Celebration of Scholarship - April 24, 2013

Forms for Submitting Information to the Schedule and Program

Messages

 

From President Michael Fiorentino, Jr.

Congratulations to each of the presenters involved in our seventh annual Celebration of Scholarship. Their hard work is a tribute to all of the possibilities that are available as they follow their passions at Lock Haven University.

The University’s Strategic Plan encourages and demands excellence in our learning community. Today’s activities and presentations demonstrate the achievements of our alumni, faculty, and students in all areas of scholarship. It is with this expectation of excellence that our students will continue to learn and intellectually grow long after their graduation, enabling them to be dynamic members of their communities.

Through the guidance of our quality faculty, students present their original scholarly and creative works in ways that demonstrate advanced and thoughtful understanding of the issues of their disciplines.

The academic and artistic endeavors all will witness today provide the framework for the discoveries and creative expressions that will shape our futures.

Please join us in acknowledging and celebrating the accomplishments of our university community.

Michael Fiorentino, Jr.
President

 

From Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Donna Wilson

The creation of new knowledge and artistic production are hallmarks of a great university.   Celebration of Scholarship marks Lock Haven University as a distinguished community of scholars and showcases the contributions of faculty and students to the arts, letters, social sciences, sciences, and a diversity of professions.

Research and creative production are oriented to the future, always inclining toward the next meaningful questions, the next innovation, cutting-edge technologies, and the excitement of discovery. Scholarship and creative production are anchored in mastery of the disciplines and interdisciplinary practice, but always contest them. Scholarship and creative production drive our curriculum and animate our faculty. And they are both the soil and seed of the life-long learning that is a distinction of our graduates and which will support them in solving problems and creating opportunities for themselves, their families, and a global society. Thus scholarship is not so much the preserve of mandarins and glass bead games, as it is sometimes parodied, but of experiential learning across the spectrum of human experience – from beauty to nanoparticles, from cognition to recreation, from DNA to political theory.

Research and creative production are also inherently communal. Important discoveries most often emerge from collaborative and multidisciplinary problem-solving and information sharing. Even those that spring from the lone scientist poring over data in a lab late at night or the historian reading medieval documents in an archive are for dissemination, questioning, revising, and disseminating again. Through the tedious process of refining research design, working in teams, and sharing preliminary results – whether they be a thesis statement or bars of an experimental composition—students learn that failure and success are shared in communities of scholars, and equally valuable aspects of discovery and creation.

The areas of inquiry and creativity highlighted in the 2013 Celebration of Scholarship show just how pervasive the culture of questioning, critical thinking, and innovation is across all programs and departments at Lock Haven University. They also show the local and global engagement to which scholarly pursuits inevitably lead. Lock Haven’s outstanding scholar-teacher faculty are dedicated to mentoring students through increasingly engaged levels of participation in scholarship and creative work with a view to helping them become interdependent participants and leaders in communities of knowledge. This partnership is conducted hundreds of times a day, in classrooms and labs, in experiential learning sites out in the community and workplace, in study abroad trips, in online discussions, and over pizza at informal meetings. Celebration of Scholarship in this context is a day set aside to remember, and to celebrate, that the ordinary work engaged in by faculty and students on ordinary days is in fact extraordinary, remarkable, and transformative.

Dr. Donna F. Wilson
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

 

From Dean of the College of Education and Human Services
Jane Penman

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is participating in or attending this year's Celebration of Scholarship at Lock Haven University. After a long cold winter, I am looking forward to seeing the showcase of academic excellence that has been ongoing this past year in spite of the gray days. The COS enables faculty and students to present individual research, joint research and other scholarly activities to the university community. Most importantly, the day provides an opportunity for both faculty and students from the College of Education and Human Services and the College of Arts and Science to unite for the purpose of celebrating and sharing accomplishments. I am proud to be part of a university rich with talented and dedicated professors who are committed to instilling the value of research, performance, and life-long learning in their students.  Many thanks you to all faculty and students who have taken the time to share their work this year.

 

Jane Penman
Interim Dean College of Education and Human Services

 

 

From Dean of the College of Arts and Science Zakir Hossain

The Boyer Commission report titled Reinventing Undergraduate Education (1998) challenged the academic culture to see that all undergraduate students will experience learning through, and about, research and inquiry-driven critical thinking. All students should understand what evidence based policies and practices are and how they are achieved. For the last quarter century, higher education institutions have moved toward research based learning outcomes to access college effectiveness, an application of evidence-based practice. It is now becoming apparent that undergraduate research benefits students, faculty mentors, and above all, their institutions. Faculty-guided participation in research and scholarship trigger many skills such as critical thinking, reading, and writing in addition to those related to research in the disciplines. It is well-documented that high-impact learning experiences such as undergraduate research are positively correlated with improvement in grades, retention rates, persistence to graduation, and motivation to pursue and succeed in personal and professional growth.

The Celebration of Scholarship is a culmination of LHU’s high impact learning experiences for its students. I congratulate all student participants for their hard work in demonstrating their accomplishments. I thank our faculty members who mentored the students and challenged them to excel in their research and exploration efforts.   Such efforts are consistent with the essential learning outcomes of a liberal education that LHU promises its students will achieve while here.

Zakir Hossain
Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Science 

 

On Behalf of Faculty President Stanley P. Berard

Scholarship is the defining activity of a university. It takes numerous forms and its works vary in scale, but it always rests on an openness to new knowledge and new ways of knowing. This is the case no matter its form: basic research into the workings of natural or social phenomena; practiced and innovative modes of artistic performance and expression; or the extension of inquiry into professional, clinical, and community environments where it informs and is informed by practice.

The university is at its best when students play a central role in the scholarly enterprise, and this is particularly so at a teaching university like LHU. The faculty is proud of the range of work in which our students are engaged at every level of development, from first-year undergraduate through the masters level, and across the widest variety of disciplines. At this Celebration of Scholarship, you will see the work of our students and faculty in a number of contexts, all of it illustrating the fruits of committed teaching and dedicated learning—with the students and professors often exchanging those roles. We are pleased that you are here to share it with us.

Stanley P. Berard
APSCUF