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The Merciad
Est. 1929 Vol. 88 No. 20
Mercyhurst university
Wednesday, april 29, 2015
Gamble’s presidency ends By Nathan Turner News editor
Salina Bowe photo
Thomas Gamble, Ph.D, is ending his almost-decade long term as the president of Mercyhurst University at the end of May.
ABP hosts literary event By Amanda Moore Staff writer
Mercyhurst’s Alpha Beta Pi chapter of the education sorority, Kappa Delta Pi, organized the 7th annual Literacy Alive event, which reached 300 underprivileged pre-K students at seven different schools between April 13 and April 16. The experience helped the future teachers teach young students the importance reading. Kathleen Bukowski, Ph.D., Dean of the Hafenmaier School of Education & Behavioral Sciences, said that this event was not just for the children, but for students as well. She said that she believed mixing their major with community outreach would help give students
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the full Mercyhurst experience. “It connects to the Mercy Mission. I’m always thinking that, being an employee of this university, it is not just about getting the skills. It’s also about helping you grow to be a better individual. We could have done this anywhere but there was a real purpose for selecting the children that we worked with because we knew they needed this,” Bukowski said. Mercyhurst students planned the event’s activities by making lesson plans, which included reading stories and acting the stories out with the younger students. “The lessons we did this year were reader’s theater using fables. So we read the children a fable, then they made masks of the characters, and then we read
it again but they acted it out as we read. It was a big hit,” sophomore Elizabeth Meier said. The Literacy Alive Committee lead by Ian Gayford and Sam Gudat, included Katherine Brittner, Taylor Redner, Nicole Kelly, Libby Clark and Rachel Costlow. Overall, Brittner has said that she believes the event was a huge success. “The students were very excited to see the box of books when we walked into the room. They were even more excited when I told them that they got to keep the books. It was great to see how enthusiastic the students were about receiving the books They couldn’t believe that they were theirs to keep,” Brittner, a junior, said. The students also received a box of crayons too, and the
students said the children were even appreciative of that. Junior Kelsey Wilson explained the children could not believe the free presents. “They were so thankful and in so much awe and it was so heartwarming. One student tried to return the box of crayons after the lesson was over and I told her she was allowed to take them home and she gave me a hug and said no way, These are mine? Thank you,” Wilson said.
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Thomas Gamble, Ph.D., is retiring as president of Mercyhurst University after almost a decade of service in office. He will retire from the presidency at the expiration of his contract on June 30, 2015, marking nearly a decade of service as president and a 30-year affiliation with the institution. Prior to his selection as the university’s 11th president in 2006, Gamble was vice president for academic affairs/chief academic officer at Mercyhurst. He is a tenured faculty member, the founding director of the Mercyhurst Civic Institute, and founding director of the former Mercyhurst Institute for Child and Family Policy. Growth within both the academic and mission-oriented spheres of Mercyhurst was the touchstone of Gamble’s presidency. “I think overall the 10 years have been an interesting, growth-oriented time at Mercyhurst. We did a lot of things on the academic side that were valuable. And then on the Catholic and Mercy side as well. I’m pleased with some of the things we were able to do on those ends as well.” Gamble said Monday in an interview with The Merciad. During the interview, Gamble touched on multiple topics – the expansion and establishment of several programs at the university, the change to a semester system, a changing enrollment climate, the financial challenges, meeting the Mercy mission, and the changing nature of college presidencies in today’s world. (Questions for the interview were submitted in advance.) The expansion of several programs at Mercyhurst came during a period of financial uncertainty. The university cut 20 positions in 2014 due to a need to reduce expenses. Despite that, Gamble said, the university still needs to expand to avoid worse financial straits. “You have to keep expanding because you have to be able to keep moving into new markets. As the world evolves, the future enrollment is going to come to Mercyhurst through public health, through physician assistants, through data science, so if we didn’t create those things, if we didn’t do those kinds of things, then the
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future would be far bleaker than we think it will be with those things,” Gamble said. He said that the success in recruiting a capacity class for the Physician Assistant program shortly after accreditation demonstrates the viability of expanding into new, in-demand programs, even in sparse times. “You have to expand in direction of growth. We can’t simply reduce expenses. You have to reduce in some places and grow in others. It’s painful for the organization, it’s painful for the individuals, and it’s terrible that it has to be that way, but it has to be that way. “We cut 14 people, but we cut 20 positions during that time to reduce expense. You reduce expense, but then you try to do something creative. You have to do both to ensure the future of the organization,” Gamble said. Another aspect of Gamble’s presidency affected the way Mercyhurst students learn over the course of the school year: The university switched from its traditional trimester system to a semester schedule. This was done to give more time for students to learn and retain information, but also to help put Mercyhurst students on a more level playing field with other university students, Gamble said. “You retain information when you learn it over a longer period of time, as opposed to a shorter period of time. Another reason is that when our students are doing internships, or they’re doing study abroad, or they’re doing other kinds of things, for us to have a very unusual calendar interfered many times with our students being able to get certain kinds of internships and so on,” Gamble said. Gamble also said that the retention rate among students after the switch is a sign that the semester system is working and that students appreciate it. “Students vote with their feet to some extent, and we have a high retention rate, so that’s a pretty good indicator that it’s worked out pretty well,” Gamble said. The switch from college to university also offered opportunities which were impossible under the old systems, according to Gamble. (Continued on page 2)