FARCE: Arthur Schnitzler’s LaRonde, a bedroom farce founded in the writings of Sigmund Freud, will be staged in SIUE’s James F. Metcalf Theater at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, Dec. 10-13, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14. Director C. Otis Sweezey said the play questions societal perceptions of sexuality and the meaning of relationships between men and women. La Ronde is a controversial and sensitive play that caused quite a scandal when it premiered in 1921 Vienna. Above, the soldier, portrayed by Alex Eichen, and the prostitute, played by Wendy Greenwood, are one of the relationships in the play. Admission is $8; senior citizens and non-SIUE students, $5; SIUE students, free. For more information or for tickets, call the SIUE Fine Arts box office, (618) 650-2774, or, toll-free, (888) 328-5168, Ext. 2774. (SIUE Photo)
(EDWARDSVILLE) A 14-person committee has been chosen by SIU President James Walker to lead the search for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s next chancellor. Chancellor David Werner announced his intention to retire during his state of the university address in October.
Don Elliott, professor of economics and finance in the School of Business, will be the chair of the committee, which will include:
Ann Boyle, Dean of the SIU School of Dental Medicine
Sara Guarino, undergraduate and Student Senate president
Al Hagemann, alumni representative
Julia Hansen, associate professor, Lovejoy Library, and committee vice chair
Joel Hardman, associate professor, English language and literature
Michelle King, SIUE graduate student
Joe Loring, manager of information technology and president of Staff Senate
Sue Morgan, associate professor, civil engineering
David Oates, community representative
Paul Pitts, assistant to the chancellor for equal opportunity programs
Sue Thomas, associate professor, psychology
Kathleen Tunney, associate professor, social work
Prince Wells, associate professor, music
John Haller, vice president for Academic Affairs in the office of the president, will serve as ex-officio member The committee will meet soon to begin planning for the search. Chancellor Werner has indicated that his retirement would be effective by July 1.
(EDWARDSVILLE) After three years of the annual Sumo Robot Wrestling Competition matching high school teams against a team of freshman engineering majors, the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Engineering will take a more refined view of the competition this year.
Twenty teams Edwardsville, Collinsville, Columbia, and Highland high schools will meet head on, starting at 9:30 a.m. in the atrium of the Engineering Building Saturday, November 22, in a game that might be thought of as a cross between ping pong and soccer.
Instead of robots from each team trying to wrestle the opposition out of the ring, this year’s teams will score by carrying ping pong balls to the other team’s side of the field while "defending" their own side. Each robot is built using Lego MindStorms kits, complete with a program that instructs the robot on how to react when it comes in contact with another robot, an obstacle or a ball.
Eight teams will advance to the second round of the competition, taking on teams from the freshman engineering design class. Last year, more than 60 students from East St. Louis, Edwardsville and Highland high schools participated in the competition.
"This is not only educational, it’s fun," said Jerry Weinberg, associate professor of computer science. "Everyone gets excited and energized by the competition. It really is a hands-on learning experience that we hope will grow every year."
Weinberg is among several SIUE Engineering professors who are using robotics to create designed a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching.
"(Robot building) is one of those experiences that applies beyond the classroom," he said. "It allows the students to apply all they have learned in math, logic, physics and other classes. They can bring everything together in a way that is going to benefit them in the future. They will be better problem-solvers, because they will understand better how to think across disciplines."
Several area companies are sponsors of the competition, including Basler Electric, Maverick Technologies, Crawford Bunte Brammeier, and Juneau Associates, Inc., P.C.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) Mary Wertsch, project director for the Initiative for Science Literacy in St. Louis, will be the featured speaker at the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Annual Science Teachers Conference that begins at 8 a.m. Monday, Nov. 24, in the SIUE Science Building.
Sponsored by the SIUE Office of Science and Math Education (OSME), the all-day conference provides a variety of informative, “hands-on” workshops for K-12 science teachers from the region. The $35 admission fee also includes materials for use in the classroom, a continental breakfast, and a luncheon buffet.
Wertsch will speak about “Community Resources: Who are the People in Your Neihborhood.” Wertsch said she directs the science literacy program, working with institutions to provide science workshops for a varied group of audiences throughout the St. Louis region.
For more information about the SIUE event or to register, contact Dawn Olive or Denise Plunk by e-mail: dolive@siue.edu or dplunk@siue.edu, or call OSME, (618) 650-3065.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) Sharon Berry of Bridgeton, Mo., associate director of the Office of Student Financial Aid at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, was named director of that office effective Nov. 1, according to Boyd Bradshaw, SIUE assistant vice chancellor for Enrollment Management.
Berry has been acting director of the office since March 1 when former Director Marian Smithson retired after 10 years of service to the university.
In her new position, Berry is responsible for the management and student-centered delivery of federal, state, and university financial aid and scholarship programs that supports the university's enrollment and retention goals, and insures compliance with current regulations and policies. .
Berry had been associate director of Student Financial Aid from 1999-2003. Before joining the SIUE staff, Berry was director of Financial Aid and Student Employment at what was then known as Belleville Area College. She also had been director of Financial Aid at Harris-Stowe State College in St. Louis.
She earned a bachelor's in Psychology and a master's in Psychology, with an Industrial/ Organizational emphasis, both from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Business recently took second in the 2003 Innovation in Leadership of Business Education Award competition, conducted by the Mid-Continent East region of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
The AACSB award recognizes curriculum innovation in university business education. SIUE was cited for its graduate level course, “Ethics and Corporate Responsibilities in the World of Enron, Andersen, and Worldcom: An Innovative Graduate Business Curricular Enhancement.” The course was offered during this past Spring Semester.
