Accreditation Improvement
The Teachers College at Emporia State University received national recognition Sept. 26 from the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation for surpassing the standards in becoming re-accredited during their most recent accreditation cycle. Receiving the Frank Murray Leadership Recognition for Continuous Improvement, Emporia State was one of only 13 institutions to receive the award out of the 238 nationally which have CAEP accreditation. Other schools recognized included Duke and Boston College.
500,000th Visitor
A visit to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County, which was organized by ESU’s Office of International Education, resulted in a surprise for Klara Stingsted from Vejle, Denmark. Klara, who was among the group of Danish high school students staying with Emporia host families, was the 500,000th visitor to the park. She received a copy of the park’s DVD and a book of photographs highlighting America’s national parks. Visitors enjoyed cake as part of the celebration.
$2M in Grants
Counselor Education recently learned it received two grants from proposals submitted this summer with the help of Bryan Jones in ESU’s Research and Grants office. One of the grants is only awarded to one organization nationally. This funding will allow the recruiting and funding of 30 new master’s students in service provision to Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Autism Spectrum Disorders consumers, and 35 counseling professionals seeking specialty training in services provision to consumers with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
NCAA Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Brian Hainline, chief medical officer for the NCAA, spent October 7 on campus, meeting with students and playing tennis with Coach Les Stafford. That evening, Dr. Hainline presented “Can Sport Save Society?”to an audience of ESU faculty, staff and students plus community members.
Center Dedication
About 100 people attended the dedication and consecration of the Kansas Masonic Literacy Center, an organization that has the singular purpose of helping children learn to read and working with the communities the children live in to encourage this basic life skill. It was created with a $4 million gift in 2016 from the Masons of Kansas. The Kansas Masonic Literacy Center has been active over recent years in its goals of helping families, schools, teachers, professionals in literacy development, and — most important — children.
Arts & Sciences
Roberta Eichenberg, Chair of the ESU Art Department, and Megan Stelljes, an ESU alumni art major with a concentration in glass, teamed up at a glass blowing event at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company’s October Festat their brewery in Chico, California. They created a glass sculpture of a seahorse.
The Emporia State University Jazz concert benefiting the annual United Way fundraising campaign was September 26 at Albert Taylor Hall, and raised a total of $1,026.
The ESU music department hosted the High School Marching Band Festivalon October 2 with 22 schools performing and over 2,000 students. Four of the high school band directors were ESU Music Department Alumni.
The ESU Music Department Hosted the Middle School Big Sing on October 4 with over 150 middle school students attending. This event engaged area middle school directors with the ESU A Cappella Choir and Dr. Ward in a one-day event aimed at exposing middle school students to ESU.
Congratulations to Bryn Boice (BFA Theatre 1999), who is the new director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’sapprentice program, CSC2 program and Stage 2 performances for young audiences. Bryn is an award-winning director, educator, actor and producer as well as artistic director of Anthem Theatre Company of Boston and teaches at Salem State University.
Business
It was a full house for the How It's Made Touron September 24. The students enjoyed this high impact learning experience, and they learned from Kim Redeker and Adam Eimer how The Sweet Granada and Uncommon Threads got started, what their career/educational history is up until this point and what it means to be an entrepreneur. The students asked good questions throughout the tour.
The School of Business was chosen by Danish high school students from Vejle, Denmark, for their class shadowingdestination. They attended classes with business students, visited downtown businesses and area parks and talked about cultural differences and similarities.
The Teachers College
Dr. Jim Persinger, Psychology and Instructional Design & Technology, was named to GLSEN National’s Research Ethics Review Committee. Persinger is a longtime GLSEN Greater Kansas City Chapter leader and recently partnered with GLSEN to conduct a national study on LGBTQ+ youth inclusivity training outcomes.
In September, Dr. Jim Persinger worked with GLSEN in New York City on the national launch of an inclusivity outcomes tool. This was the culmination of four years of research on teacher trainings to better address the needs of LGBTQ+ youth, who face many disparities in climate and educational outcomes. An earlier phase of the research involved School Psychology Program candidates Emily Schoenfeld and Brettany Williams.
