Provenance Fall 2019

Fall 2019

The newsletter of Pierre Laclede Honors College at the University of Missouri-St. Louis

Provenance is a student-produced publication of the Pierre Laclede Honors College. Its goal is to help keep alumni and friends connected with the college, current students, and each other.

• • • •

Nicole Gevers, Civil Engineering, class of May 2019 Kaitlyn Waller, English, class of May 2019 Kristyn Waller, English, class of December 2019 Dan Gerth, Associate Dean, faculty advisor

Which version of Provenance do you prefer? Are you reading this online and prefer physical media?

Are you reading a hard copy and prefer the electronic edition for easier access to web links? Contact Dan Gerth at gerthd@umsl.edu if you would like a version of Provenance other than the form you are reading.

Facebook: Pierre Laclede Honors College at UMSL Twitter: @UMSLHonors Instagram: umslhonors

Click here for back issues of Provenance or visit issuu.com/ pierrelacledehonorscollege for these and other editions, as well as additional Honors publications, such as Brain Stew and the Undergraduate Research Symposium program.

Spring 2018

Facebook: Pierre Laclede Honors College Student Association Twitter: @umslplhcsa Instagram: umslplhcsa

Honors 4900-003: Independent Study in Honors: Provenance ARR

Fall 2018

Facebook: Pierre Laclede Honors College Alumni

Spring 2019

Twitter: @UMSLBrainStew

1-3 credit hours Gerth, D.

Interested in developing your writing, communication, or design skills? Want to help nurture the relationship between alumni and the PLHC students, faculty, and staff? Provenance is looking for students for Spring 2020. You will be part of a team that develops ideas for future articles; interviews alumni, students, or faculty for articles; collaborates on editorial decisions; and gains valuable writing skills in genres that you may not always be exposed to in traditional writing classes. Credit hours and duties are negotiated so as to provide you with the best possible learning experience. Duties can begin immediately or in the spring, depending on your availability. Non-credit volunteer positions are also available. Contact Dan for more information: gerthd@umsl.edu.

Fall 2019

Ed Munn Sanchez

Dear Friends, It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the 30 th anniversary year of the Pierre Laclede Honors College.

It’s always a great time to be an Honors student, faculty, staff, friend, parent, or alum, but this year in particular has a lot to look forward to. Celebrating thirty years of transforming lives as a college will be interwoven in everything we do this year, and I hope you can join us in many exciting events.

I will briefly mention a few of the most notable, starting with our Drinks with the Deans Alumni Happy Hour on Sept. 6 in the 1942 Room at the Pat Connolly Tavern. Former and current deans and associate deans in attendance include myself, Dan Gerth, Nancy Gleason, Bob Bliss, and Fred Fausz. And we will, of course, be toasting to the memory of Dennis Bohnenkamp. Next comes the first in the official series of coinciding anniversaries: the 10th Alumni Trivia Night on January 25 th at St. Ann of Normandy Catholic Church. This annual fundraiser has helped the Dennis Bohnenkamp Award and the Nancy Gleason Fund each reach endowed status, and this year we hope to accomplish the same goal with the Robert and Paulette Bliss Study Abroad Scholarship.

It's also the 20th anniversary of Bellerive! Along with poetry, fiction, photography, and art, Bellerive now accepts musical contributions (accessible in the publication via QR codes), and alumni are very welcome to submit. The launch party for the 20 th issue happens in February. Stay tuned for more details. And of course the headline event: the official 30 th anniversary party on April 4, 2020 at Glen Echo Country Club. Featuring food, drinks, speakers, and special surprises (I hear something called Brain Stew Live is in the works), you definitely do not want to miss the largest celebration in college history.

We will also be launching a new fund-raising campaign that we are calling 30 for 30. You will hear more about this campaign very soon. We are really excited about what the next 30 years will bring and we will be asking all of our alumni and friends help us make them possible by sending us a gift of $30 (or $300, or $3000…). Your financial support is crucial, and with this campaign our goal is to have as many alumni and friends participate as possible.

