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SHSU Update For Week Of Feb. 12
- Professor To Examine Human Rights For Beto Lecture
- Business Fair Attracts 40 Hiring Companies
- Mentor, Protégé Nominations Sought For Award
- Film Series To Highlight French-Speaking African Countries
- Therapy Group To Host Educational Seminars, Concert
- Valentine’s Readings To Share Languages Of Love
- Conference To Provide Development For Educators
- Collins Attends ‘Creating Change’ Conference
- Staff Council Spotlights Jacqueline Taylor
- STAFS Presents Bloodstain Pattern Evidence Program
- Submit Update Items Here
Professor To Examine Human Rights For Beto Lecture
Jack Greene, professor and former dean for Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice, will discuss "Policing for Human Rights: If not us, who? If not now, when?" on (Friday) Feb 17.
The Beto Chair Lecture Series presentation will be from 9:30 to 11 a.m. in the Criminal Justice Center’s Kerper Courtroom.
“Policing for Human Rights” will focus on how the use of police discretion intersects with human rights with particular interest in the range of what are considered “coercive” police actions that most affect human rights. His lecture is particularly focused on democratic policing, as policing in totalitarian regimes is largely based on fear rather than social or community consensus.
Recognized as one of the leading scholars on policing, Greene has written extensively on police service delivery, community approaches to policing, crime prevention and police management.
He has published five books, the two-volume Encyclopedia of Police Science, and more than 100 research articles, book chapters, research reports and policy papers on matters of policing in the U.S. and internationally.
As dean of Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice, he led academic and research programs that focused on matters of criminology and justice policy.
Green’s most recent research focuses on the strategic and practical problems that police encounter in community building, preserving human rights and in taking on a new security role in an era of terrorism. He has just completed co-editing, Criminologists on Terrorism with Brian Forst and James Lynch.
Greene has consulted for various major city, national and private agencies and organizations and currently serves on the research advisory committees of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Foundation.
He received his doctorate and master’s degrees from Michigan State University in 1977 and 1974, respectively. He was a cum laude graduate of Northeastern University with a bachelor’s degree in 1973.
For more information, contact Beth Kuhles, criminal justice publications officer, at 936.294.4425.
Business Fair Attracts 40 Hiring Companies
Recruiters from 40 companies will be on hand to talk with students about potential employment during the College of Business Administration’s Career Fair on Tuesday (Feb. 14).
Students who are looking for a job in any of the business fields can meet with these representatives from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Lowman Student Center Ballroom.
Companies that are scheduled to attend include Amegy Bank, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Enterprise Holdings, Sherwin-Williams, and The Reynolds and Reynolds Company.
The COBA Career Fair has been held since 1999 as a way to connect business students with companies who were requesting from the college specific professionals in the fields of accounting, marketing, management, and other majors in the College of Business Administration, according to Carol Shaw, assistant to the dean.
“The fair is the perfect opportunity for students to talk face-to-face with company representatives, to ask questions, and to submit their resumes to the company for consideration,” she said. “It is very difficult to find a job these days, even with a degree. Students should not pass up this chance to make a connection with a possible employer.”
Business students are advised to dress professionally and bring multiple copies of their resumes.
For more information, contact Shaw at 936.294.4497 or carolshaw@shsu.edu.
Mentor, Protégé Nominations Sought For Award
Students and faculty who want to honor their mentor or mentees have until April 1 to submit their nominations for the fourth annual SHSU Mentoring Award.
The award, sponsored by the Student Advising and Mentoring Center, recognizes one student and one faculty or staff member with a $1,000 prize.
“Students benefit significantly from the informal education that mentors provide on how to navigate an often unfamiliar territory, whether it be moving through the ranks of higher education, continuing their academic career into post-graduate study, or even transitioning successfully into their first professional job,” said Bernice Strauss, SAM Center director for academic support programs. “I believe this new award opportunity speaks to the value placed on mentoring relationships in higher education.”
Students who want to nominate a faculty or staff mentor should submit a one-page essay about why their mentor should be chosen and how their mentor has made a difference in their life. Mentors also submit a one-page essay on their student, including why he or she should win the award, what makes the student unique, how the student gives back, and how the student has grown as a result of the mentoring.
