News

Leaders in the field of community organizing, including Harvard sociologist Mark Warren and Marshall Ganz, nationally-renowned field organizer and trainer, will speak at a two-day conference at the College of the Holy Cross, April 1-2, 2011.

“‘Let Justice Roll Down’: A Conference on the Practice and Pedagogy of Organizing in the 21st Century,” will examine community organizing as a strategy to address poverty and inequality in the United States. Leading scholars and practitioners will consider how community leadership development can impact local and national policy, and what pedagogical tools are best suited to train a new generation of organizers. The schedule and registration are online at www.holycross.edu/crec.

Mark Warren is associate professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. His research focus is on the revitalization of institutions that anchor inner city communities—churches, schools, and other community-based organizations — and how to build community alliances across race and social class. He is the author of Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2001).

Warren will deliver the keynote address in lieu of Peter Dreier, who had to cancel due to unforeseen personal matters.

Ganz, who will present “Current Practices in Teaching and Training Young Organizers,” is a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a principal of Harvard’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. He worked on the staff of the United Farm Workers for 16 years before becoming a trainer and organizer for political campaigns, unions and nonprofit groups. He is credited with devising the successful grassroots organizing model and training for Barack Obama’s winning 2008 presidential campaign. His community organizing curriculum is used at several colleges and universities, including Holy Cross.

The conference is organized by Margaret A. Post, director of the Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning at the College of the Holy Cross; Susan Crawford Sullivan, assistant professor, Sociology and Anthropology; and the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture. Other speakers will include Vincent Rougeau, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame; Rev. Arrington Chambliss, director of Life Together: Diomass Intern Program; Mary Keefe, director of the Pleasant Street Neighborhood Network Center; Rev. Dr. Sarai Rivera, Iglesia Cristiana de la Comunidad, Worcester; Lisa Vinikoor, lead organizer of the Merrimack Valley Project; Carl Nilsson, Massachusetts director of Organizing for America; Rudy Lopez, director of politics for the Center for Community Change; and Frank Kartheiser, lead organizer for Worcester Interfaith; as well as student organizers. Worcester Mayor Joe O’Brien will give a welcome address on Friday.

For more information, visit www.holycross.edu/crec or call 508-793-3869.

Give-A-Book

The College of the Holy Cross has teamed up with the Colleges of Worcester Consortium in the city’s fifth annual “Give A Book” drive.   

With the goal of promoting literacy and a love of reading, the citywide book drive will provide books to the many pre-kindergarten through 8th grade Worcester Public Schools children who may not have access to or the means to obtain books for summer reading.

“Holy Cross is glad to support this important initiative for Worcester’s children,” said Ed Augustus, director of government and community relations at Holy Cross.  “As a college community, we’re looking forward to participating in an effort that not only encourages reading, but also shows Worcester’s youth that we care about their education.”

The librarians at Holy Cross will collect new and gently used books from faculty, staff and students through May 15 in the Dinand Library. 

The annual book drive, which is part of the “Worcester: The City that Reads” campaign, is led by school committee member John Monfredo.

Carolyn Gordon

Carolyn S. Gordon, the Benjamin Cheney Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., will give the 18th annual Leonard C. Sulski Memorial Lecture in Mathematics on Wednesday, March 16, at 8 p.m. in Room 519 of the Hogan Campus Center at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, titled “You Can’t Hear the Shape of a Drum,” is free and open to the public.

A distinguished mathematician, Gordon received her doctorate in mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1979 and has taught at Dartmouth since 1992. She has won numerous grants and awards, including the prestigious Chauvenet Prize, awarded by the American Mathematical Society in 2001.

Gordon, whose research centers on Riemannian geometry—specifically inverse spectral problems and the geometry of Lie groups—has published more than 50 articles, including a well-known paper in 1992 (co-authored with David Webb and Scott Wolpert) that provided a negative answer to the famous question of mathematician Mark Kac: “Can one hear the shape of a drum?” In her talk, she will discuss this question and its answer in a manner accessible to a general mathematics audience. 

