HILLTOP VIEWS
St. Edward’s University • Wednesday, September 12, 2012 • Volume 32 • Issue 1 • hilltopviewsonline.com
University mourns professors
Sara Sanchez
Nikki Hill
ssanchei@stedwards.edu
nhill2@stedwards.edu
Kristina Schenck kschenc@stedwards.edu
It was a sad start to the new school year as the university community mourns the loss of three veteran St. Edward’s professors, all of whom taught at the university for several decades. Edward Shirley, Jean McKemie and Harald Becker, all age 58, held a total of nearly 77 years of teaching at St. Edward’s combined. Shirley died unexpectedly on Aug. 15 while recovering from shoulder surgery; McKemie died Aug. 21 of breast cancer; Becker died Aug. 8 of pancreatic cancer. Edward Shirley, a theologian, taught classes that ranged from topics such as meditation and religious studies to the infamous Christian Themes in Harry Potter course. Previously, he served as president of the Faculty Senate and was one of the first faculty advisors for PRIDE, an LGBTQ student organization on campus. More than 500 people attended a memorial service for Shirley at the univer-
IT examines outages
Courtesy of SEU Marketing Students and faculty remember Harald Becker, Jean McKemie and Edward Shirley (left to right).
sity on Aug. 25. Colleagues reported that former students traveled from as far as California for the event. Speakers included Father Lou Brusatti, Bishop John McCarthy and Shirley’s son, Matthew. Described by colleagues as gregarious and curious, Shirley was known for his sense of humor, tendency to incorporate banjo playing into class lessons and popularity on Facebook. “He was always playful. He brought together playfulness and rigor in ways I’ve never seen before,” said Steven Rodenborn, a professor of religious studies. Students loved being around
him, even though he would take off points for not having a staple in the right spot.” During the eulogy, Matthew Shirley talked about his father’s passion for teaching. “My father told me he wasn’t trying to create the best theologians…he was trying to create better human beings. And this was the perfect place to do it,” Shirley said. McKemie, professor of mathematics joined joined the university community in 1988, where she made many of her professional achievements, including being named the first Brother Lucian Blersch Professor
for her academic research. McKemie was also a highly sought-after member of university committees. McKemie always put her students first, up until her last days teaching at St. Edward’s in Spring 2012. Her students, colleagues, family members and friends remember McKemie as a voice of reason and a problem-solver in mathematics and in life. “Jean offered advice when she was asked and seemed to know just how things should be,” said Cynthia Naples, a professor of mathematics and friend of McKemie’s.
The first weeks of school have been interrupted by server and network problems and outages, causing problems and frustration for both students and staff. “The service outages experienced in the past three weeks are not all due to a singular core problem,” said Claire Dunn, IT communications coordinator. According to Dunn, the outages during the first week of school and the outage on Sept. 5 shared root causes, but different initial events. The root cause and initiating event of the Sept. 7 outage were unrelated to those of the first outage. “The initiating event [of the Sept. 7 outage] was a five-
minute network outage, during which our routing protocol was disrupted, which effectively took down servers and storage in two locations on campus,” said Dunn. In response, St. Edward’s Digital Infrastructure team conducted a five-hour outage on Sept. 8 in order to more fully address network and server issues. “[The Digital Infrastructure team] proceeded to topologically change the way two server and storage sites on campus communicated to one another,” Dunn said. No data was lost during or after the outages and network maintenance. Dunn said the Digital Infrastructure team is continually making and planning changes to improve network stability.
EDITOR’S NOTE The Hilltop Views website recently underwent a makeover. The site, which has been unavailable since May, has a new look, fresh content, and will be up and running live as of today. This is all part of our plan to provide the community with quality, accurate news coverage online to accompany the weekly print edition of the paper. As always, we encourage feedback on our content in the comments section under each story. Visit us on the web at hilltopviewsonline.com.
PROFESSORS | 2
6 | LIFE & ARTS
7 | SPORTS
11 | VIEWPOINTS
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