News

Holy Cross’ academic year consists of two semesters — fall and spring. But that doesn’t mean summer is completely devoted to vacation for members of the College’s faculty. Academic work is a year-round pursuit. Here’s a sampling of what some professors were engaged in this past summer:

Josep Alba-Salas, assistant professor of Spanish, was immersed in the history of the Spanish language. Using a large electronic corpus, he explored the evolution of certain Spanish structures from the 1200s to the year 2000. Funded by a Batchelor (Ford) foundation grant, his project ultimately seeks to explain how such structures arise and die in the history of a given language.

Leon Claessens, assistant professor of biology, in collaboration with other paleontologists from the Utah Museum of Natural History, colleagues from the Yale Peabody Museum and two Holy Cross summer research students, located and helped excavate the remains of dinosaur and other fossil reptiles in southern Utah in July and August.

Sarah Grunstein, assistant professor of music, gave piano recitals and master classes in Sydney and Melbourne, and presented a paper on Chopin sources for the postgraduate seminar at the University of Melbourne to students in musicology and performance. She also gave  performance master classes at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the University of Melbourne. (While there she also took Holy Cross study abroad students to dinner!)

Lynn Kremer, professor of theatre, traveled to Bali for a month where she attended the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar and watched a variety of performance styles including the newest adaptation of Sophocles Oedipus by I Wayan Dibia, who was a visiting fellow in the theatre department for several years. After her return, Kremer presented a talk about Dibia’s three versions of Oedipus that were created for three different audiences — including one production that was performed at Holy Cross — at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference in New Orleans. ATHE is the only national conference on theatre in higher education.

Thomas Landy, associate director of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture and lecturer in sociology, in June led his fourth Ignatian Pilgrimage for faculty and administrators from Jesuit colleges and universities. The group, including 11 from Holy Cross, traveled to sites in northern Spain and Rome that were central to St. Ignatius and to the development of Jesuit education, including Loyola, Manresa, Montserrat, and Javier. At the General Curia in Rome, the group met with Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus.

Ellen Perry, professor of classics, ran a weeklong summer institute on the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome for about 100 high school teachers and classics enthusiasts at Dartmouth College in July. Perry is director of the Classical Association of New England Summer Institute (CANE), a professional organization for classicists in the region.
“As the 25th anniversary, the program was absolutely fascinating,” she says, “because it was about the legacy of the classical world in later periods, so we brought in both classicists and non-classicists — Renaissance scholars, 18th century scholars, political scientists, and others — to lecture and teach about the influence of Greece and Rome on later periods and cultures. It was a high energy week.”

David Schaefer, professor of political science, worked on several projects this summer. He participated in a 10-day seminar on world terrorism in Tel Aviv, Israel, sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Along with some 40 other American college professors and some European scholars, he heard presentations on the subject by experts from Israel and other countries and also visited some strategic sites in Israel. In other scholarly activities, Dr. Schaefer published an op-ed article based on his new book Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition (University of Missouri Press) in The Wall Street Journal on July 23, and wrote a review of two other books on Rawls that is to appear in the journal Society. With the support of a Batchelor-Ford Faculty Fellowship, he completed an article on Arthur Armaingaud, a prominent interpreter of Montaigne’s Essays from the early twentieth century, that will appear in the journal Montaigne Studies next year. And he served as chair and discussant on a panel on “Friendship and Politics” at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago over Labor Day weekend.

May Sim, associate professor of philosophy, was conducting research for her forthcoming book titled, Continuous Confucianism: A Confucian Understanding of Human Rights. She also wrote two papers:  “Being and Unity in the Metaphysics and Ethics of Aristotle and Liezi” is for a conference on Ethics in Ancient China and Greco-Roman Antiquity Symposium in Munich; and “Knowledge of the First Principles of Virtue in Zhu Xi and Aristotle” for a panel organized by the Committee on Asian philosophy and Asian Philosophers at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting at Baltimore in December.

