Phi Alpha Theta student presentations Two Coastal Carolina University students and one faculty member presented papers at the recent 2008 Biennial Convention of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. Meggan Farish, a junior, presented a paper entitled “The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” Bogdan Grechka, a senior who is presently completing his coursework at a university in Russia, presented a paper entitled “The Civilizing Mission in the Belgium Congo: Exploitation, Slavery, and Genocide.” Meggan is a resident of Myrtle Beach and was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta along with 22 other students in November. Bogden Grechka, a history major from upstate New York, is a member of Coastal’s Honors Program. Accompanying them on the trip was Associate Professor John Navin, advisor to Coastal’s chapter of Phi Alpha Theta. Dr. Navin is Phi Alpha Theta’s Southeast region area advisor; he presented a paper entitled “Linking History Courses to Elementary School Mentoring Efforts.” The conference – Phi Alpha Theta’s most prestigious event – took place at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort in Santa Ana Pueblo near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Coastal history majors have presented papers at the past three Phi Alpha Theta biennial conferences.

Dr. Pamela Martin wins Deborah Gerner Innovative Teaching in Internationlal Studies Award Pamela Martin, assistant professor of politics and international relations at Coastal Carolina University, has been presented the 2008 Deborah Gerner Innovative Teaching in International Studies Award for connecting her students to the world through modern communications technology. Martin, who teaches international relations, was especially cited for engaging her classroom with a group of journalists visiting a refugee camp in the Sudan through Internet links and for her use of Skype telephony to connect her students to guest lecturers around the world. She has "investigated, mastered and utilized the wizardry of modern communications technology to globalize her classroom," according to the award announcement. The award was established by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and the editorial board of the New Millennium Books in International Studies in honor of the late Deborah "Misty" Gerner, a University of Kansas professor of political science and internationally noted expert in Middle Eastern conflicts. She was known for her contributions to the Women's Caucus of International Studies, the International Studies Association, the discipline of international relations and the causes of peace throughout the world. The award is granted annually to a professor who has developed effective new approaches to teaching international studies, with emphasis on pedagogy that engages students with issues of war, peace and other important topics as they evolve in the 21st century. Martin, who joined the CCU faculty in 2003, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park, and has taught at La Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. She is also the director of the international and global studies minor, as well as co-adviser to the Globalist Club. Her most recent book, "The Globalization of Contentious Politics: The Amazonian Indigenous Rights Movement," analyzes the benefits and challenges of global processes on indigenous peoples in some of the most remote areas of the world. Currently, she is researching oil extraction and new methods to protect the South American Amazon. Her research and writing focus on globalization and its pedagogy, nongovernmental organizations, and energy and environmental policy.

Article about Iraq and Academia by Richard Collin, Department of Politics Please click on the link below to read Richard Collin's article regarding his thoughts on Iraq and Academia published in the August 23rd edition of The Globalist. http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryID.aspx?StoryID=6412

CCU to gain band building through land gift A $600,000 real estate gift from Tom and Wrenzie Rice of Myrtle Beach will give Coastal Carolina University a permanent band building. The building and 4.3 acres, valued at $1.1 million, are located on Winyah Road off U.S. 501 near the campus. Coastal paid $500,000 toward the property, with the Rices making a gift of the remaining balance. A tax attorney with Rice, MacDonald, Winter and Breeden, P.A., Rice grew up in Myrtle Beach. He earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in accounting from the University of South Carolina and a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. For two semesters he served as an adjunct professor at Coastal Carolina University, where he taught taxation. Wrenzie Rice grew up in Charleston. She earned a bachelor's degree in industrial management from Clemson University. She owns Rice Leasing, a commercial real estate brokerage and property management firm in Myrtle Beach. “Coastal Carolina University is a tremendous asset for our entire community and for the state,” said Tom Rice. “We are glad to do what we can to help support it.”