It’s not just celebrations, though, that are going to make this our best year yet. I also can’t wait for you to meet our returning students (you can read about some of their amazing accomplishments later in this issue) as well as our incoming class, which meets or exceeds all college records for size and academic achievement.

A nice way to start an important year!

I hope you can join us for some of these events or perhaps at others, such as the Founders Dinner or Homecoming (Honors students took both seats on Homecoming Court last year – as you’ll see elsewhere in this issue). Or maybe you have another idea about how to participate in the college? Please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I am always thrilled to speak with our terrific supporters. Thank you for everything you do for the Pierre Laclede Honors College.

Sincerely,

Ed Munn Sanchez Dean, Pierre Laclede Honors College

•

Tau Sigma Honor Society for Transfer Students

Jennifer Churchill, Rachel Gabrian, Dalila Omerovic, Janazell Rivers

•

Golden Key International Honour Society

Sara Halibasic, Yu Hur, Hannah Schleicher, Shelli Sewell

•

Legendary Triton Award

•

Excellence in Teaching (National Society of Leadership and Success)

Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society for Freshmen

Abigail Anderson, Kenzie Andreasen, Clarence Baker, Sophie Bell, Alaina Dorsey, Benjamin Huss, Wei Wei Kellmann, Alexandra King, Kenneth Miller, Odinaka Onuigbo, Evan Price, Lane Quiller, Madison Russell, Dieynaba Sam, Emma Smiley, Cora Wallace, Philip Yusuf

•

•

Nancy Gleason

Kate Votaw

•

Advisor of the Year

•

Nicole Gevers

• •

Amanda Vollmer Sydni Jackson

•

Brain Stew – 3rd place print division, Nicole Gevers, Sammy Jacobs, and Tony Deluvia – editors

•

President

•

Comptroller

•

New senators

• •

Untitled – Sydney Koltun The Mindy Project – Madison Bick

•

Alumni Organization of the Year

Ann Torrusio

Campus Compact Newman Civic Fellow Danielle Friz

•

Rising Student Leader of the Year McKenzie Schuessler

•

Advanced Leaders Program graduates Michael Dunlap

•

Emerging Leaders Program graduates

Phillip Yusuf, Dieynaba Sam, Odinaka Onuigbo, Lucy Grimshaw, Alaina Dorsey, Allison Northcutt

•

Outstanding Service to the Community

McKenzie Schuessler Nicole Caldwell Lucy Grimshaw, Kenneth Miller, Malik Taylor-Allen, Cassidy McLaughlin, Philip Yusuf

Danielle Friz

•

Fraternity and Sorority Life Student Member of the Year Heather Lange, Zeta Tau Alpha

1. Homecoming Royalty Sydni Jackson (left) and Amanda Vollmer 2. Nicole Gevers receives the Trailblazer Award, with (left to right) Dean Ed Munn Sanchez, Associate Dean Dan Gerth, Dean Jody O’Sullivan (UMSL/Wash. U. Joint Engineering Program), Associate Dean Haiyan Cai (UMSL/Wash U. Joint Engineering Program) 3. Untitled by Sydney Koltun 4. The Mindy Project by Madison Bick 5. Legendary Triton winner Nancy Gleason (left) and Advisor of the Year Ann Torrusio 6. Nicole Gevers (left) and Sammy Jacobs with the NCHC newsletter award 7. The PLHCSA executive board with Dean Ed, (left to right) Ngoc Nguyen, Sarah Wilson, Danielle Friz, Madison Koogler, and Heather Lange 8. Alumni leaders (left to right) Elizabeth Eikmann, JB Carroll, Holly Pope, Sean and Julia Fieser

•

Student Leader of the Year

•

Most Innovative Program

Madison Koogler (PLHCSA)

Honors Charity Ball (PLHCSA)

•

Best Overall Program

•

Organization of the Year

Haunted Honors (PLHCSA) Pierre Laclede Honors College Student Association

Honors College Alumni Network

Fall 2019

Before Brain Stew, before Bellerive, before Provenance‌ we are very happy to bring you page one of the first issue of the first PLHC newsletter from our first year as a college: Confluence.

