Featured Articles

Four more years: McNair program receives new federal grant of more than $900,000

Women's soccer wins third straight WIAC title

Volleyball team also to play in NCAA tournament

Campus computing and the law, Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be topics of presentations tonight

LTS begins campus conversion to Web content management system

Career Services-Manpower partnership links students, alumni with Chippewa Valley employers

Disaster news coverage to be panel focus

Artists Series presents soprano Julianne Baird

New Foster exhibit features nonmainstream works

Vocal ensembles announce fall concerts

Event to benefit scholarship in student's memory

Four more years: McNair program receives new
federal grant of more than $900,000

McNair Scholar and UW-Eau Claire 2003 math and physics alumnus Thomas Awe was photographed exhibiting his research at the National McNair Conference while a UW-Eau Claire student. Awe, whose UW-Eau Claire faculty mentor was Dr. Mohammed Elgindi, is now a physics graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno. (Contributed photo)

The McNair Scholars program at UW-Eau Claire has been granted funds for another four-year funding cycle, ensuring that more outstanding students who come from low-income families, are from the first generation in their families to attend college, or are under-
represented minorities have the opportunity to pursue higher education and graduate degrees.

The minimum value of this award from the U.S. Department of Education is approximately $930,000, according to Dr. Patricia Quinn, director of UW-Eau Claire's federally funded Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program and author of the successful grant. Quinn also said that just because UW-Eau Claire has had a McNair program for eight years, continued funding was not guaranteed.

"This is a very competitive program," said Quinn. "The goal of McNair is to produce people with doctoral degrees, and points are awarded for how successful your program is in doing that. Since our first cohort of McNair scholars is just now getting to that level, we have not been eligible for any of those points up until now, so we basically had to have an otherwise perfect score on our grants to make the cut."

The first McNair scholar from UW-Eau Claire to earn a doctoral degree, 2001 music therapy and psychology alumnus Jeff Miller, graduated from the University of Florida-Gainesville just this past spring. Full story.

Women's soccer wins third straight WIAC title
Blugolds to host NCAA regional tourney Nov. 10-11

Women's Blugold soccer senior players (from left) Liz Weirick, Anna Talbot, Abby Ofstedahl and Jana Huebner posed with the team's three WIAC championship trophies, the third of which was won Nov. 3 at the conference tournament in Eau Claire. (Photo by Rick Mickelson, LTS) Find links to slide shows of more images on the tournament Web site.

The top-seed UW-Eau Claire women's soccer team defeated second-seed UW-Stevens Point Nov. 3 in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament Championship to win its third consecutive WIAC Championship and earn an automatic bid into the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament. The Blugolds are one of two WIAC teams in the 60-team national tournament. Full story. Also go to the tournament Web site for links to slide shows of tournament action.

UW-Eau Claire will host the four-team NCAA regional competition Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 10 and 11, at the Bollinger Fields. On Saturday, the Blugolds will play Wartburg College at 11 a.m., and Carthage College and Concordia College (Moorhead, Minn.) will face off at 1:30 p.m. The championship game will take place at 1 p.m. Sunday. Tickets, available at the University Service Center, are $3 for students and youth, $4 for seniors and $6 for other adults.

Campus computing and the law, Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be topics of presentations tonight
Tonight, two speakers addressing different topics will make presentations open to UW-Eau Claire students, faculty and staff as well as community members. Both presentations begin at 7:30 p.m.:

• C.L. Lindsay

  Student advocate and attorney C.L. Lindsay will present "Trouble Online: Campus Computing and the Law" in Schofield Auditorium. Students will learn the essentials about the law in cyberspace, what their rights are, how the laws operate and what potential liabilities await them. The author of "The College Student's Guide to the Law" (2005), C.L. Lindsay is a recognized expert in the field of student rights and educational law. He left his practice in 1998 to found the Coalition for Student and Academic Rights (CO-STAR), a national nonprofit organization that offers free legal advice to students and educators. Full story.

• Mark Matthews

  Mark Matthews, former diplomatic correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, will discuss "The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Is There Hope?" in Hibbard Hall Room 100. The one-hour presentation will be followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session. Matthews covered the Middle East for 15 years and served as Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem for close to three years. He covered such major landmarks as the Madrid conference of 1991, the Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat handshake at the White House in 1993, the aftermath of Rabin's assassination and the Intifada of 2000. Matthews interviewed a broad range of people on all sides, including Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials at various levels, settlers, refugees, students, protesters and political prisoners. Full story.

LTS begins campus conversion
to Web content management system
UW-Eau Claire Learning and Technology Services has begun implementing a Web content management system for use by developers of UW-Eau Claire public Web sites. A work group including representatives from across campus has selected CommonSpot by PaperThin as UW-Eau Claire's WCMS software.

