The list of McNAir Scholars includes the following students:

Kimberly Arnold is a Gates Millennium Scholar and will attend the Master of Public Health program at Drexel University.

Lenise Bennett will attend the master of Public Health program at the University of Miami.

Jessica Branton and Kirstie Sims will earn master’s degrees from The Citadel. Sims plans to earn her M.Ed. in Counselor Education.

Whitney Gibbs and Ariana Renrick will each receive $28,000 a year as part of the Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) at the University of South Carolina.

Javier Gomez-Lavin will receive $35,000/year, plus tuition, plus health insurance to earn his Ph.D. in philosophy at City University of New York (CUNY). Gomez-Lavin’s research was published twice and presented at 10 conferences while he was an undergraduate. At CUNY, he has already earned CUNY’s Enhanced Chancellors Fellowship, the Dean K. Harrison Award and the Mellon Foundation Fellowship.

Katherine Gumps will receive $24,000/year, plus tuition, plus health insurance to earn her Ph.D. in neurobiology and behavior at the University of Washington. Gumps spent four years conducting undergraduate research, participating in scholarship programs (including the National Institute of Health’s Undergraduate Scholarship Program), and being featured in numerous College publications.

Laura Jackson will receive $26,000/year plus tuition to earn her Ph.D. in genetics and genomic science at the University of Alabama.

Candice Ulmer will receive $22,000/year, plus tuition, plus health insurance to earn her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Florida. Ulmer earned more than 14 awards while at the College.

“The McNair Scholars Program helped me to clarify, focus on and adequately plan for my beginning career in academia,” Javier Gomez-Lavin says. “Had it not been for their support, and structured time windows that they had, I do now know if I would have been able to have the uniquely situated CV that I had when I applied for grad school.”

The College of Charleston is one of three South Carolina universities to host the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program.

The McNair Scholars Program provides special opportunities to academically promising undergraduate students who have an interest in attending graduate school and completing their PhD. Each year, 25 undergraduate students will receive special preparation for doctoral programs. Preparation will include a summer research experience, service learning, coursework, a workshop series and advising to prepare these students for successful completion of graduate degrees.

Services provided under the McNair Scholars Program include the opportunity to engage in academic research, mentoring, academic advising and non-credit workshops, as well as assistance with securing admission to, as well as financial support for, enrollment in graduate level and doctoral programs. Students receive a stipend linked to the accomplishment of specific academic milestones. Once they have successfully completed the program, they will be eligible for special graduate scholarships and fellowships at universities across the country.

To be considered for acceptance into the McNair Scholars Program, students must be College of Charleston undergraduates serious about pursuing a PhD who have earned at least 60 credit hours by the end of the spring semester of application, have a 3.0 GPA or higher, and plan to pursue a Ph.D. They must also be low-income (as defined by the U.S. Department of Education), first-generation college students and/or be from a population group that is underrepresented in graduate education.

For more information, contact program specialist Marta Rivell at 843.953.6755 or McNair@cofc.edu.

 I.    Discussion Items

1. Overview of Budgetary Process
2. Budgetary Schedule

i.         June 4 – Budget & Finance Committee Meeting

ii.         June 11 – Board of Trustees Meeting

Action Items – None

Other Business

This season marked the first time that the Cougars won both the Player and Pitcher of the Year in the same season. The College of Charleston has won the SoCon Player of the Year in four of the last five seasons as Jeremie Tice (2008), Joey Bergman (2009), Matt Leeds (2010) and now Marty Gantt (2012) have all been honored. The Cougars’ last Pitcher of the Year award came in 2007 when Nick Chigges won the honor.

Both Gantt and Powell were named to the All-Southern Conference First Team. Sophomore Brandon Murray and junior Bradley Goodson earned a spot on the All-Southern Conference Second Team.

A native of North Augusta, S.C., Gantt finished third in the conference with a .369 batting average and a league-best 62 runs scored. He finished second in doubles (19) and third in stolen bases (25), while leading the SoCon in walks (41) and on-base percentage (.481). Gantt is a semifinalist for the Dick Howser Award and was named to the USA Golden Spikes Award Watch List.

Powell led the Southern Conference with an ERA of 2.32 while he posted a record of 9-3 on the season. The Greenwood, S.C. native was second in opposing batting average (.230) as he had 69 strikeouts with just 24 walks.