By Kristyn Waller and Kaitlyn Waller In this new Provenance recurring feature, we spotlight favorite recipes from Honors College faculty and staff members. And we try them out! Do you remember “cookie week” from your time as a student? Each December Sherry brings various homemade cookies each day for a week. For our first installment we look at one of her most popular cookies. But be advised: we are NOT professional (or even amateur) chefs! Our results may not match those of the Honors College recipe submitters!

Q: Where did you learn this recipe?

A:I love cookbooks and always enjoy checking out the recipes. I found this recipe in a small booklet from Hershey’s and being a fan of Chocolate Covered Cherries, I added it to my cookie list over 20 years ago.

Q: How often do you make this recipe and when?

A: I’ve been baking Christmas cookies since before I started Kindergarten, so for over 60 years. For many of the 16 years I’ve worked at UMSL, I’ve brought cookies to work to share. This has led to “Cookie Week,” a week in December when I bring in 8-10 varieties to work to share with coworkers. I do most of my baking in December, with some exceptions. I have a son who is in the army, and when he is

deployed, I make cookies to send to him no matter the time of year. I also occasionally get requests to make cookies for an event, and I usually reply with yes.

Q: Why do you like making this recipe?

A: Although time intensive (about 2 hours), I enjoy making Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies because my coworkers are always excited to see them.

These cookies were surprisingly easy to make, and they were a definite crowd-pleaser, and by crowd we mean our parents. Our results do not have the storybook appearance of the cookies Sherry makes for us each December, but they still tasted great. If you like chocolate covered cherries, this one’s for you.

Fall 2019 Spring 2018

The Haunted (Maybe) Side of the Honors College

By Kristyn Waller

Have you ever encountered ghosts at the Honors College? Many students and professors have their own haunting stories to tell. While last fall’s Provenance included a feature on PLHCSA’s Annual Haunted Honors College event, this year we’ve decided to do a little more exploring and bring you the so-called “true” stories that students have traded since Provincial House became home to the Honors College in 2001.

Dr. Robert Bliss, associate professor of history and dean emeritus of the Honors College, said that when the Provincial House was a convent and headquarters of Daughters of Charity, the current dean’s office was used for wakes for deceased nuns of the order. “Well, the room next door, the present Common Room, was used as a kind of coffee room and also for parties,” he said. “But my room was used only for wakes. The deceased Daughter of Charity would occupy her coffin in the center of the room, while her sisters met in the common room and then came into the sanctum to pray.”

But is this story or the past purpose of the building behind the rumors? It seems that many of the stories involve the former dorm space in Provincial House, and most – although not all – seem unconnected with the building’s past history as a convent. According to Kate Votaw, assistant teaching professor at the Honors College, when Seton Hall used to function as dorm rooms, students claimed to have heard footsteps in the breezeways, and upon looking outside their dorm windows, found that the hallway was empty. Though footsteps can easily be construed for the noises and creaks of a century-old building, there is something down Seton Hall more tangible in its eeriness. Students can’t walk down Seton Hall without seeing the array of paintings featuring what some might consider as ghostly faces.

An odd variety of stories and legends surround these paintings. Holly Pope, the Honors College admissions representative, provided multiple variations of the urban myth. “Back in the 1950s,” she said, “The former St. Vincent’s Hospital for the Insane was overcrowded. The Sisters from the Daughters of Charity had volunteered at St. Vincent’s and had some of the overflow patients stay in the dorms in Seton. The faces were painted by one of the patients who was staying in the Provincial House. The patient was drawing the face of

each of their different personalities.” According to other versions, the patient drew each of the faces he saw in his room each night, and in other versions still, a number of patients drew the paintings, all of whom saw the same face.