The annual lecture series is a tribute to Professor Sulski who taught in the mathematics and computer science department at Holy Cross from 1965 until his untimely death from leukemia in 1991.

For more information, contact Tom Cecil, professor of mathematics at Holy Cross and organizer of the event, at 508-793-2719.

The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross will present a number of distinguished speakers in March who will offer theological and historical insights on how practicing Catholicism has changed and continues to change — from approaching faith in the context of overcoming poverty and oppression, to changing notions of the personal experience of prayer, and the coming Church-mandated changes to the Roman Missal.

All of the events will be held in Rehm Library, in Smith Hall, at Holy Cross and are free and open to the public. To learn more and to listen to lectures online, visit www.holycross.edu/crec.

On Wednesday, March 16 at 4:30 p.m., J. Matthew Ashley will present a lecture titled “Living with Hope in a Crucified World: Resurrection Faith, Ignatian Spirituality and Liberation Theology.” Ashley, chair of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, has focused his research on political and liberation theology, Christian spirituality, and the dialogue between theology and science. Author of Interruptions: Mysticism, Politics and Theology in the Work of Johann Baptist Metz, he is currently completing a book on the impact of Ignatian spirituality on three 20th-century Jesuit theologians. His lecture is supported by the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

On Monday, March 21 at 4:30 p.m., James McCartin, associate professor of history at Seton Hall University, will discuss “Spirituality and the Transformation of 20th-Century American Catholicism.” McCartin is the author of Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics. Whether “praying in tongues” or working on behalf of social justice or participating in public protests as outpourings of prayer, lay Catholics have consistently expanded their notions of praying. And in doing so, McCartin suggests, they reshaped and redefined American Catholicism.
 
On Tuesday, March 22 at 7:30 p.m., a panel of experts on liturgy will discuss “New Words for Worship: Coming Changes in Catholic liturgy.” Later this year, the Church will enact changes in the liturgy for all English-spoken Masses. Three scholars — Joanne Pierce, associate professor of religious studies at Holy Cross; Edward Foley, Capuchin, Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality and professor of liturgy and music at the Catholic Theological Union; and Rev. John Baldovin, S.J., ’69, a Holy Cross trustee and a professor of historical and liturgical theology at Boston College — will discuss the impetus behind these changes and the implications for clergy and all practicing Catholics.

About The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture:

Established in 2001 and housed in Smith Hall, the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture provides resources for faculty and course development, sponsors conferences and college-wide teaching events, hosts visiting fellows, and coordinates a number of campus lecture series. Rooted in the College’s commitment to invite conversation about basic human questions, the Center welcomes persons of all faiths and seeks to foster dialogue that acknowledges and respects differences, providing a forum for intellectual exchange that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international in scope.  The Center also brings members of the Holy Cross community into conversation with the Greater Worcester community, the academic community, and the wider world to examine the role of faith and inquiry in higher education and in the larger culture.

Concert organist Renee Anne Louprette will perform Sunday, March 20 at 3 p.m. in St. Joseph Memorial Chapel at the College of the Holy Cross, as part of the Holy Cross Chapel Artists’ Series.  The concert, which is handicap accessible, is free and open to the public.

Louprette’s performance will feature a variety of notable pieces, including works from Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Bohm, Matthias Weckman, and Girolamo Frescobaldi. 

Hailed by The New York Times as “a technically nimble and dynamic organist,” Louprette is the associate director of music at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City where she has collaborated in the direction of the renowned music ministry program since 2005 and serves as liturgical organist, accompanist and conductor of both professional and amateur ensembles.

She has performed at the festivals of Dún Laoghaire, Ireland; Magadino, Switzerland; In Tempore Organi, Italy; Ghent and Hasselt, Belgium; and Toulouse Les Orgues, France. In addition, she was a featured artist at the American Guild of Organists (AGO) National Convention in Washington, D.C. in July 2010.  In 2009, she appeared as organ soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane, Australia, and in Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony under the direction of her husband, French conductor Emmanuel Plasson.

