Top Stories
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Student group receives $10,000 grant
A Bucknell University student group is working to educate people about the effects of the pesticide Nemagon on banana workers in Nicaragua through a recent $10,000 grant from the Davis Projects for Peace program. [full story]
Members of the January 2008 Bucknell Brigade volunteer trip met with workers camping outside the capital city of Managua who are protesting the use of the pesticide, which is banned in the United States.
Five students will return to Nicaragua for two weeks this summer to conduct interviews and collect oral histories for a documentary. They also hope to provide food and clothing to the workers, as well as pamphlets to distribute to legislators.
After returning to campus, they will edit, produce, and distribute the documentary to many other colleges and will post it on YouTube.
This is the second year in a row that a Bucknell student group has received a Davis Project for Peace grant. The first supported two projects in Guatemala and Nicaragua: a sewing cooperative in Mi Refugio and a water supply project in El Porvenir.
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Pulitzer winner to lead off fall speaker series: “Power and the President”
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will lead off the fall Bucknell Forum national speaker series with a talk highlighting the semester’s focus on "Power and the President." [full story]
The talk, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 30 in the Weis Center for the Performing Arts, is free and open to the public.
Goodwin’s most recent book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005), was a New York Times best-seller and winner of several awards for historical literature. Steven Spielberg is developing a feature film about the book.
In 1995, she won the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II. Previous books include The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987), which was made into a six-hour ABC miniseries in 1990, and Lyndon Johnson & The American Dream (1976).
Goodwin has also been a commentator for NBC, an on-air personality for PBS, a sports journalist, and an assistant to Lyndon Johnson. She received her doctorate in government from Harvard University, where she also taught government.
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Bucknell to host “MythBusters,” popular Discovery Channel duo
The co-hosts of the hit Discovery Channel program that pits myth against modern-day science will present "An Evening with the MythBusters" on April 15 at Sojka Pavilion. The 3,300 free tickets to the event were gone in less than one day. [full story]
"MythBusters" Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the popular program with an interactive question-and-answer style lecture and video.
Their show uses science to put urban myths, folklore, and legends to the ultimate test. Can you escape from Alcatraz across the bay on a raft built in prison? Will leaving Christmas lights on your tree overnight cause the tree to burst into a ball of flame?
"I think their message has appeal to engineers, scientists, and the University community at large," said Steven Shooter, professor of mechanical engineering and a Mythbusters fan. "Their message crosses disciplines by suggesting that we should test ideas in an objective way before accepting them as truth. And we can have a lot of fun doing it."
The duo has more than 30 years of special effects experience between them. In the television series, their madcap science discovery often results in something being blown up, but no onstage experiments or explosions take place at live shows.
Information about free campus simulcast tickets is available in the full story.
The event is sponsored by the Student Lectureship Committee, whose previous speakers have included Bill Nye, Chris Matthews, James Earl Jones, Mitch Albom, and Janet Reno.
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Burma specialist David Steinberg to speak as part of series
David Steinberg, professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University and one of the nation's foremost experts on Burma, will give the talk, "Bucknell-Burma: The Dynamics of Changed Relations Over 50 Years," on April 17. [full story]
The free talk continues the series, "Historic Relationship, Contemporary Challenge: The Burma-Bucknell Connection at 150 Years and Why It Matters Today," a semester-long celebration marking the relationship that started in 1858 when Maung Shaw Loo arrived from Burma to become Bucknell’s first foreign exchange student.
Steinberg has previously visited Bucknell and was present in 1958 when a representative of the president of Burma presented the Burma-Bucknell bowl to the University.
As a member of the Senior Foreign Service, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of State, he was director for Technical Assistance in Asia and the Middle East, and director for Philippines, Thailand, and Burma affairs.
His latest book, Turmoil in Burma: Contested Legitimacies in Myanmar, takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the dynamic influences at work inside the country also known as Myanmar.
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All Bucknell chaplains named to national board
As reported by the Associated Press, all three chaplains at Bucknell are now board members of the National Association of College and University Chaplains (NACUC). [full story]
When Rabbi Serena Fujita, Bucknell University's Jewish chaplain, presides over the next meeting of the NACUC, she'll see two familiar faces on the board. Bucknell’s chaplains now hold three of the 17 board seats.
Fujita has been elected president for a one-year term, joining University Chaplain Ian Oliver, who is serving a five-year term as membership secretary for the organization, and Father Michael Letteer, Catholic chaplain at Bucknell, who recently was named to the board.
"With a membership of only 121 chaplains nationwide, it's certainly an honor for Bucknell to have three board members," said Oliver.
Founded in 1948 at Yale University, the NACUC is an inter-religious national professional organization for clergy and religious affairs administrators in higher education.
Fujita is also serving on the planning committee for the Global Chaplains Conference to be held in Finland later this year.
Oliver serves as the full-time head of religious life and Protestant chaplain at Bucknell.
Letteer joined the University in June 2007 after having served as a priest for the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa.
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Bucknell groups again contributing to Lewisburg Arts Festival
Joining with the town of Lewisburg, groups from Bucknell will contribute jazz, juggling, singing, and a brand new mural in a celebration of the arts that begins the weekend of April 26. [full story]
The Lewisburg Arts Festival includes the Market Street Festival on April 26, with food, entertainment, and 120 juried artists, plus "Lewisburg Live!" the following Saturday, May 3—featuring 13 bands in venues throughout downtown.
Market Street Festival performances will include the Bucknell Jazz Band, Bucknell Jugglers Club and Bucknell's Silhouettes female a cappella group. One of the day’s highlights is a view of the first section of a mural by artist Michael Pilate at the Donald Heiter Community Center. The mural is a service project of Bucknell’s Management 101 class.
Coinciding with the first weekend, the Association for the Arts at Bucknell will host its Spring Arts Weekend April 25 to 27, with a variety of performances and exhibits at the University.
