In addition to a one-year tenure at Binz Refectory, he also has been a prominent accompanist for the Music Department, a versatile linguist in the Modern and Classical Languages Department, and older undergrads may remember him as the organist from Sunday evening Masses.

But perhaps most notably he has served as a cook and supervisor at Scooter’s restaurant – always instantly recognizable by his black-and-white bandana.

This Sunday, Feb. 12, Tessman will say “goodbye” to Scooter’s. As a gesture of departure, he will serve a special egg scrambler that reflects his insatiable love of breakfast foods. Topped with a homemade hollandaise sauce, this colorful menu item will consist of seasoned hash browns made from baby red potatoes, green peppers, tomatoes, two over-easy eggs and a choice of sausage or ham.

This special will be available from noon to 9 p.m. or until supplies run out, this Sunday only. Cost is $5.50.

All requests for the presence of the bishops are handled through the President’s Office. Requests must include a completed 2012-13 Request for the Participation of a Bishop form. The forms are available from Karen Hennes.

Participation of a Bishop forms are requested even for tentative events rather than submitting them later; it is easier to cancel an event from the calendar than to add a new one.

Questions? Call the President’s Office, (651) 962-6500.

This graduate information session will give prospective students a chance to meet MSW faculty, ask questions and learn more about how a graduate degree in social work can fit into their lives.

For more information about the program visit the Master of Social Work website.

Registration and more information can be found online. You also may register for the information session by calling the Graduate Admissions office, (651) 690-6933, or (800) 945-4599, Ext. 6933.

The award honors Dr. Julie Hays, a member of the Operations and Supply Chain Management Department, who died suddenly in 2007.

Faculty, students and alumni may nominate a faculty member in the Opus College of Business who they feel best meets the award criteria:

• Active engagement with students.
• Ability to stretch and challenge students.
• Concern for the student as a whole person.
• Creative approaches to teaching or the development of effective teaching materials.
• Enthusiasm and passion for teaching

Details about past winners and the nomination process are available on the Julie Hays Teaching Award website. For more information email the OCB Teaching Committee.

Gratefully,
~Ann (Bittner) Schiffer

Guidelines

• Papers submitted must have been written for an ENGL 121 class during the 2011-12 academic year.
• Submissions must respond to literature in some way and should not consist entirely of narrative without reflection.
• Submissions must include a rough draft that demonstrates substantial revision.
• No more than two submissions are permitted per student.

A panel of three English Department faculty members will judge the essays.

Format for submission

Essays should be typed, double-spaced, and include a title. Paperclip the formal essay pages together – do not staple – and attach your rough draft to the back. Since it will be judged blindly, do not include your name on the essay itself. Finally, submit a cover sheet that includes your name, the essay title, your instructor’s name, and your UST email address.You have the option of discussing your essay submission with your instructor for revisions and suitability. Submitted essays will not be returned.

The deadline for submission is 3 p.m., Thursday, March 15. Essays can be delivered to the English Department in Room 333, John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.

Questions about the contest can be referred to the English Department, (651) 962-5600. Contest criteria and rules also are available on the English Department website.

Did we miss something? If you see a story about St. Thomas and would like us to include it, be sure to drop us a note at bulletin@stthomas.edu.

“After chilly holiday, a red-hot January for Target,” Star Tribune, Feb. 2, 2012. “Sales growth was double Wall Street’s expectations. But questions remain about the effect of deep discounts.”

“Your Turn: Faithful should share their views,” St. Cloud Times, Feb. 4, 2012. “On Sept. 19, the pro-same-sex marriage group OutFront Minnesota had an organizing event for a reported 550 people of faith, where they began to coalesce various religious people and groups in support of same-sex marriage.”

“Pockets of recovery in housing outstate,” Star Tribune, Feb. 3, 2012. “Last year, housing prices in parts of Minnesota saw double-digit declines. Others bucked the trend.”

“3M execs are cutting costs, but flying high,” Star Tribune, Feb. 4, 2012. “The company says far-flung operations make it necessary to replace its jet fleet.”