Louprette graduated summa cum laude in piano performance and received a professional diploma in organ performance from the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford.  She pursued private studies with Dame Gillian Weir in London and with James David Christie, distinguished artist-in-residence at Holy Cross.  In 2003, she earned a  Premier Prix – mention très bien, from the Conservatoire National de Région de Toulouse, France; and in 2005, she won a Diplôme Supérieur in organ performance from the Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Musique et de Danse de Toulouse.

She is a member of the Executive Board of the New York City Chapter of the AGO and previously served as Dean of the Greater Hartford, Connecticut Chapter AGO.
 
The 2010-11 season of the Chapel Artists’ Series will also include the following performances:

• Sunday, April 3, 3 p.m. – Balint Karosi, organist
• Sunday, May 1, 3 p.m. – Jesuit Heritage Concert of Baroque Music

 
 
For more information about any of the performances in the Chapel Artists’ Series, please call the music department at (508) 793-2296, or visit the department’s website at: http://academics.holycross.edu/music

Marilynne Robinson

Novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson will receive an honorary degree from the College of the Holy Cross and address this year’s graduates during the College’s Commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 27 at 10:30 a.m. on the campus. 

The author of three highly acclaimed novels, Robinson has distinguished herself as one of the nation’s most important and influential writers.  Interested in the search for meaning and value in life, her work explores themes of faith, forgiveness, hope, and relationships. 

Since the publication of her first novel, Housekeeping, in 1980, which earned her the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award for First Fiction, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the Academy of American Arts and Letters, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination, Robinson has been honored with many of the publishing industry’s most prestigious awards.  Her novel Gilead, the story of an Iowa preacher, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Home, a companion to Gilead, won the 2008 L.A. Times Book Prize for fiction and the 2009 Orange Prize for fiction. 

In 1990, Robinson received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and in 1998, she earned the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts. 

Robinson is also the author of three books of nonfiction, The Death of Adam, Absence of Mind, and Mother Country, an exposé of the environmental damage caused by a nuclear reprocessing plant that was a finalist for the 1989 National Book Award. 

A faculty member at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Robinson has also taught at the University of Kent in England, the University of Massachusetts and at Amherst College. 

The College will also bestow two other honorary degrees to the following individuals at Commencement: 

Rev. Francis X. Clooney, S.J., of Harvard Divinity School
Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology
Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions 

A leading scholar in the developing field of comparative theology, Fr. Clooney has opened doors to Western understanding of the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India through his writings.  He has also studied the Jesuit missionary tradition of scholarship, particularly in India, and the importance of interfaith dialogue in the contemporary world.  Clooney was the first president of the International Society for Hindu-Christian Studies, and served as coordinator for interreligious dialogue for the Society of Jesus in the U.S. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including a forthcoming introductory volume on comparative theology, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Wiley-Blackwell).  A member of the Harvard Divinity School faculty since 2005, Clooney previously taught at Boston College.  He earned his Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, his M. Div. from Weston School of Theology and his B.A. from Fordham University. 

Henry I. Smith ’58, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

A member of the Holy Cross Class of 1958, Smith has been called the “father of x-ray lithography.”  His groundbreaking work in the fields of nanoscale science and engineering and the applications of nanostructures have been widely recognized.  Smith holds over 40 U.S. patents and has published over 400 articles, contributing to the advancement of multiple scientific fields, from the medical industry to computer science to aerospace.  He is a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.  A physics major at Holy Cross, he completed his graduate studies at Boston College.  From 1960-63 he served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force before returning to Boston College to complete his Ph.D. and serve as assistant professor of physics.  From 1968-80, he was at MIT Lincoln Laboratory where he worked on surface-acoustic-wave devices and pioneered the development of techniques for fabricating nanometer structures, before pursuing full-time teaching and research at MIT. Smith also serves as president and CEO of LumArray, a lithography company with a state-of-the-art-patented technology which he developed with colleagues at MIT. 

Related Information:
Commencement website