L-R Facuty, Staff & Students Participate in MLK Day of Service

On Saturday January 22, 48 volunteers, including students, faculty and staff gathered to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of community service. Teams of volunteers completed service projects at six different organizations in the community, including Cooperative Christian Ministries, the Catawba Science Center and Longview Elementary thrift store. 

The groups came back to campus after their service projects to enjoy hot chocolate and snacks, reflect on their service and remember Dr. King’s challenge to help their community. 

This year marked the 25^th Anniversary of MLK Day of Service as a national event, and the 3^rd year of LR’s participation.

Summer Experience & Internship Fair This Thursday!

This Thursday, January 27^th students will have the opportunity to explore summer jobs and internships at the Summer Experience and Internship Fair. The event will be held in the Cromer Center from 11am-1pm. Please encourage your students and advisees to attend – undergraduates who have internships get the hiring and grad school acceptance advantage every time!

Sponsored by the Career and Personal Development Center. Email or call Katie Wohlman at Katie.wohlman@lr.edu, 328-7699 with questions.

Recruiters confirmed to attend:

Hickory Crawdads

WHKY

Chamber of Commerce

LR Office of Study Abroad

Higher Ground Summer Camp

Catawba County Parenting Network

The Cognitive Connection

Transportation Insight

LRU Visiting Playwright-in-Residence to Speak to Hickory Community

The Lenoir-Rhyne University Visiting Writers Series continues on Thursday, February 3, with LRU’s Visiting Playwright-in-Residence Amina McIntyre. McIntyre will speak at 7:00 pm in the Belk Centrum on campus. She has worked as an editor for the Infinite Field Magazine and is currently working as a playwright, freelance writer, and editor.

McIntyre is Lenoir-Rhyne University's first Visiting Playwright-in-Residence. While on campus she will be teaching an eight-week playwriting course for L-R students. This is an opportunity for students to write a 10-minute play with feedback provided by an accomplished writer.

In addition to productions of her short plays, Point of View and In Those Jeans, she has had a staged reading of her one-act Two Card Table and a Clothes Rack and a cold reading of her play Doin' The Work at the Indiana Theater Association ITWorks 2008, as well as poems in various publications. Her full-length play, Most Eligible Bachelor, was produced at Wabash College in April 2009.

A native of Atlanta, GA, McIntyre received a BA in Anthropology at Colby College, a MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University.

LRU to Celebrate the Life and Works of Martin Luther King Jr.

Lenoir-Rhyne University, in collaboration with other community organizations, will 
celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with several events in January.
Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, will speak at 10:00 a.m. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 17, in the P.E. Monroe Auditorium, located on the LRU campus. The Lenoir-Rhyne Gospel Choir will also perform during the program.

Dr. Tyson grew up in North Carolina, graduated from Emory University in 1987 and earned his Ph.D. from Duke in 1994. Tyson, a professor of African-American studies who’s white, unflinchingly examines the civil rights struggle in the South. He serves on the executive board of the North Carolina NAACP and works on issues of race and public education, in addition to his labors as a writer, historian, and teacher.

Tyson has written several books including Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, the story of an influential radical NAACP branch president from Monroe, NC as well as Blood Done Sign My Name, which went on to win the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

As Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, he can be found on Wednesday mornings out in the yard cooking eastern North Carolina pork barbecue over a hickory fire for his seminar. His handiwork has no tomato-tinted hint of what Tyson refers to as “the Lexington heresy.”

On the equally crucial basketball question, Tyson’s position is more balanced. Though born a Blue Devil, he holds appointments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as Duke. On game day, he dons the darker blue, but otherwise roots for both the Blue Devils and the Tar Heels, making him perhaps a singularly ecumenical figure in our state, crossing color lines of all kinds.

The spring course Tyson teaches with gospel singer Mary D. Williams, “The South in Black and White,” continues to draw hundreds of students from North Carolina Central University, Duke, the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, and the surrounding community.

Tyson lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, Perri Morgan, who teaches in the Duke Physician’s Associate program, and his son, Sam Tyson, lead guitarist for “Rev. B. and the WannaBees,” who will graduate from East Chapel Hill High School this year. Their daughter, Hope Tyson, will graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison next year. His father, Rev. Vernon C. Tyson, a retired United Methodist minister, and his mother, Mrs. Martha Tyson, a long-time public schoolteacher, live in Raleigh.

Dr. Tyson will also be the featured speaker at the Annual MLK Community Worship Service on Sunday, January 16 at 5:00pm at Corinth Reformed Church, 150 16th Avenue NW in Hickory.

Immediately after the January 17th presentation, the Hickory NAACP annual march will take place, from the university to the Brown-Penn Recreation Center, located at 735 Third St. SW, Hickory.

All of these events are free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Emma Sellers, LRU Director of Residence Life, 828-328-7288.

Healthcare Reform Topic of Fall Business Forum at LRU

Louis Rossiter

Louis Rossiter, Research Professor with the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy at the College of William & Mary , will be the guest speaker at the Lenoir-Rhyne University Business Fall Forum. He will be discussing the “Economics of National Healthcare Reform.”

This event is hosted by Dr. Wayne Powell, the Charles M. Snipes School of Business faculty and the LRU Business Council Board of Directors. Rossiter will speak at a luncheon scheduled for 12:00-1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 8 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Hickory. Registration will begin at 11:30 a.m.

