Student Correspondent Stories

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2021 median annual wage for biochemists and biophysicists was $102, 270. Additionally, the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Science Education predicts that “the aging of the baby-boom population will likely drive demand for biophysicists involved in biomedical research.”

The University of Scranton’s Bachelor of Science in biophysics provides students with an interdisciplinary education aimed learning how to develop the critical thinking and analytical skills needed in this complex field of work. University departments that frequently collaborate with students in this program include chemistry, biology, psychology, physical therapy, occupational therapy and nursing.

With small class sizes capped at 25 to 30 students, faculty work with students on an individual basis to ensure their unique goals are being met, especially regarding research opportunities. Through optional faculty-mentored research opportunities, students can work on a variety of research topics that are of interest to them. Previous student work covered topics including haptic research, heart rate variability, biophysics of hearing and transdermal drug delivery. Previous students have also attained paid summer research experiences at Purdue University of South Florida and Rutgers University.

An undergraduate degree in biophysics prepares students to pursue advanced degrees in fields like biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, medical physics medicine, or optometry. Examples of graduate schools that have accepted recent Scranton graduates include Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, John Hopkins University, and The University of Pennsylvania.

While most Scranton’s biophysics majors choose to pursue additional graduate education, there are career opportunities available in the industry immediately after graduation as well.

The annual median pay for a career in data analytics can range from $82,000 to $114,000. Additionally, market-related analytics is one of the fastest growing fields with Forbes estimating a growth rate of “67% over the past year, and 136% over the past three years” and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting employment growth of up to 27% from 2016 to 2026.

The University of Scranton’s Bachelor of Science in business analytics is designed to help students learn the variety of skill sets needed to be successful in this interdisciplinary field, where they will be asked to conduct, analyze and evaluate data in order to make better business decisions. Potential job titles one can pursue with this degree include management consultant, data analyst, operations research analyst, and more.

As part of the Kania School of Management (KSOM), Scranton’s business programs are accredited by the rigorous standards of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which is an elite accolade that fewer than five percent of business schools worldwide hold.

Scranton’s business analytics program includes courses from data mining, database management systems, and simulation as well as the communication, managerial and decision-making skills needed to Students will be introduced to tools like structured query language (SQL) and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as related to the use of analytics in decision making.

Scranton also offers a master’s degree in business analytics in an online or on-campus format, as well as a business analytics certificate.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates overall employment of mathematicians and statisticians to “grow 30 percent from 2018 to 2028, much faster than the average for all occupations,” reasoning that “businesses will need these workers to analyze the increasing volume of digital and electronic data.”

The University of Scranton’s Bachelor of Science in mathematical sciences bridges the interdisciplinary nature of studying mathematics at an undergraduate level with students individual career goals by offering five academic tracks including actuarial science, biological sciences, computer and information science, data science or physical sciences. Although all students are required to take courses in calculus and linear algebra, additional upper-level mathematics courses are chosen with students’ individual goals in mind.

With career opportunities in STEM disciplines, business and the social sciences, this program is focused on developing the skill sets students need to succeed in a wide variety of professions. Courses are taught with the intention of developing students’ problem-solving skills, critical thinking, logical reasoning and collaboration. With small class sizes of approximately 10 to 20 students, faculty can get to know students on an individual basis and provide academic support that is tailored to each students’ needs. As part of their undergraduate education, students are also encouraged to pursue internships and co-ops.

Job titles of Scranton biomathematics and applied mathematics program graduates, include actuarial analyst, data scientist, operations analyst, software consultant and compensation analyst. Scranton graduates can be found working at HP Hood, Penn Life Mutual Insurance, Voya Financial and Central Square Technologies. Graduates who chose to pursue additional education have been accepted at schools such as Cornell University, Texas A and M, University of Pittsburgh, Drexel University and the University of Massachusetts.

According to Teach.com, “Regardless of temporary economic conditions, hiring practices, budget cuts or any other factors that impact the education system, the need for teachers is timeless and universal. Society will always need educators, and in that respect, teaching is one career in which you can be confident you will always have a purpose.”

The U.S. News and World Report reports that the average median salary for high school teachers is $56,310.

At The University of Scranton, students can earn a Bachelor of Science degree in secondary education with a dual degree in a specific content area. Content area focuses offered are biology, chemistry, citizenship with history or political science, communication, English, French, general science, German, Latin, mathematics, physics, and Spanish.

Secondary education coursework explores educational psychology, assessment, methods of instruction and teaching diverse learners. Taught by experienced faculty in small class sizes, these courses give students the opportunity to develop important professional relationships with peers and professors.

With hands-on teaching experiences beginning as early as the first year of study, students can take advantage of Scranton’s mutually beneficial partnerships with private/Catholic schools in the area.

Recent Scranton graduates can be found working for a variety of school districts including Abington Height School District, Quakertown, Pennsylvania School District and Teach for America. 

According to The University of Scranton’s First Destination survey for the Class of 2020, the average starting salary of Scranton history graduates 12 months after graduating was $40,600.

History degrees remain in demand due to the various transferable skills emphasized in the program including, writing, verbal and interpersonal communication, research, analysis and critical thinking.

A degree in history provides the foundation for a wide range of career opportunities ranging from law to medicine and more. Examples of successful individuals who have earned degrees in history include Conan O’Brian, Chris Hughes and the 46^th President of the United States, Joe Biden.

Scranton’s Bachelor of Arts degree in history prepares students for various post-graduate opportunities including higher education, teaching assistantships, public service work or employment in both the public and private sectors. Scranton’s department of history has produced five Fulbright Scholars in the past decade.

With proximity to various Lackawanna County historical organizations, including the Lackawanna Historical Society and Steamtown National Historic Site, students can get hands-on learning experiences and immerse themselves in the region’s role in American history.

Additional opportunities for independent research are built into the program. Undergraduate student research is frequently submitted for publication or presented at conferences.

Those interested in traveling will find multiple travel abroad courses within the department to places like Italy, Germany, England and the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Students looking to study abroad can do so within the department as well.

Recent Scranton graduates have been admitted to prestigious schools such as Boston College, Cornell University, Georgetown University, a Yale University. Organizations that employ Scranton history graduates include ABC News, Chase Manhattan Bank, the Office of the Attorney General, Paine Weber and the U.S. Military.

After serving almost a decade as CNN’s Moscow Bureau Chief, Schemel Forum guest speaker Jill Dougherty was living and working in Moscow in February 2022 when tensions between Russia and Ukraine were rising, witnessing firsthand the tactics used by various media organizations to promote a single narrative.

After discussing the role American media played in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Dougherty began to explain how Russian media presented the same situation. By placing Russian weapons and troops in the geographically significant separatist territories of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin effectively had the country of Ukraine surrounded. According to Dougherty, the narrative Russian media presented was that Putin’s intentions for doing this were those of self-defense against a supposed genocide of these people. Dougherty recognized that “what they were doing is what the old Soviet Union used to do with kind of weird little places they would recognize, and then say we have to protect them and then they would put their forces in to ‘protect’ them.’” Dougherty said, “at that moment it was so obvious that they had been setting this up for weeks.”

Other media tactics employed by some Russian media companies that Dougherty explored in her lecture include: presenting prerecorded statements as live ones; selectively recording attacks in certain areas while ignoring others; and including persuasive rhetoric like referring to people as “traitors.”

Ultimately, Russian media sanctions against independent media outlets forced many journalists, including Dougherty, out of the country in fear of potential retaliation for statements made on air. However, Dougherty noted that this is not the only recent change that will impact the country and the world in the years to come.

“The implications for Ukraine are dire, but the implications for Russia, militarily, and their society in many ways are dire too. There’s no other word because both countries will be transformed by what is going on,” said Dougherty.

Dougherty presented “Russia and the Post-Truth Society” at a Spring Schemel Forum World Affairs Seminar held on The University of Scranton’s campus in April.

The median annual wage for human resources specialists and compensation/benefits specialists was $60,350 and $119,120, respectively, in May 2017. Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects job growth in this field to nearly double, from five to nine percent, between 2016 and 2026.

Professionals working in human resources are responsible for a wide variety of jobs in corporate settings including recruitment, employee relations, payroll, benefits, training and administration of human resources policies. Examples of potential careers include compensation and benefits managers, human resources managers, and training and development managers.

The University of Scranton’s bachelor of science program in human resources studies is an interdisciplinary major that incorporates courses from the social and behavioral sciences, business and liberal arts. With flexibility in the curriculum, students have the chance to pursue a minor in business administration, psychology or other related fields.

Coursework is designed to actively engage students in applying theory to real-world scenarios and emphasize the development of decision-making, interpersonal, leadership, organizational and speaking skills. With small classes capped at around 25 to 30 students, Scranton human resources studies student get to know faculty and get individualized advice on their unique career aspirations from professionals who have worked in the field.

As part of the Panuska College of Professional Studies, students are required to complete at least 80 hours of service learning aimed at developing student engagement with their community. Additionally, human resources studies students complete 120 hours of internship experience their senior year in order to get hands-on experience outside of the classroom and under the supervision of human resources professionals. Recent internship sites include Nestle USA, Allied Services, Scranton Times-Tribune and Hilton Hotels-NY.

Outside of the classroom, students can get involved in the department by joining the student chapter of the Society for Human Resources Management, related clubs and honor societies.

Scranton graduates can be found working in companies like Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, L’Oréal NY and Starwood Hotels and Resorts.

Whether your future career aspirations lie in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, podiatry, optometry or other doctoral health professions, The University of Scranton’s pre-medical and pre-health professions programshave an established tradition of success in guiding students through the complex application process and preparing them for the rigorous curriculum of doctoral health programs.

Of the more than 1,200 applicants to doctoral health professions schools over the past 20 years, nearly 80% of Scranton students were accepted to schools of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, podiatry, optometry and pharmacy, which is well-above the national acceptance rate. In addition, well over half of Scranton’s successful applicants in the past 10 years have received more than one acceptance.

Resources in place at Scranton help inform and guide students through their undergraduate years in preparation for the medical school application process. Resources include the student-run Health Professions Organization, where guest speakers and alumni present on topics such as medical ethics and navigating the professional school application process. Additionally, students can seek out advice and assistance from Scranton alumni through the University’s Medical Alumni Council at any of its various events, including the Medical Alumni Symposium that pre-health professional students can attend for free.

With Faculty-Student Research and Teaching Mentorship programs, service through the Edward Leahy Jr. Center Clinic for the Uninsured and tutoring opportunities through the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, Scranton pre-professional students also have plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience beyond a classroom setting.

As one of seven undergraduate institutions participating in the nationally recognized Jefferson Medical College Physician Shortage Area Program, Scranton’s program works to recruit students interested in practicing medicine in underserved rural areas as well.

Additional information about the University’s pre-medical and pre-health professions programs is available on Scranton’s website.

The University of Scranton’s Bachelor of Science in Accounting program provides students with a nationally-recognized education and prestigious job opportunities after graduation with all Big Four accounting firms actively recruiting on campus.

Companies that have recently hired Scranton accounting graduates include: Deloitte, EY LLC, Grant Thornton, J.P. Morgan, PwC, KPMG and more.

More than 90% of Scranton accounting graduates obtain full-time employment in their field.

According to The University of Scranton’s First Destination survey for the Class of 2020, the average salary of a Scranton accounting graduate was $53,206.

Douglas Boyle, DBA, CPA, CMA, Doctorate Program Director, Department Chair and Associate Professor says, “In our close campus community, we know students on a first-name basis. Our faculty, staff and distinguished alumni work together for the success of our students.”

Every year, over 80% of Scranton accounting students participate in internships, including a unique experience at PwC where Scranton alum Linda McGowan ’80 built a nationwide internship program for Scranton students.

Entry-level career paths that graduates pursue with this degree are accounting manager, asset manager, auditor, budget analyst, controller and treasurer.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual pay for financial managers and financial analysts in 2020 was $131,180 and $83,660, respectively.

Housed in The University of Scranton’s AACSB-International accredited Kania School of Management, this Bachelor of Science degree prepares students for employment in the financial services industry with opportunities to participate in prestigious internships, faculty-mentored research and the CFA Investment Research Challenge. Career opportunities in this field include collateral analysts, fixed income analysts, traders and securities brokers.

Companies where students have interned include AXA Equitable, Bloomberg LP, the Federal Reserve Board and Morgan Stanley.

Scranton graduates have gone on to work with companies that include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, AXA Financial and Bank of America, among others. Among the graduate schools that have admitted Scranton graduates are Cornell School of Law, University of California at Berkley and the Wharton School of Business at Penn.

On Thursday, February 10, an audience of University students, staff and invited guests joined guest lecturer, Roosevelt Montás, Ph.D., in the Moskovitz Theater at The DeNaples Center for the Sondra and Morey Myers Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in the Humanities and Civic Engagement Lecture. Sponsored by The Gail and Francis Slattery Center for Ignatian Humanities, the lecture, entitled “Liberal Education for Human Freedom,” addressed Dr. Montás’ view on the importance of a liberal arts education.

Dr. Montás is a senior lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University and author of “Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation.”

After a brief introduction from Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, Jeff P. Gingerich Ph.D., and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Michelle Maldonado Ph.D., Dr. Montás began his lecture by directly addressing students in the audience.

“Liberal education is the portion of your education that is due to you from us by virtue of your humanity,” said Dr. Montás.

He went on to structure the lecture by elaborating on key terms in the title: human, liberal education, and freedom.

Beginning with a brief evolutionary overview of how humans as a species grew to be the dominant creature on earth, Dr. Montás stressed the idea that as we continue to progress technologically, it is becoming increasingly important that we are all well-versed in how to make ethical decisions that will impact our species for years to come.

When discussing the term liberal education, the topic of his book, Dr. Montás prefaced his explanation by stating that it has nothing to do with political ideologies. Here, he uses the term liberal as it pertains to the concept of freedom. In contrast to a technical, applied or servile education, a liberal education is an all-encompassing education that goes beyond utilitarian instruction and encourages students to explore concepts outside of their chosen career areas. Dr. Montás advocates for such an education by exploring its fundamental role in a functioning democratic society.

“There is no area of human understanding and human learning that lies outside of what this individual, who is being prepared for a life of citizenship and for a life of self-governance, needs to know,” he said.

In order to ensure that students are adequately prepared to experience true freedom, his final term, Dr. Montás quoted Frederick Douglass to draw a connection between the withholding of literacy as a means to control slaves. He alludes to the concept of modern “wage slavery” where individuals are so busy trying to earn enough money to make ends meet, that they do not get to live beyond merely trying to survive.

Dr. Montás concluded his talk with the statement that, “although we can’t change society in one fell swoop, the university’s mission must include looking beyond the materialist ethos of our time and educating ourselves to be free rather than enslaved to our desire for power, wealth and security.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected employment of market research analysts to grow 23 percent from 2016 to 2026, and the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook 2018 survey listed marketing as one of the “top bachelor’s degrees in demand, by major.”

A Bachelor of Science degree in marketing at The University of Scranton provides a solid foundation for work in any industry where marketing professionals are increasingly needed. Career paths in this field include advertising, public relations, market analysis, purchasing and sales management.

Housed in Scranton’s AACSB International accredited Kania School of Management, this undergraduate program is taught by highly capable professors including former Fulbright fellows, field experts and professional consultants.

Recent marketing graduates from Scranton have completed internships with Harper Collins Publishers, Merrill Lynch, Bloomberg LP, UBS Financial Services and other companies.

Scranton graduates have gone on to work for employers such as A.C. Nielsen Co., Bank of America, Kellogg’s, Johnson and Johnson, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Ralph Lauren, among others.

Scranton’s Professor of Marketing, Abhijit Roy, D.B.A., said that “faculty members strive to prepare students for the corporate world and to be leaders in creating a more just and human society with a broader understanding of the global environment, including marketing strategies that can be used to enhance public policy and improve consumer well-being.”

As technology continues to advance, so does cyber-related crime. Homeland security, private business and individual security are among places that need individuals trained to investigate these cyber offenses. Career paths in this growing field include computer forensic investigator, cyber threat intelligence analyst, law enforcement agent, military officer or legislative assistant.

The University of Scranton offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Cybercrime and Homeland Security. Housed in the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice and Criminology, this degree is designed to give students a comprehensive introduction to the evolving world of cybercrime law and the tools used to enforce it.

As part of Scranton’s Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Crime, the University’s new cyber-forensics and cyber security lab, students can gain vital hands-on experience with digital forensics tools that are used by professionals in the field.

Some key topics covered in this program’s curriculum include cyber intelligence, digital forensics investigation, ethical hacking and terrorism and homeland security.

Scranton’s Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Criminology is one of just a handful of undergraduate criminal justice programs in the United States that has been certified by the Academy of Criminal Justice in the last 10 years.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for medical and health services managers in May 2017 was $98,350.

The University of Scranton’s Bachelor of Science degree in health administration affords students the opportunity to choose a concentration between a health administration generalist program or a long-term administration program. The former aims to provide students with a broad base knowledge of employment opportunities in various facilities, while the latter focuses on preparation for job opportunities within long-term care facilities such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Scranton’s program holds full undergraduate membership in the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) and is one of just 11 programs nationwide to be approved for its long-term care administration curriculum by the National Association of Long-Term Care Administrator Boards (NAB).

Experiential learning is emphasized in the health administration program where students complete a three-credit, 120-hour internship and 80 hours of community-based learning in their four years. Past internship sites include AseraCare Hospice, Clarks Summit Senior Living, Jefferson Health System, Lebanon Valley Advanced Care Center and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Recent graduates have been employed by various health care providers in the eastern U.S. such as Memorial Sloan Kettering, Geisinger Health System, Lehigh Valley Health Care System and Allied Services.

Scranton graduates who choose to pursue graduate-level education in health administration-related programs have been accepted at schools such as Columbia University and New York University, as well as The University of Scranton, which also offers a master’s degree in health administration.

The U.S. News & World Report lists nursing as one of the top-ranking jobs in healthcare, while the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects growth of job for nurses at higher than that of most other professions.

According to The University of Scranton’s First Destination survey for the Class of 2020, the average salary of a Scranton nursing graduate 12 months after graduating was $62,943.

Scranton’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing program aims to prepare students for a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings with clinical experiences beginning in their sophomore year.  Using an active-learning approach in state-of-the-art simulation laboratories, highly qualified teacher-scholars train students in patient-centered and evidence-based care.

In addition, undergraduate students have the opportunity to complete clinical work in a variety of settings including: specialty hospital units, ICU, operating rooms, emergency departments, inpatient, outpatient, community health center, home care and hospice.

Scranton Nursing graduates work at some of the most prestigious hospitals and outpatient practices in the U.S. including: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Georgetown University Medical Center and more.

Forbes says “The growth rate in marketing-related analytics hires is eye-popping --up 67 percent over the past year, and 136 percent over the past three years.”

The annual median pay for a career in data analytics can range from $82,000 to 114,000.

Careers graduates can pursue with a degree in this field include data analyst, operations research analyst, market research analyst and management consultant. Some industries that hire business analysts are health care, retail, construction, banking and transportation.

The University of Scranton’s Bachelor of Science in Business Analytics prepares students to have the broad range of skills needed to evaluate sets of data and help companies make informed decisions.

The Business Analytics undergraduate major is housed in the University’s Kania School of Management which is accredited by the rigorous standards of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

With advanced courses covering topics like data mining and database management systems, graduates enter the workforce with both in-class and real-world experience, gained through internship opportunities, preparing them for a competitive and growing career field.

The keynote speaker at the 35th annual Henry George Lecture, Yuliy Sannikov Ph.D., filled nearly every seat in the McIlheney Ballroom on Nov. 17 with an audience of students, faculty and invited guests.

Following the lecture series’ tradition of inviting esteemed guest speakers, Dr. Sannikov is the Jack Steele Parker professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His awards include the 2015 Fisher Black Prize, the 2014 Kiel Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs and the 2016 John Bates Clark Medal for his contributions to economic thought as an American economist under the age of 40.

For the Henry George Lecture, “The Value of Money: Currencies, Bonds, Bitcoin,” Dr. Sannikov addressed the growing role cryptocurrencies play in today’s economy.

Walking the audience through a basic valuation equation and a simplified version of the Samuelson OLG Model, Sannikov concluded that, despite cryptocurrencies’ increasing prevalence in our world,  “fundamentally, at least in the long-run, the value of currency should have something to do with how the government balances its budget.”

Dr. Sannikov said this discussion becomes important for average people, regardless of whether they have money invested into cryptocurrencies, because the popularity of different currencies impacts the value of the U.S. dollar and ultimately the country’s inflation rate, driving prices of goods higher. Dr. Sannikov stated that “recently there has been an uptake in inflation and the most recent data from October gives the number of 6.2 percent.”

