Spring Student-Faculty Reading Set For March 21
 
Following the success of the inaugural Student-Faculty Reading last fall, a spring session has been scheduled for Wednesday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m.in the Rowan Art Gallery, across the street from The Vic. Unlike the previous reading, this semester’s event will not have a pre-arranged schedule, so anyone who wants to present can show up, sign up, and speak on a first-come, first-served basis. Participants are welcome to present any genre of writing, but are asked to keep their readings to no more than five minutes in length. In addition, representatives of both Avant, the undergraduate creative writing magazine, and Glassworks, the literary journal of the Master of Arts in Writing program, will be staffing information tables at the event. Please contact Tim Donaldson (donaldsont@rowan.edu) or Anthony Palma (palmaa@rowan.edu), organizers of the Student-Faculty Reading, for more information.

Reminder: Gess Awards Submission Deadline is March 9
 
PLEASE remind your students that submissions of undergraduate and graduate pieces of short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry for the 2018 Denise Gess Literary Awards are due by 4 p.m. Friday, March 9. There are cash prizes available of $200 for first place, $100 for second place, and $50 for third place in each of the three categories. The awards will be presented, and students will be reading their winning entries, at a Monday, April 2ceremony at the Rowan Art Gallery. Click here for more information or contact Lisa Jahn-Clough (jahn-clough@rowan.edu) for additional details. Representatives of Avant and Glassworks will be at the April Gess Awards ceremony as well.

​Future Profs Peek At Their Futures Through CCCA’s ‘Open Doors’
 
Nearly three dozen high school seniors who already have been accepted to the College of Communication and Creative Arts for the fall 2018 semester – and a number of parents and family members – spent the day on campus last Monday(February 19) for Open Doors Day. As part of the event, the roughly 100 people in attendance had the opportunity to sit in on classes, tour the campus, and eat lunch with representatives of the CCCA’s six departments. During the luncheon, one student from each department gave a brief presentation on how Rowan and CCCA is helping them prepare for a successful career after graduation. Writing Arts major Laura Kincaid, editor-in-chief of Avant, impressively represented our department and her student publication, and offered a nice shout-out to Glassworks as well. Four of the high school students attending are planning to major in Writing Arts and, based on brief discussions with them and their parents – and borrowing a phrase from college athletics, we appear to have the start of a strong recruiting class for 2018-2019!

Please Answer The Library Survey, But Keep Your Voice Down!
 
The Writing Arts Library Resources Committee is working with our department’s liaison at the Campbell Library – the incomparable Sam Kennedy – to redesign the Library Guide on the First Year Writing Program’s Student Support Site. (Click here to check out the current iteration of the guide.) To update and make the Library Guide as user-friendly as possible, the committee is conducting a survey to determine what content we would like to see added as part of the redesign, as well as what content will be most helpful to our students. Click here for the survey and be sure your voice is heard (your indoor voice, of course) by this Friday, March 2. Contact Tim Zatzariny (zatzariny@rowan.edu) with any questions.
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Building A Bridge To Professional Development
 
Writing Arts colleague Julie Malsbury presented at the Michigan LAND (Liberal Arts Network for Development) Conference in Muskogee, MI last Thursday the 22nd. Her presentation was titled “Building Bridges: English Acquisition Beyond the ESL Classroom.” The theme of this year’s LAND Conference was “Building Bridges,” and various speakers related the phrase to such educational analogies as bridges on which we take a stand or march together across, bridges with structural integrity and cutting-edge design, and bridges that act as barriers and must be divided or broken down. The LAND Conference is sponsored by MLAD, the organization of Michigan Liberal Arts Deans.
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Do you have a new publication, a reading, or any other event of interest coming up? Please let me know so I can let all our colleagues know in the weekly Rowan Writing Arts Events Update newsletter. Stop by my Victoria 521 office or email me at royek@rowan.edu to give me the 4-1-1.
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Stephen A. Royek, M.A.
Instructor, Writing Arts
Rowan University
2015 Rowan Medallion Award winner
     Phone: 856-906-4755
     Victoria Hall, Room 521
     Email: royek@rowan.edu

​Friday Is the Deadline for Graduating Senior Awards
 
There are only a few days left to nominate outstanding seniors who are set to graduate in May for three of the most prestigious honors presented to students at Rowan University. This Friday, February 23, is the deadline for names to be submitted for The Robert D. Bole Humanitarian Award, the James M. Lynch, Jr. Courage in Adversity Award, and the Thomas E. Robinson Leadership Award. Click here for more information, or contact me at royek@rowan.edu with any questions.
 

​Young Philly Writers Leave Rowan with a “Mighty” Impression
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More than two dozen members of the Mighty Writers of Philadelphia – ranging from sixth graders to high school seniors – spent the day last Friday here at Rowan as its members look at prospective colleges. After a walking tour of the campus, and before lunch at the Chamberlain Center, the group spent about 90 minutes with a cadre of Writing Arts faculty. One of the Mighty Writers’ adult leaders called the visit one of the most informative and productive the organization has made in its tour of area universities. “Your group captured our students’ interest and they really opened up,” she said. “I could tell they were interested in learning more about Rowan.” Representing Writing Arts in the session were colleagues Megan Atwood, Drew Kopp, Keri Mikulski, and Steve Royek, along with Writing Arts major Matthew Vesely. For more information about the Mighty Writers group, which serves more than 2,500 Philadelphia students with five-day-a-week afterschool programs at six venues across the city, visit www.mightywriters.org.

Take Thirty Minutes to Possibly Save a Student’s Life
 
The Wellness Center at Winans Hall is urging all faculty and staff to watch a video (click here) on how to identify and respond to students in distress. The presentation, about a half-hour long, hopefully will help prevent a repeat of the incident last fall in which a student took his life during Finals Week. The video points out what symptoms to look for, how to approach students in distress, the different types of services we have on our campus, and how these services can be accessed. For more information, contact Rowan’s Vice President for Health and Wellness David Rubenstein, Psy.D. at rubenstein@rowan.edu.
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Rowan Engineering Program Among the Nation’s Best

This week’s “Did You Know” is all about Rowan’s College of Engineering: DYK . . . our Chemical Engineering program was ranked third in the nation, and the overall Engineering school was ranked 19th in the nation, by U.S. News and World Report? These just-released ratings studied more than 200 schools across the USA that primarily offer Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in that discipline.

​Do you have a new publication, a reading, or any other event of interest coming up? Please let me know so I can let all our colleagues know in the weekly Rowan Writing Arts Events Update newsletter. Stop by my Victoria 521 office or email me at royek@rowan.edu to give me the 4-1-1.
 
 
Stephen A. Royek, M.A.
Instructor, Writing Arts
Rowan University
2015 Rowan Medallion Award winner
Phone: 856-906-4755
Victoria Hall, Room 521
Email: royek@rowan.edu