Dr. Judy Ackerman, co-chair of the statewide ASE (Associate of Science in Engineering) Oversight Council moderated a panel “What Challenges is the ASE poised to address?” at the statewide kick-off of the new ASE degree. Dr. Lan Xiang, professor of Engineering and co-chair of the Faculty Discipline group, was a panelist.

This semester members of “Our Rockville Campus Community” will host activities and events that will bring us together to reinforce a healthy and enjoyable campus environment. Our Rockville Campus Community is rich with staff and faculty who have special talents, hobbies, and interests that will be highlighted throughout the academic year to foster greater involvement within the campus community and provide additional opportunities to get to know one another. The activities include: (1) Morning Badminton: Large gym PE119, Tuesday and Thursday from 7:45 am to 8:45 am. Open to players of all levels for an hour of fun before work. (2) Campus NoonWalk: Wednesdays at Noon. Forty-five minutes of an easy/moderate walk around campus. (3) Farmer’s Market: A four day event held last month, featuring Chartwell’s use of produce from local farmers. Their executive chef prepared delicious new menu items featuring the produce. We hope this becomes a regular seasonal event. (4) What’s On Your Mind? will be held for the second time this fall on November 3 in Humanities 009 from 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm. This is an opportunity for the Rockville campus community to discuss topics of interest with Dr. Ackerman. (5) Innovations in the Classroom / Scholarship of Teaching will be held on Wednesday, October 14, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm in Macklin Tower, room 105. This is an informal joint discussion about initiatives and programs that are being developed in the classroom. (6) Rockville campus honors students will have Pizza with the Provost on October 20 at 2:00 pm. and (7) International Day of Peace Event: The 3rd Annual Rockville Campus Volunteer Fair was held from 11:30 am – 1:30 am on Thursday September 24. Approximately sixty organizations were on campus to share their volunteer opportunities.

Art
Professor Tendai Johnson was prominently featured in a September 27th article in the Washington Post Magazine entitled, Art@Work. This five-page article about a shared arts space in the District of Columbia sheds light on Professor Johnson's poignant images and personal background. Dr. Percy North attended the opening of Cezanne and American Modernism for which she contributed an essay for the catalogue on Max Weber, at the Montclair Art museum on September 11. The exhibition will come to the Baltimore Museum of Art in February. An article entitled "Ten ways to fix values in watercolor" will appear in the November issue of American Artist Magazine. The article written by Adjunct Professor David Daniels describes the process of using black and white watercolor on gray paper to establish good tonal relationships in a painting. Adjunct Professor Nancy Ungar participated in the A.I.R. Gallery exhibition "Wish You Were Here" in New York City. The biennial “Shades of Pastel” national juried exhibition will be at Strathmore Hall from September 26 through early November. Adjunct Professors Jean Hirons and Muriel Ebitz, Lieta Gerson, Phil Bennet, Carol Greenwald were selected to show their works in the exhibition.

Athletics
Rockville athletes and coaches are in the middle of the fall season. The men’s soccer team are the defending Maryland JUCO champions and currently ranked 5th. The women are also defending Maryland JUCO champs and have an undefeated record of 6-0. This record earned the team a number one national ranking by the NJCAA. This is the first time in Montgomery College’s history to have the top ranked women’s soccer team nationally. The women’s tennis teams are preparing to recapture the National Championship as they did in 2001 and 2006. Coach Bobby Finney has nothing but confidence and high expectation for the team this year. Our women’s volleyball team is in 7th place and sporting a record of 5-4. This has much to do with the fact they have defeated two Division II schools within the State of Maryland. All of our fall teams are in full swing and looking forward to playoffs in October and early November.

Computer Science and Information & Interactive Technologies
Professor Alla Webb will be presenting on “Simulation related to Next Generation FAA Air traffic Control” at The World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2009 in San Francisco, October 20-22, 2009. Professor Terri Maradei completed two workshops to become a Quality Matters Distance Learning Course Peer Reviewer.

Education
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference will be held in Washington, D.C., on November 18-21.Forty-seven education students from Montgomery College will support this conference as volunteers. Students who volunteer/work one full day (8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.) will receive a complimentary registration for the entire conference. That's a savings for our students of $129 (NAEYC full-time student member rate) or $189 (full-time student non-member rate) per person! Our faculty members are very excited for our students who will take this great opportunity for their professional growth. The NAEYC is the largest early childhood education conference in the world, where tens of thousands of educators choose from hundreds of presentations and exhibits.

