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SHSU Update For Week Of April 28
- Folk Festival To Remember 19th-Century Huntsville
- World Press Day To Pay Homage To Journalists’ Sacrifices
- Festival To Present ‘Animations From Sam’
- Emory Professor To Give ‘Dynamic’ Lecture
- PRSSA, NBS To Host ‘Media Live 2013’
- Students to Play Out Semester With Four Concerts
- Student, Faculty Cellists To Celebrate Accomplishments
- Oliver Publishes Inaugural Issue Of CJ Journal
- Today@Sam Seeks Summer Calendar Info
- Submit Update Items Here
Folk Festival To Remember 19th-Century Huntsville
The Sam Houston Memorial Museum will celebrate the lives of the Houston family by recreating the 1800s Huntsville atmosphere in which they lived during the 26th annual Gen. Sam Houston Folk Festival Friday through Sunday (May 3-5).
More than 15,000 visitors are anticipated to learn about life during Houston’s days from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday on the museum grounds.
The historical event will include live historical re-enactors performing vignettes and theatrical interpretations, costumed historical characters, folk life demonstrations, arts and crafts, dulcimer workshops, live acoustic music, a living history theatre and ethnic foods.
In addition, attendees will have the opportunity to see programs by Raven’s Rangers (formerly the New Army of the Republic of Texas), Cane Island Volunteers, and Mountain Men and Fur Trappers; and learn about Texas history by storytellers representing the state’s significant leaders.
Ethnic groups including well-known regional musicians, dancers and entertainers also will showcase Texas’s diverse heritage.
Other activities include touring buildings related to Houston’s life, juried activities, ethnic foods and refreshments, and musical entertainment.
“This year’s festival is jam-packed with a variety of entertainment,” said Megan Buro, museum marketing coordinator. “Bluegrass, Americana, folk, gospel, country, Scottish, and Irish tunes are just some of the music you will hear throughout the three day festival.
“This is a great family event that combines education and entertainment,” she said.
The Gen. Sam Houston Folk Festival was begun in 1988 to increase visitors’ understanding and appreciation for Texas history, the life of Sam Houston, and frontier and pioneer heritage. Since then, the festival has accommodated over 230,000 visitors from Texas, surrounding states and several foreign countries.
Friday’s admission is $3 for all ages. Two-day passes for the weekend will also be sold for is $8 for students, $10 adults. The price for children ages 5-11 is $3 per day, and admission is free for children under 5 years old. Group rates are also available.
In addition, anyone interested in volunteering at the Folk Festival can sign up at http://tinyurl.com/folkvolunteer.
For more information, call the Sam Houston Memorial Museum at 936.294.1832, and for a complete entertainment lineup, visit http://samhoustonfolkfestival.blogspot.com/ or “Like” the Gen. Sam Houston Folk Festival on Facebook.
World Press Day To Pay Homage To Journalists’ Sacrifices
Sam Houston State University’s Global Center for Journalism and Democracy will work to raise awareness of the limited journalistic freedom experienced by reporters globally and the importance of a free press on Thursday and Friday (May 2-3) as part of the “World Press Freedom Day” celebration.
As part of the event—which itself is part of a larger day recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—the center will set up a table in the Lowman Student Center Mall Area from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on both days to display informational reports written by mass communication students and will hand out free sunglasses with the tag “Don’t be in the dark about world press freedom.” The center will also share facts and stories from its website and social media outlets.
Among the reports will be information on a missing Texas journalist, Austin Tice, who was taken captive in Syria; a look at the most and least press friendly nations; an infographic about journalists who have been killed, kidnapped or abused; an inside look at a few widely known incidents; and information on the laws, restriction and actions that have taken place in countries worldwide to restrict the press.
“Some people may think it's silly to set aside a day devoted to press freedom, but could you imagine what our country would be like without a free and vibrant press?” said Kelli Arena, executive director for the GCJD. “It's easy to criticize reporters or media outlets these days; still, we all turn to the press in the midst of crisis, when we try to find meaning in the madness, when we need vital information to keep our families safe.