Rev. Thomas Worcester, S.J., associate professor of history, spent part of his summer completing work on The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits, a volume of some 19 essays on the history of the Society of Jesus. Serving as editor of the volume, he assembled an international team of scholars to contribute essays, and he wrote three of the essays himself. The book is to be published in March 2008, by Cambridge University Press, in both hardcover and paperback editions.

Related Information:

• Read about some professors who worked with students on summer science research
• Holy Cross professor led workshop on biochemistry for Worcester school teachers
• Shakespeare in the Park
• Osvaldo Golijov served as composer-in-residence for Lincoln Center’s 2007 Mostly Mozart Festival

Drugs, blood, and human regeneration.

Sounds like a summer blockbuster movie, but it actually describes the research Kim Frederick, associate professor of chemistry, was working on in her Haberlin lab over the last few months.

Frederick worked with four chemistry majors on campus on three different science research projects.

Along with Owen Fenton ’10, Frederick worked on developing a method for rapidly identifying and quantifying illicit drug mixtures.

“The end goal of this project is to develop a portable laser-based instrument which could be used in police cars to analyze confiscated drug samples on site,” says Frederick. Previously they had developed a computer-based method for identifying the drug in the sample even when it has been “cut” or diluted with inactive compounds like baking soda or corn starch. This summer they worked on developing the model for quantifying the drug in the cut mixtures.

The second project involved developing a rapid method for screening low abundance proteins. Many diseases in their early stages only show changes in proteins in small amounts in the blood stream, explains Frederick.

“We are developing a method to selectively fish out these proteins so that disease can be detected at an earlier stage,” she says. “To do this, we used gels made with guanosine, one of the building blocks of DNA.”

They also used this technique to screen drug/protein interactions. This project was conducted by Anne Kotze ’09 and funded by Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and a fellowship from the Connecticut Business Industry Alliance.

Finally, Kyleen Swords ’08 and Stephen Crowley ’09 studied the behavior of polyelectrolyte multilayer materials which are of interest for applications such as artificial tissue, artery repair, drug delivery and environmental clean up.

“For these applications, it was necessary to understand how these materials behave when fluids flow over or through them,” says Frederick. “We used a technique called capillary electrophoresis to understand the polyelectrolyte behavior. Work on this project was funded by Research Corporation and the National Science Foundation.

Science Symposium

Seventy Holy Cross students traded in beach towels for beakers this summer as they spent nine weeks on campus conducting scientific research. During their 40 hour work weeks, students worked closely with faculty on a variety of research projects.

On Sept. 7 in the Hogan Ballroom, student researchers presented the results of their work to the Holy Cross community in the 14th annual Summer Research Poster Symposium.

“Research experience gives students greater maturity as scientists,” says Richard Herrick, professor of chemistry and science coordinator. “They are able to solve problems better than they were before, which helps build self-confidence. Students who have not had this experience are less accomplished in the lab.”

Departments with research projects include biology, chemistry, economics, mathematics, physics, and psychology. Project findings often result in publication in a research journal or invitations to participate at scientific meetings held across the country.

Herrick says that the program has doubled in the last four years, and few liberal arts colleges have a program as extensive as Holy Cross.

Students get to work with highly accomplished faculty members at the College. This past summer, four students worked with Ken Mills, associate professor of chemistry, as part of a five-year $795,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development program that he received in 2005.

As part of the project, biology majors Adam Kerrigan ’09, Melissa McGill ’08 and Jen Winslow ’09 and chemistry major Annie Schufreider ’09 studied protein slicing. As mechanistic enzymologists, they studied how a unique type of protein, called an intein, facilitates its own cleavage from flanking proteins, says Mills. They were interested in the chemistry behind this biological process, but also in discovering if there is a biological role for these novel proteins in regulation.

Mills’ students participated in a weekly journal club over lunch with students from other research groups in the biology department. They also attended a one-day conference at the MIT Center for Cancer Research on Systems Biology. The students, along with Mills, also attended the annual Protein Society Symposium in Boston at the end of July, and McGill presented a poster on her work at this national meeting.