Conversion of Web pages to CommonSpot will begin with the top-level pages (i.e., those in the "/home" directory) of the university Web site. This conversion also will include the adoption of an updated page design that will maintain the site's current navigation and content organization.

Eventually, CommonSpot will be the main Web-editing software for the sites of all UW-Eau Claire colleges, units, departments, offices and student organizations, said Lillian Hillis, university Web coordinator and co-coordinator of the WCMS project with Mike Rindo, executive director of university communications. Conversion of UW-Eau Claire Web sites to the WCMS will be gradual and voluntary, Rindo said.

Watch future University Bulletin issues for information about the timeline for implementing CommonSpot, training opportunities and an introduction to the university Web site's updated design. Visit the WCMS Web site for more information about the advantages of a WCMS and the selection and implementation of CommonSpot.

Career Services-Manpower partnership links students, alumni with Chippewa Valley employers
UW-Eau Claire Career Services has entered into a partnership with Manpower to provide employment services on campus. A representative from Manpower is now available in the Career Services office eight hours per week — from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays and from 8 a.m. to noon on Thursdays — to help students, alumni and family members of UW-Eau Claire faculty and staff find part-time or full-time jobs in the Chippewa Valley.

Manpower won the contract through a bid process made available to all staffing services in this area. Students and others use the service free of charge, said Jeanne Skoug, Career Services director.

"This is an exciting win-win for UW-Eau Claire and Manpower," Skoug said. "The university pays nothing to Manpower to provide these helpful services, and Manpower taps into our talented employment pool."

In addition to job search assistance, Manpower will provide resume and interview counseling, as well as campuswide human resource Webinars on a variety of work-related issues, Skoug said. Full story.

Disaster news coverage to be panel focus
A panel discussion titled "Covering Disasters" will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 6, in the Menominee Room of Davies Center at UW-Eau Claire. A four-member panel of UW-Eau Claire alumni will discuss how journalists handle the coverage of disasters on both a professional and personal level.

Artists Series presents soprano Julianne Baird

Julianne Baird

Internationally acclaimed soprano Julianne Baird will present "The Musical World of Benjamin Franklin" Wednesday, Nov. 7, at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. The Artists Series concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gantner Concert Hall of the Haas Fine Arts Center. Baird will be joined by harpsichordist John Chappell Stowe and narrator Edward Mauger in this visit to an earlier time in American history.

With 115 recordings to her credit , Baird is one of the world's 10 most recorded female artists. Also recognized internationally for her scholarship, she is the author of "Introduction to the Art of Singing" (Cambridge University Press), now in its third printing, used by singers and professional schools around the world. Full story.

New Foster exhibit features nonmainstream works

'Doombuddy Yellow' by Anthony Ausgang

A new exhibit titled "Rome Is Burning/The New School" opens this week in UW-Eau Claire's Foster Gallery in the Haas Fine Arts Center. The exhibit showcases art from outside the mainstream contemporary art world, including works in underground comix, rock posters, graffiti art, Kustom Kulture and graphic design. An opening reception will be held from 7:30-9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, in the gallery.

The show is curated by Rob McBroom of the OX-OP gallery in Minneapolis, which recently closed its gallery space but still maintains a Web presence. Gallery talks during the exhibit will include presentations by McBroom at 11 a.m. Friday Nov. 9; artist Anthony Ausgang at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 16; and artist Gary Baseman at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 30. All will be held in the Foster Gallery. Full story.

Vocal ensembles announce fall concerts
UW-Eau Claire's Singing Statesmen and Concert Choir will perform this weekend in Gantner Concert Hall. The Singing Statesmen concert will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9 (full story), and the Concert Choir program will be at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 11 (full story). Also read about other musical events on campus this week.

Event to benefit scholarship in student's memory

Jason Schluter

The first "Racin' for Jason" relay event is slated for Nov. 17 at UW-Eau Claire.

The kinesiology department organized the all-day event to raise money for the Jason Schluter Memorial Scholarship, established through the UW-Eau Claire Foundation in memory of Jason Schluter, a 23-year-old senior kinesiology major who died March 20 from injuries sustained in a traffic accident in Georgia.

For details about participating in the relay, volunteering or helping to support the event, contact Lance Dalleck, kinesiology, at 715-836-3774 or dalleclc@uwec.edu. Full story.

University Bulletin
Published weekly during the fall and spring semesters by the UW-Eau Claire News Bureau. News items and notices should be sent to the News Bureau, Schofield 201, by 10 a.m. Monday 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.