“Setting aside a day to think about World Press Freedom is important because it's something Americans take for granted,” she said. “We lose sight of the dangers that journalists face, the courage it takes to print or broadcast the truth, and the crushing fear that many people in the world face each day when they talk to reporters."
Since the center’s inception last year, the GCJD has hosted several journalists, including Egyptian journalist Shahira Amin, and Irish Times foreign correspondent Mary Fitzgerald, both of whom emphasized the importance of what they do, including the core ideas behind having World Press Freedom Day.
For more information on SHSU’s World Press Freedom Day activities, visit the GCJD homepage at www.shsu.edu/global-journalism or “Like” their Facebook page.
Festival To Present ‘Animations From Sam’
Sam Houston State University’s computer animation program will screen student work created over the past year during its annual “Animation From Sam” festival on Thursday (May 2).
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| A still of the student project "The Amazing Photomatron," which will be included in this year's "Animation from Sam" screening. The project was created in the spring 2013 "Advanced 3-D Animation" course at SHSU as a collaborative project by Keyton Berry, Alexiah Carter, Alexandra Guerin, Rachel Jordan, Danielle Juers, Alex Matson, Mark McMurray, Stephanie Pina and Michael Schaer. —Submitted image |
The event, which will include projects from sophomore- to senior-level classes, will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m. in the Gaertner Performing Arts Center Dance Theater lobby, followed by the screening at 6 p.m. in the GPAC Dance Theater.
“Animation from Sam” reflects the diversity of the courses that the computer animation program offers, presenting a range of approaches to animation that includes narrative and non-narrative animation, character animation, experimental animation, and motion graphics, according to Edward Morin, assistant professor of computer animation.
“The festival gives our students a chance to celebrate their hard work; most work weeks, sometimes months, to complete a single project,” Morin said. “This event helps to remind students that they are creating work for an audience, an easy thing to forget after spending hours in a dark room in front of a computer.
“This event also provides an opportunity for students to share their creative vision and talent with other students and faculty from the department of art, as well as the SHSU and Huntsville communities,” he said. “It is a great way for students to get feedback on their work outside of the formal classroom experience.”
The festival is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Morin at emm026@shsu.
Emory Professor To Give Final, ‘Dynamic’ Lecture
Patrick Allitt, the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University, will complete the four-part “Art of Teaching” series on April 30 with a discussion on “Dynamic Lecturing.”
The presentation will begin at 2 p.m., and again at 3 p.m., in the Professional and
Academic Center for Excellence Conference Room, in College of Humanities and Social Sciences Building C002.
"Dynamic Lecturing" explores the idea of presentation as type of “performance” and will focus on the many factors faculty should consider when preparing and delivering a lecture.
“Some professors are spell binding with their lectures; others not so much,” said Marsha Harman, PACE director. “Lecturing has developed a poor reputation recently, particularly from those who are not dynamic in their presentations; thus, if instructors are going to use lecture and be the ‘sage on the state,’ we need to present an engaging lecture.
Allitt’s presentation would be beneficial to both seasoned professors and first-year lecturers because, ultimately, a lecture is how a professor reaches his/her student, Harman said.
“Students give us feedback about lectures and other teaching techniques in our teaching evaluations,” she said. “If the feedback is that our lectures are not helping students learn, all instructors wanting to improve their teaching will benefit from Dr. Allitt’s observations and suggestions.”
“Dynamic Lecturing” is sponsored by PACE and the department of foreign languages.
For more information, or to reserve a spot, contact PACE at 936.294.2688 or pace@shsu.edu.
PRSSA, NBS To Host ‘Media Live 2013’
Professors and professionals from the fields of broadcasting, film, journalism, public relations and television will converge at Sam Houston State University on Tuesday (April 30) to share their expertise with anyone interested in those fields.
The first “Media Live,” sponsored by SHSU’s Public Relations Student Society of America and the National Broadcasting Society, will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the third floor of the Lowman Student Center.
