April 2008
Fines dining
Sitting next to the front desk at Roesch Library last week:
* Thirty-six canned goods
* Salt and pepper shakers
* One box of lasagna mix
* Three packets of chicken-flavored pasta
* One bag of noodles
Residential assistant Beth Ann Saracco brought it all to erase her fines.
"Library fines from OhioLink add up quickly," she said.
During National Library Week, one can of food for St. Vincent de Paul equaled $1 worth of fines. This was a great deal.
"I bought an assortment of vegetables costing 50 to 80 cents and saved a few bucks," said senior Claire Yerke. "I had so many fines."
UD staff member Christopher Strasbaugh planned on donating seven canned goods because of his $6.75 in late fees.
"I tried to renew an OhioLink book two days too early, and two days later I forgot to renew it," he said. He also forgot the canned goods. The library reduced his fines on a promise to bring them later.
At the end of the year, many students are cleaning out their pantries. "Not everyone thinks about donating," said Dianne Hoops, circulation specialist at Roesch Library. The library's extra incentive resulted in more than 570 items for the hungry.
Trash in half
Move-out piles of trash should look smaller this year. The biggest winners may be area thrift shoppers, who could see about 65 tons in donated clothing, shoes, appliances, furniture and household items.
Sustainability coordinator Joel Brand is hoping to reduce by half the approximately 130 tons of material typically hauled off campus at year's end. The donations go into the trucks, donation boxes, bins and barrels of the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul Society, which provide emergency shelter, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and other services.
Students also will be able to donate nonperishable food to UD’s Summer Appalachia Program, which does nine weeks of service in Magoffin County, Ky. There, the students staff a children’s day camp, volunteer in a teen center and visit a local nursing home. The pre-law fraternity Phi Alpha Delta is placing boxes in residence halls and Kennedy Union for unused school supplies to be donated to Dayton's Fairview Elementary.
Move-out takes place April 27-May 5 in residence halls and the student neighborhoods, but by April 23, 207 pounds of clothing had already been collected.
Art + Science
It’s not a distorted Marilyn Monroe in sophomore Katherine Norris’ "Pop Art," but an
acorn (shown left). “We were supposed to bring stuff in to look at under the microscope,” Norris said of the Art + Science minicourse. “I was walking back to my dorm in the fall and I noticed it. It was fuzzy inside and I put it in my bag.”
While leaves and pieces of mulch also ended up in her bag, Norris was particularly fond of her acorn. “I liked it when I zoomed in really close,” she said. “It had really interesting stands, almost like hair.”
The minicourse allowed students with science and art backgrounds to experiment with microscopic images as inspiration for work in printmaking, photography and ceramics.
Norris, who entered UD as a chemistry major, focused her coursework in environmental 
science. “As a chemistry major your classes are pretty set. You don’t have the opportunity to take printmaking,” said Norris, now an interdisciplinarystudies major.
Senior Kristen Lauer, a biology and fine arts major, took microscopic images of plastic-coated fiberglass to make her prints, "Untitled" (right). Both her artwork and her majors exemplify unpredictability. “You don’t always know how it will turn out,” Lauer said.
Flyers chasing their Olympic dreams
Two Flyers ran this morning in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Boston, a day before the Boston Marathon. What was on the line? The top three finishers make the Olympic team heading to Beijing this summer.
Ann Alyanak, head women's cross country coach and assistant track and field coach, finished in 2:34:46, a personal best by nearly four minutes. In today's strong field, it earned her seventh place overall. The difference between her and first-place finisher Deena Kastor? Just 11 seconds per mile over the 26-mile course. Four seconds per mile separated Alyanak and the third-place finisher, Blake Russell.
Alumna Melissa Rittenhouse ’98, who was featured in the spring issue of UDQ along with Alyanak, finished in the top 100 with a time of 2:50:17. After yearly improvements as a distance runner at UD, RIttenhouse earned MVP honors her senior year. Following a post-graduation break from competitive running, she took up the sport again in graduate school. She qualified for the Olympic trials with a time of 2:45:16 in the 2006 Austin Marathon.
No free day
Classes may have been canceled, but it was hardly a day off for students who 
showcased their academic accomplishments during the annual Stander Symposium, April 8-9. At the Horvath Exhibition, they discussed sculptures of women with chain mail hair. At the evening arts celebration in Frericks, woodwind players danced through their scales while professor emeritus Herb Martin recited poetry. At the Stander Cup, students played four-square and solved sudoku puzzles as they exercised their minds and bodies in RecPlex. And at the research presentations and poster sessions, students wrapped years of study on Alzheimer's, nanomaterials and gender analysis of road trip novels into infinitely exciting three-minute presentations for crowds of students and faculty. Click the image above to see the sights and hear the sounds of Stander.
Spike for Colin
UD senior Mike Reuther remembers playing high school soccer with Colin Fahrenkamp like it was yesterday. It wasn't. It was four years ago, before Fahrenkamp died in an accident.
Reuther couldn’t get back to St. Louis in time for his friend's funeral, but he found closure by spearheading a charity volleyball tournament, Spike for Charity, to benefit Fahrenkamp’s memorial foundation, the Save a Life Campaign. Organized by business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi, Spike for Charity raised more than $3,000 last April as 300 students dug their feet in the sand to battle over the net.
After months of fundraising, 12 professional fraternities will again bump, set and spike on the sand volleyball courts this Saturday in the second annual event.
“We’re using the unique community and environment of the neighborhood so students can sit on their porches, listen to music and play some volleyball for a great cause,” Reuther said.
