Ursinus Magazine Fall 2013

URSINUS Fall 2013

MAGAZINE

the

power

liberal arts of the

Tony Sierzega 2014 spent his summer examining the Second Amendment. He researched the legal scholarship and politics behind the individual and collective right interpretations of this section of the United States Constitution. “My goal is to gain a clearer understanding of the theories of each side,” says Sierzega, “and the implications of these theories regarding the future of American gun culture and policy.” After the 1939 U.S. v. Miller decision, the U.S. Supreme Court for the most part ignored the topic of guns. But in 2008 its District of Columbia v. Heller decision ruled in favor for advocates of the individual-right theory. This shift has cultural, in addition to legal, implications. “It broadens ‘gun rights’ while making ‘gun control’ much more difficult,” says Gerard Fitzpatrick, Professor of Politics and faculty adviser for this research. “Arguably, a step in the wrong direction in light of the many recent events involving gun violence.”

Sierzega is a double major in Politics and History.

“The articles show an almost bitter feud between different scholars and it is just fascinating to see these legal theorists offer their vastly different interpretations of the deliberation process of the Founding Fathers,” he says. Sierzega hopes to turn his paper into his honors research project this fall.

in this issue

FEATURES

The Power of the Liberal Arts Leading in Real Estate

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David Bloom 1987 knew from a young age that the real estate industry was his calling. Bloom has been senior vice president of Resource America, Inc. (NASDAQ: REXI), a specialized asset management company, since 2001 when he was brought in to launch the company’s real estate fund business, and has been president of Resource Real Estate, Inc., since 2004.

Bio Med Pioneer

After making a historic impact in the medical world by starting a company that harvests and stores life-saving stem cells, Cynthia Fisher 1983 is now focused on preserving the world’s water supply. A biology and physics major, Fisher says her liberal arts education at Ursinus has guided her every step of the way.

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Making Art, History and Terror!

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Amy Hollaman 2005 is the Events and Operations Manager at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia where she plans and manages both private and public events including Terror Behind the Walls. The event has evolved into one of the most popular haunted houses in the world.

CAMPUS NEWS

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Meet the New Trustees Five new members of the Ursinus Board of Trustees will begin their terms at the fall meeting Oct. 17 and 18.

CLASS NOTES

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Karen Wanner Zelley 1967 and Lee Zelley 1965 are still making music together.

URSINUS MAGAZINE

letter from the

president

VOLUM E C X I I I , NO. 3

Dear Friends, I write in the wake of first-year move-in, students returning to campus, and the start of classes! Vacations are past, and the campus is fully alive. May you have found refreshment over the summer months, and I extend my best wishes for a productive autumn.

Many graduates returned last June for Alumni Weekend, which is showcased in this issue. Looking forward, please mark your calendars for fall Homecoming weekend, which kicks off on Friday, October 18, with the Grizzly Gala at RiverCrest. Details are on our web site and the magazine back cover.

This coming spring there will be a chance for some of you to reconnect again. It is my pleasure to announce some exciting changes for Alumni Weekend and reunions. In our surveys following the 2013 Alumni Weekend, you indicated the preferred times for you to return to Collegeville.

We heard you!

Dr. Fong greets students at 2013 Convocation in August.

What has not changed, however, is the value of a liberal arts education. In these pages we celebrate how liberal learning equipped alumni for careers they may never have envisioned: Trustee David Bloom 1987 in real estate, Sean Clayton 1999 in government service, Trustee Cynthia Fisher 1983 in an information technology company focused on sustainable water resources and farming, and Phillip DeSimone 2012 in an online retail business. These are among those alumni profiled who would not have predicted their current careers when they were on campus majoring in Political Science, Politics, Biology/Physics, and Business and Economics/Politics respectively.

I trust that your liberal arts education is serving you well in meeting changes at the workplace and in life.

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Editor Kathryn Campbell kcampbell@ursinus.edu Director of Communications Wendy Greenberg wgreenberg@ursinus.edu Senior Writer Ellen Cosgrove Labrecque 1995 elabrecque@ursinus.edu

Contributing to this Issue Steve Falk, Jim Roese, Joan Fairman Kanes, Joshua Walsh 2013, Hilary Schwab, Brian Garfinkle, Erica Lamberg, Kayana Symczak, Erin Hovey 1996, and the Ursinus College Archives

All younger class reunions will be celebrated at Homecoming 2014, which will fall on the weekend of October 24 and 25, 2014. These changes will bring you to campus when students are in residence and increase opportunities to attend arts, lectures, and sports events.

Bobby Fong, President

Third class postage paid at Lansdale, Pa. Ursinus Magazine is published seasonally three times a year.

Copyright 2013 by Ursinus College.

Editorial correspondence and submissions: Ursinus Magazine, P.O. Box 1000, Collegeville, PA 19426-1000.

(610) 409-3300 or e-mail: ucmag@ursinus.edu

Class Notes Editor Jennifer Meininger Wolfe jwolfe1@ursinus.edu

The 50th, 55th and 60th reunion classes will be feted this spring during a revamped Alumni Weekend April 24, 25 & 26, 2014. This will coincide with the annual Celebration of Student Achievement (COSA) on April 24, when students showcase their research and accomplishments across the disciplines.

Go, Bears!

FA L L 2 0 1 3

Design Jeffrey Morgan JDM Creative Advertising, LLC www.jdmcreative.com Chair, Board of Trustees Alan P. Novak 1971 President Dr. Bobby Fong Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Dr. Lucien (Terry) Winegar Senior Vice President for Advancement Jill A. Leauber Marsteller 1978 Vice President for Enrollment Richard DiFeliciantonio Vice President for Finance and Administration Winfield Guilmette Vice President for Student Affairs Deborah Nolan The mission of Ursinus College is to enable students to become independent, responsible, and thoughtful individuals through a program of liberal education. That education prepares them to live creatively and usefully, and to provide leadership for their society in an interdependent world.

gateway the

URSINUS CAMPUS NEWS

Princeton Review Space Exploration Studying the Impact of Concussions New Trustees 2013 Ursinus College Hall of Fame App Development

Princeton Review Cites

‘Exceptional Academic Record’ Ursinus College was again included as one of the nation’s best undergraduate colleges in the 2014 edition of The Best 378 Colleges (Random House/Princeton Review). Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges (and four colleges outside the U.S.) are profiled in The Princeton Review’s flagship college guide.

The Ursinus write-up praises the school for its academics, using quotes from student surveys. “Set in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, this ‘small, close-knit college community’ offers ‘an exceptional academic record’ and ‘small-school atmosphere,’ which ‘provides accessibility to professors and successful students, enabling a better learning experience.’ ” The write-up goes on to say that the greatest strengths of the Ursinus programs are the focus on community service, the strength of the academic programs and the interdisciplinary first-year course, the Common Intellectual Experience. “Overall, this small, rigorous program is ‘about creating free-thinking intelligent (and) contributing members of society’ and ‘letting people be who they are without fear and while accomplishing learning beyond the classroom,’” the book states. It also cites the students’ “active and healthy extracurricular lifestyle.”

Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s Senior Vice President and publisher and author of The Best 378 Colleges, says that “outstanding academics” is the primary criteria for the choice of schools included in the book. The Princeton Review obtains data from institutional surveys and takes into account input from its staff and 35-member National College Counselor Advisory Board.

The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges academically or from 1 to 378 in any category. The Princeton Review’s school profiles and ranking lists are posted at PrincetonReview.com. Ursinus is also included in The Best Northeastern Colleges. n

Teagle Conferences Examine ‘Gateway’ Courses

Representatives of four liberal arts colleges met at Ursinus to explore the benefits and challenges of discussion-based first-year courses that are the foundation for the schools’ liberal education. The representatives from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisc., and Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., met on campus in July to plan a series of conferences funded by the Teagle Foundation. The focus of these conferences will be the courses that serve as each school’s gateway to liberal education: courses that ask the crucial human questions – How should we live? What does it mean to be human? What is the nature of the universe we inhabit? – whose examination defines liberal education.

Supported by a $243,000 grant from The Teagle Foundation, over two years the group will identify best practices in these “gateway courses,” and then communicate the benefits of liberal education to a wider audience. The 2.5-year project, Gateways to Liberal Education, aims to invigorate liberal education in American colleges. It is led by Ursinus College. “The upcoming conferences, held over the next 30 months, will strive to clarify the purposes that inform our gateway courses, discern the most effective means by which to achieve these purposes, Rebecca Lyczak Associate Professor and formulate ways in which we can determine whether in fact they achieve the transformation in students’ lives of Biology participated in the that is their aim,” says Paul Stern, Ursinus Professor of Politics, and one of the lead faculty involved in the grant.

Teagle Conference.

In the series of conferences faculty from the four schools will discuss ways in which interconnected seminars, or common syllabi, identify essential texts, skills, and experiences that prepare students for fulfilling careers and lives as responsible citizens after college. “At a time when there is widespread criticism of higher education, this grant is an encouraging sign that what certain liberal arts colleges have been doing is cause for hope in the future,” says Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Lucien “Terry” Winegar, who coordinated the Ursinus grant proposal. The grant concurs with The Teagle Foundation’s interest in seeking and supporting courses and programs that equip students to deal effectively with questions of meaning, value, and responsibility that will persist throughout their lives. n SPRING FALL 2013 PAGE 3

Space Exploration NASA astronaut Bernard A. Harris Jr., M.D., spoke at Ursinus College’s Center for Science and the Common Good on Sept. 3. A NASA astronaut, physician and businessman, Dr. Harris is president of The Harris Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit organization he founded in 1998 to develop math/science education and crime prevention programs for America’s youth. Selected as a NASA astronaut in 1990, Dr. Harris flew his first mission three years later. A payload commander of STS-63, the first flight of the joint Russian-American space program, Harris fulfilled his childhood dream by walking in space, becoming the first African American to do so. When he retired from NASA in 1996, he had logged more than 438 hours in space and traveled over 7.2 million miles. The Center for Science and the Common Good provides opportunities for all Ursinus students to consider the impact of science on the common good and is a resource for students on the impact of science and society.

Dr. Harris served as Vice President of SPACEHAB, Inc., where he was involved in business development Bernard A. Harris Jr., M.D. and marketing of the company’s space-based products and services. He also was Vice President of Business Development for Space Media, Inc., establishing an international space education program for students. Harris earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Houston and later a doctorate of medicine from Texas Tech University School of Medicine. A trained aerospace flight surgeon, he completed his residency at the Mayo Clinic and fellowship at the NASA Ames Research Center. He also has earned a Master of Medical Science from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Houston Clear Lake and was the recipient of honorary degrees from Morehouse School of Medicine and Stony Brook University (SUNY). He was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, received the NASA Award of Merit and the 2000 Horatio Alger Award.

At Ursinus, The Center for Science and Common Good provides opportunities for students to think, speak, and write about the impact of science on the common good by maintaining a seminar series, hosting a Science Writer in Residence, and developing new courses. It is funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition, the Center encourages further leadership development among Fellows of the Center, who are prepared explicitly for both scientific and civic leadership, and FUTURE Students of the Center, members of underserved populations in science who are given research opportunities to ensure that they remain in science and have the opportunity to become Fellows of the Center. n

Moliken Named to National Field Hockey Coaches Association Hall of Fame

Ursinus College Director of Athletics Laura Moliken was selected as one of three inductees to the Zag Field Hockey/NFHCA Hall of Fame Class of 2013. The class will be inducted during the NFHCA Annual Convention November 20-22 in Virginia Beach, Va. “It’s a wonderful honor,” says Moliken. “I’m humbled to be considered among the group that makes up the NFHCA Hall of Fame. Coaching and the sport of field hockey have been a part of my life since I was young.”

Moliken started at Ursinus in 1999 as the head field hockey coach. She coached the national powerhouse field hockey team for 12 years and shepherded the team as it transitioned to Division III and into the Centennial Conference in 2003. During that time, the Bears won seven consecutive Centennial Conference Championships, made five trips to the NCAA Final Four and won the 2006 National Championship and the 2003 ECAC Mid-Atlantic Region Championship. She has a career record of 182-69 including a record of 168-29 in Division III and 93-2 record in CC play. Moliken is a three-time South Region coach of the year, threetime Centennial Conference coach of the year and was the 2006 National Coach of the Year.

