Dr. Petillo's Blog

President Petillo's Blog: November 21, 2017

I would like to take a moment to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving holiday. I wish you a wonderful visit with family and friends and time to reflect on the things you are grateful for.

The Graduate Student Affairs office hosted a Friendsgiving dinner at the Martire Forum last night. What a great way to kick off the holiday week.

Many thanks to the students who generously participated in the Thanksgiving turkey and food drives that will benefit the local needy. This allows them to have a hot and delicious meal with their loved ones. Thanks for all your efforts and a big thanks to SHUDining, Student Government, Volunteer Programs & Service Learning and the student-athletes, especially the lacrosse team, who loaded up the truck with food donations the Monday before Thanksgiving and helped distribute the food at St. Charles in Bridgeport on Tuesday morning.

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting music legend Paul Simon at the West Campus Guest House. The private concert, hosted by athletic director Bobby Valentine, raised money for student scholarships. Thanks to everyone who made this a seamless event for a very important cause.

We are rooting for sophomore Lauren Celentano, who played Mary Magdalene in the theatre arts’ production of Jesus Christ Superstar last spring. She is currently in Rome competing in a dance contest on a major Italian television show called Amici. She is the first American dancer in the cast, and we just learned she made it to the second round. Congrats, Lauren.

Our club football team made it to the National Club Football Association’s Championship Bowl at West Liberty University in Wheeling, W.V., on December 2 when they will go up against the University of Fort Lauderdale. Kudos to Coach Greg Jones and his team, and good luck!

I wish everyone safe travels over the holiday weekend. I look forward to seeing you back on campus next week, refreshed and ready to finish up the semester.

President Petillo’s Blog: November 17, 2017

Students have been working hard finishing up projects and papers this week before heading home to spend Thanksgiving with their families. In between their studies, I hope they also found time to give to one of our many Thanksgiving food drives and collections. Student Government is still accepting money to purchase turkeys for community members in need.

Also, Hearts United is collecting items for care packages for the military. You can drop off healthy snacks, female products, toiletries, holiday decorations, water flavoring packets, food bars (granola, protein, etc.), board and card games, beef jerky, laundry soap, toothpaste/toothbrush, razors, caffeine packets, and baby wipes in the donation boxes located in the Political Science Office Suite (HC212) and Campus Ministry until November 30. 

At our Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, we saw all the boxes of non-perishable goods that were donated to help out our neighbors. As always, it was a beautiful service. I wish more of you had been able to join us.  


Professor Bronwyn Cross-Denny was the featured speaker at our second Agape Latte session of the year. The caffeinated conversation focuses on faith and life. Thanks for sharing your stories with us, Bronwyn.


Last week we renamed and dedicated two of our buildings, the Sheila Hamilton Student Success Center and the Maureen Hamilton Wellness Center, in memory of trustee and alumnus Brian Hamilton’s family members. It was a great evening celebrating a good friend who has done so much for the University. 

We are proud of the SHUperman who performed a concert for homeless veterans last weekend in honor of Veterans Day. The event was held at the Bessemer Center Social Hall in Bridgeport.

The College of Nursing’s first-ever Palliative Care Conference was a big success. The well-attended, all-day event provided patients, families, caregivers and health-care providers with all the necessary information about the palliative care experience.

Our engineering program held a SHUmo Bot Challenge in the student lounge on Wednesday. This event allowed engineering students to put their robot creations in a ring together and watch their creations battle like sumo wrestlers.

Congratulations to our Ethics Bowl Debate Team. The team reached the quarterfinals of the Northeast Regional Ethics Bowl on Saturday. Students competed at Marist College along with 26 other schools including Yale, Villanova and Tufts. SHU made it to the quarterfinals as the fifth-ranked team.

A relatively new program on campus—Heart to Heart—was featured this week in the newsletter of Families for Depression Awareness after Heart to Heart made a donation to the organization. Heart to Heart was started last spring by senior Devan Kane and seeks to raise awareness of mental health issue among student-athletes.


Congratulations and thanks to Professor Anna Greer who has been sworn in as a member of Bridgeport’s Food Policy Council. The Council was created to integrate all agencies of the city in a common effort to improve the availability of safe and nutritious food at reasonable prices for residents, particularly those in need.

