New & Notable

Mail authority figure--Kevin Hightower began work this month as supervisor of the campus post office and mailing services. He also oversees the satellite copier program and is the College's liaison with the CopyCat Print Shop at the Village Commons, which now does much of the printing and duplicating work previously done in Office Services. Hightower's most recent position was mailing/shipping consultant with Pitney Bowes, and he previously worked for Xerox and CIGNA Corporations.

Sacred public relations--In the mid-sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church was under attack by the emergent Protestant Reformation. Besieged and worried, Rome fought back--or, more accurately, it preached back--launching what Frederick McGinness notes is perhaps the first large-scale public relations campaign in history.

McGinness, head for the past eleven years of both the College's Complex Organizations Program and its internship programs, has just won the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA) for his 1995 study Right Thinking: Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton University Press). It documents efforts by the church to maintain order and orthodoxy among its far-flung flocks. The prize was awarded in New York City on the weekend of January 4 and 5 at the joint annual conference of the American Historical Association and the ACHA.

"The book," McGinness says, "deals with the Catholic response to Protestant criticism and territorial gains in Europe in the mid-sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. At the heart of this response was the Catholic preaching effort. The book deals with the strategies and theologies preachers used to combat the Reformation and to exalt and reconsolidate the Catholic Church."

Among those strategies was vilification of Protestant leaders and teachings, as well as a carefully crafted presentation of the universality and direct connection of the church to Christ and the apostles, according to McGinness. Sermons preached throughout Europe were also printed and widely distributed so that the public might comprehend in a compact and intelligible way the complicated polemics and theologies of the church's Counter-Reformation campaign.

Fallen campus trees "reborn" as lumber--The College carried recycling to new lengths this winter by turning about twenty-five trees into usable lumber. According to grounds superintendent Jon Cowan, trees that had been cut down in the past two years because of age, storm damage, or construction needs were milled on campus. The result was about 6,000 board feet of oak, maple, and pine lumber at a cost of only twenty-five cents per board foot. Buying similar lumber would cost between $1 and $6 per board foot, according to carpenter supervisor Larry Rideout, so the College saved significantly by recycling the downed trees. The lumber will now be used on campus for furniture, posts, stakes, and other building materials.

A key player advances to semifinals--Kathryn Ananda-Owens, a lecturer in piano at MHC, has been selected as one of twelve semifinalists for the prestigious American Pianists Association's (APA) ninth biennial National Piano Fellowship Auditions. If chosen, the pianist would receive a cash grant of $10,000, sponsorship to international competitions abroad, promotional support, and artistic management assistance. Others who have reached the semifinal level in APA competition have gone on to international music careers, and Ananda-Owens may be next in line for wider recognition.

Ananda-Owens has been playing the piano since the age of five. She studied with Julian Martin while teaching at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory before joining the Mount Holyoke faculty in September 1996.

March marks the final stages of the competition, and Ananda-Owens is currently developing her audition program, which includes works by Bach, Debussy, and Chopin. The week of March 9 will begin with a trip to Indianapolis, where she will participate in a lottery to determine the order of performance. Following the preliminary rounds later in the week, six finalists will advance to the recital and concerto performance. The competition ends on Sunday, March 16, with a presentation of the fellowships during an awards brunch. Ananda-Owens will feature several works from the competition in her April 13 faculty recital on campus.

New Republic--Revaz Gachechiladze from the Republic of Georgia visited the College this month to teach a three-week course entitled The Political and Social Geography of the Caucasus. A professor of human geography at the University of Tbilisi, Gachechiladze said that twenty-four students took his course focusing on a part of the world that was, until recently, part of the Soviet Union.

According to Gachechiladze, the most important lesson for students looking at the region is the ethnic diversity of the Caucasus, which, in turn, defines many of the political, economic, and social issues there. Gachechiladze also noted that the United States, through economic and political support, is playing an important role in moving the region toward democracy. Stephen Jones of the Russian and Eurasian studies program, who is also a specialist in Transcaucasian issues, was instrumental in bringing the visitor here.

During his stay at Mount Holyoke, Gachechiladze also traveled to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Brown, Northwestern, and Berkeley, and to the Department of State to lecture on the role of law and the geopolitics of oil in the Republic of Georgia and in Caucasia.

Passing on the tradition--Ten MHC seniors will be in South Hadley schools spring semester carrying out their teaching practicums as the final step toward becoming certified to teach in a public school. One interesting twist, according to psychology and education professor Anita Page, who oversees the early childhood and elementary teacher preparation program, is that one of the South Hadley teachers supervising a Mount Holyoke senior is herself an alum. Lisa Curtin '87 now teaches in South Hadley and had her teaching practicum in a South Hadley school. The seniors teaching in South Hadley this semester are Samantha Methot, Melissa Morse, Charlene Mulcahy, Allison Rebello, Melissa Sterba, Elizabeth Wyman, Lisa Bonde (MAT '97), Anita Fiorino, Tiffany Goulet, and Gretchen Rothe. There are a total of twenty-four students doing teaching practicums in all schools during spring semester; sixteen are in elementary/childhood programs and eight are teaching in middle school or secondary-school classrooms.

New faculty faces--Joining the MHC faculty during spring semester are: Kanthie Athukorala, visiting instructor in women's studies; Stacy Birch, visiting assistant professor of psychology; Jonathan Caris, visiting instructor in geography; Alessandra Di Maio, visiting assistant professor of Italian; Carol Donelan, visiting instructor in English; Stacy Evans, visiting instructor in sociology; Victoria Getis, visiting assistant professor of history; Charles Johnson, visiting lecturer in economics; Dan Kaufman, visiting instructor in complex organizations; Diana Larkin, visiting assistant professor of art; Deborah May, visiting instructor in women's studies; Cathy Osman, visiting lecturer in art; Joel Saxe, visiting lecturer in history; Bapsi Sidhwa, visiting professor of English; Anne Skrutskie, visiting assistant professor of astronomy; Stanley Stevens, visiting associate professor of geography; and Eleanor Townsley, assistant professor in sociology.

What's new with you?--Send news for "New & Notable" to Emily Weir, Office of Communications, or email eweir@mtholyoke.edu.