“Field hockey coaches are some of the hardest working people I know,” says Moliken. “They love the game and enjoy teaching it. To have had the honor to coach the game and to meet so many great people, is something I will always be thankful for.”

Moliken starts her fifth year at the helm of the Ursinus College Athletic Department this fall. Following a year as Interim Director of Athletics, Moliken made the title permanent in 2010. She has helped oversee the renovation of Patterson Field, a $2.2M project that included installation of a synthetic turf field along with the addition of a new press box, resurfacing the outdoor track and creation of a new venue for jumping and field events. Moliken previously served as the senior women’s administrator, taught in the ESS department as a visiting instructor and held the endowed position as the Eleanor Frost Snell Chair of Health and Physical Education. A 1993 graduate of Old Dominion University, Moliken was a team captain and was named to the NCAA Final Four All-Tournament Team in 1990 and 1992. n

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Studying the Impact of Concussions

Charles Lee collects data by performing EEG (electroencephalogram, a test used to record electrical activity of the brain) on concussed students and unconcussed students.

Charlie Lee 2014 is in the trenches of a national focus on the long-term impact of concussions on athletes. Lee’s Summer Fellows research explored the changes that occur in the brain after an athlete suffers a concussion.

Lee, from Cerritos, Calif., collected and analyzed data from Ursinus athletes and students to research, “The Effect of Concussions on Cognitive Ability within Athletes.” He examined how concussions, the result of blunt force or blow to the head, may cause changes in the chemical balance within the brain. This can affect the behavior and cognitive ability of affected individuals, says Lee. “The concept that a minor injury could snowball into permanent detrimental effects drew me in,” says Lee, who worked with Joel Bish, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, Chair Neuroscience Coordinator.

“Charlie’s research looking at the appropriateness of the ImPACT test at assessing cognitive deficits following concussions relates to a test used nationwide at many high schools and colleges for assessing concussions,” says Bish. “He’s working to determine whether there are specific cognitive skills that are susceptible to damage following concussions. Specifically, we are interested in whether impulse control, or the ability to control one’s actions, is one of the critical cognitive functions that may have a lasting deficit. Since control underlies virtually all behavior, deficits in impulse control are extremely damaging, although difficult to measure.” n

Honor for Environmental Teaching Patrick Hurley, Associate Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies, will be honored by the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy for teaching within the community. The staff and board of the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy selected Hurley to receive the 2013 Teaching Excellence Environmental Award.

Patrick Hurley, Associate Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies.

“Receiving the 2013 Perkiomen Watershed Environmental Excellence teaching award was both unexpected and thrilling,” says Hurley. “It reaffirms that Environmental Studies’ commitment to teaching about environmental stewardships through community and local environmental engagement is truly valued and appreciated.”

Students enrolled in an environmental planning capstone course worked on a web site that supports landowner and student environmental education about the watershed. The web site provides resources for teachers and others to explore land-use history, the relationship of management strategies to improvement, and the role of particular species in these efforts. As part of that class, and an introductory class, Ursinus students took part in significant watershed enhancement projects, including tree planting at a park in Lower Frederick, storm basin naturalization in The Vineyards condominium community in Red Hill, and forest enhancement at Meng Preserve in Lower Frederick.

As a result, more than 1,000 trees were planted in Lower Frederick. Hurley will receive the award at a banquet, Oct. 24 at 5:30 p.m., at RiverCrest Golf Club and Preserve in Phoenixville. n FALL 2013 PAGE 5

New Trustees

Five new members of the Ursinus Board of Trustees will begin their terms at the fall meeting Oct. 17 and 18 David Bloom

David E. Bloom 1987 of Tenafly, N.J., has been Senior Vice President-Real Estate Investments for Resource Capital Corporation since March 2005.

Bloom also has been Senior Vice President of Resource America since 2001 and President of Resource Real Estate, Inc., a wholly-owned real estate subsidiary of Resource America, since 2004. He was President of Resource Capital Partners from 2002 to 2006. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Ursinus College, where he played lacrosse and was a member of Alpha Phi Epsilon. He earned his J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law. Prior to practicing law, Bloom began his real estate career in 1987 as an Acquisitions and Development Associate with Strouse, Greenberg & Company, a regional full-service real estate company.

Bradley Brewster

Bradley S. Brewster of Lambertville, N.J., is a former Executive Director of the New Jersey General Assembly and General Counsel to the General Assembly Majority Office. While serving the Legislature, he played a key role in criminal code reform legislation, the creation of several major state environmental protection programs and economic growth initiatives. At Princeton Public Affairs Group, which he joined in 1989, he works on land use, energy, business and economic development issues. Brewster earned a B.A. in Political Science in 1974 from Ursinus and a J. D. from the Univer-

sity of Vermont. He was a member of Alpha Phi Epsilon and played football and track. He was recently inducted into the Ursinus College Hall of Fame for Athletes.

Brewster helped found Winning Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based federal lobbying firm. He serves as the National Director of ProtectingAmerica. org a national nonprofit that promotes policies to better prepare and protect the U.S. in planning for and responding to major natural catastrophes. He has served on the Board of Trustees at Montclair University and was reappointed by Governor Chris Christie to the Board of Trustees of The College of New Jersey. Brad has served in a political advisory capacity, including as the New Jersey Co-Chairman for Mitt Romney for President in 2008. He is currently a partner in the Philadelphia Wings professional lacrosse franchise.

Patricia K. Clark

Patricia K. Clark, a native of York, Pa., and now of Sarasota, Fla., served in her first management position with OSHA as district supervisor in Wilmington, Del., until 1982, when she was appointed Assistant Regional Administrator for Federal/State Operations for the Chicago Region of OSHA. In 1987 she moved to New England to serve as Deputy Regional Administrator for the Boston region. Patricia was appointed Director for OSHA's Directorate of Compliance Programs in 1990, joining the Federal Government's Senior Executive Service, and two years later was reassigned

Music Meets Meditation Senior Hailey Blessing explores two styles of chant singing.

Hailey Blessing’s interest in chant-style singing began last spring while studying in Florence, Italy. Her Summer Fellow’s research examined two different styles of world chant and she is hoping to find what acoustical considerations affected compositional rules. “I looked at Medieval Roman Catholic plainchant which was created in a manner that allowed the worshippers to understand the words,” she says. “The aim was to teach sections of the liturgy, so it was of the utmost importance that worshippers clearly hear the chant.”

Compositional considerations had to ensure that despite being chanted in a large, reverberating space, the words would remain intelligible, says Blessing. A double major in International Relations and Music, Blessing also is studying the throat-singing chant styles of Tibetan Buddhists and Mongolia’s Tuvan throat singers, unique in that multiple pitches are produced by one performer. Blessing hopes to attend graduate school and earn a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology. n PAGE 6 URSINUS MAGAZINE

to the position of Director of Technical Support for OSHA, serving as the principal source of agency expertise pertaining to scientific, engineering, and medical issues with respect to occupational safety and health. In 1994, she was named Regional Administrator for Region II with jurisdiction over New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and was responsible for the direction, management and control of programs and goals set forth in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Her work put her directly in charge of OSHA’s activities in the aftermath of 9-11. She retired from OSHA in 2006.

Clark received her B.S. degree in Biology from Ursinus in 1973 and her M.S. in Environmental Science from Drexel University. She was involved in Alpha Sigma Nu and the Brownback-Anders Premedical Society. She has served on the Ursinus President’s Council and has been actively involved in regional alumni activities.

Catherine Geczik

Catherine Geczik of New York, N.Y., is the Senior Vice President of Information Sourcing at Citi, Inc., based in New York City. Prior to joining Citi, Inc. she served as a Vice President for Strategic Vendor Management and Vice President and Manager for Data Business Analysis at Goldman Sachs; as a Regional Sales Manager for Primark (acquired by Thomson Reuters); and as a Regional Sales Executive for Bridge Information Systems/Dow Jones Telerate.

Geczik received her B.A. in Political Science from Ursinus College in 1984 and was involved in the Pre-Legal Society, Ursinus Student Government Association, Omega Chi, Economics Club and Varisty Field Hockey and Softball. She served as a member of the Ursinus President’s Council and has been active in regional alumni activities in the New York City region.

She also has served as a Career Services Ambassador and as a solicitor of Annual Fund gifts for the College.

Ellen Staurowsky

Ellen Staurowsky of Eagleville, Pa., is internationally recognized as an expert on social justice issues in sport, and particularly on issues that impact public dialogue and policy. She is co-author of the book, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA Amateur Myth. She has served as president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and the Research Consortium. In addition to publications in scholarly journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, the Journal of Sport and Social Issues and others, Ellen’s critiques and analyses of a variety of issues have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, The NCAA News, and The New York Times.

She became Professor of Sport Management at Drexel University in 2011.

Prior to her work at Drexel, she was graduate program Chair and Professor of Sport Management and Media at Ithaca College, and served as Director of Athletics at William Smith College. She was director of physical education, recreation and intramurals at Rutgers; director of athletics and men’s soccer coach at Daniel Webster College; Dean of Students and consultant to the athletic department at Colby Sawyer College; and Assistant Professor of Physical Education and head coach of field hockey and women’s lacrosse at Oberlin.

Staurowsky has received numerous honors and has been named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers on numerous occasions. In 2011 she received the Laughlin Award for Excellence in Education from Ursinus.

She is a 1977 graduate of Ursinus College with a B.S. in Physical Education & Health, and earned an M.S. in Sports Psychology/Teaching Pedagogy from Ithaca College, and an Ed.D. in management from Temple University.

At Ursinus she was active in Phi Alpha Psi, Softball, Field Hockey, Lacrosse and Badminton. n

Father and Son Writing Team Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion Kelly Sorensen and his son, Thomas Sorensen, a sophomore at Brigham Young University, co-wrote a chapter in the soon-to-be-published book Ender’s Game and Philosophy: Genocide is Child’s Play. This upcoming book reflects on the original Ender's Game, a military science fiction novel

by Orson Scott Card that takes place in Earth's future. Mankind has survived two conflicts with an apparently aggressive species. To prepare for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet builds a school to train future fleet commanders. The world's most talented children, including the story’s hero, Ender Wiggin, are taken to be trained in the arts of war at The Battle School. Ender is discovered to be tactical genius and the book explores the complexities of warfare and morality in humankind.

“We’ve been talking about our chapter’s issue, the moral weight of unintended consequences, for years, both in the book’s context, and in our own lives,” says Sorensen, who became the first Class of 1954 Chair in Ethics this year. “It was enjoyable and worthwhile to work those thoughts into a chapter and open up the conversation to everyone else.”

FALL 2013 PAGE 7

This App Is Therapy Coach in Your Pocket

L to R: Andy Santiago of Reading, 2016, Dr. April Kontostathis, Matthew Rink of Phoenixville, 2015, and Nathan Labourdette of Marcellus, N.Y., 2014.

Ursinus students are working as a development, programming and entrepreneurial team to produce two new mobile phone apps.

One, TherAPPist, offers soothing feedback to quell escalating emotions, and the second, the Post-Tonal Toolkit, assists theorists and composers of atonal music. It was during a fall class Object Oriented Design and Systems Development, taught by Associate Professor of Computer Science April Kontostathis, that Ursinus Professor of Psychology Cathy Chambliss and Assistant Professor of Music Garrett Hope appealed to their colleague for help to develop long-simmering ideas.

The students learned to understand licensing, assess what is out there, and discuss funding and what to charge. “They learned the whole process, starting from requirements, development through design and coding, and worked with users to incorporate feedback into a tangible product,” says Kontostathis. Nathan Labourdette, a senior from Marcellus, N.Y., says he has witnessed situations where people are distressed, and has seen smartphones become a positive distraction. “I think something designed specifically for that will be a very good tool,” he says.

TherAPPist joins a growing number of mental health apps but has unique features that customize the user experience, says Chambliss, who has a longstanding private practice as well. During an escalating meltdown, “conventional theory says walk away but that is not easy for everyone,” she says. “Some clients fail time after time. But all it might take in some cases is pulling out a phone. It is a socially appropriate action and it buys time.”