Research in other areas of science abounded on campus this summer.

Rob Bellin, assistant professor of biology, worked with three students — math major Marshall McKenna ’08, biology major Elizabeth Morse ’09, and English major Shruti Sreepathi ’08 — on two different biochemistry/cancer biology-related research projects.

“Our first project was focused on understanding the process by which individual cells form protein complexes that allow them to attach to surfaces,” says Bellin. “Our second project relates to exploring the role that specific transmembrane proteins play in preventing the disease neurofibromatosis type-2.”

Alison Casserly ’08, a biology major with a premedical and biochemistry concentration, worked with Cara Constance, assistant professor of biology, on a project titled “Characterization of clock gene expression in the brain of Xenopus tropicalis.” They investigated the expression of genes that are involved in the biological clock in the brain of the frog, Xenopus. The goal was to determine whether there are changes in expression of these genes at different developmental stages (tadpole vs. frog) in order to address whether differences in neuronal gene expression translate into differences in behavior in Xenopus.

Gil Gomez ’08, a chemistry major, worked alongside Joshua Farrell, Thomas D’Ambra assistant professor of chemistry. They looked at a series of polyelectrochromic (materials whose color changes as one applies differing voltages) polymers that they made in the lab. The materials have diverse applications in areas like smart windows (change the color of shading depending on the solar conditions) or dynamic camouflage.

Sarah Petty, assistant professor of chemistry, worked with three students — chemistry majors Alexie Andrew ’08 and Kelly Lyons ’10 and biology major Amy Trojanowski ’09 — studying the structure of disease-related proteins. Andrew and Lyons were working on the protein associated with Huntington’s disease and Trojanowski was working on one of the proteins associated with Cataracts. “We used molecular biology to express the proteins of interest and then a combination of physical chemical techniques to analyze the structures,” says Petty.

Bianca R. Sculimbrene, assistant professor of chemistry, received a Batchelor (Ford) Foundation grant and, along with three chemistry majors — Amy Cianci ’08, Patrick Brady ’08, Jen Beaudoin ’09 — worked on the development of chemical tools in organic synthesis. The projects involved new methods in non-natural amino acid synthesis, phosphorylation and peptide-isostere synthesis.

This year, Herrick worked with three chemistry majors — Laura Rose Condon ’08, William Cupelo ’09, and Joseph Lopez ’09 — trying to find new compounds for diagnostic imaging agents for nuclear medicine. The goal is to more quickly diagnose cancer and heart disease.

“I personally have never had a student who didn’t enjoy summer research and I’ve been doing this for 24 years now,” Herrick said.

Related Information:

• Read Alexie Andrew’s summer ’07 blog where she wrote about her summer research
• Read a current blog by Eric Yoon who is continuing research on campus he started this summer
• Professor works with four students on three science projects during summer
• Integrated Science Complex

Eric Yoon hopes to follow in the footsteps of the College’s many accomplished alumni who are physicians. Holy Cross graduates are admitted to medical school at a rate twice the national average, and more than 10 percent of alumni are currently practicing medicine.

So how will he spend his last two semesters on Mount St. James?

A chemistry major from Yonkers, N.Y., Yoon will share his busy year ahead in a blog, chronicling his studies, co-curricular activities, and post-graduation plans. He is continuing research begun this summer on campus, working with Joshua Farrell, Thomas D’Ambra assistant professor of chemistry.

The professor-student team is preparing a series of new compounds, which are attached to biologically relevant metals to mimic the structure and function of enzyme active sites. Proteins and enzymes are, from a chemist’s perspective, quite large, and the goal is to make them smaller and simpler models and gain insight into how they work.

Yoon, who was born in a suburb of Seoul, is co-chair of Asian Students in Action (ASIA) and manager of Night Rider, a shuttle service sponsored by the Student Government Association. We can expect to read about a lot of action on campus in his blog: he loves supporting his friends in their various activities, including the marching band, jazz band, and especially the Multicultural Student Organization’s annual cultural shows.

