Merzudin Ibric and co-Head Coach Marc Mangiacotti at the NCAA Hall of Fame

Earning a place on the Dean’s List and winning All-America honors in track are outstanding accomplishments, but they are just the latest legs in the remarkable race that Wheaton junior Merzudin Ibric began as a youngster in war-torn Bosnia.

The Boston Globe profiled Ibric, who is one of 23 college athletes featured in a permanent exhibit at the NCAA Hall of Champions. His story is found  within the “In My Own Words” segment of the outdoor track & field exhibit. Just prior to the 1995 genocide that took place in Srebrenica, where approximately 8,000 boys and men were killed, Ibric and his family left that city before arriving in the United States in 1998.

“He’s one of the hardest workers and most disciplined student-athletes I have ever worked with,” said Marc Mangiacotti, who coaches Wheaton’s track squad with Paul Souza.

“There was a video presentation, and when they saw pictures of buildings leveled and villages blown apart, they were shocked.”

When Ibric and his teammates were in Indiana this winter for the NCAA’s indoor championships, they made a side trip to Indianapolis to visit the Hall of Champions and see the exhibit featuring Ibric.

“It was an emotional moment for everyone,” said Mangiacotti, “including the coaches.

The international relations major is currently working on a book about his experiences, which he has titled “Running for My Life.”

Source: The Boston Globe

Everyone knows this is a tough time to be looking for a job. Lately, the news media’s angle on this issue has been to examine it through the eyes of recent college graduates (as though grads wouldn’t be nervous enough). The New York Times views the issue through a different lens, that of women returning to the workforce due to economic pressure.

For advice, the Times turned to someone that many other women rely upon: Kathryn Sollmann, Class of 1980, is the co-founder and managing partner of Women@Work Network, a recruitment firm in Wilton, Conn.

Her practical advice about not being boxed in by the conventions of resume writing highlights what makes liberal arts graduates such good employees and leaders in the first place. And really, with a little clear thinking and creativity, Sollman’s point can apply to any job search, no matter your stage of life or circumstance.

“If you have been running the book fair at school, for example, that is marketing and advertising with results that can be measured in revenue,” Ms. Sollmann said. “I can’t tell you how many times women have done part-time work, volunteer work, been active in industry associations and they ask me, ‘That counts?’ ”

Sollman draws on extensive experience in marketing and communications for her advice. She spent the early part of her career developing and leading training programs for Peat, Marwick, Mitchell (now KPMG), and developing seminars and conferences for Institutional Investor magazine. She left the magazine to establish her own investment marketing communications firm, which she ran successfully for 17 years from a home office. She helped co-found Women@Work in 2002.

Source: The New York Times

The future of newspapers may be in doubt, but society’s need for well-written and carefully researched journalism remains clear.

Alumnus Ted Nesi, who is a member of the Class of 2007, recently received recognition as a journalist of promise. Now a writer for the Providence Business News, Nesi has been named a 2009 Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting Fellow.

He is one of 11 journalists nationwide who will attend a one-week marine and environmental science immersion program at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography during the second week of June. The fellows will be exposed to the scientific methods and issues of current research in the field.

“I’m grateful to the Metcalf Institute for choosing me, particularly as a reporter who lives and works in Rhode Island,” Nesi said. “With climate change getting so much attention lately, it’s important that reporters who cover the environment really understand the science that’s driving the debate.”

Source: Providence Business News

Some of them amuse or inspire; others come close to putting you to sleep. It’s the season of graduations–and graduation speeches. A blogger named Cristina Negrut has perused some 700 commencement addresses on the Web, and she told USA Today that only about one in 20 are truly inspiring.

Negrut has published links to her top 10 favorite speeches on her blog, and one of them was delivered here at Wheaton in 2000. In an age of obsessive multi-tasking, John Walsh, noted author, art historian and husband of Jill Galston Walsh ‘60, bucked the trend, advising the Wheaton grads to:

Do one thing at a time. Give each experience all your attention. Try to resist being distracted by other sights and sounds, other thoughts and tasks, and when it is, guide your mind back to what you’re doing.

To glean more of Walsh’s practical advice, read his commencement address here. And visit Negrut’s blog to find out who else made the top 10. Hm …  Looks like Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has some tough acts to follow when he addresses Wheaton’s Class of 2009 on May 16.

Foodies can get excited about any dish, any ingredient, any method of preparation. (Just ask for some tomato-based barbecue sauce in North Carolina, for example. Or Manhattan clam chowder in Boston.)

The humble hamburger can be  subjected to close analysis, too, especially if the arbiters of taste can apply the critical thinking skills that are honed by liberal arts study. The New York Times focused on a group of eight men in New York City who have made a commitment to the search for the perfect burger. They call themselves the Burger of the Month club.

An alert Wheaton alumnus reader points out that two members of the beefy brethren are Jed Weiss ‘96 and Jason Beckerman ‘97.

