Retention Commitee

As a university, Dominican attempts to keep all of it's students enrolled from semester to semester, year to year. We are so committed to this, there is even a Retention Committee, headed by Associate Dean of Students Norah Collins, to keep our retention rates high.

Right now, colleges across the country are suffering from low retention rates. Reasons students leave vary from personal to financial reasons and everything in between. There are also sub committees that focus on particular students who have statistically been more likely to drop out or transfer. Some of these committees include students of color and freshman.

Yes, I know about the GSSW

Dominican extends beyond the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences to the graduate programs. One of these programs is the Graduate School of Social Work. I know this because I feel like I get at least an email a week from them.

No, I haven't changed my major. The GSSW just feels the need to tell me about their open houses or q&a sessions all the time. I know that they send these emails to everyone, seeing the "TO" line is just the entire Dominican community, but it's still annoying. I get tons of emails everyday from classes or clubs or my mom. I think th GSSW should just send the emails to people who are interested, ie not me.

TV & Radio at Dominican?

Going by what my colleagues mentioned in posts that can be found here and here, I think adding a separate TV & Radio program at Dominican would be an invaluable asset to the way the University approaches academics.

Having a radio station or a TV station or both at Dominican would truly boost us to the level of a phenominal university. Having TV & Radio here would bring in so many communications students and people from the community interested in media. It could also be a resource through which students studying any discipline could get involved, generate discussion over important issues and make their voices heard. Adding these to the academic program at Dominican would take time, but the time spent developing such a reality would be worth it.

Perhaps leftover fundraising money could be put to good use on this interesting academic program?

White Boards

It seems in most of my classes my instructors are frustrated when they go up to the white boards in Parmer classrooms to write an example or term for the class to see. It turns out that most of the markers supplied at these boards for the instructors' writing pleasure don't work. Most of the time when this happens, instructors will get upset for a moment, make a comment on the lack of usable marker, then improvise a solution that may take a few minutes to hash out, i.e. lowering the view screen and firing up the projector and typing out whatever they needed to say on computer instead of writing it down on the board.

Often it's not just one marker that doesn't work, but all of the markers that may be in the little tray at the bottom of the boards. Are these markers just left in the respective classrooms for all to use and when they run out...too bad? Or are the instructors expected to bring their own marker simply so they can efficiently and effectively teach their classes? Someone should at least be in charge of supplying working markers so that instructors can make the most of the resources available to them.

DU Email Hypocrisy

One thing that had always been stressed here at Dominican is to check your DU email. Check it, check it, check it. Anything from class work to important campus news could be sent to that email address so CHECK IT!

Why then, may I ask, do half the faculty and staff NOT use their Dominican email address? This may just be a silly pet peeve of mine, but I hate it when professors refuse to use their DU address and insist that you send messages to their Yahoo account instead. I understand that when you may have 12 different addresses it can be hard to check them all, but IT offers ways to forward all email to a different account.

I just feel that because students can always find anyone at DU email (through the universal address book on Outlook) and it's the way all us students are required to communicate, faculty and staff should be required to use their DU email.


Photo taken from myDU.

Polish Proficiency Test?

According to myDU, a Polish proficiency test will be administered Wednesday next week. I know that Dominican offers classes in Italian, German, Spanish and French, but I had no idea there was anything for Polish offered here.

I'm just curious: Why would there be a proficiency test on campus for a language the University doesn't offer? I thought the point of proficiency tests was to test out of having to take a foreign language or prove you could speak it fluently for major requirement purposes? Maybe the University is planning on offering the class in future semesters and they want to gauge the level of interest?

Does anyone else know anything about this?

College Does Not Have to Equal Boring

I have two classes on Tuesday, both of which today had guest speakers. The first was my seminar class where a professor from the biology department who spoke about Natural Selection. The other class was American Empire where a foreign corespondent came to speak about working in the field. Both classes were interesting and gave a new insight on course that were becoming, well, predictable.

