Saint Mary's Newsroom
Campus ConnectionAn update from the president to alumni and parents
Saint Mary’s awarded more than $125K in arts grants over two years
Saint Mary’s and its Page Theatre were recently awarded a $55K grant to bring a modern dance company to Winona during the 2020-21 season. While details are still being finalized, we’re excited to introduce post-modern dance to the Winona community through several artist visits leading up to a performance in March 2021. This project arose from audience feedback requesting to hear directly from artists and choreographers to better understand modern dance and what is happening on stage.
This is the second Arts Tour grant Saint Mary’s has received from the Minnesota State Arts Board in just two years. The first, a grant of more than $75K, is currently supporting two dance residencies for the Winona Campus and community. The first residency with Ballet Hispánico, a New York-based, contemporary ballet company with a 50-year history of performing work rooted in Hispanic identity, took place in early October. Over four days, Ballet Hispánico taught an adaptive dance workshop, master classes for advanced ballet and modern dance students, facilitated mentorship workshops with elementary and middle school students, provided Latin social dance lessons, and performed works by three Latin choreographers. The residency served over 900 campus and community members.
The second residency is planned for March 2020 with Leela Dance Collective, a nationally and internationally performing dance company showcasing Indian classical dance and music on the world stage by supporting the creation and performance of cutting edge works of kathak dance.
Saint Mary’s faculty, staff present at Huether Lasallian Conference
Five members of the Saint Mary’s University community delivered breakout session presentations at the 2019 Huether Lasallian Conference which took place in Minneapolis Nov. 21-23. More than 200 Lasallians gathered at the 46th annual conference themed “Living the Lasallian Mission: Celebrating with Zeal.”
Drs. Karen and Scott Sorvaag.
Karen Sorvaag, Ed.D., and Scott Sorvaag, Ed.D., both professors of Education, presented “Our Lasallian Heritage in Daily Classroom Practices.” They led their audience in seeking to answer questions such as: How do our students experience our Lasallian heritage in their everyday experiences in the classroom? How do Lasallian teachers model their deeply held beliefs and practice virtue?
In their interactive presentation, participants engaged with them to identify effective classroom practices that reflect Lasallian principles and virtues of a good teacher. They addressed everyday classroom practices that build community, humanize the learning environment, and engage the hearts and minds of learners.
Additionally, Alisa Macksey, dean of Student Success and First Generation Initiative, presented “AIMEL 2020 – Identity, Vitality and Transformation.”
Ellen Koneck and Brian Singer-Towns of Saint Mary’s Press presented “Juggling the Many Voices Inside.”
Full event coverage of the Huether Lasallian Conference can be found at lasallian.info/huether-2019-highlights.
Saint Mary’s alumni, faculty present at Minnesota English Language Education conference
Dr. De Zhang presents.
On Nov. 22, graduates of the M.A. in ESL program, Emmanuel (Bayo) Ifonlaja and Teri Anne Lott, along with Saint Mary’s alumna Tara Ryks and ESL Program Director Shannon Tanghe co-presented on their summer experiences in Colombia in a presentation titled “Global Teacher Education: English Language Teaching Experiences in Colombia” at the Minnesota English Language Education (MELEd) conference in St. Paul. Tanghe and M.A. in ESL faculty member Dr. De Zhang, also co-presented a session titled “Multinational Telecollaborative Projects in an M.A. Second Language Acquisition Course: A Focus on Design.” The conference was attended by more than 1,200 teachers, administrators, coordinators, teacher educators, paraprofessionals, students, advocates, and researchers in the field of English language teaching.
Photo caption: From left, Shannon Tanghe, Tara Ryks, Teri Anne Lott, Emmanuel (Bayo) Ifonlaja present at the Minnesota English Language Education (MELEd) conference.
