by | February 10, 2012

Lee Bateman Team Starts “Eat. Move. Grow United.”

Lee University’s Bateman Team is joining this year with the United Way of Bradley County in a campaign “Eat. Move. Grow United.” to fight childhood obesity. The campaign is the Lee Bateman Team’s  entry for their competition this year, but it was specifically chosen to aid children in our local area.

Bateman Team Member Ivey Lawrence

“It is a competition, so of course we hope to do well as a team,” said Ivey Lawrence, a member of the team. “There is however, a greater hope that we can actually impact our community. We want to help children and their families understand the importance of a healthy lifestyle and connect them with local organizations that can help sustain the knowledge that they gain.”

Specifically, the goal of the campaign is to challenge children and adolescents to eat and move for a healthier lifestyle. But another aspect of the campaign targets educating parents in ways to support and encourage this behavior for an enduring healthier Cleveland.

On February 18th,“Eat. Move. Grow United.” will host an event on the Bradley County Greenway as an effort to educate and involve local elementary and middle school children. The event will include a fun run called “Go United.”

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by | February 10, 2012

Dr. McLelland Delivers Lecture on Philosophy

 

Dr. Reginald McLelland

Monday, January 30, Lee University’s Humanities Coalition and Philosophy Club hosted a joint event featuring guest speaker Dr. Reginald McLelland. Dr. McLelland, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Covenant College, presented his paper “What is Philosophy” to a group of about 80 Lee students and faculty.

Dr. McLelland’s paper focused on what distinguishes certain kinds of thinking and inquiry as philosophical.

“If you ask someone what philosophy is, you will get a variety of answers,” said Dr. McLelland. “My definition or understanding of what philosophy is starts with the nature of human cognitive experience. Cognitive experience, as I am defining it, is a specific, particularizing, distinguishing kind of awareness of whatever is present to us in some way in such experience.”

Dr. McLelland also discussed the prejudice Christians often have against philosophy.

“I am acutely aware of the tendency of many Christians to see philosophical thought and Christian belief to be at odds,” he said. “However, is the sort of intellectual speculation that could be termed ‘philosophical’ by definition in conflict with Christian truth?”

During the course of his paper presentation, Dr. McLelland suggested the answer to this question is no.  The lecture concluded with a question and answer session for those in the audience.

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by | February 10, 2012

Dr. Kleinmann named Page Legacy Educator

Dr. Christie Kleinmann

Dr. Christie Kleinmann of Lee University’s Communication and Arts Department was recently named a Page Legacy Educator for the 2012 academic year by the Arthur W. Page Center. Through this program Dr. Kleinmann will receive a $2,500 grant for this year to fund her research.

“The grant is for my proposal topic ‘Exploring the Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Sports Public Relations,” said Dr. Kleinmann.  She looks forward to joining the other esteemed professors around the nation as a Page Legacy Educator of 2012.

The Page Center was created in 2004 through a leadership gift by Lawrence G. Foster, a retired corporate vice president for public relations at Johnson & Johnson. Arthur W. Page, for whom the award is named, is often regarded as the founder of the modern practice of corporate public relations. For more information about the Page Center click here.

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Filed under Faculty & Staff, Public Relations

by | February 10, 2012

2012 Writer’s Festival

The Lee University’s annual Writers Festival returned January 17-19 with special guests representing a range of  genres including playwriting, non-fiction, and poetry as well as visiting theatre artists.

Guest performers in a reading of Stacey Isom's original play, Dough & Cookies

The three-day event, hosted by Lee’s Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages, featured non-fiction writer, Rachel Held Evans, who read from her book Evolving in Monkey Town, as well as selections from her new book about her experiment in biblical womanhood. Guest artists Dr. Lisa Neely and Amber Wood spoke about the collaborative writing process and other topics to students in several classes. Dr. Kevin Brown also read from his latest book of poems to a receptive audience.

In the festival’s final event, resident playwright Stacey Isom presented a staged reading of her new play, Dough & Cookies to a packed house in the Edna Minor Conn Theatre. The reading featured guests Dr. Lisa Neely, Amber Wood, Kim Jackson, Phil Haynie, James Williams and lighting design work of Keith Kirkland.

 

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by | December 9, 2011

Science Symposium at the SMC

On November 29th the semi-annual Science Symposium took place in the Science and Math Complex. Over 50 students presented posters on research they had conducted, both in the laboratory and through literature research during the semester.

“During the symposium, students are required to not only defend their own poster, but they must also assess their peers,” said Dr. Lori West. “Our students spend a great deal of time working on their projects and developing their posters.  I feel that the symposium was very successful.  The students were prepared and defended their posters well, which gives them an opportunity to prepare for national science meetings such as the Experimental Biology National Conference where some of our students have been able to present their research data.”

Students in genetics presented posters on fruit fly crosses where they were given two mutant strains of flies and were to cross the flies, phenotyping their offspring and performing statistical analyses on their data in order to determine the mechanism of inheritance of the genes under investigation.

Students in the biochemistry laboratory course developed their own independent research projects. They conducted biochemical experiments, analyzed their data and presented their conclusions in poster format. Finally, students in the senior seminar developed a grant over a topic of their interest. They were required to perform an intense investigation into primary literature and then develop a grant to address an issue requiring further investigation.  In their grant, they were to formulate hypotheses regarding the problem, propose experiments that would address the problem, and present expected outcomes and potential obstacles.  A summary of each student’s grant proposal was presented in a poster.