“Finally getting a handle on things,” Farmington Independent, Feb. 4, 2012. “I’ve decided that whoever came up with the idea of putting handles on bags was a genius.”

“Minnesota firms pivot in face of Thai floods,” Star Tribune, Feb. 4, 2012. “Production of the world’s disk drives was dramatically disrupted — and local companies have had to adjust.”

“Ellison announces effort to defeat a photo ID requirement for voters,” Star Tribune, Feb. 6, 2012. “U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, joined by representatives of students, seniors and other affected groups, called on Minnesota Democrats to unify in opposition to a photo ID requirement for voting.”

“Gay Marriage Draws Big Crowd at UMD,” WDIO, Feb. 6, 2012. “Hundreds packed into a UMD lecture hall on Monday night, discussing both sides of an upcoming ballot amendment for Minnesota. It’s over whether gay marriage should be banned in the state.”

“Best Buy board member: Ethical culture improves profits,” Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Feb. 7, 2012. “Every day (it seems) I write at least one story about a business crook.”

“Calif. gay marriage ruling’s effect in Minn. is mainly as a symbol,” Star Tribune, Feb. 7. 2012. “The federal appeals court ruling that a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in California is unconstitutional is likely to have more symbolic than practical effect in Minnesota, scholars and activists say.”

All of the performances are free and open to the public, and will be held on the university’s St. Paul campus.

• Student Recital: Stefan Wolf, voice
  Sunday, Feb. 12 – 2 p.m.
  Brady Educational Center auditorium

• Student Recital: Tom Reusz and Catherine Ratelle, voice
  Saturday, Feb. 25 – 6 p.m.
  Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas

• Concert Choir Pops Concert
  Saturday, Feb. 25 – 7 p.m.
  Brady Educational Center auditorium

For more information call (651) 962-5850 or visit the St. Thomas Music Department website.

The musical performance is free and open to the public and runs from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15, in Woulfe Alumni Hall in the Anderson Student Center on the university’s St. Paul campus.

The evening includes a 5:30 p.m. panel discussion on the early warning signs of mental illness, and a 6:30 p.m. reception with refreshments.

“Fidgety Fair Tales” will feature stories about Goldilocks (obsessive compulsive disorder); Boyd, Who Cried Wolf (Tourette syndrome); and CinderEdward (bipolar disorder).

“Fidgety Fairy Tales” is a project of the Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health. The program will be of interest to those connected with youth, mental health issues, and devoted to the education of children and adolescents.

More details are available by calling the School of Education, (651) 962-4441. 

Meeting topics will include music and appropriate airplay, contracts and time slots for prospective shows. Free pizza and drinks will be available at the meeting.

For more information on becoming a DJ, email kust@stthomas.edu, view the KUST website, or check out KUST on Facebook.

Classes will take place from noon to 1 p.m. in Room 450, Terrence Murphy Hall. Wear loose, comfortable clothing and bring a mat or towel.

Learn to relax the body and mind through the stretching and breathing activities of Hatha yoga, a gentle practice that provides rest and rejuvenation. Increased energy, improved flexibility, reduced stress and more restful sleep are typical benefits of Hatha yoga.

The cost is $65 for all of the remaining nine sessions, $52 for six sessions, or $10 for a drop-in session. Payment is due on the first day of class; cash or checks are accepted. Make checks payable to Nikki Baker.

For more information or to confirm attendance, email Baker or call (651) 962-4380.

An oratory is a community of Catholic priests and brothers.  Oratories often have a chief mission, which could be teaching, parish work or campus ministry.

The Oratory of St. Philip Neri was founded in the 16^th century in Rome, and today has more than 70 oratories, with some 500 priests, around the world.

The first oratory in the Unites States was founded in South Carolina in 1934. In addition to the Pittsburgh Oratory, where Morgan is provost, they also are located in California, New York and New Jersey.

When Newman became a Catholic, he brought the Oratory of St. Philip Neri to the English-speaking world. Morgan’s Feb. 13 lecture at St. Thomas will examine how the oratory became the context for Newman’s vision of the evangelization of culture.