With a volleyball in his hand and a blue Save a Life Campaign band around his wrist, Reuther will spike one for his high school buddy.
The reunion earlybirds
Those of us who cover alumni events for UDQ get to go to Reunion Weekend every year, so we know what a great time it is.
Still, a note yesterday from Courtney Deutsch, who coordinates the event, was pretty stunning. Yesterday was a busy day for Deutsch because registration for this year's Reunion Weekend opened at 8 a.m. At 5:30 that evening, she shared a few notes from her day:
• By 8:14 a.m., all of the four-person campus housing rooms were sold out and she had started a waiting list — "not that I expect it to budge much," she added.
• By 5 p.m., more than half of the two-person campus housing rooms were gone. She's already working on whether more campus housing can be made available.
• The day ended with 190 registrations, plus an additional 98 guests (49 of whom are alumni).
• Both the Dayton Marriott and Courtyard by Marriott — University of Dayton hotels are sold out (though she notes that two downtown hotels five minutes from campus still have rooms).
• Sixty-six people registered for a new event this year: the Ghetto Fun Run/Walk.
• Twenty-eight alumni made more than $1,000 in gifts, most of them from the five- and 10-year reunion classes.
• "A whopping 77 people" from the class of 2003 registered. With guests, their R.S.V.P. list is already at 111.
All just on the first day.
Our outgrown chapel
I was among scores of people who spent five hours this past weekend at open meetings about how the Immaculate Conception Chapel, built at a small school in the mid-19th-century, can serve a large university.
We heard about over-crowded Sunday Masses, about cramped celebrations of Holy Week and of Baptism and Reconciliation, about difficulty doing the things people do in church in a way that the church says they should be done. And we heard of basic considerations, like plumbing. How many other buildings on campus don't have restrooms?
And what of a church with no gathering space on a campus well known for people who like to gather?
A consultant and architects talked of concepts and possibilities — limited at this time by very little but imagination.
Well, some limitations. A widespread love for the front fac¨ade (and lack of space there to build) make an expansion westward unlikely. Even there, however, some change may be necessary. Father Chris Wittmann, S.M., director of campus ministry, said a 5-year-old pointed out to him that the massive front doors have no handles on the outside.
And those who assembled this weekend offered a myriad of other observations, fears and hopes for the chapel renovation.
More from Bombeck
Keynote speaker Garrison Keillor shared his insights on Erma Bombeck ’49 during last week's Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, which drew to campus more than 400 writers and friends from across the country.
by Matthew Dewald 4-11-08
Knowing Erma
I knew so little about Erma Bombeck.
I first heard about her on my campus tour next to her historic plaque. This year, I discovered a writers’ workshop in her name.
Thanks to a scholarship from the National Alumni Association, I was one of the 458 writers and friends who attended the 2008 Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. My mother was thrilled. Her aunt Elizabeth — I am her namesake — read Erma’s column religiously.
Maybe now I would finally get to know Erma Bombeck.
People from all over the world traveled to Dayton last weekend to share their passion for writing and their respect for a remarkable woman. A tall, burly man, shaped by his age, knew her. Dressed in a suit, Garrison Keillor wore bright red socks and shoes, matching his personality. In his distinct voice, he explained how his Midwestern childhood, similar to Erma’s, led him to comedy.
I learned Erma taught housewives across the nation to find joy in the ordinary. Her perfectly crafted words taught Americans to love and laugh at the mess their children created.
Early on a Friday morning, I walked to campus in my suit and high heels, not my typical attire. I sat attentively, eager to learn from great writers. By the end of the weekend I wanted to prove I was worth the workshop scholarship. I always have been a vocal storyteller. Thanks to Erma, I have tips and the confidence to tell a story that will last longer.
My only regret: I wish I could have met her.
Wanted: Your artistic expression
Ready to show campus your creative side? ArtStreet is seeking submissions for its third annual alumni art exhibit, "Reason, Faith and Imagination: A Celebration of Art in Our Lives," which runs from May 19 through June 21, the Saturday of Reunion Weekend. Last year's exhibit featured 16 pieces by 15 alumni ranging in class years from 1950 to 2007, including "Jane's Tulip's" (top) by Sue Ellen Anderson Boesch ’67 and "When I'm Down" (bottom) by Larissa Raddell ’03.
This year, the ArtStreet staff hopes for even more. Alumni need not be graduates of an arts programs nor 
professional artists to participate; all are welcome.
If you'd like to participate, please e-mail ArtStreet at artstreet@udayton.edu by Friday, April 11, and include title, medium and dimensions of the artwork, and whether you will be shipping or hand delivering it. For more details, download the call for submissions (PDF format) or contact ArtStreet directly at 937-229-5101.
My Old House: 311 Kiefaber St.
An alumna, back for Reunion Weekend 2007, peered inside this old house and recognized the secondhand couch she donated a decade ago.
'Students love free stuff'
Wandering through Humanities Plaza yesterday, I was handed a free bottle of water with “Debunkify” printed on it in bright orange letters.
It’s not a word in the dictionary but a catch phrase to promote tobacco awareness used by PRoject U, the student group campaigning for tobacco use prevention.
“Students love free stuff,” said group member and senior Liz Sidor, who helped pass out wristbands and T-shirts earlier this year. “It’s a great way to catch their attention and a great way to create repetition.”
She hopes the water bottles and T-shirts will reiterate the message when students use and wear them.
With my new bottle and matching T-shirt and wristband, consider me one student successfully debunkified.
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