Meet the Student Advisory Board

by Dr. Dubé

Katie McClelland – Student Director

I am a senior political science and history double major with a pre-law minor. This will be my fourth year as a member of the softball team, and my second year a secretary of the junior class. On campus, I work at the IT helpdesk. Last year, I was inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society. During my junior year, I was an Orientation Leader, and this year I was the head OL.

Katie.mcclelland@chatham.edu  724-977-5513

 

Rachel Wakeman – Volunteer Coordinator

My name is Rachel Wakeman and I am the Volunteer Coordinator for the Honors Program and one of the two RAs in Rea House running the Honors Living Learning Community. I run cross country and track and am a double-major in Sustainability and International Studies. I am from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and have two cats, as well as a sister who’s a freshman in high school. I’m very excited to see what we can accomplish together this year!

 

Rachel Weaver – Coordinator of Alumni Relations

Hello everyone, my name is Rachel Weaver and I am the Alumni Relations Coordinator for Chatham’s Honors Program. I am currently a sophomore Biology major with a focus on Human Biology and a Psychology minor. I am also accepted into the Integrated Degree Program for Physician’s Assistant Studies. In addition to the Honors Program, I am an Undergraduate Student Ambassador at the Admissions Office, Secretary of Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society, the Vice President of our Love Your Melon campus crew, and a member of the Pre-PA Club. In my free time I enjoy attending Pirates, Steelers, and Penguins games as well as utilizing my student discount at various locations around the city, such as the Mattress Factory and Phipps Conservatory. Feel free to reach out to me at any time via email with any questions!

Abigail Kneuss – Social Media Coordinator

I am a First-Year student here at Chatham. I am pursuing a double major in Public Relations and Marketing. Outside of class, I am a reporter for the Communiqué. I also work for our office of Marketing and Communications here. When I’m not writing, studying, or snapping photos, you can catch me riding the busses all over Pittsburgh looking for a good café or thrift store!

Contact- abigail.kneuss@chatham.edu

 

 

Rebecca Pennington – Secretary

My name is Becca, and I am the secretary for the Honors Program. I am a cell and molecular biology major with a Spanish minor. I plan on following a pre-medicine route for hematology-oncology. I run cross country and indoor/outdoor track at Chatham, one of the RA’s of the Honors LLC, and a small group/Bible study leader in CCO. I enjoy exploring Pittsburgh, being outdoors, and working out. I hope to focus in involvement for planning for preparation for a career path, engage in discussion about current global issues, and get involved with community service within the city.  Feel free to email me at rebecca.pennington@chatham.edu or text me at 724-584-0050.

 

 

 

Mahima Sangtani- Historian

Hello, my name is Mahima Sangtani and I am a first year at Chatham. Majoring in molecular biology, I plan on attending medical school to become a doctor. Besides academics, I am an active participant in numerous clubs on campus such as TriBeta, MEDLife, Love Your Melon, and Chatham against Cancer. I am also an athlete on the women’s basketball team. So glad to be a part of the honors officer team. Looking forward to it!

 

 

1st Honors Lunch and Learn

by rebecca.pennington

On Friday November 2nd, seven members of .the Honors Program attended the first Lunch and Learn. At the event, students received a professional headshot to utilize on Linked In or their professional resume. The students were served lunch, which included a variety of delectable sandwiches, pasta salad, and marbled brownies. During the lunch, students listened to instructions on how to set up their own Linked In account.

My experience: Rebecca Pennington

Attending the Lunch and Learn, I discovered what a great tool, Linked In, is for developing a career path. The application itself is easy to use, however it is extremely beneficial. You can display your own achievements for employers to view, create connections in your work-field, and explore others profiles to learn about their success. I appreciated Career Development taking our professional headshots to insert on Linked In and present in future job applications. I recommend joining Linked In and attending Career Development events to gain an advantage on your career path.

If anyone who attended the event would like to share their experience, I would appreciate it. Please email me @ rebecca.pennington@chatham.edu, and I will share it on the blog. Thank you!

