Merrimack Making Connections

Several members of the Merrimack College community regularly share their accomplishments, expertise, and love of Merrimack with others. Here are some examples of Merrimackans making connections.

• Professor Mary Noonan and Vance Poteat recently worked with Joan Kulash, executive director of Jericho Road, and Matt Russell of Andover to host a Drupal Workshop on campus. The volunteers of Jericho Road, a Lawrence agency that provides free professional services for Lawrence non-profit organizations, were trained on Drupal, an open source content management platform used to create and manage Web sites. These volunteers will then take on a community service project to help a Lawrence non-profit create and manage their own Web site. Drupal users include the White House, the Grammys, and MIT media lab, to name a few.

• Assistant Professors of Heath Sciences Jay Campisi and Kevin Finn recently published "Does Active Learning Improve Students' Knowledge of and Attitudes Towards Research Methods?" in the Journal of College Science Teaching.
• Rev. Jim Wenzel, O.S.A., director of Education and Spirituality Programs, was the guest speaker at a recent Women of Worship meeting at Immaculate Conception Parish in Nashua, N.H. He spoke on the topic of St. Augustine of Hippo and Augustinian Spirituality.
• Also, as part of the White Fund Series, Fr. Wenzel recently presented "The Pemberton Mill Disaster: Its Effect on the Irish of Lawrence and the Role of the Augustinians and Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who Ministered to Them," at the Visitors Center of Lawrence Heritage State Park.
• Donald Lyman, adjunct instructor in the Biology Department, recently attended the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commission's Annual Environmental Conference. It is the largest regular environmental conference in New England. Over 1,000 conservation commissioners, local officials, state and federal environmental officials, consultants, attorneys, academics, and others attended the workshops and lectures on vernal pool conservation, invasive plant management, wetland plant identification, mitigating the effects of roads on the wildlife, and more.
• Toying with God, a recently published book co-authored by Chair and Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies Rebecca Sachs Norris and Nikki Bado-Fralik (Bayor University), has received a sizeable amount of interest in the press. Her book and her research on religious games and toys have been mentioned in the Chronicle of Higher Education; Sj-R.com; KansasCity.com; Baptist Standard; Beliefnet; Religious News and Service; and Creedible.com to name a few. Toying with God reveals a, "...complex interplay between worship and the working of popular culture," reports Publishersweekly.com.
• Professor of Philosophy George Heffernan, Ph.D. has been chosen out of 113 applicants as a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. He will participate in a prestigious five-week seminar in Carthage, tunisia. The seminar is entitled "Ask of Me Spiritual Things. Ask of Me Myself: The Autobiographies of Perpetua and Augustine."
• Karen Hayden, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology, served as the discussant for a regular session at the 2010 annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society held recently in Boston. The session was entitled, "Interactions Between Urban and Rural Places."
• At the same meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Assistant Professor of Sociology Michael DeCesare, Ph.D. presented a paper entitled, " 'Shut Up in Measureless Content': Toward Improving Measurement in Sociology?"
• Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies Warren Kay, Ph.D. recently presented two papers at academic conferences. The first, entitled "Religious Symbols and the Joy of Running: How Running Can Function as a Spiritual Exercise," was read at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations in Albuquerque, N.M. The second paper, "Sports and Religion: The Use of Running as a Spiritual Discipline," was presented at the International Conference on Sport and Society in Vancouver, Canada.
• Director of International Programs Lauren Gannon and student Lauren Dello Russo were recent guests on WBZ-TV and TV38 in "What's in Our Community?" segments discussing study abroad programs.
• Two papers entitled "Barak Obama and North Korea: A Study in Presidential Transition" and "President Obama and the 'Torture Memos'" were presented by Dr. Curtis Martin, professor of political science, at the International Studies Annual Conference in New Orleans recently.
• The book, Divine Onomatology, penned by Helena Gourko , Ph.D., adjunct lecturer in the Philosophy Department, was recently published by VDM-Publishing, Saabruken, Germany.