News Briefs con't
Meredith Student Athletes Win Pennies for Purpose
The Meredith College Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) earned the 2009 “Pennies for a Purpose” title by raising more than double the contributions from the second place school and providing over half of the total donations for the USA South Athletic Conference’s penny drive.
Meredith College raised a total of $2,372.50, which will be donated to the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. A celebration of this accomplishment was held on May 1 in Weatherspoon Gym.
Overall, the USA South institutions collected $4,365.48. Mary Baldwin College raised $935.23 to finish second while Peace College's $391.21 rounded out the top three.
Over the two-year history of “Pennies for a Purpose,” the USA South institutions have donated $7,087.24 to local organizations.
In an effort to help worthy organizations during the spring semester, the USA South SAAC developed "Pennies for a Purpose" in 2008. This is the second community service program developed by the USA South Conference SAAC. The "Cans Across the Conference" food drive, which takes place during the Thanksgiving holiday, was created in 2004. Through that campaign, USA South institutions have donated a total of 85,020 items to their local communities.
Nutshell Notes
- Meredith College is now on Twitter, a free service that lets people keep in touch with others through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Meredith’s Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/meredithcollege.
- Meredith College junior Brie Sherman won the “Bag-Out in Style” fashion show held on April 18 as part of the Planet Earth ’09 Celebration in downtown Raleigh. Sherman’s design was a long evening rosette dress made from Target plastic bags. Senior Salma Salem and juniors Meredith Busey and Lindsay Kay also participated in the competition.
- “Beckon” (2005, 18"x32"x18"), a sculpture by Meredith art instructor and alumna Holly Fischer, ’99, has been selected for inclusion in the Lark Books “500” Series: “Ceramic Sculptures: Contemporary Practice, Singular Works.” Fischer's work was selected from more than 8,000 entries by the distinguished art critic, historian and professor Glen R. Brown—an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva.
- Peace College won the RecycleMania competition against Meredith. Meredith’s RecycleMania participation was successful, however, with the campus community collecting 9,272 total pounds of recycling, including aluminum, glass, paper and plastic during the three month competition. RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.
- Meredith’s Service-Learning Advisory Committee held its annual Community Partners Recognition Luncheon on March 30. The event featured the debut of a video about Meredith’s Service-Learning Program, created by Kyra Young, ’08, and Professor of Art Jane Terry as part of an undergraduate research project.
Retiring Faculty Profile: Louise Reiss, Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures
By Stefanie Gregory, ’09
Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures Louise Reiss will enter retirement after the spring semester. Reiss came to Meredith as an adjunct assistant professor in 1980 and became a full-time faculty member in 1988.
Reiss’ favorite things about Meredith have been its students and the community spirit here. As she nears her emeritus status, Reiss says “My best experiences at Meredith have happened in classes interacting with my students. I especially have enjoyed the many times that we were having fun and learning at the same time.”
Her plans after retiring include lots of reading. “I love to read,” Reiss says, “but have not had the time over the years to read as I would like. Now I have no excuse!
Traveling is also on the agenda for Reiss post-retirement. “I travel a lot,” she says, “but will be traveling much more all over the world with my husband. I also look forward, as does my husband, to reviving my gourmet cooking skills.”
Reiss would also like to spend some time gardening and possibly using her nursing experience in some way. “I was a nurse before I went to graduate school and earned my Ph. D. and then became a professor,” she says, “I might either work or volunteer to use both my nursing skills and my language skills together. I didn’t have my languages – French, Italian, and Spanish – when I was a nurse before, but now I think I could be very useful.”
While she looks forward to spending more time with her husband and playing with her dogs more, she hopes her students have taken from her classes the absolute joy of learning. “I hope they will never lose the desire to learn,” she says.
Throughout her career at Meredith, Reiss has served the College in multiple facets including being a member of the Honor Council, the Admissions Committee and the Nursing Task Force Committee.
Reiss holds a B.A. in English and German from Pennsylvania State University, her M.A. in Comparative Literature and her Ph.D in Romance Philology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
News Briefs
Meredith Participates in NC Academy of Science
Meredith College students and faculty participated in the annual meeting of the North Carolina Academy of Science, April 3-5, 2009.
Students Cynthia Abell, Krishna Chagarlamudi, Audrey Lenhausen and Anna Simmons presented talks about research they have conducted in the past year.
Chagarlamudi’s presentation: “Quantification of Pharmaceutical Uptake by Corbicula fluminea”, earned second place in the Derieux Award for undergraduate research in her section: Ecology, Environmental Science, and Conservation Biology. The Derieux Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research is presented for presentations at the NCAS annual meeting. Presentations are judged on scientific merit and presentation.
The students were accompanied by Professor of Biological Sciences Francie Cuffney and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Erin Linquist, and Sustainability Coordinator Laura Fieselman, each of whom presented papers at the annual meeting.
Lindquist was inducted as co-executive director of the Collegiate Academy of the North Carolina Academy of Sciences (CANCAS) at the meetings. She will serve as the director for five years.
For more information on Meredith’s academic program in biological sciences, visit www.meredith.edu/biology.
Avenging Angels Win USA South Tennis Tournament
The Meredith tennis team captured their first ever USA South Athletic Conference Women's Tennis Tournament Championship defeating #1 Methodist University 5-4. The Avenging Angels avenge their regular season 5-4 loss to Methodist.
With the win, Meredith gained the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament for their second appearance in the last three years.
The Meredith all-tournament team was led by most valuable player Molly Parks, Morgan Martin, Kathryn Maples and Ashley Pearsall.