Coastal's Ashes2Art Web site project awarded NEH grant Coastal Carolina University's Ashes2Art, an innovative Web site that shows the virtual reconstructgion of Grecian ruins and monuments, has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grant was one of 16 Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants the NEH awarded to new projects "designed to explore and develop innovative uses of technology in humanities education, scholarship and public programming." Ashes2Art, under direction of Coastal professors Arne Flaten and Paul Olsen, involves the digital, three-dimensional reconstruction of classical monuments of the early fourth century at Delphi in Greece. In classrooms, Coastal students work on the reconstruction of animated re-creations and virtual tours of ancient monuments and important historical sites. Viewers enter a "virtual" location suchas a Gothic cathedral and tour the structure from a practically unlimited number of viewpoints. The Web site, www.coastal.edu/ashes2art, offers fly-throughs, panoramas and access to high-resolution details of various architectural and sculptural elements, floor plans, stained glass, mosaics, etc., with links to discussions of iconography, artistic process and materials, as well as historical summaries. The grant will allow professors Flaten and Losen to take a group of students to Greece to photograph and study the ruins they will re-create on the computer through use of sophisticaed software. Arkansas State University has recently teamed with the Coastal students and professors in a collaborative efort to expand development of the site. "Ashes2Art is a new concept," says art historian and professor Flaten. "It will bring back ancient monuments into a fully searchable, rotatable, immersion experience. It utilizes cutting edge video and 3-D rendering software, onsite measurements and current research in archaeology, economics, politics, religion, art history, philosophy and socio-cultural history." http://www.coastal.edu/ashes2art/

Dr. Eliza Glaze receives Andrew A. Mellon Post-doctoral Rome Prize in Medieval Studies “Florence Eliza Glaze, Assistant Professor of History and Co-Director of the Honors Program, has been awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Rome Prize in Medieval Studies, which will be spent in residence at the American Academy in Rome for the 2007-2008 academic year. There, Eliza will complete her current project, “Gariopontus and the Salernitans: Medical Practice and Medical Theory, c. 1050-1225,” which includes an analysis of the surviving texts of Salerno, the earliest center for medical education in the West, and the role of one particular text in that pedagogical process. The American Academy in Rome is one of the leading American overseas centers for independent study and advanced research in the arts and the humanities. Each year, through a national competition, the Academy offers Rome Prize fellowships to some 30 Americans in architecture, landscape architecture, design, visual arts, musical composition, literature, archaeology and classical studies, history of art, and post-classical humanistic and modern Italian studies. Prizes in the Humanities are awarded for research in four fields of interest: Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, and Modern Italian Studies. Each year the Academy organizes an open, national competition from its New York City office to select its Rome Prize winners. Jury members, prominent in their disciplines, are drawn from all regions of the country and change annually. The primary criterion for selection is excellence, as perceived both in achievement and in promise. The Academy's Board of Trustees announced this year’s winners on April 19 in a ceremony at the Academy’s New York offices. Fellows will be joined in Rome by a select group of Residents invited by the Academy, and other distinguished artists and scholars, forming a residential community of approximately 75 individuals. Residents for the 2007-2008 academic year will include Caroline Walker Bynum, Elizabeth Ann Clark, Michael Conforti, John Corigliano, Jorie Graham, Chang-rae Lee, Louise Rice, Michael R. Salzman, Olly Wilson, and Peter Zumthor. Previous Fellows have developed into some of America’s leading artists and scholars, including John Russell Pope, Samuel Barber, Philip Guston, Nancy Graves, Robert Venturi, Lester K. Little, Michael Graves, Frank Stella, Mary Miss, Lucy Shoe Merritt, James Ackerman, Richard Wilbur, and many others.”