The multifunctional and interdisciplinary course provided an overview of recent corporate misconduct and ethical lapses, and discussed the implications for individuals’ personal business ethics, managerial decision making, and areas of corporate accountability.
“It’s not just a matter of teaching our future executives to make wise choices,” said Gary Giamartino, dean of the SIUE School of Business. “We need to teach students to better recognize an ethical dilemma. It could be that we’ve taken for granted that people know an ethical dilemma when they see it.” The course received funding from SIUE’s Excellence in Graduate Education, a program that funds graduate program initiatives. SIUE Management and Marketing Professor Madhav Segal organized the course with assistance from James Wilkerson, and Joseph Michlitsch, both members of the SIUE Management and Marketing faculty.
The full SIUE team included Professor Thomas King, Associate Professor J. David Mason, and Associate Professor Brad Reed, all of the Accounting faculty; Professor Bijoy Bordoloi and Assistant Professor Susan Yager, both of the Computer Management Information Systems faculty; Assistant Professor Chris Dussold and Professor Yuk-Chow “Jacky” So, both of the Economics and Finance faculty; and Associate Professor Ralph Giacobbe and lecturer John Gilbert, both of the Management and Marketing faculty.
“We intentionally took the multi-disciplinary approach,” Segal said. “It gave us a chance to see the issues from multiple angles and with the benefit of varied backgrounds. It’s not only an issue of what the regulations say, or how to properly develop an economic forecast. It is all those things and more— most especially, it is a managerial issue.”
The award included recognition at the Mid-Continent East Association meeting in Chicago, and a prize of $1000.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) The Annual Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is set for Wednesday and Thursday, Dec. 3-4, in SIUE’s Morris University Center. Deadline is Dec. 1 for renting booth space, based on a juried evaluation of arts and crafts to be exhibited and space available.
Sponsored by the Morris University Center Print and Design Shop, the fair will be open from 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. both days. There is no admission charge to attend the fair and the public is invited.
Items at the fair will include original works produced by local and regional artists and crafts persons. Many types of handmade goods will be available for purchase, including pieces made from clay, weaving, fiber, fabric, wood, paper, metal, glass, leather, graphics, painting, photography, and other materials.
Selections for purchase will include many articles suitable for holiday gifts. For more information about obtaining booth space or about the fair itself, call Tom Ostresh in the Print and Design Shop, (618) 650-2178.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO, will speak at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11, in the dome room of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Religious Center.
Velasquez, co-author of pending federal legislation that would create a "guest worker" program for undocumented farmworkers in this country, will speak at SIUE about "Walking a Fine Line Between Homeland Security and Loss of Civil Rights: The Post 9/11 Dilemma."
Vice president of the Ohio AFL-CIO and president of the Toledo Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Velasquez began working in the fields beside his parents at the age of six. During college, he formed the FLOC to organize farmworkers and lead their fight for just wages and living conditions.
In 1987 Velasquez led over 2,000 workers in the largest agricultural strike in the history of the Midwest, calling for unprecedented union recognition in a multi-party collective bargaining agreement.
There is no admission charge for the Nov. 11 event. For more information, contact the SIUE Kimmel Leadership Center, (618) 650-2686.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) A dance about the transition from life to death and a piece choreographed using a live string ensemble, are highlights of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Dance In Concert 2003, which features pieces choreographed by SIUE dance faculty and guest choreographers.
The dance concert is set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, through Saturday, Nov. 15, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, all at SIUE’s Katherine Dunham Hall theater.
Artistic Director J. Calvin Jarrell, a professor of theater and dance and director of dance at the university, said a professional movement teacher from England is presenting a piece she choreographed using the Laban Method. "Carol-Lynne Moore, a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey at Guildford, England, works with the Laban notation process.
"It’s a process that presents the choreography to the dancers in notation so that a dancer can read the movement notation much like a musician reads musical notes on a staff. Her dance, "Joint Venture," is a light-modern piece with jazz elements. "It’s a very nice closing dance for the show," Jarrell said. He pointed out that the nine pieces in the concert range from lyrical ballet to serious and light modern.
Jarrell himself choreographed "Passage Beyond Time," inspired by the death of his mother earlier this year. "It’s a meditative piece about the transition from this life into the next life. My sister and I cradled our mother as she died just like she cradled us when we were infants," he said.
"It was a very powerful moment for me and my family."
Veteran guest choreographer Janet Strzelec is breaking tradition this year—her Dance In Concert tradition. "I’ve been involved in Dance in Concert since the early 1990s, and throughout that time I’ve always been the ‘go-to’ person for jazz-tap pieces," Strzelec said.
But, this time will be different. "I was approached to choreograph a dance piece with two songs that would be performed by a live string ensemble," Strzelec said. She explained that most dance concerts utilize recorded music. "It’s lovely music with violin and cello, but there’s a twist—the ensemble also features banjo, guitar, and mandolin," Strzelec said. "If we had to give it a label, I suppose it would be considered ‘new age’ music."
An SIUE graduate, Strzelec is the dance teacher at Saint Louis University High School and also is a part-time dance instructor at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. "My background has been in ballet, performing with the Saint Louis Symphony, and in musical theater, with an orchestra," she said. "Choreographing to live music is very comfortable for me. But, most important, for me, this has been a chance to return to lyrical ballet choreography, a return to my classic dance training."
Tickets for Dance In Concert 2003 are $8; non-SIUE students and senior citizens, $5; SIUE students, no charge. For more information, or to make reservations, call the SIUE Fine Arts box office, (618) 650-2774.
