Author: Brynn Boyer

Presently on sabbatical in Italy, Federico Schneider is a visiting scholar at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, where he is working on his second book project “The Inconspicuous Art of the Libretto.”

He has been featured on National Swiss Radio (RSI, Rete Uno): “Incontro con Federico Schneider. Dal Jazz a… Dante”  http://reteuno.rsi.ch/home/networks/reteuno/oraDelTe/2011/01/25/Federico-Schneider-1.html.

He has presented a paper entitled “Musica e dramma nella Commedia,” at Ritrovarsi alla Badia di Ganna, Lecture Series 2011, Ganna (VA), and has been invited to deliver a lecture entitled “L’arte nascosta nel libretto d’opera” at the Università degli Studi of Turin. .

Join the James Monroe Museum this Saturday to get in the holiday mood!

Tickets are still available for “Deck the Halls,” the annual holiday decorating presentation by Jan Williams, which will be held in Dodd Auditorium from 9:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday. This program has hundreds of loyal fans and will give you great ideas on how to decorate your home for the season! Tickets are $22 for UMW faculty and staff and include a breakfast of seasonal breads, pastries, coffee and tea. Call x1123 or e-mail auphaus@umw.edu to purchase.

On Saturday afternoon, visit the museum (at 908 Charles Street) for our free holiday Open House from 4 to 6 p.m., before the downtown Holiday Parade. We’ll have hot cider and cookies, and visitors will see the special exhibit “A Monroe Christmas,” which shows how the holidays were celebrated during Monroe’s time.

An added bonus is that a jazz ensemble from the Quantico Marine Corps Band will give a free performance of seasonal tunes in our courtyard at 4 p.m.!

We hope to see you all there!

Xiaofeng Zhao, assistant professor in the College of Business, chaired a session and presented two papers at the Decision Sciences Institute 2011 Annual Meeting in Boston. The papers, “The Effects of the Variation on Queuing Systems in Supply Chain Management” and “Understanding Process Flow and Waiting Time Variance: A Spread Sheet Approach,” are published in the peer-reviewed conference proceedings.

“Estimating the Variance of Waiting Time in the Delivery of Healthcare Services,” a paper co-authored by Zhao, has been accepted by the International Journal of Decision Sciences.

Charles J. Shields, associate director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, is featured in the Sunday, Nov. 27 edition of The New York Times Sunday Book Review. The article, “How It Went,” is a review of Shields’ book, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life.

Join the Eagle Business Book Club on Friday, Dec. 9 at 7:30 a.m. in duPont Hall, Room 211 for its second meeting.

The club was formed to give UMW faculty and staff an opportunity to read books that pertain to our work environment—our goal is to learn and share best practices in the workplace!  To that end, each month we will read a different ‘business book’ and then discuss it.

The book for the December meeting is “StrengthsFinder 2.0” by Tom Rath.  Pick up a copy of the book, complete the online test and be ready to discuss your top five strengths at the meeting.

The Eagle Book Club Steering Committee members are Rosemary Arneson, Erma Baker, Donna Mejia, Fred Pierce, Lynne Richardson, Doug Searcy and Justin Webb.  If you have specific questions, please contact a member of the Steering Committee.  Oh, and it’s BYOC (Bring Your Own Coffee)!

– Lynne Richardson, Dean, College of Business