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Delta president to speak at Commencement

Edward Bastian, president and chief financial officer of Delta Air Lines, will be the keynote speaker at St. Bonaventure University’s 148th Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 11.

Bastian, a 1979 St. Bonaventure graduate, will be one of three people receiving honorary degrees, along with Monsignor William H. Shannon, professor emeritus at Nazareth College in Rochester, and Sr. Maureen Avril Chin Fatt, O.S.F., Congregational Minister of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany.

Commencement Weekend will include a Candlelight Ceremony at 8:45 p.m. Friday, May 9, and a Baccalaureate Mass at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 10. Commencement Exercises, which will also recognize St. Bonaventure’s 150th anniversary, will begin at 10:30 a.m. May 11 in the Reilly Center Arena.

Ed Bastian joined Delta in 1998 as vice president of finance and controller and is credited with leading Delta through its recent Chapter 11 restructuring process. Just this week, Delta and Northwest announced merger plans that would make the airline the world’s biggest air carrier. The combined airline will be called Delta, and Bastian will remain in both positions.

The business plan Bastian helped develop to rescue Delta included $3 billion in annual financial improvements and gained strong support from the company’s creditors and employees. The plan also included what the airline deems to be an innovative compensation program for Delta employees including stock, cash payouts and pay increases.

“To be the president of a company as large as Delta, and be so respected down through the ranks during such difficult economic times, says a lot about Ed and the culture he’s helped to redefine at Delta,” said Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., University president. “I’d like to think a little bit of that workplace creativity and compassion rubbed off on him during his time at St. Bonaventure.”

Bastian briefly left Delta in early 2005 to become senior vice president and CFO of Acuity Brands, but he quickly returned to the airline in July 2005 as CFO, and was promoted to president in August 2007.

Before joining Delta, Bastian had worked for PepsiCo, where he served as vice president of finance for Pepsi Cola International. While at Pepsi he had also served as vice president of business processes re-engineering for the Frito-Lay operation and vice president, finance and controller, for Frito-Lay International.

Prior to joining PepsiCo, Bastian was a partner in the New York audit practice of Price Waterhouse. He specialized in the entertainment, advertising and manufacturing sectors, and also served as the strategic planning partner for Price Waterhouse’s New York Region.

Bastian serves on the International Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity and the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Anna, and their four children.

Monsignor Shannon, who won’t be able to attend due to health concerns, is the founding president of the International Thomas Merton Society, and was the general editor of the Thomas Merton Letters and the Thomas Merton Encyclopedia. He is author of the acclaimed Merton biography “Silent Lamp,” as well as a number of books on spirituality.

Merton was one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century. He taught English at St. Bonaventure in 1940 and 1941 before becoming a Trappist monk. The Merton Archive at St. Bonaventure is one of the most important repositories of Merton materials worldwide.

Lisa Biedenbach, SBU class of 1976, will accept the degree on behalf of Monsignor Shannon. She is an editorial director at St. Anthony Messenger Press and a close friend of Monsignor Shannon’s.

Sr. Avril was unanimously elected in 2004 as the first non-American Congregational Minister of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany.

The eldest of six children, born in Jamaica to Chinese parents, Sr. Avril graduated with a degree in elementary education from St. Bonaventure, and earned her master’s degree in mathematics education from Boston College.

She returned to Jamaica after her graduate work and was a teacher and administrator at St. Joseph’s Teachers College in Kingston for more than 30 years. She served on several school boards and was a member of the Joint Board of Teacher Education in Jamaica.

Since 1980, she has held several elected positions in the Congregation, including Area Coordinator of the Jamaica Region, Regional Minister, and member of the General Council before being elected Congregational Minister four years ago.

“She has brought to all these leadership positions great insights of our Franciscan culture, heritage and tradition, as well as an outstanding ability to synthesize and dialogue in areas pertinent to religious life and society,” said Sr. Margaret.

The St. Bonaventure chapter of Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) won the regional championship at a recent competition in New York City and the students are now setting their sights on nationals.

The regional competition was held Friday, April 4, at the Westchester Marriott. St. Bonaventure competed against 12 other college SIFE teams.

“It’s great to win, but what’s more important is the service we perform,” said Dr. Todd Palmer, SBU SIFE adviser. “An example would be our blood drive. We raised 300 units. That’s the number that really counts.”

SIFE is an international organization that mobilizes university students around the world to make a difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders.

It is the largest student service organization on campus, with more than 70 members. The SBU SIFE team ranks in the top 5 percent of SIFE teams nationwide.

