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Dean’s Letter: Jan. 19, 2014

January 19, 2014

Dear Students:

Welcome back to our continuing students and welcome to our new students.

I hope that you enjoyed a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season and that you are ready and energized to enjoy and learn – from your faculty and from your peers – in our new semester.  As the semester gets started, I encourage you to think about what you want to achieve this semester and to map out your plan to achieve your goals.

Please remember that tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I hope you can spend at least part of the day in service in honor of the memory of this great leader who inspires us all.

I also want to call your attention to a very special event coming in February – for which you should buy your ticket now.  HSS and the Black Student Union, with generous support from the Student Finance Board, are co-sponsoring a field trip to see the play “Fences” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton at a matinee performance on Saturday, February 8.  This play, written in 1983 by award-winning playwright August Wilson, won both a Pulitzer and a Tony Award in 1987.  Thanks to the co-sponsorship of this event, students will have to pay only $10 per ticket, including round-trip bus transportation from the Brower Student Center to the theater in Princeton.  After we return to campus, there will be a reception for students, faculty, and staff who attended the play to discuss it (complete with delicious hors d’oeuvres) – also at no additional cost to our students.  So, what are you waiting for?  You can buy your ticket at the Box Office in the Student Center (cash only, one ticket per ID), starting on Tuesday, January 21.  The tickets are available until they run out (only 80 tickets), so run, don’t walk, to buy your ticket!

 

Sincerely,

Your friendly neighborhood dean,

Benjamin Rifkin

 

Congratulations

Congratulations to History students Sarah Cassim, Shannon Kane, Joana Arruda, Christina DiBartolo, and their mentor, Dr. McGreevey, who travelled to New Mexico over break to give presentations at the National History Honor Society Conference (Phi Alpha Theta).

Congratulations to Angela De Santis, whose article, “The Color of Recovery,” was published on the front page of the Trenton Times. If you missed it there, you can see it on the web here: http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2013/12/former_hopewell_township_mayor_opens_up_about_alcoholism_homelessness_and_recovery.html

As many of you know, Dr. Chazelle (History) has been very active in outreach and education in area prisoners (and she is the director of our Center for Prison Outreach and Education, about which see below, in “Opportunities”).  She was the subject of a front-page article in the Trenton Times: http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2013/12/youthful_bordentown_inmates_get_a_taste_of_the_college_of_new_jersey_while_serving_time.html#incart_river_default

Congratulations to the faculty and students of last year’s Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Seminar, and especially to Dr. Friedman (English) and Dr. Leigey (Criminology), co-authors of an article about this project.  The article has been accepted for publication in a journal published by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR).

Congratulations to Dr. Shao (History), whose book, Shanghai Gone, has won the Academic Excellence Award of the Chinese Historians in the United States.

Congratulations to Dean Rifkin, who was presented with the 2014 American Council of Teachers of Russian Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession.  (Dean Rifkin wants to be sure that you know that he teaches Russian.)

 

Opportunities

You can change someone else’s life and learn a lot about yourself by volunteering through TCNJ’s Center for Prison Outreach and Education.  In Spring 2014 CPOE is providing GED Preparation for inmates at the Jones Farm Prison, courses in the Albert C. Wagner Correctional Facility, as well as opportunities to assist inmates at the Mercer County Correctional Facility with LexisNexis searches for their legal needs.  Regardless of the program in which you’re interested, you should attend one of the following orientation meetings listed here:

Tuesday, January 21 at 11:30 am in Soc Sci 230

Wed., January 22 at 12:30 pm in Soc Sci 232

Thursday, Jan. 23 at 11:30 in Soc Sci 230

Friday, Jan. 24 at 11:30 am in Soc Sci 230

Please also visit cpoe.tcnj.edu to download the application.  If you can’t make it to any of the orientation sessions, contact CPOE at cpoe@tcnj.edu.

Buy your ticket for Fences (matinee performance on Sat., Feb. 8 in Princeton, $10 ticket includes roundtrip bus from campus):  tickets available for purchase at the Box Office starting Tuesday, Jan. 21.

Indiana University’s Summer Language Workshop invites applications for the intensive study of Arabic, Hindu-Urdu, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swahili, Tatar, Turkish, and Uzbek.  Financial aid is available.  For more information, see www.indiana.edu/~swseel, e-mail swseel@indiana.edu or call 812-855-2889.


Events

TCNJ Center for the Arts Exhibit opens on Wed., Jan. 22:  Through the Window of My Mind … Ruane Miller Paintings and Prints,” a retrospective exhibition of 46 works of art created over the past 15 years on the occasion of Professor Miller’s retirement as a Professor of Digital Art at TCNJ where she has taught since 1986.

On Thursday, Jan. 23 at 5:30 pm see a presentation entitled “Human Trafficking Is Modern Day Slavery,” in the Kendall Hall Main Stage, presented by the NJ Office of the Attorney General, the Division of Criminal Justice, and the NJ Anti-Trafficking Task Force.

On Thursday, Jan. 23 at 8 pm come to a concert by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in Mayo Concert Hall, featuring works by Debussy, de Victoria, and Fernandez.  (This is a ticketed event.)

Stay tuned for announcements of more exciting events to be held throughout the semester.  HSS is not sponsoring many events for this first week of classes as we know that all of us are focused in finding our new rhythms as classes get started.

Contact

School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Sciences Building, Room 302
The College of New Jersey
P.O. Box 7718
2000 Pennington Rd.
Ewing, NJ 08628

609.771.3434
hss@tcnj.edu

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