Carlow University Staff Members Make Pilgrimage to International Mercy Centre

When Frances Warde traded her view of the Barrow River in Carlow, Ireland, for the shores of the Monongahela, Ohio, and Allegheny Rivers that surround Pittsburgh, she could never have imagined that, more than a century later, Carlow staff members Siobhan De Witt, campus minister; Hector Torres, chief compliance officer; Dawna Horton, admissions counselor; Laura McCarthy, admissions counselor; and Sister Sheila Carney, RSM, special assistant to the president for Mercy Heritage; would match her transatlantic pilgrimage.

The Carlow University contingent at the Mercy International Centre in Dublin, Ireland. Top row: Bob DeWitt (Siobhan's husband). Bottom row (from left): Laura McCarthy; Dawna Horton; Hector Torres; Siobhan DeWitt; Sister Sheila Carney, RSM; and Karen Torres (Hector's wife).

“The purpose of my role is to enhance our understanding of the values of the Sisters of Mercy who founded the University,” says Carney. In order to accomplish her goal, Carney established the McDarby Institute in 2008, giving all Carlow staff the opportunity to participate in a yearlong program where they are able to learn what it means to be a Catholic, Mercy institution. “So far, almost 40 people have completed the program,” says Carney.

For those willing to complete the McDarby Institute, a reward awaits. Periodically, another invitation is sent out by Carney—a pilgrimage to the Mercy International Centre in Dublin, Ireland. It is there in the Emerald City that Catherine McAuley first began her ministry, helping the needy and inspiring others to do the same; an inspiration which eventually led her to form the Sisters of Mercy.

During their three-day stay in Dublin, the Carlow staff members participated in various excursions, including a walking tour of “Catherine’s Dublin.” This unique tour took the group around Dublin as Catherine would have known it.

“While obviously it’s a much more modern time, we still had her experience and the experience of the women that started with her,” says De Witt. The tour ended at the chapel where Catherine professed her vows as a Sister of Mercy.

After exploring Dublin, the pilgrims traveled to Carlow, Ireland. The namesake of the University, Carlow is where seven Sisters of Mercy started their journey to the United States in 1843. “The house that they walked out of in 1843, we walked into,” explains Carney.

Their trip also included a visit with the Sisters of Mercy of Carlow, Ireland, who received a picture of the new statue, which sits in front of Frances Warde Hall in Pittsburgh from the Carlow staff. “They were just delighted with that,” says Carney, who recognizes the strong ties between Carlow’s past and present.

Core Value: Discovery/Quest

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Carlow’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing students spent their annual Irish residency at Trinity College Dublin, this year studying with Ireland’s most prominent writers, among them world-renowned novelist Edna O’Brien.

“My goal was always to have a residency at Trinity because it is synonymous with Ireland’s literary history: Swift, Wilde, Beckett—so many others—were students there,” says Ellie Wymard, director of the Carlow MFA program.

“There’s a mystique about Trinity that’s inspirational to writers. Our students even had an opportunity to read from their work in Trinity’s celebrated 1592 Restaurant.”

Students had easy access to The Book of Kells and Trinity’s main library, The Great Hall. They were also able to visit Kilmainham Jail and The General Post Office of Dublin, sights associated with Ireland’s political history.

Most lectures and workshops met inside the Trinity Gate, but also at the Irish Writer’s Centre and The United Arts Club. Students had the advantages of the National Gallery, The Abbey Theatre, and spent Bloomsday, June 16, following the tracks of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Highlights of the day included a literary fair in Dalkey, where Joyce once taught, and seeing a production of Tom Stoppard’s play “Travesties.”

Writers Anne Enright, 2007 Man Booker Prize winner, and Claire Keegan, recipient of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Short Story Award, returned as speakers. Recent winners of The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, Kevin Barry, Hugo Hamilton, and Kevin Power, also talked to the group.

“We’ve established a reputation in Ireland as a fine MFA program—we had no problem getting the most interesting and successful Irish authors to speak to our group, especially since we were in Dublin this year,” says Wymard.

One such author was world-renowned Irish fiction writer, Edna O’Brien. O’Brien’s book, The Country Girls, first published in 1960, was originally banned in Ireland, but is now considered a groundbreaking text for women.

“Edna O’Brien is an icon in Irish literature, and we were honored to have her speak to our students,” says Wymard. Another highlight of the trip was touring the United States embassy and meeting the ambassador to Ireland and owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Dan Rooney.

