NJ Mandates Climate Change Curriculum

 The New Jersey Department of Education’s mandate establishing climate change as a requirement for NJ elementary, middle, and high school curriculums will go into ef­fect beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, according to nj.gov.

“An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Climate Change in NJ Classrooms” was held as part of the University’s Climate Crisis Teach- Ins week, from Monday, Oct. 26 to Friday, Oct. 30. Presenters included Associate Professor Jiwon Kim, Ph.D., Lecturer Michelle Schpakow Ed.D., and senior students Alexan­dria Marchesani, Brielle Sadowski, and Mary McGee. The discussion to integrate climate change into NJ classrooms was held on Wednesday, Oct. 28.

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Health Experts Advise Against Travel and Large Gatherings this Holiday Season

 It’s still the most wonder­ful time of the year for many, even during a global pan­demic. However, this might not be the year for the large family gatherings and travel­ing typically associated with the holidays.

As the Centers for Dis­ease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on their website, cases rise as people spend more time gathering indoors due to the cold weather. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order, ef­fective Nov. 17, lowering the indoor gathering limit from 25 to 10 people as COVID-19 cases rise in the state.

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New "Trials of the Century" Course Taught by Award-winning Journalist

 Emmy and Peabody award-winning journalist, docu­mentary producer, trial at­torney, and author Jack Ford joined the University as an Adjunct Professor this fall to teach his seminar, Trials of the Century, to students in the Honors School.

Ford has been teaching the course periodically for the past 14 years, starting at Yale University and traveling to other esteemed institutions, most recently New York Uni­versity.

“The course came from a series that I did for the To­day Show back when I was covering the O.J. Simpson trial. I was working for NBC News as their chief legal cor­respondent, and people were referring to the O.J. Simpson case as the trial of the centu­ry. I got curious and started to take a look at some other so-called trials of the cen­tury,” Ford said. “I thought at the time if I could ever have enough control over my sched­ule that I could commit to one day a week every week that this would make a really inter­esting college seminar.”

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University Ranked Among Best Colleges For Anthropology

In CollegeFactual’s 2021 ranking of the Best Colleges for Anthropology, Monmouth University placed #8 out of 125 colleges and universities across the United States, an honor reserved for the top 15 percent of schools. CollegeFactual considered a variety of elements to determine their rankings, including available scholastic resources, the percentage of students who complete their degrees, students’ post-graduating earnings, and the program’s accreditation. 

In response to this recognition, Richard Veit, Ph.D., Dean and Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, said, “It is thrilling to have Monmouth University’s Anthropology Program recognized as one of the finest in the nation.” Veit emphasized that this award rightly spotlights the school’s commitment to deliver quality education, largely due to the dedication of its staff. 

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Music Industry’s Pandemic Struggles

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the music industry in multifaceted ways.

Mike Flannery, a Professor in the Department of Music and Arts, acknowledges the ways the music industry has changed throughout the pandemic. “Back when you could sell records or CDs or tapes in a music store, that was the original business model,” Flannery said. “Around 2001 when I worked with Atlantic records, I had 13,000 copies sell and over a million illegal downloads. There had to be a shift in the music industry to keep this from happening, so the industry moved to streaming and cheap subscriptions to keep people from stealing music.

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Social Work Lecture Held

The 8th Annual Social Work Alumni Lecture at Monmouth took place on Monday, Nov. 30. The lecture was a presentation called “Born of Rage: Art as an Agent for Social Change” given by Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work Ralph G. Cuseglio, DSW.

Cuseglio’s talk showed the influence of inequality, oppression, discrimination, and social injustice in art, and what kind of impressions were taken and left in certain artist’s work. Whether it was Billie Holiday’s haunting recollections of lynch mobs on “Strange Fruit” or Picasso’s interpretations of Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain in what is his probably most famous painting, “Guernica”, or Childish Gambino’s song “This Is America” about the banality of gun violence, Cuseglio draws connections of certain pieces of art and media to real-world atrocities.

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Minor League Baseball Speaker Visits Sports Industry Club

Minor League Baseball’s Marketing Coordinator, Miranda Mauro, joined the Sports Industry Club for a lecture via Zoom, on Thursday, Nov. 19.

Mauro worked for multiple organizations, including the Tampa Bay Lightning, the National Hockey League (NHL), and USA Baseball. Today, she is the Marketing Coordinator for Minor League Baseball. Mauro gave a talk about the experiences and the daily duties of her previous jobs and the details of the operations in her job today.

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Real Estate Team Brings Home First Place Prize

The Monmouth University real estate team received a first-place prize for the second consecutive year on Friday, Nov. 13. The intercollegiate competition, titled “Monmouth University Kislak Real Estate Institute Competition,” also consisted of students from Baruch College, Lehigh University, and Villanova University.

The team was given one month to develop a proposal for the highest and best use of a property, which was a mobile home park located in Highlands, NJ.

“It’s a very rigorous month,” said James Azarian, senior business student and captain of the real estate team. “We all see it as the equivalent of the internship. We’re dealing with real life issues and real-world scenarios. Some of us want to go into real estate development, so this could help us when we go into the job market and tell them we worked on a development proposal. It’s a good experience.”

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Dining Hall Serves Thanksgiving Dinner

The Magill Commons Dining Hall served dinner to students from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, due to the unprecedented volume of students remaining on campus during the break this year.

With a menu consisting of turkey, stuffing, and other Thanksgiving-themed foods, employees and residence hall assistants helped prepare and facilitate the meal.

The dining hall was limited to 10 students at a time, with the ability for students to take their meals back to residence housing. Isolated students could also have their food delivered. Brunch and dinner was served each day during the holiday weekend.

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University Announces Plans for Spring Semester

President Patrick F. Leahy Ed.D., detailed the University’s plans for the upcoming 2021 spring semester, in an email addressed to the campus community on Friday, Nov. 20.

The spring semester’s academic calendar has been updated with a new start date of Monday, Jan. 25. The delay was implemented in an effort to “mitigate the risk of virus spread at the height of cold and flu season,” Leahy wrote.

“This postponement, coupled with the public health objective of preventing non-essential travel, has required us to eliminate the traditional spring break,” Leahy wrote. 

In place of a weeklong spring break, the new academic calendar incorporates “break days” in March and April. “This adjusted schedule allows us to maintain our typical 14 week semester, which will end when it normally does in early May,” Leahy added.

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