The Chronicle of Higher Education has named Jim Groom, director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, one of 12 “tech innovators who are transforming campuses.” Along with the distinction, Groom is featured in the Sunday, Feb. 26 issue. The article “Self-Described ‘EduPunk’ Says Colleges Should Abandon Course-Management Systems” explores Groom’s involvement with UMW’s digital-storytelling course and his ideas on learning management systems.
Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry Claudia Emerson’s new book “Secure the Shadow” is now available. Her book, published by Louisiana State University Press, is a collection of poetry.
Daringly realistic and artfully mediated by past and present, Claudia Emerson’s Secure the Shadow contains historical pieces as well as poems centering on the deaths of the poet’s brother and father. Emerson covers all aspects of the tragedies that, as Keats believed, contribute to our human collective of Soul-making, in which each death accrues into an immortal web of ongoing love and meaning for the living. Emerson’s unwavering gaze shows that loss cannot be eluded, but can be embraced in elegies as devastating as they are beautiful.
UMW Speaking Center Director Esther Yook co-edited a book on communication centers in higher education, published by Lexington Books. “Communication Centers and Oral Communication Programs in Higher Education” is a collection that examines the centers that support communication departments or across-the-curriculum programs as higher education focuses more attention on the communication field. The text addresses theoretical issues covering topics such as the importance of communication centers to higher education, and the effects of communication centers on retention, critical thinking in the center and ethics.
Mark Thaden, director of alumni relations, presented at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District III conference in Atlanta from Feb. 19 to 22. Thaden’s talk focused on small shop alumni relations.
On Monday, March 26, he will present “Cost Effective Strategies for Reaching out to Alumni: Alumni Relations on a Shoe String” at the Institute of International Education’s Finnish Higher Education Experts USA Study Tour in Washington, D.C.
In an episode of the television program “Jeopardy” that aired on Friday, Feb. 24, the final question referenced Charles J. Shields’ biography “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life.” Shields is associate director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series.
The question, in the category of literary biographies, was:
“Quoting a famous line of his, a 2011 biography of this man was titled ‘And So It Goes’.”