Whether or not this is directly related to the public’s growing interest in alternative currencies, like Bitcoin, Sannikov explained that “if an asset becomes inflated in value and it becomes a bubble,  when that bubble crashes it coincides with inflation.” He was quick to clarify that it is unclear if the values of various cryptocurrencies are falsely inflated, but said it is something to keep an eye on as more and more people become interested in the concept.

Considered the preeminent public lecture series on economics in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Henry George Lecture Series is presented by the University’s Economics and Finance Department and the campus chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, an international honor society for economics. Among the distinguished list of speakers who have spoken at previous lectures are 11 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics: David Card (2021), Paul Romer (2018), Robert Shiller (2013), Tom Sargent (2011), Peter Diamond (2010), Paul Krugman (2008), Joseph Stiglitz (2001), George Akerlof (2001), Amartya Sen (1998), Robert Lucas (1995) and Robert Solow (1987). The lecture series is named in honor of the 19th-century American economist and social reformer and is supported financially by a grant from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Bongrae Seok, Ph.D., an associate professor of philosophy at Alvernia University, discussed “Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame” at The University of Scranton’s Asian Studies Program Lecture. The lecture took place in the Pearn Auditorium of Brennan Hall on Oct. 20.

After a brief introduction from Asian Studies Program Director, Ann Pang-White, Ph.D., Dr. Seok described his approach to the concept of shame. Using elements of philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, history and biology, he has studied cultural perceptions of shame and their effect on human behavior.

Dr. Seok was careful to distinguish between our Western understanding of shame as a harmful emotion and argued that “shame is interpreted and transformed into a constructive moral emotion by ancient Confucian philosophers.”

Using statistics on mental illnesses in the United States, Dr. Seok explained that a Western perception of shame insinuates and encourages the idea of a “bad person.” Although this understanding of shame provided evolutionary benefits at some point, he suggested it’s modern function hinders personal growth and should be considered vestigial, similar to that of the human appendix.

However, through the analysis of the works of early Confucian philosophers, such as Mencius, Dr. Seok was able to share how Eastern cultures perceive shame. Rather than a punitive emotion that drives behavior with negative consequences, Confucian moral shame is led by an inner desire to be virtuous. Dr. Seok argued that instead of writing off shame altogether, co-opting Confucian moral shame can be a productive method to promote human flourishing.

“Shaming is not good ... however, don’t be afraid of listening to an inner autonomous sense of shame, as suggested by ancient Confucian philosophers,” said Dr. Seok.

The University of Scranton celebrated the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Conference on disABILITY with more than 550 conference attendees, who represented 30 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, and four countries. This year’s conference, which was held in a virtual format on Oct. 14, continued the theme of “Exploring Autism Across the Spectrum: Building Inclusive Communities.”

The full-day conference culminated with an afternoon presentation titled “The Boy Through His Art” featuring guest speakers Devin Wildes and AJ Paron-Wildes.

After a brief welcome from the University’s Dean of the Panuska College of Professional Studies, Debra Pellegrino Ed.D., the pair greeted the conference attendees and played a short video that gave the audience a brief overview of their story.

Wildes, now a 26-year-old artist, began displaying symptoms of severe autism as a baby and received a diagnosis at the age of four. His mother, Paron-Wildes, expressed concern for her son’s future, explaining that she was afraid of the difficulties he would face as a result of his disability. She realized that her son’s autism did make him different, but that it was not necessarily a bad thing.

“Different doesn’t mean you’re less, and in many times different means you’re much, much more,” said Paron-Wildes.

Paron-Wildes learned that her son has exceptional visual acuity. Though he was primarily nonverbal for the first 14 years of his life, Wildes expressed himself through art. At the conference, he presented a powerpoint of some the pieces he created.

Ranging from sketches to three-dimensional functional pieces, Wildes impressed the audience with the complexity and depth that each work held. His piece titled “Hideous” showed an intricate display of black and white Zentangle-like lines contained within a vague shape which he explained was a skull. Scattered amongst the pattern, formless facial features, like eyes and lips, could be found in atypical locations on the “skull.”

At the onset of COVID-19, Paron-Wildes began posting examples of her son’s work on her Facebook page, asking friends and family to send them photos of landscapes for Devin to draw.

Overwhelmed with responses, Paron-Wildes said that, “In a time of darkness and dreariness, people were telling me ‘I can’t wait to see what Devin is going to draw and what he’s going to make next.’ ... It’s like my beacon of hope on social media.”

Eventually, Wildes and his mother were able to start a website where his work could be commissioned and sold (devinwildes.com). Since the time the website was launched, Wildes has been able to raise thousands of dollars for INTERACT, the center for visual and performing arts that he attends. This program helps inspire and fund his ability to continue creating art, forming what his mother calls a “circle of giving.”

At the end of their presentation and remaining consistent with the overall mission of the disABILITY conference, Paron-Wildes pointed out that “every human being has creative value and, if you’re not finding it in them, you are not looking hard enough.”

The 20th Annual U.S. Conference on disABILITY, presented by the University’s Panuska College of Professional Studies and the Edward R. Leahy, Jr. Endowment in partnership with AllOne Foundation, was open to the public free of charge. The primary sponsor of the conference was UPMC Health Plan and Geisinger was the featured sponsor.

Edward R. and Patricia Leahy served as honorary co-chairs of the 2021 conference they helped to establish 20 years ago. University of Scranton professors Rebecca Spirito Dalgin, Ph.D., director of the Rehabilitation Counseling Program, and Lori Bruch, Ed.D., chair of the Counseling and Human Services Department, served as conference co-chairs.

University of Scranton alumnus and former trustee, Yohuru Williams, Ph.D. ’93 G’93, spoke to members of the University’s class of 2025 about the message of racial justice taken from this year’s Royal Reads assigned book, and how we, as part of a Jesuit institution, are called to do more than just listen.

Dr. Williams began his talk by referencing this year’s Royal Reads book by James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time,” saying “Baldwin was writing to his nephew, but he was talking to you … The ‘fire’ was his nephew. The ‘fire’ is you.” With this bold interpretation, he went on to challenge listeners to view their individual efforts as part of a larger community effort toward the common good.

As is tradition, the Ignatian Values in Action Lecture introduced first-year students at Scranton to core tenets of Jesuit education, as well as the moral and ethical expectations placed upon student and graduates of the University. After connecting Baldwin’s message to 12 Jesuit characteristics, Dr. Williams transposed these ideals onto modern-day issues by identifying ways in which racial issues continue to present themselves today.

Specifically, Dr. Williams mentioned the killing of George Floyd and included a video clip of the Minneapolis Chief of Police’s reaction to it. Emphasizing that the pursuit of racial justice is a matter of social justice, he went on to identify what makes a Jesuit education stand out.

“A decision to work with others toward the dismantling of unjust social structures so that the weak, the oppressed, the marginalized of this world may be set free. That’s what you signed up for when you signed on for a Jesuit education,” Dr. Williams said.

Using Martin Luther King Jr.’s writings on the purpose of education, Dr. Williams further explained to the class of 2025 that as a student of a Jesuit institution, remedying social injustices needs to be at the forefront of their minds, regardless of what major they are pursuing.

With a final call to reflect on the topics discussed, Williams ended the lecture with a reminder to the audience that “you are the class of 2025, but you are more than that. You are ‘The Fire Next Time.’”

Also speaking at the Ignatian Values in Action Lecture were Jeff Gingerich, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, and the student founder of the Louis Stanley Brown Black Student Union at the University, Tiannah Adams of New York, New York.

The lecture for first-year students took place in the Byron Recreation Complex on campus and was also streamed to several auditoriums on campus for viewing by other students and members of the University community.

By Ann Slock ’21, written for a media writing course, spring semester 2020

“I can’t remember the last person I’ve had a non-digital encounter with outside my family. ” said Kevin Bowery, a junior theology and information technology double major at The University of Scranton said.

Bowery, like many others, has begun to grow restless in the wake of social distancing because of COVID-19.

Andrew Faulkner, a first-year accounting major at the University responded similarly.

“For me, it’s a tie between having the opportunity for some pre-class socialization with my friends and having actual lectures. It just isn’t the same online,” Faulkner said.

While an official end to social distancing policies across the country is still in question, The University of Scranton’s clubs decided to bring the community to the students through various online events and social media campaigns to keep students engaged in the campus community while at home.

Alana Siock, a junior French and Francophone cultural studies and political science double major, president of the Commuter Student Association (CSA), and director of operations for the club council board of directors said that while entering social distancing was difficult for the CSA board, they have committed to producing virtual events for members to attend.

“We had to cancel one of the biggest events this semester,” Siock said, “We didn’t let it stop us.”

Scranton’s CSA has since been reworking their spring programming, reconfiguring older events and starting to brainstorm new activities that could keep their club members and others in the University community engaged with the school outside of class.

This has taken the form of weekly trivia nights with prizes being given to the winners, as well as social media campaigns geared toward keeping students creative even as they are stuck inside. For these campaigns club members submit everything from favorite homemade foods to songs that can be added to a special quarantine soundtrack, lovingly dubbed ‘Quarantunes,’ on the club’s Spotify account.

The CSA has even created a virtual forum on Discord to simulate the student forum on campus to allow students to interact throughout the day.

While students are grateful for the attempts being made to try to bring their Scranton experience online, the separation has taught them valuable lessons about the University community.

“The Scranton community thrives on face-to-face communications. Scranton students never fail to greet each other enthusiastically, with a hug, high five or a fist bump,” Bowery said. “I never took the time for granted, but I wish I had appreciated each moment even more than I did.”

By Nicholas Yanni ’21, written for a media writing course, spring semester 2020

When The University of Scranton closed its doors in March because of COVID-19, Ian MacDonald was immediately faced with a challenge.

“It’s just a terrible situation. My mom works at Tobyhanna Army Depot and is considered essential personnel so she is at risk every day of contracting COVID-19 and bringing it home,” said MacDonald, a senior allowed to stay on the University’s campus during this time, along with a few others.

MacDonald has been on the University’s campus since March. Although his hometown of Albrightsville is not too far away, MacDonald is still struggling with trying to adapt to a vastly different campus life.

“It’s like a ghost town,” MacDonald said. “I spend most of the day in my room. Meals are served at lunch and dinner for about 90 minutes in the dining hall. I will see people there and that’s most of my in-person interaction these days. The few people I do see are in decent spirits.”

Dan Shuck, a junior at the University, is trying to adapt as well.

“I try to call people to socialize but it’s nothing like talking in person,” Shuck said. “Everyone on campus has to stay far away from each other.”

 “I am doing okay now because this is bigger than me,” MacDonald said. He is hopeful that his world will return to normal soon.

“I accepted a job offer with Pepsi at the beginning of the fall, and my tentative start-date has been June 15,” MacDonald said. “They have reassured me that they are still preparing to welcome me on June 15 and that I should look for apartments. The thought of something changing is stressful but I should be good to go.”

Before I started college I was homeschooled. While my younger sister Bodo chose to attend high school, I stayed home throughout, loving the independence and freedom (and quiet) of learning from home.

Now it’s my final semester at The University of Scranton, my sister’s second, and I will be learning the way I started, back at home with my family. While I wouldn't say that anyone in my family is happy about the situation, we do seem to be more prepared for this period than a lot of our friends.

Having made the switch from homeschooling to classroom learning, we know how jarring the change can be. Study skills and routines that you have perfected and personalized over the last 12-16 years of “regular school” might fall apart over the next few weeks. Technological aspects aside, home or e-learning might require a complete reworking of organization, routine, time management and discipline. We aren’t saying “homeschooling” is better or worse, easier or harder - we’re just saying it’s different; very, very different.

In the spirit of braving this weird time together, Bodo and I thought we’d compile a list of tips about how to approach e-learning so that we all come out of this semester with GPAs and sanity intact.

1)         Get Dressed

While admittedly we did spend more time in our pajamas than most kids, we highly recommend getting dressed in the morning.

            You’re probably thinking, “I don’t always get dressed in the morning for class; I wear sweats to school and I’m fine.”

While that might have been fine two weeks ago, you still had to go to class. Just leaving your dorm, stepping outside into the breeze, finding your uncomfortable seat, complaining to your neighbors tells your brain, “the day has started, it’s time to focus.” Those factors are gone, now. Getting up out of bed, putting on jeans, brushing your hair, or doing your makeup can go a long way. The physical activity and sensations of getting dressed will help make up for other lost stimuli, reminding you to start working. It also prevents you from falling asleep again and missing that zoom seminar.

2)         Write out a Daily Schedule

Probably our most important piece of advice is something neither of us have kept up with in college. Whether you need one in school before or not, use a planner. Write things down. Without external reminders from lectures, comments in class, friends stressing over assignments, study groups etc., assignments and due dates will start to slip your mind. You need one place where you can keep track of what you need to accomplish and when. We used a very simple three-step system in middle and high school.

• Write out a plan for the week that includes when things are due.
• Write out a plan for the day that maps out when you will be working on tasks.
• Check tasks off. This will help you keep track of where you stand in relation to your work but most importantly make you feel like you have accomplished something.

3)         Work in the Morning

I hate waking up and Bodo is in her prime hours between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., but we agree on the following: get up at a reasonable time and get stuff done in the morning. If you too are a night owl, this might seem counterintuitive to you, but trust us. If you put off working in the morning, you will continue to put off working throughout the day. Get it over with as early as possible.

As a compromise Bodo tends to do her immediate assigned work early in the day, take a long break in the afternoon, and then study or work ahead at night. Obviously everyone has different methods but don’t take “homeschooling” to mean you should sleep until noon just because you can. Did we do that sometimes? Of course. Should we have? Nope.

4)         Make a Rewards System

Losing scheduled class times, meals with friends, varied study spaces, “student gatherings,” sports and clubs can make remote learning overwhelming and stressful at the same time as completely mind-numbing and monotonous. Trust us; we’ve been here. It can be rough, so be kind to yourself. Give yourself breaks, watch an episode of Netflix, eat an entire box of chocolate, go for a run, whatever you need to do. Just make sure these rewards are part of your daily plan, not just spontaneous ways to procrastinate.

What both of us have found helpful in the past is to incorporate these with school work. That online quiz equals ten minutes on Instagram. One draft of a paper equals a walk around the block. If played right these rewards can act as both a distractor and a motivator. 

5)         Move

We’ve all done it: 10 hour Netflix/gaming/reading binges. Sitting still for a whole weekend, getting up only to use the bathroom or make popcorn. These days or weekends can be relaxing but they are not conducive to good work and productivity. Don’t treat remote learning like a binge weekend. You have to move.

It might not seem like it but moving from one classroom to the next, from your dorm room to DeNaples or to the library to print makes a huge difference. You need to get your blood moving, to change your scenery. Study for biology in your backyard. Write your philosophy essays at the dining room table. Walk around the block with your dog or sister after an hour of studying for an economics exam. Do not sit on your bed for 19 hours a day. It will make sleeping difficult and focusing impossible.

6)         Plan Meals

Don’t forget to eat. It’s weirdly easy to forget to eat if you aren’t moving around, and aren’t confined to a schedule. One minute it’s, “I’ll make lunch after this page;” next minute it’s 8 p.m. and you don’t know why your head hurts. When you’re planning your day out, decide ahead of time when you are going to stop for lunch. This can turn lunch into part of your reward system, motivating you to get along with something. It will also prevent you from using snack time as a procrastination tool.

7)         Get a Browser Nanny

It’s embarrassing how much time in high school I spent on YouTube and Netflix. You might think you do now, but you haven’t studied along, at home day after day after day yet. When all you have is your laptop, the temptation to open a new tab on your browser and waste time is staggering. Thankfully there are helpful free tools that you can download that will limit your access to certain websites on your browser. “StayFocused” on the Google Chrome Webstore is a good option.

8)         Sleep

Finally, it is still important to stick to a sleep schedule. Foregoing actual sleep and relying on one-hour naps between tasks is a horrible idea. Adjust your schedule how you see fit. It‘s likely going to be different than it was during the first part of the semester that’s fine. Sleep till 10 if your 9 a.m. isn’t meeting on zoom, but make a somewhat consistent sleep schedule and make sure you sleep for more than 30-minute spurts.

And that’s it. We hope our childhood experience will help you get through this part of the semester. You got this.

Additional tips can be found on the University’s Student Life Student Activities webpage.

“We’ve told our story to our children and grandchildren. Tonight, with your permission, we’d like to include you into our family and share our story with you,” Bernard Schanzer, M.D., said. “Our story is a story of terror and survival told from a child’s perspective.”

The University’s PNC Auditorium in the Loyola Science Center was filled to capacity Nov. 12 for the Judaic Studies Institute Lecture presented by twin brothers Bernard Schanzer and Henry Schanzer, J.D.

Marc Shapiro, Ph.D., professor of theology/religious studies and the Weinberg Chair of Judaic Studies at The University of Scranton, gave a short introduction before the brothers took the stage.

The twin brother spoke about how they were only seven years old when they were first impacted by the Holocaust.

“Our ordeal began when the Germans invaded Belgium on May 10, 1940. Within a few days, 15 members of our extended family – including my ailing grandmother and my sister, who had just had her appendix removed – crammed into a small van. We fled ahead of the event of Germans taking over France,” Bernard said. 

Their family, trying to get ahead of what was brewing, fled their home and moved south to St. Etienne. During this time, the brothers were able to escape the horror happening around them, but it would be short-lived.

Their father, Bruno Schanzner, was around 40 years old when their apartment in St. Etienne was seized, and he was deported to a French detention camp on August 26, 1942. He – like many other Jews – ended up in Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz.

They emphasized how the invasion of Nazi forces into France tore their family – and the country – apart. After their father was deported, their mother went into hiding and the brothers spent years away from her and any other relatives. At some points, they were in orphanages, and at other times they were in hiding on farms. 

“At times, we were so hungry, we resorted to stealing food from the animals. We were malnourished. We had worms and we were very sick,” Henry said.

Eventually, their mother was able to arrange their stay at the farm of Adolphine Dorel in Saint-Pal-de-Mons, where they were kept safe until the end of the war.

In the summer of 1945, the war finally ended, and they were reunited with their mother. In April of 1946, they arrived in the United States and settled on the lower-east side.

“My mother was a 45-year-old widow. Somehow, against all odds, she overcame. We were poor; we didn’t have a pot to put a penny in. We struggled and progressed,” Henry said.

They mentioned how their story is a story of matriarchy.

“My mother really sacrificed her life. After the war, it was incredibly difficult for her, yet she managed somehow to raise us without bringing up all the terrible thoughts, memories, and disasters that she had gone through. She isolated us from the real difficulties that she faced when she came to the United States,” Bernard said.

They ended their lecture with a call-to-action for the community members and students in the audience.

“We must have the courage to stand-up to evil and to bigotry. You cannot be bystanders,” Bernard said. “We have to be vigilant. It [the holocaust] occurred once; it may occur again. What we have to do it make sure that that does not happen again.”

The University hosted a day-long series of panel discussions titled “The Crisis of Democracy Today: What Can the Humanities, Law, and Civic Activism Do to Address the Challenge?” as part of the formal launch for the Sondra H’87 and Morey Myers H’12 Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in the Humanities and Civic Engagement. The event took place on campus on Oct. 25.

The last of three-panel discussions on Oct. 25 focused on “How Can Law Address the Crisis of Democracy?” Panelists were: David Cole, J.D., legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown University; Nomi Stolzenberg, J.D., Nathan and Lilly Shapell Chair in Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law; Marcia Greenberger, J.D., founder and co-president emerita of the National Women’s Law Center; and President Judge Michael Barrasse, J.D. ’78, G’78. Michael Fairbanks ’79 H’06, chairman of the board, Silver Creek Medicines and fellow at the Weatherhead Institute for International Affairs at Harvard University, provided the introduction, and Joel Kemp, J.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of theology and religious studies at The University of Scranton, served as moderator.

In his opening remarks, Fairbanks utilized the example of Rwanda as a new, upcoming legal paradigm from which the United States may learn a way to approach its own challenges. “They’ve built something new in the law, and it’s called ‘building modern institutions on traditional values,’” said Fairbanks. “We go over there with fancy notions about privatize and democratize and liberalize, and they’re so smart, they take a tiny bit of what those of us from the West said and then for the rest make up their own path.” Fairbanks also noted that Sondra Myers served an integral role in Rwanda, writing a handbook about their institutions in Rwanda’s official language, Kinyarwanda, so that children could learn about their country in their native tongue.

Following the opening remarks, the panelists introduced themselves with a comment on the state of the American democracy today. Judge Barrasse touched upon recent threats to the rule of law in the United States: “In Pennsylvania – in our city of brotherly love, Philadelphia – we now have a city that has declared itself a sanctuary city, essentially indicating laws that it’s not going to enforce or support.” Likewise, he added, some cities have asserted themselves as Second Amendment sanctuary cities, upholding the right to bear arms over federal law, all of which create a cause for concern. “If a citizen sees government officials choose not to follow law, then why should they?” he said. “Without the rule of law, we will have anarchy to follow.”

