I just got back to my office after attending the breakfast on campus for the Consortium of Vermont Colleges' Bus Tour - this is an annual event which brings together guidance counselors and independent counselors from all over the country for a bus tour of all of the Vermont colleges/universities. With several current students and members of the faculty and staff in attendance, Admissions Director Jacki Murphy gave a brief overview of SMC and then the participants had breakfast and a chance to talk with those of us representing SMC before they took their tour of the campus. I met with a number of these folks and had the opportunity to answer a lot of their questions. One woman from NY works at a community college and we had a great discussion of the value of that experience. Since my first two years of college were at a community college we had a great talk. She was asking about transfers. Two other folks asked about athletics, the Catholic nature of the College, financial aid, student involvement in so many activities and the benefit of SMC being right next to Burlington. It is a lively group and they will tour the entire state during this week. As always, I am proud of our students as they are such great representatives of our overall student body.
Three Eye Blind is the name of a very popular group who performed on Friday night at the spring concert. From all reports, it was a great event and everyone I have spoken to so far had a fantastic time. It takes so much effort to put on any event on a college campus while school is in session and a concert truly takes up the effort of so many people. Grace Kelly, our Director of Student Activities and all of the students/staff who work with her to make these events a success are to be applauded. Mark LItchfield, Director of Special Events always does a fantastic job working with all of us and he makes things to much easier just by the way he interacts with everyone - Well done.....
We have two weeks of classes left before the end of our semester. This coming Friday the Psychology Department's Symposium will take place and seven of our students will present the results of their honors research to the community. Jenny Pietroski, Morgan Powers, Jason Fuchs, Kate Amey, Greg Tatro, Caitlin Adamo and Betsie Miltner all have done some amazing research and they present to the Department and the community and then answer questions about their research. This not only provides them with the chance to show their hard work but it also is great preparation for future work in the field of Psychology. Tolerance and sensitization of d-amphetamine on a DRL 17.5-s schedule is Jason's topic and Parsing partisanship: How strong political leanings might distort one's thinking is Greg's. Jenny is a wonderful student to have in class and her presentation is titled: The effects of nicotine, nicotine abstinence, and acute psychological stress on cardiovascular reactivity and neuroendocrine functioning in a sample of habitual and intermittent cigarette smokers. They have all worked closely with a member of the faculty in our department and this is one of the highlights of their four years here - that collaboration between a student and a member of the faculty which results in a public presentation of research - it doesn't get much better than that. In addition, we will have the Psi Chi Induction ceremony where students who have achieved high grade point averages will be inducted into the Psychology Honor Society. There will be 62 student poster presentation where our students get to showcase their activities over this past year. Dr. Melissa VanderKaay Tomasulo is this year's Symposium coordinator and she has done a great job in preparing everyone for this event - thanks Melissa :)
Now that pre-registration is almost complete I have my class lists for the fall courses. I received an email the other day from one of my "future" students who is studying abroad and who will be in two classes. She is in Africa right now and while I know OF her, I don't know her yet so appreciated her email. She also commented to me that her family reads my blog - as those of you who DO read this regularly know, that always amazes me since I simply blog but really have no idea who or how many people actually read all of this - to those of you who do - THANKS........
Our new men's basketball coach has been selected. Michael Harding comes to us from Stonehill College and since I was on the Search Committee, I am really happy that Mike accepted our offer and will be joining us. He has a very strong stance on academic achievement for his student-athletes and I look forward to working with him on this. He has already begun his duties here and on Tuesday he will be "introduced" to the local media. During his interviewing we discussed a hope that there will be greater involvement with students and the community and to that end, I am taking Michael to the SA meeting on Tuesday evening where he will be introduced to the student leaders of the Student Association. Both Matt Seklecki and Claire McQuillen will be returning next year to be the co-secretaries of programming and they are interested in increasing the involvement of ALL students with our athletic programs so they will not only attend the 4:30 "media" presentation but they will hopefully work with our new coach to bring more students to support our basketball program. Welcome Michael! ! ! ! !
Enjoy the week, take care and please keep all of the members of our military in your thoughts and prayers.
Dave
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