The lecture is sponsored by St. Thomas’ Center for Catholic Studies. Refreshments will be served.

The presentation, free and open to all students, will be held at noon Wednesday, Feb. 15, in the Fireside Lounge of Koch Commons on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas.

The Minnesota Catholic Conference is the public-policy voice of the Catholic Church in Minnesota. Adkins, who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from St. Thomas and a law degree from the University of Minnesota, was named executive director of the conference in March 2011.

Pizza will be served; reservations are not required.

Adkins’ talk is co-sponsored by Campus Ministry and the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Thomas, and by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Matthew Sullivan

Profiles for Matthew Sullivan, Jacob Wakem, and Kiana Williams, the three Tommie Award finalists, are available on the Tommie Award website:

Voting for the 2012 Tommie Award finalists will take place Monday through Wednesday, Feb. 13-15. Faculty, staff and undergraduate students will receive an email with voting instructions on Monday.

Questions? Email Vern Klobassa, Tommie Award coordinator.

The Tommie Award has been presented since 1931 to a UST senior. It recognizes achievement in scholarship, leadership, and campus involvement, and represents the highest ideals of the university.

Jacob Wakem

The Division of Student Affairs sponsors the Tommie Award.

Kiana Williams

Take a few minutes to pick up healthy relationship materials while decorating sugar cookies.

Purple Coffee Bené mug sleeves will be given to the first 100 customers, and the Show’d Up Band, a traditional music ensemble, will perform over the noon hour. Free sugar cookies, coffee coupons, and a chance to win something cool from the prize wheel await you.

Get your picture taken with the Coffee Mug mascot and receive a coupon for a free drink. Look for  Tommie mascot, too!

The study’s criteria will require that participants identify as female, male, or transgender, freshman or sophomore between the ages of 18 and 21, are currently enrolled in college, and have struggled with an eating disorder. Participants will be asked to reflect on their adolescent years in middle school and high school. Those who participate will be asked to complete an online survey that includes 21 open- and closed-ended questions about the perceived pressures from their families, peers and media on the development of their eating disorders.

If interested in participanting in the study go directly to the online survey here. The study has been approved by St. Thomas’ Institutional Review Board.

For more information about the study contact Debra Lorasch-Gunderson, (715) 579-7929.

The event will feature free demo sessions of the five fitness classes offered this spring semester. Sessions will be taught by the AARC’s professional fitness instructors and are open to all UST undergraduate students and current AARC members.

Demo sessions will begin promptly at the following times, and each session will run approximately 45 minutes. (Click on the hyperlink to view a description about each class.)

Demo Day sessions

• 8 a.m. – TRX
• 11 a.m. – Spinning
• Noon – Sculpt
• 1 p.m. – Yoga
• 4:45 p.m. – Zumba

Demo Day sessions will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. To participate, be at the AARC 20 to 25 minutes before the beginning of the session and swipe your ID at the front desk. All Demo Day sessions will take place in the AARC’s aerobics rooms (Room 112 or 113). A Demo Day representative will be present to greet you outside of the room.

All participants must be current AARC members and present a valid UST ID to be admitted to the AARC. For more information about Demo Day email arcfitnessclass@stthomas.edu.

The club will host a speaker, Dr. Nathaniel Nelson of St. Thomas’ Graduate School of Professional Psychology, who will speak on neuropsychological outcomes of the blast concussion research he is conducting through the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis. 

The club also will discuss volunteer opportunities. Lunch will be provided.

Current stories include:

• Coffee Bené second birthday party – Friday, Feb. 10
• Hubbs Children’s Literature Conference – Feb. 25
• Deborah Tannen coming to UST
• Keffer Library 2.0 update: Where are the books?
• Group Study Room scheduling at OSF Library is now online
• Columbia International Affairs Online: What’s new, what’s old, what’s unique?
• Wilson databases now on EBSCO
• Journal of Sports Economics now online
• Mountain of Books (book art)
• Solar flares
• American Medical Association Journal – change in online availability

Check out the blog and tell UST Libraries what you think.