Unsurprisingly, the real story behind the paintings is much less scary. Dean Bliss explained that after the move to Provincial House a student art committee was created to procure art from the university’s collection in the basement of the JC Penney Center, and other storage places like the Provincial House basement, for the all too bare walls of the Honors College. They had permission from the Chancellor to take whatever art pieces they wanted to hang up around the Honors College, and chose the paintings now hung down Seton Hall. He said, “I don’t think I can shed any more light on the paintings other than to say that they were a student choice. I thought them just a tad grim. But perhaps the students on that ersatz committee were in a pretty grim mood.

Anyway, Donna Hart [a former Honors College professor] and I had decided beforehand to accept student preferences whatever they might turn out to be.” Regardless, the paintings apparently belonged to the university, not St. Vincent’s or the Daughters of Charity – although ghost lovers are free to speculate about where the university acquired them.

The Honors College, as well as the larger university, of course, capitalizes on Provincial House ghost lore, with various events – including PLHCSA’s annual Haunted Honors, winner of various Office of Student Involvement awards.

The University Program Board also held a notable event in the building three years ago: a tour through the basement accompanied by professional ghost hunters. Megan Mayfield, senior, psychology major, said “It didn't seem like they [the ghost hunters] expected anything to happen, but they showed us all their gadgets and gizmos and we turned off the lights and got started. Well, weird things started happening, and the name Mark kept coming up on different gadgets.

Once we went home I did some digging and found an accidental gun death of a student named Mark in 1992.” Sadly, this tragic incident is easily confirmed in August 1992 coverage from The Current. However, the same article also reveals that the incident took place in an off-campus apartment and involved the accidental discharge of a service pistol issued to the student’s roommate, a cadet at the St. Louis County and Municipal Police Academy, who was unloading the pistol at the time.

Many of the stories also involve a different part of dorm space that is still utilized today: the Villa residential area.

Lauren Becker, now a graduate student in criminology and criminal justice, recounts faucets turning off and on, strange noises, and unsettling presences. She lived on the third floor of Villa for a year and half, but it wasn’t until the last 6 months of her stay in September 2017 that she started experiencing unexplainable events. She said, “One day when I got home in the afternoon, my roommate asked me if I had been using the shower at 10 am that morning. I told her no, because I left to go downtown at 7. She thought that was very strange, because she swore that she heard footsteps in the bathroom at 10. No one would've had access to the bathroom because my door was locked, and I hadn't called maintenance or anything. I just ignored it because I figured it was just the pipes or something in the old building.”

Fall 2019 Things became spookier. In the middle of the night in October, she said she heard a terribly loud noise from the bathroom. She said, “The sound was so loud that it seemed like something had fallen through the ceiling in the bathroom.” Having lived on the top floor of Villa, she said that nothing could have dropped from above-- at least not anything from other residents.

Things settled down until fall break. One night, while watching TV, her roommate having gone home for the holidays, she said she heard strange noises. “They began with what sounded like someone turning the knobs in the shower. Shortly after that at about 10pm, I heard what sounded like wet feet on my bathroom floor.”

She verified that her roommate was away and went to check the door. For a while everything was fine until she started to hear her roommate’s bathroom door open and shut. She said, “Between about 10:30pm and 2am, my roommate’s bathroom door opened and closed 4 times.” She stayed under her covers, afraid to get up, but then felt something on her bed. “You know that feeling when someone sits on the side of your bed while you're under the covers?” she said. “That happened that night as well.” While we can document explanations or contradictory evidence for many of the stories we encountered, this one certainly stumps – and chills – us. Luckily, it seems isolated, as we are very happy to report that all of the students currently living in Villa North, the home of one of the Honors College living learning communities, seem thrilled with their home, the site of much student programming, including pumpkin carving this past October, which resulted in the steps to Provincial House being lined with jack-olanterns in the week leading up to PLHCSA’s Haunted Honors.

You can count Dan Gerth, Associate Dean and one of the faculty advisors (along with Kate Votaw) for the Villa North community among the skeptics. “I love horror.