In his first season as a starter, Murray led the Cougars with 11 home runs and finished third on the team with a batting average of .315. He earned SoCon Player of the Week on March 26.

Transferring to the College from Central Florida Community College, Goodson finished second on the team with 42 RBI while he hit .292. He earned SoCon Player of the Week honors in week nine.

2012 SoCon Baseball All-Conference Team

Player of the Year – Marty Gantt, Sr., OF, College of Charleston

Pitcher of the Year – Christian Powell, Jr., RHP, College of Charleston

Freshman of the Year – Chase Griffin, C, Georgia Southern

Coach of the Year – Chris Pollard, Appalachian State

First Team

SP Christian Powell, College of Charleston

SP Josh Martin, Samford

RP Preston Hatcher, Western Carolina

C Alex Swim, Elon

1B Saxon Butler, Samford

2B Ross Heffley, Western Carolina

SS Will Callaway, Appalachian State

3B Eric Phillips, Georgia Southern

OF Marty Gantt, College of Charleston

OF Phillip Ervin, Samford

OF Brandon Miller, Samford

DH Daniel Kassouf, Appalachian State

Second Team

SP Ryan Arrowood, Appalachian State

SP Brandon Yarusi, Wofford

RP C.K. Irby, Samford

C Brad Moss, Samford

1B Ryan Kinsella, Elon

2B Hector Crespo, Appalachian State

SS Bradley Goodson, College of Charleston

3B Thomas Troelstrup, UNCG

OF Tyler Tewell, Appalachian State

OF Tyler Zupcic, Appalachian State

OF Brandon Murray, College of Charleston

DH Jacob Hoyle, Western Carolina

All-Freshman Team

Brandon Burris, Appalachian State

Jamie Nunn, Appalachian State

Kevin Connell, The Citadel

Mason Davis, The Citadel

Henry Sisson, Davidson

Chris Ohmstede, Furman

Elliott Warford, Furman

Tyler Avera, Georgia Southern

Chase Griffin, Georgia Southern

Jacob Hoyle, Western Carolina

Jeremy Null, Western Carolina

Bradley Strong, Western Carolina

“Past SURF grant recipients say the experience has prepared them well for post-graduate pursuits, particularly admission to top graduate schools and access to competitive jobs after graduation,” says Trisha Folds-Bennett, Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities. “Plus, SURF grants support faculty-student collaboration, one of the most enriching and rewarding experiences on an undergraduate campus.”

SURF grant recipients are awarded up to $6,500 and the student is expected to work 40 hours a week for 10 weeks. The culmination of the research is participation in the college-wide “Celebration of Summer Scholars: Exposition of Faculty and Student Research, Scholarship & Creativity at the College of Charleston”, which will be held on Monday, August 20, 2012. They are also required to submit a written project summary for public dissemination and are encouraged to submit results to regional, national and international publications.

Physics and Astronomy professor Linda Jones and Biology major Pooja Patel will be working with a doctor at Mayo Clinic to improve the results of photodynamic therapy (PDT) for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Psychology professor Jen Wright and students Evan Reinhold and Matthew Echols will study whether people are more motivated to become the self that they or the self that other people think they ought to be. They will have participants complete a personality survey, to which negative feedback will be given. Then the subjects will complete a survey asking questions about how motivated they are to develop those traits in the future.

Religious studies professor Katie Hladky and Women’s and Gender Studies major Meredith Porter will collect and analyze more than 30 oral histories from African Americans who attended church in Charleston during the Civil Rights Movement. The recordings will be archived in the Avery Research Center and the article will be submitted to national publications and conferences.

Geology and Environmental Geosciences professor K. Adem Ali and Physics and Astronomy professor Narayanan Kuthirummal and Geology major Morgan Shuman are hoping to develop robust algorithms that can estimate color producing agents (CPAs) from satellite data using analytical and multivariate techniques. This approach should apply to a variety of optically complex aquatic environments.

Music professor Blake Stevens and student Martin Dawson will study versions of Mozart’s Die Zauberflote and Die Enthfuhrung aus dem Serail performed in France. The project will compare the textual and musical material of the original German-language editions with the corresponding French editions and record all significant changes.