Rossiter currently serves on the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health; the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth and its Finance Committee; and is the 2010 Chair of the Board of Directors of the Coalition for Health Services Research. He has served on numerous boards and advisory groups including the National Advisory Council of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Rossiter is the former Secretary of Health and Human Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia. As Secretary, he directed the implementation of Virginia’s new private health insurance program for children and families; ensured significant further improvement in the state’s mental health system; created new policy initiatives in the emerging field of human genetics; and brought the major information technology projects in the Secretariat to national prominence.

He served as a professor at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University from 1982 to 2000 where he was the first director of the Williamson Institute for Health Studies. He took a leave of absence from the university from 1989-1992 to serve as deputy for policy to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As deputy, he created and directed a new payment system for U.S. hospitals under Medicare and formulated all agency policy initiatives through the federal legislative process.

Rossiter, 61, received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his bachelor’s degree from Lenoir-Rhyne University.

Tickets for this event are $50 each for members of the Lenoir-Rhyne Business Council and $75 each for non-members. A table for eight is $350. To reserve your tickets, contact Leeanne Kale at leeanne.kale@lr.edu or call 828-328-7321.

World Aids Day Events on December 1st

Part of the AIDS quilt on display in
the Rudisill Library Quiet Room

LRU is currently hosting the AIDS Memorial Quilt on display in the Rudisill Library Quiet Room. In addition to the quilt on display, the World AIDS Day Reception is scheduled for Wednesday, December 1st at St. Andrews Lutheran Church from 5:50-6:30 p.m. The event is being sponsored by Special Touch Florist and Catering.

Immediately following the reception is the World AIDS Day Memorial Service, also at St. Andrews Lutheran Church, from 6:30-7:30 p.m. The service will include music, speakers, reflection, and a candlelight vigil. The event is being sponsored by Frye Regional Medical Center,  The United Way and ALFA

Christian Counseling Seminars to be Presented at Lenoir-Rhyne University

Lenoir-Rhyne University will offer a series of seminars on Christian counseling during the week of December 13-17, 2010. The seminars are designed for counselors, professional church workers or any layperson interested in learning more about the spiritual dimension of life. The sessions are free unless the course is taken for graduate credit.

The seminars can be taken as a graduate course or as separate half-day sessions. All sessions will meet from 8:30-12:00 and 1:00-4:30 Monday through Friday of the Dec. 14 week. The first four seminars (Dec. 13 and 14) will be in the Bear’s Lair on the L-R campus. The next six seminars (Dec. 15-17) will meet in then Mauney-Schaeffer room 115. Dr. David J. Ludwig will conduct the seminars.

The seminars on Dec. 13 and14 will provide a deep, spiritual understanding of the internal struggles that everyone experiences as anxiety, depression, obsessive reactions, or impulse-control disorders. The seminars on Dec. 15 and 16 will give an exciting look at marriage and family relationships as the mood or atmosphere control the interaction. Dr. Ludwig will explain his popular “Painter/Pointer” relationship typology.

The seminars on Dec. 17 will contrast the current “Culture of ME” with the skills needed to build a “Culture of WE” in you life, your home, or your community.

Ludwig taught psychology at Lenoir-Rhyne for more that 30 years and has worked as a family therapist for more than 40 years. He is an ordained Lutheran minister and has written numerous books and created videos related to family life. Through the years, he has developed a number of programs and presented them at conferences and workshops around the world.

Individuals wanting graduate course credit must register prior to the first session by contacting the registrar at 828-328-7412. Persons who want to attend individual seminars can e-mail Dr. Ludwig at ludwig@lr.edu to sign up. A certificate of completion for the hours attended will be available for those who want a record of attendance for professional purposes.

Annual Christmas at L-R Concert Set for December

The A Cappella Choir, College Singers, Brass Ensemble and Handbell Ensemble will present this year’s Christmas at Lenoir-Rhyne concerts at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 4, and at 7:30 p.m. December 6 and 7 at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Hickory.

These concerts are open to the public. Admission is free, but an offering will be taken to help defray costs. Due to the popularity of these programs, those wishing to attend are encouraged to arrive early.

The LRU Youth Chorus Kicks off the Holiday Season with a Concert on November 30th

The LRU Youth Chorus will be performing on Tuesday, November 30, from 7pm – 9pm at St. John's Lutheran Church in Conover, North Carolina

L-R Student James Crapps Receives Statewide Community Impact Student Award!

James “J.J.” Crapps of Lenoir-Rhyne University recently received North Carolina Campus Compact’s fifth Community Impact Student Award. Crapps was one of thirty-four college students across the state who received the award for making significant, innovative contributions to their campus’ efforts to address local community needs. Awardees also received a Volunteer Certificate of Appreciation from Gov. Beverly Perdue.

Crapps volunteered at several organizations including Rape Crisis Center of Catawba County, Hickory Police Department, Centro Latino and Habitat for Humanity, completing NC-ACTS! requirements twice. On campus, he has been a part of the homecoming committee, the campus activity board and served as a resident assistant. As the philanthropy chair for his fraternity, Crapps organized and facilitated several events and projects including fundraising for several organizations, hosting clothing drives and holding the first book drive for the Patrick Beaver Memorial Library.

The awards were presented at two NC Campus Compact Student Conferences that brought together over 300 college students and guests representing 34 North Carolina higher education institutions. On Oct. 30 at NC Wesleyan College, the Compact’s Executive Director, Dr. Lisa Keyne, presented the awards with the Reverend James Gailliard, CEO of the Impact Center and Senior Pastor of Word Tabernacle Church. Budd Berro, the Piedmont Regional Director for the Office of the Governor, joined Dr. Keyne in presenting the awards at Johnson C. Smith University on Nov. 6.