You might think that faculty members take the summer off and that we’re all sitting under a palm tree eating dates and sipping umbrella drinks. Oh, but no. Here in the SMC everyone stays really busy during the months between spring and fall semesters, and much of that busy-ness is school related.
We’re working on our courses for the upcoming semester, updating this syllabus or that test bank, uploading all those files onto Blackboard so they’ll be ready the first day of class (which this fall is Aug. 30). Some of us are cleaning up our offices, filing materials that have collected over the past school year, adding new books or clearing out old ones.
Dr. Bob Thomas, director of the Loyola University Center for Environmental Communication and Loyola Chair in Environmental Communications, has spent the last few months fielding questions from media about the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Dr. David Myers just published a new book, “Play Redux,” through the University of Michigan Press. Professor David Zemmels is also busy writing, working on his doctoral dissertation, planning to add “Dr.” to his title shortly.
Dr. Yolanda Cal and Dr. Cathy Rogers will join Dr. Sonya Duhé and me at The Power to Transform the World conference at Marquette University this week. We’ll be presenting papers on various research projects. As you can imagine, these presentations aren’t created in a few days. We’ve all spent lots of hours this summer pulling them together.
But it’s not all serious work. We’ve been working in some fun too! Drs. Duhé and Cal, along with Professor Michael Giusti and Dr. Sherry Alexander – and me – represented the SMC at the Press Club of New Orleans 2010 awards banquet Saturday night at Harrah’s. We were there to cheer on the SMC students and alumni up for various journalism awards. Dr. Alexander took photos as one Loyola-connected journalist after another went up to collect their trophies. Recent Loyola SMC graduates Trevor Cassidy, Ramon Vargas and Danny Monteverde took home first place honors.
We are especially proud of our current students, who competed against seasoned professionals to take some of the first, second, third place and honorable mention awards. That group includes Katie Urbaszewski, Eduardo Gonzales, Craig Malveaux, Kevin Zansler and Jean-Paul Arguello.
Jean-Paul, an investigative reporter who is interning this summer at The Lens, was announced as the winner of one of the two Press Club scholarships this year.
And the summer’s not over yet. Who knows what’ll happen before we see you in class. Stay tuned!