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by | December 9, 2011

Dr. Aaron Johnson Conducts Eusebius Panel

Dr. Aaron Johnson

For the past several years, Dr. Aaron Johnson, assistant professor of humanities at Lee, has organized a series of panels hosted by the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) on Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius was a 4th century AD Christian intellectual.

Dr. Johnson has designed the scope of the panels to be international. To date, the panels have included speakers from Israel, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, the UK, Switzerland and the US.

“My involvement as the organizer and chair of these Eusebius forums has kept me at the center of Eusebius studies,” said Dr. Johnson, “which helps in my teaching here at Lee, as I am currently teaching a seminar on Eusebius.”

Dr. Johnson has also written a number of articles and a book on Eusebius, published by Oxford University Press, with another commissioned book underway.

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by | December 4, 2011

Fort Hill Cemetery Walking Tour

Read the full story here

Zachary Arms portrays Capt. William Grant, who died in 1863, as he stands at his grave during a lantern walking tour of Fort Hill Cemetery in Cleveland on Sunday. The event was presented by the Lee University history faculty and the Bradley County Historical and Genealogical Society. Photo by John Rawlston.

As they do each fall, students and local actors dressed in period attire stood in Fort Hill Cemetery on Sunday, beside the graves of people who lived here in another time.

As groups of visitors strolled past on the annual Fort Hill Cemetery Walking Tour, the costumed actors portraying the deceased residents spoke about the lives they had lived.

One of the actresses, Michelle Dyer, a senior Lee University history major, said the annual cemetery tour “gives you a sense of the depth of our history.”

“This is the South, but not everyone was for the Confederacy,” she said.

Robert Barr and Hillary Tedrick, also senior history majors at Lee, were dressed as Dr. P.J.R. and Sarah Edwards. A prominent family here, the Edwardses were active supporters of the Confederacy.

Researching the characters, they got to know them as people, the students said while waiting for the next tour group.

Many of the people portrayed had links to the pro-Union Civil War burning of the Hiwassee River railroad bridge in nearby Charleston.

“Maybe not the bridge burning itself, but the suspicion of conspiracy,” said Randy Wood, professor of humanities at Lee.

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Filed under History and Political Science

by | December 4, 2011

Dr. Ringer Joins BICC Board

Dr. Jeff Ringer

Dr.  Jeff Ringer of Lee’s Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages recently joined the Bradley Initiative for Church and Community (BICC) Board of Directors. The BICC is a non-profit, Christian Community development organization located in Cleveland.

According to their mission statement, “BICC exists to unite churches, along with other community organizations, to address the root/systemic causes of the social, economic and cultural issues in Clevlenad/Bradley Country, Tennessee.”

“I’m interested in working with BICC because, as a Christian, I’m interested in social justice,” said Dr. Ringer. “Specifically, I believe that Christians need to take very seriously the biblical admonitions to care for the poor and marginalized and to work toward a more level playing field for all residents of Bradley County, regardless of their socioeconomic status, level of education, race, religion, gender, ethnicity, and so forth.”

BICC functions based on funding from private donors but also from various grants. Dr. Ringer will most likely assist in helping write grant applications along with other Board duties.

 

 

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Filed under English and Modern Foreign Languages, Faculty & Staff

by | December 4, 2011

Mary Mathias-Dickerson Speaks on Beauty

Mary Mathias-Dickerson

On Tuesday, Nov. 8 Lee University’s Humanities Coalition and the Department of History and Political Science held the third lecture in 2011-2012 Arts and Culture Series. Mary Mathias-Dickerson, who joined Lee’s art faculty this year,  spoke about the subject of beauty and how our faith can be changed and transformed through interaction with the arts.

“Art can be used in our spiritual formation— the influence of a work of art can subtly shift an attitude, a point of view, or contribute to a heightened sensitivity to some aspect of life,” she said to a diverse audience of students, faculty and community members. “I have found that the more that I am involved in the practice of making art, the more receptive I am to seeing beauty in unlikely places.  It is a process of learning to see everything in a new way. When creating observational art we shift into a wordless mode and become fully involved in evaluating and learning.”

During her lecture “The Transformational Power of Beauty,” Mathias-Dickerson presented the results of a Google Image search for “beauty”. The search revealed pages and pages of young, thin women with light complexions.

“These narrow ideas of beauty dominate mainstream imagery,” she said. “I see this as damaging—leading to feelings of alienation, inferiority, and exclusion, whereas true beauty leads to something positive.  Art is a way to communicate visual values.  We are ALL made in the image of God and retain God’s beauty. Not everyone needs to be an artist, but I believe that for a full range of insight and communication the skills of observation and visual expression must be fostered. ”

The Arts and Culture Series will continue with a lecture and discussion led by Baylor University professor Joe Kickasola.

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by | December 4, 2011

Tartuffe

From left to right: Jonathan Campbell, Laura Sherwood, Lindsay Hanson, Alli Wilson, and Jacob Shrimplin in Tartuffe.

  • Molière’s classic comedy Tartuffe took the Lee University Theatre stage this fall. The play premiered on Nov. 4-6 and concluded its showing on Nov. 12 in the Dixon Center mainstage.

“The play was very well received,” said Dr. Christine Williams, director of Tartuffe.  “We had a number of people mention how accessible they thought the play was and that they were surprised by how much they enjoyed it.  Many people came to the show thinking it might be a stuffy, old classic, but ended up having a great time.”

The cast performed for 1300 audience members in total, including a school time matinee for local high school and middle school students. Many audience members commented on the exquisite costumes displayed during the production.

Tartuffe is one the most successful pieces written by French comedic playwright Molière. It is set in 17th century Paris during the reign of King Louis XIV and is a satirical commentary about religious hypocrisy.

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