Award-winning essayist and critic William Deresiewicz will present the keynote lecture, titled “The Self in Society and the Humanity in Both,” for English department’s annual Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature (NUCL) on Saturday, March 19, at 1:45 p.m., in Mago Hunt Center Recital Hall. His lecture is free and open to the public.
Deresiewicz’s works include A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught me About Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter (2011) and Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (2014), a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in nonfiction. His criticism appears in The Nation, The American Scholar, The New Republic, The New York Times, and Harper’s. He taught English at Yale University for ten years and at Columbia University for five years.
For more information contact the English department at 7228 or english@up.edu.
Dale Recinella, chaplain for Florida’s death row, will explore challenges to the death penalty rooted in sacred Scripture on Monday, March 14, at 7:15 p.m., in Franz Hall Room 120. His talk is free and open to all.
On Thursday, March 17, at approximately 10:15 a.m., the University of Portland will conduct an emergency lockdown drill. All members of the UP community are asked to shelter in place for a short period of time. All will receive notification when the emergency drill begins and will also be notified at the end of the drill. The lockdown drill is part of a regular series of emergency preparedness exercises at the University.
The School of Education cordially invites UP faculty and staff to attend the final dissertation defenses of the inaugural cohort of Ed.D. candidates in the coming weeks. For a full schedule of the defenses, 
University of Portland collections technology librarian Bonnie Parks has been named as the 2016 recipient of the Ulrich’s Serials Librarianship Award for her distinguished contributions to serials librarianship. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services division of the American Library Association makes the award each year to a leader in the field. The award will be presented at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony on June 25 during the 2016 American Library Association Annual Conference and Exposition in Orlando, Florida.
Employees may notice that TIAA-CREF looks a little different. They will be rolling out a new website in the next few weeks and are shortening their name to TIAA. The UP human resources team, which works closely with TIAA-CREF, assures employees here will be no changes to retirement accounts.
It is time again for information services to begin the process of creating computer lab and classroom builds for 2016 summer and fall terms. Whatever has been installed on the computers for spring 2016 will not be on the computers for summer or fall unless a specific request is made. Exceptions include Microsoft Office, internet browsers, and anti-virus protection. Since the build and deployment process is extremely labor intensive, requests must be submitted no later than Friday, March 18. Please click 
All faculty members are invited to nominate eligible, outstanding students for the Leader Certificate course (LDR 225) offered in fall 2016. During this course students explore what it means to be a leader using the 7 Leader Habits within Common Leader Vocabulary, assess and understand their strengths, explore several leadership theories, and create a personalized leader development action plan with a leader coach. The ideal nominee is a student who demonstrates academic excellence, has a unique passion for learning and relates well to others.
A group of 39 students will be attending the March Encounter with Christ Retreat along with 21 student leaders from March 18-20. All faculty and staff are asked to consider writing a note (palanca) to students they may know on the retreat’s attendance list. Palanca present an opportunity to encourage students and express appreciation for them outside the classroom. Each retreatant will receive an envelope of surprise palanca.