The SIFE regional competitions are the first events in the competition process. Every SIFE team is invited to attend the regional competition of its choice. Regional champions then head to the SIFE USA National Exposition. This year’s national exposition will be held May 13 through 15 in Chicago.

“Doing well in the SIFE regional competition is great for our team in that we now have the opportunity to go to the national competition in Chicago which escalates us to a different level of competition,” said student Lindsey Pohlman, vice president of SBU SIFE. “It is a great experience because we are exposed to many other competitive teams, great networking events and career building opportunities.”

This year, SIFE put forth close to 10,000 hours in service activity on both local and international projects. Some of its key projects included:

- A Community Blood Bank Social Entrepreneurship Challenge. Members worked with local high schools to run their own blood drives. Each school was given a real marketing budget and placed ads in local media. Close to 300 units of blood were donated, a 35 percent increase from conventional methods. These schools will have a final marketing competition on April 22.
- The Wooly Willy Creativity Contest. Members taught creativity and marketing lessons to 150 sixth graders who were then given the opportunity to design their own toy for Smethport Toys. The winners had their toy manufactured by the company.
- The Bahamas Entrepreneurial Service Trip. SIFE runs one of the largest service trips in the world and its own economic development zone in the Bahamas. Fifty-five St. Bonaventure students spent 10 days on the island of Grand Bahama working with nearly 2,000 elementary and high school students. These students were taught a series of lessons in entrepreneurship and economic development. Students also held computer classes for adults. SIFE members helped to fund the painting of the Freeport YMCA, which was damaged by two hurricanes, and built a library at a primary school that had no books. St. Bonaventure SIFE members gathered 2,000 books for the school.

“It feels great to be recognized at competition for all the hard work SBU SIFE members have put in over the past years,” Pohlman said. “Our members have developed and implemented impressive projects that in the past years have ranked us in the top 40 SIFE teams (out of approximately 850) in the United States and hopefully this year we will do just as well if not better at nationals.”

Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., S.T.D., St. Bonaventure University president, has begun a three-year term on the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities Board of Directors.

The ACCU is a voluntary association founded in 1899 by 53 delegates from Catholic colleges throughout the United States. Its principal purposes are to help its members enhance and strengthen their stated Catholic mission and to foster participation among Catholic colleges and universities.

“The ACCU plays a significant role in continually helping Catholic institutions define and refine their mission-oriented goals,” Sr. Margaret said. “I’m honored to serve on the board, and to contribute to the collaborative effort that benefits almost every Catholic college in the U.S.”

Through research, publications, conferences, consultations, special programs and its relationship with other agencies, ACCU encourages and facilitates the sharing of ideas and collaborative efforts among its member institutions.

Since it began, the ACCU has grown to represent more than 90 percent of accredited Catholic institutions of higher learning in the U.S., as well as approximately two dozen international universities.

The major project this year for the Board of Directors and ACCU’s staff is the drafting of a document tentatively titled Catholic Higher Education in the American Context, which will cover a myriad of topics including, but not limited to: the value of diversity within Catholic higher education, linking academic freedom to academic responsibility, linking liberal arts traditions to Catholic intellectual and social teachings, and relating Catholic higher education in U.S. context to a global frame of reference.

Sr. Margaret also serves on the board of the Council of Independent Colleges of New York and the Association of Franciscan Colleges and Universities. She is a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference’s Council of Presidents and serves on the Secretariat for the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition.

leading researcher on autism and childhood behavioral disorders will share his knowledge with St. Bonaventure University and surrounding communities on April 24.

Dr. Phillip Strain, professor of educational psychology and director of the Positive Early Learning Experiences Center at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, will host a one-day workshop on these topics at St. Bonaventure.

This workshop will be held from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Rigas Family Theater at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. An informal reception before the workshop will start at 3 p.m.

Dr. Barbara Trolley, associate professor of counselor education and chair of the Disability Committee at St. Bonaventure, developed the workshop in an effort to provide more education to the university and community in the area of autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

“Statistics indicate that such disorders are on the rise, with reports that autism is the fastest growing developmental disability, affecting 1 million to 1.5 million children,” Trolley said. “Additionally, if one considers the statistic that every 20 minutes a child is diagnosed with ASD, and that more children are included in the classroom, it is essential that school and agency professionals and parents be educated as to the nature of ASD in order to best assist these children.”

Strain, the co-principal investigator for the Center for Evidenced Based Practice: Young Children with Challenging Behavior, will present on the topic “Quality Inclusion for Young Children with Autism: An Overview of LEAP Preschool.”

