A celebration of student, faculty and staff accolades
What else are students doing? Jasmine Shinko and Cassandra Wasson were recently awarded Sigma Xi Grantsin-Aid of Research for their research proposals; ROTC cadets Kayla Amsler, Mitchell Carroll, Patrick Doty and Eric Stormer received scholarships— plus lots more! Visit www. gannon.edu/ accolades/ students for a full listing of these and other recent accomplishments.
What else are faculty and staff doing?
Café Showcases Students’ Ingenuity The International Student Office, located on the first floor of Zurn Science Center, has recently expanded to include a project that brings students of all ethnic backgrounds together—the One Green World Café. The Café is a completely student-run coffee shop that not only serves fair-trade, gourmet brand coffee, but also locally sourced international foods. The Café, which started with one cardboard table, has expanded to a streamlined coffee shop, with every piece of the space designed and built by the students using recycled materials found in the basement of Zurn. Jason Steinberg, associate director of the ISO and a woodworker, has helped the students fashion the space, noting the only thing that students are not permitted to do is actually Sophomore Sohinee “Rhea” Ghosh
By Beth Gaertner
cut the wood. The idea for the One Green World Café came up when Steinberg began looking for a project in which international and American students could learn to work together. “Creating a coffee shop is a great way to create this blending of international and American students because we have students working together at the coffee shop getting to know one another and learning about different cultures,” said Kelsie Bunce, a sophomore business administration major and one of the student managers of the Café. The shop is operated by nearly 50 student volunteers, including four students using the job as an independent study course and one student intern assisting with publicity. The Café operates during the normal Gannon business hours of 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and is currently working with a variety of campus organizations such as Metz Culinary Management dining services and Gannon’s Small Business Development Center to meet food safety requirements and work toward SERVSAFE Certification, which is required of all business operations to be a fully licensed business. “These certifications are the next steps toward expansion and will aid the coffee shop in being a vehicle for the internationalization of campus,” Steinberg said.
mans the counter in the new One Green World Café.
Gaertner is a junior communication arts major and work study in the Communications office.
Alumnus Helps Name Parish Library after Father Gregorek For nearly 28 years total, the Very Rev. Joseph Gregorek, Ph.D., V. F., biology professor, has been a fixture on Gannon’s campus. But for much of the 1980s, he was also a mainstay at St. Peter and St. Paul Parish in Alta Loma, Calif.—and his contributions there were recently recognized when the parish’s library was named in his honor. As fate would have it, Gregorek’s former parish has more than one connection to Gannon; its current pastor, the Rev. Patrick Kirsch ’77, is a Gannon alumnus. “I received a call from Father Pat, letting me know that the parish committee felt it appropriate to name the library in my name. I thought, ‘Why me?’ I only did what I was ordained to do, serve the people. And I was ordained to do so for the sake of God, not myself. So I was very honored that they would remember me in this way,” Gregorek said. From 1984-1992, Gregorek was a resident priest at St. Peter and St. Paul while also serving as associate dean of basic sciences at the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific in Pomona, Calif. He currently serves as a weekend assistant at several churches in the Diocese of Erie, including St. Casimir, Holy Family and St. Ann’s. “Throughout his whole life he has been dedicated to education and growing in holiness; I could think of no greater person to name our library after,” Kirsch said. “Father Gregorek’s name is mentioned over and over. He is so well-loved and remembered by all of the people for his dedication and willingness to be a servant.”
The parish honored Gregorek during a special Mass celebrating the church’s 30th anniversary, followed by a dinner and the formal blessing of The Rev. Joseph Gregorek (left) and The Father the Rev. Patrick Kirsch ’77 (right) Joe Gregorek celebrate the parish library naming. Parish Library. About 300 people attended the event, including former members of Gregorek’s youth group, many of whom brought their own children to meet him. “I most fondly remember the people; their dedication to the parish was very memorable,” Gregorek said of his time in California. “My first day, I was in a hurry and I answered the telephone, ‘Hello, St. Peter and Paul,’ and the woman on the other end corrected me, ‘No, father, it’s St. Peter and St. Paul, don’t you forget it!’ That was the kind of pride they had in the church.”
newsnotes
Chris Dubbs, grant writer, co-authored a new book, Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Space Flight, that tells the stories of how ordinary people got into space; a paper co-authored by engineering professors Weifeng Xu, Ph.D., Stephen Frezza, Ph.D. and Wookwon Lee, Sc.D., was honored with a Certificate of Merit at the recent World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science— plus lots more! Visit www.gannon. edu/accolades/ facstaff for a full listing of these and other recent accomplishments.
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