HONORS NEWS
CAL U December 2012
California University of Pennsylvania
Honors Conference
Inside this Issue: Honors Conference
Page 1 Fall 2012 Graduating Seniors
Page 2
Carnegie Museum of Art Excursion
Page 3 Organic Farming Excursion
Page 4 Flight 93 Memorial Excursion
Page 5 PASSHE Summer Honors Program 2012
Page 6 SHAB Scavenger Hunt Page 6 Staff: Kelsey Baumgardner, Editor Emma Will, Editor Lindsey Gasper, Contributor Kevin Hager, Contributor Stephanie Moore, Contributor Justin Johnson, Photo Contributor
By Justin Johnson The 2012 National Collegiate Honors Council conference sounds unnerving merely in name, and this intimidation is only matched by the amount of undergraduate students who attended it; roughly 1,950 young scholars presented at the research conference in Boston, Massachusetts, and I am one of the many who believe it was the experience of a lifetime. Just last year I participated in the Intersections conference sponsored by our university, but like many can understand, treading into unknown territory is a hard fear to overcome. NCHC’s first excursion – City As Text - pitted me against that fear, along with three other Cal U students and two students from universities across the nation. Our assignment had us explore the streets of Boston in order to find the Financial Dis-
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trict and Waterfront with nothing but a map. (A paper map, mind you, not an iPhone.) We quickly found ourselves lost, and it was incredible. As our group asked locals for directions, they also recommended Al’s sub shop for good food, places to see, and places no one should see. Eventually we found our destination, explored, recorded the information, and presented it to hundreds of conference attendees when we returned. But the City-As-Text experience mainly concerned the journey. It allowed typical honors students to see the great city of Boston outside of a history book, letting us use all of our senses – sound, smell, taste - to find our way around.
Special Thanks: Kim Orslene Dr. Aune Dr. Fox Dr. Meiss Dr. Persinger
The research conference itself was an equally outstanding event, and no textbooks were necessary to participate. From a plenary speaker debating the virtues of right and wrong, to research presentations focused on the life of children in the European Middle Ages, there seemed to be something for everyone to attend, question, and enjoy. As a presenter in one of NCHC’s poster sessions, I needed to overcome a fear of public speaking and ignorance quickly... or so I thought. As I mentioned, nearly two thousand people attended the conference, and most of these were students just as nervous and doubtful of their abilities as I was. As the sessions progressed, however, we all explained our work, debated and defended our rationales, but most importantly, we came to know each other as both people and honors students. Small groups of attendees showed interest in my work, some who never heard of it, and many with such enthusiasm, (Continued on page 2)
Honors Students Stephanie Moore, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Brittany Kusniar
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Fall 2012 Graduating Seniors Kathryn M. Brunetta Honors Thesis: “Abraham Lincoln: America’s 16th President, America’s First Dictator” Advisor: Dr. Sean Madden Gina E. Buscemi Honors Thesis: “Albigensian and Samogitian Crusades in the European Theater” Advisor: Dr. Paul Crawford Chad J. Dechowitz Honors Thesis: “Law and Lawyers: The Past, Present, and Future of the Legal Profession” Advisor: Dr. Craig Smith Meghan R. Gavin Honors Thesis: “A Study of the Deliberation of Banned Books” Advisor: Dr. J. Drew McGukin
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they taught me things I never knew. In essence, the conference was dedicated to honors research, but it was so much more than that. It was a glimpse of Boston through my own eyes, it was getting lost on a subway and eating outstanding food, it was presenting my research that I spent months evaluating, and it was making connections and networking. It showed there are others out there looking for answers, but some are also looking for questions. Attending the NCHC research conference made me return to campus with an extraordinary experience and a few new friends. Who would’ve thought?
