Board of Trustees embark on retreat
Members join to discuss task force recommendations
By Erin Munger
staff reporter
The Board of Trustees members are packing up and heading off to Glen Rose for the first board retreat in TCU’s history. The trustees will spend today and Friday focusing on more than 250 recommendations from the 17 task forces of the Commission on the Future of TCU, Chancellor Michael Ferrari said.
“The board has studied various reports from the task forces and is now coming together for an extended period of time to focus on the initiatives that can move TCU to another level of national and international prominence,” Ferrari said.
He said there is a big difference between the retreat and a regular board meeting. In a regular meeting, the board faces many different issues dealing with the university. While at the retreat, the board members will be able to spend an large amount of time on the subject at hand, Ferrari said.
Larry Lauer, director of the commission, will head discussions about
the commission at the retreat.
The task force reports came out in June and summaries were developed for
each report. The faculty, administration and board members all received
copies of the summaries, said Lauer, who also is the vice chancellor for
marketing and communications.
Lauer said the suggestions fit into three categories: those that require no money, those that require money but will fit under the normal budget and those that need newly raised funds.
“We will review with the board all outcomes of the task forces, but ultimately we will focus on the ones we need to find money for,” he said.
Don Mills, vice chancellor of student affairs, said the meeting will be laid back to allow the trustees to discuss the recommendations of the task forces in a more casual and in-depth manner before they meet again in November.
“The retreat will set the direction and priorities for the Commission on the Future of TCU,” said Mills, who is also the facilitator of the undergraduate task force for the commission.
Chairman of the Board John Roach said the commission is reaching its final stages, and the retreat will get the board’s input on the final report.
“(The retreat) gives an opportunity for full presentation, discussion and understanding about all aspects of the report,” Roach said.
The first objective, Lauer said, is to look at what is going to happen, then the board will sort through what fund raising needs to take place.
The printed outcome and chancellor’s report will be released on Oct. 9 at a luncheon in the Student Center Ballroom for the trustees, Lauer said.
Glen Rose is about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
Staff reporter Emily Ward contributed to this story.
Erin Munger
erebm@netscape.com .
Inspiration out of desperation
Library displays paintings
By Yvette Herrera
staff reporter
Paintings inspired by the work of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel are on display in the Mary Couts Burnett Library until Oct. 1.
Artist Marie Cedars said her paintings are based on “The Six Days of Destruction: Meditations Toward Hope,” a novel based on the six days of creation from Genesis and the horrors of the Holocaust.“As I read the book, I was so inspired that I could actually visualize 12 paintings — bright versus dark,” Cedars said in a phone interview from her home in Stephenville.
Cedars
said bright colors in half of the paintings emphasize life in the days
of creation, while other paintings are darker to stress death during the
days of destruction.
Miles Hayes, a senior photography major, said the colors are stunning.
“The colors add to the intensity of the feeling,” he said.
Diane Cooper, director of gifts to Brite Divinity School, said when Cedars showed her original 12 sketches to Wiesel, he and co-author Rabbi Albert Friedlander approved them.
“Cedars’ work is very powerful,” Cooper said.
Helen Rowe, a senior fashion promotion major, said Cedars’ paintings were powerful.
“I think they’re fabulous,” Rowe said. “The colors (and) action in the paintings all show great fear in the people, but at the same time a lot of life.”
Rowe said her two favorite paintings depict the creation of woman and show Eve literally flying out of Adam.
Another painting shows a young Jewish mother being transported in a
train to a concentration camp. She has her baby wrapped in a blanket and
dangles it out the window, poised to let go. Inspired by a photograph,
Cedars said the woman killed her baby so she would not leave anyone behind
after she died.
Cedars said she has been studying art for many years and this isn’t
the first time she was inspired by Wiesel.
She received her doctorate in humanities of French literature after writing her dissertation, “Speaking Through Silence: the Art of Elie Wiesel,” at the University of Texas at Arlington.
“When Wiesel was liberated from concentration camps, he was considered an orphan, and they sent him to France,” Cedars said.
Cedars said Wiesel’s novels were in French, which inspired her to read them.
“‘The Six Days of Destruction’ has a great juxtaposition of the six days of creation and the six days of destruction,” Cedars said. “That was my inspiration.”
