Author: wmf008

Alexandra Rosen
Contributing Writer

The Interfaith Council sponsored a discussion on Oct. 9 that involved issues about religious apathy. The talk, called “Why am I None,” was open to members of all religious denominations and encouraged participants to voice their opinions about what several members of the council consider to be a trend toward students not identifying with a particular religion.

University Chaplain John Colatch led the conversation. Colatch said that 27 percent of college students are apathetic toward religion. Many people today don’t need religion to encourage them to do good works, and Colatch allowed part of the discussion to build from that prompt.

“It seems that the numbers are rising with each passing year,” Colatch said. “It’s not really news.”

Colatch also said that conversations about religion have become taboo.

“Teaching in the classroom has changed,” Colatch said. “Students feel uncomfortable with the religious aspect of colonialism.”

People are hesitant to bring up the subject of religion today, even during a mature discussion, Colatch said.

Colatch created the Interfaith Council during his first year at the University as a group for multiple religious traditions to converse. The council includes representatives from many of the religious affiliations found on campus, Courtney Nelson ’15, a member of the council, said.

“I hope we can have other conversations like this,” Colatch said.

Cooper Josephs
Contributing Writer

The Lewisburg chapter of the Kiwanis Club will host the Woolly Worm Festival on Oct. 12 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hufnagle Park on Market Street, which will include free craft stations for children and several dozen food and craft vendors.

“This is a year-round planning event. It is a very anxious moment for us because we (the Kiwanis Club) never really know how many people are going to show up,” Ken Kulish said.

He and his wife have coordinated the Woolly Worm Festival for the previous three years.

“When the Kiwanis Club first started the Woolly Worm Festival … there might have been probably a couple hundred people there. Now there are a few thousand people coming to it throughout the day,” Kulish said.

The festival is named for the small, orange and black caterpillars that appear during the summer and later metamorphose into the Isabella Tiger Moth.

During the annual “Weather Prognostication Ceremony,” young scientists do various tests on the woolly worms, including measuring and weighing them, and try to predict the conditions for the upcoming winter from the data obtained.

“There is a lot of showmanship to the prognostication process, but the kids have a good time having the chance to pick up the 100 or so woolly worms we bring out … and hearing how many snow days they are going to have,” Kulish said.

The proceeds from the festival go to the Kiwanis Club for several charitable works, including scholarships, school supplies for needy children, and projects for the benefit of the Lewisburg community. The proceeds also go toward a project called The Eliminate Project, which is designed to help prevent and eliminate neonatal tetanus, a disease that affects newborn children.

Due to budget shortfalls, grant money from the Lewisburg Visitor Center and Arts Center for the festival was stripped back, and organizers turned to the local community for donations.

“This year we didn’t really know what was going to happen with the festival … We weren’t able to advertise much this year, but we made it through with the help of the townspeople. We made a plea to the Lewisburg community to help support this festival, and they responded in a huge way. We raised about $3000 in start-up money, which was enough to get our bands and our advertising paid for. It was a feel-good moment when the people of Lewisburg came through to us,” Kulish said.

Lewisburg Mayor Judy Wagner praised local donations and volunteer participation in the event.

“We continue to enjoy festivals and parades, and people continue to put in the time so the whole community can enjoy themselves … We make fun for ourselves here, and we do quite well. We think of new reasons to celebrate the seasons, our town, and ourselves,” Wagner said.

Hannah Paton
Writer

Assistant Professor of Music Paul Botelho will perform at an electro-acoustic concert in Russia at the end of this month.

Botelho has been working with renowned composer Jon Appleton for several months, and the two will depart on Oct. 24 for the Urals Conservatory’s Festival of ElectroAcoustic Music in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

During their 10-day trip, the pair will be performing a set at the international festival, teaching workshops at the Conservatory on electroacoustic music, and even judging other music competitions.

To prepare for their upcoming performance, Botelho and Appleton have spent the last few months collaborating and producing numerous new tracks.

“At first we just came up with a time—seven minutes—Jon wrote the voice part, which I sang, and I wrote the piano part, which he performed,” Botelho said.

Botelho defines electroacoustic music as any sort of music made through technology. According to him, electroacoustic techniques have become increasingly popular over the last few decades and are bound to be the music of the future.