Junior Scholar Meaghan Clohessy wins award at Sigma Tau Delta National Conference

by chathamscholars

Sigma Tau Delta, the National English Honor Society, held its annual national conference this year in Portland, Oregon. Members of the honor society around the country attend and present their academic and creative pieces at this conference. Chatham’s chapter of the society, Alpha Delta Lambda, sent four upper class women to present at the conference this year.

One of these women, junior Scholar Meaghan Clohessy, presented a nonfiction piece entitled “Revisiting the Laundromat” in the creative portion of the conference. She won second place in the nonfiction category at the conference.

Clohessy is a Creative Writing and History double major. Her nonfiction piece is a memoir that she wrote in which she details her reading of the book “Laundromat Blues,” which was written by a friend of her father’s who passed on a few years ago. Clohessy’s piece is both brilliantly crafted and realized, and Chatham University’s Scholars Program is proud to announce her accomplishment.

First Year Chatham Scholars Annual Warhol Trip

by chathamscholars

On Friday, March 1st, some of the first year scholars, a second year
cohort scholar, Dr. Lenz, and Dr. MacNeil took the annual trip to the Andy
Warhol Museum. After enjoying a delicious Middle Eastern meal at
Aladdin’s Eatery, the group headed over to the Warhol. Working our way
down from the top floor, we got to experience some of Andy Warhol’s most
famous prints, as well as many film pieces, paintings, works of
photography, and sculptures by a variety of artists. We probably spend
most of our time, however, in the room filled with silver mylar balloons
shaped like pillows, a favorite of the group’s. After a quick stop at the
gift shop, we headed back to campus, having enjoyed an exquisite evening
of art!

–by First Year scholar Ivy Kuhrman

First Year sholar Chloe Bell enjoys the Warhol Museum

First Year scholar Chloe Bell enjoys the Andy Warhol museum.

Scholars enjoy dinner at Aladdin's after the museum

Scholars enjoy dinner at Aladdin’s after the museum.

Scholar Abroad Presentations

by chathamscholars

     Chatham Scholars have gotten an early start this spring semester. Although only week two of the new semester, first year scholars Phoebe Armstrong and Rosemary Davies presented on study abroad experiences. The presentations, which occurred on Tuesday, January 15th at Chatham University, piqued the interest of fellow scholars.
Armstrong studied abroad in both Argentina and Germany, while Davies took part in an Arctic expedition. During her time abroad, Armstrong became fluent in German, and delved deep into the culture of both Argentina and Germany. Davies, meanwhile, had the opportunity to see the unique variety of animals and fish that inhabit the Arctic, and was especially fascinated by diatoms, a type of algae found in Arctic sea ice. The range of their experiences provided varied lenses through which fellow scholars could see the abroad trips of their peers, as well as consider their own potential future trips.

