Saint Mary's purchases south Minneapolis properties

$2 million anonymous gift helps purchase purchase of Harrington Mansion and Events Center

Saint Mary’s has finalized its purchase of the Harrington Mansion and Events Center, located adjacent to the university’s Schools of Graduate and Professional Programs (SGPP) in Minneapolis. Saint Mary’s plans to use the property, formerly owned by the Zuhrah Shriners, for expansion of its graduate programs, community outreach, and alumni event venues.

“This is an investment both in our campus and in the Twin Cities community,” said Brother William. “Saint Mary’s is expanding to meet our growth in educational offerings. We see this as an investment to not only provide educational access to those who increasingly are excluded from it, but also a commitment to help revitalize the Phillips West neighborhood.”

The Harrington Mansion and Events Center purchase, which includes the historic mansion, carriage house, modern events center, and 100 parking spaces, encompassing 1.66 acres at 2540 Park Avenue. The mansion and carriage house consist of 30,000 square feet, and the event center has 54,000 square feet. The purchase significantly increases the size of Saint Mary’s campus footprint on Park Avenue.

The purchase price of the properties is $2.75 million. A $2 million gift from an anonymous donor made the purchase possible for Saint Mary’s. Saint Mary’s will begin a campaign to raise funds for renovations of the buildings.

“We are grateful to the donor for enabling us to make this purchase,” said Brother William. “We are proud to become a part of the rich history of the Harrington Mansion. Saint Mary’s University intends to preserve that history while making the property highly functional for today’s learners and guests.”

The mansion and carriage house will be used for online learning opportunities, office space, gatherings of alumni and friends, and performing and visual arts space. The center will be used for university events and will continue to be available for public rental. The space is ideal for meetings, corporate functions, and receptions.

Harrington Mansion history

The Harrington Mansion was designated historic by the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission in 1988. This designation protects the external integrity of the historic property while allowing Saint Mary’s to make modern internal renovations.

To view photos, go to www.flickr.com/photos/64409651@N02.

To view a fact sheet about the buildings, go to http://saintmary.posterous.com/harrington-mansion-fact-sheet.

Master of Education in Teaching and Learning accredited in Jamaica

The Master of Education in Teaching and Learning program has been accredited by the University Council of Jamaica (UCJ), effective May 1, 2010. Saint Mary’s and the Catholic College of Mandeville, partner institutions in this venture, were notified by mail of this very important milestone in mid-June. This accreditation is official validation of the M.Ed. program by officials in Jamaica, adding to the previous approval by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, the regional accreditor of Saint Mary’s, over two years ago. The effective date (May 2010) of this accreditation has been back-dated by UCJ to include the first graduating community in Jamaica, normal procedure for program accreditation by UCJ in Jamaica.

The M.Ed. program has graduated 50 students in its first two learning communities. Currently, there are 35 students in the second year of the program, with plans to begin another new community this September. The program began delivery in the summer of 2008 after three years of planning between the partner institutions.

Homecoming draws 400 alumni

Brother John Grover greets a couple of alums at the picnic.

A few alums from the 50th anniversary class enjoyed a trolley tour of Winona.

A full weekend of activities drew 400 alums during Homecoming June 24-26. Check out the more than 400 pictures and the online highlight video. The energy from the weekend was high, and alumni were thankful for the opportunity to connect with each other and with the university. Thanks go to faculty and staff who found the time to take part in this activity-filled weekend and for all those who worked hard to prepare campus for these events. Together we are building important connections with our alumni community that strengthen our future. Go to www.smumn.edu/alumniphotos to view photos from the weekend; to see a video of activities, go to www.smumn.edu/hcvideo.

Tom Farren Memorial Golf Classic is July 24

The fourth annual Tom Farren Memorial Golf Classic (formerly the Saint Mary’s Golf Classic) is scheduled for Sunday, July 24, at Cedar Valley Golf Course. The four-person scramble has a 9 a.m. shotgun start and is a fundraiser for SMU golf. The entry fee is $80 per person and includes a Sunday brunch (7:30 to 8:30 a.m.), a Saint Mary’s logo shirt, and 18 holes of golf with a cart. Raffle prizes are available, team prizes will be awarded, and games will include: closest to pin, long drive, longest putt and closest to pin in two shots on designated holes. The deadline to register is Monday, July 11. Send check and shirt sizes for foursomes to the Cedar Valley Golf Course, P.O. Box 1148, Winona, MN; (507) 457-3129.