“Media Live 2013” is an event where current and former mass comm students can learn about different programs in the mass communication department and get professional advice from those already working in the field, according to Ashlee Page, vice president for the SHSU PRSSA chapter.
“This is the only day mass communication students can meet face-to-face with professors and professionals in their respective fields,” Cheyenne Simpson, NBS president, said. “Students can get advice about classes, resumes and how to begin their careers."
Following an opening and welcome at 9:30 a.m. in Lowman Student Center Room 320, the first of two panel sessions will begin at 10 a.m., featuring Huntsville 101.7 KSAM Radio’s Brooke Addams, Bryan/College Station KBTX-TV’s Michael Odor, and SHSU associate director for communications Julia May.
At 11 a.m., students can attend “breakout sessions” on broadcast production, with Bearkat athletics media coordinator Jason Barfield or with the mass comm department’s broadcast operations general manager LeeAn Muns; public relations, with mass comm adjunct faculty member Frank Krystyniak or Tiffany Thomas, executive director of the Linda Lorelle Scholarship Fund; or film, with mass comm department chair Jean Bodon.
Later in the afternoon, freelance journalist Kim Morgan and David Ellison, the media information officer for Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, will discuss their respective fields in another breakout session.
For more information, follow “Media Live” on Facebook or contact Page at arp027@shsu.edu.
Students to Play Out Semester With Four Concerts
The spring semester will reach its coda this week for student musicians, as a trio of piano classes and the string chamber class perform their last concerts of the semester beginning Monday (April 29).
Students of assistant professor of piano Ilonka Rus will tune up the week’s performances that day with a Piano Studio Recital beginning at 6 p.m. in the Gaertner Performing Arts Center Recital Hall.
Undergraduate and graduate students in Rus’s Piano Studio will perform a program of chamber music that ranges in time from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 18th century “Sonata in F major, K. 332,” to Franz Liszt’s 19th century “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2,” to Astor Piazzolla’s 20th century “Libertango,” among many others.
On Tuesday (April 30), associate professor of music Sergio Ruiz’s Piano Studio also will perform a program filled with music from the 18th and 19th centuries, beginning at 5 p.m. in the GPAC Recital Hall.
The concert will feature Anggraini Dinata, performing a piece by Franz Joseph Haydn; Kara Reed, performing a piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Shannon Boone, performing a piece by Jan Hugo Vorišzek; Kirk Jimenez, performing a work by Frederic Chopin; and two pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Kyungok Kim and Anna Smigelskaya.
On Wednesday (May 1), some of Rus’s students will collaborate for a “traditional” piano recital, beginning at 4 p.m. in the GPAC Recital Hall.
The Piano Collaborative Recital will feature two or more pianists playing a variety of international works on a single piano, and sometimes two or more pianists playing on two pianos, according to Rus.
“This is a recital that is comprised of an exciting and engaging two pianos (with) four hands; two pianos, eight hands; one piano, eight hands; one piano, four hands; and two pianos pieces,” Rus said. “All pieces are well known by the public and will keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
A reception will follow the concert on the second floor of the School of Music Building.
Finally, that evening, the string chamber class will present masterworks by Shostakovich and Beethoven, among others, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the GPAC Recital Hall.
The chamber class ensemble include string quartets and piano trios and duos, according to Javier Pinell, associate professor of violin.
Admission is free to all of the concerts.
For more information, call the School of Music at 936.294.1360.
Student, Faculty Cellists To Celebrate Accomplishments
A duo of cello concerts will celebrate the end of the semester and the beginning of a professor’s career as an assistant professor, both on Sunday (May 5).
The SHSU Cello Studio will begin the day’s events with the presentation of works by Bach, Elgar, Klengel, Lalo, Saint-Saens, and others, beginning at 4 p.m. in the Gaertner Performing Arts Center Recital Hall.
“This recital is the culmination of the hard work and practice our SHSU cello students exerted this semester,” said Daniel Saenz, assistant professor of cello.
