National Alcohol Screening Day aims to raise awareness and educate students about the misuse and abuse of alcohol. We invite all students, whether infrequent or frequent drinkers to come by to take the free alcohol screening and pick up some important information about alcohol and your health.
Please stop by if you or someone you know is struggling with an alcohol problem and you would like to learn more about resources and support services on and off campus!
Alcohol Screening Day Wednesday, April 1st, 2015 11:00am-3:00pm
Student center theatre: plaza level
FREE food and T-shirts!
Contact the Drug and Alcohol Resource Center for more information: 392-5074/5087
• Meet prospective employers
• Discover career possibilities
• Dress like you mean business!
Each year the Academic and Career Advising Center holds a career fair that bring national and regional employers representing all fields to the Southern campus. The fairs foster student and employer interaction while offering students the opportunity to explore various careers, learn about organizations and industries, and apply for full-time, part-time, internship, and cooperative education opportunities.
As we are all well aware of by now, we have been experiencing some extremely cold temperatures. In order to protect our facilities and ultimately faculty and staff personal space, we need your help in making sure all windows are closed in offices and classrooms. Since many of our buildings have units located on outside walls, it is extremely important to make sure windows are closed so piping won’t freeze.
Last weekend we found several windows open in both classrooms and offices. Had we not been on Campus doing snow removal these areas might not have been discovered and frozen pipes could very well have caused serious water damage.
Please take a moment to check for open windows in your areas, and thank you for your assistance.
Robert G. Sheeley
Associate Vice President for Capital Budgeting & Facilities Operations
Southern Connecticut State University sheeleyr1@southernct.edu Phone: 203-392-6050
Fax: 203-392-6058
I am very pleased to announce that Dr. Troy Paddock, chair of the History Department, has been named as the recipient of the 2014 Faculty Scholar Award.
Troy, who is an expert on German history, was chosen by a committee of his peers for his book, “Creating the Russian Peril: Education, the Public Sphere and National Identity in Imperial Germany, 1890-1914.”
Rex Gilliland, Chair of the Faculty Scholar Award Committee, said committee members were impressed by Troy’s “breadth of scholarship and the innovative methodology that he developed and employed.
“We also noted the fact that he addressed a neglected issue in historical research and questioned widely-held assumptions about the development of public attitudes in Imperial Germany,” Rex wrote. “The importance of his work for the field was evidenced by several detailed and fascinating reviews of his book.”
Troy’s book — published in March 2010 by Camden House of Rochester, N.Y. — explores the German perception of Russia in the years before World War I, which is a topic of some debate. Drawing on extensive scholarly research conducted in several German cities, his work explores how Russia was presented in various books, newspapers, and academic writings.
Several reviewers praised Troy’s contribution to an important topic that has been little-discussed in the English-speaking world.
As Andrew Donson, a University of Massachusetts Amherst scholar, wrote in The American Historical Review: “The book’s main argument – that the image of Russia created by German historians and journalists was largely a foil for their own concerns about Germany, their reflection in a panoptic mirror – is sharp and illuminating. It is commendable that, rather than writing a purely intellectual history, Paddock traces the transmission of this image from experts to school textbooks and the press.”
As a result of his book, Troy has been invited to participate in a multi-volume project, “Russia in the Great War and Revolution.” He also edited “World War I and Propaganda,” published by Brill in 2014 and the 2004 book, “A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion and Newspapers in the Great War,” published by Praeger.
Troy, who has taught at Southern since 1998 and was promoted to full professor in 2008, was the recipient of that year’s Connecticut State University System Board of Trustees Research Award.
On behalf of the university community, I congratulate him on this latest accolade, which is a fitting recognition of the depth and impact of his scholarly work. I thank the committee for their successful deliberations, and am also pleased to note that there were 13 applicants for the 2014 Faculty Scholar Award. This was the largest applicant pool in several years, reflecting the breadth and quality of scholarly endeavors by our Southern faculty.
Sincerely yours,
Mary A. Papazian, Ph.D.
President
As the CDC continues to monitor and respond to the recent ebola concerns, please be assured that SCSU is remaining informed through local and state health authorities. We currently have no university-sponsored trips where students or faculty are coming to campus from the affected areas. There are no university-sponsored study abroad trips in the affected areas. Any students that require medical care for any reason are being properly screened for travel history and symptoms of concern. We have no reason to believe that our campus community has any heightened reason for alarm.
Since we are beginning to enter the season for other illnesses such as influenza, the usual methods to prevent infection remain important including handwashing. However, the ebola virus cannot be transmitted through the air, through water or through food. It can only be transmitted through fluids of an infected person or from exposure to contaminated objects – such as needles. Body fluids include blood, sweat, urine, feces, saliva and possibly nasal secretions if close to the infected person.
Any person with recent international travel to affected areas separate from university-sponsored travel should monitor their health status for three weeks after arrival from West Africa. Taking your temperature once or twice daily might be helpful. If you have traveled to West Africa and develop sudden fever, chills, muscle aches, severe diarrhea, vomiting, rash or other symptoms consistent with Ebola, you should seek immediate medical attention. When traveling to a health-care provider, limit contact with other people and avoid all other travel.
