campus news
Inaugural Prairie Gate Prairie Gate Literary Festival
Concert Choir performs on Morris broadcast of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” The Morris Concert Choir performed on “A Prairie Home Companion” when Garrison Keillor hosted the live show from campus on February 19, 2011. More than four million listeners enjoyed a number of pieces by the choir, heard Garrison interview Matt Privratsky ’11, Walker, about the student experience, learned about the community of Morris, and enjoyed Keillor’s signature monologue, the news from Lake Wobegon. The Morris show is archived online at prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs. See more photos of the Morris broadcast at morris.umn.edu/newsevents/aphc.
Literary Festival was held on Thursday, March 24 through Saturday, March 26, 2011. The festival brought together aspiring writers, literary enthusiasts, published authors, editors, and other professionals through public readings, workshops, and panel discussions designed to celebrate the literary arts. Special guests and workshop facilitators were poet Philip Bryant, poet Tom Hennen, memoirist and poet Mary Rose O’Reilley, novelist and playwright Eric Gansworth, and novelist Kiese Laymon. To learn more, visit morris.umn.edu/prairiegate.
m or r is . umn.edu/prairiegate
Literary Festival The inaugural Prairie Gate
P
Photo: Courtney Driessen ’12, Blooming Prairie
Chemistry students publish new findings The research of Debbie Schneiderman ’11, Luverne, and Matthew Lovander ’12, Willmar, working with Ted Pappenfus, associate professor of chemistry, has been published in a special issue of Chemistry of Materials. The students synthesized new organic molecules toward the development of materials with enhanced electronic properties. They created the first known redox polymer that conducts electrons and holes. Pappenfus shares that organic materials are a “hot area” for research because of price and flexibility limitations of current products. Researchers are looking for better molecules to conduct electricity for electronic devices such as LEDs, solar cells, and transistors. Schneiderman and Lovander’s research contributes a noteworthy step in that direction. Matthew Lovander ’12, Willmar, and Debbie Schneiderman ’11, Luverne
Winter/Spring 2011 Profile
Undergraduate Research Symposium moving to Saturday To better accommodate campus visitors who wish to attend the Morris Undergraduate Research Symposium (URS), the event this year has been planned for a Saturday instead of a week day. The 11th annual celebration of student research, creative and scholarly, will be held on Saturday, April 16, 2011, and will include performances, oral presentations, and poster presentations. The URS offers students from all divisions—Social Sciences, Education, Science and Math, and Humanities—opportunities to present research, creative work, and artistic performances. Faculty, staff, students, as well as family and community members are invited to attend this Morris campus tradition. 7