That evening Saenz will celebrate his new appointment as assistant professor with violinist Jisu Shin and pianist Andrew Staupe as the trio performs the “monumental” “Piano Trio” of Tchaikovsky, beginning at 6 p.m. in the GPAC Recital Hall.
Saenz and the guest artists will begin the program with a set of salon pieces by Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers evoking a recital in late 1800s Moscow, Saenz said.
“A literal tour de force for each member of the trio, the difficulties fade away as the beauty of Tchaikovsky’s melodies overwhelm us with feelings of joy and sorrow,” he said.
Staupe, a native of St. Paul, Minn., is a laureate the 2013 ProLiance Energy Classical Fellowship Awards of the American Pianists Association who is currently completing his doctorate in piano performance at Rice University.
Since completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance at the University of Minnesota, Staupe has begun rapidly earning international acclaim for his consummate artistry, effortless virtuosity and a deeply poetic approach to the keyboard, according to Saenz.
He recently made what would become an acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut and has appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, and numerous other orchestras throughout the country.
Shin, a native of South Korea, earned her bachelor’s degree at the Korean National University of Arts and was a member of the Korean Symphony Orchestra before coming to America in 2008 to study at the University of Houston, where she received her master’s degree.
She has played numerous contemporary performances in AURA, which is dedicated to the performance of contemporary chamber music at the University of Houston and the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and is currently working on her doctoral degree studying under Frank Huang, who is the concert master of Houston Symphony Orchestra.
Admission to both performances is free.
For more information, call the School of Music at 936.294.1360.
Oliver Publishes Inaugural Issue Of CJ Journal
Willard M. Oliver, professor of criminal justice, released the inaugural issue of Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology, at Sam Houston State University on April 15.
The official online journal of the Southwestern Association of Criminal Justice, now supported by Sam Houston State University, has been in production for two years and will now publish semiannually on April 15 and Oct. 15.
The Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology is the result of a fall 2011 conversation with SACJ board members who were concerned with the direction the journal was going in and was seeking new leadership.
“It just so happened that I had been preparing a ‘Qualitative Research Methods’ course for the doctoral students in the College of Criminal Justice and was frustrated by the fact there was no journal dedicated to qualitative research in either the criminal justice or criminology disciplines,” Oliver said.
“The majority of work is with numbers and statistics, yet research with words through interviews and field research is still a viable method,” he said. “I proposed creating a new journal, dedicated to qualitative criminal justice and criminology.”
The support from researchers in criminal justice and criminology has been overwhelming, with one leading researcher saying, “It’s about time someone took this on.”
“The qualitative community was united in the need for such journal,” Oliver said. “Since the inaugural issue was published, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive as congratulations have poured in to the editorial office.”
The first issue, Vol. 1 No. 1, features six peer-reviewed articles ranging from interviews with prison chaplains to interviews with while collar prisoners currently serving sentences in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
One article also deals with how families of murder victims feel following the execution of the murderer. In addition, the journal also features four book reviews of contemporary qualitative works, as well as one historical book review, covering a qualitative book that has had an impact on qualitative research.
The journal has a dedicated website and the first issue may be downloaded for free at www.jqcjc.org.
Today@Sam Seeks Summer Calendar Info
The university Communications Office is now collecting information on campus events for its summer and fall calendar pages.
Departmental calendars or events can be sent to today@sam.edu or jenniferg@shsu.edu or faxed to 294.1834. Please include the date, location and time of the event, as well as a brief description and a contact person.
Information collected for the Today@Sam calendar pages, at /calendars/, is used by various media outlets, as well as the Communications Office for news stories and releases.
All information, including story ideas and update items for Today@Sam, should be sent a minimum of a week in advance of the event in order to make necessary contacts and write a story.
To see a full list of the Today@Sam submission guidelines, or to access submission forms for news or feature stories, calendar submissions, or hometown releases, visit /guidelines.html.
For more information, call 936.294.1836.
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
April 26, 2013
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.