The use of outside speakers and other learning aids are underutilized to say the least. I feel that while, yes, this is college, classes don't have to be boring. Lectures day in and day out get repetitive and less effective as the semester goes on. Courses with engaging professors and varied class time are always the ones I look forward to and always the ones I get the most out of. More professors should look into alternative teaching methods to keep college as educational, and entertaining, as possible.

Amazing Possibilities Campaign Wraps Up

Dominican's "Amazing Possibilities" financial campaign has finally finished collecting money. The outcome? A cool $53.5 million, according to a headline on the Dominican homepage. So where is all this money going?

According to the campaign brochure, available in .pdf format here, the initial goal of the campaign was to raise $50 million for four different items: facilities, endowment, program support and the annual fund. The purpose of this fund raising was to expand Dominican's enrollment to potentially include 4,000 students by 2012. The plan designates certain amounts to be granted to each item on the list described above: $33.5 million going to facilities, $5.5 million to the endowment, $5 million to program support and $6 million to the annual fund.

So now that the campaign is complete, where does the extra money go? Is the university still paying for the new buildings, or is this extra money going to be put towards academics?

According to the brochure, a good chunk of the initial $50 million raised that doesn't go toward Parmer Hall, the parking garage and the Early Childhood Education Facility should be going toward academics. Program support and the endowment include academic programs and financial aid money for students, in addition to other issues that require money, such as student retention and recruitment.

Coming off such a successful campaign, I'm anxious to see what this extra financial boost brings to Dominican. We've already seen the incredible new buildings. With all that extra money, hopefully students will see more great academic programs and unique educational opportunities. That is, if our new buildings are fully paid for.

More information:
Amazing Possibilities Campaign Video
Amazing Possibilities Website

Green Academics

I, like everyone else in consumerism America, have been swept up in the green movement. Yipee for the environment, sustainability, and chalk free classrooms?

In my latest read The Green Book, there are countless ways to go green in nearly every aspect of life, including school. There are little tips and tricks that can save a school some money and save the earth some green. One of the things that was brought up was using white boards instead of chalk in classrooms. The elimination of chalk dust can aggravate asthma and reduce the amount of chemicals in the air that are used to clean classrooms.

Another tip was to use online resources as much as possible to cut down on the amount of paper that is used for handouts and textbooks. With the internet being so accessible now, this seems like a small task that could make a big difference.

Dominican prides itself in being a "green" university, but what else can still be done? I know that many of my professors have started putting material on Blackboard or myDU in order to save some paper. Parmer Hall is a certified "green building" because of the steps the school has taken to reduce waste in its construction and upkeep.

What else has the school done in order to do its part in the environemnt? What types of things can still be improved?


Image courtesy of www.thedeathbox.com

A very interesting lecture

Next Tuesday, October 28, Dominican will be hosting a very interesting lecture on brain research in Parmer 108 at 6 p.m. Dr. Jeff Lewine of the Alexian Brothers Center for Brain Research will be lecturing on Neuro MEG technology, a new kind of method for mapping the brain and learning more about conditions such as autism. Dr. Lewine practices Magnetoencephalography, which is basically mapping magnetic fields caused by electrical activity in the brain to create an accurate image of the brain.

Even though I have little to no knowledge of neuroscience, this lecture seems extremely interesting; if I didn't have class at the time it's being held, I would attend. But it's a chance to learn more about the extremely complex human brain, and what doctors are doing to try and find cures for the most challenging medical diagnoses.

The mystery of the midterm

College midterms. Something that no one looks forward too, but seems to come just as the leaves will fall off the tree. As a junior, I have seen my share of midterms…. That is, until now. It seems while all of my friends are cramming for tests or staying up all night to write papers, I have been able to enjoy the cool weather and Halloween fun. For some reason, maybe I just picked all of the right classes, this semester has been severely lacking in Midterm drama. Yes, I have some scattered papers or small assignments here or there, but nothing like the whirlwind that seems to have caught much of the school. Please understand, I by no means am upset by this phenomenon.

