President's Report to the Board: College Bulletin
CHSHPEH Academic Unit and Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus Report
November, 2014
Celebrating Faculty, Staff, and Administrators
Barbara Nubile, Director of Nursing and Associate Dean of Health Sciences, received the 2014
Maryland Nurses Association Outstanding Mentoring Award. Peg Daw, Nurse Support Program II
Administrator at MHEC nominated Ms. Nubile for this honor and said, “Through the NSP II
program for New Nursing Faculty Fellowships, she has recruited, mentored, supported,
encouraged and retained almost 90% of her new faculty. Representative of her vision and
concern for meeting the needs of population health, she has increased the diversity of faculty by
mentoring one-third from underrepresented groups in nursing, ethnic and racial minorities and
men. She developed a unique full time clinical instructor role and provided relationship-based
mentoring which has resulted in several completing graduate degrees and joining her full time
faculty ranks. Her efforts have been fair, culturally sensitive, respectful and forward thinking.
She has invested personal time and energy to provide structured, caring guidance to a younger
and more diverse nursing faculty. She has engendered a culture of collegial peer support for
each to seek higher education and can readily recite what each individual has accomplished."
Adjunct professor Patricia Kessler will be exhibiting her artwork during the month of November
at the Hill Gallery & Studio in Richmond, Virginia along with ceramic sculptor, Janice Arone. Her
work includes fibers treated with natural dyes and also monoprints of livestock.
History professor Vincent Intondi spoke with Julian Bond at American University on October 9 th, the
anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, on contemporary issues dealing with civil rights and race. The
moderated discussion was entitled, The Fierce Urgency of Then: The Legacy of the Civil Rights
Act 50 Years On.
Nursing Professor Monique Alston-Davis was accepted into the 2015 NLN LEAD program. LEAD is
part of the NLN Leadership Institute in the Center for Transformational Leadership, which
focuses on leadership development for nurse educators who have experienced a rapid transition
to an administrative position or aspires to lead. This year-long program will provide Professor
Alston-Davis an opportunity to be engaged with peers and experts to examine issues related to
leadership concepts and organizational systems.
Kim McGettigan, administrative manager of the TP/SS Vice President and Provost’s office in
Takoma Park/Silver Spring helped to organize the First Annual Armed Forces Appreciation Day in
the heart of Bethesda on October 4th. The appreciation event for members of our armed forces
raised funds and awareness for two non-profit organizations that provide much needed support
to our country’s service members and their families -- The Fisher House Foundation
(www.fisherhouse.org) and the Semper Fi Fund (www.semperfifund.org). Several students from
the Mental Health Club volunteered as did the Combat to College staff and more than $45,000
was donated to the two non profit organizations.
Professor Robert Giron was chosen to speak on behalf of Gival Press at the National Poets &
Writers’ event on Oct. 25th at the Library of Congress. Melissa Faliveno, associate editor of Poets
& Writers Magazine, talked with the editors of five independent presses about the kind of work
they look to publish, the relationships they cultivate with their authors, and the balance
between publishing traditional work and developing new and innovative ideas for both print and
digital literature. Robert Giron established Gival Press in 1998. Since then, the award-winning
independent literary press has published over sixty books of fiction and poetry by emerging and
established authors. Giron is also the editor of the online journals ArLiJo and the Sligo Journal,
and the past poetry editor of Potomac Review. He is the author of five poetry collections, has
coedited an award-winning collection on women’s studies, and has edited two award-winning
anthologies of poetry, most recently Poetic Voices Without Borders 2
Link:
http://www.pw.org/live/events/washington_dc_independent_publishing
Academic News and Notes
Professor Bob Helsley’s Graphic Design I class partnered with Dr. Rita Kranidis and the Global
Humanities Institute and created the postcard design for the upcoming event "Identity:
Contemporary Interpretations of History, Place, and Culture" at the Cultural Arts Center
October 23, 2014. There was a committee which chose the winning design by student Kayla
Beehler to be mass-produced and mailed out.