Employees get discount to Great River Shakespeare Festival

As a sponsor of the Great River Shakespeare Festival, all employees of Saint Mary's University are entitled to a 15 percent discount on tickets.

Season 8 includes “King Henry IV, Part 1”; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; and “The Fantasticks” from through July 31.

Call the box office at 474-7900 and tell them you’re an employee of Saint Mary’s to get your discounted tickets. For more information, go to http://grsf.org.

Two organizations honored by Minnesota Campus Compact

Two Saint Mary’s University groups and organizations received Presidents’ Awards from the Minnesota Campus Compact in the areas of Student Leadership, Civic Engagement and Company Partnership in June at the Minnesota Campus Compact’s Annual Summit and Awards Luncheon.

The Presidents’ Awards provide an opportunity for university presidents and chancellors to give statewide recognition to effective leaders in the development of campus-community partnerships.

Receiving awards from Saint Mary’s are:

Presidents’ Student Leadership Award — SMU Student-Athletes. This award is for an individual student or a student organization that models a deep commitment to civic responsibility and leadership.

Community Service has become a hallmark of SMU athletics, garnering national recognition in recent years. Amy Kujak, a member of the women’s volleyball team and the Cardinal Athletic Council, represented the athletes for this award. In 2007, the CAC organized efforts to assist area flood ravaged communities. These efforts led to the nation’s top community service award for NCAA Division III athletic departments, the Josten’s Community Service Award. In 2008-09, student-athletes culminated a year of volunteering with a spring CAC Play for Shay Day, inviting children from local communities to the SMU campus for an afternoon of sporting activities and a silent auction. Proceeds were donated to a family with a child battling cancer. The student-athletes again received the Josten’s Community Service Award-Honorable Mention, for a variety of activities during 2009-10, including raising money for cancer research, volunteering with elementary children and collecting and donating food and Christmas gifts. Approximately 300 student-athletes volunteered more than 2,000 hours, raising $5,000 for charitable and community service causes. In 2010-11, efforts have included cancer awareness, painting classrooms at area schools and food drives.

Presidents’ Civic Engagement Steward Award — the Winona Campus Volunteer Committee. This award is for a member of the faculty, administration or staff, or for a group (advisory committee, task force, project team) that has significantly advanced their campus’ distinctive civic mission by forming strong partnerships, supporting others’ civic engagement, and worked to institutionalize a culture and practice of engagement.

The volunteer committee, formed in 2001, is dedicated to bringing faculty and staff together in service to the community. Laurie Haase, a member of the committee, represented the committee members for this award. The group has been involved with a number of activities including Gifts for Winona, United Way’s Day of Caring, Habitat for Humanity, Spruce Up Winona, Adopt-A-River, Hurricane Katrina and Haiti earthquake relief, flood relief, and raising money for CTIE.

For nine years, the WCVC has managed Gifts for Winona’s program database, provided facilities and volunteers to manage gift collection, wrapping and pickup and raised funds. The program has provided Christmas gifts annually to 1,200-1,846 individuals, mostly children. Over the nine years of existence, the program has provided gifts to more than 13,244 individuals.

Dale Warland leads Minnesota Beethoven Festival Chorale at Chapel

Dale Warland leads a rehearsal of the Minnesota Beethoven Festival Chorale in the Chapel of Saint Mary of the Angels.

Renowned choral conductor Dale Warland returns to Winona to lead the Minnesota Beethoven Festival Chorale in two performances of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s beloved All-Night Vigil at SMU’s Chapel of Saint Mary of the Angels. Additionally, SMU’s Patrick O’Shea is part of the chorale.
Performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 9, and 3 p.m. Sunday, July 10, at Chapel of Saint Mary of the Angels. Tickets are $25, $21 students and seniors .