“I have been at Sam Houston for 18 years. During that time students have repeatedly share with me the power of someone believing in them and offering them support and guidance,” Strauss said. “Similarly, faculty and staff have shared how their own careers have been enriched by watching a protégé flourish.”
Mentors and protégés do not both have to be nominated to win, nor do they have be a part of an official mentoring program.
Nominations are due by 5 p.m. and should be emailed to mentoringaward@shsu.edu.
A reception will be held to honor participants at 2 p.m. on April 19 in the SAM Center, in College of Humanities and Social Sciences Building Suite 190. The reception is open to the university community.
The criteria are also listed online at http://www.shsu.edu/~sam_www/mentoring_award.html.
For more information, contact Strauss at 936.294.4455 or sam_bss@shsu.edu.
Film Series To Highlight French-Speaking African Countries
The SHSU French Club will showcase films from French-speaking regions of Africa for its first African Francophone Film Festival beginning Wednesday (Feb. 15).
“Lumumba,” a film from the Congo, will be the first of four featured films, screened at 6:30 p.m. in Academic Building IV’s Olson Auditorium.
The 2000 release is the true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo Patrice Lumumba.
Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck used newly discovered historical evidence in his presentation of the film.
“We will showcase films from French-speaking regions of Africa in an effort to give more visibility and attention to those countries outside of Europe where French is a predominant language,” said Shirin Edwin, French Club adviser and associate professor of French. “Africa, especially West and North Africa, has a rich and vibrant francophone cultural heritage.”
Other films presented as part of the series include “Les Indigenes,” an Algerian film about four North African men who enlist in the French army during World War II to liberate the country from Nazi oppression; Mali’s “Bamako,” about a bar singer and her out-of-work husband who are on the verge of breaking up; and Rwanda’s “Sometimes in April,” a drama framed by the Rwandan genocide, starring Debra Winger, Oris Erhuero and Idris Elba.
Screenings of the award-winning French films will be presented each Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. through March 7.
For more information, contact French Club president Laura Wood at lew018@shsu.edu.
Therapy Group To Host Educational Seminars, Concert
The SHSU chapter of the Mu Tau Omega national organization for music therapy will “spread awareness about what music therapy is to the community” with a weekend of lectures and performances on Friday and Saturday (Feb. 17-18).
The MTO Music Therapy Awareness Weekend will get started at 3:30 p.m. on Friday in the Gaertner Performing Arts Center Recital Hall with two lectures by board certified music therapists.
The presentations will include “The Basics of Private Practice” by David and Nikki Belshe, owners and music therapists at Heart and Harmony in Fort Worth, and “Using Play Therapy with Child Victims" by Theresa Fusaro, play therapist at Huntsville's SAAFE House.
That evening, music therapy students and faculty members, as well as therapists Karen Miller and Hayoung Lim, will perform the MTO Coffeehouse Concert from 7:30-10 p.m. in Music Building Room 201.
Saturday’s activities include pastries and coffee from 8:30-9 a.m., followed by three lectures: “Neurologic Music Therapy” by Amy Marroquin, “MT at FMU: Music therapy with Forensic Patients” by Susan Phillips, and “ASD: A Hands on Look at educational strategies” by Sherri Ross.
Bill Matney, music therapist and adjunct lecturer at Texas Woman’s University also will present "Emovere: The Use of Movement in Music Therapy" as the closing session.
All of Saturday’s activities will be held in the GPAC Recital Hall.
The Music Therapy Awareness Weekend is designed to show the community the benefits of music therapy, according to Chelsea Cooper, MTO president-elect.
“Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program,” she said. “As we continue to grow as a profession, we want SHSU, the community and the world to grow with us.”
Music Therapy Awareness Weekend events are free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Miller at 936.294.1376 or musictherapy@shsu.edu, or call the School of Music at 936.294.1360.
Valentine’s Readings To Share Languages Of Love
The foreign languages department will celebrate love in several different languages with a Multilingual Love Poetry Reading on Tuesday (Feb. 14).
Participants can hear students and faculty reading beginning at noon in front of Academic Building IV.
Romantic poetry, selected by the readers, may be delivered in languages such as Arabic, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Italian and Spanish, representing many of the languages taught at SHSU, as well as the [redacted] of the SHSU community, according to Debra Andrist, chair of the foreign languages department.