LEAP stands for Learning Experiences: Alternative Program for preschoolers and parents. It was founded by Strain, who received a three-year federal grant to create a model program that placed autistic children in a classroom with those who do not have autism. It is one of eight empirically validated programs recognized by the National Academies of Science across the U.S. used by approximately 100 classrooms in 20 states now.

The workshop will focus on the development of social skills in children identified with autism spectrum disorder, teaching strategies for special needs students, better undertanding Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) as well as positive ways to respond to children’s behavior at home and within the classroom.

“This workshop will not only provide cutting edge knowledge for education students as they work for families, but also pertinent and practical information for parents, teachers and administrators in the community,” Trolley said.

“The big message you will receive is that if you really want to change the social skills and social relationships that young children with autism have, you have to start early and intensively in the classroom as well as at home,” Strain said.

Strain’s work has been published in more than 200 professional papers and intervention manuals that have been translated for use throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. He has been the principal investigator for dozens of federal and state grants totaling more than $34 million. He is currently involved in the research and implementation of two evidence-based models: Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for Young Children and Center on Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning. He is on the editorial board of 10 journals and is a grant reviewer for NIH and the U.S. Department of Education and has been a consultant on early intervention practices to the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council in five countries. Strain is the recipient of career achievement awards from the Division for Early Childhood and the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children.

Co-sponsors of the event include the St. Bonaventure University’s Counseling Education Department, Western New York Chapter of The Autism Society, Beacon Light Behavioral Health Systems, Cattaraugus Allegany Teacher Center and The ReHabilitation Center as well as St. Bonaventure University’s Diversity Action Committee, Visiting Scholars and the School of Education Counseling Clinic.

For more information about the workshop, contact Karen O’Dell, adjunct professor of counselor education and Autism Services Specialist at Olean City School District Foundation, at (716) 969-3299 or Jennifer Sylor, counseling clinic coordinator, at (716) 375-7670. Interested donors may also e-mail O’Dell at rwroblew@sbu.edu.

Detailed information on upcoming Career Center events such as NACE’s Virtual Career Fair for International Students, other career fairs, SBU College Central, and BonaConnection is available in Directions, the Career Center’s monthly newsletter, located on the Career Center’s Events’ page.

Join us for this week's FRIDAY FORUM!

All SBU faculty, staff and administrators are welcome to all the Friday Forums.

Date: Friday, April 18, 2008
Speaker: Dr. Zennia Hancock, FLTA supervisor; Sarah Bearzi, FLTA in French; Jasmin Kleinheider, FLTA in German; Marco Lepore, FLTA in Italian; Liliana Martínez, FLTA in Spanish; Anouar El Younssi, FLTA in Arabic.
Time: 12:20 to 1:30 p.m.
Place: The University Club
Topic: "A Year’s Worth of Reflections On Teaching Languages at St. Bonaventure"
Abstract: In this session, the Modern Languages teaching assistants (hailing from France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Morocco), who have now spent almost one full academic year at our institution, will describe what they have learned about teaching U.S. students and what continues to surprise, delight, or shock them about U.S./Western New York/St. Bonaventure culture.
Cost: $3

Dr. Robert P. Amico, professor of philosophy, was an invited speaker at the 9th Annual White Privilege Conference, April 2-5, 2008, in Springfield, Mass.

Fr. Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M., director of the Franciscan Institute and dean of the School of Franciscan Studies, presented a major paper at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, April 11-12, 2008, at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. The theme of the colloquium was: "Francis, Dominic, their Orders and their Tradition." Fr. Cusato's paper was titled: "Who Destroyed Assisi? The Lament of Jacopone da Todi." His paper explored the selection of texts and images used in the creation of the frescoes of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi and their relationship to the public presentation of Franciscan identity.

Dr. M.W. Jackson, associate professor of English, recently delivered his paper titled “Defoe's 'Journal of the Plague Year' and the Ecology of Bacterial and Economic Infection" at the annual American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference in Portland, Ore.

Darwin King, professor of accounting, Kathleen Premo, lecturer in management sciences, and Dr. Carl Case, professor of management sciences, presented a paper titled “Nineteenth Century Cost Accounting Practices and Their Influence on Current Accounting Methodology” at the Allied Academies Spring, 2008, International Conference held in Tunica, Miss., April 2-5, 2008. The paper discussed the military’s innovative training in the areas of cost or managerial accounting. Many of our current cost principles and practices were introduced and developed by West Point educators during the mid-1800’s.

