The UMW Bookstore still has a few copies of Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market:  Ayn Rand and the American Right in stock. UMW Faculty & Staff receive 20% discount.

In an effort to improve Information Technologies support and service delivery to our campus community, and to once again offer IT related training courses, the Information Technologies division has reorganized User Services into two separate departments: IT Support Services and IT Training and Communication.

The new department of IT Training and Communication will be directed by Pam Lowery who will head up our renewed training efforts and an overhaul of the IT website.  More information regarding training opportunities will be announced in the coming months.

We are pleased to have Jerry Slezak, formerly the Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, join us as Director of IT Support Services.  As director, Jerry will provide oversight and management of the IT Help Desk operations, desktop support, lab and classroom technology support, the coordination of computer replacement initiatives, and other related functions.

For more information about the IT organization please visit: http://www.umw.edu/doit/organization/default.php.

The Department of Psychology is once again holding our annual Topher Bill Scholarship Auction.  This year the auction will be on-line! This will change how we do business.  We still would like your donations, and we’d appreciate your participation in our auction after it begins. 

Any big items we auction will have to be picked up from us by the buyer. We will still pick items up from the seller. The delivery of any baked goods will be decided upon by the buyer and the seller.  The dates of any outings (ballgames, picnics) or dinners will be decided upon by the buyer and the seller, as usual.  The psychology department will mail gift certificates and small items.  When the auction goes online, we will indicate in the item description whether the item can be shipped or not.

We hope that by going online, we will increase our participation in the auction, so please consider a donation!  We can auction anything, just like in our past auctions. If you prefer, you may make a donation directly to the Topher Bill Memorial Scholarship Fund by sending a check payable to the UMW Foundation and noting that it is for the Psychology Topher Bill Scholarship.

Please plan to check us out online and bid on items at the auction! Once the auction is up and running, probably by the end of February, we will send out the web address.

Attached is the donation form which can be completed and returned via email, campus mail or regular mail to Jean Bennett (jbennett@umw.edu). 

If you have any questions please contact Jean (540-654-1054) or me (540-654-1559).

Thanks for your help!

Debra Cowart Steckler, Chair, Department of  Psychology

New book discusses “The Challenged world of Traditional Islam.”

The world’s fastest-growing religion is also the most misunderstood in the west. In Islam in the Modern World, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world’s leading experts on Islamic thought, explains why traditional Islam exists in tension with modern Western culture while at the same time it is also opposed by many currents of Islamic “fundamentalism.”  Nasr explains all the major points of tension—politics, philosophy, education, art, the role of women, and more—for traditional Isla, rooted in the Qur’an and the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad, differs from both modernism and Islam’s extremist factions.

–Back Cover/Published by Harper One

Great Lives; The Free Lance-Star

The University of Mary Washington‘s ‘Great Lives’ lecture series continues this week with a discussion on Tuesday of “Peanuts” cartoonist and observer of the human condition Charles Schulz, given by M. Thomas Inge, a professor of humanities at Randolph-Macon College and the editor of “My Life With Charlie Brown.” An op-ed column by Mr. Inge appears today on Page D3.

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/012011/01232011/600289