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Tara Prestholdt, biology, won the 2019 Excellence in Teaching Award at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association of College and University Biology Educators (ACUBE). The award is offered annually to honor faculty who both practice and promote effective, innovative teaching in the biology classroom.

While the entire campus is no doubt aware of Prestholdt’s polymathic proficiency, mathematics professor Stephanie Salomone explains it best: “Tara is a true mentor to her undergraduates. Tara’s expectations for her co-researchers are high. They will not just do good science, but they will be able to explain their work to people who are as far as possible from experts. They will not just enjoy science, or like science; they will find science exciting,the process of discovery exhilarating, and the difficult cognitive task of explaining science to laymen motivating. Every student that I’ve known who has worked in Tara’s lab has come out skilled in scientific research, and eager to get back into the lab or the field to do more.

“Further, Tara Prestholdt is dedicated to improving undergraduate education on campus and beyond. Tara’s work on the NSF-funded REFLECT project has helped transform the culture of undergraduate STEM education at UP into one that responds to the evidence of what makes for great teaching – active, hands-on, engaged approaches to instruction. She is a supportive mentor for other faculty who are new to evidence-based practices, she is innovative in her own approaches to teaching, and she is a leader who deeply deserves this recognition.”

All students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate in UP’s sixth annual ReadUP program. This year’s selection is The Leavers by Lisa Ko, who will speak on February 10, 2020 as part of this year’s annual Schoenfeldt Writers Series.

The Leavers, Ko’s 2017 debut novel, was a National Book Award finalist, winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, and was named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Bustle, Electric Literature, and others. According to a review in The Atlantic, “For topicality, Lisa Ko’s novel The Leavers, about an undocumented mother who suddenly disappears and the young American-born son she leaves behind, could hardly be better timed.”

ReadUP is the University’s annual celebration of literature in which the entire local campus community — students, faculty, and staff — are invited to read “one book together.” Free copies of each year’s selection are distributed by the Clark Library and in residence halls, and book discussion groups are formed in the residence halls and at faculty/staff brown bag lunches. The campaign culminates with a public lecture and discussion by the book’s author, as part of the Schoenfeldt Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. The author’s visit to the UP campus — and the efforts to get each year’s riveting selection into the hands, heads and hearts of UP students, faculty and staff — is sponsored by the Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writers Series, the Office of the Provost, Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life & American Culture, Clark Library, Office of Residence Life, the Office of University Relations, and the Office of Marketing and Communications.

To order your free copy, please click here. Orders will be taken starting Monday, October 21 through Friday, November 1. Starting Monday, November 11, students living in residence halls will pick up their books from their hall directors and for everyone else, books can be picked up from the Clark Library, any time between 7:30 a.m. and 10 p.m., at the main circulation desk.

All are welcome to join student activities in celebrating their annual Día de Muertos event, a night full of cultural celebration with authentic cuisine, educational performances, sugar skull decorating, music, and so much more, on Friday, November 1, at 6 p.m., in Bauccio Commons. Family members and the public are free to attend. To showcase a photo of a loved one for display the altar please email Stephen at laphen21@up.edu. Don’t forget to RSVP on Engage and please encourage participation from your students!

Catholics believe in the Communion of Saints—the spiritual connection with those loved ones who have gone before us and the saints that lived as examples for us. Through the month of November we remember all of those who have gone before us in faith, especially our loved ones who have died.  

Starting Monday, October 21, stations will be available in many offices around campus where anyone is welcome to inscribe the names of loved ones on a card and place it in the accompanying basket. The cards will be placed near the altar in the Chapel of Christ the Teacher during Mass for All Saints Day on Friday, November 1, and they will continue to be a focus of prayer throughout November, the month of remembrance. There is also an online form at this link.

We will also celebrate Mass on Sunday, November 17, at 10:30 a.m., with special intentions for the loved ones of our UP community who have died in the past year.

For more information contact Rev. Tim Weed, C.S.C., Campus Ministry, at x8919 or weed@up.edu.

The deadline for submitting a nomination for the 2020 Alumni Awards is October 15, 2019. If your nominee is selected as a finalist, members of the National Alumni Board will contact you to obtain more information about the individual you have recommended. Honorees will be chosen this fall, and will be celebrated at the President’s Alumni Awards Gala during Alumni Reunion Weekend in June 2020.

Kaiser Permanente has announced their 2019 walk-in flu shot clinics, which will take place from October 12 through 25:

• Saturday October 12 and 19: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Monday-Friday, October 14 through 25: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The flu is a serious virus that can cause severe illness. A flu shot can help protect you against the flu, which is why Kaiser doctors recommend that everyone 6 months of age and older get a flu shot every year.

Kaiser members can visit this website to find a location near them.

For more information contact Laura Barnard, human resources, at benefits@up.edu.

One of UP’s great treasures is our Heritage Edition of The Saint John’s Bible, the first hand calligraphed and illuminated bible text crafted in over 500 years. It serves as a tremendous resource for courses and prayer experiences on campus. If you would like to receive training in the proper handling of the texts, an overview of the whole manuscript and digital access to the 100-plus illuminations, you are welcome to attend one of two training sessions: Tuesday, October 1, at 4 p.m., or Monday, October 7, at 9:30 a.m. Both will be held in the Clark Library classroom, and the material in both sessions will be the same.

If you have any questions, please contact Karen Eifler (eifler@up.edu) in the Garaventa Center.

Join Robin Jensen, theology and art history professor at the University of Notre Dame, as she presents “The Cross and the Crucifix in Visual Art through the Ages” on Tuesday, September 24, at 7:15 p.m., in Franz Hall room 120. The event is free and open to all.

In this richly illustrated lecture, Jensen will explore how the Holy Cross and Christ’s Passion have been depicted in the history of Christian art. Jensen will also discuss reasons for the late emergence of both the cross and crucifixion in Christian iconography and consider the ways their depictions developed, varied, and were transformed in different places through the centuries.

Sponsored by the Garaventa Center. For ADA accommodations or more information go to x7702 or up.edu/garaventa.

Renowned author and Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson will present the 2019 Zahm Lecture, “Wisdom and Knowledge,” on Wednesday, September 11, at 7:15 p.m., in the Chiles Center. Robinson will touch upon the roles of wonder, grace, and imagination to explore intersections and disconnects between knowledge and wisdom in this lecture that is free and open to all. Doors will open at 6:15 p.m. with first-come, first-served seating. Additional parking available in the Franz river campus lot, with frequent shuttles up to the Chiles Center.

Robinson was the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by former President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” In 2016 she was awarded the Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award in American Fiction, as well as the Dayton Peace Prize’s Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2013, she was awarded South Korea’s Pak Kyong-ni Prize for her contribution to international literature. She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, and Mother Country, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Robinson, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa, taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for 25 years.

The Zahm Lecture, which annually launches the academic year, addresses important issues confronting American Catholic higher education, and honors Fr. John Zahm, C.S.C., an eminent Holy Cross priest and scientist of the late 19th and early 20th century, who was one of University of Portland’s founders.

For ADA accommodations or further information, please contact the Garaventa Center at 503-943-7702 or garaventa@up.edu.