Armstrong presents Davies describes her experience in the Arctic

Scholar Summer 2012 Trips Abroad

by chathamscholars

One of the tenets that Chatham continues to uphold for students is travel and study abroad. Faculty and administration across campus stress the importance of taking a Maymester, summer, or semester abroad, citing that experiencing another culture can change the way one views and understands one’s own. This past summer 2012, Meaghan Clohessy and Seyhan Sagcan, both members of the Chatham Scholars Program, were two students to have a travel abroad experience.
Clohessy, who traveled across the pond to Cambridge University at Gonville and Caius College, discovered her summer abroad opportunity through one of those handy emails Dr. Lenz circulates among the students at Chatham. “I was going to ignore it,” Clohessy states, but in a turn of chance, “…[I] decided to look at it anyway. I looked at the University of New Hampshire website, the school through which this program was taking place, and realized that it was offering classes in both creative writing and history, the majors that I am completing here at Chatham.”
She applied to the program immediately and was accepted. Clohessy would be taking two classes during her time at Cambridge, which included Travel Writing and History of the British Monarchy. She wasn’t sure what to expect from this trip, her first time abroad alone, but found that any expectations she could have had were “far exceeded, as I did far more in England than I ever would have imagined.”
“When I was not taking a class, I was going on various excursions” she states about her adventures overseas. The Cambridge abroad trip offered a variety of opportunities: bus tours across England to Stonehenge, the Cliffs of Dover, the Canterbury Cathedral, and seeing Richard II at The Globe Theater. London, which was only forty minutes away from the university, became a frequent getaway during Clohessy’s stay. She even wandered off from the University of New Hampshire group to explore on her own, carefully planning and executing a trip to Wales, where she stayed at a bed and breakfast in Blaencwn, a village not far from Cardiff. She spent the weekend amongst the villagers, exploring the Welsh landscape, and scaling Cardiff.
Sagcan, meanwhile, took her 2012 summer abroad experience to Africa. She discovered the opportunity to travel to Cape Town, South Africa online, using the website Cross Cultural Solutions, which offers short-term volunteer abroad programs in 12 countries. She volunteered as a teacher’s aid for a 4th grade class of 70 students in the township of Athlone, in Cape Town. Sagcan also worked in a women’s shelter in Athlone, attending to the children in the crèche (daycare) while the women sought help for their individual needs.
Her experience abroad, however, did not end with her volunteer work. For the first three weeks after volunteering, her program provided a mandatory South African culture excursion. She explored Cape Town, dug deep into the history of District 6, learned about Islamic influences, the slave trade, and about current refugees. “I also had the opportunity,” she states, “to learn how to play a traditional South African drum, and learn a little bit of Xhosa,” which is the native language of Cape Town tribal communities. Sagcan also climbed Lion’s Head Mountain and took tours through Cape Point and Stellenbosch, rounding out her trip with plenty of volunteer work, lots of learning, and a little leisurely fun too.
There are also moments that stand out distinctly from her trip abroad. “One moment from [my trip] that I can never, ever forget is with this one lady I had a conversation with [one day during a free period at the women’s shelter].” Sagcan found herself connecting to a woman from a completely different culture as she explained her past hardships, and how the shelter had made a fundamental difference in her life. They spoke of how, someday, the woman wanted to learn how to use a computer and become a typist. “It was incredibly heart-wrenching to hear about everything that she has gone through,” Sagcan states. “She is a strong person, and all I can say is that I am so proud of her for being able to start back up at the shelter.”
For both Clohessy and Sagcan, their summer 2012 abroad trips are ones they aren’t likely to forget. Their experiences overseas did live up to what so many professors at Chatham stress: that once you return home, there is a fundamental change in how you view your own life and culture. For Sagcan, “this entire experience changed my perspective of everything…I think that learning about another culture and working with different individuals every day has allowed me to grow as a leader and a person…I can tell you that everyone will have a revelation after an experience outside of the United States.” Clohessy came to realize that she felt much the same way. “I have never felt so confident or independent in my life,” she says proudly. “The separation from what felt like ‘the real world’ helped to put my life in perspective. I will never forget the beauty of a rainy day in England…or the silence of the London streets during the Olympics. How do you experience these wonderful things and go unchanged? You can’t.”

All-Campus Author Yrsa Sigurdadottir Visits Chatham University

by chathamscholars

One of the beauties of writing is the complete freedom it provides. This year’s All-Campus Author Yrsa Sigurdadottir’s novel My Soul to Take is unrestricted in this same way as it breaches the constraints of labels. A mystery novel, but with parts spanning comedy, women’s issues, and politics, Sigurdadottir’s novel is a page-turner that readers cannot put down. On Monday, November 5th, the Icelandic author held a lecture and reading in Eddy Theater on Chatham University’s campus. Those in attendance were able to hear about the story from her perspective, and gain insight into her work as a writer. During the public reading on Monday, she read the prologue. Before, I had read those same words silently. When Sigurdadottir read them, the words came alive. The story was given a tangible edge illuminated by her discussion.

My own experience with My Soul to Take has been transformative. It has allowed me to go beyond the facts of Iceland, and into a deeper familiarity that was brought on by Sigurdadottir’s lecture. Now, I know more about the country’s people and culture. When Sigurdadottir spoke on Monday evening, she bridged the gap between the United States and Iceland. She clarified our comments, answered questions, and shared with us her perspective. At the end of her visit, she left me thinking of her country and people. I can still taste the shark and cod liver from Monday’s reception.