More congratulations are in order for Professor Bernadette Boyle who was randomly selected from 17 entries requesting to represent Sacred Heart in next year’s Boston Marathon. She has been a runner since high school and is the faculty mentor for our cross country and track teams, occasionally running with the teams and coaches. She will be running to raise money for our scholarship funds, and in the coming weeks and months, you will hear more about how you can support her efforts. We are also very grateful to Todd Cassler of John Hancock (a primary sponsor of the marathon) and a member of the WCOB Board of Visitors for providing us with the opportunity to choose a SHU representative for the race.

This weekend is your only chance to catch Noises Off on the Edgerton stage. Don’t miss it.


Good luck to all our student-athletes playing home and away this weekend.

And JP’s Diner is finally open and ready for business! Be sure to check it out soon – great menu and atmosphere. If today’s crowds are any indication, it is well on its way to becoming one of the most popular spots on campus.


Have a wonderful weekend.

Check out my posts on social media to get a pulse on the happenings at SHU.

 

 

Our first students at JPs. Great breakfast

A post shared by Dr. Petillo (@shuprez) on Nov 17, 2017 at 4:36am PST

President Petillo's Blog: November 10, 2017

It has been a busy and blustery week. Hope everyone is getting used to these cold fall temperatures.

We had another enlightening group of speakers these past several days. Professor Sigrid Schmalzer of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, stopped by Monday to present her lecture on “Transforming the Earth: Survival and Sustainability in Chinese Agricultural Terracing Campaigns, 1949-Present.” On Tuesday, we were visited by Rohit Bhalla, M.D., the vice president of Quality and chief quality officer at Stamford Health. He presented a talk on value-based health care as part of the Center for Healthcare Education’s Inaugural Year Lecture Series. Later on Tuesday, our very own professor Rhea Paul presented “Make It Work: Accommodating Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Mainstream Classrooms.” Today we hosted another guest speaker at the CHE. John Murphy, president and CEO of Western Connecticut Health Network, talked to us about the health industry. There was certainly a lot to choose from.

John Murphy and Rohit Bhalla

We held our annual Kristallnacht commemoration on Wednesday afternoon in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. This year we honor the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht. It is important that we remember the events of November 9-10, 1938, because it is a reminder of the suffering that we can bring to other human beings when we marginalize and exclude others. This reminder seems particularly poignant today with the kind of hate we seem to be hearing about on a daily basis. We commemorate Kristallnacht each year at SHU because we are a community that welcomes and embraces people of every religion, culture, race and sexual orientation. It was nice to see such a large crowd in attendance.

Kristallnacht

Tonight we will name two of our buildings, the Student Success Center and the Wellness Center, in memory of trustee and alumnus Brian Hamilton’s family members. The Student Success Center will honor his mother, Sheila, and the Wellness Center will be named after his former wife, Maureen, also an alum. I am pleased that we can help him honor his family in this way.

Our College of Nursing has worked hard to organize SHU’s first-ever palliative care conference for patients, families, caregivers and health-care providers. The event, “Living Through Illness: Charting a Patient-Centered Voyage,” will take place tomorrow at the Martire Center. Good luck to all those presenting.

Please give a nice, warm Pioneer welcome to all the potential Pioneers and their families who will be visiting campus on Sunday at what is expected to be one of our biggest open houses ever.

Student Government is collecting money to purchase Thanksgiving turkeys for those in surrounding communities who are in need. To donate, please click here. The Office of Volunteer Programs and Service learning is collecting non-perishable food to accompany the turkeys, including canned gravy, canned fruit and vegetables, peanut butter and jelly, pasta, dried or canned beans, canned tuna and more until November 15 in SU 100, next to the HC Lounge.

Thanksgiving food drives

Shaun Mitchell, a SHU grad and a current student in the Isabelle Farrington College of Education administrator preparation program, was selected as one of three Connecticut teachers for the Nellie Mae Foundation’s O’Toole Teacher Leadership Award. You can learn more about Shaun here. Congrats.

Last week Michael W. Higgins was one of four keynote speakers at the Yale Divinity School’s Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton conference. The event commemorated the two men’s contributions and legacies. You can watch his talk here. Great work.

Michael W. Higgins

Many of our theatre art students were nominated for the 2017 Broadway World Connecticut Awards. They were nominated in the following categories: best actor in a musical, best actor in a play, best actress in musical, best actress in a play, best playwright, best costume design and best younger actor (under 25). You can vote for your favorite actors here. Good luck to our talented nominees.