Minnesota Public Radio’s Brian Newhouse joins Dale Warland and the chorale to host this unique musical event. For more information, go to www.mnbeethovenfestival.com.

Countdown to College runs July 16-Aug. 6

Saint Mary’s will conduct its second annual Countdown to College July 16-Aug. 6 on its Winona campus. This two-week program for students from under-resourced communities will be offered to students each year for four years, beginning just after they complete eighth grade and continuing until they reach college age — helping to assure each student is prepared for a successful college experience.

The camp is completely free to student participants from San Miguel and Nativity Schools, their parents (who come the first weekend) and teachers from their schools, who co-teach with SMU instructors, and help prepare SMU instructors on how to effectively work with this growing population of students. Twenty-five students participated last summer. In addition to welcoming back these 25 participants, SMU also welcomes 25 new incoming ninth graders. Each group of 25 is here for two weeks, and they overlap on campus one week.

This is one portion of Saint Mary’s First-Generation Initiative, a program designed to offer academic, financial and personal support to first-generation students as they transition into higher education.

Lueck to compete in Dancing with Winona Stars

Forty local stars — including Terrie Lueck, SMU director of conferencing and camps — are getting ready to dance the night away for charity this summer during the 3rd Annual Dancing with Winona Stars.

The event will be held Saturday, Aug. 13, at SMU’s Gostomski Fieldhouse and will be sponsored by the Gotta Dance Competition Group. The pre-show begins at 7 p.m., and the competition begins at 7:30 p.m.

Last year over 1,000 people attended the show and more than $10,000 was raised for local charities. Lueck is raising money for SMU’s First-Generation Initiative.

This year will feature 11 individual stars dancing with Gotta Dance Instructors and five star groups that will be performing a variety of styles from rhumba to hip hop.

Tables are available for $250 and include hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar, reserved seating and early admission at 5 p.m.

Single tickets with hors d’oeuvres and early admission at 5 p.m. are $25 and show-only tickets with 7 p.m. admission are $10 or $20 at the door.

For more information, visit www.dancingwithwinonastars.com or call Gotta Dance at (507) 474-7077.

Ice cream social scheduled for July 28

The Winona Volunteer Committee will host an old fashioned ice cream social on Thursday, July 28, from 2-3 p.m. Enjoy a bean bag toss, ladder golf, water balloon toss and a cherry pit spitting contest. Prizes will be awarded. Cool off with “free-will” rootbeer floats and pie (at $1 per slice). Mark your calendars for July 28 for a fun summer celebration that will benefit CTIE in Nairobi.

SMU welcomes Flying Foot Forum

Joe Chvala and the Flying Foot Forum will present an evening of intricately layered percussive footwork for Saint Mary’s first “Off the Page” event Saturday, July 23.

Audiences are invited to watch what the Minneapolis Star Tribune coined as “fierce exhilarating dancemaking” at 8 p.m. in the Valéncia Arts Center, located at 10th and Vila streets.

The Flying Foot Forum is a vibrant and bold percussive dance/theater company that fuses percussion and percussive dances with many other forms of music, dance and theater, telling unusual tales, creating a wild variety of characters, and exploring universal ideas in inventive and exciting new ways.

Chvala has worked as a director, choreographer, writer, composer, performer, and teacher for opera companies, experimental and nonexperimental theatres, concert dance venues, performing arts academies, and universities. Located in Minneapolis since 1990, Chvala previously worked in New York and Gothenburg, Sweden.

Tickets are $15 for adults or $10 for seniors and students and are available at the SMU Box Office, (507) 457-1715, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays or online at www.pagetheatre.org.

In conjunction with their visit, Chvala and the dancers will present a free lecture/demonstration on the history of tap and jazz dance at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 21, at the Valéncia Arts Center. The artists will also conduct master classes with Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts students July 22-23. For more information, call (507) 453-5500 or go to www.mnconservatoryforthearts.org.

Saint Mary’s “Off The Page” events feature Minnesota artists in venues around town throughout the year. Enjoy additional Page Series-quality performances at other convenient, accessible locations in Winona!