Meanwhile, Atty. Cole addressed the institution's autocratic leaders of democratic societies target: namely, the press, non-government organizations, universities and religious institutions. “Why? Because each of these are places where people can come together in pursuit of their views and in check of governmental abuse,” said Atty. Cole. In a democracy where the institutions of civil society are under attack, he continued, the First Amendment is critically important in protecting citizens’ ability to criticize governmental authority, and people have spoken out in response to the threat against it through protests and membership in the ACLU, which has swelled to 1.8 million members. “People recognized the importance of these institution,” Atty. Cole added. “Citizens will be our salvation.”

For Atty. Greenberger, justice cannot be achieved without activism. “As a public interest lawyer, much of my work was to link activism and law, and that remains more true now than ever. In the Me Too movement, which arose certainly after the election, after the Women’s March, women in Hollywood came forward. But what’s not so well-known is that farmworker women contacted those women in Hollywood and told them how proud they were because they understood how hard it was to step forward,” said Atty. Greenberger. “And these women in Hollywood were so blown away that they set up the Time’s Up effort and supported a legal fund that would be available to help women in non-traditional jobs, who were often facing multiple kinds of discrimination, to have access to the law. That’s how getting those stories out made a difference.”

Atty. Stolzenberg called attention to a grave threat to democracy: the war against secularism. “In the United States, we have a long tradition of religious war against secularism by Protestant and Evangelical Christian groups, as well as some conservative Catholic discourse,” she said, “but what’s new is that anti-secularists now occupy unprecedented levels of power.” Using Attorney General William Barr’s speech at the University of Notre Dame, Atty. Stolzenberg illustrated the ways in which anti-secularists attack secularism: “They say secularism destroys traditional morals, that it’s discrimination against their religious liberty. This is a discourse that is very dangerous to democracy.”

Following their opening remarks, the moderator asked the panelists questions as did audience members. The program concluded with brief closing remarks by Sondra and Morey Myers.

The Sondra H’87 and Morey Myers H’12 Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in the Humanities and Civic Engagement, housed in the University’s Slattery Center for the Humanities, will help to advance the University’s efforts to bring renowned scholars, artists, and thinkers to Scranton to share their work and enrich cultural and civic activity at The University and in Scranton.

On Saturday, Oct. 5, the Friends of the Weinberg Memorial Library came together in celebration of their 25^th anniversary and the presentation of the 16^th Royden B. Davis, S.J., Distinguished Author Award. This year, The New York Times bestselling novelist and classicist Madeline Miller, author of “The Song of Achilles” and “Circe,” received the Distinguished Author Award.

            “The importance of a story that stays with you is what I think about when I read your novels,” said Charles Kratz, dean of the library and information fluency, in his opening remarks. “I’m sure everyone in this room has had one of those moments when they’ve finished a reading and said, ‘That story’s going to stay with me forever.’”

            For Miller, Greek mythology is the story that stayed with her forever. “I have libraries in my blood,” she said. When she was young, her librarian mother read her the Greek classics that would inspire her novels decades later. “They resonated with me because these stories felt like really human stories, and they were timeless stories.”

            The character she always returned to was Circe, an anomaly in classic myth. Born a minor goddess on the lowest totem pole of the divine hierarchy, she obtains incredible power on her own through witchcraft. In a world where women were relegated either to merely names or to villains, Circe was neither, disobeying the hierarchical order of the gods without being punished for it and simultaneously enacting vengeance and kindness on Odysseus, the weary war hero who haphazardly lands on her magical island.

            In Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Odysseus spends ten years struggling to return home from the Trojan War and stays for a year on Circe’s island to rest. His narrative is, to Miller, another fundamentally human story: “‘The Odyssey’ is really about this exhausted war veteran who’s desperate to get home to his family, but once he gets home, it’s much harder to reenter his old life than he thought it would be.”

These two complicated characters meet when Odysseus lands on Circe’s island, and Circe, in her most infamous episode, turns his men into pigs. “In eighth grade, when I was first reading the confrontation between Odysseus and Circe, I was on the edge of my seat,” Miller said. “I wanted to know what was going to happen next – he’s smart and complicated, she’s smart and complicated, so there’s going to be an exciting scene, right? But what actually happens is that Circe tries to turn him into a pig, it doesn’t work. He pulls his sword on her, and she screams and falls to her knees, begs him for mercy, and invites him into her bed all in one breath. And at the time, I was enraged. That’s all this interesting female character gets?”

             Miller decided if the myth wouldn’t give Circe the story she deserved, she would have to write it herself.              

            “Homer calls her ‘the dread goddess who speaks like a human.’ And as a novelist, that implies for me that this is a character who is born a goddess, but has her foot in both worlds. Circe’s story is this very human story of someone who’s born into this family where they really don’t belong and who’s trying to get out – but what’s the cost of getting out? Is it possible to get out? And where are you going once you are out?”

            These questions are why humans retell these stories we’ve known the endings to for millennia, said Miller. Questions of war and questions of family are ideas that resonate with us in perpetuity, and we retell myths to find new answers to the age-old problems mortality brings.

Writer Stephanie Soldaña, author of The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith, and A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide, spoke at The University of Scranton’s 8th annual Ignatian Values in Action Lecture in September.

Soldaña’s memoir, The Bread of Angels, was the Royal Read’s book for the University’s class of 2023.

“Tonight I’m gonna talk about falling in love,” Soldaña began, “Because what I hope is that your arrival here at The University of Scranton is the beginning of a love story that will continue for the rest of your lives.”

Soldaña’s love story with the Middle East began with a broken heart, “the kind that makes you move to Syria.” In her final year of college she applied for a fellowship that allowed her to spend the following year in the Middle East. A girl from Texas, Soldaña knew nothing more about the Middle East than that it was the place where the Bible took place. “We didn’t even have hummus at the grocery store,” she joked.

Once in the Middle East, Soldaña was overwhelmed with the culture of hospitality that welcomed her. As strangers opened their homes, beds, and hearts to her, she felt what she called a “holy envy” for their type of love.

In her travels, she visited a monastery outside Damascus where she met Rev. Paulo Dall’Oglio, S.J., who had founded a religious community dedicated to interreligious dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Fr. Paulo was the Ignatian Values in Action Lecture speaker in 2011.

Under Fr. Paulo’s guidance, Soldaña, embarked on the 30 day Ignatian Spiritual retreat in the desert. While contemplating the incarnation, Soldaña said, she realized that she didn’t believe that God became man and was terrified. She spoke to Fr. Paulo that night who reminded her that “the presence of God in our lives is scary,” but that Mary said yes to God, and so must we.

Soldaña said yes in the desert, and fell in love with Christ.

Soldaña also spoke of her relationship with a female sheikh, who taught her about Islam. She said her relationship with this muslim teacher made her love her own christianity more. The interactions between the women of different faiths, she said was like the Visitation from the Gospel of Luke. “Something in me leapt up and something in her leapt up.”

Soldaña also told about falling in love with her now husband, Frederik, who at the time was a novice monk.

About half-way through the lecture, the Soldaña’s tone and content changed. While The Bread of Angels, she said, was a story about how she fell in love, the Syrian civil war that followed the book’s publication was about staying in love. Fr. Paulo, she said, had stressed in his teaching the importance of fidelity after falling in love. After war broke out, Fr. Paulo and Soldaña’s sheikh were exiled from Syria. Fr. Paulo returned illegally in 2013, was kidnapped, and is presumed dead. In war, Jesuits “stayed in love.”

Soldaña continued to share stories of “hidden saints” who, in the spirit of Middle Eastern hospitality, continued to open their doors to strangers and were shot for it. She told of a family who opened a pharmacy in their garage where they became famous for sharing medicine for the soul as well medicine for the body. She told of people who looked around the destruction of war, and made new and beautiful things out of the rubble.

At the conclusion of the talk, Soldaña called the students from Scranton to be witnesses. “Learning to see,” she said “is probably the most important thing in your life.” She called listeners to notice beauty in a world that seems to have lost its way; to “look into the broken world with the eyes of creation;” to build, from the destruction we find, something better and to “fall in love every day.”

“Fall in love, stay in love, let all of your lives be love stories,” she said.

At the first Task Force for Healing, Reconciliation and Hope event of the fall 2019 academic semester, Massimo Faggioli, Ph.D., professor of theology at Villanova University, and Rita Ferrone, contributing writer at Commonweal magazine, presented “Insights from History and Theology,” a forum addressing questions surfaced by the crisis of Catholic clergy sexual abuse.

Dr. Faggioli’s lecture addressed what church history teaches the world about this crisis, and presented what he said were sensitive issues that spoke to changes the crisis is bringing in the church and in society.

            Dr. Faggioli reported that 20-25 percent of clergy from the 16th and 17th centuries had a criminal record, yet the Holy Office burned archival records of priest investigations every 10 years or less until 1914, which Faggioli referred to as bonfires.

            “Our problem is that we don’t know when they stopped burning records. So, Catholic institutions of higher education have been slow in reacting to this and doing something,” Dr. Faggioli said.

            Dr. Faggioli identified five issues pressing the church and the world following the abuse crisis, including the statement that the church cannot heal entirely by itself. Faggioli said the church must address the crisis with the rest of the world yet still glean its own theological truth apart from judicial and journalistic views.

            “The monster we see in the mirror as Catholics is not a picture that can be changed by a court. It is work that intellectuals and theologians have to do. I’m not accusing anyone. I’m part of the problem,” Dr. Faggioli said.

            Ferrone’s presentation addressed whether prayer and liturgy can be a source of healing and courage for those affected by the church’s abuse. Ferrone said sometimes members of the Catholic church are tempted to feel helpless in terms of beating the crisis, due to its unprecedented nature, but Catholics can still see and embrace God’s work.

            “I may have already tested your credulity by saying that God is at work in and through this crisis, but that’s the wager. That’s the bet,” Ferrone said.

            Ferrone discussed Luke 17:2, which states “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” Ferrone said the passage makes her tremble at the thought of how many children have faced abuse from the Catholic church.

            Ferrone spoke about what Pope Francis calls the Jonah Syndrome, which is the false solution of finding a scapegoat on which to pin a problem. Ferrone named several scapegoats blamed for the sex abuse crisis, but said members of the Catholic church should listen to the hard truths not as cynics, but with an open heart.

“Francis told (Archbishop of Grenada, Francisco Javier Martínez Fernández) to ‘come down from the cross and face up to the problems in [his] dioceses,’” Ferrone said.

Ferrone said that the only adequate response to the church’s crisis is a Paschal Response, involving the death of an old model of insularity and arrogance.

“Instead, we turn to an organic, sacramental relationship of sharing in the one mission of the church for which we must all hold one another accountable, and which is worked out in all our various roles and relationships,” Ferrone said.

Dr. Faggioli and Ferrone then responded to questions from audience members following their presentations in the Kane Forum of Leahy Hall on Sept. 16.

             On Tuesday, Sept. 10, the McIlhenny Ballroom of the DeNaples Center swarmed with students. Though their backpacks were heavy, and their schedules were tight, nearly 600 students sought to donate their time to the participating nonprofits at The University of Scranton’s annual Volunteer Fair. Organized by The University’s Center for Service and Social Justice, this year they connected 44 organizations with a veritable horde of would-be volunteers. Nonprofit organizations participating included the Scranton Cultural Center, Salvation Army, Ronald McDonald House, Clarks Summit State Hospital and American Red Cross.

            One of these organizations was the Everhart Museum of Natural History. Located in Scranton’s Nay Aug Park, the Everhart Museum is dedicated to the education of its visitors in the disciplines of science, history, culture and art, and they have attended the Volunteer Fair for over half a decade. “Every person at the museum wears a lot of hats,” said Stefanie Colarusso, director of programs and events. “We depend on our volunteers quite a bit. We have a very small staff, so our volunteers do a lot.”

            The Everhart Museum offers volunteer positions in research, collections, education and events, which give students the opportunity to brush up on their analytical, interpretive and leadership skills. “Working with the Everhart Museum is very fulfilling,” said Sarah Sutton, manager of educational programs. “You learn a lot about the community.”

            Each year, more than 2,800 Scranton students volunteer for more than 175,000 hours of service.

The University of Scranton’s Hope Horn Gallery recently hosted a talk by Richard Stanislaus G’98, guest curator for the exhibit “John Willard Raught: Beauty Lies Close at Home,” that opened at the gallery Sept. 6 along with the release of a three volume catalogue of Raught’s work. The lecture, entitled “John Willard Raught: Scranton’s Beloved Artist,” was also presented on Sept. 6.

The former curator of the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum, Stanislaus lovingly and humorously explored the life and work of this local artist and shared his own journey as an admirer and collector of Raught’s work.   

Raught (1857-1931) was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He traveled and studied art in New York City and Paris for seven years before returning to study and paint in his hometown. Although Stanislaus stressed Raught’s skill in many areas, the painter’s most notable works are impressionist landscapes. Described as a man of “modest means, but rich anyway,” Raught celebrated, in his work, the natural beauty of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Subjects of his paintings include a view of Ridge Row, which now part of The University of Scranton’s campus where Loyola Science Center now sits, Roaring Brook, and areas of Moscow, Scranton and Dunmore.

A “scholar painter” Raught was also a writer, who regularly published essays in both the Scranton Times and the Scranton Republican. His writings combined with his surviving paintings, Stanislaus stressed, show a thoughtful, talented man who was “happy with life.” Examples of his published articles can be found in the catalogue, for sale at the Hope Horn Gallery.

The lecture, which was open to the public, was attended by a number of Raught’s descendants, local admirers and University students, faculty and staff. The lecture was followed by a reception at the Hope Horn Gallery in Hyland Hall, which was part of Scranton’s First Fridays.

The exhibit will run through November 8th. The Hope Horn Gallery will host another gallery reception for the exhibit as part of October’s First Fridays event from 6 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 4 

His Excellency Rolandas Kriščiūnas, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Lithuania to the United States of America and to the United Mexican States, spoke at The University of Scranton’s sixth annual Jay Nathan Lecture Series titled “Lithuania: Traditional and Modern Nation.”

“In general I’d say Lithuanian’s are humble people, but we do believe in our hearts that we need to make the world a better place for everybody,” Ambassador Kriščiūnas said.

The lecture began with a welcome from Charles E. Kratz, dean of the library and information fluency, and a short video on Lithuania, covering the history of the country and geographical features.

After World War I, Lithuania’s Act of Independence was signed in February 1918, but during the World War II the country was occupied by the Soviet Union then Nazi Germany. When Nazi Germany fell, the Soviets reoccupied Lithuania until of March 1990, when Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union as the first Baltic state.

“If you look at Lithuania today, last year we celebrated our centennial, the restoration of independence in Lithuania back in 1918,” Ambassador Kriščiūnas said. “We spent quite a substantial part of that centennial fighting for our freedom.”

Soviet troops stayed in Lithuania until 1993, causing altercations with its citizens. Now Lithuania remains a peaceful nation, part of the United Nations, with the country joining NATO and the European Union in 2004.

Ambassador Kriščiūnas discussed Lithuania’s rapidly increasing tech industry at the lecture. Fintech, a technology used to improve finance, has 117 firms across Lithuania employing more than 2,000 people, according to the Lithuania Fintech Report 2017.

“Today we do believe and always believe that we love freedom and we love peace. Lithuania is not a threat to anyone and it will never be,” Ambassador Kriščiūnas said. “We would like to see our neighbors living in peace, cherishing freedom and building a future.”

The lecture featured a musical performance by soprano Kristina Malinauskaitė, a participant in the Martina Arroyo Foundation’s Opera Education Program and dell Arte Opera Ensemble; and a reading by poet Carol Lasata Gargan, Ph.D.

A reception followed the lecture in the McIlhenny Ballroom in the DeNaples Center.

The Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series invites international scholars from emerging democracies and countries in political and economic transition to visit the University to address issues that will enlighten and benefit students, faculty and the community at large. While visiting the campus, scholars deliver presentations on topics of interest to the academic community and meet informally with attendees, students and faculty.

Patricia Roberts-Miller, Ph.D., professor of rhetoric and writing at the University of Texas, Austin, discussed “Democracy and the Rhetoric of Demagoguery” at a recent Schemel Forum collaborative program with the Political Dialogues Campus Working Group.

“The demagogue is what scholars regularly call a devil term. It’s something we use for people we don’t like,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said. “I want to consider what it would mean to think about demagoguery in a way that would enable us to identify demagoguery in our leaders, in our way of thinking about politics and how we argue.”

She outlined issues concerning thinking and argumentation first by discussing in-group and out-group thinking when engaging with others.

“In social psychology, the in-group is not the group in power. It’s the group you’re in,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said. “If being vegan is an important part of your identity, and it’s something you tell others when you introduce yourself, then vegan is one of your groups.”

She continued, explaining that if being a vegan is your in-group, “then you probably have some group or groups that you think of as opposed to you as not like you. Your identify is partially defined as not being them.”

According to Dr. Roberts-Miller, this in-group and out-group thinking style fuels this concept of us versus them.

“We attribute far too much importance to in-group and out-group identities,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said. “We’re more likely to trust someone we perceive as in-group even if the issue at hand has nothing to do with that group construction.”

“Also, what happens with demagoguery is that policy issues get depoliticized and are no longer about policy argumentation, instead they are about forming loyalty with your in-group,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said.

There are two parts of policy argumentation, the affirmative case, where there is an argument for a plan for change and the negative case, going against the plan. The affirmative case also has two parts, according to Dr. Roberts-Miller, the need, where one shows there is a need for a solution, and the plan that will try to introduce a solution.

“Policy argumentation can and probably should happen anytime people are deliberating a new course of action,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said.

Dr. Roberts-Miller explained policy argumentation and demagoguery by using the Mytilenean Debate in ancient Greece.

In 428 BCE, Athens was at war with Sparta and the city state of Mytilene that sided with Athens, had a pro-Spartan revolt. The leader of the revolt was executed and the remainder of the rebels were sent back to Athens. Two Athenians, Cleon and Diodotus, suggested two opposing sides on how to deal with Mytilene.

Dr. Roberts-Miller said that Cleon positioned his argument as obviously right that the only explanation for people arguing against it is that they are “secretly in the pay of enemies of Athens,”

According to Dr. Roberts-Miller, Cleon wanted the people listening to him to follow him without question. Cleon used demagoguery to make Diodotus’ argument invalid.

Dr. Roberts-Miller applied this idea of us versus them from ancient Greece to how we should seek common ground today instead of focusing on left versus right.

“Once you articulate these things you can see that very different political parties might find a common ground in terms of something like prison reform, where you can get people from all sorts of different directions,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said. “You’re never going to see that if you think all issues are left versus right.”

Dr. Roberts-Miller ended her lecture with a response by Diodotus in how we should debate in our era.

“Diodotus said, the good citizen ought to triumph not by frightening his opponent but beating him fairly in logical argument,” Dr. Roberts-Miller said.

The University of Scranton’s Hope Horn Gallery hosted a lecture entitled “Altered States: Important Prints From The Maslow Collection,” by Ryan Ward, curator of The Maslow Collection, which is currently housed at Marywood University. The Maslow Collection was the featured exhibit in the Hope Horn Gallery until April 12.

Ward spoke about the history of the collection, saying that in the 1980s, Marilyn and Richard Maslow began collecting American contemporary art, mainly from artists in New York. Artists featured in the collection include, but are not limited to, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Robert Rauschenberg, Jane Hammond, Sol LeWitt and Andy Warhol. The collection moved from the Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University in Wilkes Barre, to the Everhart Museum in Scranton in the late 1990s. More recently, in 2008, The Maslow Collection moved to Marywood University.

Ward also presented a video Andy Warhol’s process for making art pieces, many of which are now well-known.

The exhibition itself shows the history of the printmaking technique and its changes over time.

“Is printmaking going to stick around? My guess is yes. You can express so many ideas, formally and conceptually. You name it. Everyone should try it,” Ward said.

Techniques represented in the exhibit by different artists include woodcut, woodblock, intaglio, etching, lithography, screen printing, collage and mixed media.

The lecture was followed by a public reception at the Hope Horn Gallery.

“In order to keep government accountable, voters need information. In modern democracy, this information comes from media,” said Andrea Prat, Ph.D., professor of economics from Columbia University, at The University of Scranton’s Henry George Seminar on campus. He discussed “Media Power: Measuring the Influence of News Media on Politics,” and noted that media includes “traditional platforms like newspapers and television, and new platforms like social media and the internet.”

In his lecture, Dr. Prat said the founding fathers of the United States were aware of the role media played in a democracy.