TherAPPist has customizable soothing scenes that could “reassure and reinPAGE 8 URSINUS MAGAZINE

vigorate,” says Dr. Chambliss. “When I approached April (Kontostathis), I was envisioning a cell phone tool that could help severe and persistently mentally ill patients who make bad choices. TherAPPist is designed to be a one-stop app for anyone who struggles with emotional extremes. It’s like having a therapeutic coach in your pocket, offering tools for enhancing self-control and emotional regulation.”

Options include a relaxation routine, soothing scenes, photos of persons in the support system and emergency numbers. The Summer Fellows were adding a customization subsystem, as well as a journaling feature, and a mood/habit tracking feature. These additional features will allow patients to recall events for discussion during traditional therapy, as well as reinforce the idea that positive habits, such as taking medication or maintaining a good sleep schedule, can have a significant impact on mood.

The Post-Tonal Tool Kit stems from Hope’s work with a student on an independent study project on post-tonal music, which often uses the full chromatic scale and has a strong relationship to math. “Post-tonal music evolved from the highly chromatic music of the late nineteenth century, eventually discarding the notion of key and pitch hierarchy entirely,” says Hope, citing Bartok, Stravinksy and Schoenberg as composers who developed different styles. The Post-Tonal Toolkit (PTTK) can calculate pitch-class sets and twelve-tone matrices, which allows users to explore relationships between different groups of pitches. The PTTK also provides subsets and supersets, and will soon allow for the exportation of trichords, tetrachords, and larger sets to the pitch-class calculator for further analysis.

Hope calls the PTTK a “Swiss Army Knife” of post-tonal music analysis.

“When students take a post-tonal theory class, the instructor can incorporate it,” he says. “It doesn’t replace learning long-hand, but it speeds up progress. We can go further, such as how to teach with it.” Plans call for adding the ability to save and recall previous computations, and the addition of more tools for composing and analysis. There are web-based post-tonal aids, he says, but the app is a first as far as he knows. Working with professors in departments other than math and computer science has been among the benefits of working on the apps, says Rink. “We don’t

always get to do that.” Rink says he always wanted to create something with software but “needed the motivation.”

The apps are available for iPhone® and Android®. “There are a lot of great ideas out there,” says Dr. Kontostathis, “but not everyone has the technical know-how to put them to work.” She is eager to help her students continue to work in the field. “Computer science students need the experience developing software. They are getting that here.” n - Wendy Greenberg

New Vice President for Finance and Administration Jonathan C. Ivec has been named as the new Vice President for Finance and Administration for Ursinus. He will succeed Winfield Guilmette, who is retiring in November after 15 years of distinguished service.

“We are fortunate to have someone with Jon Ivec’s breadth of experience,” says Dr. Fong. “After a national search, he stood out in his ability to run a multifaceted operation. I look forward to his joining the community in a key role to enhance the strengths of Ursinus College and to realize our strategic vision.”

Ivec will oversee the operations of the business office, facilities, and human resources and manage outsourced programs in support of the college’s 335 full-time and 110 part-time employees. “I look forward to coming to Ursinus College,” he says. “The interdisciplinary programs and the firstyear Common Intellectual Experience were particularly impressive to me, and I am eager to meet the challenges posed in this position.”

He was most recently Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he was responsible for finance, human resources, business services, student financial services, and facilities. He was previously Vice President for Finance and Administrative Services and Treasurer at John Carroll University in Ohio, where he directed all financial accounting activities, created an ethics hotline, and began a program where student ID cards were used for purchases in the community.

His experience beyond higher education includes being the Chief Financial Officer at the Cleveland Sight Center, a nonprofit agency serving the visually impaired, as well as Group Controller at Figgie International, a Fortune 250 company. He began his career with Arthur Young and Company, a Big Eight accounting firm. Ivec earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics from John Carroll University and received his master’s degree in Business Administration from The Ohio State University. He is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional. n

Romance & Comedy

Bell, Book and Candle October 30 - November 2, 7:30 p.m.

Blackbox Studio Theater Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Directed by Professor Beverly Redman

Tickets: $5 general admission $2 students & senior citizens New, easy reservations: www.ursinus.edu/tickets Just in time for Halloween, Ursinus stages this fun and sexy romantic comedy. A free-spirited witch casts a romantic spell but risks losing her supernatural powers. John Van Druten’s Bell, Book and Candle enjoyed a successful run on Broadway in the early 1950s and was followed by a hit film. The TV show Bewitched drew its inspiration from the play. n

2013 Ursinus College Hall of Fame for Athletes Induction Ceremony & Reception

November 16, 6-8:30 p.m. | Wismer Center, Ursinus College Campus Join the Ursinus community in congratulating this year’s inductees by attending the ceremony and reception. Advance registration is required.

Visit www.ursinus.edu/HallofFame for more information.

Jaime Matty Ciarlello '02 – Women’s Lacrosse Traci Davis '82 – Field Hockey, Track & Field, Women’s Lacrosse Sandra M. Fetterman '03 – Field Hockey Amy Transue Hartenstine '03 – Field Hockey Richard P. Lowe '88 – Football, Track & Field Daniel J. Luciano '03 – Basketball Jennifer Stone Mandato '96 – Women’s Lacrosse Darren J. Torsone '97 – Wrestling Frank R. Vecchio '01 – Football FALL 2013 PAGE 9

the arts

museum / theater / dance / music

Charles Stainback, Director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, was the founding Director of Skidmore College’s Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.

His areas of expertise are photography and contemporary art.

feature the works of such 20th-century artists as Alexander Calder, Mary Cassatt, William Glackens, and Andy Warhol, and is being organized by the Berman Museum’s new Director Charles Stainback, Ursinus professor of art history Matthew Shoaf, and an interdisciplinary mix of Ursinus students.

The exhibition celebrates the generosity of Philip and Muriel Berman in founding and supporting the Museum, and illustrates the role the arts can play in enriching higher education.

HOLLY TROSTLE BRIGHAM: DIS/GUISE

The summer months were full of activity for Charles Stainback, Director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art. Stainback and the Berman staff and student workers rolled up their sleeves planning for the fall and winter exhibitions.

"Over the past month or so we have made many changes to the Berman in preparation for an exciting series of exhibitions this fall and winter,” says Stainback. “From exhibitions organized in collaboration with Ursinus students to exhibitions of work by some of the regions most distinguished artists, the months ahead will certainly provide for much discussion and debate on the art of our time." Before his arrival on campus in April, Stainback was Deputy Director of the Norton Museum of Art, the largest art museum in Florida and one of the state’s major cultural institutions. He holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop of the State University of New York at Buffalo. n

A TO Z: HIGHLIGHTING THE BERMAN COLLECTION

October 20 through January 12, 2014 – Main Galleries Opening reception, October 19, 4 p.m.

A to Z: Highlighting Works from the Berman Collection is an alphabetically arranged selection of artworks—a wry reflection on the limitations inherent in the traditional chronological presentation of works of art.

With more than two dozen pieces drawn from the Berman collection of nearly 1,400 works, the exhibition reveals the depth and breadth of the holdings of the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College. The exhibition will William Glackens, Chester, Nova Scotia, 1910 Oil on Board, 6 ½ x 9 ½ inches

October 20 through December 22, 2013 – Upper Gallery Community opening reception: October 19, 4 p.m.

Gallery Talk: November 3, 2 p.m.

The Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College is organizing the first solo museum exhibition for Philadelphia artist Holly Trostle Brigham. Holly Trostle Brigham: Dis/Guise will bring together 24 works, including pieces drawn from private collections that have never been publicly exhibited. Featured in the exhibition are life-sized watercolors, oil paintings, and a multimedia work. Following the presentation at the Berman Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Luther Brady Art Gallery at The George Washington University, where Brigham earned her MFA in Painting.

Holly Trostle Brigham: Dis/Guise will present Brigham’s Seven Sisters series in its entirety for the first time. The series comprises a suite of self-portraits in which Brigham depicts herself as women artists throughout time: Sophonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Maria Sibylla Merian, Judith Leyster, Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun, Tamara de Lempicka, and Frida Kahlo.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog with an introduction written by Brandon Brame Fortune, Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and an essay jointly written by Dr. Ferris Olin, Ph.D., and Judy Brodsky, co-founders of the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers University.

ONLY CONNECT: A CONVERSATION ABOUT IMAGE AND WORD

Photographs and Texts by Brian H. Peterson January 21, 2014 through March 9, 2014 – Upper Gallery Opening reception, January 30, 2014

“Only connect…live in fragments no longer.” - E. M. FORSTER “Only connect,” says the English writer E. M. Forster in his novel Howards End. Forster’s insight into the need for connection in our lives is also a directional beacon for a view of art that was beautifully expressed by the American photographer and teacher Minor White: “The most valuable part of my photographs is what they bring me about the people who respond to them."

In this unusual exhibition, photographer Brian H. Peterson has selected a smorgasbord of pictures and prose that explores his spiritual life and the art and practice of photography. Also a curator and critically acclaimed author, Peterson has chosen excerpts from his two published memoirs, The Smile at the Heart of Things (2009) and The Blossoming of the World (2011), creating an exhibition that explores the connections between word and image in his own work. At times, Peterson will be at the Museum to “only connect” with museum visitors. n PAGE 10 URSINUS MAGAZINE

uc athletics

spotlight on excellence

Drive and Skill Intact, Football Aims to Capture Conference Title Quarterback Chris Curran and wide receiver Jerry Rahill were freshmen on the 2010 Ursinus football team that captured the Centennial Conference title for the first time since 1996. Now senior captains on the squad, they hope to bring their college career full circle with another conference title this season.

“It would be such a great ending to our college football careers,” says Rahill.

“We definitely have the drive and skill level to compete for a title.”

Head Coach Peter Gallagher described Rahill as “one of best athletes in the entire conference.” An agile 6'0" receiver, he was recruited as a quarterback from Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, Pa. He made the switch to wideout his freshman year after a starting receiver became injured and Rahill stepped in to fill the void. As a junior, he was named to the AllConference Second Team and led Ursinus in receptions (53) and receiving yardage (765).

Curran has started every game for Ursinus since his sophomore year.

A 6'3" quarterback “with one of the strongest arms in Division III,” Curran set the school record for most touchdown passes in a season (25) while only throwing four interceptions in 2012. (He also threw a school-record 93-yard touchdown pass against Susquehanna University). A second team

Strong and Unified – Field Hockey Looks to Capture National Championship

The Ursinus women’s field hockey team is focused on one goal this season. “Our goal every year is to win a national championship, plain and simple,” says senior defender and team leader Jenna Stover, of Lancaster, Pa. For other teams, this might seem out of reach.

But for the national powerhouse field hockey team, it’s realistic. The Bears won the national title in 2006 and reached the Final Four during Stover’s freshman and sophomore year.

Megan Keenan

Quarterback Chris Cur­ran set the school record for most touchdown passes in a season (25) while only throwing four interceptions in 2012.

All-Conference selection in 2012, Curran began the 2013 season just five touchdown passes shy of the school’s career record (43) and 623 yards shy of the record for career passing yards (5,369).

“I don’t even think about the records,” says Curran, of Ocean City, N.J. “I just know we have the overall talent to win the conference. That is what I’m focusing on.”

Coach Gallagher, in his 13th season as head coach, already is the program’s all-time win leader (60). But like Curran, he prefers to just think about the season at hand. “We have a talented group of players returning. With a little luck and a lot of hard work the 2013 season could be a memorable one.”

Stover played midfield last season, when Ursinus went 11-8, but made the switch to defender this season. “I’m a much better protector and distributor of the ball than a goal scorer,” she says.

Sophomore defender Megan Keenan of Sinking Spring, Pa., moved to the midfield slot. An aggressive goal-oriented player, she finished last year tied for the team lead in goals (10) and was named the Centennial Conference Rookie of the Year.

Overall, the Bears are an experienced team this season, with eight returning starters. They also spent their spring and preseason fixing some problems that they encountered in 2012.

“We definitely were not pleased how the season shook out with our wins and losses,” says head coach Janelle Benner, now in her third season. “But, during the spring and pre-season we made huge strides. We now work much more as a unit. We are a strong and unified team.”

