If you attended to the Returning Faculty Workshop on Jan. 3, you learned about strategies for dealing with disruptive students. W. Scott Lewis, JD, Assistant Vice Provost, The University of South Carolina, shared best practices and case studies about how to handle disruptive students.

The Faculty Institute and workshops for new and returning faculty, chairs and program directors has ended and thus the school term begins. Presentations for several of the sessions can be found online at http://web.nccu.edu/intranet/faculty/presentations.php.

Music professor Dr. Malcolm Rector continues to lend his growing series of stellar achievements to the reputation of NCCU as a creative mecca. His short film called FALLEN DIVA, slated for release fall 2007, depicts a singer who, in pursuing her career, abandons her family and succumbs to the destructive path of drug abuse . His music video, WACK ATTACK (Crack Attack), depicts the life-robbing effects of crack cocaine. He is also in preproduction of a feature film titled RAPED. Dr. Rector was screenwriter, producer, director, and editor for these productions, in addition to doing all music and lyrics.

The paper presented this past summer by Dr. Mary T. Mathew, Interim Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, at the Oxford Roundtable Conference on Reading and Literacy, conducted in Oxford University in England, will soon be published by the journal, Forum on Public Policy. The title of the paper is, "BRIGHT HOPE FOR A LITERATE INDIA: PRATHAM AND THE MISSION OF CHILD LITERACY."

In her recent article, “Orlando Gibbons, Keyboard Music, and the Beginnings of the Baroque: New Considerations of a Musical Style,” (International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (Dec. 2006), the NCCU associate professor challenges the way scholars have defined "Baroque" in music and offers an alternative view by examining 17th Century English instrumental repertories as opposed to Italo-centric vocal ones.

On a related topic, her recent presentation at the International Conference on Arts and Humanities, Hawaii (January 2007), entitled “Piano Girl or Piano Thumper? Women Pianists in the Antebellum South,” looked at how some women contravened strict cultural mores by becoming accomplished pianists, although they almost certainly never vetted their expertise before anyone of equal social standing.

Dr. Bailey also has an article, “Becoming Useful: Confederate Women Composers,” forthcoming in Fiori musicali: Liber amicorum Alexander Silbiger (Harmonie Park Press, 2007).

On November 28th, the NCCU Spanish Club (Voces Unidas) and the NCCU Office of Student Leadership, Training and Development hosted a celebration the AFRO-LATINO AMERICAN FESTIVAL. In one of the liveliest learning events this year, students in the Alfonso Elder Student Union could taste, feel, understand, and enjoy some of the cultural diversity within NCCU. The Spanish Club, moderated by Spanish Instructors José Agudelo and Martha Espinel of the Modern Foreign Languages Department, prepared and organized this event. More information about the event, click HERE.

The BRIDGES Program is an intensive professional development program for women in higher education who seek to strengthen their academic leadership qualities.
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Five NCCU faculty members participated in BRIDGES XIV: Cassandra Atkinson, Department of Public Administration, Wanda Coneal, School of Education, Kendra Harris, School of Business, Veronica Nwosu, Department of Biology, and LaHoma Romocki, Department of Health Education.
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Attorney Rosalind Fuse-Hall, Executive Assistant to Chancellor James Ammons, and an inaugural participant in BRIDGES I, opened the session with a talk on Transformational Leadership in Higher Education. More information HERE.

For information about coming sessions, contact the Center at x7854.