After graduation, Yoon, who is in the College Honors Program, plans to take the year off before attending medical school in fall 2009. In the year between, he hopes to work in the field of medicine or chemistry research. His career goal is to become a medical doctor.

Related Information:

• Chemistry
• Premedical program
• Integrated Science Complex
• Holy Cross Blogs

Cancer Walk
Students, faculty, and staff from the College of the Holy Cross will join thousands of people from Central Massachusetts on Sun., Sept. 23 for the 9th annual Walk to Cure Cancer, a day of celebration, remembrance, and action. The College is a flagship sponsor of this unique fundraising event, which over the years has raised millions of dollars to support cutting-edge cancer research and build the UMass Memorial Cancer Center, the world class research center in Worcester.

Last year, 150 students, faculty, and staff from Holy Cross participated in the walk. This year, the College expects 300 walkers and will work to raise $10,000.

Alice Laffey, associate professor of religious studies at Holy Cross, has participated in the Walk for several years, and says last year’s event really hit home: “I am so much more aware now of the number of people with cancer among us in the College Community, as well as the number who are in remission.”

Kristin Neal ’08 is one of the many students organizing teams and raising money among friends and classmates, “People are really eager to help because they understand that the money is going directly to cancer research.  Unfortunately, so many students have lost members of their families or close friends to this disease.  This is our chance to do something concrete that can truly make a difference.”

The Walk to Cure Cancer begins and ends at UMass Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, and follows a five-mile (or optional one-mile) loop around Lake Quinsigamond. Every Holy Cross walker will receive a purple T-shirt, with space on the back to write the name of the person for whom you’re walking.

Holy Cross participants will meet on campus the day of the walk (Sunday, Sept. 23) from 10:30 a.m. – 11 a.m. on the lower level on the Hogan Campus Center – near the Gesso Art Gallery and adjacent to Crossroads. Pledge sheets and money will be collected, and T-shirts will be distributed. Bus service to and from UMass Medical School will be provided, beginning at 11 a.m.

After the Walk, at 1:30 p.m., UMass is hosting a dance party with Chubby Checker.  There will be a “late bus” back to Holy Cross for those who want to stay for the music and dancing.

Walker Registration Forms and Sponsor Sign Up Sheets are available in displays at Cool Beans, Crossroads, and other locations throughout Hogan. They are also available online.

If you’re not available to walk, but would still like to participate, Holy Cross needs help with set-up, T-shirts, collecting registration forms, and other logistics at Hogan the Sunday morning of the Walk. Please contact Laura Searles (lsearles@holycross.edu) in Public Affairs to volunteer or if you have any questions.

If you would like to make a donation or set up a donation page, please visit the Holy Cross Team area. To join the team and create a page, go to the above link and click on the button that says “Get Started” where you will be registered and can start sending e-mails to potential donors.

www.walktocurecancer.com

Basketball legend Bob Cousy ’50, will be honored with a life-size bronze statue to be located in front of the Hart Center at the College of the Holy Cross. The announcement was made last Friday (Sept. 7, 2007) during a luncheon and press conference at the Hogan Campus Center.  In attendance were Cousy and his wife Missy, members of the committee who made the statue possible (including alumni who played basketball with Cousy), Celtics staff, and media.

Ron Perry ’54, former athletic director at the College of the Holy Cross, served as the emcee of the event, at which Rev. Earle L. Markey, S.J., ’53, associate director of admissions and former teammate of Cousy’s, and Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J., ’49, president emeritus, took the podium to relive fond memories of the ‘Cooz’ and emphasize the importance of the statue.

The man who led the Boston Celtics to six NBA titles, was at first hesitant to have a statue erected of himself, but he was visibly moved and humbled by the honor.  In an emotional speech, he challenged the College, “It is my hope in the not-too-distant future that I would be flanked by a prominent Holy Cross sports lady on my left and a distinguished minority athlete on my right.”

