Students' service valued at more than $1.3 million

UW-Eau Claire student Amy Krause contributed to her community by reading with area youth on a weekly basis. (Photo by Bill Hoepner, LTS)

During the 2005-06 academic year, students at Campus Compact member colleges and universities, which include UW-Eau Claire, contributed an estimated 377 million hours of service in their communities.

According to Campus Compact's annual member survey, these hours are valued at $7.1 billion, which is a significant increase from last year's findings of $5.6 billion, reflecting greater support structures for service on campus as well as growth in membership.

"For 2005-06 our students contributed a conservative estimate of 86,000 community service hours, the majority of which were served in the Chippewa Valley region," said Dr. Don Mowry, director of UW-Eau Claire's Center for Service-Learning. According to Mowry, the value of volunteer time contributed by UW-Eau Claire students was more than $1.3 million. Full story.

Athletics announces three new head coaches
UW-Eau Claire Director of Athletics Scott Kilgallon announced three new head coaches for Blugold teams at a press conference June 29:

Jerry Kollross

Kim Wudi

Dan Schwamberger

Jerry Kollross has been named the UW-Eau Claire men's and women's swimming and diving coach. Kollross, a former Wisconsin State University Conference champion and NAIA national champion freestyle sprinter at UW-La Crosse, spent the 2006-07 season as the interim head coach after Rob Welcher resigned late last summer. He had been a volunteer assistant during Welcher's sixth and final season as the Blugold head coach in 2005-06. Full story.

Kim Wudi has been selected to replace Lisa Herb as the head coach of the UW-Eau Claire women's volleyball team. Wudi has been an assistant to Herb the past two seasons, was an Academic All-American as a Blugold player and has been the director of the Eau Claire Air Volleyball Club since 2004. Full story.

Dan Schwamberger has been named the UW-Eau Claire men's and women's head cross country country coach and assistant men's and women's track coach. Schwamberger, who recently finished 29th in the Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, has strong ties to the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. He has been the assistant cross country and track coach at UW-Platteville since 2004 and was a conference and national 5,000-meter champion at UW-Stevens Point in 2000. Full story.

Strategic planning groups get to work
Work groups consisting of 62 UW-Eau Claire faculty, staff and students have been meeting since mid-June to help shape a vision for the future of UW-Eau Claire. The work groups, convened June 13 by Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich, are addressing a range of themes identified at campus focus group sessions this spring. Read more about the work groups' progress and timeline, and find out whom to contact to provide strategic planning input.

Blugold earns Academic All-American honors

Liz Faller

UW-Eau Claire senior Liz Faller has been named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American college division women's track and field/cross country second team.

Faller, the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference indoor 55-meter hurdles champion, is a kinesiology major with an emphasis in physical education and sports a 3.97 cumulative grade-point average.

Faller is the second Blugold this academic year to receive Academic All-American recognition and only the 23rd individual in school history. Last fall, Shanna Berger, a December 2006 chemistry business graduate, was selected to the Academic All-American volleyball second team. Full story.

Students to present at annual math workshop
Ten students, including four from UW-Eau Claire, will give talks on their summer research projects July 6-7 when the UW-Eau Claire department of mathematics holds its 2007 summer mathematics workshop, "Analysis and Its Applications."

The featured speaker at the workshop will be Dr. Michael W. Frazier, chair of the department of mathematics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Frazier will present four main lectures July 6 and 7. Local resident Jim Schwarzmeier, senior principal engineer at Cray Research Inc. in Chippewa Falls, will be the evening colloquium speaker July 6.

Other presenters at the workshop will include faculty members and graduate students with backgrounds in mathematics, computer engineering, physics and statistics from UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout, the University of Tennessee, Western Illinois University, German University in Cairo, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Full story and complete workshop schedule.

University photo staff receives UPAA awards

UW-Eau Claire photographer Rick Mickelson recently won the UPAA's Fuji New Approcah Award for this underwater photo of Blugold swimmers Emily Viau, Cale Schmidt-Jackson and Alissa Condra.

UW-Eau Claire photographer Bill Hoepner and artist Mindy Merryfield received an award for this cover of the chancellor's inauguration program.

UW-Eau Claire Learning and Technology Services photography division staff members received eight awards at the University Photographers Association of America annual symposium June 18-22 in Chicago.

In the photographic print competition, Rick Mickelson received the Fuji New Approach Award for innovative photography for his underwater view of three senior Blugold swimmers. In the print competition, Mickelson received awards in the sports and campus environment categories and Bill Hoepner received an award in the news and features category.

In the UPAA publications competition, UW-Eau Claire's awards were as follows:

• Viewbook category, second place: Mickelson; Hoepner; Ann Hoffman, senior editor in the News Bureau; and Sheila Pederson, senior artist in the Publications Office.
• General publications category, third place: Mickelson, Hoepner, Hoffman and Pederson for the 2006-07 UW-Eau Claire Foundation annual report.
• Publications covers category, third place: Hoepner and Mindy Merryfield, artist in the Publications Office, for the fall 2006 chancellor's inauguration program cover.
• Posters category, honorable mention: Pederson; Ansel Brooks, senior artist in the Publications Office; Dan Urban, student intern in the Publications Office; Mickelson; and Hoepner for a series of UW-Eau Claire athletics posters that included men's hockey, men's track, and swimming and diving.

Mickelson was also the year's top point winner in the Sports and Personal Vision categories of UPAA's monthly image competition. Full story.

What's in a name?
PeopleSoft conversions cause confusion
Similar names in two new campus computing initiatives have caused confusion for some UW-Eau Claire employees.

Business Services is currently going “live” using the UW System Shared Financial System — PeopleSoft (SFS). See the Business Services Web site for more information.

The Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Financial Accounts and Registrar's areas are beginning a conversion to the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions software system, as described in the April 16 University Bulletin and June 18 Summer Bulletin. Final implementation for the project is slated for the fall of 2009. See the Learning and Technology Services Web site for more information.

Since both software packages are PeopleSoft products, there has been some confusion on terms. To avoid future confusion with the Shared Financial System, the UW-Eau Claire implementation project for the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions product will be referred to as CampS (simply a shortening of the words Campus Solutions). Look for the CampS logo (above) on future articles and Web pages devoted to this project.

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.