"The idea of the event is to celebrate Valentine's Day multi-culturally by affording students, faculty and staff the opportunity to hear how cultures other than English-speaking celebrate love, if not the specific holiday," she said. "It's also an opportunity to read aloud and/or practice listening skills in target languages, not to mention broadening horizons in poetry."
In the event of inclement weather, the reading will be held in the inside lobby of AB IV.
For more information, call the foreign languages department at 936.294.1441.
Conference To Provide Development For Educators
Early literacy and bilingual education strategies will be among those discussed during the 17th Annual Joan Prouty Young Child Winter Conference on Saturday (Feb. 18).
The annual conference on early literacy for teachers and administrators, hosted by the Sam Houston State University Department of Language, Literacy and Special Populations, will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Eleanor & Charles Garrett Teacher Education Center.
Registration and a continental breakfast will begin at 8:30 a.m. on the day of the conference.
The event will include a keynote presentation by Texas A&M Commerce early childhood education professor David L. Brown, who is considered by many to be a knowledgeable leader within the preschool movement and a highly recognized researcher in the areas of emergent literacy and early childhood education, according to Miki Henderson, assistant professor of early childhood education.
In addition, breakout sessions will be held on literacy learning in math and science; infant and toddler early interventions and at-risk learners; and reading strategies in early childhood classrooms. These sessions will be led by school teachers, graduate students and the Bilingual Education Student Organization, Henderson said.
The registration fee is $45 and can be paid on the day of the event; however, space is limited, and reservations will not be held until payment is received.
Registration forms are available in the language, literacy and special populations office, located in GTEC Room 100.
All participants earn six hours of professional development credit.
For more information, contact Henderson at 936.294.4638 or mikihenderson@shsu.edu.
Collins Attends ‘Creating Change’ Conference
Chuck Collins, assistant director in the Department of Student Activities, recently received an Eric Rofes Memorial Scholarship that allowed him to attend the Creating Change 2012 conference hosted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a member of the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals.
A record 3,400 attendees participated in the Creating Change conference, held Jan. 25-29 in Baltimore, Md., where Collins attended sessions on "Dancing Through the Minefields of Alumni Relations and Development Work in Student Affairs and Higher Education" and "Radical [redacted] for all People at College and Universities," as well as workshops on transgender [redacted], organizing social change, safe zone best practices, and current research on the lives of gender nonconforming youth.
“This was quite the exceptional conference. You could feel the energy of the attendees as you had a great number of people committed to a cause that were doing it for very little—if any—pay,” Collins said.
“I have future career aspirations of transitioning into heading a LGBTQ Center at an institution of higher education one day, so the additional opportunities events such as this offer in terms of training and education are invaluable to the field and my practice,” he said. “Additionally, it aids the work that I am able to do here on the SHSU campus between Haven, our LGBTIQ resource program, and working with GLOBAL, our student-run gay-straight alliance.”
He also participated in two higher education day-long institutes for "Building an Anti-Racist LGBT Movement" and the "LGBT Campus Administrators Institute."
“While the conference is dedicated to LGBTQ activism, there is a large component of student development, leadership, and identity-support education, which provides a strong benefit to my work with both students and colleagues,” Collins said. “Program Council, the campus activities board, is one of my primary responsibilities and learning about new methods and skill sets, is quite helpful when working with them.
“For Haven, the conference was a great education tool for new resources that we can utilize in our efforts here on campus between bringing new information into our trainings, increasing participation in the program, and working to increase the scope of our offerings.”
The Eric Rofes Memorial Scholarship was established in honor of the late activist and author, who died in 2006. It is awarded on the basis of merit and need.
Rofes, a former task force board member, was an enthusiastic and thought-provoking contributor to the Creating Change Conference, which he attended annually and presented some of its most challenging and stimulating material, according to Collins.
Staff Council Spotlights Jacqueline Taylor
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| Staff Council members present Jacqueline Taylor (center) with a basket of goodies as their monthly "spotlight." |
The SHSU Staff Council recognized Undergraduate Admissions transcript evaluator Jacqueline Taylor for her nine years of work at SHSU as the group’s spotlight selection.
Taylor has spent her SHSU career with the Undergraduate Admissions Office, beginning as a receptionist before becoming a processor and now a transcript evaluator.