African American Studies professor Conseula Francis and psychology major Brittany Counts will be studying contemporary narratives of love and desire aimed at/about black women with a hypothesis that contemporary culture is full of anxiety-producing narratives painting black women as unlovable, unattractive, unrealistic in romantic relationships. The research will be published in a book entitled Standing Straight in a Crooked Room: Black female Desire in Popular Media.

Chemistry professor Neal Tonks and Biochemistry major Brett Snyder will work in partnership with a small industrial firm and two manufacturing firms to develop “green chemicals” for use in the polyurethane industry.

For more information on the SURF program and other research opportunities offered through the office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities go to their website: http://urca.cofc.edu.

“Finishing a college-level course, the students have mastered the critical content, and by coming to the College of Charleston, we can involve them in more open-ended experiments,” says Neal Tonks, chemistry professor. “Even in a one-day overview, students can use their knowledge to interpret the data, assess whether their current understanding of the underlying theories agrees with the results they achieve, and formulate new experiments based on these techniques. By working at the College of Charleston, they can use state of the art spectral analysis equipment to see how their theoretical knowledge can be of use experimentally.”

The chemistry students will be in an organic chemistry lab in room 105 of the School of Sciences and Mathematics Building (corner of Calhoun and Coming Streets). They will be synthesizing biodiesel fuel from organic soybean oil and corn oil using a variety of experimental conditions, and then characterizing the materials using modern instrumental analysis techniques.

The biology students will be in the third floor Jennings biochemistry lab in the School of Sciences and Mathematics Building monitoring the formation of a colored antibody-enzyme complex by means of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect the presence of an antibody or an antigen in a sample that can be used to detect pathogens in the environment.

There is a critical need to increase student involvement in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields overall in this country, and the School of Sciences and Mathematics at the College is always interested in recruiting students who have an interest in the sciences, and convincing them it is an exciting, vibrant field of endeavor. Academic Magnet is one of the top schools in the nation, so the School is interested in increasing the number of science students who come to the College from there.

This is a pilot program. Over the next few years, the hope is to expand it to have students across the tri-county area experience science in a deeper way.

For more information, contact Neal Tonks at 843.953.7543.

The history professor’s sixth manuscript is an American horror historical study that explores America’s fascination with monsters. The book examines how these narratives have intersected with topics in American history ranging from race to gender and sexuality.  Poole has blended distinctive newspaper accounts, archival materials, personal papers, comic books, films and oral histories together to create this engrossing narrative.

“Monsters are not just fears of the individual psyche,” Scott Poole explains, “But are concoctions of the pubic imagination—reactions to cultural influences, social change, and historical events.”

Monsters in America was recently given the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association’s (PCA/ACA) 2012 John W. Cawelti Award for the Best Textbook/Primer published in 2011.

Poole holds a Ph.D in American history from the University of Mississippi.  He is also the author of Satan in America: The Devil We Know, The Palmetto State: The Making of Modern South Carolina, Never Surrender, South Carolina’s Civil War, and Vale of Tears: New Essays in Religion and Reconstruction.

For more information, contact Scott Poole at poolews@cofc.edu.

“We want these students to leave our campus knowing that higher education is an option for them,” says Debbie Counts, associate director of admissions. “We also want this to jump start their high school career so as a freshman in high school, they understand what is needed to get into college, what grades they will need, and how a college education can impact their career.”

The College of Charleston Office of Admissions and Multicultural Student Programs and Services have partnered to provide this experience. Students will stay in residence halls, eat meals at campus dining facilities, tour the campus, visit Grice Marine Lab, the Natural Science Museum and Addlestone Library.

College of Charleston faculty and staff will also be offering the following workshops for students: Middle to High – What’s the Difference?, The Leader in “YOU”, and Summer Reading. Six to 10 College of Charleston students will also be working with the eighth graders while they are on campus.

This project is funded by a HEAP grant awarded by the State Department of Education (http://www.sccango.org/heap-incentive-grant-content.html) and the College of Charleston.

For more information, contact Debbie Counts at 843.953.4954.

Tessa Garton will teach an anthropology class entitled “Medieval Imagery and its Legacy in the Modern World: the ‘Holy Grail’ and other Relics.” Henry Xie will teach “Sports Marketing,” Doug Walker will teach the “Economics of Gambling,” and computer science professor Aspen Olmstead will teach “Game Development with Java.