FALL 2013 PAGE 11

The Power Liberal Arts of the

America is at a crossroads. At issue the role, expense and future of higher education. In essence – its worth. College students who graduate today are faced with a constricted job market and likely will change jobs and careers many times throughout their adult lives. These economic pressures have reignited a national conversation on the value of a liberal arts education as well as what role a college education in general will continue to play in the shifting landscape of work and careers.

Some believe online learning courses and technical or vocational training eventually will replace the degrees offered by more traditional four-year colleges. Others maintain that their liberal arts education has formed the very foundation for growth and success in their careers. A report, commissioned by the Annapolis Group, a consortium of 130 leading liberal arts colleges, shows alumni of private liberal arts colleges believe their education has benefited their lives and careers.

According to the report, liberal arts college graduates are more likely to say they experienced a sense of community, participated in smaller classes and had professors challenge them. These activities have been identified by scholars as essential components of an effective education.

“College, particularly a liberal arts college, seeks to cultivate qualities of intellect and character that are essential not only for a satisfying career and useful life, but to make judgments and choices in the face of uncertainty and complexity,” President Bobby Fong wrote. “Learning judgment demands taking an active role in your education, and not being a passive receptacle for information transmission. College can't serve you well without challenging you to integrate information and skills in ways you haven't before, and to apply the results to problems that may not yield clear and simple answers.”

Many Ursinus alumni agree that their liberal arts degree has helped to define their role in the workplace. Flexibility and a willingness to approach new ideas with an open mind are, and will continue to be, critical tools for success. Finding a niche, a willingness to take risks and an early exposure to philosophy and writing have helped them navigate their fields. Research, writing and critical thinking skills have led many alumni to unexpected and fruitful paths. A liberal arts education might today be in the cultural crosshairs. But in this series of profiles, we meet just a few of the accomplished women and men who have journeyed through the Eger Gateway and made their mark in the world.

PAGE 12 URSINUS MAGAZINE

PHOTO | MODERN MULTIPLES GALLERY

David Bloom 1987 majored in government with a minor in business administration.

FALL 2013 PAGE 13

Think Critically, Communicate

David Bloom describes himself as “just a real estate guy.” Humble, easygoing and hard-working, he says he’s known since a young age that the real estate industry was his calling. “Since I grew up around different elements of architecture and real estate, I always knew what I wanted to do,” says Bloom.

Bloom has been senior vice president of Resource America, Inc. (NASDAQ: REXI), a specialized asset management company, since 2001 when he was brought in to launch the company’s real estate fund business, and has been president of Resource Real Estate, Inc., Resource America’s wholly owned real estate operating company that he’s run with two other senior principals, since its inception in 2004. Bloom has also been head of real estate and senior vice president of Resource Capital Corp. (NYSE: RSO), a commercial mortgage REIT, since its establishment in 2005.

Bloom is based in his company’s New York and Los Angeles offices.

Resource America, Inc. now has over $16 billion of financial services assets under management and Resource Real Estate now has three primary lines of business: a multifamily equity fund and management group that runs opportunistic and value add funds; a debt group that makes structured loans on all commercial property types; and the newest group, which is a global securities investment platform. “Today the bulk of my time is spent on the commercial debt platform,” Bloom says.

Jonathan Cohen, president and CEO of both Resource America, Inc. and Resource Capital Corp., describes Bloom as hard-working, honest, smart, and dynamic. “Dave’s experience as a lawyer and private equity principal for some of the most prestigious firms in those fields provides him with a unique understanding of all types of real estate transactions – both large and small,” says Cohen. “He’s incredibly hard-working, and a leader in the real estate private equity business. His sharp mind for complex structures makes him a leader and pacesetter in our business.”

He loves what he does and feels extremely fortunate to be associated with “The core curriculum was rigorous, varied Resource America. “Prior to joining my and included many subjects that I wouldn't On the personal front, Cohen said current company, I was a principal with Bloom’s integrity, his genuine nature have taken unless required.

Many of those a global private equity fund working and respect among his peers adds to primarily in Asia and was very happy. subjects were challenging and required much his talents. “Everyone in this industry That said, the chance to join Resource more work than things in my major or minor. knows Dave. He has a great reputation. and build a fund business under incredI’ve worked with him more than 11 Pushing through them taught me valuable ibly talented and extremely visionary years and I can’t say enough good things senior management was a very special lessons. It gave me a different level of conabout him.” opportunity. My partners and I benefit fidence about building and expanding core from specific guidance and unwavering Bloom has been married to Colleen com­petencies as a life-long pursuit, as opposed support, but largely run a national real Cooper, since 1995, and the couple has estate investment and asset manageto starting a career at 22 and traveling a a 15-year-old daughter, Courtney, and ment company the way we want to,” says linear professional path that is based on four twin 11-year-old sons, Jack and GrifBloom. “It is a rare gift to find such a fin. Colleen, a graduate of Hamilton years of very specific course study. ” powerful institution that is fueled by the College, is also the beneficiary of a libspirit of true entrepreneurs who foster eral arts education. She started on Wall that culture throughout all of their operating companies. It’s even rarer to Street and then went to business school. “Colleen has been in brand manfind a situation where you truly like and respect your senior management agement/marketing with Johnson & Johnson for the last 19 years and is simiand your colleagues.” larly fortunate in that she loves what she does and who she works for and with,” Bloom says. “My job has always involved a great deal of travel and late Bloom, Ursinus 1987, who earned a B.A. and majored in government with a nights, and Colleen has been able to work in a series of positions that, while minor in business administration, says his liberal arts education taught him rigorous, allow her flexibility and a base in a home office. I couldn’t do what to think critically and communicate. “These skills are too often lacking in I do without Colleen’s support – she clearly has the tougher job.” those with pure technical degrees, such as real estate finance or accounting,” he says.

Bloom cherishes downtime with his family. “We love time together as a family, which gets more difficult with three children all going in different direcA liberal arts education taught him to embrace a push outside his comfort tions, but we come together at a house we have in New England and enjoy zone, Bloom says. “The core curriculum was rigorous, varied and included the relative seclusion, water and nature that surrounds us when we're there,” many subjects that I wouldn't have taken unless required. Many of those he says. subjects were challenging and required much more work than things in my major or minor. Pushing through them taught me valuable lessons. It gave Bloom recently joined the Board of Trustees of Ursinus. “I’m proud to be me a different level of confidence about building and expanding core coman Ursinus graduate and the lessons I learned there have definitely helped petencies as a life-long pursuit, as opposed to starting a career at 22 and shape who and where I am today. I consider myself lucky because I entered traveling a linear professional path that is based on four years of very specific college with a very good idea of what I wanted to do and I've had the good course study.” fortune to spend my 26 professional years involved in the field that I set my sights on early in life,” he says. “Serving as a Trustee is an honor and very While having started in real estate finance after graduation, in 1993, important to me because I believe in this institution and its deep commitBloom earned a J.D. with honors from Rutgers University Law School. ment to the liberal arts. I’m excited to play a part in continuing the positive After practicing law in the real estate groups of firms in Philadelphia and strategic direction of Ursinus.”

New York, in 1997 Bloom returned to the business side with valuable additional skills.

PAGE 14 URSINUS MAGAZINE

Be a Pioneer

After making a historic impact in the medical world by starting a company that harvests and stores life-saving stem cells, Cynthia Fisher is now focused on preserving the world’s water supply. A biology and physics major, Fisher says her liberal arts education at Ursinus has guided her every step of the way.

When Fisher graduated from Ursinus in 1983, the world’s population was 4.7 billion people. Today, it has grown to 7.3 billion, and the United Nations projects it might be 10 billion by 2050. Government and industries must seek new means to feed the growing population, all the while working with a finite amount of land and an overtaxed water supply. The challenge to provide available food for future generations is greater than ever.

Enter Fisher, whose new company, TerraBlue, an information technology company in smart farming and smart environmental monitoring, plans to provide farmers the ability to achieve the maximum amount of productivity using the least amount of water and fertilizer inputs.

“The plants do so much better when they are not overwatered or overfed,” explains Fisher, who co-founded the company with Graeme Jarvis, formerly of John Deere Water.

Cynthia Fisher 1983

Electronic devices that sense whether a crop needs more water or fertilizer for optimum growth are installed in the ground at root level. The information is collected, aggregated, and provided to the farmers’ mobile device where they can then make irrigation and fertilization decisions in real time.

Thanks to TerraBlue’s smart technology, more food is produced at a higher quality, using less water and energy.

“Our company plans to help farmers and environmental agencies make timely, informed decisions while implementing sustainable practices,” says Fisher.

Starting TerraBlue isn’t Fisher’s first role as a pioneer in making widereaching global impact through industry. After graduating from Ursinus, Fisher worked at IBM in Philadelphia for five years before going to Harvard Business School. After graduating in 1990, she became the Blood Bank Marketing Manager at Haemonetics, in Braintree, Mass., a company that makes and markets automated blood collection and processing systems.

She was overseeing work with bone marrow transplant centers around the globe to support their equipment needs.

While at Haemonetics, Fisher saw the demand for curative, bone marrow stem cell transplant therapies far exceeded the supply of donor stem cells available. When she learned of the first umbilical cord blood transplant conducted, she realized that this valuable material, which typically was thrown out as medical waste, was actually extremely valuable for its concentration of potentially life-saving stem cells. Stem cells, which are found primarily in bone marrow, can create new blood and immune system cells and transform into other tissues of the body. They can be used to treat diseases such as cancers like leukemia and certain genetic disorders. Umbilical cord blood is rich in these stem cells. At the time, doctors still needed a way to harvest, transport and safely store the blood, which they could then use to treat these diseases as needed.

Fisher began to investigate how she could solve this problem. She knew her science degree, as well as her experience in business, would help her along the way.

“A liberal arts education provides a strong foundation for many of the facets of starting and running a business,” Fisher says. “You have to have such a variety of skill sets and be able to go wide and deep enough in various disciplines.”

Fisher cites disciplines such as: being a great communicator (English), making the underlying fundamentals of the technology work (science), having a strong financial background (accounting), developing ethical decisions (religion and philosophy), and finally, dealing with public policy and governmental agencies (politics and government).

After two years of research and logistical work, Fisher launched ViaCord, a cord-blood collection and storage service, in 1995. “Umbilical cord blood was just thought of as medical FALL 2013 PAGE 15

waste,” says Fisher. “But with this service, it would be a life-saving source of stem cells.”

Fisher was born with entrepreneurial genes. Her father ran his own CPA firm in Selinsgrove, Pa., and her grandfathers each ran their own businesses, one in antiques and the other in hosiery. Her maternal grandmother owned and ran the family farm.

“Cynthia has an urgency to accomplish things in life,” says Graeme Jarvis, her current business partner at TerraBlue. “She is so smart and resourceful and always highly ethical.”

During the time period Fisher launched ViaCord, she went on a blind date and met the man she would later marry, Jim Koch, the co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, the producers of Samuel Adams.

Koch and Fisher shared a love of mountain climbing as well as the same change-the world ethos.

“I knew within the first 10 minutes of our first date I was going to marry Cynthia,” says Koch, who did just that a little over a year after their first date.

The couple now has two teenage daughters, Elizabeth and Emily.

“She is such a force of nature who is so passionate and full of creativity.

When you pioneer an industry the way Cynthia did, people can think what you are doing is crazy,” says Koch. “I just wanted to make sure she kept believing in herself all along her journey.”

Within five years, ViaCord had banked over 4,500 cord-blood units and saved the lives of countless children. In 2000, ViaCord merged with another company to form ViaCell. Her venture-backed company raised $60 million in its 2005 IPO and was acquired for the ViaCord business by PerkinElmer in 2007 for $300 million. The ViaCord technology enabled thousands of children and adults to have readily available and reliable source of stem cells for their family members.

“I still think every day about the lives we save,” said Fisher. “I like to imagine what they are doing: living healthy lives, graduating from high school or starting college.”

With her medical technology days behind her for now, Fisher shifted her focus on the global effort to preserve water resources. In addition to running TerraBlue, she is also on the Board of Directors of water.org, actor Matt Damon’s nonprofit organization that helps improve the clean water and sanitation problems in developing countries. She is also a director of the Boston Beer Company and serves as a Trustee of Ursinus.