Cousy is to be recognized not only for his extraordinary basketball career both at Holy Cross and with the Boston Celtics, but also for his generous and long-term commitment to the citizenry of Worcester and for his efforts to integrate the NBA racially during its early years.  The statue is expected to be unveiled in the summer of 2008.

Check out recent coverage of the event:

WBZ-TV (Sept. 7, 2007)
Celtics’ Cooz Immortalized With Bronze Statue

Telegram & Gazette (Sept. 8, 2007)
Holy Cross captures ‘the Cooz’ in bronze

The MetroWest Daily News (Sept. 8, 2007)
Courtside View: A true Crusader

Celtics.com (Sept. 11, 2007)
Already Humble, Cousy Overwhelmed By Statue Plans

Lowell Sun (Sept. 17, 2007)
Cousy statue bigger than life

The Holy Cross Admissions office prides itself on a highly personalized application process. The goal is to treat each student with careful attention in each encounter they’ve had on campus or with a Holy Cross representative, says Ann B. McDermott ’79, director of Admissions.

The biggest feature of the thorough admissions process at Holy Cross is the one-on-one interview with an officer. “We provide students with the opportunity to speak with us about their past accomplishments and future goals in a way that it becomes part of their application here. We’re interested in getting to know our applicants beyond simply numbers — and that’s completely in line with the highly personalized intellectual exploration Holy Cross students have here on campus,” McDermott says.

In addition to personal contact, the Admissions office in recent years has introduced Web site features to show prospective students the rich experience available at Holy Cross. Among them: virtual tours, message boards, online chats, and the ability to “Meet Some Students” online.

With an applicant pool that has grown more than 45 percent over the past two years, the Admissions office is taking another step to help students learn more about Holy Cross.  During the 2007-08 academic year, admissions officers will maintain a blog chronicling the selection process that will shape the Class of 2012.

“Some of the biggest issues we hear about from students revolve around the high level of stress and anxiety involved in the college application process,” says McDermott. “Through this blog we hope to show students what things are important to us and give them some tips on where to focus their energy.”

Admissions officers will be posting entries from around the world — the Holy Cross campus in Worcester, a high school stop in California, an Internet café in another country. They’ll write about a wide variety of topics, addressing frequently asked questions, and describing what makes the living-learning environment on the Hill so exceptional.

Related Information:

• Admissions
• Holy Cross Blogs

Sure, everything seems perfect on stage, but ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes of a theatre production?

Katherine Fritz ’08, a theatre and English double major from Queensbury in upstate New York, is ready to shine the spotlight on the fun, hard work, and yes, drama, that goes on behind the scenes of a theatre production. She plans to be involved with four on-campus shows this year:

• Costume shop manager/stitcher for My Life with Albertine, the fall theatre department show (Nov. 1-3 and 8-10)
• Costume designer for Beyond Therapy, an Alternate College Theatre (ACT) comedy (Nov. 29 – Dec.2)
• Costume designer for Sweet Charity, ACT musical (Jan. 31 – Feb. 1)
• Costume designer for Dinner at Eight, the spring theatre department show (April 3-5 and 10-12)

Fritz has been involved in 11 productions on campus (including Damn Yankees, Good, and Rumors), and more than 10 productions off campus in Glens Falls, N.Y., (You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown) and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., (Proof) and at Assumption College in Worcester (Chicago). At Holy Cross, she is the chair of ACT and the theatre department’s Student Advisory Committee, and sits on the English department Student Advisory Committee.

This isn’t how Fritz initially planned it. “I don’t think it had ever dawned on me during high school that there are careers to be had in theatre,” she says. “Meeting Holy Cross theatre professors Lynn Kremer, Ed Isser and Steve Vineberg, and costume designer Kurt Hultgren, was instrumental in helping me realize that I could turn a passion for theatre both into an academic pursuit as well as a lifelong career.”

After the lights go down on her college career, Fritz hopes to either head to graduate school to pursue an MFA in costume design or work in the field of design. All of which means, her blog will contain plenty of excitement — on and off the stage.