“Arts and the Media at Spoleto” is taught by Jeanette Guinn, host of Arts Daily on ETV Radio, the S.C. NPR affiliate, and offers real experienceworking on the preproduction for the daily hour-long radio coverage of Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo Spoleto. Artist research, scheduling, question development, interviewing, app development, broadcast programming, social media, promotion, marketing, script writing, voice over, media relations, and remote and studio video and audio recording and editing will be included. Read the student’s blog posts on the project.

Students interested in music can take either Edward Hart’s “New Wave: Music of the 1980′s” or Blake Stevens’ “Music of the Beatles.” Both courses will look at the influential groups, cultural relevancy and development of the style.

There is also an online course dedicated to popular music entitled “Like A Rolling Stone: History and Development of Rock Music” taught by Yiorgos Vassilandonakis in the music department. Like A Rolling Stone will trace the origins, development and stylistic nuances of rock music from its folk and blues beginnings via Elvis, Bob Dylan and the British invasion through the Woodstock, Motown, California surf, Psychedelic, Hippie culture, Heavy Metal, and Grunge movements.

Or if technology is more your interest, take “Technology and The New Enterprise,” an online course that answers questions like: Is Facebook really worth $80 billion? Why was NetFlix able to repel Blockbuster and WalMart? Why is Google more profitable than Disney? Computer science faculty member Lancie Affonso will teach this introductory course.

Twelve students have been accepted in dental programs at the following schools for the coming year: Medical University of South Carolina, Ohio State University, University of Maryland, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, Temple University and Tufts University. Other outstanding College of Charleston graduates will be headed for clinical programs in veterinary medicine, pharmacy, physician assistant, physical therapy, occupational therapy, cardiovascular perfusion and nursing.

There are approximately 700 students in the pre-health loop at the College of Charleston, including medical, veterinary, dental, pharmacy, nursing, allied health, and health administration. Alpha Epsilon Delta, the CofC Chapter of the National Health Preprofessional Honor Society, has a membership in excess of 75 students who have spent the past year volunteering with local organizations, including the Ronald McDonald House, Hope Lodge, the Charleston Miracle League and Camp Happy Days. The Pre-Nursing Club, the Pre-Dental Club and the Pre-Vet Society have been involved in community outreach activities, fundraising and have offered professional development opportunities in CPR certification and standardized test prep. A growing number of pre-health students are becoming EMS certified and gaining clinical exposure through the First Responder Program on campus.

As competencies for medical schools and standardized tests are being revised, the College of Charleston is well-staged to meet the challenges according to Karen Eippert, director of pre-professional health advising. “As a liberal arts school, with a strong science curriculum, our students can choose from a wide range of courses and unique minors in areas like neuroscience and the behavioral sciences. Dental students can take sculpture classes to combine their creative and academic interests, medical students can combine the sciences with philosophy, biomedical ethics and the arts. Majors in exercise science and health and human performance attract students with an interest in science, but enjoy a more experiential academic program. Plus, a wide range of study abroad opportunities, for students to expand their worldview and gain a more global perspective of healthcare.”

During the past year, a growing number of College of Charleston alumni have been seeking motivated undergraduates for enhanced internship and mentoring opportunities in the Charleston area.

For more information, contact Karen Eippert at 843-953-6460.

“There is great work to be done in many fields,” said Locklear. “ I daresay there is a field of public service perfectly suited to every member of the 2012 graduating class. As you leave the College and embark on your life’s work, you have a responsibility to consider and an opportunity to enjoy the rewards of a life in public service.”

A 1973 graduate of the College of Charleston, Locklear began her career as an attorney at the Native American Rights Fund.  During her 35-year career in federal Indian law, she has represented tribes throughout the country in federal and state courts on treaty claims to water and land, taxation disputes with states and local authorities, reservation boundary issues, and federal recognition of tribes.

In 1984, Locklear appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, where she successfully challenged South Dakota’s authority to prosecute a Native American for on-reservation conduct.  In doing so, she was the first Native American woman to appear before the Court.

She has received numerous awards for fostering the development of women, among them a 2008 honor for her contributions to the American Indian community by the Conference of American Indian Women of Proud Nations.

Also during the ceremony, The College awarded honorary degrees to long-time philanthropists and community leaders Norman and Gerry Sue Arnold.

More than 1,400 students received their degrees in two ceremonies on the College of Charleston’s historic Cistern Yard on Saturday.