And being scared. I always have. My favorite of the courses I teach is ‘Monsters and Metaphors,’ an exploration of how horror film and fiction function as a metaphor for cultural fears. Sorry, folks, but I think a 120 year old building that looks like Hogwarts and has students living in it is just going to have ghost stories. I would be shocked if it didn’t. I hear weird noises in my house all the time. It’s always the cat.”

Whether a skeptic or believer, the Honors College certainly has its own large collection of ghost stories for those interested, stories that are either haunting or prosaic depending on whom you ask.

Want to experience a haunting of your own? We recommend PLHCSA’s Haunted Honors, an experience that’s genuinely chilling – and extremely fun.

In 2015, Ryan Heinz interviewed a number of key players in the early years of the college – including the first two deans, the chancellor who hired both of them, and the associate dean who started the college’s writing program.

Provenance is thankful to UMSL Daily and UMSL Magazine for permission to reprint selections from this oral history. We start, though, not in 1989 with the establishment of the Honors College, but in 1978, with the founding of the Sophomore Honors Program.

[UMSL chancellor, 1990-2002]: The man who ran that program was a fellow named Steve Hause. He was a member of the history department faculty. He had a lounge in Lucas Hall that was designated as the honors program lounge. The students and faculty could sit in there, chat and meet. They just used the regular classrooms. But it was a different kind of setting than the large lecture hall or the course that had 50 students in it. These classes were small. Maybe 20 students at the most. Later, Marguerite Ross Barnett (UMSL chancellor 1986-1990) came along, and she wanted the curriculum for all four years. It was going to have a dean. It would have faculty. And it would be a college. When I took over as chancellor, John Onuska was the director. It was still an honors program but it was moving to be an honors college. I was looking around the neighborhood for space for the college. Our goal was to get the college from 68 students to 300. I went to the Incarnate Word nuns, who had a building. It had a parquet floor, small seminar rooms, offices, a chapel, which we could use for a convocation hall, recreation space in the basement, a little cafeteria and 10 bedrooms upstairs on one floor and 10 bedrooms on another. The campus had been trying to get a dorm for years. We purchased the building, which became the honors college campus. [emeritus associate professor of history at UMSL, first dean of the honors college]: For most of my tenure, August 1991 to August 1996, I was the only full-time employee. The honors college grew from 45 to 260 students in my five years. I began and ended my tenure in the original PLHC building – the former Incarnate Word convent. That was also UMSL’s first residence hall. All honors classes were held in that charming old building, and on the floors above my office were dorm rooms and the nuns’ quarters. That was probably the most quiet residence hall floor of any U.S. college! The sisters remained there the entire 1991-92 academic year, cooked hot lunches that sold for $2.50 and even conducted the last funeral for one of their number in what later became our convocation hall – while classes were in session.

We were trying to create a small college inside a large urban university to provide a special kind of education for a particular kind of student. [emeritus dean, 1997-2015]: Fred Fausz and Dennis Bohnenkamp did so much to create collegiality, a sense of belonging among the students. That has been ever so important.

Dennis Bohnenkamp was my two-thirds-time associate dean, and we had student workers in the office and giving tours to families. The two of us read every application, all the writing samples and conducted every interview with all applicants.

When (Interim Dean) Bohnenkamp showed me into my office on my first day, my chair completely collapsed – in a heap – when I sat down, with me sprawling on the floor. After that, deanly dignity could not be an issue.

I hired Bob Bliss, and I said “I want 600 honors students.” In time, we bought the Daughters of Charity property. I asked Bob if he wanted to move the college from Incarnate Word. He had to because to get to 600 students, he needed more classrooms. So we moved him over (to what is now Provincial House), and he did it. He got to 600 students.

Since I started as dean in 1997, we have gone from 250 to 600 students, from three faculty and staff members to 10, and from approximately 35 seminars per year to 90-plus. Our 600 students today are as well qualified as those 250 were in 1997, but today’s students encounter a much fuller honors program, including an in-house writing program. [first director of the writing program, emeritus associate dean]:High-achieving students are attracted to the college, the kind of students who want to be involved, want a “college experience” and want to be academically challenged.