$5,000 raised through No Cell Phone Day
No Cell Phone Day results announced
The Brother James Miller No Cell Phone Day, held Nov. 25, was a success with close to 300 students, faculty, and staff giving up their cell phones for the day — and raising exactly $1,000 for students in Guatemala. This was matched by another $1,000 gift from a Saint Mary’s trustee, a $1,000 match by the Office of the President, $1,000 match by Saint Mary’s Press, and another match of $1,000 by the Christian Brothers’ community, for a grand total of $5,000.
Blessed Brother James Miller ’66, M’74
Brothers Pat Conway, Frank Carr, and Stephen Markham are traveling to Guatemala to present the director of Casa Santiago Miller, Brother Juan Carlos Canales, with the financial gift. Saint Mary’s alumnus Blessed Brother James Miller ’66, M’74 (who is being beatified Saturday in Guatemala) worked at this Guatemalan school, which now bears his name. This gift will provide the registration fees, tuition, and books for several students who otherwise would have limited opportunities to attend school.
The generosity this Saint Mary’s community has shown speaks volumes about its commitment to the Lasallian mission. The De La Salle Christian Brothers on campus feel a great sense of pride in how the Saint Mary’s community has reached out to those who are poor and living on the margins — particularly to the same students Brother James once served and gave his life protecting.
Many thanks to the student senate, the men’s and women’s hockey teams, and the baseball team for their enthusiastic involvement. In addition, Saint Mary’s Press and Montini High School, members of the Lasallian network, contributed to this wonderful endeavor.
Bridging the gap: Assistant business professor earns top research award at national financial planning conference
Having been to his fair share of academic conferences, Andrew Scott was amazed when he walked into the room at the Minneapolis Convention Center in October at the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) annual conference.
While he expected to see only 20 or so professors or economists in attendance, he walked into a room filled to maximum capacity with at least 250 attendees, some of whom lined the side and back walls. Nearly all patrons were practicing financial planners.
Andrew Scott
“Sometimes in academia, we do great work and research, but don’t do a great job sharing that research with the public in a meaningful way. And I saw this organization and this conference as a wonderful venue to bridge the gap between research and practice,” said Scott, who has served as an assistant professor of business at Saint Mary’s University since 2016. “It was a really phenomenal opportunity to share current research with folks who are on the front lines who are working with clients making these decisions on a daily basis.”
As just one of nine academic teams to be chosen to give a presentation at the national conference, Scott was part of a group of researchers representing Kansas State University, where he is pursuing a doctorate degree of personal financial planning. Their collaborative work earned the Best Research Award, after being selected through a blind review process by the editorial team at the Journal of Financial Planning (JFP).
A delicate dance
Scott’s presentation, “Are optimistic investors smarter and alone?,” explored the idea of possible predictors of investors’ optimism in the U.S. economy — or their own individual portfolios — being tied to guidance from a financial professional or the amount of investment knowledge those investors possessed. Scott and his team hope to have the material in the presentation published as an academic paper in a future edition of the JFP.
After looking at survey results of 2,000 investors gathered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in 2015, Scott’s team concluded that investors who use financial planners and other forms of professional help have a more optimistic outlook, whereas those who have more financial knowledge are less optimistic.
Andrew Scott, assistant professor in business, poses with the Best Research Award that he and his team earned at the Financial Planning Association’s annual conference.
“They have to paint a somewhat rosy picture for the future for their clients, so their clients remain their clients,” Scott said of the situation that all financial planners face. “If you present them with gloom-and-doom or with lower expectations than what the clients might prefer, you risk losing your client.
“On the other hand, if you paint too rosy a picture, your clients are going to be misinformed and off in their projections for when they can retire and how high of a standard of living they can have when they retire.”
Although many researchers have delved into what optimism can do for a client, Scott said his team was more interested in the characteristics or attributes of those who maintain that optimism.
“The traditional economist would see everyone as being completely rational and would struggle to identify why different people would make different decisions given the same parameters, but in behavioral economics, we look at those characteristics that might lead some groups of people to make different decisions than others,” he said.