Honors News
Rebecca A. Kuklar Honors Thesis: “Hippotherapy: A Remarkable Method in Sensory Stimulation and Equine Movement for Children with Autism and Cerebral Palsy” Advisor: Professor Nancy Carlino Kelsey L. Landy Honors Thesis: “Teaching Through Effective Communication Techniques” Advisor: Dr. J William Hug Emily Martik Honors Thesis: “A Study of Readership of the Cal Times Newspaper” Advisor: Dr. Margo Wilson Bridget A. Rogan Honors Thesis: “Change the Sardines? A Study in the Semantics of Stage Management” Advisor: Dr. Michelle Pagen
David C. Schmidt Honors Thesis: League Salary Structures: “How MLB Compares With the Other Major Sports and Does Team Market Size Matter?” Advisor: Dr. Brian Wood Rebecca Serafini Honors Thesis: “Exploring the Options” Advisor: Dr. Barbara Bonfanti Melissa L. Straub Honors Thesis: “The Benefits of Junior Hockey vs. Amateur Hockey: A Look Inside the Pittsburgh Junior Penguins Organization” Advisor: Dr. Donald Franks
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Carnegie Museum of Art Excursion by Kevin Hager I recently attended a field trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland, Pennsylvania, for my Honors art history class, “Global Transitions’ since 1300: Art, Guns, and the Government”. Dr. Persinger gave us the opportunity to explore countless art exhibits outside the classroom and analyze material we have not covered in her course. Myself being strongly interested in seeing the art at Carnegie, pledged to attend one Friday morning in October; and so we set forth to Oakland, anxious to see what lay ahead. When we arrived,
we were greeted by the polite staff members of the museum and we prepared ourselves for the art seminars that we would be attending until noon that day. The topics discussed at the seminar were all different and abstract in their own way; however, each was dedicated to the aspect of ephemerality in art. One graduate student proudly engaged in her presentation on Xu Bing’s art at a North Carolina tobacco museum and his placing of his anti-smoking structures within the confines of the museum’s property to show the negative effects of smoking and abusing the substance, as he himself lost his father to the self-destructive agent. Another presentation was by a young man who de-
tailed the secret life of Queen Victoria and her image being portrayed as sexually-charged in those days and how the British people responded to this social issue at the time. The third described the quaint memorial of a little girl who perished during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. At the culmination of the seminar, we embarked to explore all the museum has to offers in terms of art aestheticism and meaning. We divided ourselves into small groups and adventured the art section of the museum, bewildered at the sheer quantity of works put on display there. I examined many Greco-Roman sculptures and was fas-
detail in the statues erected there. The reason we were at the museum was to analyze the exhibit on the World’s Fair, which at the time was being displayed in the temporary exhibit showrooms. I was entranced by the sheer mass amount of gold and silver present, and the art-decor style of vanities and bureaus of the early twentieth century. My group and I were fascinated by the some of the artwork presented at the museum’s simplicity. One This field trip gave me and other students in the Honors program the chance to broaden our horizons in everyday life.
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News
Organic Farming Excursion By Lindsey Gasper The Honors Excursion to Athens, Ohio with Dr. Sarah Meiss was truly an eye-opening experience. Although I am not in her “Topics in Science and Technology: Sustainable Agriculture� class, I still benefited from the trip. It was three days from Wednesday, October 24, 2012 until Friday, October 26, 2012. In those three days, every restaurant we ate at was part of the "30 Mile Meals" program, meaning most, if not all, of the dishes' ingredients came from local suppliers. Almost all of the restaurants served all organic meals as well. We toured several organic farms, an organic creamery (Snowville Creamery) and even an organic winery (Shade Winery).
On Wednesday when we arrived, the first stop we made was at the Farmer's Market that had everything from organic beef to apple pies to beeswax candles. On Thursday, we met a remarkable man by the name of Paul Strauss, who owns Equinox Botanicals. He produces herbal-medicine, all from the plants growing naturally on his own farm, which he also resides on. Because we were about 10 minutes from Ohio University (Dr. Meiss's alma mater), we also had the chance to tour the campus on top of a guided tour of the university's ECOhouse and the OU Community Gardens.
Students visited the Snowville Creamery in Ohio.
On the last day, before we started our drive home, we stopped at grocery store which carries all the organic food we ate throughout the trip as well as all the samples we were given at the farms. By partici pating in this excursion, I was able to experience something that I probably wouldn't have had the chance to anywhere else. (in no particular order) Caitlin Birmingham, Emily Murray, Nicole Kuhta, Bethann Wilson,
Alicia Wadsworth, Kaitlin Enck, Kathryn McAndrew, Abby Beatty, Lindsey Gasper, Angelina Lorenzo, Andrew Tuzikow, and Chad Morrow
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Flight 93 Memorial Excursion By Stephanie Moore It’s the beginning of autumn and a cool breeze blows onto your face. An eerie calmness comes over you while you look at the surrounding trees of changing colors, empty fields, and visitors baring solemn faces. On September 11, 2001, this was a place of tragic and heroic moments. Today, it is a place of memories, honor, and remembrance. This is the Flight 93 Memorial.