Honors Program
Montgomery College completed its responsibilities as host of the 2009 Beacon Conference on September 25, 2009, at the Beacon Steering Committee Meeting with the distribution of the 2009 Conference Proceedings. The conference, which took place on June 5, 2009, at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus received 107 submissions from honors students representing a consortium of 17 community colleges. Seventeen different MC faculty members mentored the 37 students who submitted papers to the college. Eighteen students were selected as finalists to present their papers on discipline panels, and an additional 6 students presented their work in a poster session. Montgomery College students received the outstanding paper award on 8 of the 15 discipline panels. The National Collegiate Honors Council Conference will be held in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 28th through November 1st. Joan Naake, Carole Wolin, Rick Penn, Steve Lang, and Mary Furgol will be leading a roundtable entitled “Strengths, Challenges, and New Directions: A Two-Year College Multi-Campus Honors Program”. Professor Lucy Laufe will be presenting a panel with Laura Damuth from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln on “Major Scholarship Advising: Strategies for Identifying and Mentoring Students.” Professor Laufe is also part of a panel with Honors Program directors from Community college of Allegheny County, Miami Dade College, and Collin Community College entitled “Multi-Campus Honors programs in the Global City: Fostering Communities Across the Institutional Divide.” The Honors Program has launched a Facebook group page as an effort to foster community with honors students and more effectively disseminate information about co-curricular activities and transfer information. Dr. Judy Ackerman and Dr. Sanjay Rai will be hosting a Pizza with the Provost meeting for Honors Program students on Tuesday, October 20th at Rockville, and Tuesday, October 27th at Germantown.

Hospitality Management
In mid-September, Hospitality Management students, led by Professor Saros, co-hosted with the Hospitality Program UMES@Shady Grove, a dinner for the Marriott Corp. International and the Marriott Foundation to honor a Marriott employee who was selected to be this year’s “Face of Travel” by the US Travel Association. Hospitality students from MC and from UMES@Shady Grove planned, prepared, and served the meal for approximately 100 people including the honoree, Marriott senior management, Marriott Foundation representatives, and MC faculty and staff.

Interior Design
Interior Design Program students are participating in The Historic Ellicott City Decorator Show House. This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the HEC’s Decorator Show House Project. Wun-ee Chin, a current Interior Design student, who has her own design business, also has a room there. The Interior Design Alumni Chapter met for a planning session and happy hour at Clyde's Tower Oaks on Tuesday, September 22. Alumni Chapter Liaison Helen Youth and Interior Design Professor Jill Irey met with the Interior Design alumni members Jeanne Blackburn, Susan Ives, Emilia Lipsman and Sue Hulse. They were joined briefly by Anne White and BOT member, Gloria Aparico Blackwell. Last year, the group sponsored a "green" speaker event and plans to consider additional activities, both for the professional membership and for current students. In May, our first students, Margaret Curtner and Claudia Hampsher, graduated with the newly accredited NKBA Track A.A.S. These two students also passed the NKBA (National Kitchen and Bath Association) AKBD (Associate Kitchen and Bath Designer) exam. Another, Vivi Flanagan, passed the exam and is slated to graduate this semester. At the end of May, a team from the Interior Design Club volunteered to set up vignettes at the Habitat for Humanity store, Restore. Furniture sales have increased and the students plan to volunteer again this semester to stage the furniture section again. Aliette Cottin, an Interior Design student, received a scholarship from the NEWH, the Hospitality Industry Network.

Macklin Business Institute
In September, four MBI students, accompanied by MBI Director Steve Lang and Professor Brian Baick, traveled to Chicago for the Loyola Marymount University (LMU) 2009 Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC). This competition challenges students to: (1) select a current ethical issue facing a company, then analyze the issue from legal, financial, and ethical perspectives; (2) propose a solution: and (3) defend their proposal before a panel of judges. The MBI team of sophomores Ksenia Prokunina, Crystal Quinones, Ricardo Camacho, and Andrew O’Connor won, for the first time ever, the Emmons Award for the overall champion. This is quite an accomplishment as the number of overall participants comprised college seniors, college graduates, MBA students and graduates who outnumbered sophomore participants by more than 5 to 1. Due to budget constraints, funding for the trip was not initially available; however, the director of LMU’s Center for Ethics stepped up with a $3200 travel grant. He said it was important for MC students to be at the event because he considered Montgomery College “one of the competition’s greatest success stories.” He echoed those sentiments again after our students were named the overall winner.