“Thomas Jefferson had the idea that the media is at the center of the democratic system,” Dr. Prat said, noting “in the past decade people have lost faith in the media.”

“The percentage of adult Americans who say they have little or no faith in newspapers, and it has gone from below 20 percent to twice as much,” said Dr. Prat

Dr. Prat discussed four issues that can negatively impact media’s role with the first problem being fake news.

“News should be impartial and informative and people say we are getting bias news or even completely fabricated news,” Dr. Prat said.

The second issue mentioned is when the media and the government join together.

“The media and the government are supposed to be separate in Thomas Jefferson’s view. They are supposed to be even adversarial, so the media should not be nice to government,” Dr. Prat said. “One thing that can go wrong is if the media becomes too crucial to government or to the opposition.”

The third issue is how there is little variety in the news media.

“The third thing that can go wrong is concentration,” Dr. Prat said. “We need morality with many voices and one potential risk people see is excessive concentration.”

The fourth issue is a financial concern with media outlets, where many companies are losing money.

“I will argue the revenues for commercial media have been dried out,” Dr. Prat said. “It’s becoming harder and harder to sustain the journalistic model we’ve had so far.”

In order to measure how important a news source is and how much attention is drawn to it, Dr. Prat would research the percentage of a population that use a single news source for information. In the U.S., the media outlet with the most attention is News Corporation, who owns Fox News.

“Why does Fox News have so much attention? Because many people watching only tend to watch Fox News,” Dr. Prat.

Dr. Prat based how informed people in the U.S. are on how many sources of news were used. How likely we are to have numerous sources is influenced age, gender, income, education and political outlook according to Dr. Prat.

“All of these create information inequality,” Dr. Prat said. “In our society, some people have many more sources than others. They choose to have many more sources and this is probably related to income and education.”

According to Dr. Prat, there is a correlation between income inequality and information inequality.

“If we put countries on this scatter plot, we see a positive correlation with countries with a lot of income inequality also tend to have a lot of information inequality,” Dr. Prat said. “The United States is a particularly high income inequality and information inequality country.”

Dr. Prat discussed media capture, where the government and the media begin working together, using stories from Peru, Britain and Italy to demonstrate this concept. He focused mostly on Italy because he said that began his interest in mass media.

In the 1990s Silvio Berlusconi ran for prime minister and he was, at the time, the owner of the largest commercial TV network.

“He got elected and got systematic positive coverage, unsurprisingly, from the TV stations he owned,” Dr. Prat said. “Now it is interesting how that allowed him to keep power.”

While Berlusconi was in power Italy’s economy fell with its GDP dropping.

“It’s interesting if you control the media, you can get re-elected even when your country is clearing underperforming,” Dr. Prat said.

He concluded the lecture with his revenue model, with how revenue is dropping with journalists due to a loss of advertising. According to Dr. Prat, media outlets with a subscription service are doing very well, for example The New York Times.

“But this goes back to the information inequality we were talking about and the majority of people don’t use those sources because they’re behind a pay wall,” Dr. Prat said.

The spring Henry George Seminar is presented by the University’s Economics and Finance Department and the campus chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, an international honor society for economics. It was named in honor of the 19th century American economist and social reformer. The lecture series is supported financially by a grant from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

At the University’s Spring Community Breakfast, Emmy Award-winning producer of “60 Minutes,” Nicole Young, told the story of seeing starving children on a television commercial for the first time when she was 13 years old. Young said she knew that poverty existed but never to the extent she witnessed that day on television.

“If it’s real, it shouldn’t be. And what can I do?” Young said she thought to herself.

Young told the audience composed of Scranton area residents, faculty, staff and students that she decided to become either a humanitarian or a journalist in order to have a platform to get the world talking about global issues.

When The University of Scranton accepted Young as a communication major, she began building her experience as a broadcast journalist in her sophomore year by accepting an internship with the Scranton affiliate for CBS News. Her internship started at 5 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday.

“I raised my hand, and I said ‘I’ll do it for free!’” Young said, laughing.

Young went on to snag two subsequent internships, one in New York City and one in Washington, D.C., with CBS News before graduating from Scranton in 2000. After Young earned a master’s degree in international journalism from City, University of London, CBS News hired her to work as an assistant to Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes.”

Sixteen years later, Young has won 13 Emmy Awards for her work with “60 Minutes.”

At the Community Breakfast, Young played a compilation of several of her shows from “60 Minutes,” including “Fighting Famine,” which focuses on a rare famine emergency in South Sudan, and “War and Hunger,” a report on 10,000 people journeying 22 hours through the desert to escape ISIS and starvation by crossing the Jordanian border.

“I’ve never seen desperation like that in my life,” Young said.

Young said her experiences as a producer for “60 Minutes,” investigating starvation and poverty are overwhelming, yet very strangely addicting.

“The tool to being a successful journalist,” Young said, “is being curious, wanting to go. Maybe if there were 100 of me, one child wouldn’t die today.”

Young received a standing ovation at the end of her talk and said she was choked up about returning to Scranton after nearly 20 years.

“The Jesuit education [at Scranton] gave me the power and strength to do the work I do,” Young said in closing.

The breakfast was hosted by the University’s Office of Community and Government Relations and Schemel Forum.

On March 28th, students gathered in a conference room on the fourth floor of the DeNaples Center to not only learn skills that could help with salary negotiation in the future, but also to learn how to better advocate for themselves.

The Jane Kopas Women’s Center hosted the two-hour salary negotiation workshop, which featured the curriculum of a “Start Smart” salary workshop, a program created by the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

According to the Women’s Center, the AAUW’s Start Smart and Work Smart programs are “designed to empower women with the skills and confidence to successfully negotiate their salary and benefits packages. By learning strategies and practicing effective language, participants gain valuable skills they can use throughout their lives – well beyond their next negotiation.”

The workshop was facilitated by Maria Marinucci, director of the Cross Cultural Center, and Lori Moran, career development coordinator.

The workshop included information regarding the gender pay gap and taught the attendees how to: expand the market value of their education, skills and experience; conduct market research and decide a fair salary; create a good pitch; and respond to salary offers.

“We want you to come out of college ready to negotiate your first salary,” Marinucci said.

The attendees included both men and women and ranged from seniors to first-year students. Participants received a workbook that included pertinent information about the workshop and its learning objectives and it also included exercises to help guide the learning experience. 

“The very first step,” Moran said, “is knowing your own value.”

The mission of the Jane Kopas Women’s Center is to offer educational programs on topics related to women, gender and feminist theories; to develop women as lifelong learners and confident leaders through skill training, educational opportunities, advocacy training, and a women’s leadership program; and to encourage service through collaborative projects between the campus and Scranton communities.

In correlation with Women’s History Month, throughout March the University, its departments and organizations have hosted events that focus on displaying the University’s commitment to diversity, gender equity and cultural understanding.

Hussein Ibish, Ph.D., senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C., and David N. Myers, Ph.D., Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA and president of the New Israel Fund, contextualized the Israel-Palestine conflict at a Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon Seminar. The presentation took place on campus March 1, less than a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictments made international news.

Dr. Myer and Dr. Ibish took turns explaining the past, present and future of Israel and Palestine’s conflicts, with Dr. Myers focusing on Israel and Dr. Ibish focusing on Palestine.

Issues Israel faces today include, Dr. Myer said, the corruption of Netanyahu. For example, the prime minister spent government money on cases of very expensive cigars. Though Netanyahu had called for an early election, the announcement of his indictments 39 days before the early election caused the political Right in Israel’s government to accuse the Left of subverting the election. Other political parties are now poised to take Netanyahu’s spot, if he loses the election or resigns.

Palestine does not face issues such as these, Dr. Ibish said, because its leaders generally rule by force. While controlling of its citizens’ freedom and other aspects of their lives, the Palestine government does not take much responsibility for the safety and health of their citizen, such as providing access to clean drinking water.

“There is zero accountability,” Dr. Ibish said. “In the West Bank, what you have is a polity which began with some promise in the 90s, but that has been worn down. Worn down by unaccountability, worn down by corruption, worn down by the manipulation by the government of the legal system.”

Like Israel, Dr. Ibish said, Palestine faces conflicts both internal and external. Many people are concerned about Palestine going forward, seeing it as a ticking time bomb. Since the fall of Aleppo, the Arab world has changed, and Israel fixates on whatever the Arab world fixates on. For Israel, the future is murky but now has more room for change than ever, due to a potential shift in dominant political party.

“Perhaps the sole constant in history is the persistence of change,” Dr. Myer said. “Just when we thought change was impossible on the Israeli front, the past 24 hours […] have delivered very ample doses of change.”

The Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon Seminar series is sponsored by Munley Law.

For more information on the Schemel Forum, please contact Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum, at 570-941-4089, or at Sondra.myers@scranton.edu.

The University of Scranton Asian Studies Program began a three-part spring lecture series exploring Women in Asia with presentations by Shuhua Fan, Ph.D., professor of history, and Ann Pang-White, Ph.D., professor of philosophy and director of Asian Studies. The professors discussed the historical and philosophical portrayal of women in mainland China and Taiwan, with a focus on inequality and obstacles faced by Chinese women and the possible means of redemption offered through Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism. 

In her presentation “Women in Mainland China and Taiwan,” Dr. Fan said “to Confucius, family was very important because family was the basic unit of society and also for the practice of marriage. In Chinese culture, before the 1980s, single-life was abnormal, except for widows, monks and nuns, so everyone had to be married.”

Dr. Fan also discussed the role of a concubine, a woman who lives with a man in a household but has a lower societal status than his wife or wives. A concubine was seen to fulfill the man’s sexual desires and bear children.

“Concubines mainly functioned as a symbol of power and wealth, because families needed to have sons,” Dr. Fan said, who noted that having a son was seen as much more valuable than having a daughter at the time. The people of power ranged from military leaders to political leaders in China.

“Most of the concubines were from poorer families because they could not afford to give them a good marriage,” Dr. Fan said. “Many were purchased from tea houses, suitors or brothels.”

It wasn’t until 1971 that a ban on concubines began with the Marriage Reform Ordinance in Hong Kong. Since the 1980s, however, Dr. Fan said there has been resurgence of concubine culture in China with the trend of wealthy business men having mistresses.

“The central government, the provisional government and private organizations have launched campaigns on anti-mistress and anti-corruption,” Dr. Fan said.

Following Dr. Fan’s remarks, Dr. Pang-White presented “Beyond Gender: Buddhism and Women in Contemporary Taiwan.”

Dr. Pang-White began her lecture with a poem on Buddhism and how gender is not a factor when someone ascends to enlightenment.

“An enlightened being is both male, female and man, women because they are not tied to a gender,” Dr. Pang-White said. “It does not matter which final form this enlightened being is, when he or she ascends to Buddhahood.”

Even though there is no gender discrimination when trying to achieve enlightenment through worship, Dr. Pang-White said “early text originally only allows men to become monks. Women were not allowed to go outside of the household to become nuns.”

Dr. Pang-White said that women were eventually allowed to form their own nunnery, not to be governed by men. There were still rules, the “8 Heavy Rules,” that nuns have to follow.

“It is forbidden for a nun to accuse a monk of a transgression, but monks can admonish nuns for their transgressions,” Dr. Pang-White said. “It’s not equitable.”

This discrimination started to dissipate with a folklore tale from the book “Lotus Sutra.” In the book, the Dragon King’s Daughter sought to achieve enlightenment from the Buddha. She was rejected at first for not being a man then became enlightened after offering a pearl to the Buddha.

“This is a daughter not a son, an 8-year-old daughter attaining Buddhahood not an 8-year-old prince. It reverses the paradigm,” Dr. Pang-White said. “This really opened the gate for female Buddhas in tradition it became a hugely popular concept in Japan, China and Taiwan.”

In 1949 when the communist party took power in China, Buddhist monks fled to Taiwan and were in need of students, so they took female students.

“They integrated women’s status as legitimate students in Buddhism,” said Dr. Pang-White.

Women in Buddhism continued to grow until the point where women were allowed to own their own monasteries and work with the male monks in Taiwan.

“We see now that Buddhist nuns take leadership roles in providing alternative venues for women who don’t want to get married – that want spiritual progress and not to be bound by household duties,” Dr. Pang-White said. “They want to seek more education.”

Brent Glass, Ph.D., director emeritus of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, has advised many museums around the world. Now he wants to explore Sing Sing prison’s rich history and put it on display so the world can learn more about the famous prison, and through this, learn more about ourselves.

“History is a resource that helps us understand our own times,” Dr. Glass said at the Schemel Forum’s World Affairs Luncheon Seminar in February. “[Sing-Sing prison] is a topic both timely and timeless.”

Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum-security prison located in Ossining, New York, just over an hour’s drive from New York City. Its location, “up the river” from New York City, inspired the development of the same phrase, said Dr. Glass. Its first cell block was built by convicts in 1825, using stone from a large nearby quarry. The construction of Sing Sing marked a turn in our nation’s criminal justice philosophy, as convicts were kept from the public eye in prisons more and more, instead of facing justice in the public eye via stockades or similar displays. Auburn Prison was initially chosen to house most of New York City’s prisoners, but Sing Sing took its place because it is closer.

According to Dr. Glass, the original living conditions for inmates at Sing Sing were cramped, violent, and inhumane. Cells were often just big enough to fit an adult man, and no larger. Warden Elam Lynds, with a background in naval corporal punishment, made Sing Sing famous for corporal punishment during his tenure from 1825-1830.

“There’s something very haunting about being in this place, knowing its history, knowing how 1200 men […] lived in very Spartan conditions,” Dr. Glass said of the original cellblock.

The conditions at Sing Sing were so sensational that the New York Times assigned a reporter to cover stories of violence and drama at Sing Sing each day, said Dr. Glass. Newspapers and the era’s “yellow journalism” contributed to much of the prison’s notoriety.

In 1891, the prison began executing convicts in electric chairs, which continued until 1963. The decision to start executing people caused so much controversy that the town of Sing Sing changed its name to Ossining, so as not to be identified with the practice.

Dr. Glass said several prison directors have tried to implement change over the institution’s history, such as Lucretia Mott’s descendant Thomas Mott Osborne. Change has often been met with resistance by prison employees and authorities, but reforms over the years have done away with such practices as wearing stripes and walking in lockstep, while also adding more recreation and rehabilitation programs.

Dr. Glass hopes that the museum will contribute to a conversation on change in modern prisons, and the New York State Department of Corrections approves. Of course, Dr. Glass reminded the audience, they still have a prison to run.

“They have said to us, remember, we’re not in the hospitality business the way you are,” Dr. Glass said, to laughter.

Today, Sing Sing utilizes rehabilitation programs designed to reduce convicts’ recidivism, by empowering them with skills they can use to strengthen relationships and succeed in careers after being released.

While Sing Sing’s reputation over the years has gained some notoriety and fed into sensationalism, Dr. Glass said his goal for the museum is to take Sing Sing and its history seriously. With plans to improve the local economy and revitalize the town of Ossining, the museum will make a positive impact on the lives of prisoners, victims, employees, and families. Using interactive exhibits, virtual reality, and more, the museum will examine the experiences of the prisoners, staff, and the prison’s historical significance without trivializing or sensationalizing those stories. 

“All of us know someone who has been convicted or accused of a crime, and we may not realize it,” Dr. Glass said. “The prison’s mission statement is: we want to prepare the people who live here,” so that they do not come back.”

The Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon Seminar series is sponsored by Munley Law. For more information about the Sing Sing Prison Museum, visit www.singsingprisonmuseum.org. For more information on the Schemel Forum, please contact Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum, at 570-941-4089, or at Sondra.myers@scranton.edu.

Trained in stand-up comedy and author of the book “Leading Imperfectly: The Value of Being Authentic for Leaders, Professionals, and Human Beings,” James T. Robilotta was this year’s Keynote Speaker at the ninth annual IGNITE Leadership Conference hosted at The University of Scranton.

An internationally recognized speaker, Robilotta began by encouraging student leaders to embrace what makes them unique: “It’s fun when we talk about our weirds,” he said. After sharing some of his own strange eating habits, he called on others to share their own odd food rituals.

Robilotta introduced the topic of the session: Authentic Leadership and discussed the five attributes of authentic leaders. “They are purposeful, they empower, they own who they are, they’re real and they follow their morals.”

“Revisit your purpose and let it serve as a bulldozer that pushes you through the unfortunate parts of leadership,” he said, stressing the importance of having clear, honest intent when in leadership.

 The key to leadership, he told students, is not being perfect, or seeming perfect; it is in sharing who you actually are. This type of leadership, he admitted, is not easy, because it involves being vulnerable in front of others. He challenged the audience to think of lies they tell themselves every day, and to think of what version of themselves they show to others.

“You can’t be everything to everyone,” he concluded, “But you can be something to someone. Be something to someone.”

Following the keynote speech, students participated in a number of breakout sessions about being authentic leaders.

IGNITE, organized by the University’s Center for Student Engagement, is the premier leadership conference open to all college students in Northeast Pennsylvania.  Focused on personal growth and development, the conference holds sessions about a broad range of leadership topics, including communication, problem solving, team building, having difficult conversations, communication across difference and identity development.

F. Dennis Dawgert, M.D., explained that an important study shows Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are the root of many seemingly unrelated issues that children with such negative experiences may face later in life. The talk, “ACE Study and Resiliency,” was presented at a Schemel Forum collaborative program with Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine earlier this month on campus. Dr. Dawgert, a former pediatrician, teaches at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.

Types of ACEs include verbal, physical and emotional abuse, neglect, witnessing of a parent’s abuse by another, or separation from a parent. ACEs are common, but the more ACEs are sustained, the more a child’s risk of future diseases or negative health events increase. These diseases and health issues include mental illness, addictions, severe obesity, high number of sex partners, stroke, hepatitis, ischemic heart disease and more. Children with ACEs are also less likely to graduate high school and college.

For Dr. Dawgert, understanding ACEs and preventative medicine go hand in hand. According to a large study by the CDC and Kaiser-Permanente on people who had experienced ACEs, those negatively impacted children grow into adults who are much more likely to suffer from disease, commit crimes, and even die decades earlier than their peers. People on death row, Dr. Dawgert pointed out, have very high ACE scores.

In society today, “we have many institutes that look at smoking, look at obesity, look at type 2 diabetes, look at cancers and other diseases, look at suicide,” Dr. Dawgert said. “And yet, we haven’t made the trip back upstream to figure out where this all comes from.”

The reason ACEs cause so much pain even after they have been inflicted lies in neurology. The brain can deal with different levels of stress, Dr. Dawgert said. Yet if sustained stress is severe enough or inflicted chronically while a child’s brain is still forming, the severe stressors can change how the brain forms, impacting a child’s thoughts and behaviors for the rest of their lives.

However, all is not lost for children with ACEs. Preventing ACEs from occurring, or treating them earlier on, could significantly improve the lives of children by helping their brains heal from psychological trauma earlier on, thus avoiding a slew of future health problems. The study of ACEs, Dr. Dawgert emphasized, extends into not just the topic of public health but also legal and educational issues across the globe, and should inform our consideration of current events such as the child separations at the U.S. Mexico border.

“We have to become aware of it and what the effects of adverse childhood experiences are so that we can look at this not as a medical problem, or social work problem, or psychiatric problem,” Dr. Dawgert said, viewing ACEs as a community responsibility, and a problem to solve together.

“There are things that can happen that help people who have ACEs,” Dr. Dawgert said. Doctors have found that children who can employ resilient mindsets can undo some of the negative effects of ACEs, and increase their life expectancy as well as decrease their risk of disease.

Supportive family, peers, teachers and coaches can all contribute to a child’s development of a healthy sense of self, and teach healthy behaviors.

“Resiliency is … positive adaptation, despite adversities,” Dr. Dawgert said. He showed the audience a picture of flowers pushing up through a crack in a road, blooming. “If you have some sort of supportive person, or supportive factor in your life,” it can make all the difference. “I can’t say you can get rid of ACEs, but you can obviate them to some extent.”

For more information on the Schemel Forum, please contact Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum, at 570-941-4089, or at Sondra.myers@scranton.edu.

The University of Scranton’s Center for Health Education and Wellness (CHEW) will offer its annual Fitness Challenge from Feb. 10 to March 10 this semester.

“The great thing about the fitness challenge is it’s open to the entire campus community, so students, faculty and staff are able to register through noon on Friday, Feb. 8,” Stephanie Adamec, director of CHEW said.

The challenge encourages students, faculty and staff to complete a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise per week for at least three out of the four weeks.

“The reason why it’s 150 minutes is because the CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate activity as a guideline for exercise,” Adamec said.

Students like Taylor Septer of Langhorne, a senior secondary education – general science major at Scranton, finds the exercise challenge to be mentally relaxing.