Dr. Cate Crosby was awarded a MIDTESOL 2019 travel grant at the annual Mid-America Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages conference September 27-28 and was elected secretary of the MIDTESOL Higher Education/Teacher Education Interest Section.
Information Technology
Information Technology launched a cybersecurity campaignto highlight the technology resources available to students, as well as to keep students safe online. This also included an online scavenger hunt, inspired by the Netflix show “Stranger Things.”
Library & Information Management
Kimberly Martin (Oregon MLS 2017) recently accepted the position of catalog librarianat Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington.
Brandon Wilkinson (Oregon MLS 2012) joined Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, as a visiting assistant professor and reference librarian in March 2018.
Athletics
Emporia State's Mackenzie Dimarco earned her first MIAA Women's Soccer Offensive Player of the Week Awardpresented by Mammoth Turf.
Off to the best start after 10 games in school history, the Emporia State women's soccer team has debuted at No. 14 in this week's United Soccer Coaches National Rankings.
Emporia State's Tanna Benefielwas named the MIAA Defender of the Weekon October 1 after the Hornets soccer team began their season 2-0.
The Division II Athletics Directors Association (DII ADA) announced 62 Emporia State student-athletes have earned DII ADA Academic Achievement Awards. The student-athletes were honored October 1 during Hornet volleyball matches.
Presentations
Dr. Carrie Boettcher (Assistant Professor, Counselor Education) presented “Cognitive Authority in Online Social Media during Severe Weather” during the Jean Tague-Sutcliffe Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition at Association of Library and Information Science Education in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Sept. 25.
Dr. Joan Brewer, Dr. Zeni Colorado-Resa, Dr. Tiffany Hill, Dr. Amanda Lickteig, Dr. Sunnin Keosybounheuang, and Dr. Sara Schwerdtfeger, all from The Teachers College, presented “It’s Better to be Absolutely Ridiculous than Absolutely Boring: The Fun Side of Accreditation” at the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation Conferencein Washington, D.C., September 26.
Four ESU English, Modern Language, and Journalism faculty members presented at the 2019 Mid America Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Conferenceon September 28 in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Cate Crosby, Cara Codney, Jonathan Leach, and Dr. Kat O'Meara presented their panel "Cross-Campus Bridges: Reflections on a Multilingual Composition Pilot." The panel was nominated for the "Best of MidTESOL" award by the MidTESOL board.
Dr. Michael Widdersheim, Assistant Professor in SLIM, presented “Intelligent Systems and the Public Sphere in American Society: Information Selection and Quality Management in Public Libraries” at the Tsukuba Conferencein Tsukuba, Japan.
Stephen Catt and co-author Barbara Tarter at Marshall University presented their paper “Still Not Dead: An updated analysis of the Russian Facebook Advertisements prior to the 2016 US election” at the International Conference on Social Media & Societyat Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada in July.
Dr. Mirah Dow, Professor and Ph.D. Program Director, and Brady Lund, Ph.D. student, presented on September 23 during the ALISE Academy at the 2019 Association of Library and Information Science Education conferencein Knoxville, Tennessee. The title of the Academy was Including Disability in LIS Education and Workplace: From Local Concerns to Global Vision.
Kristine Woods, Ph.D. candidate, presented at the 2019 Association of Library and Information Science Education conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, Ph.D. Student Poster Session, Cooperative catalogers’ lived experience implementing Resource Description and Access: Developing best practices for creating global metadata.
Dr. Greg Schneider (Professor, Social Sciences) presents “The Past and President of American Conservatism” on Sunday, October 13, as part of the Sundays at the Siteseries at the William Allen White State Historic Site in Emporia.
Publications
Marta Murvosh (Oregon MLS 2011) had her short story “Mothers and Daughters" published in Abyss & Apex. Murvosh is a teen librarian at Marysville (Washington) Library, Sno-Isle Libraries.
Dr. Brendan Fay, Assistant Professor in SLIM, published the book “Classical Music in Weimar Germany: Culture and Politics Before the Third Reich” (Bloomsbury).
Former ESU mathematics students, Keely Grossnickle, Jeana Johnson, and Zhihao Sun, are co-authors of a paper published in Mathematics Magazine. The article, Triphos: A World Without Subtraction, is a result of undergraduate research conducted with Professor Brian Hollenbeck.