 

I just hope it won’t catch up to me during finals. 

Adding courses....

According to some of my sociology friends, the department may be requiring all majors to take a certain writing class in order to graduate, even though this class was not in their original bulletin. According to the Academic Advising Office, students are only required to take the courses for their majors as outlined in the bulletin they received during their orientation. This being said, the sociology department would be breaking the rules by requiring this writing class. According to junior Rosana Godinez, sociology major, the whole thing is "ridiculous". 

 

I agree. The school clearly states that in order to graduate in your chosen major, you are required to meet the fulfill the requirements set out in you bulletin. Many students are double majors or just have a lot of things going on. Schedules are an exact science. Adding a requirement as a junior or senior could cause some students to graduate late. The whole thing is, well, ridiculous.  

The Dominican Admission Process

Dominican's homepage features an online application and visitation for potential students called "Discover Dominican." I had recently heard of a "Discover Dominican" event that is to take place on November 8, so I decided to reflect a little more on the new process of admissions and on how I came to visit Dominican the first time.

This program is apparently catered towards groups of 10 or less, with visiting students being able to access all sorts of online material for the university, including an application for the event and for admission. This approach to courting prospective students must be a new method they instituted recently. Four years ago, the only way the Admissions department was able to persuade me to visit the university was by repeatedly calling my home and then later switching to letters promising fairly large sums of financial aid. As an average high school slacker, I was flattered that a university wanted anything to do with me and seemed genuinely interested in having me visit the campus personally to soak up the atmosphere and get a feel for Dominican. This was part of the reason why I took the plunge and went with Dominican.

I remember when I first visited Dominican, it was only my parents and myself visiting that day. We were shuffled around campus, I sat in with a class while my parents talked figures with the Admissions people, and they took some notes on my interests so they could figure out how to get me to attend Dominican. And they seemed very interested in figuring out an arrangement that would benefit me. They were looking out for my future before I even made any decisions or told them I was even impressed with things. It was this hands-on and extremely personal process that made me feel like I was wanted somewhere; like these people who were trying to get to know me were interested in things other than getting my tuition money.

While it seems that the Admissions process at Dominican is still fairly personalized, I think other than going to big group orientations and tours, prospective students should be curious to visit on their own or with parents, not as just another name in a special group designed to entice students to the institution. It just seems to me like Dominican should focus more on the individuals in this process. I'm sure these groups probably help a lot of prospective students and make them feel like they're a part of something great and present opportunities to meet people. But I'm willing to bet that if a prospective student were to go through the personalized meetings and visitations, they'd feel more comfortable with the whole situation. Making the decision on a college is a HUGE step and a major life decision that effectively influences everything else in one's life. I'm also willing to bet that these anxious high school juniors and seniors would feel a lot more comfortable with a personalized admission process: no group visitations, seminars, meet and greets, etc. I know that feeling like I was more of an individual than just a name was the major thing that brought me to Dominican. Getting to have one-on-one meetings with Admissions staff and faculty members made me truly feel like an adult out in the world at last, able to make my own decisions, and individual ones at that; no group influence or tacky admission programs to make me feel like someone was holding my hand through everything.

While I'm sure that these personalized experiences are a big part of the admission process, I think that Dominican should seek out the students, instead of simply having them fill out applications and read information on admission web pages. The personal experience is what makes going to Dominican such a positive experience, and I believe that by starting off students on such a path from the very beginning, prospective students can get a great taste of the full experience that awaits them once they come to Dominican.

Dominican Videos page: is the University making the most of it?

Dominican recently started a new videos page about two weeks ago. And it seems the site has already been relegated to the backburner for DU web projects.

As mentioned in my last post on this little innovation, the page features a few brief news videos posted to a web page for all to access. Although this is a revolutionary effort on the part of the university to give outsiders and insiders a glimpse of all Dominican has to offer, it appears the site has already fallen into disuse by those responsible for its creation.