Looking for something to do this weekend? It is your last chance to check out the theatre arts programs’ production of Next to Normal. Also tonight, the SHUpermen will present “Salute to Heroes,” a concert for homeless veterans. The event will be held at the Bessemer Center Social Hall in Bridgeport.

Next to Normal and the SHUpermen

SHU soccer star, Ezra Siyadhuba, was featured in an article and video produced by Kwesé ESPN. You can read all about Ezra and his soccer dreams here.

In other exciting athletics news, SHU had eight programs earn a perfect score of 100 in the Graduation Success Rate standings announced Wednesday by the NCAA. The Pioneers increased the department GSP to 88, a point over the national GSR which is 87. Congrats!

Men’s basketball plays Holy Cross tonight at 6. Good luck to all our student-athletes playing home and away.

Be sure to follow me on social media for the latest news and updates.

Have a great weekend.    

 

Congratulations once again for the Sing Out concert against bullying. There is absolutely no room for bullying in this community and this concert reaffirms it. Thank you.

A post shared by Dr. Petillo (@shuprez) on Nov 4, 2017 at 4:37pm PDT

President Petillo's Blog: November 3, 2017

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween and did not ruin their appetites with too much candy. To get into the ghoulish spirit, the SHU band wowed us with their Halloween Spooktacular concert. Band members donned some great costumes. And it was great to be the SHUlebrity bartender last Friday at Red’s where everyone was getting into the Halloween spirit.

We found out this week that the Princeton Review once again ranked SHU’s Jack Welch College of Business as one of the best in the nation. SHU made the publication’s Best 267 Business Schools. As always, we are proud of the college’s faculty and students who work so hard to ensure the best educational experiences.

The SHU Biology Club hosted a bone marrow drive on Monday. Many staff, faculty and students participated in this program that could potentially save a life.

Undergraduate admissions is now offering opportunities to visit our off-campus facilities, including the Center for Healthcare Education. To make the experience a bit more unique, they will be offering families the chance to travel in an old-fashioned trolley, courtesy of Dattco. 

Another week at SHU means more enlightening lectures. On Wednesday, we welcomed Brian Wygal from Adelphi University who talked about the Pleistocene archaeology of Alaska. María Dolores Jiménez Blanco from NYU stopped by a little later that day to discuss the perception of Spanish art in America. Later that evening, an interprofessional education student seminar took place in University Commons. Over 200 students from various programs in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Health Professions and Nursing were in attendance.

The Human Journey Colloquia Series and La Hispanidad hosted a Day of the Dead celebration on Thursday on 63’s patio. The event, which included the traditional cultural experiences, also provided attendees with hot chocolate and a bonfire to keep warm.

School of Computing Chair Dom Pinto presented at an Academic Impressions workshop in San Antonio, Texas, last month called “Essential Management Skills for Department Chairs.” He conducted two sessions on communication skills. Great work, Dom.

History student Megan Marcucci successfully presented her paper, “Breaking the Silence: The Story of the Ixil Maya of Union Victoria during the Guatemalan Civil War,” at the New England Historical Association’s fall conference at Eastern Connecticut State University last month. Megan conducted oral interviews with the Ixil Maya in Guatemala over a period of two years to gather information for her paper.

Recently, Art & Design Professor Nathan Lewis took students in his painting course on a field trip to New Haven. The group visited two artist studios, galleries and even ate some famous New Haven-style pizza. Looked like a great day.

Congrats to SHU’s student chapter of the American Chemical Society for its commendable award for activities conducted during the 2016-17 school year. Kudos to Professor Linda Farber, faculty adviser, who commits her time to the students.

Looking for something to do this weekend? Be sure to check out the Theatre Arts Program’s production of Next to Normal. You can see it this weekend and next. For tickets, click here. On Saturday, SHU’s Choirs perform “Sing Out! A Concert Against Bullying” in University Commons. This annual concert is a moving testament to the awareness and tolerance we practice here at SHU – it makes me proud to be a Pioneer.

You can get into all SHU sporting events free this weekend with your SHU ID. Our women’s ice hockey team plays Post at the Sports Center of Connecticut in Shelton tonight at 8. On Saturday, our women’s rugby team takes on AIC at 11, and our men’s ice hockey battles Canisius at 2:05 on Saturday and Sunday at the Webster Bank Arena. Good luck to all our student-athletes playing home and away.

Have a great weekend!