Those characteristics led his group to the reaffirmation of a “very fine line” that a practitioner must maintain by balancing a positive outlook with realistic performance expectations, so as to not misinform clients.
A change in direction
In 2009, Scott was working in Quincy, Ill., as a commodity manager at Archer Daniels Midland, a massive food processing and commodities trading corporation, when he decided to quit his job to pursue an academic career.
While training junior traders, Scott came to the realization that his love of teaching would be best put to use in a traditional academic setting. So, in the wake of the Great Recession, when others in his industry were being pushed out of their jobs, Scott willingly quit his and enrolled in the MBA program at Southern Illinois University with a focus on finance.
“I quickly learned that personal finance was something I was a little bit more passionate about, and a way where I could really answer some unique research questions that nobody had tackled already,” Scott said.
A year after coming to Saint Mary’s, Scott began earning his doctoral degree at Kansas State through a combination of summer on-ground courses and online courses. He hopes to finish his studies in 2021.
Many of the co-authors from Kansas State were actually his fellow students from a class taught by Martin Seay, who is also the president elect of FPA. Scott’s academic group also utilized the same FINRA data set to create another paper devoted to learning more about the customers who use exchange traded funds (ETFs), which was published in the summer by the JFP. Given that ETFs are newer to the market, it was not a surprise to Scott and his team that they drew more attention from younger investors.
“Basically, our findings were the same, in that here’s an opportunity for advisers to better educate their clients so their clients can make better decisions and have better assumptions about the future,” Scott said.
Going forward, Scott plans to delve into more behavioral economics, such as the financial behavior and characteristics of college students.
“It’s relatively new in the grander finance sphere. We’re starting to see more push for research and education in this specific area,” Scott said.
Students share literary work at undergraduate writing conference in Iowa
On Nov. 16, a group of five students representing the Department of English and World Languages traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, to participate in the 12th annual Streamlines Undergraduate Literature and Writing Conference.
Five students recently represented Saint Mary’s University at the Streamlines Undergraduate Literature and Writing Conference Nov. 16 in Dubuque, Iowa including: senior Daniel Collette, senior Emilie Steingraeber, junior Maggie McGee, senior Emma Lay, and senior Ian Hebeisen.
Sponsored jointly by Clarke University and the University of Dubuque, the conference afforded students from universities and colleges in the Upper Midwest the opportunity to be inspired by each other’s submitted work in a variety of categories by taking part in readings, followed by panel discussions led by faculty moderators.
“For the students, I think presenting their own work to a real audience in a public forum is extremely valuable. They can network with other students and faculty and whoever’s attending the conference, and be reassured that there are other people interested in their subject area,” said Carolyn Ayers, Ph.D., associate dean of General Education and professor of English.
“To know that everybody in all the rooms cares about literature and language is enormously energizing. And in particular, I would say our experience consistently has been that Saint Mary’s students compare well with their peers from other institutions, and so they come away a lot more confident.”
Senior Emilie Steingraeber presented a literary analysis paper centered on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, stemming from a recent study abroad trip to England.
In addition, senior Daniel Collete presented a reading of his one-act play titled “Denise, in Office 208,” while senior Ian Hebeisen shared poetry in a presentation titled, “The Impact of Structure on Free Verse Poetry.”
Communication professor gives introduction for NCAA student-athlete graduate scholarships
It had been four years since Dean Beckman had made the trek to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Faculty Athletics Representative Association’s (FARA) annual meeting and symposium. Beckman was excited to represent Saint Mary’s University in the Seattle area at the event on Nov. 7, while seeing other acquaintances at other colleges across the country.
A week before the event, though, he received an email from Joan Davison, Ph.D., a professor at Rollins College in Florida and the president-elect of FARA. Davison was in need of someone to introduce four Division I student-athletes who had each been awarded graduate scholarships. She and the current president had started to look at the list of faculty athletic representatives (FARs) who made the lion’s share of the attendee list. When they came across Beckman’s work as the co-host on “Cardinal’s Nest” on YouTube, originally airing on HBC TV25, alongside Saint Mary’s Sports Information Director Donny Nadeau, they agreed that Beckman would be the perfect choice given his broadcasting experience.
