A new PEL baby; Mark your calendars; Kudos!

A New PEL Baby!!!

The PEL community welcomed a new baby recently! PEL Reception Coordinator Janice Writt and her husband, Jeremy, are the parents of Jaxson Billy, born October 25th. Baby Jaxson weighed in at 9 lbs. 10 oz. and is joined at home by their Dalmatian, Dallas. Congratulations!

Mark your calendars

January 14, 2017 is the opening day of the Writers in Paradise week-long workshop. All evening readings are FREE and open to the public. Readings begin at 8 p.m. in Miller Auditorium; refreshments are available beginning at 7:30 p.m. and book signings follow each speaking event.   Scheduled to speak are:

• Saturday, January 14: Keynote Speaker is poet Richard Blanco
• Sunday, January 15: David Yoo and Laura Lippman
• Monday, January 16: Fabienne Josaphat and Andre Dubus III
• Tuesday, January 17: Denise Duhamel, Stewart O'Nan and Helen Wallace
• Wednesday, January, 18: (free day, no reading scheduled)
• Thursday, January 19: Les Standiford and Ann Hood
• Friday, January 20: Sterling Watson, Major Jackson and Peter Meinke
• Saturday, January 21: Closing speaker, Lan Samantha Chang

January 14, 2017: PEL people are invited to a Writers in Paradise Pre-Conference PEL Reception  from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Cobb Gallery. This year's theme is Celebrating PEL Authors. Read more about this event here.

March 11, 2017: PEL Reception at Alumni Weekend. More details will be coming soon!

Kudos!

PEL Students contributed 2000+ hours of community service through various service learning projects -- including helping to promote the artwork of senior citizens, working with homeless projects, helping teens learn financial literacy skills, and volunteering at nature parks -- during the 2015-2016 academic year.

Most of these hours were part of Reflective Service Learning projects in Quest for Meaning and many were part of the Enactus/SIFE course taught by Professor Malhotra. And many others were completed as part of other PEL courses. Way to go PEL people!

At right: PEL student Yolanda Carter helps install a community garden at CASA. 

Faculty News

 Professor James Welch presented "Developing Ethical Leadership in the Post-Enron World: An Analysis of Business Ethics Education in National Liberal Arts Colleges in the United States" at the European Group for Organizational Studies 32nd Annual Colloquium in Naples, Italy, in July. Professor Welch oversees the Organizational Studies program in PEL.

Professor Naveen Malhotra  presented his paper, "Case Study: The Teaching Tool in Capstone Business Courses," at the International Academy of Business and Economics Conference in Las Vegas in October. Malhotra is the Tom and Mary James Professor of Finance at Eckerd College.

 Staff News

PEL Director of Blended and Online Learning Anne Anderson recently contributed to Toward a Spiritual Research Paradigm: Exploring New Ways of Knowing, Researching, and Being, a book that is part of Information Age Publishing's Transforming Education for the Future series. Anderson's chapter is titled "'Out of the Everywhere into Here': Rhetoricity and Transcendence as Common Ground for Spiritual Research."

The publisher's site describes the book thus: "Spirituality and spiritual experiences have been the bedrock of every civilization and together form one of the highest mechanisms for making sense of the world for billions of people. Current research paradigms, due to their limitation to empirical, sensory, psychologically, or culturally constructed realities, fail to provide a framework for exploring this essential area of human experience. The development of a spiritual research paradigm will provide researchers from the social sciences and education the tools and abilities to systematically explore fundamental questions regarding human spiritual experiences and spiritual growth."