The welcome sign at the entrance to the road way of the Flight 93 Memorial.
As I approached the marble panels at the end of the walkway, I noticed that each one had a name of either a passenger or crew member inscribed on them. These panels made up a wall that follows the exact flight path. At the end of the panels is a wooden gate, made out of the same type of trees that were destroyed by the crash. Looking through this gate, I saw a sandstone boulder that marked were Flight 93 violently crashed. I enjoyed that the architects left the final resting place untouched and that this area remains a place for the victims’ families to mourn their losses. Because the memorial was so simple, visitors did not focus solely on the structure. Instead, visitors could remember this tragic event and be thankful for the brave passengers and crew members on Flight 93. Being in this emotional setting, I felt a sense of gratitude towards the passengers and crew. I continually asked myself what I would have done if I was in the same situation that they went through. And I could not give an honest answer. The experience was one that I will never forget. Who knows what would have happened to our country if they had not taken control of that plane.
I had expected the memorial to be overwhelming in size, similar to the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., but this memorial was more serene and meaningful. The architects left the landscape as natural as possible, so the memorial is open to natural changes throughout the seasons and over time. From the entrance of the memorial, I followed a black, granite walkway to a distant wall made of 40 marble panels, each representing a passenger or crew member from the flight. To my left, a black, sloped wall marked off the exact crash site. There were three inlets on the sloped wall where visitors left tokens and memorials.
The marble wall with the names of each victim of Flight 93 engraved into each panel.
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England where the students were able to tour various colleges, the Bodleian Library. They also were able to take day trips to historic sites such as Canterbury and Cressing Temple, which was once owned by the Knights Templar. The group also took part in fun activities like punting down the Thames and visiting the Harry Potter studios.
PASSHE Summer Honors Program 2012 This summer Cal U hosted the annual Summer Honors Program. Seamus Hutchens and Emma Will were the scholarship winners from Cal. The trip, entitled “There and Back Again: Medievalism, Modernity and the University”, included a week at Cal U with lectures on the War of the Roses, medieval manuscripts, and college culture within Oxford along with others presented by Dr. Paul Crawford, Dr. Sarah Downey, Dr. Rick Cumings, Dr. M. G. Aune. This was followed by two weeks in Oxford,
SHAB Scavenger Hunt By Kelsey Baumgardner On Thursday September 27 the students of SHAB held a welcome back event for all UHP students. At 7 pm students and SHAB members filled the honors classroom for a briefing of how the nights event would work. The event was a photo scavenger hunt. In this hunt students had a list of items they had to take photographs with. The list included things such as the Vulcan statue, the cow in the library, the no stapler sign in Noss hall, a professor, a desk assistant in a residence hall, a community assistant in a residence hall, the California Universi-
News
Honors students from the 2012 PASSHE program in Oxford
Congratulations on another semester Honors Students! Have a great winter break, and see you next semester!
ty sign, an employee from a business in town, an AVI employee, a Vulcan Flyer bus stop, the oldest building on campus, and the newest building on campus. Participants teamed up in groups of three or for and took off to accomplish everything on the list. It was a race to see who could make it back with a picture of everything first. Each member of the first and second place teams was awarded a gift card to the Cal U bookstore. It took the teams a little less than an hour to complete the list. Members of the SHAB allowed creative ways of crossing some things off the list, such as letting participants take a picture with an image of a professor instead of inter-
The next PASSHE Summer Honors Program will be hosted by Bloomsburg University. This program, Music and Media: A Grand European Tour, will examine music and media, past and present, in Europe and visit famous venues in cities like London, Salburg, Vienna, Venice, and Rome. Interviews for the Cal U scholarships recipients will tentatively take place on December 11th for those who submitted their portfolio.
rupting class to find a professor on campus. It made for a very competitive night. Honors students could be seen running all over campus and through the town trying to get back as quickly as they could. “It was crazy, but I really enjoyed participating,” freshman University Honors Program student John Troutman said. After teams returned from the hunt they were offered pizza and soda to refresh themselves. All the participants stuck around, socialized, and enjoyed the refreshments. The first place team consisted of John Troutman, Lauren Schultheis, and Kelsey Baumgardner. The second place team consisted of Miles McCauley, Rodger Vigliotti, Logan Flannigan.
Other participants included Haley Bashada and Stephanie Moore.
Freshmen students John Troutman and Kelsey Baumgardner pose with the Vulcan statue as to complete part of the photo scavenger hunt.