The page has not been updated since I last posted about it nearly two weeks ago. Now, I may be expecting too much of this new institution, but I thought it was actually going to be regularly updated with short news stories and videos documenting lectures, student activities and other happenings on campus, sort of like an occasional Internet-only version of your garden variety TV news features. But there are still the same videos of Lund Gill Chair Stephen Kinzer's recent lectures and a couple of features portraying different events and occurrences on campus that took place in late August and early September. There have been improvements made since the site's initial start up, most notably each video receiving its own individual page. However, I couldn't figure out how to even get to the videos page; I had to follow my link from my previous post. It turns out the page is located on the Dominican homepage instead of somewhere where students are likely to access it, such as the myDU portal.

This seems a little silly to me. Frankly, I'm not surprised; it seems many websites started by individuals at Dominican fall by the wayside and are updated a few times when just starting out before being left to forever clutter the internet with outdated and/or irrelevant information. I think this opportunity is something that's not being realized to its fullest potential. This videos page could not only give the University some much-needed publicity if organized and promoted accordingly, but could also give students a resource for information about what's going on around campus. Event organizers always lament about a lack of attendance at on-campus events, but perhaps organizers could make use of this page and could advertise events or give students a "heads-up" about things they otherwise might not have thought twice about. This resource shouldn't be something completely controlled by the Marketing and Communications Department; it should be a resource the entire community can use to promote, inform or even educate their fellow Dominicans.

Isn't it Strange?

Since last year, I've realized that my classes have become increasingly intertwined. By this I mean that the subject matter in most of my classes, no matter what the subject, always seems to line up.

For example, last week my senior seminar class had a discussion about narratives and how they're essential to the nature of human life. I won't go into detail here as it was a pretty lengthy and complex discussion, but it was a fascinating concept that I had never really given much thought. Later that night, as I was preparing a Blackboard online post for my History 300 class, I came upon a passage in the text I was quoting from discussing narratives. The narrative concepts discussed in the history text closely mirrored those of my seminar class from earlier that evening. I was once again surprised by how well my classes' subject matters had lined up again. That is to say, I was very well prepared for my History 300 discussion the next day. I had never thought that those two classes, a liberal arts seminar and a class about the methodology of studying history, would be entirely on the same page simultaneously.

This "lining up" trend has become increasingly common throughout my years at Dominican. I know this essentially what a college-level course of study is supposed to accomplish, but I had never really considered that my advisers would be able to perfectly sync up my classes so that everything would tie together so well, with the same exact topics being discussed in two or more very different courses in the same day or week. Sometimes this seems to happen constantly for weeks on end; it feels as if I'm in one massive course, with class periods spread out over several days, subjects and instructors, yet still I feel like I'm learning one larger concept.

Phabulos Photo Essay

Here is a little photo essay that was created for the online journalism class this whole blog sprung from! The photos feature staff and students from the Dominican University Art Department. Below are captions with more information! Enjoy!

Sophomore Jess Myers critiques a classmate’s work in her Introduction to Design Applications course last Tuesday night. Myers, along with others in the course, describe the art and suggest the meaning behind it. All students take turns sharing their art and receiving criticism.

Jasmine Samuels works on her sculpture quietly and focused. She is also using a roller blade as the object of her work. Samuels along with the ten or so other students in the class, talk only briefly in between hammer strikes. The whole class is committed to their work, often coming after class is over to continue their projects.

Juniors Ashley Boyd and Kacey Hahn look over their negatives last Tuesday night. Both photography students, Boyd and Hahn put in hours of time outside class working on their art. Hahn enjoys photography but laughs, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

Professor Hannah Jennings listens quietly and sips her soda as her students critique each other’s work in Introduction to Design Applications last Tuesday night. Jennings gives her input and helps leads a discussion, but allows time for each student to give his or her opinion.

Jennifer Raplan-Ortiz continues her Polaroid camera sculpture. She wears an old t-shirt over her clothes because the plaster dust can be quite messy. She carefully angles the chisel and hammer to get just the right chip. These projects have just been started, but are already taking shape.

