Plan to attend President's Convocation, Aug. 18
Mark your calendar for this year's President's Convocation, scheduled for Monday, Aug. 18. All faculty, staff and administrators should plan on a full day, beginning with breakfast at Calihan Hall at 8:30 a.m., followed by a University program, lunch and an afternoon of games and good company.
Sisters of Mercy form West Midwest Community
On July 1, the Sisters of Mercy in Detroit joined with five other Mercy regional communities to become the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas - West Midwest Community.
The new West Midwest Community includes hundreds of Sisters of Mercy, Mercy Associates and Companions in Mercy from the former regional communities of Auburn, Calif.; Burlingame, Calif.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Detroit; and Omaha, Neb.
While its central offices are in Omaha, the West Midwest Community continues to have a local office in Farmington Hills. The new Community Leadership Team includes UDM alumna Sr. Judith Frikker, RSM '73, who was elected earlier this year.
For more on the new Community, visit www.mercywestmidwest.org.
College of Health Professions wins grants
UDM's College of Health Professions and McAuley School of Nursing were recently awarded two grants. One comes from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, who granted the School more than $1 million to fund the Simulation Technology Electronic-informatics Preparatory Systems (STEPS) initiative.
STEPS is an innovative UDM clinical practice program using new technologies to better prepare students for twenty-first century health care settings. Technologies to be used in STEPS include an electronic health record system, handheld informatics systems and computerized, real-time patient simulation manikins.
The STEPS initiative will be led by Suzanne Guzelaydin, coordinator of the College of Health Professions's Simulation Practice and Technology Integration Center. Guzelaydin and Judith Lewis, associate dean of the McAuley School of Nursing, were instrumental in obtaining the highly competitive grant.
The College of Health Professions will also benefit from a State of Michigan grant of more than a quarter million dollars. The 2008 Michigan Nursing Corps award approved by the Michigan Department of Community Health is intended to help the College address the critical shortage of nurses and nursing education faculty. Read more.
UDM well-represented at Mercy Higher Ed symposium
UDM President Gerard L. Stockhausen, S.J., and Assistant to the President for Mission and Identity John Staudenmaier, S.J., were two of the UDM contingent at the 2008 Symposium on Service Learning and Civic Engagement, held by the Conference for Mercy Higher Education (CMHE), June 12-14 at Georgian Court University in Lakewood, N.J.
Also at the symposium was Director of UDM's Leadership Development Institute John Daniels, who gave the presentation, "Service learning nuts and bolts," and led a session on service learning assessment. Professor of Philosophy Gail Presbey joined Daniels to give the presentation, "Going beyond service learning to social change."
The mission of the CMHE is to strengthen the core Catholic identity and mission of Mercy higher education in accord with the values of the Sisters of Mercy. Moya Kaporch Dittmeier, vice president for Planning & Special Projects at Holy Family University (Philadelphia), was chosen as the new executive director of the Conference. For more, see the CMHE web site.
AICUM gives Distinguished Service Award
The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Michigan (AICUM), of which UDM is a member, named State Representative George Cushingberry Jr. '91, as the 2008 recipient of its highest award for public policy support, the Distinguished Service Award. The award was presented at the AICUM annual meeting, May 21 in Lansing.
Cushingberry, an alumnus of UDM's School of Law, was honored for his leadership defending the Michigan Tuition Grant program and its funding through the difficult 2007 state budget process. More than 40,000 students attending Michigan independent institutions receive the aid.
From left: College for Creative Studies President Richard Rogers, AICUM President Edward Blews, Representative George Cushingberry, University of Detroit Mercy President Gerard Stockhausen, S.J., and Marygrove College President David Fike.
Stanton
UDM journalism to get a boost from new faculty member
Journalist, award-winning author and former UDM instructor Tom Stanton returns to McNichols Campus this fall to teach Journalism, coordinate the Neal Shine Media Center, and take on the role of faculty advisor for the UDM student newspaper, Varsity News. Stanton, whose book, Ty and the Babe, was recently reissued in paperback, will be honored as the Michigan Library Association's Author of the Year in October.
Thumbs Up!
Colleen Connolly, executive assistant to the Dean of the College of Health Professions, became an Associate of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Regional Community of Detroit (now the West Midwest Community), in a ceremony at Mercy Center in Farmington Hills, June 20. Mercy Associates are women and men who enter into a covenant with the Sisters of Mercy to participate in the life of the Mercy Community. Read more.
Executive Chef for Sodexo at UDM Richard Flack Sr. was a first place winner in the "Battle of the Chefs," held by the Macomb County NAACP during its Juneteenth celebration, June 21. The winning dish was Sizzling Breast of Chicken and Wild Mushroom Caesar Salad.
UDM Library Technician and Preservation Specialist Maurice Greenia Jr. is a highlighted artist in the exhibition, Considering Detroit, on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit through July 27. Greenia, whose nom d'art is Maugré, created nearly 400 works for the show. Also, Greenia has put together a display of over 100 puppets in the lobby of the McNichols Campus Library, which will be on view through July 19.
Joseph A. Weglarz, instructor and director of the Undergraduate Program in UDM's Department of Economics at Macomb University Center, presented the paper, "San Bernardino: Early Defender of the Entrepreneur," at the 35th annual meeting of the History of Economics Society, June 29 at York University (Toronto). Bernardino's De Contractibus et Usuris was used to explain the economic contributions of this Catholic philosopher and moral theologian.
Professor of Education Barbara Schirmer co-wrote "Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction with deaf and hard-of-hearing students," to be included in the ninth edition of Exceptional Children, edited by W.L. Heward and scheduled for publication by Prentice-Hall in 2009. Schirmer also gave a number of presentations in the last few months:
- "Defining quality research in education: should ABA weigh in on the national dialogue?," Association for Behavior Analysis International conference, May 25 in Chicago.
- "Guided reading approach: application to deaf students," International Reading Association conference, May 7 in Atlanta.
- "How effectively are we preparing teacher educators in special education?: the case of deaf education" and "Guided reading approach as an instructional intervention model with elementary deaf students," at the American Education Research Association conference, March 25 in New York City, where she also chaired the session, "Reading research: results of two years of research with students with intellectual disability."
Campus Connection will appear monthly through the summer. Weekly issues will resume at the beginning of the 2008-2009 academic year.