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."

Twelve January PEL graduates; Alumni news; Faculty & Staff news

courtesy of SweetClipArt.com

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Warmest congratulations to these PEL students who completed their programs of studies and graduated in January, 2016 :

Craig Michael Cuatt (H), Concentration in Media and Film
Stephen Alan Douglas, Concentration in American Culture and Society
Jana Lené Gross, Human Development
Marilyn Beatrice Haegele (H), Concentration in Communication Art
Lennise Quantaie Jackson, Human Development
Tamara C. Lasser, Business Management
Jennifer Worsham Lillquist (D), Business Management
Sherry-Ann A. Murphy, Humanities
Michelle Darlene Rees, Human Development
Angela Aquinda Sealy, Organizational Studies
Karen Lynn Trzcinka (D), Business Management
James Edward Weaver (D), Concentration in Human Learning

H - Honors; HH - High Honors; D - Distinction

ALUMNI  NEWS

• Valerie Bendt '09 (Creative Writing) earned her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in children's literature from Pennsylvania State University. For her thesis/project she wrote a bilingual children's book (Lucinda the Goose and the Yard Sale) and developed several related activities parents and children could complete together. She also earned a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate from the University of Toronto.
• Todd DeLozier '09 (Humanities) has opened his own business, Meridian Security, and he was featured on #ThatBusinessShow, a radio program on 1250whnz.
• Mike Domke '14 (Business Management) recently was promoted to coordinator of Central Printing Services for Pinellas County Schools. As such, he oversees the school district's interoffice mail systems and production of all the printed materials for the district.
• April Griffin '16 (Organizational Studies) and chair of the Hillsborough County School Board was featured in a recent Tampa Bay Times article acknowledging her December 2015 graduation. 
• Bernard LiLavois '10 (Business Management) subsequently earned an M.B.A. in Healthcare Administration from South University in Tampa. He currently is the director of the respiratory and EKG services at HealthSouth Rehab Hospital in Largo.

Note: An alumni class includes all students who graduated between June of one year and May of the next year. For example, students who graduated in August 2015 are considered part of the Class of 2016. 
What's new with you? Share your good news two ways:

• Share your personal and professional updates by emailing us at pelsuccess@eckerd.edu. We reserve the right to format announcements to fit style and other considerations. 
• Share Instagram Photos via live update on the Eckerd Alumni Engagement page by including the #EckerdNotes hashtag. 

FACULTY & STAFF NEWS  

Anne Anderson '07, PEL's director of blended and online learning, co-authored a chapter, "The World is Flat, Stanley! Globalization, Ethnocentricity, and Absurdity," which recently was published in The Early Reader in Children's Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2016). The chapter discusses the Flat Stanley series of books for their contributions to increasing globalization, for their insight into ethnocentric thinking and actions, and for the ways in which their absurd premises complicate the reading.

 

Catherine Griggs, PEL coordinator of Humanities and Associate Professor of American Studies, recently was featured in a WTSP 10News article, which included a Studio 10 televised interview.  Griggs and Nathan Andersen, also an Eckerd professor, organized the Environmental Film Festival held this past month. 

 

Gregory Padgett, Associate Professor of History at Eckerd College who teaches African-American History and other courses in the PEL program, recently was featured in an article in The Weekly Challenger. The article focuses on a civil rights course titled "What’s Past is Prologue: The Civil Rights Movement In the United States" that Padgett taught through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), another Eckerd program. The class met at the Midtown campus of St. Petersburg college.

 

Jim Schnur, PEL professor of  Florida history and USF-SP Special Collections librarian, recently had a book published and a day designated in his honor. Seminole, part of the Images of America series (Arcadia Publishing, 2016), tells in words and images the story of Pinellas County's youngest municipality. The City of Seminole designated January 12, 2016, the official date of publication, as "Jim Schnur Day."

 Helen Pruitt Wallace, PEL professor of creative writing, recently opened Mayor Rick Kriseman's State of the City address with her poem, "Reunion in the Sunshine City."

 

[January 18, 2017] Editor's Note: This post was supposed to  have been published on February 29, 2016, as part of the March PEL Connector, but it was just discovered sitting in our drafts. However, we included it in our EMMA email, and we usually check all the links before sending it. Was it published and then pulled for further editing? Was it kidnapped by cyber-gremlins or lost in a cyberspace time warp? We cannot say for certain, but we are posting it in it's proper slot of February 29, 2016, and are noting that the actual publication date is only about a year off.

New Eckerd website wins award; managing the email avalanche

Eckerd College's new website features lots of visual images.