By Rosemary Davies

Scholars Ice Cream Social

by chathamscholars

The incoming Scholars class of 2016 was welcomed last Monday at the Scholars Ice Cream Social. The Mellon Dining room was packed with Scholars—from first years to seniors—and everyone was enjoying a nice cup of ice cream while mingling with their Scholar mentors. Dr. Lenz gathered us all in a circle, like every one of his classes, and made us go around the room to introduce ourselves. We are a very diverse group: there are women from as far away as California, the East Coast, and right here in Pittsburgh. Dr. Lenz talked to us about how important it was to be a part of the Scholars program because we raise the academic standard at Chatham but we remain humble at the same time, always remembering that we are here to find whom we are and what we want to do after these four years at Chatham University.
By the end of all the mingling and ice cream, a few first years were left—I being one of them—talking about the upcoming classes for the week and what events the Scholars program would be doing in the future. All my first year friends at Chatham and I decided that we were very happy to be in the program we are in and to be with the people we will spend the next four years studying with in class. The Ice Cream Social was a great way to start out our time here at Chatham and we can’t wait to go to another Scholars event.

Sook Yee’s Review of “As You Like It”

by chathamscholars

Ted Pappas has refashioned Shakespeare masterpiece for today’s audience just in time for Valentine’s Day! Shakespeare’s As You Like It, directed by Ted Pappas, is a modern-day celebration of love, ranging from friendship to lascivious passion. In particular, the anachronisms in this theatre performance bridged the perceptions of love in the Shakespearian times with the modern times.
In addition to the 19th century attire, Pappas’ fusion of modern day mannerisms with the Shakespearian vernacular creates an intriguing way of relaying the play’s dialogue, which is sort of similar to speaking and miming, that made the lay more accessible to toady’s audience. For instance, Celia and Rosalind’s heart to heart conversations and bantering had features of today’s bold emphatic intonation. At some points, one can almost hear the voice of a friend saying something similar to “Oh no you didn’t (insert subject here.)”Also, Duke Frederick’s talk-to-the-hand gesture, which is a fairly recent non-verbal gesture, made it quite clear to the audience that he detested her, so his subsequent decision to exile Rosalind was not surprising. It was quite intriguing to watch the performers’ mannerisms clarify, reinforce, and translate for those who may not understand the dialogue. Hearing the words, observing the body language, and discerning the intonation accentuates certain sentiments, which also shows how open to interpretation theatre performances are and how a performance can emphasize a particular interpretation.
Hence, for the upcoming Valentine’s Day, Pappas has accentuated the scope and fundamental values of love. Audiences witnessed the love in true friendship between Celia and Rosalind, particularly when Celia decided to accompany Rosalind in the latter’s exile. Silvius’ obsessive and undying devotion to Phoebe earned much of the audience’s (and Rosalind’s) sympathy, particularly when the Silvius eagerly consumed Phoebe’s love letter to Ganymede (a.k.a. Rosalind’s male disguise persona) when the latter discarded the letter in disgust. Ultimately, the essence of Valentine’s Day shines through the mutual infatuation that Orlando and Rosalind had for each other. From Orlando, the audience identified with the feeling of butterflies in one’s stomach—that can also somehow clog one’s vocal chords as one tries to speak with the object of their affections. From Rosalind, the audience experienced the feeling of delight upon discovering that one’s infatuation was mutual—especially when one personally finds out by disguising as a member of the opposite gender in order to converse with the person of one’s dreams. As for the lascivious passion, neither Shakespeare nor Pappas approved of Touchstone’s (the jester) prurient love for Audrey (the witless shepherdess) and their precipitous wedding for Jacque refers to the pair by stating, “[H]ere comes a pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.”
Ultimately, Pappas’ modern day rendition of Shakespeare’s As You Like It compels the audience to identify and empathize with the fundamental values of love that have persisted from Shakespeare’s time till today.