Junior Kacey Hahn takes a short break from staring at negatives last Tuesday night. Her latest assignment features all kinds of cracks on the human body. She is working far beyond class time and wonders about the other homework that waits for her.

Student Jennifer Raplan-Ortiz asks for assistance from professor Noelle Allen Wright in her 3D Design course last Wednesday in the basement of the Priory. Raplan-Ortiz is making a plaster sculpture of a Polaroid camera and needed help getting the right angles. Allen offered a few pointers, but allowed Raplan-Ortiz to finish the bulk of the work herself.

Several paintings wait on the floor of the hallway on the fourth floor of Lewis. These paintings are to be hung on the first floor, near the Dean of Students Office. According to Jeffrey Cote de Luna, the university often purchases or shows student artwork. Several photography pieces can be seen just off of the Parmer Atrium.

Ashley Richardson works on her plaster sculpture of a roller blade. She wears safety goggles to protect her eyes from the plaster chips. Midway through class, Richardson is asked to remover her headphones, much to her dismay. Richardson continues to hammer away, hoping that a roller blade will soon form.

Junior Ashley Boyd takes a much-needed break from her photography work. She has been looking at her contact sheet for some time and is getting tired. Boyd is also a graphic design major and spends much of her time here on the fourth floor of Lewis.

This is a photo essay I assembled for the Online Journalism class about a day in the life of returning student Austin Hall. I followed Austin around during a typical busy day around Dominican to gain some insight into how he stays fit and healthy, how he gets around and what its like to work the library desk in the Cyber Cafe for six hours at a stretch. Below are captions for the photos.

1.) Austin's Bicycle: Returning student Austin Hall rides this bicycle, 16 miles each way from his apartment each day to get to classes at Dominican. "It used to have fifteen speeds," says Austin, who purchased the bike three years ago for $80 from a pawnshop. "Now its only three."
2.) Austin in transit (photo by Austin Hall): Austin riding his bicycle through his "halfway point," the intersection of Foster and Central Park Blvd. at 7:15 a.m. Monday. Austin rides from his Andersonville apartment in Chicago a total of 32 miles each day, unless weather is foul enough to warrant driving his 1987 Ford Country Squire station wagon to class.
3.) The Remains of a Nutritious Breakfast: The remnants of Austin's healthy breakfast of milk, grapefruit, a fruit cup and assorted nuts, all brought from home except for the fruit. "I just like eating healthy," he says. "I eat grapefruit and nuts for breakfast instead of Lucky Charms."
4.) Homework before Class: Austin types his LAS 379 response paper concerning Pope John Paul II's "On Human Work" in the Technology Center before class Monday morning. He frequently comes to the Tech Center to work on homework throughout the day, as his two jobs make it difficult to get everything done at home.
5.) Lunch: Chicken salad and a glass of water round out a green and healthy lunch at noon in the dining hall. "I like lots of fiber, lots of protein in my lunch to keep me going through the day," he said.
6.) Gym: Austin works out on the rowing machine in the Fitness Center at 12:20 p.m. on Monday afternoon. "I usually try to make it to the gym two or three times a week for a half hour to forty-five minutes at a time," he said. "I mostly lift weights to keep up my upper-body strength, but today I decided to try something different."
7.) Voting booth: Austin attempts to remember if he has registered to vote at a voter registration booth in the Rebecca Crown Library Link on Monday. After years of voting for the Green party, he switched to the Democrats a few years ago after moving to Chicago from Nashville.
8.) Job: Austin squeezes in some extra homework while working as a desk attendant at the Library Resource Desk in the Cyber Café at 5:15 p.m. Monday. He works the resource desk Monday nights for six hours in addition to working his other part-time job as a chef at a Chicago restaurant.
9.) Dinner at work: Austin sips a fresh fruit cup for dessert after eating a turkey sandwich for supper at the Resource Desk at 7:28 p.m. Monday. In between eating dinner and attending to his job at the desk, he also researches scholarly articles for an English paper on cultural studies.
10.) End of the Day: Austin is the last person to leave the Cyber Café after closing at midnight, following the troubleshooting of the printer to help a student print 65 pages at 11:58 p.m. He leaves the Cyber Café to begin the 16-mile bicycle journey back to Andersonville. Tomorrow he starts the process all over again.