“It’s a nice break from my schoolwork and a little reprieve I have a couple times a week,” Septer said. “Even during my busy weeks, it pushes me to get down here to the gym and give myself a mental break.”

Last spring semester, CHEW had more than 850 students, faculty and staff signed up for the challenge, logging over 6,550 hours of exercise. This semester, more than 800 members of the University community have signed up.

“I would classify this a Scranton tradition, we have more than 500 people register every year,” Adamec said.

Students, faculty and staff can complete the challenge individually or with a team of up to five members. Kristen Gensinger of Seaford, New York, a junior strategic communication major at the University, is on a team with her friends.

“I like that it’s something I can do with my friends,” Gensinger said. “All my friends are on a team and we motivate each other, stay active and have fun.”

This year, there are all new optional “Wellness Challenges” to complete for people who signed up. One of the new challenges is called “POUND – Rockout Workout.” The event takes place on Feb. 14 and Feb. 21 and lets students, faculty and staff unwind while playing music.

“We’ve added two ‘POUND’ workout classes, where you use drumsticks and music, and we have a faculty member that is teaching it,” Adamec said. “It’s a class just designed to pound your stress away using music and movement.”

Adamec recommends bringing a friend along while doing the challenge to get into the routine of staying fit.

“You motivate each other and inspire each other to go on days that aren’t great,” Adamec said. “It’s all about habit forming that’s why we have it for 30 days, it’s designed intentionally because we know we need over 21 days to form a habit so we have it be four weeks so your forming that habit of regular exercise.”

The Fitness Challenge begins Sunday, Feb. 10. Once the challenge is completed on Sunday, March 10, students, faculty and staff who submitted three out of four fitness logs can qualify for a raffle and a free t-shirt.

Hans Gindlesberger discussed his exhibit “I’m in the Wrong Film: Photographs by Hans Gindlesberger,” at a gallery lecture at the University on Feb. 1. The exhibit is on display at the Hope Horn Gallery through March 1.

Gindlesberger began his work as a photographer in college taking stray, isolated images without a narrative context. He said the images “blended in with what everybody else was doing at the time. Anything that I was doing wasn’t especially distinct or provocative,”

During his sophomore year at Bowling Green State University, his photography professor Lou Krueger taught him how to tell a story with photographs.

“He was a huge influence because he was the first photographer I encountered person-to-person that was working not with the world but with constructed imagery,” Gindlesberger said. “He was fabricating these things to be photographed rather than wandering around and trying to happen upon something.”

These fabricated photographs became the start of Gindlesberger’s storytelling through art.

“I made a lot of disconnected scenes – sort of one frame films – that didn’t tie together in any way, that didn’t tell any big arching story, but were each their own self-contained little narrative,” Gindlesberger said.

The pieces Gindlesberger presents in the exhibit contain images of real places, including some from his hometown in Northern Ohio. The images are also constructed in Photoshop to create his narratives by using technology.

“Photography is a medium that’s interesting, particularly because it has had so many different iterations,” Gindlesberger said. “Technology in the early days changed every three years, but now even more so in a radical and dynamic way.”

The art exhibit will be on display through March 1 in the Hope Horn Gallery, located on the fourth floor of Hyland Hall.

Chris Whitney, director of the Center for Career Development at The University of Scranton, offers advice on what students can do during the winter break to prepare for their future careers.

Job Searches Peak in January

According to Chris Whitney, January is a peek time to look for jobs, as many employers will be posting new positions after the new year. If you haven’t already, winter break is a great time to make use of Handshake.com. You can log on by visiting scranton.edu/careers and clicking on the link provided. Currently, Handshake lists more than 8,000 postings, including nearly 2,000 internships.

Build and Refresh your Network

Intersession is a great time to get in touch with people, especially alumni, whom you have met during your time at Scranton. Send them an email and ask if they would be available to talk or meet with you. This is a chance for you to learn about what successful men and women in your field have done to get where they are. Whitney suggests asking them about their journey and their career, as well as for advice as you start to think about your future. This will show intellectual curiosity and is a great way to practice communication skills without the stress of interviewing.

If you feel awkward reaching out to alumni you barely know, Whitney says don’t. Talking with alumni about your career is a safe place to start and alumni want to help Scranton students succeed. Most will feel flattered that you want to hear their stories and listen to their advice.

Revamp your Resume

A break from coursework offers an ideal time to focus on your resume, one of the most important documents needed in your career search. Whitney offers a few things to keep in mind when revamping your resume:

Organization: keep the most relevant experiences and skills at the top of your resume. (Many employers will stop reading if the first item does impress them);

Research: once you have decided the positions you want to apply for, look at the job descriptions and make sure your resume exhibits the skills and experience the employer mentions in the job listing. Again, Handshake is a great tool for this. Be sure to include industry terms mentioned in your resume and cover letter. Usually, everything you need to mention is included in the job description.

Use your network: ask alumni to look at your resume and take their advice to heart;

Customize your resume: some students think that a resume should be a one size fits all deal. It is not. If you are applying to slightly different positions at different companies or organizations, your resume might have to be different too depending on the skills and experiences needed for each position. Each resume should be tailored to the position you want.

Practice your Interview Skills

Don’t have any interview experience? Whitney suggests getting some practice during the break by using Big Interview, an online mock interview program. All you need is a computer with a webcam and the website will provide sample interviews based on industry with three difficulty levels from which to choose. The website will record your responses for your review. You can also share your responses with career counselors at the University or members of your network for feedback. To get started, just visit scranton.edu/careers and scroll down for the link.

Eighty elementary and middle school students and their teachers from Howard Gardner MI Charter School and the Lutheran Academy attended “Presenting El Salvador” at The University of Scranton as part of its International Education Week programming. International graduate MBA student Ingrid Maria Serrano Bran of El Salvador gave the presentation about her home country on Nov. 12 in the McIlhenny Ballroom of the DeNaples Center.

After introductory remarks given by event organizer Huey Shi Chew, director of international student and scholar services, and Sunil Ahuja, Ph.D., associate provost for academic affairs, Serrano Bran asked the school children to guess at trivia facts such as El Salvador’s national bird, currency and the continent on which it is located. She handed out small prizes to students who could provide the correct answer. 

After sharing photos of beaches, mountains and volcanoes in El Salvador, Serrano Bran then gave a brief overview of the nation’s history, beginning with a description of the indigenous populations, covering independence through to modern times. When discussing the current political and economic situation of El Salvador she mentioned high poverty and low literacy rates in the country, saying the average educational level in the country is sixth grade due to “the violence and environment,” which affects “especially the poorer class.”

Serrano Bran also discussed cultural aspects of her homeland, sharing colorful photographs of dancers, food, soccer teams and traditional arts of El Salvador. She also explained the special connection between the Jesuit university of El Salvador and The University of Scranton since 1999. She shared a photo of a Scranton sweater that was made in El Salvador.

Serrano Bran urged the children to sympathize with those who want to leave El Salvador for better opportunities. She shared a photo of a young boy who was fleeing to Mexico even though he knew he could die in the process. “The kids just want to play and have a good future,” she said. “When we understand each other’s problems, we can open our minds and hearts to solve them together.”

Following the presentation, the students were invited to taste El Salvador’s most popular food: Pupusas (a thick corn tortilla stuffed with a savory filling).

Niko Kallianiotis, the photographer of the exhibition “America in a Trance” now on display in the Hope Horn Gallery, was joined by photographer Luke Wynn, documentary and street photographer Parker Reinecker and award-winning author and journalist Seamus McGraw in a panel discussion about the exhibit and on capturing the cultural identity of small towns in Pennsylvania in images. The three panelists also wrote short essays on Kallianoitis’ work.

Kallianiotis, originally from Athens, Greece, first visited the United States by going to New York City in the late 1980s, but wanted to truly experience the country by seeing its small towns.

“I wanted to explore small town industrial America as a way to find myself and assimilate myself with the country and the state,” Kallianiotis said. “One of the difficulties of having two countries and loving two countries is to try to find yourself and find your identity through the place you live.”

Kallianiotis’ “America in a Trance,” involves photographs from across Pennsylvania capturing scenes of deindustrialization.

“If you have read the essays it’s almost like they’re expressing their own life histories through the essays, and I’m expressing my life histories and concerns through the photographs,” Kallianiotis said.

McGraw commented on how Kallianiotis captured the essence of Pennsylvania and put it on display.

“The towns he takes pictures of, they were never meant to be forever, they’re named after guys who came here to take what they could take and left as soon as they got it. They left fossils behind,” McGraw said. “Niko catches that when you freeze the last moment of life that last moment of hope, and that is the inspiring thing about all of these pictures.”

Wynn then asked Niko on his process of taking photos in this area and what inspired him to do it.

“I don’t have a process, the process and inspiration was, for this project and is for many projects that I do, my own life experiences,” Kallianiotis said.

Even though Niko’s project attempts to capture the idea of industrialization he still encourages people to go out and explore small town America.

“This project has been and still is an education for me, and I recommend visiting all of these places, getting in your car, driving there and coming to your own conclusions,” Kallianiotis said.

Reinecker concluded the discussion by describing the feeling of taking photographs in these small-town areas.

“It isn’t even about getting the picture, it’s about being there and watching that moment unfold,” Reinecker said.

The panel discussion ended with a question and answer, followed up by a public reception at the Hope Horn Gallery.

Most Reverend Bernardito C. Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, discussed “Global Migration: Shared Responsibility and Solidarity” at The University of Scranton.

“On the 30th of July this year, delegations to the United Nations conference on migration informally adopted what is now called the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” said Archbishop Auza, who has served at the United Nations since 2014.

 The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) seeks to improve governance and attempts to address the challenges associated with migration today. In 2017, 250 million people migrated to different countries and 68.5 million of the people migrating were forced from their homes, according to Archbishop Auza.

“Refugees in 2017 grew to almost 27 million from around 11 million in 2010, an increase of more than 60 percent in only seven years,” Archbishop Auza said. “These are just some of the figures that tell us why the international community has come together and decided to come up with a compact.”

The GCM acts as a framework for dealing with massive movements of migrating people around the world and seeks to lower death rates when migrating.

“In September 2018 – that is just last month – one fifth – that’s 20 percent – of the migrants and refugees who tried to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy or Greece perished, they drowned or simply disappeared,” Archbishop Auza said.

In addressing the question of why people leave their homes, Archbishop Auza said there are “many factors that drive migration.” He continued saying “you can generally divide them into two: the so called push factors that are the factors that drive people to leave their homelands to go somewhere else; and the so called pull factor, those are the factors that make people move to a particular country.”

 “The number one push factor now is war and conflict,” Archbishop Auza said. “The pull factors that attract people to go somewhere else like the search for better opportunities and changes in labor markets.”

The top three nationalities who crossed the Mediterranean from January 2015 to March 2016 were Syrians at 47 percent, Afghans at 21 percent and Iraqis at nine percent, according to Archbishop Auza.

“What is the common denominator of these three countries? War and conflict,” Archbishop Auza said.

The General Assembly for the UN will hold an intergovernmental conference on international migration in December of this year, with the idea of adopting the GCM. The GCM has several principles that seek to help ease migration, an example of a principle is the “recognition that migration is a natural positive phenomenon,” according to Archbishop Auza.

“The global compact is now the international framework for global and shared responsibility toward migrants,” Archbishop Auza said. “This Global Compact on Migration is the first ever – there has never been a global compact or international document on migration. This is historic.”

The lecture ended in a panel discussion with members from the University and closing remarks from Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., president of the University.

The Friends of the Weinberg Memorial Library presented writer Lorene Cary with The Royden B. Davis, S.J., Distinguished Author Award at a dinner reception Oct. 13 in the McIlhenny Ballroom of the DeNaples Center.

Cary is the author of the best-selling memoir, “Black Ice,” and novels such as, “If Sons, Then Heirs,” “The Price of a Child,” “Pride,” and “FREE! Great Escapes on the Underground Railroad.” Cary founded Art Sanctuary, which creates unique programs for African-American artists, performers and writers in Philadelphia. Such programs have garnered up to 1,500 participants a year. She has also been a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

The program began with a toast by Cathy Ann Hardaway, director of domestic relations for Lackawanna County, and an invocation by Rev. Ronald McKinney, S.J., professor of philosophy at the University. Jeffrey Gingerich, Ph.D., senior provost and vice president of academic affairs at Scranton, welcomed all attendees to the event. Charles Kratz, dean of the library and information fluency, and Gretchen Welby, Ph.D., Distinguished Author Award committee chair and vice-president of the Friends of the Library, also spoke at the event.

“Lorene, tonight, we celebrate the stories that you tell in such searing, exuberant and poignant ways,” Dean Kratz said. “And how eloquently you weave together your roots and your imagination.”

The Royden B. Davis, S.J., Distinguished Author Award series, according to The Friends of the Weinberg Memorial Library, is a way to honor notable fiction and non-fiction authors and to give them the opportunity to share their literary pursuits and impressions with Northeastern Pennsylvanians. Proceeds from the event benefit the Friends of the Library Endowment Fund, which supports special gifts for the Weinberg Library collections and services.

“Thank you, thank you so very much. I’m grateful, really grateful to be here,” Cary said upon formally receiving the award. “I’ve been so moved by the Friends of the Library.”

Previous Distinguished Author Award recipients include Stephen Karam, Colum McCann, Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Jay Parini, among others.

“I do not think it is an overstatement to claim that the role of the humanities and liberal arts in the contemporary university is the most pressing issue facing the president of any University, especially a Catholic and Jesuit University,” said Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., president of The University of Scranton at a talk presented by the Schemel Forum in collaboration with the Office of the President. Father Pilarz presented “The Humanities: Now More Than Ever” at the lecture held on Oct. 18 on campus.

“It is obvious, as it has been for some time, that humanities and liberal arts are on the run across the landscape of American higher education and, in fact, American culture at large,” Father Pilarz said.

Humanities and liberal arts classes have been decreasing in most colleges and universities across America, according to Father Pilarz. He made a case for important role the humanities and liberal arts play in higher education by first referencing the history of St. Ignatius Loyola.

“Ignatius returned to school in his 30s to learn Latin. Subsequently, he studied at several European universities but found the model of education at those universities wanting,” Father Pilarz said. “Instinctively, Ignatius wanted a more engaged educational experience, rounded especially in classical literature and philosophy.”

Ignatius found this rounded education at the University of Paris and lived in Paris for seven years.

“Throughout his years in Paris, Ignatius and his companions encountered a radically new educational paradigm,” Father Pilarz said. “The paradigm understood education as a dynamic process and that the study of fundamental disciples, the liberal arts and humanities, would lead ultimately to greater focus on more sophisticated subjects.”

Father Pilarz discussed the two educational institutions the Jesuits used: the college and the university.

“The first was the college, which humane letters, languages and a little bit of Christian doctrine formed the curriculum,” Father Pilarz said. “The second was the university, where the higher disciplines taught logic, metaphysics, ethics, some rudimentary sciences, mathematics and theology.”

This was the basis for the first Jesuit schools that allowed students to engage more in their classes, according to Father Pilarz.

“This gave to the Jesuits an organized plan for the progress of students through increasingly complex materials and a codification of pedagogical techniques designed to solicit active response from the learner,” Father Pilarz said. “In the end, the first Jesuits with their emphasis on humanities and liberal arts sought to move students to an interior appropriation of ethical values.”

This gave Jesuit students, who went to these schools, a desire to take part in their community after education.

“Out of the schools, Jesuits came to understand themselves to have a role the shaping of culture,” said Father Pilarz.

Bern Gavlick, an eighth-grade guidance counselor at FDR Middle School in Bristol Township, has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and used assistive technology for the first time when he was in the first grade.

Bill Zeigler, an assistive technology consultant with Bucks County Intermediate Unit 22 in Doylestown and an Apple Distinguished Educator, introduced Gavlick to a device called the “Unicorn board,” which acted as a giant pad that had all of the letters of the alphabet on it so Gavlick could spell out words by touching it.

Together, they spoke about how assistive technology helped Gavlick throughout his life in “Working Through the System,” the keynote presentation at The University of Scranton’s 17^th annual U.S. Conference on disAbility, which was held Oct. 11 on campus.

Later, when Apple released one of their first desktop computers, Zeigler upgraded Gavlick’s technology, attaching a joy stick (mainly used in flight simulators) to the Mac. Gavlick was able to easily navigate and spell out words without using a mouse and keyboard.

Gavlick’s cerebral palsy worsened when he was 11 and he was unable to use his hands. Zeigler turned to voice navigation, but unfortunately, the technology was not advanced enough to fully implement word use. Gavlick had to spell out each letter using the military phonetic alphabet to spell one word.

Because this process was tedious, Gavlick came up with his own idea on how to spell words faster. He put a pencil in his mouth one day and used it to type on a keyboard.

As technology advanced, Gavlick was able to return to voice navigation to make sentences type out on the computer faster.

During his time working with assistive technology, Gavlick attended K-12 school and Ursinas College in Collegeville. He only used the assistive technology at home and not while he was at school, saying he would “do things kids would do at his age,” such as ski, swim and help out at his school’s “Gym Night” by bringing out gear for his fellow students to use.

Currently, Gavlick works as a special education guidance counselor and helps students with their disabilities as they move into middle school. He said the students he teaches have a “smooth transition into middle school.”

The presentation ended with Gavlick and Zeigler showing videos of Gavlick throughout his life, including climbing a rock wall in his high school gym and skiing at Jack Frost Ski Resort.

The presentation ended with a Question and Answer session with Gavlick, Zeigler and Gavlick’s parents.

The annual U.S. Conference on disAbility brings together national, state, and regional experts to discuss a multifaceted approach to improving employment, independent living and transition for all people with disabilities. The conference is hosted by the University’s Panuska College of Professional Studies with the support of the Edward R. Leahy Jr. Endowment and Honorary Conference Co-Chairs Edward R. and Patricia Leahy.

Matthew Meyer, Ph.D., discussed the impact of neoliberalism on democracy at his Schemel Forum “University for a Day” talk, “The Real Road to Serfdom?” in September. He is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University, and oversees the Pre-Law concentration.

            Neoliberalism, a system of political beliefs most prominent during the Reagan administration, calls for freedom of private property and from governmental control, Dr. Meyer explained. The problem, Meyer said, is that sometimes Neoliberalism places more value on the importance of such freedoms than it places on democracy.

            “Neoliberalism understands freedom as the ability to do what one wants,” Dr. Meyer said.

            “The Road to Serfdom,” a book by famed economist and philosopher F. A. Hayek, hypothesizes that democratic nations will become enslaved socialists if their people embrace too much democracy. Hayek believes neoliberalism is the answer to too much democracy: Democratic nations should not favor their democracy more than individual rights. Neoliberalism is a reaction, Hayek argues, to socialism.

            One way in which societies become too democratic, according to Hayek, is that they see all citizens as “created equal” when they should be seen only as equals before the law. 

            “Nowhere is the difference between the reasoning of the older liberalism and that of neoliberalism clearer and easier to demonstrate than in their treatment of the problem of equality. The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the idea of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights because they assumed that all men are created equal,” Dr. Meyer quoted famed neoliberal Ludwig von Mises. “Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.”

            Dr. Meyer named his talk “The Real Road to Serfdom?” because he questions Hayek’s hypothesis of what leads nations into serfdom.

            “Does Hayek’s thinking represent the real road to serfdom?” Dr. Meyer asked. “Hayek is a father of one of the key proponents of neoliberal thinking […] Does the spread of neoliberalism, or neoliberal ideas, prepare the way for the conditions of authoritarian rule?”

            Yes, Dr. Meyer believes, neoliberalism does pave the way for authoritarianism. In “The Road to Serfdom,” Dr. Meyer pointed out, Hayek even writes wistfully of authoritarian governments.

            “Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom, we must not forget that there has been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under autocratic rule than under some democracies,” Dr. Meyer quoted Hayek. “In other words, if democracy starts getting into your business, it would be a lot better to live under authoritarian rule.” He added that the quote shocked him when he first read it.

            Dr. Meyer’s biggest concern about neoliberalism is that it gives citizens a lot of rights without much responsibility. “It strips away, therefore, the demands upon us […] from having any deep commitments […] to the common good and the project called democracy,” said Dr. Meyer. The differences between the economic winners and losers created by neoliberalism are so extreme that they lead to oligarchy, which makes citizens angry and tired enough to elect a strongman. Once a strongman is in power, serfdom ensues.

            “I simply don’t think that we can have a democratic society without a robust sense of, [and] a significant number of people who are committed to, notions of the common good,” Dr. Meyer said.

Other speakers at the University for a Day were James Campbell, Ph.D., Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. history at Stanford University; Mark C. Alexander, J.D., Arthur J. Kania Dean and professor of law at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law; and Josephine Dunn, Ph.D., professor of art history, oral history and European cultural history at Scranton.