“Mr. Rooney, was so gracious, nice, and generous,” says Michelle Stoner, administrative assistant for the MFA program. “He asked questions of the students and spoke very highly of Carlow.”

Many Pittsburghers don’t realize that the Rooney family has such an appreciation for Irish literature that they created the highly coveted Rooney Award for Irish writers under the age of 40. “It’s always interesting to me that the people we meet in Ireland are surprised to hear that the Rooneys own the Pittsburgh Steelers,” says Wymard.

On the last night of the trip, the MFA students gave their Irish mentors Steelers t-shirts.

The MFA students in the Irish residency came from five states, in addition to Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh residency will be January 3-13, 2012 at Carlow University. The MFA program will return to Trinity College in June 2013.

Core Value: Student Progress

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Carlow University Professors Give Virtual Presentation to University of Zagreb Students in Croatia

Carlow University has been home to thousands of lectures over the course of its 83-year existence. Dozens of chalkboards and whiteboards have been covered with notes, but calling upon the latest technology, Carlow professors Howard Stern, PhD, and Enrique Mu, PhD, have moved from the whiteboard and onto the Web, delivering a PowerPoint presentation-based lecture to students at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

“It all started with a working relationship,” says Mu, the MBA program director at Carlow University. While attending a conference in Prague in 2009, he met Tihomir Hunjak, PhD, the dean of the School of Informatics at the University of Zagreb, along with faculty member Nina Begičević, PhD. During Begičević’s semester-long visit to the University of Pittsburgh, Mu invited her to attend his Advanced IT and IT Management class at Carlow.

As the relationship between the two schools continued to grow, the University of Zagreb inquired about the skills of Mu, an expert in analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Mu had used AHP to help the City of Pittsburgh choose Google for its cloud computing options. “It was one of the biggest projects I have ever done,” says Mu.

Putting their wealth of knowledge about AHP and cloud computing to the test, the two Carlow professors, who co-teach the Politics and Technology course shared their experience with students at the University of Zagreb. “This is where education is going, and we want Carlow to be at the forefront,” says Stern, who came to Carlow less than a year ago to spearhead the University’s digital initiatives.

More than 100 University of Zagreb students voluntarily attended the professors’ virtual cloud computing lecture. Nikola Kadoić, master of informatics and teaching and scientificassistant at Zagreb’s Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI), says students were, “very positively surprised about this lecture…they are very honored.”

With the groundbreaking lecture behind them, the two professors are already looking towards the future. Teaming up with University of Zagreb professors, a return lecture is being planned in which the Croatian school will take its turn teaching Carlow’s students.

“It just goes to show the importance of forging new relationships,” says Stern, who is keen on making events like this a standard in education. “Many people don’t think it can be used on a large scale, but it can.”

Core Value: Leadership

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Carlow University will host an exhibit of the work of award-winning artist, Janet McKenzie, from September 17 through October 19, in the Kresge Theatre Lobby, located on the fifth floor of Grace Library, on the Carlow campus. The public will be able to view the exhibit only at select times.

“Janet McKenzie focuses her life’s work primarily on the subject of women and views her work as a symbolic voice for women who are not able to speak for themselves,” says Sister Sheila Carney, special assistant to the President for Mercy Heritage. “Incorporating diversity, children, and symbolic imagery into her work, Janet explores the sacred voice within her which seeks expression.”

The formal opening and a reception with the artist, which is open to the public, will be September 17, 2012, at 7 p.m. in the Kresge Theatre Lobby. The exhibit will also be open to the public from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. on three consecutive Sundays—September 23, 30, and October 7—as well as Saturday, October 13, also from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m.

One of the paintings on display will be Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, which was commissioned by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Carnegie, Pa., and will be on display in that parish following the exhibition at Carlow. The painting was commissioned for the parish by Carol Riley, who was a member of the team advising Father David Poecking, the parish priest.

McKenzie is a native New Yorker, born in Booklyn, and raised in and around New York City. She now lives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

She studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology (NYC) and the Art Students League (NYC), on scholarship. She was the recipient of the Edward McDowell Traveling Scholarship, which sent her to Europe for a year to study and travel. At the time, she was one of the youngest recipients of the McDowell, which is the Art Students League’s most prestigious award. After returning to New York, the League gave McKenzie her first solo show. Since that time, she has focused her life’s work primarily on the subject of women.