“We’re approaching the point where technology is just another instrument,” Botelho said. “There’s an entire wing dedicated to electroacoustic music at the conservatory. It’ll get there.” 

Botelho will teach one workshop about ChucK Audio Programming language, which is essentially a form of computer software like JavaScript or C++ that makes it easy to develop musical software and produce sound very quickly.

His other workshop will cover the future of electroacoustic music. He will also experiment with a theremin, an electronic musical instrument consisting of two different metal antennas that make sound based on the position of the player’s hands relative to the antennas. 

The  main goal and hope of the trip is to make connections for collaborations in the future. He even hopes to try to set up a future student exchange program with a focus in electroacoustic studies. 

“We both hope to end the ghettoisation of electro,” Botelho said.

Nick Salvo
Contributing Writer

Philanthropy leaders from the University’s Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Panhellenic Council raised over $12,000 for charity on Oct. 6 at the Greek-sponsored “B+ Challenge,” according to IFC Community Service and Philanthropy Chair Jeremy van de Rijn ’15 and Panhellenic Council Vice President of Community Outreach Ally Flessel ’15.

Van de Rijn and Flessel coordinated the event, which featured an obstacle-laden “Twisted 5K Run.”

All proceeds went directly to the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, a national charity that provides financial and emotional support for families of children with cancer and also provides grants for childhood cancer research.

Kappa Delta Rho, the fraternity whose national philanthropy partner is the B+ Foundation, co-sponsored the event. Every member of the fraternity signed up for the run and helped with food and refreshments during the event.

The Twisted 5k consisted of a five-kilometer run around the University’s West Fields. Nine obstacles, designed by teams from fraternities and sororities, added to the challenge of the run, Flessel said. Obstacles included trivia games and army crawls.

Over 120 people participated in the run, while 288 students raised money through donations, van de Rijn said.

Van de Rijn, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, said that he hoped the event would open eyes on campus to the community service work done by Greek organizations.

“Community service is one of the goals of all governing bodies of Greek life. It is an important part of the Greek community on campus. And really, community service is very fun and very rewarding,” van de Rijn said.

Flessel said that she hopes support for the B+ Foundation will continue in upcoming years. She also said that it is important that events like the B+ Challenge spread beyond Greek life and become something that the entire University community supports. She stressed that philanthropy is a great way for Greek students and unaffiliated students to unite for a common goal.

“Philanthropy can be a common ground between Greek students and the rest of the campus,” Flessel said.

Kerong Kelly
Writer

Sixteen professors were awarded tenure by the University this semester. The professors were selected among faculty from both the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. Currently, 62 percent of the University faculty is tenured, according to the University website.

Newly tenured Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities and Asian Thought James Shields said that he was proud to be awarded the new position by his peers and the University Administration.

“My reaction was, more than anything, relief. I don’t think there are very many jobs where it takes roughly 20 years to reach the ‘entry’ gate to a stable and secure position,” Shields said.

In addition to the newly tenured professors, the University also added 10 full professors in fields ranging from geology to linguistics.

This most recent wave of growth in the faculty size marks the end of a period of significant expansion. According to Provost Mick Smyer, the increase in faculty size was originally the result of a transition from a mandatory six-course to a five-course, as well as the number of sabbatical leave positions.

In the 2008 academic year, the administration converted sabbatical leave replacement positions with 12 tenure track positions, Smyer said. The decision to replace sabbatical positions with tenured positions was part of an initiative to fulfill a chronic need of faculty, especially seen by larger departments.

“President Bravman and I have been urging our colleagues, who are associate professors, to consider going up for promotion to full [professorship]. That’s explicitly a strategic effort on part of the University to encourage colleagues to get the recognition that they deserve for their teaching and research accomplishments,” Smyer said.

Newly tenured professors:

M. Laura Beninati, associate professor of mechanical engineering

Sharon Garthwaite, associate professor of mathematics

Julie Ann Gates, associate professor of biology

Michael Gross ’03, associate professor of chemical engineering

Mark Haussmann, associate professor of biology

Peter Jansson, associate professor of electrical engineering

Sarah MacKenzie-Dawson, associate professor of education

Christopher Martine, associate professor of biology

Collin McKinney, associate professor of Spanish

Robert Nickel, associate professor of electrical engineering

Leocadia Paliulis, associate professor of biology

Adam Piggott, associate professor of mathematics

Nathan Ryan, associate professor of mathematics

James Shields, associate professor of comparative humanities and Asian thought

Matthew Slater, associate professor of philosophy

Katsuyuki Wakabayashi, associate professor of chemical engineering

Gigi Flynn

Writer

The University has received a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) summer program.