            For more information on the Schemel Forum, please contact Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum, at 570-941-4089, or at Sondra.myers@scranton.edu.

The University of Scranton celebrated the Inauguration of our 27^th president, Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., the morning of Sept. 21 in the Byron Center. Father Pilarz, who also served as the University’s 24^th president, was welcomed by a University community elated for his return.

More than 1,000 members of the University and local communities filled the Byron Recreation Center to watch the academic procession usher Father Pilarz onto the stage. Following the procession, Father Pilarz and the audience were treated to a surprise. Wycliffe Gordon H’06, award winning trombonist, played his original composition “Me, We.”

Next, everyone viewed a short video welcoming Father Pilarz back, which featured Scranton students, faculty, staff, Scranton Mayor Bill Courtright and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. The video highlighted the University’s anticipation of Father Pilarz’s Inauguration, calling it “the return of a great leader.”

Joshua Rosenblum conducted the world premiere of his original piece “Don’t Waste Love,” commissioned specially for Father Pilarz’s Inauguration and performed by The University of Scranton Band and Choir. Rosenblum’s inspiration for the lyrics, which included the past speeches of Father Pilarz, other prominent Jesuits, and Pope Francis, set the tone for an Inauguration focused on love.

When Father Pilarz began his remarks, he said he only had one thing to say.

“I love this place and I am blessed to be back here with you.”

Of course, he joked, the Board of Trustees might be disappointed if he only said one thing, so he went on to call on the University community to act out of love more than ever now.

“We cannot be complacent,” he said. “Communities everywhere are under stress … We must be a source of hope for the local community going forward.”

The way forward, he said, is clear. To lead the way, and to ease the stresses and division of communities both great and small, The University of Scranton must further commit itself to liberal arts and humanities, Father Pilarz said. Members of the University community must be agents for positive change in the world.

“The humanities teach us not to waste love,” Father Pilarz said.

Even those students, faculty and staff who do not primarily work within the humanities benefit from their liberal arts courses, he said.

“What sets aside a good doctor or nurse?” Father Pilarz asked. “A deep understanding of the human condition.”

To better enable its students to be men and women for others, Father Pilarz announced a $1 million commitment to a new center for the humanities from Betsy and James Slattery ’86, who is co-vice chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. 

Also at the Inauguration, Father Pilarz received important symbols of his presidency. Judee Bavaria G’72, co-vice chair on the Board of Trustees, entrusted Father Pilarz with the Charter. Slattery gave Father Pilarz the Presidential Medallion. Rev. Herbert B. Keller, S.J., H’06, the 26^th President of the University, presented Father Pilarz with the Mace.

A reception on the Dionne Campus Green immediately followed.

An author and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical school spoke about his work with the homeless at The University of Scranton’s Ignatian Values in Action Lecture.

            James O’Connell M.D., is the founding physician of the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program and author of “Stories from the Shadows: Reflections of a Street Doctor.” The book follows his experiences taking care of the homeless on the streets in Boston, Massachusetts. He began his work with the homeless after transferring from an intensive care unit to a homeless shelter clinic in Boston.

            “All I could do for two months was soak feet,” Dr. O’Connell said. “I was shocked because I went from ICU, high-tech, knowing the most complicated stuff I could imagine to two months of soaking feet.”

            The nurses at the shelter clinic were teaching Dr. O’Connell how to specifically treat homeless people.

            “What the nurses were trying to tell me was, look you’ve been trained all wrong, you know medicine, how to prescribe it and how to diagnose it but, you have no idea how to take care of a homeless person who is struggling to survive each day,” Dr. O’Connell said. “Those were challenges I had no idea how to overcome.”

            The nurses had Dr. O’Connell start at the patient’s feet so they could get used to having him around.

            “What the foot soak does is change the power structure,” Dr. O’Connell said. “As doctors, we end up with our faces in your face or listening to your heart and lungs, but we really invade personal space. That doesn’t work when you see someone whose really been scarred by bad experiences on the streets.”

             Dr. O’Connell continued.

            “The nurses really flipped that power structure and put you at the feet of the person and then way away from their personal space,” Dr. O’Connell said. “It was brilliant because you were out of their personal space and your doing something that is very comforting to them, and we did it night after night just so they can get used to the fact I was there.”

            The feet soaking helping Dr. O’Connell take his first steps into learning how treat homeless people.

            “It taught me a huge lesson and that’s that you have to slow down, you have to be present, you have to listen and you can’t offer ideas until you’ve heard everybody through,” Dr. O’Connell said.

            Dr. O’Connell’s dedication to caring for the homeless grew even more and he reached out to people living on the streets.

            “In Boston we have a shelter bed or matt for anyone that wants one,” Dr. O’Connell said. “There’s a really small core of homeless people that can’t handle the shelters and will stay outside all year long. They are a particular sub-group of the world’s population that I’ve grown to know really well, love dearly and feel very frustrated on what we should do for them.”

            The book was part of the Royal Reads program through which first-year students read the book over the summer. During the fall semester, first-year students will attend first-year seminar classes where themes of the book will be discussed.

            Dr. O’Connell next took his work from the exam room and applied it to his work on the streets by giving treatments to the homeless living on the street.

            “When you start doing street medicine, you realize you have to break those rules and break out of those usual ways of thinking,” Dr. O’Connell said. “As we parsed it back, we found 80 or 90 percent of what gets done in an exam room could actually be done in a McDonald’s booth or on a bench near a train station.”

            This thinking led to more medical work being done for the homeless on the streets, including giving flu shots.

            “One week in the fall, we all just get out and give everybody who lives on the street a flu shot,” Dr. O’Connell said. “We started to see all sorts of possibilities for what you can do to take care of people who never come into the clinic or hospital.”

            Dr. O’Connell then gave his take on how to combat homelessness.

            “A solution to homelessness though is not simply good healthcare or good housing,” Dr. O’Connell said. “The solution, I think we have to understand comes from focusing on the poverty and trauma that causes it back when they were kids. So if we’re going to fix the problem we need to fix our schools, our welfare system, our work system, our justice system, our public health and mental health system, our agriculture, business and law.”

            A book signing followed the lecture.

On the first Friday of September, the Hope Horn Gallery held a lecture, entitled “Liquid Earth: Contemporary Cast Iron Sculpture,” that invited students and community members to learn about what goes into creating cast iron art, and, in particular, about creation of the pieces that are featured in the current gallery exhibit.

According to Darlene Miller-Lanning, Ph.D., director of the Hope Horn Gallery, some of the inspiration for the exhibit came from a week-long event that happened in May and early June of 2018 in Scranton, The International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art (I.C.C.C.I.A).

Dr. Miller-Lanning first explained that Scranton’s history with iron casting existed long before conference. In the 19^th century iron casting was a daily occurrence in Scranton and, at one point, Scranton had the third largest iron manufacturing plant in the United States. Situated near the University’s Fitzpatrick field at 159 Cedar Avenue, are the remains of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company furnaces, which is now a historical site.

Today, iron casting is becoming a lost art, according to Dr. Miller-Lanning. She said one of the goals of the I.C.C.C.I.A. is to promote iron casting as an art medium.

“For artists who are using [iron casting] in a creative way, to pass down that knowledge and transform that into a vision is important to them. It also – on a really broad level – provides an international platform that fosters innovation and creative practice and sustains relevancy in the context of the contemporary art scene,” Dr. Miller-Lanning said. 

The spring conference was attended by nearly 300 people from all over the world who had one thing in common: their interest in iron casting. Dr. Miller-Lanning said that this medium of art has a way of bringing people together. 

During the lecture, Dr. Miller-Lanning showed images of many of the art pieces that are featured in the Hope Horn Gallery exhibit “Liquid Earth: Contemporary Cast Iron Sculpture,” which is on display through Oct. 5. Gallery hours are Sunday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m. and Wednesdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

Following the lecture, reception was held in the Hope Horn Gallery in conjunction with downtown Scranton’s First Fridays. The reception included live music and refreshments.  

For many, the summer is a time for “vacation and relaxation.” However, for Jordan Oakey, a liberal studies major at Scranton, this summer was a chance to “gain as much knowledge about the art world as possible.”

Oakey, an intern at the Everhart Museum of Natural History and Art in Scranton was among the 11 University of Scranton students awarded a stipend through The Royal Experience Summer Internship Program. The program seeks to reduce the financial barriers that could prevent students from gaining important knowledge and experience through unpaid summer internships.

“Working in a museum has so greatly expanded my knowledge about local art and what goes on behind the scenes; that is, what happens behind those white gallery walls in order to create an exhibition that would catch the interest of the public, no matter their age,” Oakey wrote in his blog post.

As an intern, Oakey transferred information about the museum’s art collection from notecards to a computer database called Past Perfect. The collection reached more than 6,000 items, with information recorded not only on notecards, but also in email correspondences, handwritten letters and typed thank you cards for pieces donated.

“This experience, so far, has given much more insight as to what happens in a museum when its doors are closed to the public,” Oakey wrote.

Tate Ackerman, a biology, Spanish and philosophy triple major, also participated in The Royal Experience Program. She accepted the intern position in the University’s Biology Department, where she surveyed bats and learned about advancements in echolocation technology.

“I have always enjoyed working with animals, but I never thought that I would have the opportunity to gain the specific and unique skill set required for tracking down and recording the echolocation calls of such small and evasive animals,” Ackerman wrote in her blog post.

Through The Royal Experience Summer Internship Program, students are able to get ahead in their career paths without falling behind financially.

“The cultivation of my bat-finding techniques will be invaluable for me in the future, as I plan to pursue a career in animal research. The Royal Experience Internship Program has provided me with an opportunity to diversify my skills and gain practical, hands-on experience for my future career goals,” Ackerman wrote.

The other participants were encouraged to write about their experiences over the summer on the career development blog as well.

For just over 950 young adults, this fall will mark the beginning of their college experience at The University of Scranton. The new students are stepping into a different chapter of their lives and whether they want to admit it or not, they’re likely nervous or even a little scared.

Current Residential Assistants (R.A.s) at the University understand just how the students in the class of 2022 feel. At one point, they had the same experience. When rising senior Angela Coen, a double major in women and gender studies and sociology, first arrived at the University, she was shy and nervous.

“I came in as a very introverted person. I was very nervous about meeting people, and more importantly, meeting people that I fit in with and connected with. But gradually, after conversations with my R.A., she was able to facilitate a lot of friendships with the girls on my floor,” Coen said. 

Although the perspective of being a new college student might seem daunting, the University offers many resources so that the students never have to deal with the stress alone.

Rising senior Jannell Jeffers, a biochemistry major, will be entering her third year as an R.A. and has seen how helpful the resources are to students.

“There are so many resources here at the University. We have the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (C.T.L.E.) and they’re able to set you up with a tutor. … Don’t be afraid to take advantage. They’re there to help,” Jeffers said.

Not only are students able to work with a tutor through the CTLE, they also offer help and guidance with academic papers through the Writing Center. The University’s center works with faculty and students to help create an environment that encourages and supports student learning, faculty enrichment, instructional design, and the use of technology, as their webpage says.

The University also has more than 80 active clubs and organizations where students can get involved, meet new people and try new things that they’ve never done before. 

“Have an open mind and appreciate that you’re going to meet people that are like no one you’ve ever met before. Then you’ll be able to understand their uniqueness and their diversity and what they can add to your life,” Thomas DeMarco, a rising senior and double major in criminal justice and psychology, said.

Most of the R.A.s agreed that it is important to explore the new opportunities available, but to also be able to set limits.

“Definitely do get involved, but don’t overwhelm yourself. It’s really important to manage your time coming into college, considering that it’s a new environment and you’re doing a lot of new things,” Carolina Chazez, a sophomore strategic communications major, said.

“Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. This is a great community. They want to embrace you, but they can’t if you don’t take the first step. So don’t be afraid to say ‘Hi’ to different people or be too afraid to join that club,” Jeffers said. “Align yourself with people in your life who will help you be successful and stay true to yourself and I think things will line up. At the end of the day, you’ll find your place here.”  

“We need you,” one mentor said to a boy sitting out, “and your dancing!”

With “The Spark” by musical artist Afrojack playing in the background, kids danced around during a game of musical chairs at The University of Scranton’s Retreat Center at Chapman Lake.

For one week in the summer, children from diverse backgrounds are brought together by SPARK, a program in which every participant feels needed.

Started in 2011 by Daniel Marx, a University of Scranton graduate and mathematics teacher at Scranton Preparatory School, and Patricia Vaccaro, director of the University’s Campus Ministries’ Center for Service and Social Justice, the SPARK program has always been a place to foster inclusivity.  

Even during a competitive game of musical chairs, the children ranging in age from 12 to 16 are encouraged to support each other and have fun. 

“We wanted to have a positive impact on community kids and the other thing was to offer it as an opportunity to our students as a growing experience,” Vaccaro said. 

Students from the University and Scranton Prep volunteer to mentor and lead lessons in the summer to children who are too young to work, but are also too old for summer camp.

Five groups, each with two University students and three Scranton Prep students, help serve breakfast, offer companionship, teach and encourage the children who come to participate in the SPARK program.

“[Here] they can learn to be themselves. We just tell them to be OK with who they are and try not to be someone they’re not. That also comes across in all of the topics they discuss this year,” Vaccaro said.

Each day a group presents a different topic to the children, such as bullying, individuality, social media, relationships and personal wellness.   

“It’s really the University students and the Scranton Prep students that are the heart of this and we’re just here to critique and make their programs the best they can be,” said Lauren Roote, a mathematics teacher at Scranton Prep whose been part of the SPARK program for two years.

It isn’t only the children who grow from the SPARK experience; it affects the mentors as well. After the game of musical chairs, a group of five mentors from both the University and Scranton Prep gave a presentation tackling the issue of bullying.

As she swayed back and forth and held a notebook in her shaking hands,

one mentor shared her powerful story on how bullying had continued to affect her life, even at that very moment. As she finished, everyone applauded her bravery and a few children wiped their tears away.

“Our students have to dig deep and work hard … They really are transformed by this,” Vaccaro said. 

While the children go home at the end of the day, the mentors stay over night at the Retreat Center, where they’re able to further bond and connect with their peers. 

“It’s important that they do stay because they form this bond as a team and as a group. I don’t think it would have the same effect if they were leaving and coming back everyday,” Roote said.

Shy and timid children break out of their shells and brighten up, according to Vaccaro. The SPARK program leaves no one forgotten or left in the dark because as Afrojack says, “We all got the spark!”

“Really, our goal is to just help some of the kids feel better about themselves” Vaccaro said.  

“Anti-Semitism is defined as a religiously-based complex of irrational, mythical and stereotypical beliefs about the diabolical, malevolent and all-powerful Jew infused in its modern secular form with racism and the belief that there is a Jewish conspiracy against mankind,” said Mark Cohen, Ph.D., the Khedouri A. Zilkha professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East, Emeritus, and professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He spoke at the Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute lecture at The University of Scranton recently.

Dr. Cohen presented his views on the past and present state of Muslim-Jewish relations by addressing Islamic views of the Jewish community in the middle ages at the lecture titled “Modern Myths of Muslim Anti-Semitism.”

“I can say with a great deal of confidence, in agreement with other seasoned scholars, that such anti-Semitism did not exist in the Islamic world in the middle ages,” Dr. Cohen said. “Of course, we should not make the mistake of thinking Jews lived in the middle ages as equals of Muslims.”

According to Dr. Cohen, Jewish people in the Islamic world were treated as second class subjects because they did not recognize the prophet Mohammad and the Quran.

“This kind of unbelief was not as threatening to Islam as Jewish unbelief was to Christians,” Dr. Cohen said. “For unbelief in Christianity means rejection of Jesus as messiah and as God.”

Even though Jews were treated this way, along with Christians, if they obeyed the laws in the Islamic nations they were offered benefits from the rulers, according to Dr. Cohen.

“As respected people of the book, the Jews and Christians enjoyed the status of a protected people,” Dr. Cohen said. “Who were entitled to security of life and property, freedom from forced conversion, communal autonomy and equality in the market. In return for the payment of an annual poll tax and recognizing the superiority of Islam by maintaining a low profile.”

Dr. Cohen then moved onto the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism in the modern age and provided reasons for this rise.

“The first is colonialism, which disrupted the traditional Muslim society,” Dr. Cohen said. “It engendered resentment against those Jews who identified with the European colonizers and the civilizing mission that seemed to be a path to modernization.”

This path towards modernizations from the Christian European colonizers seemed to separate Jews and Muslims in Dr. Cohen’s eyes.

“Colonialism drove a wedge between Arab Jews and Arab Muslims, who resisted colonialism,” Dr. Cohen said.

“Another factor is nationalism, influenced by European secular nationalism and imported into the middle east in the 19^th century, where it undermined some of the pluralism and relative tolerance that marked Muslim society in early centuries,” Dr. Cohen said. “In the case of Zionism, nationalism pitted Arab against Jew as rival claimants to the same land.”

“Muslim anti-Semitism took off later in the 19^th century, during the colonialism period, when European Christian Missionaries came to promote Christianity, at the expense of any other religion, fostered western style Anti-Semitic Jew hatred,” Dr. Cohen said.

The Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute was created in 1979 through an endowment funded by the local Jewish community. The Institute fosters a better understanding and appreciation of Judaism, Israel and their histories. It supports visits to the University by Jewish scholars and writers and supports library acquisitions, publications, faculty research, travel and other scholarly endeavors. The work of the Institute was further enhanced by a $1 million gift from Harry Weinberg in 1990.

A Romanian diplomat discussed the views Romanian people have of the United States and the impact Brexit will have on the European Union at the University’s fifth annual Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series, which was held on campus in April. The lecture by George Cristian Maior, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Romania to the United States, was part of the presentation entitled “The Rise of Romania: History. Culture. Economy.”

After the second world war Romania was under occupation by the Soviet Union and was under a communist regime. In 1989, the Romanian Revolution released Romania from a communist government.

“Even under communist rule over the Romanian population, there was an inspiration and admiration for the American way of life, for the idea of freedom even though we were under a dictatorship,” Ambassador Maior said.

Romania was the first communist country to host a visit by a president of the United States.

“He was surprised to be so well received in a communist country,” Ambassador Maior said about President Nixon’s visit. “He even said to Henry Kissinger, who joined him in the visit, ‘I’m better received in a communist country than in my own country.’”

Currently, Ambassador Maior said that most Romanians view the United States as an important ally.

“Constantly, 70 to 80 percent of Romanians consider the United States their best ally and their best friend,” Ambassador Maior said. “This says a lot about the fact that practically we are the most pro-American country – I would say, in central and eastern Europe, perhaps even all of Europe.”

When the conversation moved onto Brexit, Ambassador Maior expressed his concern.

“It is a negative development for the European Union and Europe,” Ambassador Maior said. “We are very disappointed with Brexit, but the reality of the realm is there was a referendum and the vote was as such.”

Brexit is a merging of the two words “Britain” and “exit,” symbolizing the United Kingdom’s vote in June of 2016 to leave the European Union.

“It will impact in a negative manner the economy of Europe and its strategic relevance because we are losing a country with very strategic knowledge and vision about the world,” Ambassador Maior said. “We still hope we will reach an agreement that is satisfactory to both Europe and Britain, because both parts will lose in my opinion. We’ll see what the future brings.”

At the conclusion of the lecture, performers from Philadelphia presented traditional dance and music from Romania. A reception immediately followed the performance.

The Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series invites international scholars from emerging democracies and countries in political and economic transition to visit the University to address issues that will enlighten and benefit students, faculty and the community at large. While visiting the campus, scholars deliver presentations on topics of interest to the academic community and meet informally with attendees, students and faculty.

The event, which was presented free of charge to the public, was made possible through the generosity of Dr. Nathan, a former professor in Scranton’s Kania School of Management who is now a tenured professor of management at St. John’s University in Queens, New York.

The University of Scranton’s Earth Day Fair, held recently in the Loyola Science Center atrium, featured student research projects and giveaways.

 “It’s a lot of fun to have everyone out here, and have a chance to take a break from school and still be doing something productive,” said Anne Ferketic ’19, health administration. Ferketic presented research she completed as part of a psychology class for professor Jessica Nolan, Ph.D. “I focused on the production cycle of cotton,” Ferketic said, and on how it impacts water and the environment.

Student researchers found simple but powerful ways to make positive changes for the Earth. Elena DiLorenzo, Psychology, ’19, persuaded students to commit to using fewer plastic straws each week.

“It is pretty normal to get a straw when you go to Starbucks or a restaurant,” DiLorenzo said. “If you do sign the pledge, you will be agreeing to reduce the amount of straws you use by five straws a week for the rest of the semester, which can make a huge impact.” Reducing plastic waste, DiLorenzo said, would help save marine animals such as sea turtles from consuming it.