Every qualified applicant is interviewed by a faculty member; every accepted student has a faculty adviser. And thanks partly to having full-time faculty, thanks partly to having Nancy Gleason among them, we have our own in-house writing program, which helps students negotiate their academic career.

Almost all honors seminars are put on by the honors college, paid for by the honors college, and – although typically open to main campus students and often cross-listed with major programs – appropriate for an “honors” education. It’s also unusual to have a fully-fledged honors program for transfer students, which we have had here since 1989. Indeed, for the first 10 years, the honors college was the main source for transfer scholarships.

As a graduate of UMSL, I wish that they would have had an honors college back in those days. I like offering students a full experience, and I love getting to know the students really well. It is gratifying. I believe we help students a lot. I believe in the honors college, and I believe in UMSL. When I retire as dean (in August), I plan to teach. My teaching responsibility at UMSL will be in history, but I will continue to discharge part of that responsibility by offering seminars in the honors college. Otherwise, I plan to leave the Honors College entirely to those improvements thought most desirable by the new dean and by the honors faculty. Improvements will be needed, and improvements will come. [Note: Bob did step down as dean in August 2015 and returned to the History department. He retired in 2017 and continues to teach in History and Honor part-time.]

Your gift brings many good results. Scholarship support helps us attract more and stronger students and encourages those same students to realize their full potential at St. Louis’s very own public, research university. Some funds are devoted to student welfare and facilities, refreshing those parts that public funds don’t often reach or cannot encompass. Gifts help us seize unexpected opportunities for our students’ benefit. All gifts work together to make our small seminars hum, multiply our independent study and research projects, and ensure the continued relevance to our students’ lives of a liberal education and the attitudes to learning it embodies.

In almost thirty years, we’ve grown to 600 students who major in every UMSL program and enrich the campus with their diversity. They come mainly from the region but from further afield, too, and represent a dozen states and about the same number of foreign countries. But they come to like St. Louis, and most stay here after graduation, whether in graduate and professional programs, or teaching in our schools, or working in its private or public sector firms and organizations. So your gift not only strengthens our students; it makes a difference to St. Louis, too.

If we can provide you with further information about how we use your gift or about the institution in which you’ve invested, please ask Ed at munne@umsl.edu. Our conversations with our friends are among our very greatest treasures. Some of the options for giving include:

This critically important fund supports all parts of college life, particularly the ones where university funds fall short. This past fall, for example, donations from this fund helped to send the Pierre Laclede Honors College Student Association to Boston, where they presented on how to lead a successful student organization at the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference.

Bellerive celebrates its 20th anniversary this year! Please consider submitting and attending the launch party for the 20th issue on February 28th. Your financial support for the publication is also much appreciated. In recent years Bellerive has expanded to accept musical contributions (published via QR codes) and now accepts alumni submissions too. Your support helps ensure the publication can continue to flourish.

1. Blanche Touhill (left) and Marguerite Ross Barnett, the chancellors who expanded the original honors program into the Pierre Laclede Honors College. (University Archives photo) 2. Fred Fausz, emeritus associate professor of history and the first dean of the college. (Photo courtesy of Fred Fausz) 3. A Brain Stew cover depicts Fred Fausz, as well as Dennis Bohnenkamp, the college’s first associate dean.

4. Bob Bliss, emeritus dean who came to UMSL in 1997. (Photo by August Jennewein) 5. Nancy Gleason, emeritus associate dean and founder of the college’s writing program. (Photo

by August Jennewein)

Named after our emeritus dean and his spouse, this fund provides scholarships for Honors students studying abroad – especially for our own trip to Germany, led by Christoph Schiessl, in alternating summers.

Interested in adding your photos to our archive?

Want to help us identify and add descriptions to photos that we already have? Email Dan Gerth at gerthd@umsl.edu and let us know! We will be showcasing these photos throughout our 30th Anniversary celebrations this year!

Provincial House 1 University Boulevard St. Louis, Missouri 63121 (314) 516-5243 umslhonorsc@umsl.edu