Dandy Dietetics

On Friday, November 21, the Nutrition Department will be holding a Diversity in Dietetics Workshop. This workshop will consist of several speakers about the world of dietetics and the role it plays in our lives. For more information on this workshop or to RSVP, contact Dr. Jill White.

There's prizes!!

Midterm grades

In a meeting I was at recently, there was much discussion among the administration about whether or not midterm grades would be beneficial to students. The idea would be that students would have a better understanding of how there were doing in class if students had a concrete grade by mid semester. Do you think that these grades would be helpful to us students? Do many classes lend well to grading in the middle of the course?

Who knew there were so many opportunities for studying abroad?

The past two days, the University held a Study Abroad Open House event in two separate locations. I stopped by the open house in the Parmer Atrium on Tuesday afternoon, and quickly noticed that there were so many programs I had no idea existed.

There were so many opportunities for programs in Europe (London, Paris, Nantes, Milan, Florence, Salzburg, Ireland, Salamanca). I didn't know that Dominican had a program for two locations in France, or that there were programs for Salzburg, Austria or Ireland. I was also unaware of a program in Buenos Aires.

One of my big regrets about college so far is that I never seriously considered studying abroad for a semester or two in some new and exciting place. My sophomore year, I briefly courted the idea of studying in South Africa at the University of Stellenboch for a semester, but my hopes were quickly dashed upon finding out they had no programs for journalism or sociology majors (I was considering Sociology for a second major at the time). Hopefully since then, the programs have been expanded to provide the same experiences for all majors. I would recommend to those who haven't considered it to do so. You never know where a completely new and foreign experience might take you.

Some more information on study abroad can be found here.

The Best Way to Relieve Stress

Recently, I had been having problems with stress.

I'd been bombarded for weeks with assignment after endless assignment for my classes, set upon by the hounds of financial responsibility (even more so with the looming financial crisis), barely managed to make it to my campus job on time and struggled to live up to my responsibilities as co-editor-in-chief of the Dominican STAR. I was at the breaking point a few weeks ago. The academic powers that be seemed have thrown everything they could at me: papers, projects, newspaper production, meetings, lectures, obligations, the list goes on and on. My social life was rapidly decaying and at the same time it felt like I had no time to myself.

But then I finally began reciting a mantra suggested to me by a family member: "It can wait."

My family realized, through phone conversations and the occasional visit back home, that I was falling apart under the weight of my commitments. So my parents suggested I take it easy and tell myself that things can wait; my personal health and sanity come first.

After a much-needed weekend hiatus from school life, spent on the couch at home and at a good old fashioned rock n roll show, I felt like a new person. By getting out of my stressful environment, going home, and immersing myself in a favorite band for a few hours, I found I could suddenly deal with everything. All I needed to do was step back for a second.

Service Learning

To pursue truth, to give compassionate service, to participate in the creation of a more just and human world. This should be familiar to all of those in the Dominican community as a part of our motto. These ideals are sewn throughout all aspects of life at this university. One place in particular is in the Service Learning department.

Students can participate in Service Learning in a variety of ways. One of the most literal is by having a service learning component added on to one of your classes. With this a professor would assign some sort of service as a part of a class grade. Often times, these courses meet less or have less homework in order to make time for the service element. A professor may integrate the service more or less depending on the course. Service destinations could include anything from serving food at a homeless shelter to cleaning up Thatcher Woods. The student would then either discuss the service in class, or have a written assignment on it to further analyze the experience.