CCU Choir in Florida Members of the Coastal Carolina Concert Choir and Symphonic Band toured Orlando, Florida during March 1-4 2007 as part of the performance programs' strategic recruitment initiatives. The CCU ensembles made two stops at high schools on their journey south with culminating performances at Disney World in Orlando on Saturday morning. With each performance stop the Coastal Carolina University ensembles received high acclaim. The concert repertoire included selections for brass choir, woodwind choir, the Chamber Choir and the combined forces of the Symphonic Band and Concert Choir performing Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. The "Return Home" performance received a standing ovation on Tuesday evening, March 6th before a capacity crowd in the Wheelwright Auditorium. The instrumental and vocal ensemble programs are under the auspices of Drs. Terri Sinclair and James Tully. This tour was made possible, in part, by funding from the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Dr. William Richardson, Dean.

Dan Albergotti Awarded 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize Dan Albergotti is the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize winner for his first collection of poems, The Boatloads. Edward Hirsch selected this manuscript from 25 semi-finalists and will write a Foreword to the published collection. Albergotti will receive a $1,500 honorarium and book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in March, 2007, in the A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series. An annual competition, the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize is open to poets who have yet to publish a full-length-book collection of poetry. This year's runner-ups were Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager; The Mansion of Happiness by Robin Ekiss; Hawk Weather by Anna Ross; and History of the Always Pain by Jennifer Militello. Dan Albergotti's winning manuscript was chosen from a filed of 888 entries. Edward Hirsch says, "Dan Albergotti's first book, The Boatloads, is filled with the spirit of mystery. It is a startling achievement that begins in wonder and ends in awe."

Sanders named CCU's Kearns Palmetto Professor Coastal Carolina University English professor Sara Sanders has been named the university's Kearns Palmetto Professor. This endowed professorship was established in 1989 to honor Coastal faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding skills as a teacher and scholar, service to their university and profession, and who have enhanced Coastal's national and international reach. Sanders joined Coastal's English faculty in 1987, and she has been consistenly recognized for her innovative approach to teaching. She has written, published and presented extensively in the areas of linguistics and narrative. Sanders has served as director of Coastal's Honors Program and chair of the Department of English, Communication and Journalism. She was a senior Fulbright lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland in 1989-90 and a visiting professor at St. Michael's College in Vermont during the summers from 1995 to 2005. Through grants from the United States Information Agency, she has conducted teacher training seminars in Russia, Italy and Uruguay. With her husband, Coastal distinguished professor emeritus Stephen J. Nagle, Sanders was awarded a 2003 Governor's Award in the Humanities for "preserving the language and culture of Southern English." Sanders is also the recipient of the 1996 Coastal Carolina University Student Affairs Division Award, the 1997 HTC Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer Award and the 1996-1998 Fetzer Institute Courage to Teach National Teacher Formation Award. Sanders earned a bachelor's degree in English from the Baptist College of Charleston (now Charleston Southern University). She earned a master's degree and a doctoral degree in linguistics from the University of South Carolina.

CCU's Bachman named 2006 S.C. Professor of the Year Coastal Carolina University professor Maria Bachman has been selected as the 2006 South Carolina Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The recognition is made through the U.S. Professors of the Year program, which selects a professor from each state to be honored for instructional skills and for outstanding commitment to teaching undergraduate students. Read more...

Students to Attend Model House of Representatives An endowment has been established at Coastal Carolina University that will enable a CCU student to attend the U. S. Model House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. The endowment was created through a gift from Rosemary Long Jenrette in honor of her husband, former U.S. Congressman John W. Jenrette. The endowment will provide funding for a student to attend the five-day... Read more...

2006 Fall Gala Photo Gallery View scenes from the 2006 Fall Gala... Photo Gallery

Self Taught: Seven African American Vernacular Artists The Rebecca Randall Bryan Gallery at Coastal Carolina University is pleased to announce Self Taught: Seven African American Vernacular Artists. The exhibition, cocurated by George Jacobs and Dan Powell, features paintings, sculpture and multimedia work by Bessie Harvey, Purvis Young, Thornton Dial Sr., David Butler, Jimmie Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver and Mary T. Smith. The exhibition runs from January 11, 2007 through February 8, 2007. Read more...