Beckman, who serves as the chair and an associate professor for the Department of Communication, initially thought he would just have to read prepared statements — until he clarified the expectations with Davison.
“She said, ‘We want them to be personable and a little bit funny,’ ” Beckman recalled.
Davison sent Beckman the event’s program as well as the application materials of the scholarship recipients, which included personal essays and letters of recommendation. After going over all the content and conducting his own digital research, Beckman gained insight into the lives of four remarkable student-athletes.
“For me, it was an honor to do it, because these are just incredible student-athletes with unbelievable stories and phenomenal aspirations for what they want to do in life,” Beckman said. “When I was writing up the introductions, it was a pretty humbling experience.”
He continued: “To start things off, I said, ‘They were as impressive in person as they were on paper. That’s really saying something, because on paper they are really phenomenal people.’”
Two of the recipients were receiving $24,000 on behalf of the Walter Byers Scholarship. Named after the first executive director of the NCAA, the scholarship is given to a male and female student-athlete “who achieve national distinction for their achievements and are on a path to become future leaders in their chosen field of career service.”
Beckman was especially inspired by the story of Derek Soled, a former member of the men’s fencing team at Yale University. Soled is currently working on a medical degree from Harvard Medical School, while also earning his MBA at Harvard Business School — in the interest of providing care to disparate populations, while also being able to launch the necessary public health campaigns in those areas to address systemic issues.
The other recipient of the Walter Byers Scholarship, Rachael Acker, is currently at student at Harvard Medical School after being a championship-winning swimmer at the University of California, Berkeley. She hopes to either enter the fields of obstetrics/gynecology or pediatric surgery.
Beckman also presented the winners of the recipients of the Jim McKay Graduate Scholarship, a $10,000 scholarship for student-athletes who have a “potential to make a major contribution to the sports communication industry or public relations.” Those recipients were Jennifer Haskel, a soccer player from Northwestern University, and Benjamin Colin, a swimmer from the University of Iowa.
Photo caption: Dean Beckman, chair of the Department of Communication, (middle) was asked to introduce four recipients of student-athlete graduate scholarships including, from left: Derek Soled, Walter Byers Scholar, Yale University; Jenny Haskell, Jim McMay Scholar, Northwestern University; Ben Colin, Jim McKay Scholar, University of Iowa; and Rachael Acker, Walter Byers Scholar, University of California, Berkeley.
Anchor course examines Hmong culture
On Nov. 9, students from the biology anchor course, Environmental and Human Health, and the history anchor course, Make a Place in History, attended a Hmong New Year Celebration hosted by the Hmong American Student Association at Winona State University. The biology anchor course, taught by Dr. Jeanne Minnerath, focuses on the role of microbes in food production (such as in fermentation), while Dr. Erich Lippman’s anchor course focuses on the historical experience of immigrant and refugee population in and around Winona.
Both professors recognized the value of this event as a place-based, experiential learning opportunity for students looking for a deeper encounter with the cultures behind the content of their course materials. Anchor course students were able to sample Hmong cuisine, watch Hmong traditional dances, and listen to a dramatic retelling of the Hmong refugee experience, among other elements of the program.
Saint Mary’s students Candance Vang and Ze Vue attended at the invitation of both instructors and helped anchor course students interpret aspects of the celebration. Vang has been particularly helpful to Dr. Lippman’s class because of her willingness to share her family story and answer a variety of cultural and pronunciation questions related to that course.
All Saint Mary’s University Twin Cities, Rochester locations closed today, Nov. 27
Due to winter weather conditions, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis, Apple Valley, and Rochester locations are closed today, Wednesday, Nov. 27. The Winona Campus will remain open. University employees in the Twin Cities and Rochester should not report to work.
The Rev. James P. Burns, IVD, Ph.D.
President
Saint Mary's University of Minnesota
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