By Kathy McDonald

Photos and screenshots by 
Anne W. Anderson

Eckerd College’s website. found at eckerd.edu, has more than just a fresh, new look and layout. It also is mobile friendly and streamlined.

And it won a Silver ADDY award in the Consumer Websites category last month from the Tampa Bay chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF). The Eckerd site competed with sites from all sorts of businesses across the Tampa Bay regions, not just those sites developed by other higher education institutions.

Designed by a St. Petersburg company, ClearpH Design, the website markets Eckerd College primarily to prospective residential students and their parents, while also featuring the colleges other academic and non-academic programs. The redesigned PEL website, eckerd.edu/pel, can be found under "More Offerings", which is at the top right corner of every page.

Another Eckerd marketing feature, personalized videos, designed by St. Petersburg's Roundhouse Creative Studio, won two Silver ADDYs -- one in the Branded Content category and one in the Innovative Use of Interactive Technology category.

According to Michel Fougeres, Eckerd’s director of marketing, communication, and web services who, with Sarah Richardson, Eckerd's digital marketing media manager, oversaw the year-long project, the new website was created for several reasons:

To create one mobile-friendly experience. As more users move to searching the Web from a smaller-screened smartphone or tablet, the site needs to be equally readable as on a larger-screened desktop or laptop. Plus, mobile-friendly sites have user-friendly features like hyperlinked phone numbers. Instead of having to punch numbers, users can click on the link to place the call.

Additionally, Google gives priority to sites that are mobile-friendly in determining which sites to list near the top of the list of a search, which means PEL, too, is now listed more prominently. This keeps the homepage focused on residential recruiting.

To streamline the site. “The old site had about 9,680 pages and other items,” Fougeres said. “Most of those were used by faculty, staff, and students. The new site has about 600 pages focused on promoting Eckerd College. Prospective students and visitors are less apt to land on a random page containing a van reservation form, for instance.”

Most internal pages used by faculty, staff, and current students have been moved to Google sites. For example, PEL’s main pages are part of the new website, but the Directed Studies and Writing Services pages are on Google sites.

To catch visitors’ attention. Technology users today expect a different look and user experience. The old site had fallen out of date in look and feel, leaving potential students with the impression our college might be out of touch as well.

“Users have come to expect visually rich website experiences that tell a story as much with images and video as with text,” said Fougeres. “This refresh was a real opportunity to capitalize on one of our key 'differentiators', our beautiful location.”

The new look also has been applied to print materials, which includes color updates, new design elements like gradients and hexagons that echo our historic St. Petersburg sidewalks, and a more modern font.

Where to find what you need

 

MyEckerd has a new look, and as with any change, it can take a while to become comfortable with the new layout. Anne Anderson, PEL director of blended and online learning, said she has had a number of people asking for help in accessing their email and in finding the list of links to campus sites such as the Library.

Gmail's screen confused some people.

Part of the problem wasn’t the fault of Eckerd’s new website, however.

“The same week Eckerd launched its new website,” Anderson said, “Google added a ‘new features’ screen that opened when people clicked on the gmail link in MyEckerd.”

Even she was confused at first. “It took me a few minutes to see the ‘Sign In’ link in the upper right corner—next to the more prominent ‘Create a New Account’ block,” she said with a laugh. A couple of people she talked to said they went ahead and created new accounts, not realizing they wouldn’t be Eckerd.edu accounts.

Left:  Connect to your Eckerd gmail account, the ECWeb, and Moodle by clicking on one of the three boxes in the lower blue/green bar. To connect to the old MyEckerd page of links to the Library, Banner, etc., click on For Faculty/Staff in the upper right corner. 

To check whether the campus is open or closed due to weather, scroll to the bottom for the Campus Safety Status. Also at the bottom, under Account Management, are the links to change your password or to contact the IT help desk.

Email Tips: If you feel buried in an avalanche of email when you open your inbox, consider opting out of some Eckerd list-serves. [Campus Events], [Clubs], and [CPS-Events] are used to communicate events, items for sale, and other non-official items.

One way to sort mail quickly is to use the search bar at the top to locate specific senders or topics. Folders can help, too.

Consider forwarding your Eckerd email to your personal email address, especially if you keep forgetting to check your Eckerd email. But don’t be too quick to delete mail—just mark it as ‘read’ and you will still be able to search for it if you realize you need it later on.

Who to contact if you see something that needs attention

 

While the website has been streamlined, Fougeres noted, some of the content still needs to be updated and sometimes glitches occur. If you find any errors on the PEL site, such as broken links, inaccurate or confusing language, or other problems – or if you have a suggestion -- please contact Kathy McDonald at mcdonakh@eckerd.edu.