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itable Father Art Wheeler, C.S.C., is Harvard professor Eduardo Contreras, who is fluent, absorbingly, in Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, and Sanskrit. Wow. Student Feats The University will again enroll more than 4,000 students ¶ Joanne Warner, who retired as nursing dean on July 1 (and was this year — 3,600 undergrads (920 succeeded by nursing professor Joane freshmen), 500 grad students. StuMoceri), was named a Fellow of the dents hail from 40 states and 22 American Academy of Nursing — countries. More than a third of the essentially the nursing hall of fame. undergrads will study abroad. ¶ Four May graduates were off to France this ¶ Education professor and deft essayist Karen Eifler won two national fall to teach English in l’Hexagone, Catholic book awards for Becoming courtesy of the French government. Beholders: Cultivating Sacramental ¶ Off to MIT on a free three-year ride to study graduate biomechanics: Imagination and Actions in College Classrooms (Liturgical Press), and engineering major Chika Eke ’15, who dreams of helped disabled folks. theology professor Tina Astorga won ¶ Among the new students: Jean Paul the College Theology Society’s best book award for Catholic Moral TheolMugisha, whose family fled violence in the Congo and lived in a Rwandan ogy and Social Ethics. ¶ Sentenced to being provincial of Oregon’s Congrerefugee camp with no electricity; gation of Holy Cross men: the urbane Jean Paul, a brilliant guy who will study electrical engineering, wants to Father John Donato of the student affairs office. Poor, poor John. eventually electrify his home village and the refugee camp. He’ll do it, too. Gifts & Grants Among recent generA New Residence Hall is being plan- osities: $106,000 from 120 donors for ned for the corner of Portsmouth and the new Catherine Bigelow Gullickson nursing scholarships, honoring Willamette, between Tyson Hall and the new Beauchamp Center; the huge a gentle gracious nursing alumna three-part castle will house some 270 (and tennis star); life regent and terrific photographer Larry Rockwood’s students, and could be finished by next summer; see below. ¶ The Pilot house on the Columbia River, left to House is doubling in size, and should the University in his estate when he died last year at age 93; $100,000 from open for business (with a campus NBC television sports legend Dick pub!) before Christmas. ¶ The gleaming new Rec opened for all students Ebersol, honoring his good friend Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., for in August; see pages 32-35. ¶ The next big dream: a new academic cen- whom the gleaming new rec center is named; and $50,000 from Tony Isaia ter, to augment Buckley Center and ’53, honoring the two best Holy Cross Franz Hall. teachers he ever had, Brother Godfrey Faculty Notes The new studies abroad director, succeeding the inim- Vassallo and Father John Delaunay.
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The New UP App was born in July; it works on iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices and tablets. It’s free and instant and opens doors to all sorts of campus resources, among them courses, assignments, events, complete directly of faculty and staff and students, news, maps, emergency data, social media, sports scores and schedules, and everything at Clark Library. A Windows version is coming soon. Info: Ann Harris at harrisa@up.edu. Awards & Honors The University was ranked as Oregon’s top private school for best value for the fifth consecutive year, by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. ¶ And we were ranked 14th in the nation for study abroad opportunities and commitment. ¶ And we were ranked 20th in America for producing Peace Corps volunteers. ¶ And among the best ten universities in the West, by U.S. News & World Report, and among America’s ‘greenest’ schools, by Princeton Review. New Faculty Among the fresh professoriate: psychology’s Louisa Brad, who studies irrational behavior in primates and children; engineering Olivia Coiado, who earned all her degrees in her native Brazil; pediatric intensive care nurse Theresa Duda; terrific ultimate frisbee player and mathematicist Carolyn James; Air Force Captain Daniel Parker, who served in Iraq and was an NSA cyber-security manager; and Father Dan Parrish, C.S.C., ’96, delighted to be back on The Bluff teaching business.
Work on the University’s newest residence hall is slated to begin this fall: the new dorm, a whopper that covers both arms of the Portsmouth/Willamette corner across from the Chiles Center, will house 268 students and might include a dining hall, ground-floor retail, and classrooms. You could name it for someone you revere, you know, with a gargantuan gift: call Amy Eaton at 503.943.8551, eaton@up.edu.
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