The artist’s devotion and commitment to imagery of women has in many ways to do with the loss of her mother and grandmother at an early point in her life. She realized that their journey was interwoven and linked together. She grew to believe that her work would serve as a symbolic voice for women who were not able to speak for themselves.

In the mid-1990s, McKenzie began to incorporate diversity, children, and symbolic imagery into her work with women. At the same time, the need to explore a sacred voice within her work surfaced, partly influenced by time spent in New Mexico.

Her painting, “Jesus of the People,” was selected from a field of 2,000 artists as the winner of the National Catholic Reporter’s competition for a new image of Jesus at the Millennium. The Carlow exhibit marks the first time that “Jesus of the People” has been exhibited in Pittsburgh.

Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie, a book featuring many of the paintings in the exhibit, will be on sale throughout the show. The artist will be available to autograph books at the opening reception. For more information about the exhibition of McKenzie’s work, please call Sister Sheila Carney at 412.578.6424.

Core Values: Sacredness of Creation

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Carlow University's Athletic Director Receives National Award
George Sliman named NAIA Northeast Region Under Armour Athletic Director of the Year

The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) named George Sliman, the athletic director at Carlow University, as its 2011-2012 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Northeast Region Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year Award recipient.

George Sliman

Sliman was appointed as athletic director at Carlow University in June 1999. Prior to that, he served as Carlow's part-time volleyball coach while working for the Urban Redevelopment Authority of the City of Pittsburgh. In his time as athletic director, Sliman has raised standards and implemented changes that have brought the athletics program a level of distinction. He revitalized the Student-Athlete Association and implemented "Champions of Character" training for all coaches and student-athletes. Sliman has kept student-athlete academic achievement a high priority throughout his tenure.

Sliman received this honor on June 26, 2012, at the NACDA and Affiliates Convention Week in Dallas, Texas. The Athletic Director of the Year Award winners were honored the following day at the James J. Corbett Awards Luncheon.

Additionally, there was a special feature in the June issue of Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal highlighting all of the recipients of the 2011-2012 Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year Award.

Core Value: Leadership

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Touted as “small-town friendly…close to downtown Pittsburgh,” Millvale, Pa., is just one of the City of Pittsburgh’s many boroughs. Filled with a slew of unique shops and restaurants, Millvale may have famed Croatian artist Maxo Vanka’s artwork, but it is missing one essential element: a library.

“A library is something that I feel every community needs as much as it needs a fire department, police department, or a park,” says Millvale resident Brian Wolovich, a sixth grade teacher in nearby Quaker Valley who has helped spearhead work on the library. “A community needs a library to base their education around.”

While the dream of a Millvale Library is still thousands of dollars away from becoming a reality, the idea has become more concrete through fundraisers, monthly board meetings, and immense help from the community, which has come together each Saturday for the past three years to work on the library. With their hard work and dedication, 213 Grant Avenue gets closer to completion every day, and will be open to the public once the library receives enough funding to fully install heating and air conditioning for the building.

Believing in the grassroots potential of a library in Millvale, Jessica Friedrichs, an instructor in Carlow’s School for Social Change, and Corey Maloney, DSc, an instructor in Carlow's School of Management, partnered with Wolovich to use the project as the basis for their Community Innovation through Networking course in spring 2011.

Using the potential library as an opportunity for students to look at service learning through both a business and tech-driven lens, the students set to work developing technology plans and accounting systems for the library, even going so far as to use the Foundation Center to research potential suitors for grants and other philanthropic foundations in Pittsburgh which could provide aid for the library. Creating a list of 20 possible grants for which the library was eligible, the class then selected the top five grants.

Armed with informative poster boards, the class traveled to Millvale where they presented their ideas about the potential grants to the Millvale Library board in a public presentation.

“I’ve worked with different universities on this project and Carlow [understands]” says Wolovich. “The beauty of Carlow is that they’re flexible and willing to work with us to tailor the learning experience.”

Receiving the go-ahead from the board, the students in Friedrichs' and Maloney’s class then passed the torch to their fellow Carlow students.

English department Associate Professor Irene Lietz, PhD, connected students in her grant writing service-learning course to the library project, enabling them to apply their skills to a real-life situation. Using the potential grants selected by the students in the Community Innovation through Networking course, Lietz’s students wrote grants for the library’s practical needs, including a grant for a sprinkler system, an air conditioning and heating system, and a plumbing network, all of which are vital to the reconstruction of the 138 year old building.

