Category Archives: Spotlight

Christopher Leslie Receives Fulbright Award UPDATED

June 10, 2008 – 10:24 am

Congratulations to Christopher Leslie, Instructor of Liberal Studies and New Media and Co-Advisor, Science and Technology Studies, for receiving a Fulbright Award to Postdam, Germany. Christopher will be teaching in the American Studies program at Postdam University for the 2008-09 school year.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchange. Since the program’s inception in 1946, approximately 279,500 participants — chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential — have had the opportunity to exchange ideas and to contribute to finding solutions to shared issues. Read the official press release after the jump. Read More »

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Othmer Residence Hall Shows Campus How To Go Green

May 28, 2008 – 8:13 pm

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Residence assistants cutback on paper waste by creating this recycle-inspired, paperless bulletin board.Did you know that recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours?

Students living in the Othmer Residence Hall have been learning similar energy-related facts every day this spring since the Office of Residence Life, with support from the Facilities Department, began the pilot green initiative R.E.D.O. (Reduction, Education, Do Research and Outreach).

Daniel Aniello, Director of Residence Life and member of Poly’s Sustainable Practices Committee, created R.E.D.O. as a way “to develop Residence Life into a green community and to use its success as an example of sustainability for the rest of the campus.” Read More »

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Maureen Braziel, A Pioneer for Women in Sports

February 28, 2008 – 9:29 pm

Maureen Braziel, Director of Athletics, has played an important role in the development of Poly’s athletic department and the history of women in sports. When Maureen first came to Poly 26 years ago, physical education was mandatory, “gym” classes were held in outside facilities, and the school didn’t have any women’s sports teams.

As Maureen moved up in the ranks of the athletic department it began to expand and improve. Today, Poly is an NCAA Division III institution with eight women’s teams (lacrosse was recently added), eight men’s teams, and an on-site gym that was added in 2002 to become the home of the Polytechnic Fighting Bluejays.

A key event on the timeline of Poly sports is Maureen’s founding of its judo team in 1982. At the time, judo, a modern Japanese martial art and combat sport, was little known — it didn’t become an Olympic sport for women until 1988. But for Maureen, judo was the focus of much of her life for nearly three decades. (After the jump, read more about Maureen’s history-making judo career and see pictures from the mat to the trophy block at the end of the story.) Read More »

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Q & A with Jean Gallagher, Poet

February 8, 2008 – 4:06 pm

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Jean Gallagher, Poet & Associate Professor of EnglishIf you didn’t know already, Jean Gallagher, Associate Professor of English, is an award-winning poet who has published two collections, Stubborn (2006) and This Minute (2005). Of her first collection, poet Jean Valentine said, “This Minute is brilliant and surprising, full of history, invention, wit, humor, motion, [and] stillness.” Poet Bruce Beasley has said, “Jean Gallagher majestically conducts a history of approaches to the sacred in Christian art, scripture, mysticism, theology. She rewrites the Bible as she re-sees the ‘gravities, necessities, haphazard plots’ behind the frozen sacramental moments of religious art.”

What does Jean have to say about her poetry? eBriefs asked Jean a few questions to find out. Continue reading after the jump for her insights on topics such as getting published, the “elemental questions” poets and artists try to answer and how we’re “hard-wired to make art.” Read More »

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Counseling Center’s New Extern Program Expands Resources, Enhances Services

December 6, 2007 – 3:55 pm

In September, Poly’s Counseling Center, directed by Luis G. Manzo, Ph.D., began its first-ever extern program. Similar programs have existed at other universities for years. Adding the program to Poly not only expands its resources but improves its credibility among other universities.

The extern program is designed so that three doctoral students spend eighteen hours a week for nine months counseling students and training with Dr. Manzo and Scott Feldman, Ph.D., Staff Psychologist and Coordinator of Clinical Training. The program’s formalized training is a secondary, but vital benefit to Dr. Manzo and Dr. Feldman. “It keeps us from going stale,” says Dr. Manzo.

As part of the Center’s commitment to providing culturally sensitive services to Poly students, the extern program is focused on enhancing cultural competence. Externs participate in a month-long multicultural lab in which they explore their own cultural backgrounds, attitudes and values. Weekly multicultural case conferences are also held between externs and senior staff.

More about the extern program.
More about the Counseling Center.

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Using Social Networking as an ESOL Learning Tool

December 6, 2007 – 9:56 am

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The Conversation Café : Left to right, front row: Jiahui Lu, Beixi Li, Ting Lv, Qian Wu, Jonathan Sorocki; Left to right, back row: Luqin Wang, Yifan Wu, Lexie Bryan, Holly Halmo, Ting Wen, Yiqing Zhang, Bo Peng, Yin Chen
College students are utilizing social networks like Facebook.com and MySpace to meet new people, catch up with old friends and, of course, procrastinate. So why not take this new medium to the next level and make it a place for education as well?

Holly Halmo, a Writing Consultant at the Polytechnic Tutoring Center (PTC), has found a way to make online social networking advantageous to Poly’s ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) student population. With her creation of the “Conversation Café” social network, students can now log on and be connected to other students, chat about language issues and practice their colloquial English all at the same time. Merging the needs of ESOL students with the technology that they are already interested in and utilizing, the PTC is using Web2.0 as an educational tool for our students. The virtual Conversation Café is not just a language resource, but also a forum to debate political and cultural issues, learn new vocabulary and how to express complex ideas in English. For example, there are current discussions taking place on the site about differing healthcare practices in China and America and ways to convey respect to your parents in English.

The PTC, located in JAB 373, is well known for its free, open tutoring available to all Poly students in an array of subjects — from Physics to CS to writing. However, many may not know about the conversational English help offered by the PTC under the umbrella of its Writing Center.

Conversation Groups, small groups of students led by a Writing Consultant, meet weekly for an hour to discuss interesting topics, debate current events and take small trips while they practice conversational English, colloquialisms and pronunciation. On Friday afternoons from 4-5:30 the actual Conversation Café is held, where students can drop by to engage in a fun, informal conversation over coffee and treats. Topics of discussion range from social “ice-breaker” activities, cultural differences and playing conversation-focused games, but the overarching goal is to have some fun with a new language.

Feel free to visit and join the network!
Want more information on the PTC?

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Dibner Library Launches PolyThinkers Pad and Poly Authors

November 29, 2007 – 10:07 am

This semester, librarians at the Dibner Library have started PolyThinkers Pad, a blog which features information for the Poly community. It presents additions to the library collection (both print & electronic), updates on library services and database offerings, announcements of science and technology lectures and exhibits, both on and off campus, breaking research news in the engineering, science, and technology fields, useful tools and tips to help get organized as well as other news and tidbits of interest to the Poly community.

Discover the current Poly Authors at the Dibner Library. The library showcases recently published books authored by 23 faculty members. Some Poly authors such as Charles Tapiero of Financial Engineering and Myles Jackson of HUSS have published more than one monograph in the last couple of years. Others have had a book translated into several languages. Professor Keith Ross of the Computer Science Department is the clear winner in that category. His book, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet has gone through four editions and is available in 13 languages.

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