Maintain good healthy practices like getting plenty of sleep, maintaining good nutrition, drinking plenty of water and increasing your physical activity to help your immune system best resist infections.
SCSU is committed to ensuring the health and wellness of our community and will keep you updated in the event of any changes.
Dr. Diane S. Morgenthaler, MD
Director SCSU Health and Wellness
Granoff Health Center
501 Crescent Street
New Haven, CT 06515
(203) 392-6300 phone
(203) 392-6301 fax
Southern’s second terminal degree program is the first of its kind in the state
Writers and poets with a drive to learn more about their craft, and to do it within a community of other writers, now have a home at Southern. On Sept. 17, the state Board of Governors for Higher Education approved a new degree program at the university: a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, only the second terminal degree to be offered by the university and the first full-residency M.F.A. program in the state.
The English Department has long offered the M.A. and M.S. with creative writing option; the M.F.A. will replace these degree options. The primary difference between these degrees and the M.F.A. is that the latter is the terminal degree in the field of creative writing. A more rigorous program than that leading to the M.A. or M.S., the M.F.A. is essentially the equivalent of the Ph.D. in its field, preparing students to become published writers and to seek jobs as university-level writing instructors. Southern’s M.F.A. joins the Ed.D. program as one of the university’s two terminal degree programs.
Left to right: Vivian Shipley, Tim Parrish, Robin Troy, Jeff Mock
“The M.F.A. offers a different level of professionalism, with different expectations,” says English Professor Tim Parrish, one of the architects of the new program. “In the abstract, M.F.A.s prepare people to be flexible thinkers, great written communicators and facilitators in groups,” he says, “but personal enrichment is really the draw. Students get to be part of a serious community of writers.”
English Professor Jeff Mock, who worked with Parrish on developing the proposal for the M.F.A., agrees. “We’ve had a wonderful writing community here,” he says, “but it’ll be a major difference to have these students here for this specific purpose.”
The creative writing faculty, which includes CSU Professor Vivian Shipley and Assistant Professor of English Robin Troy, along with Parrish and Mock, say that there has long been a need in Connecticut for a full-time M.F.A. program in creative writing. Western Connecticut State University offers a low-residency M.F.A. in professional writing, and Fairfield University recently added a low-residency M.F.A. program in creative writing. Low-residency programs allow students to do most of their coursework online, with only occasional visits to campus.
“With an online degree program, one misses the presence of a human community and the opportunities for personal interaction,” Shipley says. Southern’s is an on-site program, which, the faculty say, will give students a sense of common purpose and enable them to develop close friendships and working partnerships. And, as Troy points out, “People from Connecticut will have the opportunity to complete this degree without leaving the state.”
The new program is an exciting development within an already vibrant department. With flourishing undergraduate and graduate literary publications, award-winning faculty members and a visiting writers series, the department is well prepared to offer the high level of literary activity expected in an M.F.A. program. Michael Shea, English department chairman, says, “The creative writing program has a long history of great teachers and courses, and the M.F.A. program is a culmination of this tradition of excellence.” Shipley, who has been a member of the faculty since 1969, says the M.F.A.’s approval “is the most exciting thing to happen in this department since I got here.” She calls her colleagues — Parrish, Mock and Troy – “miracle workers” for what she sees as their success in bringing their collective vision for the M.F.A. program to fruition.
Parrish says that the creative writing program has been steadily evolving and that the M.F.A. is the natural next step. He points to the accomplishments of Southern’s creative writing students — publications, prizes, fellowships and acceptances to demanding M.F.A. programs around the country – as evidence that the university attracts serious writing students and supports them in their craft.
The curriculum for the 48-credit program will be based in literary studies, consisting in fiction and poetry workshops, literature and theory courses and the thesis. Currently, the M.A. and M.S. curricula allow up to 18 credits of fiction or poetry workshops and six credits of creative-thesis work. The M.F.A. will retain these opportunities while increasing course requirements in literature studies, the study of rhetoric and theory and the teaching of high school and college writing. The core of the program will be the workshop, a class in which students submit their original manuscripts-in-progress for critical examination by their classmates and the instructor.
Admission to the M.F.A. program is competitive, with roughly six poets and six fiction writers admitted each year. The deadline for applications is March 1. The creative writing faculty expect that the M.F.A. will attract prospective students from out-of-state as well as from within Connecticut, due to the increasing national competition to gain admission to residential programs.
Parrish expresses his appreciation for the support of President Cheryl Norton; Selase Williams, provost and vice president for academic affairs; DonnaJean Fredeen, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences; Sandra Holley, dean of the School of Graduate Studies; Kenneth Florey, professor of English and the English Department’s graduate coordinator; Robert McEachern, professor of English; Marianne Kennedy, associate vice president for assessment, planning and academic programs, Scott Ellis, associate professor of English, and the English Department.
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