'Up Till Dawn' to raise money

KRISTEN CATALANOTTO NEWS EDITOR KMC723@CABRINI.EDU

Cabrini will be hosting its very own "Up Till Dawn" yearlong fundraising event to benefit St. Jude Children's Hospital.

"Up Till Dawn's" executive director Megan Beauduy will be hosting information sessions in order to help the student body become familiar with the project. "It will give people an opportunity to talk to us so they can get a better feel for things," Beauduy said. The first information session was held on Tuesday, March 23. The second information session will be held in the Jazzman's Cafe on March 30 from 12-1:15 p.m. and the third will take place in the New Residence Hall on April 5 at 10 p.m.

In addition to Beauduy, the program is operating with two other executive members, Liz Ritter and Sarah Boyer. Ritter operates as the external assistant director and Boyer as the internal assistant director. Student Developments Amy Hecht and Jason Bozzone will assist the executive board as their coadvisers.

The "Up Till Dawn" fundrais- ing event centers around raising money for the daily expenses of the St. Jude Children's Hospital. The hospital does not charge families in order to treat their children and the costs to run the hospital amounts to $715,000 per day, "Every cent helps a child," Beauduy said.

Beauduy, Ritter and Boyer are currently trying to fill the rest of the executive board slots that are still open. They are still looking for nine dedicated individuals to help them make the program a success.

Once the executive board is in place, they will then focus on getting Cabrini students to join in on the fundraising. Teams consisting of five to six individuals will work all year in order to raise as much money as possible for the hospital. The teams will help spark enthusiasm and will assist in people noticing the cause.

Beauduy hopes to finalize the year-long event with some type of dance marathon that will go on all night. The executive board has not set a specific amount of money they want to raise, "Every cent counts we are doing it for the kids," Beauduy said.

"I began developing the project in 1997. I refined it until I graduated in 2000. I wrote up the article in 2003," Acker said, citing the delay was due to career changes. It took five months or so before I heard that I passed screening of the first draft." After revisions, Acker's article "Drug Levels and Difference Equations" was accepted for publishing in Mathematics Teacher.

The article was compiled from "raw date, looking at patterns, and looking at the amount of drugs m the body after multiple usages" Acker said. "Students were required to get the data ~n their own.

They could call drug companies, research online, [or] speak with a pharmacist." The data was collected over a number of semesters from students at a school where Acker was previously employed. She chose the topic hoping that it would catch the interests of the students while keeping in mind that the data they needed to collect would be easily accessible to them.

"I was nervous when writing the article," Acker said. But those nerves did not hold her back;Ackerlooks forward to writingagain. She is inter- ested in "technology in the math classroom; not the graphing calculator, more like computers." Acker thinks it is important for people to know the capabilities that computer programs, such as Excel, have to offer to the field of math. "l figure most people don't use their graphing calculators after college, right?" Acker said.

However, Acker is interested in a lot more than just math and technology. Biking, cooking, reading, and science fiction are all passions of Acker's. And although Acker is a big Star Wars fan she insists that she did not dress in costume to get tickets to the movie.

Acker has also been happily married for a year and a half and she and her husband David are the proud parents of three beagles. They live in the city now but hope someday to move to the suburbs so the dogs can have a nice big back yard.

Ackers article can be found in an upcoming issue of Mathematics Teacher.