AELP Professors Mike Berman and Paul Lux initiated a CAPDI-approved two-year pilot in which
AELW940 students were allowed to take any MATH course they placed into instead of having to
wait until they were eligible for ENGL101. Success data, which had been gathered by Professors
Berman and Lux and shared with the Math department and CAPDI, indicated that AELP students
performed as well as, or better than, their native-speaking counterparts in Math. On the
strength of the initial data and the results of the subsequent pilot, Mathematics Professor Jenny
Polm submitted a proposal to the Collegewide Curriculum Committee to officially change the
assessment levels for Math courses to include AELW940. The committee unanimously approved
this proposal and forwarded it to Dr. Rai for signature on October 3rd. This initiative will be used
as the basis for further, similar efforts aimed at expanding access to credit courses for AELP
students at the upper level of the program.
The Montgomery College Planetarium is not too shy to tackle the tough questions. On Saturday,
October 18, the Planetarium staff addressed the beginning of time in a free event entitled,
When Was Creation? The universe is finite in time, it had a beginning, and the universe that we
can know is finite in space. Many college and community members attended the informative
and entertaining exploration of the universal timeline.
Celebrating Students
The Economics Club of Takoma Park Campus had two events in October that were very well
attended. On October 3rd, recruiters from the Universities at Shady Grove visited the Economics
Club and Phi Theta Kappa students to discuss transfer. On October 10th, Professor Barbara Crain,
an Associate Professor at Northern Virginia Community College and Program head for
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Geography, discussed her faculty exchange experience at a 4 year college in Sunyani, Ghana.
The title of her presentation was Ghana: Democracy, Tribes and Economic Development.
ZEN ADVENTURES IN COLLAGE, a new art exhibit by art professor Patricia Zannie and nine of her
students : Fetunwork Amedie, Cynthia Farrel Johnson, Julie Kaplan, Amy Kincaid, Judi Leary,
Joann Morris, Lezetta Moyer, Fred Ruckdeschel and Patricia Sagawa, will be on display at the
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville until November 30th.
MC in the News
Those of you who have known Susan Kryszak for any length of time are aware of her volunteer
work raising whooping cranes, an endangered species. Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame), who
now has a program called Somebody’s Gotta Do It, featured ‘Raising Cranes’ and attempted to
do Susan’s job at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/10/10/mike-rowe-episode-2-clip2.cnn.html
Montgomery College Professor and Grammy nominated musician, Dawn Avery, just won a
Bronze Medal at the Global Music Awards (http://www.globalmusicawards.com) for her newest
project 50 Shades of Red which she performed October 18 in a multi-media event with Grammy
winning guitarist and producer, Larry Mitchell at the Cultural Arts Center; it includes
downtempo Native American music, dance, and film.
http://www.womanaroundtown.com/locations/new-york/my-career-choice-dawn-avery-50shades-of-red.
Speakers and Events
An exciting first: the Humanities Division and the new Center for Black Studies at Montgomery
College brought civil rights leader Ben Jealous to the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus to talk
about “Closing the Achievement Gap: The Intersection of Technology, Civil Rights and Social
Justice”. History Professor Vincent Intondi was able to persuade Mr. Jealous to appear gratis as
the opening event for the new Center.
Authors and Montgomery College Professors Maria Sprehn-Malagón, Jorge Hernandez-Fujigaki,
and Linda Robinson read from Latinos in the Washington Metro Area, their new book, and
highlighted the early days of the Hispanic Festival, the Central American peace movement, the
struggle for civil and immigrants’ rights, and notable residents. The book reading took place in
the Library of Macklin Tower. With a shared immigrant experience and broad cultural bonds,
these and many other Latino residents have transformed the Washington, DC area.
Anthropologist Maria Sprehn-Malagón, PhD, whose family is from Spain; historian Jorge
Hernandez-Fujigaki, PhD, a Mexican immigrant; and college counselor Linda Robinson, of Puerto
Rican descent, collaborated on this book. Both Maria Sprehn-Malagón and Linda Robinson are
lifelong residents of the DC area.
Artist Matthew Litteken’s “Images and Installations” is on display at the Cafritz Arts Center’s
King Street Gallery from October 23 through November 25, with a reception on October 23. Mr.
Litteken’s installation explores consumerism by incorporating iconography and visual motifs
from U.S. currency.
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The capstone event for Humanities Days celebrations, featuring more than 45 events college
wide, took place on October 23rd in the lobby of the Cultural Arts Center. An art exhibit features
work by faculty and staff at two of the Global Humanities Institute's academic partners abroad:
Xian University of Arts and Sciences in China, and the University if El Salvador. Working with the
GHI to create this exhibit have been art faculty from our three campuses.
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