Related Information:

• Theatre department
• Alternate College Theatre
• Holy Cross Blogs

Timothy R. Austin, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College used the opportunity of the dean’s address to Academic Affairs to welcome 17 new professors to the campus that was new to him about a year ago. Austin arrived at Holy Cross in the summer of 2006, from his previous position as dean of Creighton University’s College of Arts and Sciences and professor of English.

His speech was delivered in the Hogan Ballroom, filled to capacity with all the faculty, administrators, and support staff who work in the area of Academic Affairs at Holy Cross. During the speech, he also announced the name of the new first-year experience curriculum — Montserrat — also with some personal reflection on the choice.

In June, Austin, along with other Holy Cross administrators went on the fourth iteration of the College’s Ignatian Pilgrimage. The primary objective of the pilgrimage is to allow Holy Cross faculty and staff to draw closer to the life and influences of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, by visiting important sites in northern Spain and Rome.

In his speech, Austin offered the following context for the First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee’s decision to name the program Montserrat.

After undergoing his initial conversion, Ignatius searched for a way to capture, almost sacramentally, the moment at which he would formally commit himself to his new way of life. He hit on a centuries-old tradition in which a candidate for knighthood would hold an overnight vigil at a local or national shrine to consecrate his future feats of arms to God, to the Virgin, or to a patron saint. Ignatius planned to stand that tradition on its head, arriving at nightfall in his soldier’s garb, holding vigil overnight, but then leaving the next morning dressed as a humble pilgrim, having left his sword and armor hanging on the wall of the chapel behind him. Where, though, should he carry out this plan? To a native of the northwest of Spain, the answer must have been obvious: the mountain monastery of Montserrat.

In short, Montserrat is a place of interest to botanists, zoologists, geologists, historians (of many periods), modern linguists, political scientists, sociologists, musicians, students of architecture and of art, and, of course, scholars in religious studies. What better metaphor could one hope for to capture the interdisciplinary emphasis that lies at the heart of our new first-year program?

Related Information:

• Press Release: Holy Cross Announces Integrated Living-Learning Curriculum for First-Year Students
• Read more about Montserrat on the Admissions Web site
• Holy Cross Announces New Tenure-Track Faculty Hires

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

That’s one way of summing up life at Holy Cross for first-year students. There are so many academic, co-curricular, athletic, spiritual, social (and more!) opportunities from which to choose, it’s difficult to narrow down the list.

Colleen Curran, from Alpharetta, Ga., near Atlanta, is currently facing those tough choices.

“I plan on getting involved with either Dance Ensemble Theater, Student Programs for Urban Development (SPUD), campus ministry, or the Student Government Association,” she says. “I’ve also been considering starting up my own Irish step dancing club.”

This much is for sure: Curran is an English major because she loves “literature and the workings of the English language,” and she’s considering doubling with either classics or political science. She is also part of the First-Year Program. “I came to Holy Cross because of the strength of the English and classics departments, but also because of the atmosphere and student life on Mount St. James.”

Oh, and also because of a certain building on campus.

“I fell in love with Dinand Library. A beautiful library was one of my requirements when selecting a college — I guess I really am an English major,” she says.

Curran’s first year at Holy Cross will help her decide which other offerings to pursue later in her college career. She’s interested in studying abroad during her junior year and participating in the Washington Semester Abroad program her senior year.

There’s one more thing she’ll be doing during her first year: maintaining a blog. With all the choices she’ll be making, Curran will surely have many stories to tell. And she can’t wait to get started.

“I want my blog to depict what the first year at Holy Cross is truly like. I found last year’s first-year blog to be very influential in helping me choose Holy Cross, and I also hope to reach out to students who, like me, are not from the New England area.”

Related Information:

• Holy Cross Blogs

The College of the Holy Cross has announced plans for a new program designed to better integrate the academic, co-curricular and residential experiences of first-year students.  Launching in September 2008 for all enrolling first-year students, the program is a dramatic expansion of the College’s highly successful First-Year Program (FYP), which has been an option for students since 1992.