“My biology and physics major has served me well. I guess you could say I’m in fluid dynamics,” she jokes. “I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into blood, water and beer.”

In every endeavor Fisher has undertaken, she has changed so many lives along the way. Not only by helping heal the sick, but by creating thousands of jobs for people, as well as personally mentoring many of her employees.

“There are very few bosses for whom I would walk through a wall to help,” says Nadia Altomare, who worked for Fisher at ViaCord and then ViaCell for nine years and now runs Life Technologies, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco. “Cynthia is one of those people. She makes the people around her better humans and better citizens just by talking with them and sharing her energy. She is truly a one-of-a-kind individual.”

PAGE 16 URSINUS MAGAZINE

Take Risks, Join Forces

Philip DeSimone was four months from graduating from Ursinus in the spring of 2012, and already had a job offer from a venture firm in Silicon Valley. But DeSimone, who graduated with a double major in Business and Economics and politics, knew in his heart he wasn’t going to accept the offer.

“I have more of an entrepreneurial spirit,” explains DeSimone. “I knew I had the courage and the skill set to help build a business from the ground up.”

DeSimone decided to join forces with two partners, Ted Kraus and Joe Davy. He he met them in his home state of North Carolina, and collec­tively they decided to start the company, BUYSTAND, an online company that allows customers to bid on ac­tive lifestyle gear, apparel, Philip DeSimone 2012 and foot­wear. The company sends the offers to retailers and brands across the country and allows them to accept or decline the price offer. If the offer is acceptable, the transaction goes through and the item is shipped directly to the customer. The company has seen tremendous growth since their launch in June.

“Active lifestyle industry is the fastest growing retail market in the United States,” says DeSimone, whose company is based in Durham, North Carolina. “It grew 33 percent last year, even greater than the growth of consumer electronics.”

As Director of Partnerships, DeSimone reaches out to the brands and retailers to get them on board with selling their goods on BUYSTAND. As of July, BUYSTAND carried over 60 million dollars in inventory from over 415 brands worldwide, including top sellers such as Ugg, The North Face, Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and Merrell.

“My job started out as cold-calling,” says DeSimone. “But we have grown BUYSTAND enough that now companies call us because of our unique value proposition. We allow customers to get the items they want at the price they decide and the brands get to get rid of inventory in a discrete manner that doesn’t hurt brand equity.”

DeSimone’s entrepreneur spirit comes naturally. His father, Joseph DeSimone, 1986, is a Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an innovator in nanotechnology. He founded Bioabsorbable Vascular Solution, Inc. in 2002 and Liquidia Technologies in 2004.

“I absolutely thought that starting a company was the right move for Phil,” says Dr. DeSimone. “He is now exposed to a wide range of issues and people that he would have never been exposed to in a regular job. He also has such a great interest and a true understanding of how venture capital truly works.”

Phil gained a lot of business skills through his Business and Economics classes and professors at Ursinus as well as significant help and advice from Geoffrey Bloom, who sits on the Ursinus Board of Trustees and started his own footwear company, Wolverine Worldwide. DeSimone also worked at various

internships. Between his junior and senior years, he worked at Northgate Capital, a venture capital firm in Danville, California. His time at Northgate taught him how venture capital firms research startup companies to determine whether they are worthy for investment, and he gained great mentors in the Northgate’s managing directors Brent Jones and Tommy Vardell.

“Phil is interested in absorbing all the knowledge he can,” says Dr. Jennifer VanGilder, a Business and Economics professor at Ursinus. “He is not afraid to ask questions and go to people who know something and ask for advice.

This is the true sign of an entrepreneur.”

Be a Good Listener, Open to Change

As the newly appointed Chief Human Capital Officer for the National Archives and Records Administration, Sean Clayton 1999 has direct responsibility for 60 employees. His work directing the human resources staff impacts 3,500 National Archives employees who house and maintain documents and artifacts in over 30 locations across the United States, including the Presidential library system. Federal records centers house a lot of the unique historical paper documentation that all federal agencies generate, says Clayton. Archived paperwork can relate to military personnel records, historical documents like the Constitution, to trademarks and unique patents such as the original patent sketch of the shoes Michael Jackson wore in the video Smooth Criminal.

DeSimone was married this past Labor Day weekend to Ursinus classmate, Amanda Shisler. He plans to continue to grow BUYSTAND and build on his entrepreneurial goals. Aligning with other Ursinus graduates with similar business ideals is part of that plan.

“The students I studied with would excel against anyone else in the workplace,” says DeSimone. “Our liberal arts education taught us to think outside the box as well as to not to be afraid to take risks. Guess what? That is exactly how I run my business and live my life right now.”

When he is not at work, Sean Clayton spends time at his church, the DC Metro Church. After working to lose 50 pounds two years ago, he is focused on the importance of work-life balance. He has traveled to several countries in Asia and South America and is getting ready for a trip to the Middle East. He also likes to visit his family in Gibbstown, New Jersey.

Clayton says the position of Chief Human Capital (also known as Human Resources) Officer is critical to an organization’s success. “It’s a dynamic position and one where you need to understand people and what motivates them. When a company opens, I often say that the first person a CEO needs to hire is an HR specialist. How else will you be able to build a company without them?”

“We work to devise programs to make our workplace better and to improve the work experience,” says Clayton, a New Jersey native. Some of those initiatives include labor relations and negotiations with union leadership, recruitment, learning and development, performance management and awards, employee benefits and compensation, wellness programs and diversity and inclusion programs.

Part of his work includes managing a multigenerational workforce. “It’s challenging in that we have individuals specializing in a field in some cases longer than I have been alive. It is important to recognize that expertise and still be open to new ideas,” says Clayton. “Finding ways to lead all generations can be challenging because sometimes the latest tool doesn’t measure up to implementing regulation.” He works on mentoring at every level. “I bounce things off my peers and those who are younger who keep me up to date. I offer the wisdom of where I have been and how I got here. I think one of things I really offer is being present when people are talking. I am a really good listener. Part of my job is to find ways to help people know that they are being heard.”

At Ursinus, Clayton started out majoring in chemistry but soon realized politics held more appeal. “I thought I wanted to be a pharmacist, but those electives start to sneak in and I was excited about the humanities and philosophical side.” He graduated with a degree in political science and then earned his master’s degree in Public Administration at American University with a focus in Organizational Diagnosis and Change Management.

“Ursinus helped me to be more open and well-rounded. My education helped me to think more broadly and be open to other disciplines.”

In his new role, Clayton is responsible for implementing the rules and regulations of several oversight agencies including the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Management and Budget, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The rules and regulations governing various aspects of a human resources program for a federal agency and are derived from laws Congress has passed or Executive Orders issued by the President of the United States.

Clayton has daily meetings with his staff or interagency agency working groups in order to address human resource strategy and planning needs.

“No two days are really the same,” says Clayton. Throughout his career, he has had success through several government positions including his work in the civil rights office for the Farm Service Agency for the Department of Agriculture. He is most proud of a college access and career exploration symposium for at-risk high school students he co-founded nine years ago to talk about the importance of pursuing careers in the federal government.

His best advice is to be open to change, says Clayton. “That is the Ursinus way – to be open to learning new things and to be as well-rounded as possible. Try and learn as much as you can and be patient with the process of learning about an organization and its people.”

FALL 2013 PAGE 17

Be Fearless

Every October Amy Hollaman has one goal at work. Scare as many people as possible.

As the Events and Operations Manager at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia, she plans and manages both private and public events including Terror Behind the Walls. Over the last 22 years, the event has evolved into one of the most popular haunted houses in the world.

Amy Hollaman 2005 is Creative Director Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. She has been featured on the Rachael Ray Show, Emeril's Table and Good Day Philadelphia. Actor in chair - Jake Christiansen. Special Effects Makeup Director - Lauren Palmer.

“My favorite time of year is terror time!” says Hollaman, who majored in Spanish and Gender & Women's Studies. “As creative director, not only do I get to work in a picturesque building, but I get to create a massive haunted house in a real prison.”

She has worked with the haunted house for nine years and advanced from an actress to her current position. Hollaman makes the final decisions about the show, including overseeing all of the creative departments, costume, makeup, technical design and acting. In addition, she is head of human resources, hiring and managing over 250 seasonal employees. Her work throughout the year includes running fundraising events for the museum as well as corporate events, weddings and private parties ranging from 25 to more than 1,000 visitors at a time.

When she graduated from Ursinus, Hollaman enrolled in the City Year Greater Philadelphia AmeriCorps Program. She took an acting job at Terror Behind the Walls to supplement her income. “Sure enough, I fell in love with Eastern State and found it to be my true home. After completing my AmeriCorps program, I worked full time jobs at organizations such as the ACLU of PA, Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania and Homelink Inc., but I kept my Halloween seasonal job with Terror Behind the Walls. About two years ago I was offered a full-time, year round position at Eastern State. I have been delighted to make an impact on such a young nonprofit housed in a building with such a historically rich past.”

Throughout the year, she directs a team in planning for the show. That team includes a design services manager, a special effects makeup director, a costume director and director of operations. Together they travel to haunted houses and trade shows across the country for ideas and inspiration. “I get to go to the coolest buildings, meet awesome haunters and see cutting-edge special effects,” says Hollaman. In early August, she directs a hiring process where 250 people are selected from thousands of applicants who audition to act in the show or work as event staff on site. Once the show is cast, she manages a rigorous training schedule for the staff. “We teach them not only how to scare the living daylights out of our visitors, but we also train them on safety protocol and customer service.”

After a few weeks of training, they raise gigantic gargoyles onto the façade of the prison and Philadelphia knows that it is officially Halloween. “Every show night, I make a point to walk through the entire show and make notes and improvements for the following night. I work directly with actors on PAGE 18 URSINUS MAGAZINE

improving their scares and startle strategies. I love this job because I get to apply my knowledge and experience in a fast-paced environment.”

Once every show week Hollaman dresses in costume and turns into her favorite character, ‘Knuckles’. “Then I run out into the cellblocks and wait in the darkness,” says Hollaman. “Once I have those lucky visitors in my sites, I pop out from behind an iron head gate. First you hear screams, and then you hear laughter. Although our goal is to scare every person who enters the gatehouse, we also want to make sure that people have a fun, entertaining experience.”

Terror Behind the Walls is open for 29 nights September through November.

All proceeds from the event go directly toward maintenance of the historic site. “This fundraiser is a very successful model that has allowed us to restore several parts of the prison and improve museum operations and safety.

Thanks to Terror Behind the Walls, people from all over the world can come see the amazing architecture and learn about the history of Eastern State Penitentiary,” she says.

Her role allows her to be a leader, be creative and use her problem-solving skills, says Hollaman. “At Ursinus, not only did I receive a solid liberal arts education, but I engaged in many extracurricular actives that have helped me become a confident leader. I was a member of the rugby team, President of the Gay Straight Alliance and an intern at a Drug and Rehabilitation program in Madrid, Spain. Ursinus opened me up to experiences that enable me to now handle anything that comes my way,” she says. Studying abroad, she became fluent in Spanish and developed an understanding of people from different cultures and backgrounds. “My ability to relate to all different kinds of people is what makes me a good boss,” says Hollaman. “I am always grateful that I decided to go to Ursinus. I feel like it's made me the person I am today.”

Observe, Lead, Discover

It may have been fate that Thomas P. Loughran, Jr., MD, was on call the night a patient was referred with an unknown illness in the mid 1980’s. The woman’s symptoms were vague and included a decreased number of normal white cells. As an oncology Fellow at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, Loughran became something of a detective, using the patient’s blood smear and records of similar patients previously seen at the University to describe a new disease. Timing and tenacity converged and his findings were instrumental in discovering large granular lymphocyte (LGL) leukemia – a new and rare hematologic malignancy. The initial discovery was described in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1985.

“It’s really rare,” says Loughran, who graduated from Ursinus in 1975 with a Biology degree. “We got lucky.” Only 1,000 new patients a year in the United States are diagnosed with LGL leukemia. The disease affects both men and women usually between the ages of 50 to 60 years old. It is a chronic condition found around the world, but more common in the United States. LGL patients now even communicate on an LGL Facebook page. Loughran sees at least two new referrals of LGL patients a week.