Yvette Herrera
yvebex@yahoo.com.
Frog Calls to arrive in two weeks
Student, staff directory compiled by three offices
By Chris Gibson
staff reporter
The 2000-2001 edition of Frog Calls, TCU’s faculty, student and departmental telephone directory, will be available Sept. 25.
The office of Marketing and Communications, along with Human Resources and the Registrar’s office, all provide information to a publisher who organizes the directory.
Henri Etta Kilgore is the administrative assistant for Marketing and Communications and has been dealing with the departmental section of the book for over 20 years.
“June 1st of every year, I send out a form that has a listing of the current Frog Calls attached to it and ask (faculty and staff) to please update the information,” Kilgore said. “Once I get them back, I enter all the changes onto a disk which is then sent to the publisher.”
Similar procedures are used by the Human Resource department to compile the faculty directory section. The Registrar’s office has been able to take a different approach with the student section.
With the implementation of PeopleSoft, students can now access all of their personal information via FrogNet.
Pat Miller, registrar and director of Enrollment Management, said this has changed the duty of both the student and the Registrar’s office.
“Before the PeopleSoft system, we were the contact for students (who needed to update their information),” Miller said. “Now all that has changed. Students can do it all on the Web, which basically takes us out of the loop.
“They can still come to our office to do it, but most just choose to use the Web,” he said.
Joe Scully, who publishes Frog Calls, said the PeopleSoft system has also made TCU’s version of the campus directory more thorough and easier to publish.
“We do directories for TCU, Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas and Texas Women’s University using basically the same format, but TCU’s is the most complete,” he said.
Most college directories list a student’s school address and phone number, but Frog Calls also lists permanent addresses and phone numbers and e-mail addresses because of its computer system, Scully said.
Chris Gibson
c.j.gibson@student.tcu.edu.
Student participates in dual-degree program
Exchange program provides experience for Maga–a
By Yvette Herrera
staff reporter
Marisol Magaña, a junior communications major, will be the pioneer student in a dual-degree program this semester between TCU and the Universidad de las Américas, in Puebla, Mexico.
Magaña, who is from Mexico City, said she has been studying radio-TV-film and advertising/public relations at UDLA for the past two years.
“I didn’t plan on studying at TCU,” Magaña said. “My professor of communication theories told me about this new program at the end of last semester.”
Magaña said she will take a total of 36 hours at TCU, which is required for the five-year program. She will spend her final year at UDLA.
The College of Communications implemented the program this semester. David Whillock, dean of the college of communications, said one of the mission statements in the proposal for the program is to create ethical leaders in a global society.
“This opens up the opportunities and possibilities for that to
occur for our students,” Whillock said.
But small problems have already been noticed by Whillock and his associates,
he said.
Whillock said because of the culture shift from one language to another, students might feel overwhelmed and tired.
“Even if you speak Spanish well and you’re from the U.S., Spanish is, still, a second language,” Whillock said.
Magaña said she has been speaking English since kindergarten, but she still has difficulties with pronunciation.
“I don’t like my accent,” Magaña said.
One way to correct the problem of discomfort is to allow students to take 12 hours rather than 15, Whillock said.
However, Whillock said he and other faculty members from both schools are concerned with how this will affect students from UDLA with their degree plans.
“Hopefully, in the next month a group of us will go down to UDLA to take care of some of the shifts we’re experiencing,” Whillock said.
Magaña said she was skeptical about the program at first because
she didn’t know how it would work.
“There are classes that I will take here, and they will count as
classes that are offered at UDLA,” Magaña said.
Magaña said at the beginning of this semester, she was enrolled in Introduction to Film, but she had already taken a similar class at UDLA.
“I looked on my degree plan and realized the class I was in I had
already took in Mexico,” Magaña said.
Although the program is still not fully developed, Whillock and professors
from UDLA have assured her that she will graduate in the program’s
allotted five-year time span.
Along with the changes TCU may implement in the program, Magaña said the program will change her life.
“I know this will open up many doors for me in the future when I am looking for a job,” Magaña said.
Delia Pitts, study abroad coordinator, said other departments from both schools are looking into this program and considering instituting it.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the business school, Latin American studies, anthropology and so on are initiated in this program as well,” Pitts said.
Yvette Herrera
yvebex@yahoo.com.