I love this school and I love the department, it gives me the opportunity to be face-to-face with the students, and I love the feeling you get when you help someone who is trying to move forward with their life,” she said.
She is very active in the community as an adviser for a student organization on campus, a Sunday school teacher, and an organizer for food and clothing drives.
“I try to keep a positive attitude no matter how bad things appear to be, and I realize that if I keep a positive attitude, it seems to spread to those who are around,” Taylor said.
“I always try to encourage people to be more than willing to do a certain thing, because I feel you can be willing to do something, but sometimes any small discouragement will stop you,” she said. “But if you are more than willing, more than likely you will push past any negative thoughts or words that might come your way. Oh, and, of course, I always remember to smile at someone everyday.”
Taylor is married and she and her husband, Anthony, have three children, including a daughter who attended SHSU and a son who is currently a Bearkat freshman.
STAFS Presents Bloodstain Pattern Evidence Program
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| Teachers experiment with bloodstain transfer from hands and weapons. —Submitted photo |
Forensic science and criminal justice teachers from high schools across Texas were given hands on-lessons in bloodstain pattern analysis during a workshop by Sam Houston State University’s College of Criminal Justice.
The two-day workshop was sponsored by the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility, a state-of-the-art research and training facility designed to enhance academic and technical knowledge in the application of forensic science to crime scenes and criminal investigations.
Educators were presented classroom instruction and received experiments and resources that can be used to create and analyze blood spatter in the classroom.
These lessons were brought to life by Celestina Rossi, a crime scene investigator from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, who used photos from real cases to explain how to analyze blood evidence at a crime scene. Bloodstain pattern analysis includes many of the disciplines taught in high school, including biology, physics and math.
“I love the hands-on aspects,” said Tamar Powell, of the Houston Independent School District. “We can take it back to our students and give them a real world perspective.”
Using simple tools, many that can be found around a classroom, the teachers created and analyzed “evidence” such as angled bloodstains, which demonstrates the direction and angle from which the blood emanated; blood drops from various weapons on difference surfaces like tile, paper, cloth and carpet; arterial spray; transfer blood patterns, which come from objects used in the crime, such as a knife or screwdriver; impact patterns caused by striking a victim with an object; and drip patterns that occur when blood continually drips in the same pool.
The workshop also demonstrated how to present the results of the analysis to a jury in the courtroom.
Throughout the year, STAFS offers trainings for high school teachers and professionals in the field on various aspects of forensic science.
Participants can earn continuing education credits, credits from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer s Standards and Training or certifications in forensic discipline.
Future workshops include “Pattern Evidence,” including blood spatter, fingerprinting and trace evidence, on June 11-15, and “Advanced Crime Scene Investigation,” include CSI processing, entomology, human decomposition, human skeletal recovery and documentation, on June 18-22.
For more information, visit www.cjcenter.org/stafs.
Submit Update Items Here
In order to assist members of the Sam Houston State University community in publicizing events, the SHSU Communications Office (Today@Sam) is now requesting that students, faculty and staff submit information about events, accomplishments or ideas for feature stories online.
Submission criteria and guidelines, including deadlines, have now been placed online, at /guidelines.html. This information is also accessible through the “Submissions” link in the right-hand navigation on Today@Sam.
From there, those submitting ideas can access forms that will allow them to provide detailed information about their idea, as well as attach event calendars, vitas/resumes or photos, depending on the type of submission.
Ideas submitted to the SHSU Communications Office are directly utilized in several ways: as news stories, “slider” or SHSU home page stories, hometown releases, and on the Today@Sam calendar.
If your submission qualifies for distribution, we will either contact you for more detailed information, or we will edit the information using SHSU/journalistic style and forward the final release to the appropriate media.
All information is verified before release, so please provide complete, accurate and timely information. Please type all responses in appropriate upper and lower cases.
For more information, contact the Communications Office at 936.294.1836 or today@sam.edu.
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SHSU Media Contacts: Julia May, Jennifer Gauntt
Feb. 10, 2012
Please send comments, corrections, news tips to Today@Sam.edu
This page maintained by SHSU's Communications Office
Associate Director: Julia May
Manager: Jennifer Gauntt
Located in the 115 Administration Building
Telephone: 936.294.1836; Fax: 936.294.1834
Please send comments, corrections, news tips to Today@Sam.edu.