Paul Peck Humanities Institute
I wanted to forward an update to you on behalf of the Paul Peck Humanities Institute concerning the Portraits of Life project. This past summer, the Humanities Institute received another grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County to continue the collaboration between Montgomery College and the county public schools in terms of teaching the Holocaust to middle and high school students. The project involves exhibiting documentary photographic panels, representing Holocaust survivors, some of whom will also speak to the students in person about their experiences. The grant stipulates that PPHI will visit eight schools this year, which might include Westland Middle School, Julius West Middle School, Rockville High School, Clarksburg High School, among others. As of this moment, the first exhibition of Portraits of Life will take place at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring starting in November. PPHI has collaborated with this school twice as their Humanities Magnet Program is an excellent fit in terms of finding creative and rigorous ways to discuss the history of genocide, racism, and intolerance.

Psychology
Dr. Don Palmer gave a speech to the Friend’s Retirement Community entitled “What is Normal Adjustment” on Wednesday, September 23, 2009.

Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
This fall, the Department’s Anthropology Club became official. The mission of the Montgomery College Anthropology Club (sponsored by Dr. Maria Sprehn) is to promote cultural appreciation of the present and past through the study of humankind. Events, activities, and advocacy focus on the diversity of MC’s community and its global connections. More than eighty students signed up for the club during Club Involvement fest. The club has a Facebook group account with a growing number of members. In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the club sponsored a presentation by archaeologist and faculty member, Dr. Robinson, on her research in the Guatemalan Highlands. The club will be sponsoring a dialogue on what it means to be Hispanic. Additionally the club has launched a video contest on “Culture Shock.” The contest is open to all members of the MC Community.

Professor Sean Fay helps coordinate the “Boots to Books” program at the college. This program helps veterans and active military personal get adapted to college life through a number of activities and mentoring. Professor Fay is also one of the sponsors of the club for veterans and active military students, which is connected to MC’s Combat2College program. Dr. Vicky Dorworth continues to be an active participant of the Community Advisory Committee for the Montgomery County Dept. of Corrections. Professor Stone received a $10,800 Perkins Grant for the Criminal Justice program. The funds will be used for supplies to enhance the forensic science and criminal investigations classes, and to host pre-employment training for individuals seeking careers in law enforcement. The grant will also allow CJ faculty the opportunity to attend the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences annual convention. This year’s theme is “Beyond Our Boundaries: The Inclusivity of Criminal Justice Sciences”. The CJ program, with collaboration with the Montgomery County Department of Police and the Montgomery County Department of Corrections, will reassess its AAS degree to help better prepare students for careers in criminal justice.

Assistant Professor Cynthia Pfanstiehl is the recipient of an Anthropology Matters grant. This grant program is the legacy of Dr. Mary Gallagher, who worked as an anthropology instructor at Montgomery College for over 25 years and retired in 2008. The grant will fund Professor Pfanstiehl’s work on the archaeological investigations done to date at the historic James Hanson Miles Site (18MO498). Under the guidance of Anthropology professors, AN105 and AN202 students have been excavating at the Miles Site as part of their course work during various field sessions since 2008. This antebellum house site has yielded thousands of artifacts. The Miles Site archeological investigation is part of a much larger project that is being undertaken by archaeologists at Maryland National Capital Park and Planning. Dr. Eugenia Robinson continues to research the Nursery Site in the Chevy Chase area, a site with 7,000 years of prehistory, for a site report.

Student Development
The college-wide Counseling Training Group, an ad hoc committee of the Advising Steering Group, had the first in a series of advising trainings aimed at new counseling and instructional faculty. The series is part of the CTL Friday trainings for new faculty professional development opportunities. The Rockville First Year Experience Team in conjunction with Service Learning will work on a Habitat for Humanity Build on October 10, 2009. Professors Joan Hawkins (R) and Anne Schleicher (GT) continue to work with Ms. Debra Harris, EVP’s office, to develop a process to establish criteria for evaluating articulation agreements. Rockville campus Transfer Day was held on September 30th, featuring over 30 local and out-of-state colleges and universities (including Columbia University and Pennsylvania State University). Transfer Council is scheduled to meet on October 21st to discuss partnerships with four-year institutions, promotion of transfer information and other issues relevant to transfer. The Council typically meets at least once a semester and comprises faculty and staff from all three campuses.