Saint Mary’s is a fiscal year 2011 recipient of an Institutional Presenter Support grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4, 2008.

Tegrity recordings to be deleted Aug. 1

The IT Department will delete Tegrity recordings from the SMU Tegrity database on Aug. 1, 2011.

Only Tegrity files from the semesters of 2009W1, 2009W2, 2009W3, 2009M1, 2009M2, 2009M3, 2010W1 and 2010M1 or prior will be deleted.

2010W2, 2010W3, 2010M2, and 2010M3 will remain intact, as well as any organizations or courses that don’t match that naming criteria.

If there are recordings you would like to keep from a previous semester, there are three options available to you.

1) Move those recording(s) to a current semester offering.

2) Create an Image CD of the classes you would like to archive. This process zips up the recordings into a file that you can then extract and save.

3) Log a call at the Helpdesk to request that we not delete those class recordings.

The HelpDesk will need to have the specific course ID to pass along to IT staff.

Please email helpdesk@smumn.edu or call Ext. 7800, if you have any questions or concerns regarding this matter.

Please note that unless you contact the Helpdesk, Tegrity files listed above will be deleted. This will only delete Tegrity recordings, it does not affect the course listings in Blackboard in any way.

Heukeshoven to teach, compose, perform jazz this weekend

A. Eric Heukeshoven, SMU Music Department, will be one of six regional educators serving as faculty for the 7th annual Dixieland Jazz Workshop sponsored by Winona State University. The workshop promotes a better understanding of traditional “Dixieland” jazz in middle and high school aged students through teaching and performance.

As part of the program, Heukeshoven has been commissioned to compose a new piece of music expressly for this year’s group of students. “Strollin’ Down the Lane With You” is a work inspired by jazz great Thomas “Fats” Waller. The new composition is Heukeshoven’s 4th commission for the annual event. His first — “Woodshed Stomp” — was
premiered at the inaugural workshop in 2005.

Following a day of rehearsals, lecture/performances, and individual instruction, the students will kick-off the 24th annual Dixieland Festival sponsored by the Upper Mississippi Jazz Society on Saturday, July 9, from 10:30 a.m. until noon at the Goodview Pavillion (6th
Street & 44th Avenue). In addition to playing with the workshop students on Saturday morning, Heukeshoven will also perform later in the day on piano and trombone with the Turkey River All-Stars. The group has a 44-year history of playing traditional jazz and is led by Minnesota Music Hall of Famer Les Fields.

The UMJS Festival is free and open to the public and runs from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Food and beverages will also be available for purchase
at the event.

For more information, contact Eric Heukeshoven at Ext. 7292 or eheukesh@smumn.edu.

Jazz notes

Swing Inc. will perform today, Friday, July 8, from 7 -10 p.m. at Signature’s Restaurant, 22852 County Road 17.

Quilters Guild show on display at SMU

The summer show, “Beneath the Covers: The Winona Area Quilters’ Guild” will be on display at Saint Mary’s Lillian Davis Hogan Galleries through Aug. 14.

A huge variety of full-size quilts, as well as other quilted pieces — ranging from traditional patterns to very graphic and experimental ones — will be on display.

The galleries — free and open to the public — are open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

SMU community members perform in municipal band

Come and enjoy the sounds of band music at the Lake Park Bandshell each Wednesday evening from 8 to 9 p.m. (Concerts are canceled if it rains.)

The band features a wide variety of music including show tunes, marches, overtures and concert pieces. Bring a chair or blanket or sit on the benches provided by the city and enjoy the free concerts every Wednesday evening through mid-August.

‘Campus Notes’ will continue every other Friday

“Campus Notes” will continue every other Friday during the summer including July 22, Aug. 5, and Aug. 19. The deadline for each issue is noon the previous Wednesday.

Sympathy to Jarvinen family

Dr. Richard “Dick” Jarvinen, who served as professor of math and statistics at Saint Mary’s from 1972 through 1990, died Wednesday, July 6. Fawcett-Junker Funeral Home is handling the funeral arrangements. Survivors include his son Caleb '90. The Saint Mary’s community extends its sympathy to the Jarvinen family.