Save the date: Zorn Arena to be site of Aug. 22 academic year kickoff for all faculty, staff All UW-Eau Claire employees are invited to attend the "Gettin' in the Groove" All-Employee Breakfast and Opening Meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 22, in Zorn Arena. Breakfast will be served starting at 7:30 a.m., and the opening meeting will begin at 8:30 a.m. The meeting will include Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich's state-of-the-university address, as well as the presentation of the annual faculty and staff excellence awards. An academic year opening meeting for evening shift employees who cannot attend the Aug. 22 event is planned for 8 p.m. Aug. 23 in the Presidents Room of Davies Center.

Research in Israel ends early for professor, student

UW-Eau Claire Professor Harry Jol and student Eric Pascal recently returned earlier than planned from a research trip to Israel. At left, Pascal prepared to take laser level measurements for topography along a survey line that goes by Mamluck Mosque at Tel Yavne (just south of Tel Aviv). At right, Pascal and Jol stand in front of their work site in Nazareth, St. Gabriel's Church of the Annunciation (Greek Orthodox) and Mary's Well. (Read more about the Nazareth and Tel Yavne projects.) (Contributed photos)

Harry Jol, UW-Eau Claire professor of geography and anthropology, and senior Eric Pascal returned July 17 from a research trip to Israel, where they had a few close encounters with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The first part of their trip (July 6-14) was quiet, but some of the areas they visited in the northern part of Israel later became targets, and the last day of their work together was canceled when the site they planned to visit was struck by rockets. At one point they were staying on Kibbutz Ginosar on the Sea of Galilee (near Tiberius), just two miles from where more rockets were landing.

Pascal was supposed to stay on in Israel a week beyond Jol to conduct research with a professor from another university, but the conflict forced him to come home a week early. Jol and various students have been visiting sites in Israel for the past several years to assist archaeologists working there by using ground penetrating radar to locate buried archaeological artifacts and religious sites and structures. Read a related story published in the July 19 Leader-Telegram.

Recent grads receive Austrian teaching awards

Emily Braun	Jessica Schiff

Two recent UW-Eau Claire graduates have been awarded U.S. English Teaching Assistantships in Austria. The assistantships are offered through a program of the Austrian Ministry of Education and administered through the Fulbright Commission in Austria.

Emily Braun, Fond du Lac, graduated in May with a major in German and a minor in geography. Jessica Schiff, Superior, also graduated in May with a German major and a topical minor in writing and editing in professional venues. Both will leave for Austria in mid-September and stay until June 2007. Braun will live and teach in Bad Aussee, a small city in the center of the country surrounded by the Alps. Schiff live in Klagenfurt and teach there and in Maria Saal, another town 10 kilometers north of Klagenfort. Both women will teach English and American culture.

During their time at UW-Eau Claire, both women studied abroad — Schiff in Austria and Braun in Germany — and both believe those experiences helped prepare them to succeed in their new roles. Full story.

Thirteenth Blugold Promise Scholarship awarded
Another student who will enter UW-Eau Claire this fall was recently awarded a Blugold Promise Scholarship through the UW-Eau Claire Foundation. Twelve other Blugold Promise Scholarship recipients were announced in June and early July.

Kevin Mesiar, Eau Claire, son of Keith Mesiar and Sheree Ruff, was awarded a Dorothea S. Bobb Blugold Promise Scholarship. Mesiar plans to major in biology with a premedicine emphasis.

Dorothea Bobb, of Eau Claire, died June 3 at the age of 91. Her family established this scholarship in her memory. She raised three sons as a single mother, and while she never was able to go to college, her family said she loved UW-Eau Claire and valued the importance of a higher education. Several of her sons and daughters-in-law are UW-Eau Claire graduates, and two of her daughters-in-law have been UW-Eau Claire employees (Fay Bobb works in the Center for International Education). Dorothea Bobb's husband, who was in the military, died while they were living in Italy. She was a Gold Star member. Full story.

Campus-community partnerships to be July 26 'Let's Do Lunch' topic
Principles of community-campus partnership building will be the topic of a July 26 luncheon presentation hosted by the UW-Eau Claire Alumni Association. Dr. Don Mowry, director of the Center for Service-Learning and professor of social work at UW-Eau Claire, will give a presentation from noon to 1 p.m. at Sweetwater's restaurant titled "Building Mutually Beneficial Community-University Partnerships." The presentation is part of the Alumni Association's "Let's Do Lunch" series.

"Many institutions of higher education have in their mission statement a few lofty goals focused on serving the greater community," said Mowry. "I'll address the active steps necessary to involve all stakeholders from both campus and community in developing ongoing collaborations to address pressing community needs. Full story.

Summer Session music, films continue
The following Summer Session programs will be offered free of charge this week at UW-Eau Claire:

• Keith Scott

  Chicago-area blues artist Keith Scott will present an outdoor concert today from 7 to 9 p.m. on the Central Campus Mall.
• Entries in this summer's 48-Hour Video Project will screen Wednesday, July 26, concluding the film series "Summer Cinema Revolution: A Declaration of Independents." The films will be shown at 7 p.m. in Davies Theatre.
• Mark Mowry, tenor, and Mitra Sadeghpour, soprano, will present the final Summer Sounds program for this summer, with Beverly Soll at the piano. They will give a "listen at lunch" performance at noon Thursday, July 27, in The Cabin in Davies Center, and their recital will be at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 30 in Phillips Recital Hall, Haas Fine Arts Center.

Full story.

Summer Bulletin
Published weekly during the summer session by the UW-Eau Claire News Bureau. News items and notices should be sent to the News Bureau, Schofield 201, by 10 a.m. Thursday for publication in the following week’s issue. E-mail submissions to Julie Poquette at poquetjm@uwec.edu are encouraged. Faculty/staff news items are published on a space-available basis.