To the delight of the students, the Portiuncula Foundation—a group which aims to promote programs that address root causes of poverty and endorse initiatives that advance health, wellness, and education—awarded the library a $15,000 grant for the building’s heating and air conditioning system.

Core Values: Service and Leadership

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Carlow University Joins Western Pennsylvania Electricity Consortium
Carlow Is Only Institution of Higher Education in Consortium of 25 Entities

Carlow University has entered into a consortium to buy electricity at auction along with 24 other entities in Pennsylvania, mostly local municipal governments.

The auction, which took place in June at the David Lawrence Convention Center, locks in a lower price for electricity for a given period of time. Carlow had been paying an average of 6.9 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) over the past year, but the auction price will represent substantial savings for the University.

Some of Carlow’s buildings fall into a usage category abbreviated as “GM,” which stands for “General Services-Medium.” Carlow will be paying an electric rate of 5.52 cents per kwh on these buildings for the next two years. Duquesne Light Energy had the lowest bid in this category.

Other buildings on the Carlow campus—such as dormitories Dougherty Hall and Frances Warde Hall—have much higher electric usage. These buildings are classified as “GL” or “General Services-Large.” The consortium was able to lock in a rate of 5.28 per kwh for the next three years through Duquesne Light Energy.

Carlow anticipates saving more than $100,000 when comparing current usage and rates to the new rates. In addition, 25 percent of the electric provided under these contracts for Carlow is certified to be “green,” or environmentally friendly.

Core Value: Discovery/Quest

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On Saturday, July 28, 2012, students in Pittsburgh connected with peers from as far away as Australia for their orientation to the Carlow University Master of Science in Fraud and Forensics program.

Fourteen students physically gathered in room 107 of Carlow’s A.J. Palumbo Hall of Science and Technology for panel discussions and lectures, while another 40 students from across the globe joined via a WebEx conference.

“Technology brought everyone together as if they were in the same room,” says Howard Stern, associate dean of Academic Administration. “We were very pleased—everything worked perfectly.”

“We had students from nine different states, Canada, and Australia,” says Mary Onufer, an instructor in Carlow’s School of Management.

“The technology in the room allowed our students from across the globe to see and participate in what was going on in the room. Those in the classroom could see images of their classmates from all over the world at bottom of the screen.”

The orientation began with a virtual panel discussion about the MFF program with the program’s first graduates. “There was a lively, virtual discussion between all of the students about the positives and negatives of the program,” says Onufer. “WebEx works with cameras and microphones in the room to project images of students who are speaking.”

During the panel discussion, the new MFF students viewed a presentation by an off-site panel member. The presenter was broadcast virtually in the room and to all the students in other states and countries via WebEx.

“With this technology, several different venues became one classroom,” says Onufer. “People all over the world are in one place at one time.”

The technology in the room will be used throughout the online-only MFF program.

With seating for more than 100 people, room 107 in the A.J. Palumbo Hall of Science and Technology is the largest in the building and used for special lectures and events, large meetings, classes, etc., many of which are open to the outside community.

Some of the many upgrades to the room include:

• Two 164” screens, one on each side of the front of the room
• A touch-screen computer that controls the technology in the room and makes multimedia presentations a breeze. The software on the computer is simple, intuitive, and allows the speaker to seamlessly switch between a PowerPoint presentation, document projection, videos, and more.
• Lights that dim automatically when a presentation begins
• Speakers in strategic locations in the ceiling, ensuring that presenters can be heard from anywhere in the room
• Automatic cameras with the capability to record lectures/events or broadcast on screens or online in real-time. When a speaker moves from one end of the room to the other, the camera follows him or her. When a question is asked from a member of the audience, the cameras focus automatically on the person asking the question.
• Microphones at every other seat for audience questions. Speakers/lecturers have lapel microphones, enabling them to leave the lectern without any loss of volume or sound quality.
• A confidence monitor—a 42” TV screen in the back of room in the speaker’s line of site where slides will be projected. This helps the speaker stay on track during presentations without having to turn around and look up at the screens in the front of the room.

“The University made a big investment in the most current and modern technology for this room,” says Stern. “The room demonstrates Carlow’s commitment to technology and making sure our students, faculty, and staff have the technology they need to teach and learn in the 21st century.”

Core Value: Hospitality

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Join the celebration of Carlow's founders during Mercy Founders Fortnight.

Visit MyPortal for and updated list of events.

Carlow University Alumni Weekend
October 5-7, 2012

Please click the photo for a schedule of events and more information.

For upcoming campus events, please visit MyPortal.

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