This is an exclusive group, allowing just eight members, a limitation established for the practical reason that it would be difficult to find a table for a larger group. Club members were required to apply for the privilege of joining the group’s burger tour. The Times quote Jed Weiss’ application:

“Vegetables are to be eaten by rabbits and liberals,” wrote Mr. Weiss, a lawyer who lives on the Upper West Side, “and the only form they should take is the fourth ingredient in a condiment.”

You decide whether Jed was referring to lettuce, tomato, onion or pickle.

In any event, you can learn more about the art of the burger by visiting the club’s web site: http://www.burgerrankings.com/.

Source: The New York Times.

In Boston, long before you walk into the Dancing Deer Baking Company and long after you leave, you smell it. The chocolate. The cinnamon. The unidentifiable yumminess.

Goodness lingers. Company CEO and co-founder Trish Karter, a Wheaton alumna, has made sure that that is also true of her business mission by practicing corporate social responsibility. Her award-winning Boston-based company donates 35 percent of the retail price from the Sweet Home product line to programs aimed at ending homelessness.

She has taken the mission on the road with the Dancing Deer Mother’s Day Ride to help end homelessness. To mark company’s 15th anniversary, Karter got on her bike on April 22 for a 15-day, 1,500-mile ride from Atlanta to Boston. The ride will end around Mother’s Day on May 6. Along the way she plans to stay at homeless shelters in 15 cities and talk about ways to end homelessness. She’s also trying to raise money for a scholarship fund that helps homeless mothers.

Before she left for the trip, NECN interviewed her about her efforts. See photos, find out where she is now via her GPS tracker and read her blog at www.dancingdeer.com/ride.

Sam Coale’s expertise lies in literature and culture. That’s culture—not horticulture. But this weekend the Wheaton English professor will try his hand at flower arranging for the Celebrity Flower Design Challenge, part of the Attleboro Arts Museum’s annual flower show.

His challengers? A retired TV meteorologist (John Ghiorse), a traffic reporter (Scott Montminy) and Willy T, the oversized chicken mascot for Willow Tree Poultry Farm in Attleboro.

The four local luminaries will square off at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 4, in an event dubbed “Celebrity Flower Power Design Challenge: Laugh-in Meets Martha Stewart.”

Despite his lack of experience in the garden, Coale is approaching the challenge with confidence, as he told the Attleboro Sun Chronicle:

Coale, who teaches American literature and culture at Wheaton and is an author, lecturer and theater critic, seems to be out for the prize as well, although he says he entered the contest “for a lark.”

“Being married to a horticulturist is daunting when it comes to twigs and sprouts,” Coale said. “For me, a garden is to be walked through at day’s end, preferably in summer, with a martini in my hand. That’s as close as I’ve gotten to the soil.”

Coale wondered, however, how much competition he will have on Saturday. “What do TV folks and a chicken know about art?” he said.

“I mean where else but being a weatherman can you get it wrong every time and still keep your job?” he continued. “And as for a chicken – all cluck and no culture. He’ll lay an egg, I’m sure, while I, with my artistic flair, knowing absolutely nothing about blossoms and buds, will attend to the muse and be remembered long after the arrangement I can conjure up. Give me the petals and I’ll knock the cock and the TV talkers outta the garden!”

Source: Attleboro Sun Chronicle

Wheaton’s commitment to community service and health education is paying off. The town of Norton was recently designated a HeartSafe community; Wheaton will officially receive its designation in the next few weeks.

The acknowledgement of the town as a HeartSafe community caps a campaign that Wheaton helped launch, and then implement, last fall. The effort is designed to help cities and towns, colleges and universities improve the possibility that anyone suffering a sudden cardiac arrest will have the best chance for survival.

Wheaton students helped to train half the students in Norton High School in CPR during the fall. According to the Attleboro Sun Chronicle: “The remaining 348 Norton High students who were not formally trained last fall will do so this spring, said Craig Andrade, Wheaton associate dean of health and wellness and director of student health services. Supporters are trying to train 2,000 Norton residents during the program’s first year.”

Source: The Sun Chronicle

Researchers who study vernal pools say the signs of spring are clear: the spotted salamander and wood frogs are on the march back to their ancestral homes.

Vernal pools are seasonal bodies of water that appear during the spring. These pools serve as critical breeding habitat for amphibians and insect species. The MetroWest Daily News features a story about naturalists’ anticipation that the vernal pool season is about to begin with annual mass migration of animals from hibernation to the vernal pools in which they were born.

Wheaton faculty members and students have been engaged for a number of years in studying vernal pools, many in the woods that ring the college campus. As a result, professors in the biology department have established some expertise in recognizing when the annual migration will begin.

“I suspect we may get animals coming if it rains (Wednesday night), definitely wood frogs if not salamanders,” said Kathy Morgan, a professor of comparative psychology at Wheaton College in Norton who specializes in animal behavior. Morgan is part of a group that studies a vernal pool on campus and catalogs individual salamanders that return each year.

Morgan said her group has documented 329 individual salamanders since 1996, each identified by the unique pattern of spots on their backs.

“I always get a big kick out of it when I can identify someone as a previous year’s capture,” Morgan said. All salamanders caught near the vernal pool are released immediately after identification.

Source: Metrowest Daily News