The infrastructure at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center played a crucial role in allowing him to succeed, he says. “To be successful as a physician-scientist you need institutional support and a strong mentoring system,” says Loughran, who completed his fellowship in medical oncology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1985. Those support systems are continually in jeopardy because of federal funding cuts. His career path has been marked by his commitment to translational research which

has at its core a focus on multi-disciplinary collaboration and practical applications for scientific research. “I’m fascinated by the clinical and genetic connections of LGL and with the research figuring out what causes it. We suspect that the disease could be caused by virus but we haven’t been able to prove it yet.”

Loughran will bring his understanding of translational research to his newest role. In August, he began a new position as director of the University of Virginia Cancer Center, F. Palmer Weber-Smithfield Foods Professor of Oncology Research and Professor of Medicine. His keen ability to balance leadership, research and patient care highlighted his career as the first founding director of the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Penn State College of Medicine.

Surrounding himself with the best and the brightest has helped shape his leadership style, says Dr. Loughran. “My objective has always been to hire people who are smarter than I am to work with me. You have to remain optimistic and build a team. You have to be focused on longer goals and metric-driven performances should not be the major focus of your work,” he says. Before Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, he was program leader of hematologic malignancies at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida, associate director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at SUNY Health Science Center, and chief of hematology at the Syracuse Veteran's Affairs Medical Center in Syracuse, N.Y. His liberal arts education with its focus on writing and critical thinking continue to serve him in his career. College students today should focus on a broad education, he says. “It’s very important to have a comprehensive, broad background. Students need a strong foundation and the ability to think critically. You never know where the new ideas are going to come from.”

Thomas P. Loughran, Jr., MD, 1975, is the new director of the University of Virginia Cancer Center, F. Palmer Weber-Smithfield Foods Professor of Oncology Research and Professor of Medicine. He was the founding director of the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Penn State College of Medicine. After graduating from Ursinus, Loughran earned his medical degree from Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia in 1979. He completed his Internship and his Residency in Internal Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. As an oncology Fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, he was instrumental in discovering large granular lymphocyte (LGL) leukemia - a new and rare hematologic malignancy.

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Develop a Hybrid Skill Set

Tom Howard is the Senior Linux DevOps Engineer for American Express Publishing, the magazine publishing arm of American Express, overseeing titles such as Departures, Executive Travel, Food and Wine and Travel and Leisure. “The term ‘DevOps’ stands for development and operations. The concept behind it is still evolving,” says Howard. DevOps is an approach

scripting, HTML, Javascript and CSS. Then, I uploaded my resume to a career site that specializes in the IT industry.”

DevOps engineers need a hybrid skill set to be able to write code in higher level programming languages like Ruby or Python, he says. The engineers also should be able to build out and maintain Linux systems, understand networks, and be able to work with various SQL/NoSQL databases.

Howard accepted an offer with Advance Internet, an online media company in Jersey City, N.J. “I spent about four years there. I got hands-on experience in a wide range of technologies, working alongside some great people, and felt, for the first time, great pride and passion for my work.” After Advance, he worked in the world of tech startups in New York’s “Silicon Alley” in Manhattan. He was a support engineer for an e-commerce startup, a solutions engineer for a mainframe security firm that sent him overseas to conduct software assessments, and a systems engineer for a pop music media site. The world of tech startups was challenging, Howard says. The hours were long, benefits few, and the job security precarious. But the opportunities gave him the experience of learning new skills.

“Tech startups work well as incubators for new technologies or tech professionals,” says Howard.

“My time at Ursinus taught me how to develop self-paced learning strategies to essentially become an autodidact,” says Howard. “I read a lot of Zed Shaw, Stack Overflow and Server Fault, O’Reilly media books, and anything by Howard on Pharaoh Mountain in the Adirondacks. “Critical thinking skills are the heart of good technical troubleshooting and debugging,” says Thomas Howard 2000. He took an unconventional path to becoming a development Bruce Schneier. Whatever I read, I put into and operations engineer for American Express Publishing. practice while I was reading it. I also taught myself to be okay with breaking things. Buildto IT that encompasses the systems side of infrastructure engineering, the ing a repeatable test environment helped a great deal. With access to online deployment, configuration and change management, and the automation resources, free training and books, it’s easier than ever to teach yourself.” side of software engineering, he says.

As the point person for many of these tools and services, Howard is a key stakeholder in the stability and availability of the entire online infrastructure of American Express Publishing. “I got to where I am in a fairly unconventional way,” he says. He graduated with a degree in History, but also studied Japanese, and practiced fiction writing. Outside of class, he participated in the Ursinus theater program. Ironically he never took a single computer science course, he says. Howard wasn’t sure what type of career he wanted when he graduated in 2000. He had had a small role in the movie The Patriot, but never pursued acting. He dabbled in freelance writing and video editing, but wasn’t drawn to journalism.

Then in 2007, he started a job as a publisher’s assistant at a scientific, technical and medical publishing house. It wasn’t the right fit. After a few months, he made the decision to make the shift into technology. “I had played around with Linux on personal computers before, but never worked with it professionally.” He found books on the basics (Linux Bible from Wiley, Linux in a Nutshell from O’Reilly, and others). “I literally locked myself in a room for months teaching myself about the operating system, command line, shell PAGE 20 URSINUS MAGAZINE

Howard says his liberal arts education helped in surprising ways in the tech industry. “The history program at Ursinus forced me to develop critical thinking skills. Rote memorization only goes so far, and the same methods used to explore the root causes of the Salem Witch trials can also be applied to root cause analysis for CouchDB replication failure. That was an incredibly valuable realization. Critical thinking skills are the heart of good technical troubleshooting and debugging.”

He learned to place a high value on interdisciplinary application of knowledge and experiences. Theater helped with communication and leadership, fiction writing helped with both technical documentation and in translating heavily technical information to non-technical users and staff. And his foreign language experience helped him to easily pick up new programming languages.

“I’ve never felt restricted to a specific career path by my degree,” says Howard. “I’ve changed careers now a few times before getting it right. I took some risks, but in the end, they paid off and I’m much happier for it. It’s really that simple.”

P lay to Win

The video game Journey focuses on a player traveling toward a mountain in the distance. Other players on the same journey meet and help each other along the way. But the players can’t communicate through speech or text.

Instead, they can only communicate through musical chimes.

“It is such a beautiful game,” says Susan Arendt, 1991, who is Managing Editor of Joystiq, a video gaming blog. “It evokes a sense of wonder and escape that you can’t get in your own life. These types of games are what makes me so passionate about video games in the first place.”

Pitts and Arendt eventually got married.

Arendt, who grew up in Newtown Square, Pa., and now lives in Durham, North Carolina, has had a passion for gaming since she fell in love with the medium playing on the Atari 2600 as a kid. But, she always assumed this love would be her hobby and not a career.

The billion-dollar video game industry continues to grow and Arendt grows along with it. After working at The Escapist for six years, Arendt started as managing editor for Joystiq, a blog owned by AOL. She edits, writes stories and manages a site that averages 40 million views per month.

An English major at Ursinus, Arendt planned to become a high school teacher. But, when she graduated early from Ursinus in three years, she was just 19 years old.

“Susan is a legit game nerd,” says Christopher Grant, editor and founder of the video game web site Polygon, who was also on that 2006 panel in Valley Forge. “But more importantly, she is also a great reporter, writer and a savvy editor. These are really the skills that have helped her advance and stand out in our business.”

“There was no way I was mature enough to be in charge of a class,” she says.

“I knew I had to find a different career path.”

Arendt turned to the publishing world and wrote for trade publications in the radio and television industry and then the health care industry. But on the side, she was also writing for the videogame website, 1up.com, for free.

When she began to attract more readers to her blog and reviews, fellow gamers suggested she try and get paid for her writing. In 2006, she attended a video game convention in Valley Forge, Pa., where she met Russ Pitts, a panelist who at the time was a feature editor for the video game web site EscapistMagazine.com. Arendt’s writing style and video game knowledge impressed the company enough to land a full-time job as an editor at The Escapist, and

Find a Niche, Build on It

When Jeffrey Berlin 1984 started working in his father’s construction business, Berlin Homes, he had no idea that he would become a regional leader in upscale, green construction. But thanks to his Ursinus education and business savvy, he did just that.

Berlin learned the basics of construction from his father working for Berlin Homes, which was originally a standard construction company. At Ursinus he earned a degree in economics and has maintained an interest in philosophy that began as a student. Although he was hired at a tech company during his senior year, it went under before he graduated, so he returned to his father’s construction business after graduation.

Eventually he inherited the business, and slowly transformed it into the custom home building business it is today. Berlin says his choice to “green” his father’s business was an economic one. “I wanted to differentiate myself from competitors.”

Green construction is work that meets guidelines set by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) mandating energy conservation, water usage, and building materials. Berlin says his green homes exceed the NAHB guidelines. Green building includes energy effi-

“Susan has a great ear for stories that excite people about games and the people who make them,” says Pitts. “That passion is infectious.”

When Arendt isn’t playing video games or writing about them, she and Pitts have also founded an organization called The Take This Project. (A reference to the Legend of Zelda video game). The organization offers education and outreach for people with anxiety and depression in the gaming community.

“I will talk about video games for as long as someone will pay me to do it,” says Arendt. “But I also know gamers still suffer from the stigma of ‘being weird’ and ‘not fitting in with the main stream society.’ I want to help these people feel okay about who they are and about playing video games in general. After all, I’m one of them and probably will always be.”

cient measures like using ENERGY STAR appliances, recycled insulation materials for walls and ceilings, using Sun Tempered design (orienting the house in respect to the sun in a given lot to maximize the potential for heat absorption in winter months to save heating), and reducing the travel distances for materials.

“Being green is really about common sense business decisions,” Berlin says.

“It just makes sense to do things more efficiently.” Streamlining his business and focusing on customer service made Berlin Green Homes a leader in the regional market. He has won 23 awards for his work in New Castle County in Delaware, and Chester and Delaware Counties in Pennsylvania.

Berlin says his Ursinus education has helped him work with clients. “Philosophy made me realize that all people didn’t think the way I thought,” he says, and “to be empathetic with customers and try to understand them.”

These skills came in handy when educating customers about the benefits of sustainable housing. The social skills he learned at Ursinus have helped his business survive the recession. Though his business averaged eight highend houses a year before the recession, it now averages a single house a year. Berlin has started doing commercial building (he’s currently working on a hotel) to sustain himself. He recommends students balance practical work with long-term planning to achieve the careers they dream about. “Do what you have to do to pay bills, but keep your eyes on the things you’re passionate about,” he says.

FALL 2013 PAGE 21

Swim With the Sharks

As an aquarist at the Long Island Aquarium and Exhibition Center in Riverhead, New York, Rachael Vietheer is responsible for the husbandry, care, feeding, and maintenance of various fish tanks in the aquarium. Some of the animals include lobsters, crabs and electric eels, but she also works with sharks and penguins.

“Taking care of the animals is a priority in my job,” says Vietheer. “But getting along and communicating with the people I work with is extremely important to the success of the aquarium. Although the marine science field is vast, Ursinus prepared me to pursue a specialized career as an aquarist through opportunities such as internships, study abroad programs, and higher level course offerings.”

Vietheer holds the honor of being the first aquarist at the Long Island Aquarium to raise oyster toadfish fry. The female lays the eggs under a ceramic structure followed by the male fertilizing the eggs. The male then

“The liberal arts education I received at Ursinus empowered my sense of personal independence and made me confident in my skills,” says Vietheer.

“I have been able to excel in my role at the aquarium and contribute to its success. Animal care sometimes requires complex problem solving.

The skills I acquired in order to propose functional solutions include, examining the situation realistically, making broad analyses, and evoking interdisciplinary thinking.”

One of the more adrenalin-inducing of her tasks at the aquarium is shark dive instructor. She accompanies the visitors into the shark cage for a dive in the 120,000 gallon shark tank and provides them with a briefing on how to use the equipment and rules. “I prepare them for an unforgettable, close-up experience with five sand tiger sharks, four nurse sharks, and a 350pound loggerhead sea turtle. We are underwater for about 30 minutes.”

