Fulbright grants go to faculty member, recent grad

Michael Penkava	Erin House

A UW-Eau Claire mathematics professor and a May 2007 UW-Eau Claire German graduate both have been announced as Fulbright grant recipients.

Dr. Michael Penkava has received a research award from the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program. The award will allow Penkava to spend five months in Hungary to continue his collaborative research with Dr. Alice Fialowski of Etvs Lornd University in Budapest. Full story.

Recent graduate and Eau Claire native Erin House has been awarded a grant through the Fulbright U.S. Students Program to attend the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany, where she will study German as a foreign language during the 2007-08 academic year. Full story.

Eleven National Merit scholars enroll for fall
Eleven of the approximately 2,025 new freshmen enrolled at UW-Eau Claire for this fall are National Merit scholars — the largest number of incoming National Merit scholars UW-Eau Claire has ever had. These most recent recipients of the prestigious scholarship bring the number of National Merit scholars attending UW-Eau Claire this fall to 24. Admissions counselor Gretchen Switalski attributes UW-Eau Claire's success in consistently attracting top students to the university's strong liberal arts emphasis and the opportunities for students to pursue interests outside or complimentary to their academic majors. UW-Eau Claire's study abroad programs, service-learning and student-faculty collaborative research opportunities, and Honors Program all are attractions for National Merit scholars, Switalski said. Full story.

Stranded faculty member returns from Peru

Susan Peck

Dr. Susan Peck, UW-Eau Claire professor of adult health nursing, returned to Eau Claire Saturday, July 7, after being stranded for more than a week in Pucallpa, capital city of the province of Coronel Portillo in eastern Peru. Citizens in Pucallpa had been protesting and striking after a recent government decision that put into effect a 19 percent sales tax, and a state of emergency had been declared in the city, according to the Web site livinginperu.com.

Peck, who is certified as a healing touch practitioner, had traveled to Peru for study in healing touch therapy. After spending four days in a small village upriver from Pucallpa, she and her fellow travelers returned to the city to find it virtually shut down due to the strike. For more than a week, the group walked daily the 2-3 miles from their hotel to the airport, hoping to catch a flight out of the city, Peck said. They spent their days sitting in the sun near the airport, awaiting some news of available flights. Peck said her group was told there were roughly 500 tourists stranded in Pucallpa, and approximately 100 of them were Americans.

The airport eventually reopened early afternoon on Friday, July 6. Peck and her group boarded the third flight to Lima at 5:30 p.m. Friday, an experience she said was "tear provoking." She returned to Eau Claire Saturday night.

Peck said the situation in Pucallpa was stressful. At the airport, workers would tell her group that flights had been arranged and then later laugh at the group and say the flights had already left when the tourists returned to check in. The group eventually learned the flights had never actually been scheduled, Peck said.

Other residents of the city were friendly, Peck said, but the strike situation made the tourists uneasy. "People were warm and caring to us, but the tension was definitely there," she said. "You felt like you had to be watchful."

See related July 6 and July 7 Leader-Telegram articles.

UW-Eau Claire joins U.S.-China partner program
UW-Eau Claire has been accepted into a prestigious international exchange program that will allow students from China to earn dual degrees from UW-Eau Claire and their home institution in China.

Students enrolled in the China 1-2-1 Partnership Program — facilitated through the China Center for International Educational Exchange and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities — will spend a year at a Chinese university, study at UW-Eau Claire for two years and return to the institution in China for their final year.

The first Chinese exchange students are expected to arrive at UW-Eau Claire in fall 2008, said Karl Markgraf, director of UW-Eau Claire's Center for International Education. He expects five to 10 Chinese exchange students to attend UW-Eau Claire the first year, but up to 25 students in future years.

Approximately 35 U.S. colleges and universities are part of the China 1-2-1 Partnership Program. Full story.

Campus Solutions sessions to conclude this week
UW-Eau Claire's Learning and Technology Services seeks as much input as possible as the university makes the transition to the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions product for handling student-based administrative computer systems.

Consultant John Gleason, who has been on campus since June 19 conducting information and readiness interviews with UW-Eau Claire faculty, staff and students regarding the transition (see June 18 Summer Bulletin for more information), will hold two additional group sessions this week:

• 3:30-4:30 Monday, July 9
• 2-3 p.m. Wednesday, July 11

Both meetings will be held in Old Library 2101. Those who have not yet attended a session and cannot attend one of the group sessions may contact Chip Eckardt at eckardpp@uwec.edu to schedule an individual appointment.

More information about the conversion can be found on the LTS Web site, which also has a connection to the UW-Eau Claire Campus Solutions Implementation Web site.

Music on the Mall, Summer Cinema continue

Billy Krause Trio

Henry Aaron in 1952

The Billy Krause Trio will present an outdoor concert at 7 p.m. today on UW-Eau Claire's Central Campus Mall as part of the university's fifth week of free Summer Session Programs.

The Summer Cinema series will present "Henry Aaron's Summer Up North " (2005) at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 10, through Thursday, July 12, in Davies Theatre. The film chronicles the first three months of Aaron's professional baseball career, when he played shortstop with the Eau Claire Bears in the summer of 1952. Interviews with Selika Ducksworth-Lawton, UW-Eau Claire professor of history, provide context and perspective. UW-Eau Claire alumnus Jerry Poling, news wire editor and columnist for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, also appears in the film, which is based upon his book "A Summer Up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball" (2002).

Wednesday's screening will be preceded by an informal discussion at 6 p.m. in the Skylight Lounge, Davies Center, led by Poling and the film's creators, William Povletich and Joshua Adams. Free baseball-themed snacks and beverages will be provided. Full story.

Photo corner: A salute to the red, white and blue Photos by Rick Mickelson, LTS
It was a patriotic campus scene July 3 as youth from the UW-Eau Claire Children's Center waved American flags, carried hand-made banners and sported red, white and blue hats during an Independence Day parade. Their route took them across the Central Campus Mall and through the corridors of Schofield Hall.

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.