The concept of a “universal” first-year experience was developed and refined as part of the College’s comprehensive curriculum review, and was adopted by vote of the Faculty Assembly in the spring of 2006.  The new program is rooted in the tenets of Jesuit higher education, and is titled “Montserrat,” after the mountain in Spain, where in 1522 St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuit order) laid aside the symbols of his old life and began a pilgrimage of exploration, self-discovery and commitment.

“The first year of college marks a critical transition in the lives of many students,” said Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., president of Holy Cross.  “The experiences they have and the directions they take can affect them profoundly for the rest of their lives.  We believe that it is important for students beginning their journey here at Holy Cross to encounter early on the questions, ideas, values and experiences that will help them come to know themselves more deeply and find their place in the world.”

He added:  “Montserrat will provide a foundation for new Holy Cross students to develop an appreciation for the world of ideas and critical thinking.  And by integrating other areas of college life with their work in the classroom, first-year students will see how their education is shaped by their openness to new ideas and experiences, and by their willingness to share their quest with others and to draw on them for help.”

The new first-year curriculum will coordinate small, full-year seminar courses with co-curricular programs (such as on- and off-campus events, guest lectures, discussion groups, and social activities).  The dozens of seminars will be grouped around broad topics in five interdisciplinary “clusters,” and will engage students in both critical inquiry and consideration of ethical values. The five clusters are: The Divine, Global Society, The Natural World, The Self, and Core Human Questions.

“The seminars are central to Montserrat and guarantee first-year students a smaller, more intimate classroom experience,” said Timothy Austin, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College.  “That’s something many students might not otherwise experience until their second or even third year.  Smaller groups also mean that serious dialog and connections with faculty will occur earlier in the students’ college careers — and, we hope, grow even richer during the three years that follow.”

Students in each cluster will live together in the same residence hall.  There, common social space will provide natural opportunities to interact with classmates who are exploring the same cluster theme in a different seminar setting.  Matriculating students will choose their cluster theme and seminar preferences when registering for classes during new student orientation.  Each Montserrat seminar is one of four courses students will take per semester.  Students will choose three additional courses during both of their first two semesters, allowing them to pursue their academic interests and explore other disciplines.

The College librarians, chaplains, and Office of Student Affairs have also developed special programs expressly for the first-year students that will complement and enhance the cluster themes.

“While a number of colleges and universities across the nation have introduced, or are introducing, first year programs, most are focused on helping students transition from high school to college by providing extra advising or study skills support,” said Timothy Austin.  “Montserrat aims to do much more by bridging the divide that can sometimes exist between living and learning, and creating a truly holistic intellectual environment.”

Additional information on Montserrat can be found on the Admissions Web site:
www.holycross.edu/admissions/

Related Information:

* In major speech, Austin offers background for name of new first-year curriculum

First-year students at Holy Cross received their first lesson in critical thinking at an unlikely setting: the dinner table.

On Aug. 27, two days before classes started, students were challenged to “enter the banquet of the mind” first when Mark Freeman, dean of the Class of 2011, delivered the Dean’s Address and then at the annual President’s Banquet in Kimball Dining Hall. At the latter, they critically discussed — and brought to life — their summer reading assignment, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin Press, 2006), which was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times.

Chosen because of its emphasis on fundamental social, ethical and environmental questions, the book is a fitting introduction to life at Holy Cross, where students are continuously encouraged to join in dialogue about basic human questions. The book also draws connections between living and learning.

“Food is one of the great pleasures of life, and yet we’re often inattentive to it,” says Freeman, who chose the book. “At Holy Cross we try to expand learning beyond the confines of the classroom, and this is one example.”

As Freeman also pointed out in his speech, exploring the process of eating also serves as a very valuable inroad into the process of learning.