PHOTO | MAGGIE SEILER

“One of the most important skills I learned at Ursinus is communication,” says Rachael Vietheer 2012 who majored in biology. She is an aquarist at the Long Island Aquarium and Exhibition Center in Riverhead, New York.

guards the eggs until the fry develop, finish their yolk sac, and fall off. At that point, Vietheer removes them from the adult tank and places them in their own tank to grow. This July she continued the rearing of flamboyant cuttlefish. She also participated in the raising of two baby African black footed penguins this past winter and spring. “We were involved from when the eggs were laid all the way until we had to remove them from the parents and hand feed them ourselves,” she says. Also under her charge are flamboyant cuttlefish, giant pacific octopus, puffer fish, lionfish, moray eels, and various other tropical fish.

The divers wear full-face masks that allow them to communicate with each other underwater.

“Sometimes small fish swim into the cage,” says Vietheer. “The sand tiger sharks swim very close and check us out, curious about all of the bubbles we are making.” This summer the aquarium launched a program that allows people to help feed the five sand tiger sharks. Three times a week they are fed a variety of bluefish, mackerel, and herring.

“We place the fish at the end of a pole and keep track of how many fish each shark eats by identifying who is eating and recording it on a chart.” The people who sign up to assist help prepare the food, get a behind the scenes tour, and assist throughout the entire feed. “The sharks are very exciting and come right up to us at the top of the tank. I have found that most people are impressed by how close they come to us and will stick their heads out of the water.”

The small class size at Ursinus taught her to speak comfortably and confidently in front of peers and teachers, she says. “I practice this daily while engaging with the public during programs such as the Shark Dive program and with my coworkers. One of the most important skills I learned at Ursinus is communication.”

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Erica Lamberg, Ellen Cosgrove Labrecque 1995, Joshua Walsh 2013 and Kathryn Campbell contributed to this story.

events Homecoming Weekend | October 18 – 19 RiverCrest Golf Club, Phoenixville & Ursinus College Campus Register now for a weekend full of Homecoming festivities!

Visit www.ursinus.edu/Homecoming to register and for more information, including details on the 2nd Annual Grizzly Gala and a full list of Organization Reunions.

Heefner Organ Recital | October 20, 4 p.m.

Bomberger Auditorium Curtis Institute Students

Ursinus Jazz Ensemble Concert | October 25, 7:30 p.m.

Lenfest Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Conductor: Holly Hubbs Romance & Comedy | October 30 - November 2, 7:30 p.m.

Blackbox Studio Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Tickets: $5 general admission/$2 students & senior citizens New, easy reservations: www.ursinus.edu/tickets Just in time for Halloween, Ursinus stages this fun and sexy romantic comedy. A free-spirited witch casts a romantic spell but risks losing her supernatural powers. John Van Druten’s Bell, Book and Candle enjoyed a successful run on Broadway in the early 1950s and was followed by a hit film. The TV show Bewitched drew its inspiration from the play.

College Choir and Meistersingers Concert

November 2, 7:30 p.m.

Bomberger Auditorium Conductor: John French

Ursinus String Ensemble Concert | November 9, 7:30 p.m.

Lenfest Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Conductor: Garrett Hope Ursinus Wind Ensemble Concert | November 15, 7:30 p.m.

Lenfest Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Conductor: Holly Hubbs

2013 Ursinus College Hall of Fame for Athletes Induction Ceremony & Reception | November 16, 6-8:30 p.m.

Wismer Center, Ursinus College Campus

Join the Ursinus community in congratulating this year’s inductees by attending the ceremony and reception. Advance registration is required.

Visit www.ursinus.edu/HallofFame for more information.

Jaime Matty Ciarlello '02 – Women’s Lacrosse Traci Davis '82 – Field Hockey, Track & Field, Women’s Lacrosse Sandra M. Fetterman '03 – Field Hockey Amy Transue Hartenstine '03 – Field Hockey Richard P. Lowe '88 – Football, Track & Field Daniel J. Luciano '03 – Basketball Jennifer Stone Mandato '96 – Women’s Lacrosse Darren J. Torsone '97 – Wrestling Frank R. Vecchio '01 – Football

Ursinus College Dance Company | November 21, 22 and 23, 7:30 p.m.

Lenfest Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Tickets: $5 general admission/$2 students & senior citizens New, easy reservations: www.ursinus.edu/tickets Ursinus students perform in a variety of choreographic works by faculty members Karen Clemente and Jeanine McCain.

Handel’s Messiah, College Choir and Meistersingers

December 7, 7:30 p.m., Bomberger Auditorium December 8, 2:30 p.m., Bomberger Auditorium

New, easy reservations: www.ursinus.edu/tickets

Ursinus College National Council Events

Ursinus College National Council Liaisons will be hosting a variety of events and programs in Boston, D.C., Florida, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco this year. Additionally, regional chapters will be established in Chicago, Southern California and Southern New Jersey. For more information on upcoming events and regional activities, please visit: www.ursinus.edu/NationalCouncil.

Alumni Weekend 2014, including Alumni Awards

April 24 – 26 | Ursinus College Campus

Save the date and plan to reconnect with your classmates!

FALL 2013 PAGE 23

Alumni Weekend

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1. Shannon Hansell 2014 is all smiles at Alumni Weekend lunch.

2. Corey Barker 2013 and his father Carl Barker post-Alumni Award ceremony.

3. Lynn Watson Smith 1963.

4. Emily Smith 2011 with her guest, Brian Laverty.

5. Reconnecting over old photos.

6. Professor Amanda Reig and family.

7. Dining and conversation under the tent.

8. Mary Alice (Weaver) Butkofsky 1943 with President Bobby Fong.

9. Charles Haeussner 1963.

10. James Tiggett 2001 and Janean (Gamble) Tiggett 2004.

11. Jane Sillcox 1947.

12. Christine (Furstnau) McCormick 1983 and Leo McCormick 1983.

13. George Brackin 1963.

14. President Fong accepts a check from the Class of 1958 care of 55th Reunion co-chairs, John Idler 1958 and Reggie (Cairo) Idler 1958.

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Here's your chance to honor them!

Do you know an Ursinus alumnus or alumna who deserves to be recognized?

We are now accepting nominations for the 2014 Alumni Awards in the following categories:

• Alumni Award for Professional Achievement • Alumni Award for Service to Humanity

• The Rising Star Alumni Award • Senior Alumni Award

To submit your nomination(s), please visit www.ursinus.edu/AlumniAwards before the January 17 deadline.

Full award descriptions and criteria are also available on this site.

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Robert E. Keehn III 1970

Robert E. Keehn III received The Alumni Award for Professional Achievement for an individual who has attained significant professional achievement through exemplary leadership. Keehn majored in Political Science and was President of the Class of 1970. He worked for the Procter & Gamble Co., for 32 years and was Director, Global Customer Logistics and Financial Services before retiring. “The experiences I had during my four years [at Ursinus] had a significant influence on both my professional and personal life,” he said. Keehn was an active Member of the Board of Trustees from 2004 through 2012.

Corey J. Barkers 2013

Corey J. Barkers received the Alumni Senior Award for Leadership. The honor goes to a graduating senior based on the promise they show to make significant contributions to their future communities, and to Ursinus College.

A singer and writer, Barkers sang with the UC Bearitones and with the Voices in Praise Gospel Choir. President of the Blue Note Jazz Society, he also led the Africana Studies special interest residence hall. He hosted the annual “Substance of My Souls” concert celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King and served on the Ursinus Strategic Planning Committee.

Geoffrey S. Brace 2003

Geoffrey Brace received The Rising Star Award. This award recognizes an accomplished graduate of the past 10 years for significant contributions to, and leadership in, the recipient’s profession, community or Ursinus College. Brace majored in politics and graduated in 2003. He earned his master’s degree in Political Science/Public Policy from Lehigh University in 2005. He was the Regional Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Downtown Center and then Executive Director for Kutztown Community Partnership. He is a Legislative Assistant to State Rep. Mike Schlossberg (D-132) and was elected to the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners this fall.

Joan Bradley Parlee 1957

Joan Bradley Parlee received The Alumni Award for Service to Humanity. The award recognizes and pays tribute to an individual exhibiting outstanding service to society. Parlee served on the board of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Bucks County. She was assistant treasurer of Doylestown’s The Village Improvement Association (V.I.A.), and was president for two years. In 2008, she became treasurer and then chair of the Finance Committee for the Doylestown Hospital Board. Currently she is Vice Chair. Parlee and her husband, Dr. Donald Parlee, established The ParleeBradley Fund to support scholarships, and The Parlee Fund for the Performing Arts.

Ronald Algeo 1991

Ronald Algeo received the Henry P. and M. Page Laughlin Educator Award. The award recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the field of education. Algeo is Head of the Upper School at Malvern Preparatory School and has dedicated his professional life to providing quality education and creating an environment where students can stretch themselves academically, athletically and morally. “Ron is idolized by the kids and adored by the faculty,” says Father James Flynn, President of Malvern Prep. He was a Mathematics major and played varsity basketball at Ursinus.

Madeline K. McEvily 2013

Madeline K. McEvily received the Alumni Senior Award for Leadership. This honor goes to a graduating senior and is based on the promise they show to make significant contributions to their future communities, and to Ursinus College. McEvily, a business and economics major, was a Bonner Leader. She organized students to volunteer for the “City Year Serves” program, offering painting, construction and gardening in and around Philadelphia schools. She volunteered at Partners for Families, which provides services for economically disadvantaged families in Norristown, Pa. She studied in Australia, was a Resident Adviser, and taught English in Madagascar.

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In Memoriam Physician, Humanitarian, Loyal Friend Spencer Foreman M.D., 1957, who was known as Spike, died May 28 after a courageous battle with brain cancer. He was Chair of the Ursinus Board of the Trustees from 2004 through 2012, and served for 17 years on the Board of Trustees.

Spike served as Chair during a time of physical and reputational growth for Ursinus, an era that included the performing arts agenda, restoration of Bomberger Hall as a premier musical performance space, the opening of the Pfeiffer Wing of the Berman Museum, and a continuing assessment of the sciences. He oversaw the transition from the presidency of John Strassburger, who stepped down in 2010 and died later that year, through the interim presidency of John E.F. Corson from 2010 to 2011, to the selection in 2011 of President Bobby Fong as the institution’s 15th president. He also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Ursinus in 2008.

Spike’s leadership at Ursinus helped shape Ursinus as a nationally known liberal arts college. “From the first time I met Spike to my last conversation with him,” reminisced President Fong, “he spoke passionately about how the liberal arts education he gained at Ursinus prepared him for his profession and for life. He was adamant that continuing generations of students at the College be equally well served.”

Corson recalled that Spike’s interest in Ursinus blossomed when he became involved in the 1998 project to renovate Pfahler Hall, which he thought was essential. “But the interesting thing about Spike is that he championed the liberal arts, as he believed that those in the medical profession needed the humanities,” said Corson. “He said that in order to properly diagnose patient illness, doctors needed to talk to patients on their level, to understand their perspectives and appreciate their points of view. Science is, of course, absolutely necessary in the process, but it is humanities that provides insight and empathy that science does not.”

including an adolescent AIDS program, a medically based Child Advocacy Center and the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.

Dr. Foreman was proud of his humanitarian work in the former Soviet Union, where he spent time as a consultant on health and social services, especially helping needy families in Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kirghiz Republic, Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia as the advisor on health and welfare programs there for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. His fact-finding visits were instrumental in finding solutions to medical, nutritional and social service community needs there.

He was Chairman of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and established an annual award to recognize academic medical centers that meet the needs of their communities. In 2007, the organization renamed the award in his honor. He served on the boards and as a member of many medical and philanthropic organizations including Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute; the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; Biomedical Research Alliance of New York and many others.

“His leadership contributed to a remarkable upward trajectory in our liberal arts college that was unprecedented,” said Jill Marsteller, Senior Vice President of Advancement. “Spike was a committed, devoted person to people and causes.”

He is survived by his wife, Sandra, their four children and 10 grandchildren.