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences George Shields has had success with this program at Hamilton College and Armstrong Atlantic State University.

For the next five years, 20 students, all potential science majors, will do research at the University for five weeks the summer before their first year. These select students will also have the opportunity to do research at the University one other summer, for 10 weeks, after their first year. The students will be paid $350 a week.

The program will also help expose new science majors to University students already participating in research on campus.

“We want to build a connection between incoming students and upperclassman,” Shields said.

The STEM program will increase the number of mathematics, science, and engineering majors at the University. It will also increase the diversity in these fields of study by providing opportunities to first generation college students, low-income students, and female students, all nationally underrepresented in the sciences, Shields said.

William M. Fierman

News Editor

A break-in at a student apartment at Bucknell West is being investigated by Public Safety.

Nicole Bakeman ’16, a resident of Mod 18, stepped out of her bathroom around 1 p.m. on Oct. 1 and found a man standing in her living room by the porch door.

“He saw me and just booked it out,” Bakeman said.

Bakeman later described the man to University Public Safety Officers as a white male in his mid-thirties, wearing a backwards baseball cap.

“We were keeping our Mod open because it is Big-Little Week,” Bakeman said, referring to the annual tradition in which upperclassmen members of sororities leave gifts for new associate members with which they are paired. She and her roommates will now lock their doors.

Nothing is missing from the apartment, roommate Alexa Healey ’16 said.

“Maybe if I wasn’t there they would have taken something,” Bakeman said.

Ethan Zubkoff

Assistant News Editor

The Library will Stay Open Longer Hours on Friday and Saturdays

The Bertrand Library will be open later on weekends due to an initiative launched by the Bucknell Student Government (BSG) that was approved this week.

Senior class representative Olivia Cohen ’14 led the project to keep the library open to students until midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. Before these changes, the library traditionally closed at 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and they closed at 2 a.m. every other night of the week.

The change in hours will go into effect after Fall Break, Cohen said.

“Students have requested that the library stay open later to promote academics. Several faculty members have also voiced that they believe the library should be open later on the weekends for students who wish to study,” Cohen said. “Many schools have their library’s open 24 hours to promote academics, and I think this is a great step for the University.”

Ethan Zubkoff and Jen Lassen

Assistant News Editor and Senior Writer

University Hosts Middle States Re-Accreditation Forum

The University hosted a forum on Sept. 24 to begin its re-accreditation process. At the forum, there was a presentation of the first draft of a self-study guide for its upcoming re-accreditation with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

“The self-study addresses Middle States’ 14 Standards of Excellence, with a special emphasis on the interaction between Bucknell’s residential nature and our academic mission,” Provost Mick Smyer said.

The self-study is also designed to assess the extent to which the University adheres to the characteristics of excellence outlined by the 14 Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation standards, Smyer said.

“For reference, in Middle States parlance, a ‘recommendation’ is binding and requires follow-up action from the University within the next five years. A ‘suggestion’ by contrast is an action that is strongly encouraged, but is not required,” Smyer said.

The reaccreditation process takes place once every 10 years with the goal of composing a document that not only meets the needs of the Middle States Commission but at the same serving as a valuable way to enlighten the University about the continuing institutional planning, change and growth, Smyer said.

“The self-study process gives Bucknell and Bucknellians a chance to reflect on our strengths and challenges as an institution and our goals for the next ten years,” Smyer said.

The self-study is also designed to advance the University’s strategic priorities to enhance its academic and residential relationship, assist in its long-term vision for growth, sustainability and development in higher education.

Over 60 faculty members, staff, and students, who broke into six working groups, created this self-study, which is chaired by Professor of German and Humanities Katie Faull and Professor of Physics Tom Solomon over a two-year period.

Just under 100 faculty members, staff, and students attended the forum, according to Smyer.