Not every participant in the fair was a student. John Hambrose, Communications Manager for the Waste Management® Greater Mid-Atlantic Area, hoped to inspire students to envision how they will keep making an impact on the Earth in the future. Waste Management is North America’s largest residential recycler.

“The fair is a great opportunity to talk to people on a college campus, future decision-makers, about the environment,” said Hambrose. “We have some information about a product we’ve developed in NYC and in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where we’re taking food waste and we’re processing it … to make a slurry, that we then feed into a biodigester which makes natural gas.”

Some stands offered coffee, travel mugs or other items to take home.

Visitors were also allowed to pet the University’s milk snake, Zorro. Milk snakes are native to Pennsylvania.

The Earth Day Fair was among nearly a dozen events organized by the University’s Office of Sustainability.

A professor of economics from the University of Chicago presented “Crony Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics” at The University of Scranton’s Henry George Seminar, held in April on campus. Chang-Tai Hsieh, Ph.D., spoke at the seminar, presented by the University’s Economics and Finance Department and the campus chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon.

“In terms of the overall ease of starting a business, China ranks 151 in the world,” Dr. Hseih said. “In 2013 there were 185 countries, so that’s very near the bottom in terms of the overall ease of starting a business.”

Dr. Hsieh provided an example of what it takes to expand a small business in a small city in China.

“Think about a small noodle shop. What you need to do is pay 95 taxes and get 192 official chops (referred to as a seal or stamp) of approval. Those are the official signatures,” Dr. Hsieh said. “There is an official list of rules and regulations that on the face of it looks like it is going to kill any business.”

Paying the 95 taxes and getting the 192 chops is required by all business in China unless a business can strike a deal with the local government.

“What you quickly find out is that every single branch of the government, at the local level, is focused on business,” Dr. Hsieh said. “A big part of what that means is basically carving out special deals, or exceptions, to the 95 taxes and 192 official chops.”

The members of the local government can essentially wave past these requirements for businesses if they deem them important enough.

The Henry George Seminar is supported financially by a grant from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

“Veterans, especially educated veterans, it is my honest belief, will be the generation that leads during the hard times that are in front of us. They are the ones that will solve the complex problems of our country,” said Jared Lyon, president and CEO of Student Veterans of America (SVA), during his keynote address at The University of Scranton’s College/University Regional Veterans Education Representative Conference in Leahy Hall. The conference was sponsored through a grant from Lockheed Martin.

Lyon discussed the history of the GI Bill and its initial unpopularity with some of this country’s university presidents, who, in 1944, could not envision veterans in higher education.

“There were op-eds written by university presidents … begging Congress not to add a provision for education, and quite literally, calling for the President of the United States to veto the bill,” Lyon said. “‘These [veterans] maybe weren’t smart enough to get into college. I mean otherwise, how did they end up fighting the war?’”

Negative assumptions about student veterans have always existed, Lyon said, but veterans have always proved stereotypes wrong.

Veterans “not only defended the world, freedom, and democracy,” Lyon said, “but then came home and were quite literally the most successful students in higher education, with their top three majors of business, STEM and health-related fields.” Lyon explained student veterans today are the most educated subset of the population, and have some of the highest GPAs and success rates of any other group after international students.

The GI Bill paved the way for other once-nontraditional students to pursue education rights, including women, minorities, people with disabilities and people of lower socioeconomic status.

“The happy accident of history is that the original GI Bill made education available for a generation of warriors,” Lyon said. “It democratized higher education for not just veterans, but for all Americans.”

Recognizing veterans’ right to education enables them to become leaders and continue serving their country, said Lyon. The SVA, which assists over 500,000 veterans in the US, advocates for them on their path to success.

“We are yesterday’s warriors, becoming today’s scholars, who will most assuredly be tomorrow’s leaders,” said Lyon.

“The Cold War and its influence lasted, as you know, for decades. The majority of the fighters for freedom and democracy didn’t live to see the fall of the Iron Curtain in the fall of 1989. Therefore, we historians need to catalog their efforts and make sure that their work will not be forgotten,” said Martin Nekola, Ph.D., of Prague, at The University of Scranton’s Schemel Forum collaborative program with the History Department, held recently on campus.

Dr. Nekola, a Czech political scientist, historian and scholar from Charles University, presented “For the Freedom of Captive Nations: Eastern European Exiles in Postwar America,” which explored the formation and development of organizations of political exiles during the Cold War.

“Each time we have the opportunity to hear a scholar or a journalist from abroad, I believe we make this institution a better place,” said Sondra Meyers, Schemel Forum director. “I am especially pleased to welcome a Czech scholar from Charles University, Martin Nekola. While we are in one of those eras in America where immigration is under scrutiny and discouraged, there is no doubt that immigrants have enriched the intellectual and cultural climate of our nation.”

Dr. Nekola examined the general conditions leading up to the anti-communist exile movements in the countries of east-central and south-east Europe in the West.

“In the 1920s and 1930s, there were about two million first- and second- generation Poles in this country, in America, almost one million Czechs and Slovaks, 300,000 Hungarians, 260,000 Yugoslavs and 150,000 Romanians,” said Dr. Nekola.

Dr. Nekola also discussed the internal crises and conflicts surrounding anti-communist exiles, which included the lack of proper leadership and the surfacing of propaganda. 

“There were fears that World War II and the years preceding had exposed many reasons for distrust and bitterness. Nevertheless, the complicated relations between the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and Romanians did not prevent a common bond against the communist enemy,” said Dr. Nekola.

The Czech scholar addressed the varying viewpoints of what liberation meant to different parts of each exile community, as well as the impact those viewpoints had on society as a whole.

“Naturally, there were different views and disagreements about what would constitute an effective liberation. The conservative and extremist parts of the exile communities claimed that only a complete eradication of communism would suffice. The majority, however, said that many of the economic and social changes introduced under the communists would have to stay because they had become a part of each nation’s life,” said Dr. Nekola.

Dr. Nekola is a researcher on the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague. His research has mostly focused on non-democratic regimes, the Communism era, and the East-European anti-communist exiles in the United States throughout the Cold War. Moreover, Dr. Nekola has conducted research regarding political refugees from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II and their migration to different parts of the world, at both the Hoover Institution and Stanford University.

“Almost exactly 50 years ago, March 31, 1968, when Lyndon Johnson stepped before the television cameras and part way through the speech he said, ‘I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination from my party for another term as your president,’” said Pulitzer Prize-winning author Fredrik Logevall, Ph.D.

            The mystery behind former President Johnson’s reason for not seeking another term as president was discussed a University of Scranton’s Schemel Forum luncheon seminar, titled “JFK, LBJ and the Paradox of Vietnam” and presented by Dr. Logevall recently on campus.

            “I think he withdrew because of the war and because of the divisions that the war had created,” said Dr. Logevall, who won the 2013 Pulizer Prize in history for his book “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam.”

            The United States had been involved in Vietnam beforehand in the 1950s with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower sending over military advisory groups to Vietnam to help the Republic of Vietnam fight the North Vietnamese communists said Dr. Logevall. In the early 1960s, however, former President John F. Kennedy increased United States presence in Vietnam significantly.

            “He also authorized a coup in his final month against the south Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, a fellow catholic, somebody who had been president of south Vietnam for a long time and American officials concluded the war could not be won with Diem,” Dr. Logewall said.

            The coup was successful and Diem was assassinated along with his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu on November 1, 1963.

            “JFK dictates into a machine (recording device), on the fourth of November, his thoughts on the Diem coup and he says this, ‘I feel we must bear a good deal of responsibility for what’s happened,’” Dr. Logevall said. “It’s testimony to how much he struggled with this coup.”

Three weeks later former President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

“Then Lyndon Johnson takes power and of course now is dealt a difficult hand in part because of the coup,” Dr. Logevall said.

In March of 1965 former President Johnson officially sent United States combat forces into Vietnam.

“Publically Johnson would project optimism about the war but the truth is he was always a bleak skeptic on Vietnam,” Dr. Logevall said. “In May of 1964, he says to McGeorge Bundy, who is the national security advisor, ‘I don’t think it is worth fighting for and I don’t think we can get out, it’s just the biggest damn mess.’ That is almost a full year before the first United States ground troops are dispatched into the war.”

Dr. Logevall said the mystery still remains of why former President Johnson pursued a path of war in Vietnam when he had his own doubts.

“Surely part of the answer to the question is that Johnson felt if he did this gradually without putting the nation on full war footing he could take the path of least resistance,” Dr. Logevall said. “Especially in domestic political terms it was an easier proposition for Johnson to hope that these new measures would succeed.”

Former President Johnson would continue his hope that his path of least resistance would succeed, until the end of his one term presidency and he left the White House with the nation still involved in Vietnam. It would take until April of 1975 for the United States to officially leave Vietnam.

“I would say that from day one until the end Lyndon Johnson was a hawk on Vietnam, this proves that even doubting warriors can be committed warriors,” Dr. Logevall said.

A reception and book signing at the Lackawanna Historical Society’s Catlin House followed the lecture.

The Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon Seminar series is sponsored by Munley Law.

“In the 1900s, a huge shift in attitude toward the performance of Shakespeare on the stage was taking shape. The latter part of the 19^th century saw the conclusion of what we might call actor’s theater, while the start of the 20^th century featured what we term author’s theater,” said Michael Friedman, Ph.D., professor of English and theatre at The University of Scranton, in his lecture “Shakespeare on the Stage in 1900: From Actor’s Theater to Author’s Theater.”

Dr. Friedman’s talk was one of two lectures presented at an art exhibit reception for P.W. Costello’s theatrical portraits, which are currently on display in the Heritage Room of Weinberg Memorial Library.

Dr. Friedman described the transition between these two types of theatrical performances and discussed specific Shakespearian examples with attendees.

“The main difference between these two attitudes is that in actor’s theater, the work of performers and designers are the main focus. In author’s theater, the actors and designers exist to serve the play by presenting the author’s intentions,” said Dr. Friedman.

Also at the reception, Thomas Costello spoke about master penman P.W. Costello’s career as well as his great grandfather’s collection, “Distinguished for Their Talents,” which is comprised of pen and ink portraits of theatrical personalities drawn between 1905 and 1930.

“There is a good cross-sampling of his work across all genres – drama, tragedy, Shakespearian, comedy, histories, music – it’s all represented here. And it’s all unique. There’s different styles, colors, subject matter, poses,” said Thomas Costello.

“His reading, his interest in literature, his proximity to the heart of the theater district were all developing at a time where economic, industrial and cultural growth were growing in the 1900s – leading to an interest in the arts. And that’s why theaters thrived. And he loved theater,” said Thomas Costello of his great grandfather.

Thomas Costello spoke to community members, faculty and students about specific portraits in the collection and P.W. Costello’s self-taught artistic practices that defined him as one of the best engrossers and illustrators in the country.

Following the presentations of the two speakers, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions and explore Costello’s exhibit on the fifth floor of the library.

The exhibit will be on display through April 23 during normal library hours. Images of the portraits are also available online through the library’s digital collections website. For more information, email archives@scranton.edu or call 570-941-6341.

“If we use children’s literature to contextualize the complexity of our world for young people, we can grow the next generation of world leaders while also developing their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills,” said Debra Pellegrino, Ed.D., dean of The Panuska College of Professional Studies at The University of Scranton, who recently gave a lecture titled “Using Children’s Literature to Teach Social Justice” to Northeastern Reading Association members.

The Northeastern Pennsylvania Reading Association is a professional organization serving more than 30 school districts, colleges, libraries and child care providers in Lackawanna, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties. The association is dedicated to improving and promoting literacy in the area schools and communities served, and is a local council of the Keystone State Reading Association and the International Literacy Association.

A former elementary school teacher and professor of literacy and elementary education, Dean Pellegrino has decades of academic and practical experience teaching literacy. In addition to numerous scholarly papers on teaching, literacy and Jesuit education, she is the author of a chapter entitled “Social Justice and the Ignatian Tradition” in Jesuit Education and Social Justice: the Pedagogy of Educating the Educators.

Dean Pellegrino is also a lover of literacy who strives to make a difference in the Scranton community and beyond.

“You can make a difference. Show children how they can contribute make the world fairer. Give children examples of when social justice is at work and when it’s not. Help children understand better a variety of cultures, types of people and situations,” said Dean Pellegrino as she discussed the

importance of utilizing children’s literature to provide an opportunity for children to explore and learn about new people, places and ideas.

 “Using books for social justice issues tells untold stories, and assures that there are multiple ways to look at something – a person, story or history,” said Dean Pellegrino.

Dean Pellegrino also emphasized the power of writing journals and the benefits of students regularly recording their observations to be more aware of the world around them and how they can make a difference.

 “I don’t think you can understand literacy without understanding the connection between reading and writing. To me, a writer’s notebook can be many things. It’s a place to make mistakes, to experiment, to record overheard conversations or family stories, to remember an inspiring quotation, to ask questions, to record language, to tell the truth or to lie, to remember things, or to describe a picture or a person or an image you can’t get out of your head,” said Dean Pellegrino.

The lecture contained interactive elements in working directly with children’s literature and breaking it down through content brainstorming and picture walks. Each attendee received a copy of Listen to the Wind, a children’s story written by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth.

“It is a great time to be a feminist. Feminism is experiencing a comeback. It is swift wind sweeping the country. And it’s great to be the wind – the wind is powerful. The wind is unpredictable. The wind has the ability to mess things up. So today, I am going to share with you how, as part of the Guerrilla Girls on Tour, I messed things up,” said Donna Kaz aka Aphra Behn, Guerrilla Girls on Tour! member, who recently gave a lecture on “PUSH/PUSHBACK: Nine steps to make a difference with art and activism” at The University of Scranton.

Kaz, a leading feminist voice in the nation on how to combine art and activism, has led the touring activist troupe, Guerrilla Girls on Tour!, for nearly twenty years.

“Sexism and discrimination are everywhere. The arts are probably more discriminatory than huge corporations because they don’t have to follow the laws of equal opportunity. Where there’s more money, there’s more discrimination,” said Kaz.

Kaz discussed the evident lack of equality between men and women, especially in the theater world, and addressed some solutions to the issues of inequality that are plaguing the nation.

“I’m not here to say that the work of white men should go away. I’m not talking about eliminating work that is already here. I’m not talking about that Shakespeare should go away. I’m talking about equality. And there has to be a place at the table for everyone. We have just been fed one narrative for a long time, and it’s time for other narratives to come forward. Because we are not a rich country without the diversity of those narratives,” said Kaz.

The activist also mentioned how her experiences in surviving domestic violence shaped her career path as a feminist in the arts.

“I was just really embarrassed by the whole thing, and it took me twelve years to finally open up about it. And it hit me: I’m a survivor. And that was twelve years after the incident. I really became involved in the domestic violence movement and started writing about it,” said Kaz. Her memoir, “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour” was published in 2016. She speaks regularly at conferences, universities and festivals and has won numerous awards.

The lecture concluded with a question and answer session with attendees, where Kaz offered advice on the future of equality and the steps individuals can take to make a difference.

The Guerrilla Girls on Tour presentation was co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program, the Jane Kopas Women’s Center, the Multicultural Center, the Schemel Forum, the Art and Music Program and the Hope Horn Gallery at The University of Scranton.

College students from across Northeast Pennsylvania gathered at The University of Scranton on Saturday to attend the annual Ignite Student Leadership Conference and hone their leadership skills.

Award-winning entrepreneur and author Justin Jones-Fosu provided the keynote address at the conference.

“For me this is about the totality of who you are and not just about what you do as a student or what you do as a leader – but who you are as a person,” said Jones-Fosu, who travels the world spoken and has given more than 450 presentations at 250-plus organizations.

Jones-Fosu discussed four traits that he feels make leaders successful. The traits are being humble, empowering, relational and optimistic. When it came to being relational, he wanted students to become people for others.

“Give your all, fight for those that you serve,” Jones-Fosu said.

Students from The University of Scranton, Bloomsburg University, Marywood University, Misericordia University, Luzerne County Community College, Northampton Community College and Lackawanna College attended the 26, 50-minute-long concurrent sessions on multiple leadership topics held throughout the day. The format allowed participants to choose the educational sessions they wanted to attend. The topics ranged from the importance of self-care to workshops about safe-zones.

            Originally named the Royal Leadership Conference, the Ignite Student Leadership Conference started eight years ago, founded by the University’s Center for Student Engagement with the goal of engaging students to become future leaders.

P.W. Costello, Scranton artist and master penman, became a national figure in the early 1900s for his work in engrossing, the calligraphic embellishment of documents. An avid reader of Shakespeare, Costello loved theater and classic literature, which served as the backbone of his work with portraitures.

Through April 23, “Distinguished for Their Talents – Theatrical Portraits by Scranton Master Penman P.W. Costello, 1905-1930” is on display in the Heritage Room of Weinberg Memorial Library.

Thomas W. Costello, great-grandson of the artist, discussed the artist, the collection and its inspiration.

“He loved theater. And he loved classical literature. He was an avid reader. Many people in Scranton knew him as both an engrosser and a portrait artist, particularly if they were the subject of one of his engrossed documents that included a portrait. Those who frequented one or both of his restaurants, lined with framed drawings, knew him primarily as a portrait artist,” said Thomas Costello.

P.W. Costello was born in the Minooka section of Scranton in 1866, the son of poor Irish immigrants. He had no formal training or education as an artist, instead honing his skills by reading and studying art books. At the time Costello began his engrossing work, there were only about 200 engrossers in the country.

Using photographs of prominent stage figures for reference, Costello created hundreds of pen portraits in black ink and umber or rose-colored watercolor pigments. Cross-hatching, stippling and brushed, layered washes were trademark elements of his portrait work.

“It took him a couple decades to develop a style. The exhibit shows his refinement of a cross-hatching technique that he mastered by the early part of the century,” said Thomas Costello.

Costello’s peers in the profession considered him to be one of the best engrossers and illustrators in the country. He was a self-taught artist whose career in Scranton spanned a total of 45 years. Through correspondence courses and detailed, published art instructions, he dedicated himself to the education of young pen artists. 

On Tuesday, March 27, at 6 p.m. in the Heritage Room of the Weinberg Memorial Library, Thomas Costello will speak on his great grandfather’s career, and Michael Friedman, Ph.D., professor of English and theatre at The University of Scranton, will speak on Shakespearean performance at the turn of the 20^th century.

To learn more about Scranton’s master penman, visit scranton.edu/library/costello to read Thomas Costello’s biographical essay, “The Life and Art of P.W. Costello” and to view a digitized version of the exhibit.

For additional information, call 570-941-6341 or email archives@scranton.edu.

“Broad-based property ownership was necessary for a democratic republic to exist and sustain itself and not to fall apart,” said Joseph R. Blasi, Ed.D., the J. Robert Beyster Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, at Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon held recently at The University of Scranton.

A former top policy advisor on employee share ownership and profit sharing to the Clinton presidential campaign, Dr. Blasi explored the concept of economic inequality in his lecture titled “The Citizen’s Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21^st Century.”

“Dr. Blasi has built his stellar career on idealism. I would say a pragmatic idealism. His look to employee ownership is an important approach to arriving at economic fairness. He is widely considered the world’s leading expert on the subject of how workers and companies can share profits and ownership to strengthen the middle class. He has advised leaders in many parts of the world on that subject, working with both Republicans and Democrats all over the country,” said Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum.

Dr. Blasi provided brief background of his book, “The Citizen's Share: Putting Ownership Back Into Democracy,” published in 2013. He discussed the American history behind owning shares and reviewed companies that have gone global within the past few decades.

“You can create as many corporations as you want and as many shares as you want. Profit sharing is the way of the modern world. A number of American entrepreneurs have gone global, very quickly, and have started thinking of this idea of broad-based property ownership. One of the first was the Pillsbury family,” said Dr. Blasi.

The author also discussed the importance of what his ideals mean for each individual, as well as on a larger scale, specifically in Lackawanna County.

 “The people who are able to have economic liberty now are people who own capital. They own stock, bonds and real estate, and they live off of the income from that capital. These are the members of the population that have economic liberty,” said Dr. Blasi. “The rest of us are not in that situation. And this impacts you because today 77 percent of all wealth and property in the hands of the richest 10 percent.”

Dr. Blasi teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on corporate governance at Rutgers University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has written a total of 13 books.

The World Affairs Luncheon Seminar series is sponsored by Munley Law.

For more information on Schemel Forum programs and memberships, contact Sondra Myers, Schemel Forum director, at 570-941-4089 or sondra.myers@scranton.edu.

“When I first met Berenice D’Vorzon I was 17, a freshman art major at Wilkes College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and she was my adviser. I was terrified of her,” Darlene Miller-Lanning, Ph.D., said. “Her reputation preceded her. She was thought to be a very tough teacher, very passionate, and she would not let you get away with taking the easy way.”