Raised in Philadelphia, Spike worked as a stock boy, and later at a Poconos summer camp. After graduating from Ursinus in 1957, he attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

Trained as a pulmonary specialist he served in the U.S. Public Health Service and in his 30s, was tapped to run a Health Service hospital in Baltimore. Later he served Sinai Hospital in Baltimore before going to Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y., where he served as a professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and social medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). Montefiore is the university hospital and Academic Medical Center for AECOM. Dedicated to improving both the access to and the quality of health care to large populations of people, Dr. Foreman was Chair of the Board of Trustees, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Montefiore Medical Center, where he retired as President in 2007. According to a New York Times death notice, “there he set the hospital on a course to become a national model managing the health care of an underserved population.” Under Dr. Foreman, Montefiore established leading innovative social programs

Spencer Foreman M.D., 1957 FALL 2013 PAGE 35

Marching On In the fall of 1963, Lee Zelley met Karen Wanner. Lee, two years Karen’s senior, played baritone horn and Karen was a clarinet player in the Ursinus College marching band. They already shared a love of music and soon discovered they had childhood ties, too.

“Karen was from Union, New Jersey,” says Lee, a retired obstetrics and gynecology doctor in Pottstown. “I lived in Union until my family moved when I was going into second grade. If my family would have stayed there, Karen and I would have gone to junior high school together.”

Fate, it would seem, meant for them to be together. The college sweethearts now have been married for 45 years and continue making music. They both play in the Pottsgrove Community Band, which includes 50 musicians ranging in age from 14 to 85 who volunteer to perform in concerts at nursing homes, retirement centers, churches, and at local community events.

Karen Wanner Zelley 1967 and Lee Zelley 1965 are still making music together.

“Karen and Lee are so full of life,” says Dave Bartman 1965, an Ursinus classmate who was a member of the Pottsgrove Community Band. “They are both talented musicians. Lee even has perfect pitch.”

For more than 20 years, Lee has played in the community band in addition to singing with his church choir. Karen just resumed playing in 2010. Lee is responsible for encouraging his wife to pick up her clarinet again and for recruiting other members to the band.

“When I was still practicing medicine,” says Lee, who retired three years ago, “I used to include the question on my medical questionnaire, ‘Do you play a musical instrument?’ I probably recruited about half a dozen new members this way.”

Lee comes from musical royalty. His grandfather was Roland F. Seitz, a renowned composer, bandmaster and music composer.

“Roland Seitz was a contemporary of John Phillip Sousa,” Lee says.

“He is probably the most famous composer of marches. But, my grandfather also gained fame nationally and internationally during the same era. Many of his marches have been recorded and played over and over.” Seitz’s marches, such as Grandioso and Salutation are played in the Rose Bowl Parade and during Presidential inaugurations. Elaine Zelley, Lee and Karen’s daughter who graduated from Ursinus in 1995, says music filled the house while she was growing up. Although she only played piano briefly, she’s thrilled her parents are back performing together again. Elaine's two brothers also played piano. One took up clarinet and the other the baritone horn.

“Music always played a big part in our lives,” says Elaine. “My mom and dad connected through it and it truly helps to keep them in tune with each other.”

Lee and Karen also sang in the Messiah while at Ursinus and Lee was student conductor of the Meistersingers his senior year. Karen played clarinet for the Meistersingers as accompaniment to some of the pieces.

She still plays the same clarinet she had at Ursinus. But some things have changed since their college days.

“We don’t have to wear the red blazers and black slacks and skirts we wore while playing at Ursinus,” Karen jokes. “Luckily, we don’t have to march anymore, either.”

Ellen Cosgrove Labrecque 1995

PAGE 36 URSINUS MAGAZINE

Weddings

Elisabeth Clarke 2012 and Tim Groth were married on May 26, 2013.

Ewa Maria Siedlecka 2008 and Michael Kohler were married on April 20, 2013.

David Chamberlain 2008 and Amy Lynch 2008 were married on June 28, 2013.

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Amanda D'Amico 2007 and Mike Lichtenstein 2007 were married on May 4, 2013.

Rebecca Lamhut 2009 and Jesse Jones 2009 were married on May 18, 2013.

Caitlyn Kennedy 2007 and Kevin Niedelman 2009 were married on March 16, 2013.

Erin Walsh 2005 and Nicholas Ventresca 2004 were married on April 26, 2013.

PAGE 38 URSINUS MAGAZINE

Mary Reid 2007 and Bobby Atkinson were married on April 27, 2013.

Jenna Filipkowski 2007 and Jason Mott were married on June 15, 2013.

Ursinus wedding photos

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FALL 2013 PAGE 39

field notes Medieval Religion, Medieval Violence Your courses focus on both medieval Europe and the medieval Mediterranean, and include topics such as interfaith relations, religious violence, gender and sexuality, and the Middle Ages in popular culture.

How would you summarize your research?

I am concerned with why human beings violently persecuted one another in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. I am interested in the context and motivations of violent and hateful behavior; why people thought it was morally good (or at least justified) to persecute others, and what cultural factors—ideas, emotions, beliefs, or terminologies—they used to explain their actions.

I look at these questions specifically in the context of the medieval crusading movement in Western Europe, particularly from the late eleventh through the early fourteenth centuries. I investigate how Christians in this period conceptualized their violence towards non-Christians (Muslims, but also Jews and non-conforming Christians deemed “heretics”). I explore why they thought this violence was so morally right—indeed, obligatory—that it was worth both extensive mobilization at all levels of society and extensive commitment (economic, political, personal). Of course, since I can’t get into people’s heads—now or in the past—I look at the evidence left behind, the cultural context people created around the crusading movement.

Assistant Professor of History Susanna Throop completed an M.A. as a Mellon Fellow at the University of Toronto and received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

She studies interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, violence, ideology and emotion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly in the context of the medieval crusading movement. Her research revised historical understanding of the idea of crusading as vengeance and exposed the problems with believing that crusading ideology can be broken down into ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ components. She has been teaching history at Ursinus since 2009.

PAGE 40 URSINUS MAGAZINE

This is akin to intellectual history, since it involves accounting for how people understood their actions and presented their motivations. It is also a form of religious history, because I am often studying Christian doctrine, theological texts, and popular devotion. But it can’t be easily classified as either one or the other, especially because my research looks at emotional as well as intellectual constructs and visual as well as textual evidence. I prefer to think of my work as cultural history.

What do you think is the most significant contribution you have made to your field so far?

Before my book Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095-1216, scholars believed that the idea of crusading as an act of vengeance was not widespread, was primarily secular, and was essentially the result of ignorant laypeople failing to “properly” understand Christian teachings of the time.

My research showed the opposite: the idea did become widespread, and, in fact, it was deeply rooted in Christian doctrine and theology and energetically advocated by high-ranking members of the Catholic Church. Yet, it was also influenced by more secular ideas and seems to have been relatively popular in many different areas of society. Thus, not only did my work completely revise our historical understanding of the idea of crusading as vengeance, it exposed the problems with believing that crusading ideology can be categorized simplistically as “religious” or “secular.” As part of this work,

I analyzed the emotion-term “zelus.” This was pioneering work on crusading emotion. I’m happy that it has inspired a number of younger scholars to do further research on crusading and emotion.

What aspect of your research do you find the most exciting or interesting?

All of it! What really has my attention right now is the role of the crucifixion of Christ in crusading culture. The crucifixion is used in so many different ways to explain or justify or illustrate going on crusade— it’s just fascinating, and so very rich. And it continues to be relevant in unexpected ways; people continue to use or even reenact the crucifixion as a symbol or expression of intense beliefs or emotions. Recently I read about a small number of workers in Paraguay who had themselves nailed to crosses in order to protest being fired.

What is the most frustrating or challenging aspect of your work?

Medievalists face an incomplete and unique body of evidence. In addition, no one kept diaries or created similar documents in the twelfth century, so trying to figure out how people thought about their actions requires careful and creative evaluation of many different kinds of sources.

These sources are often unavailable to me, despite being near major research libraries at the University of Pennsylvania and the valiant efforts of Dominique St-Etienne in Myrin, Interlibrary loan. Finally, I have to be able to read a number of different languages, both modern and medieval, to handle the primary sources and also modern scholarship discussing the sources, which is often written in a modern European language. To a degree these are things that all historians do, but for a medievalist, they are even more pressing. Because of the nature of the source evidence, there are some questions that can simply never be answered conclusively. There are two choices: stop asking questions, or accept the difficulties and do your best. Obviously I choose the latter.

Being a medievalist in America is sometimes challenging because America lacks medieval history; we inherit ours through Europe, but it is not around us every day. We don’t live with medieval buildings in our daily environment or with obvious medieval artifacts in our political or religious ceremonies.

We don’t live with medieval events still influencing contemporary society or politics—or so many believe, despite what can seem like obvious connections to a medievalist. As a result, for some Americans, the medieval past can seem completely irrelevant and separate from our own times, or alien, rather like a fairy tale or a video game. It can be a bit frustrating to find that people think of your field of study as either irrelevant or frivolous.

But all that said, I don’t spend a lot of time feeling frustrated; I don’t feel like any of these issues keep me from my work or bring me down, and I have found my students and colleagues at Ursinus to be very receptive and supportive. Furthermore, there are positive aspects to these challenges. Yes, it’s hard to pin down medieval history precisely but that means there is more room for imaginative analysis and creative research. And yes, medieval history isn’t always widely known or valued in the U.S., but that makes the medievalist community in the U.S. tight-knit and supportive, and it also means that the circle of colleagues with whom I regularly interact is international.

When you start research for The Crucifixion, Christian Violence and the Crusades in Medieval France – where will you go and what questions are you hoping to answer?

I will be working in the University of Pennsylvania libraries in Philadelphia to begin. I anticipate research trips elsewhere, especially to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, which will become necessary further into the project.

The main goal of the project is to clarify the way in which three major trends intersected in twelfth century Europe: the rise of affective (emotional) devotion to a suffering Christ, the rise of the crusading movement, and the rise of Christian persecution of those thought to be non-Christian (through the crusades, but also outside of the crusading movement). Many scholars have noted this intersection, but have focused on one or another of the trends without considering their relationship to each other in depth.

The crucifixion fits into this because it played a role in all three trends.

Moving away from early medieval images of a triumphant Christ on the cross, beginning in the twelfth century theologians and artists drew attention to the humanity of Christ, and, in turn, the intense, physical agony of the crucifixion. This correlated with a turn toward a more personal, affective devotion to a human Christ who suffered on the cross. At the same time, the crucifixion was linked with the crusading movement in a wide variety of genres and mediums. It was sometimes portrayed as a discrete historical event, and at other times as a timeless “present.” It was a symbol of redemption but more broadly an impetus for both Christian love and Christian vengeance. Above all, the crucifixion served as a dual motivation for crusaders: it drove them to “carry their crosses” as Christ had done, in imitation of him, but also demanded vengeance. Finally, those groups increasingly persecuted by Christians in twelfth-century Europe – Jews, Muslims, and “heretics” – were accused of acts of aggression toward the crucifixion: crucifix desecrations, mockery of Christian rituals, and even crucifixion “reenactments.” As I have argued in previous work, this suggests that from a Christian perspective, attacks on the crucifixion served as the ultimate example of willful infidelity, deliberate betrayal of God, and animosity toward Christians.

There are many questions I hope to consider in this study. How should we interpret the correlation between the rise of affective devotion to a suffering Christ and the crusading movement? What relationship existed between the crucifixion as an inspiration for Christian love and self-sacrifice and as a motivation for Christian vengeance on religious minorities? In particular, to what extent was the crucifixion a lens for identity; to what extent did medieval Christians perceive a world in which Christians’ belief in the crucifixion opposed the willful disbelief of non-Christians? Understanding the ways in which the crucifixion endowed both Christian devotion and Christian violence with meaning, in different ways at different times, will hopefully help us to better understand the ways in which medieval contemporaries experienced crusading. n

FALL 2013 PAGE 41

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Homecoming Weekend • October 18 & 19, 2013

• 2nd Annual Grizzly Gala: Friday evening, 8 p.m. to Midnight, RiverCrest Golf Club, Phoenixville Roaring ’20s Cocktail Party featuring the Slippery Band!

• Soothe your growling stomach at Bears’ Brews & Bites, sponsored by the Bruins Club • Good Times with your fellow Bears at Organization Reunions • Go! Fight! ROAR! Athletic Games, including UC Bears vs.

Juniata Eagles Football Game

www.ursinus.edu/homecoming Visit to register or for more info!