Service Learning is a very unique way to teach without books or essays. It gives students an opportunity to have hands on experience and create their own thoughts. This type of learning comes from the heart of Dominican’s values because it give students a broader sense of the world around them.

For more information, visit the Service Learning Website

A different way to teach....

Many professors use lecture as their primary forms of educating. Others prefer class discussion or the use of visual aid. In one specific communications course, the instructor prefers not to show up at all.

The class is Interpersonal Communication. The professor is Ric Calabrese. Every few class periods, Calabrese breaks the students into small groups and has them teach themselves. That is, one student is chosen as the facilitator and Calabrese doesn't come to class that day. Is he lazy? Maybe, but the more appropriate guess would be that Calabrese feels that by not coming to class, his students will be more open and candid with the discussion.

It is an interesting approach to teaching, and so far seems to be surprisingly effective. Students still show up and have a decent discussion about the topic at hand. Of course, cutting the class short by 15 minutes never hurt anyone so these students may or may not have taken this liberty. Still, the class period is by no means wasted and seems to be educational.

It is safe to say that Professor Calabrese learned something in his umpteen years of teaching. While this may not be the most orthodox way of educating the youth of our nation, it seems to give students a different perspective about college and education in general.

Or he could be lazy.

Recipe Box

The Recipe Box Atrium Café is the product of students in the course Quantity Food Production and Service, Nutrition 407. In this course, students learn how to plan, prepare, serve, and clean a large meal. It is a culmination of the students’ nutrition and organizational skills. Each week, a different student is chosen as the Kitchen Manager. This individual is responsible for planning and organizing the menu and making sure the food is properly prepared and served. Customers are given evaluations at the end of the meal to assess the meal, service, and overall experience. Students are asked to use these critiques as a way to assess their performance and improve.

For more information or to RSVP contact Judy Beto.

Lund-Gill Chair to give speech on the importance of history

Lund-Gill Chair Stephen Kinzer will be presenting a talk about the importance of history in the 21st century tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7, in the Martin Recital Hall. The lecture is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.

This lecture should be a great opportunity for journalism and history students to learn from one of the pros; Kinzer was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 30 years, and always knew the history behind the nations and revolutions he's covered throughout his exciting career. Kinzer is an engaging speaker, and he always keeps his audiences interested in the points he raises in his lectures through his extensive historical knowledge and wealth of personal stories and experiences.

Find out more about Kinzer here.

Dominican Unveils New Video Page on myDU

Dominican has just premiered a brand new videos page on myDU. The site currently features a few short news story videos, including excerpts from lectures by Lund-Gill Chair Stephen Kinzer, a news story covering 2008 Academic Convocation and DU Fest, as well as a segment entitled "A Week in the Life of DU," which features clips from several events that occured the week of September 7-13.

According to the post on myDU announcing the start of the page, new videos covering campus events will be posted frequently.

Seminar. Unique to DU and I wonder why.

Seminar is a uniquely Dominican creation. It is a course that all students from all disciplines have to take in order to graduate. The point of this course is to study the "BIG questions" in life and get other perspectives on them.

However, while seminar can be interesting at times, this year especially it seems to fall flat. I am often bored with the questions asked, the responses, and the overall feel of this course. While I understand that it helps us become well rounded individuals, I'd honestly rather sleep in.

Have you all found the purpose in seminar? Or do you too find it leaves something to be desired?

Fulbright Scholarship

Many students want to make a difference after they graduate. I think this would be the hope for most individuals, but at Dominican especially because of our "caritas et veritas" lifestyle. One way to do this may be the Fulbright Scholarship program.

With this, students can live overseas to help teach, do research, or lecture. It may be an interesting way to get a taste of other volunteering opportunities. The foundation gives several different types of grants. The qualifications are as follows:

• Are a U.S. citizen, and
• Are a graduating senior; hold a B.S./B.A. degree; are a master's or doctoral degree candidate; or are a young professional or artist, and
• Are thinking of studying, teaching or conducting research abroad, and
• Are in good health

For more information, contact Kathleen Houlihan.