Dr. Miller-Lanning, director of the University’s Hope Horn Gallery spoke at an art gallery lecture for “The Berenice D’Vorzon Collection at The University of Scranton.” A collection of D’Vorzon’s work is on display in the Hope Horn Gallery through Mar. 9.

“If you told me that I would be standing here tonight talking about her work – that would’ve been unimaginable,” Dr. Miller-Lanning said.

D’Vorzon was an abstract painter, whose works mainly portrays nature through her eyes.

“She painted many images that dealt with the idea of landscape,” Dr. Miller-Lanning said. “The idea that life, death, nature and creative energy are very dynamic – that whole cycle and process is very important – that is what she wanted to address in her own work.”

D’Vorzon’s love for nature allowed her to do a series of works that featured swamps in Alabama and Florida.

“She would talk a lot about the idea that everything is born and lives, grows and dies but sometimes that takes a very long time,” Dr. Miller-Lanning said.  “Things changed very rapidly in the swamp, so that was very interesting to her.”

D’Vorzon travelled frequently and the places she visited impacted her work.

“She liked water, rivers, volcanos, glaciers, storms, hurricanes and downpours in the tropics, all of these things were subjects that attracted her attention,” said Dr. Miller-Lanning.

D’Vorzon died in 2014 and many of painting were donated to The University of Scranton. Her memory still lives on in her abstract paintings of nature, which are displayed throughout the Loyola Science Center.

Jim Remsen, author of the book “Embattled Freedom,” spoke about the local history during the civil war era at The University of Scranton’s Schemel Forum Collaborative Program with the Lackawanna Historical Society. The lecture was held at Weinberg Memorial Library in the fall semester.

Remsen said Waverly was one of the way stations of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania.

“The fugitive slaves escaping from the south were helped on their way through,” Remsen said. “As time went on, the support was such that some of the fugitives decided to actually stay, which is remarkable.”

Remsen then discussed the case of black farmer William Fogg, who was born a free man and owned property in what is now Scott Township. In 1835, Fogg tried vote and was rejected at the polls because of his race.

“When Fogg was turned away, he actually got his back up, and he took the bold step of filing a civil suit against the county board of elections,” Remsen said. “He accused them of quote, ‘fraudulently and maliciously intending to injure and damnify him’ end quote.”

Remsen stated the board of elections claimed Fogg was not a citizen because of his race and, therefore, he could not vote. Fogg’s lawyers argued that “free blacks in good standing, like Fogg, were entitled to vote by federal privilege in state elections,” Remsen said.

The case went to county court and the county judge at the time, David Scott, who is the namesake of Scott Township, ruled in favor of Fogg and held the election board liable for damages.

“This is a major case about black people’s rights to do basic things like vote. It was a seminal case and it came to a head right here in our backyard,” Remsen said.

The county appealed and the case went to the state supreme court, which at the time was under state chief justice John Bannister Gibson, who ruled that black people could not vote in Pennsylvania. This would come to change later with the installment of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.

“From 1837 to 1870 no black person could vote in Pennsylvania because of this case,” Remsen said. “I don’t know if this pains you, but it is depressing stuff – this whole story – but it’s in our history and we can’t try to deny it.”

A reception and book signing at the Lackawanna Historical Society’s Catlin House followed the lecture.

“We are victims of our old history, our old narrative. But history is not in the past. It’s actually where we are now. We are the production of history, and this is where the forming of the individual happens,” said Sami Adwan, Ph.D., co-founder and co-director of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), at The University of Scranton’s Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon Seminar held recently on campus.

PRIME, an organization that Dr. Adwan has helped to develop, is a joint Palestinian and Israeli non-governmental organization established in 1998 consisting of teachers and researchers aiming to create school history curriculums that include historical narrative textbooks.

“It’s a personal pleasure and distinct honor to welcome our speaker to the podium. He has come the furthest distance for our speaker series – he resides in Bethlehem, and I don’t mean Pennsylvania. Sami Adwan is a professor of education and taught for many years at Bethlehem University. Last year, he spent his sabbatical year at a university in Sweden and is known internationally for his work with PRIME, an educational model igniting Palestinian and Israeli educators. Sami is a pioneer in his field and an inspiration to others who recognize our interdependence on this planet and find ways to engage across borders and boundaries,” said Sondra Myers, director of the University’s Schemel Forum.

Dr. Adwan discussed the relevance of history today, emphasizing the importance of history narratives over facts when it comes to teaching this subject.

“There is no end to history – it is a continual digging and remembering of the past and is filtered by subjective reality and interests. There are facts in history, but the narrative is what we consider to be important to remember from them. It’s a matter of selection and priority, highlighting the why and the how,” said Dr. Adwan. 

The professor also examined the purposes of teaching history and how teachers should find a balance between personal desires versus political ones in the classroom.

“Mainly, the purposes of teaching history in times of open conflict are to sustain the conflict, justify self wrong-doings, support political actions, remain united, and guard interests and ideologies,” said Dr. Adwan.

Aside from his work as a professor and with PRIME, Dr. Adwan has published widely on Palestinian education and on the role of education in peace-building. He is also a co-author of Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine.

The World Affairs Luncheon Seminar series is sponsored by Munley Law.

David Autor, Ph.D., professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-director of the School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative, discussed the impact on the U.S. of China’s growth as a world-manufacturing exporter from 1980 to 2014, what he refers to as “The China Shock,” at The University of Scranton’s 32^nd annual Henry George Lecture.

“China goes from essentially zero percent in 1980 to about 20 percent at present day and that is a remarkable achievement,” Dr. Autor said about the growth of the world-manufacturing exporter. “That is world historic.”

The United States’ world-manufacturing exports during the same period of time peaked at around the year 2000 and fell after that rapidly.

“These two things, it will turn out, are connected to one another,” Dr. Autor said.

According to Dr. Autor, China growth is due to efforts to modernize their country in the 1980s. China created special economic zones along their southern coast, freed the price and wage controls for manufacturing and production, and allowed foreign investment and Western technology into their country.

“This was a remarkable change, China’s productivity rose at a stellar rate, eventually a quarter of a billion people migrated from agricultural areas into these urban areas of production,” Dr. Autor said. “This created a growth of productivity and wealth unlike the world has previously seen.”

China’s growth in productivity and exporting resulted in the loss of manufacturing worker’s jobs in the U.S.

Dr. Autor also discussed how the “China Shock” affected voting patterns in the United States, “in particular, with the rise of populism, by populism I mean a specific type of politics that sort of tells a narrative of a good, hard-working people taken advantage of by an elite.”

Dr. Autor studied whether this “populist activity” was prevalent in areas where voters were exposed to the China trade shock and saw how voting patterns shifted in those locations. He observed in the House of Representatives from 2002 to 2010 that there was a movement of conservative Republicans being elected consistent with voters in the locations that were affected by the trade shock.

“This particular phenomenon contributed to a pretty epochal seat change in United States politics,” Dr. Autor said.

Considered the preeminent public lecture series on economics in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Henry George Lecture Series is presented by the University’s Economics and Finance Department and the campus chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, an international honor society for economics. Among the distinguished list of speakers who have spoken at previous lectures are nine winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics: Robert Shiller (2013), Tom Sargent (2011), Peter Diamond (2010), Paul Krugman (2008), Joseph Stiglitz (2001), George Akerlof (2001), Amartya Sen (1998), Robert Lucas (1995) and Robert Solow (1987). The lecture series is named in honor of the 19th century American economist and social reformer and is supported financially by a grant from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

The University’s 32^nd Henry George Lecture took place in the Grand Ballroom in the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel in November.

Students from local elementary and middle schools learned about Ghana’s culture and language during an

International Education Week event held at The University of Scranton.

Nearly 100 students from Prescott Elementary School, The Lutheran Academy and North Pocono Elementary and Middle School came to the University in November to hear international student Ekow Aikins, a MBA student at the University and a native of Ghana, talk about his country.

Aikins began the lecture by explaining the symbolism and meaning of the colors represented in Ghana’s flag. The red symbolizes the blood of those who died in Ghana’s struggle for independence from Great Britain; the gold represents the mineral wealth of the country; green represents the country’s lush fields and forests; and the black star is the symbol of African emancipation.

Aikins also talked about Ghana’s traditional dress, food, tribes and regions. He also showed images of places that signify Ghana’s independence in a slideshow. He told the elementary school students how most Ghanaian people name their children by the days of the week they were born. For example, Ghanaian male children born on Wednesday could possibly be named Kwaku and female children born on Friday could possibly be named Afua.

The lecture ended with a question and answer session. The local students then had the chance to taste a sampling of traditional Ghanaian food.

The lecture was sponsored by the University’s Office of International Programs and Services and was part of International Education Week, which is a joint operation by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education. Its purpose is to commend the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide.

“Culture – it has to do with certain paradigmatic things, what your relationship is to the Earth, building spontaneous sociable experiences – these are all cultural attributes. It turns out that people with certain cultures are more open to doing things in a way that promotes innovation,” said Michael C. Fairbanks ’79, H’06, chairman of the board at Silver Creek Medicines and fellow at the Weatherhead Institute for International Affairs at Harvard University. He spoke at a November Schemel Forum Munley Law World Affairs Luncheon at The University of Scranton.

Fairbanks, who has done extensive work in Africa’s economic development as well as biotechnology, explored the concept of citizenship and cultural change in his lecture titled “Scholarship, Service and Integrative Thinking.”

“On the one hand a dear friend, an alumnus of the University, and a person who in a way changed my life by encouraging me to pursue my life’s work in Africa, Mike is a pioneer in promoting entrepreneurship that believes in promoting the culture of citizenship to live in harmony. He has been advising the President of Rwanda, as well as a dozen other presidents and prime ministers from around the world,” said Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum.

Fairbanks discussed the five preconditions that are needed for a change in a country, a useful model that is the foundation for his book, “Plowing the Sea: Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Growth in the Developing World.”

“In order for a country to change, it needs a crisis. It’s a useful thing that can galvanize a response among people, and it’s critical for a transformation to take place. You also need a cultural receptivity for change – a heart and mind that are open to change,” said Fairbanks.

The author also discussed the need for new knowledge in developing countries, providing a moral purpose, and the necessity of adequate leaders.

“Entrepreneurs are born, not changed. We need people who are more generous, more concerned about the future than the past, and people who take more rational risks. These are the traits of an entrepreneur,” said Fairbanks.

Fairbanks has advised presidents in Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Asia on competitiveness and private sector development. Additionally, he has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Hill, Fox News and Huffington Post.

The lecture concluded with a question and answer session with the audience, where Fairbanks addressed lack of efficient leadership in our own country in addition to a need for philosophy.

The World Affairs Luncheon Seminar series is sponsored by Munley Law.

“When you have a series of themes, illustrations and allusions, then we are justified to say that the singer, the lyricist, is trying to do something. Understanding the dimension of the song gives us an even deeper understanding of the artist on a personal level,” said Azzan Yadin-Israel, Ph.D., a professor of Jewish studies and classics at Rutgers University, at The University of Scranton Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute lecture titled “The Theologies of Bruce Springsteen.”

Dr. Yaden-Israel is the author of “The Grace of God and the Grace of Man: The Theologies of Bruce Springsteen,” for which he researched underlying biblical themes in Bruce Springsteen songs. He discussed the numerous Old Testament themes and interpretations of biblical passages from Springsteen songs, including “Thunder Road,” “Adam Raised a Cain,” and “Jesus Was an Only Son.”

“Springsteen is not a theologian in any sense, but over the course of his writing, he returns to these biblical themes over and over again. His early exposure to Catholicism is the pallet he used to create his work, his artistic work,” said Dr. Yaden-Israel.

The author also addressed how the Old Testament served as a rich source of inspiration to Springsteen’s work.

“The stories of Genesis that contain stories of relationships between fathers and sons really resonates with him. Springsteen recognized the centrality of religion later in life that eventually transcribed into certain songs open for the public’s interpretation,” said Dr. Yaden-Israel.

“Although his early writing is mostly of rabbinic literature and things of that nature, a couple of years ago, Dr. Yaden-Israel published a book. Trust me when I tell you, in addition to being an expert on Bruce Springsteen, he is also an expert on the theological ideas he talks about,” said Marc Shapiro, Ph.D., the Weinberg Chair of Judaic Studies at the University.

Dr. Yaden-Israel earned his bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University, and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley and Graduate Theological Union. Most of the courses Dr. Yaden-Israel teaches are on rabbinic literature, classical Jewish philosophy and Plato.

The lecture concluded with a question and answer session with attendees, where Dr. Yaden-Israel discussed some of the challenges he has faced with his research.

“The academic community doesn’t always know what to do with popular culture. I think that’s a shame. There can be good things that come from cross-pollination,” said Dr. Yaden-Israel.

The University of Scranton hosted a discussion about “Trust, Credibility and the News” led by professional journalists and student and faculty representatives of the University’s Department of Communication.

Panelists who participated in the event, which was held in the Forum of Leahy Hall in late October, were Larry Holeva, executive editor of The Times-Tribune, Citizens’ Voice and Standard Speaker; Dave Bohman, investigative reporter at WNEP-TV; Matthew Reavy, Ph.D., associate professor of communication at the University; and Steven DePrimo, managing editor of The Aquinas. Mark Cohen, president of the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, moderated the discussion.

The discussion began by highlighting current challenges faced by the news media, including the transition of print sources into an online format. In the spring semester of 2017, The Aquinas changed from print to fully digital format.

“Social media is one of the most successful tools toward driving people to a website,” DePrimo said. “We started a new position this year called social media manager and they are in charge of all social media under the name Scranton Aquinas.”

Panelists also addressed the issue of news credibility.

“We make sure the information we provide goes through a real set of checks and balances,” Holeva said. “It’s really important that you make decisions based on information that has been vetted, that is accurate, that has been challenged, been pushed through an editing process and is not coming out of someone’s opinion.”

Bohman said WNEP-TV has a rigid scripting process.

“There have been some stories that never made air because one of the two people that do our script approval process in a major story will look at it and say that’s not good enough,” Bohman said.

When incorrect information is presented by a journalist, Bohman said was important to inform the public immediately of the error.

“People will respect you more when you make a mistake and you own it as soon as possible,” Bohman said.

“The two things everybody should be doing is accountability, which means stand up for what you’ve done, and transparency, which means show what you’ve done and ideally show why you’ve done something,” Dr. Reavy said. “If you have to make a tough ethical decision that you know a lot of your readers will disagree with, you should be transparent and say here’s why we made the choices that we made.”

Dr. Reavy discussed news media bias at the national level.

“On social issues you definitely see a left bias, whether it’s abortion, affirmative action, same-sex marriage, immigration or trans-gender issues right down the line journalists are going to be much more likely to be on the left side of those issues,” Dr. Reavy said. “On other issues, for example capitalism, journalists are going to have a right wing bias. They’re going to be pro-business because they work for corporations that have to make money.”

Dr. Reavy said the current political situation, with news focused on Republicans in control of the government, is not helping the media improve the public’s perception of their credibility.

“If only we had a Democrat as president that we could really investigate right now that would be great for media credibility,” Dr. Reavy said.

The discussion ended with panelists describing the passion they have for their profession.

“I love being out in the community, speaking with as many people as I can, digging through old files for number that may cause me to question my sources,” DePrimo said. “That’s what gets me up in the morning, gets me through my classes during the day and what puts me in the office until 2 a.m.”

The discussion was sponsored by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, The Times-Tribune, and the Department of Communication at the University.

English and theatre professor Rebecca Beal, Ph.D., was awarded a grant from The University of Scranton’s Strategic Initiative Fund to enable students in her first-year seminar not only to read, discuss and study a Pulitzer Prize-winning book in class, but also to share their insights in a service initiative with residents of the city of Scranton. The fund supports innovative projects that will have a positive impact on the student experience and further the goals of the University’s Strategic Plan to engage, integrate and globalize the student experience.

Through the grant, students in Dr. Beal’s first-year seminar course “Latest and Greatest. Prize-winning Fiction, Poetry and Theatre” participated in the city’s Scranton Reads program by facilitating group discussions about the book Gilead at libraries throughout Lackawanna County during the month of October.

Freshmen Catherine O’Callaghan of Peapack, New Jersey, and Kathryn Antonawich of West Islip, New York, facilitated the book discussion at the Albright Memorial Library on Monday, Oct. 16.

“It’s going to be interesting to see the difference between what we think as freshmen at the University versus what the community thinks,” O’Callaghan said. “I think people will have different perspectives depending on their age, gender and background.”

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is a novel set in Gilead, Iowa, written as a memoir of Reverend John Ames, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Ames remembers the experiences of his father and grandfather so he can share them with his son. The book focuses on the dynamics of Ames’ family, his life in Gilead, Iowa, the struggle of coming to terms with death and missing out on his loved one’s lives. Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005.

The students facilitated the discussion around four key themes seen throughout the book: faith, anger, family and death. The students used quotes from the book to prompt community members into a conversation about the book. Even though the students analyzed the book and crafted the discussion together, Antonawich valued the community’s views on the themes of the book.

“It’s easy for us to have the same opinion and it’s better to get other people’s opinions on it too,” Antonawich said. 

When the conversation reached the theme of death, community members and students alike reflected on the idea that people can lose their life at any moment. They found importance on meditating on one’s own life at an old age and how Ames had time to think about his life before death due to the diagnosis of his heart condition. 

Scranton Reads is an annual event that seeks to unite the community through reading and discussing a designated book. The program began in 2001 when the mayor of Scranton at the time, Christopher Doherty, discusses starting the program in Scranton with Jack Finnerty, director of the Albright Memorial Library. The program has run each October since 2001.

“The idea is to get as many people in the community of all walks of life, to read a single title, sit down and talk about whether they loved it, hated it or didn’t understand it at all,” Finnerty said.

“I was hooked when I saw the first blade of grass. It requires stamina – you have to have it and a great, great tolerance,” said artist Helen Evanchik about en plein air painting. “You have to have great resilience and an undying love of nature.”

Evanchik is a New York City native whose exhibit called “Here and There, Now and Then” is being featured at The University of Scranton’s Hope Horn Gallery in Hyland Hall through Nov. 17. She discussed her work at a lecture prior to an opening reception for the exhibit on Oct. 20.

“Make yourself see the beauty all around you. It’s all there, and out there it’s moving very fast. If you do decide to go out there and paint, I can guarantee you, you’re going to have the greatest time. Just realize it’s not for you, but for anyone who can appreciate what it is that you’re trying to show,” said Evanchik.

The artist addressed the impact of impressionism on her work and what en plein air techniques she utilizes to capture the beauty she so often discovers working outdoors to create her landscape paintings.

“En plein air thinking derives from entering the age of discovery. Changes were taking place in the air, land and sea, and the world was alive with action. People were studying plants, animals and most importantly, humanity. Perspective, light and reflection all became essential components to the technique,” said Evanchik.

Evanchik also discussed the profound influence living in New York City had on her childhood as well as the implications it had on her art. She offered sage advice to attendees on what it truly means to fail.

“When you approach outside, your response may be overwhelming. You might try to succeed, and unfortunately it doesn’t always work. But failure is just practice. Practice, practice, practice,” said Evanchik. “That’s how you become an artist.”

Evanchik, who received her arts training at the Cooper Union, has participated in numerous regional and national exhibitions. She has produced a plethora of landscape paintings, specifically of Long Island and northeastern Pennsylvania. There are 37 oil paintings in the Hope Horn Gallery exhibit. A portion of any sales from this exhibition will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation in honor of Evanchik’s daughter, Merrie.

A politically filled discussion addressing the most urgent constitutional issues making the headlines at the time occurred at The University of Scranton Schemel Forum’s annual University for a Day.

The lecture “The Constitution in the Headlines” was presented by Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, Akhil Amar, Ph.D., recently on campus during the daylong program. One of the issues he discussed was the division of the North and South during voting in the most recent election.

Dr. Amar began by stating that there is no “big state versus small state” in presidential elections, but instead it is a division between the North and the South in the U.S. He represented the division in America by showing a map of the U.S. after the election and how there was a clear divide in voters from the cities to the rural areas. This was always the case in America as Dr. Amar showed an election map of 1896, which he also compared to the election of 2008 and the only difference being that the parties had flipped.

In the 1896 election, people from the rural areas voted Democrat and people from the cities voted Republican, which is the complete opposite of today. Dr. Amar used this example to show America has always been deeply divided on politics, not just this past election.

Dr. Amar also compared the past election to the race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He compared Hillary Clinton to Adams and Donald Trump to Jackson. He used the similarities of Trump and Jackson both not being politicians before the elections, and being viewed as a voice of the common people. He also said how Jackson was tough on government leading up to the election, similar to Trump.