New sociology research database – SocINDEX

SocINDEX with full text identifies resources in the field of sociology and related subject areas. It indexes more than 3,000 journals and provides full text for 890 journals, several dating back to 1908. The new database includes full text for more than 850 books and monographs as well as over 16,800 conference reports. SocINDEX is available via the UST Libraries A-Z database list.

 Program

With globally located teams on the increase and travel budgets on the decrease, the need for virtual conferences is greater than ever. A panel of experts will share their experiences in setting up and hosting virtual conferences in their organizations.

Information to be covered

• Why host a virtual event?
• Who are the providers available?
• What goes into the event?
• Main entry
• Auditorium and speakers
• Booths
• Social networking connections
• Related content to download into an attendees “briefcase”

How virtual events are being used

• LarsonAllen
• UnitedHealth Group
• Wells Fargo

Best practices for hosting a virtual event

• Lessons learned

Q-and-A

Presenters

Hird leads the LarsonAllen Learning and Development Team as it develops, plans and implements learning initiatives that support the firm’s strategic direction. Additionally she is responsible for the overall strategy and direction for Learning and Development and Human Resources to ensure that people and career development initiatives support LarsonAllen’s strategies for people, leadership and culture. Hird is known as a leader for getting things done while working with and through others. She has a passion for helping others develop their talents and leadership capabilities. She enjoys working with leaders who are looking to build their business areas, implement new ideas, and develop their staff and succession plans.

Shields was the learning and development manager for technical learning at Wells Fargo for the past nine years. She led the first virtual conference within Wells Fargo to give team members access to possibilities for the technology environment of the next five to 10 years. She also incorporated information shared by the leading technology companies that participated in the exhibitor booths and studied their vision of the future of technology. Shields has a background in IT and learning, and she has worked in the educational publishing and financial services industries. She lives in Bloomington, Minn., and enjoys traveling and collecting wine.

Weedman leads Talent Development Infrastructure at UnitedHealth Group, where the mission is to Help People Live Healthier Lives. She has a passion for career and leadership development, mentoring and performance consulting. She recently launched “UMentor” where all 90,000 employees at UHG have access to mentor-mentee relationships via an online tool – a highlight of UHG’s “Career Development Week.” Weedman’s background is in IT and human capital in manufacturing, transportation and the retail industries. She lives in Minneapolis near the lakes and loves cooking and spending time with her husband and three kids.

 Sponsors

The Digital Learning Forum’s monthly presentation and discussion is sponsored by the Master of Arts in Technology for Learning, Development and Change, and the Graduate Certificate in E-Learning program in the Department of Organization Learning and Development at the University of St. Thomas.

Susan Stabile

Participants will meet from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on Tuesdays (listed below) in Room 458, School of Law, Minneapolis campus. A light lunch will be served.

The retreat will focus on personal prayer and the experience of God in prayer and daily life. Through personal prayer participants will enter experientially into the mind and heart of Jesus in his passion, death and resurrection.

Participants commit themselves to a half-hour of prayer each day and go about their daily lives as usual. Prayer material relating to the theme of the retreat is provided for each day of the retreat.

In addition to a daily period of personal prayer, the weekly meetings will include:

• A period where participants can share their experience of prayer in small groups
• A talk on the theme for that week
• Instruction on some of the dynamics of this type of retreat experience

The retreat will run for six Tuesdays (note: no session on March 20 – spring break):

• Feb. 21
• Feb. 28
• March 6
• March 13
• March 27
• April 3

The retreat is sponsored by the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions. Since lunch will be served, register via email to Bethany Fletcher.

The Wellness Center’s Heart Hunt ended yesterday morning on Day 3 of the contest. The hidden heart was found after the third clue had been posted.

Megan Sitek and a friend found the heart hidden under a table in the Anderson Athletic and Recreation Center. They will be given a prize valued at $150.

The Wellness Center thanks all who participated in this year’s hunt.

Bring a partner to the class on Monday, Feb. 20, in Room 155, Murray-Herrick Campus Center. The class is free to all students; light refreshments will be offered before the class begins at 4:30 p.m. Register here.

For more information visit the Wellness Center website or call the center, (651) 962-6128.