“We are omnivores not only when it comes to food but when it comes to knowledge,” Freeman said in his address to students. “And an undergraduate liberal arts education, of the sort you’re about to experience, provides compelling testimony about exactly this. It’s possible, I suppose, that all of you out there could just be ‘fed’ one thing: calculus, architecture, history, whatever … What liberal arts education tries to do is precisely provide an extraordinarily sumptuous banquet, that ensures not only that you develop multiple parts of your brains and minds but that, through this exposure to multiple modes of knowing, you come to exercise your freedom as a human being. It’s about cultivating your very humanness, bringing it to fruition, allowing it to flourish, to flower.”

The dinner, designed to reflect the principles of the Slow Food movement, was conceived and prepared by the staff of Holy Cross Dining (who had also read Pollan’s book) with produce from nearby organic farms and locally-raised livestock. The entrée included roasted Townsend Farm free range organic chicken with J.P. Sullivan Orchards apple salsa, Lanni Orchards wax and green bean medley, and mixed whole grain pilaf.

The event drew the attention of USA Today, which reported that common readings across the nation’s colleges and universities, like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “serve a range of purposes, especially for incoming students who are navigating a big transition.”

Freeman said the book is morally inspiring and asked students to reflect upon the following questions as they feasted on the story:

• Why do I eat what I do? How do I make the choices I make?
• How does what I eat relate to how I live — or ought to live — my life? Should I be making any changes?
• How does what I eat bear upon my understanding of who and what I am, as a human being, living among other beings in the world? How does it “define” what it means to be human?

Students will tackle these and other such questions throughout the year, and Freeman is working on additional programming to further engage the entering class.

Related Information:

• Read about the Class of 2011
• Read more about Slow Food at Holy Cross
• Holy Cross in the News

The Colleges of Worcester Consortium and the Shrewsbury Street Merchants’ Association have teamed up for an event that’s sure to get mouths watering.

The Taste of Shrewsbury Street College Shuffle, based on the successful Taste of Shrewsbury Street event held each June, will give the Holy Cross community a chance to sample the offerings of more than 20 restaurants along Worcester’s Restaurant Row.

The event will be on Sept. 1 from noon to 5 p.m. The event is geared to college students, faculty, administration, staff and their families. Consortium folks say the $10 fee per person is a huge bargain for all the food that will be available to sample — not to mention the entertainment that will follow. From 3 to 5 p.m., bands will perform at Cristoforo Colombo Park.

Students can purchase buttons in the Student Program and Involvement office, Hogan 229. Faculty and administration can purchase buttons in Human Resources, O’Kane 72. Buttons will also be available on Shrewsbury Street the day of the event at Brew City, East Park and Flying Rhino.

Transportation will be provided, with a bus leaving from Hogan Campus Center at: 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:30, and 4:30 p.m. Returning to campus, the bus will depart from the DCU Credit Union on Shrewsbury Street at: 12 p.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m., and 5 p.m.

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The seasons are about to turn over a new leaf, and the Worcester Cultural Coalition is helping people make the transition with a string of fall events.

Worcester Fall Fest 2007 features the following free colorful offerings:

Worcester Windows
Sept. 6 – November
339 Main Street
5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Opening reception for Worcester Windows Community Gallery Program. Dozen downtown storefronts exhibit dozens of artists.

Blackstone Canalfest
Sept. 8
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Harding Street
Celebrate the legacy of the Blackstone Canal with a classic street festival in the historic Canal District. Enjoy food, music, dance, arts vendors, street performers, children’s activities, horse-drawn tours of the neighborhood, and kayak rides on a water-filled replica of the canal.

3rd Annual African Cultural Festival
Sept. 15
11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
33 Canterbury Street
Celebrate our community and cross-cultural events. Dance performances, food, games, arts & craft, entertainment for the whole family.

stART on the Street
Sept. 16
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Park Avenue
A street festival celebrating the culture and arts in Central New England. Visual artists and crafters display and sell their handmade goods, live bands will perform on the main stage, and street performers will entertain the masses as well as a new food court area. Free children’s activities, face painting and more.

For a complete listing of Fall Fest events, visit the Worcester Cultural Coalition Web site.

Related Information:

• Word on Worcester
• Watch the Consortium’s new video promoting Worcester and the region