Darwin L. King, professor of accounting, was presented with the Allied Academies “Outstanding Educator Award” at its spring International Conference. The Academy of Educational Leadership, one of Allied’s organizational divisions, was the provider of the honor. King has attended Allied Academies conferences since 1999 and was given this award for “Innovative and Creative Teaching.” The Allied Academies Conference chairs presented an engraved plaque to King at the Awards Reception held in Tunica, Miss., on Friday April 4, 2008.

Dr. John Mulryan, Board of Trustees Professor of English, has just received notice that the Arizona Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies has accepted his book-length translation of Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini de I deghli antichi (Images of the Gods of the Ancients) for publication.

Just off the press is another volume of the renowned Bonaventure Texts in Translation Series (BTTS) from Franciscan Institute Publications! The latest volume, the 13th in the series, presenting Bonaventure's Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection, is available for the first time in an English published format. The work was co-translated by Thomas Reist, O.F.M. Conv., and our own Fr. Robert J. Karris, O.F.M. of the Franciscan Institute. This volume represents the fourth text of Bonaventure that Fr. Bob has translated in this series of which he is now also General Editor. The former editor, Fr. Zachary Hayes, O.F.M., also just released his own translated volume - the 14th in the series: The Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Both volumes can be purchased from Noel Riggs in the Institute offices.

English MA graduate students Katherine Fredlund, Stacy Kastner, Amanda Lagoe, Kara Manning, and Jessica Marsh, and associate professor of English Dr. Lauren De La Vars presented papers at the 30th annual College English Association conference in St. Louis, Mo., March 27-29, 2008. The titles of their presentations are:

De La Vars: “Female Power and Patriarchal Catastrophe in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca”
Fredlund: “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: The Development of Self-Concept through Travel and Writing”
Kastner: “3:10 to Yuma: A Continuation of the Political Western Genre”
Lagoe: “Quincey Harker: Dracula’s Continued Presence in England”
Manning: “From the Selfish to the Individual: An Examination of W. E. Henley’s In Hospital 1873-1875”
Marsh: “‘Curse Them All’: New Ironies in Hamlet Act One, Scene Two”

More than 230 Franciscans representing 45 different congregations will gather at St. Bonaventure University this weekend to commemorate a moment 25 years ago that helped Third Order Franciscans worldwide reconnect with their faith and tradition.

St. Bonaventure President Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., S.T.D., and Franciscan studies Professor Dr. Jean-François Godet-Calogeras were pivotal figures in helping the Third Order Regular (TOR) Franciscans rewrite their Rule of Life, first approved in the 13th century but not modified since 1927.

They beam at the thought of once again seeing so many people who lent their voices to the painstaking evolutionary process more than two decades ago. All but one of the congregations attending are from the United States; the other is from Canada.

“For me, it’s going to be a fabulous family reunion,” said Sr. Margaret, a self-described nobody in Franciscan scholarship when she was asked to represent North American TOR sisters at two 10-day work groups in Germany (September 1980) and Belgium (May 1981).

Their mission, set forth to all Catholic congregations at the close of the Second Vatican Council in the Decree on Renewal of Religious Life, was to re-examine their Rule of Life to rediscover the true spirit and aim of their founder; in this case, Francis of Assisi.

“Because I had six credits to my name in the Franciscan Institute, that’s why,” she said with a laugh. “I gave up an important job in the Diocese of Pittsburgh to come here (in the late 1970s) to study, to learn more about the Third Order and its history. I was already trying to understand all this stuff.”

Since most of Franciscan history “focused on the First Order (Friars Minor), and was viewed through their perspective, very little was known about the history of the Third Order,” said Godet-Calogeras, who left the Order of Friars Minor in 1986, but never lost his Franciscan spirit or passion for Franciscan scholarship.

Sr. Margaret’s keen interest in learning all she could about Third Order history led to her nomination to represent North American sisters at the TOR Rule meetings. (She eventually developed a Franciscan Institute course on TOR history because none existed.)

“Roland Faley always told me, ‘Margaret, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen,’” Sr. Margaret said.

Faley, a TOR friar, is the keynote speaker at this weekend’s Festival of the 25th Anniversary of the TOR Rule.

Faley began conversations as early as 1973 with Fr. Thaddeus Horgan, S.A., to discuss revising the TOR Rule, which hadn’t been altered since 1927. It wasn’t decided until early 1980 that the revised Rule of Life would be shared by both sisters and brothers of the Third Order. (Poor Clares make up the Second Order.)

What the years-long process leading up to the first work session in Germany revealed was a remarkable ignorance about a religious order more than seven centuries old.

“Some congregations were so centered on themselves that they often never realized the existence of other congregations,” Sr. Margaret said. “As we wrote the Rule, we began to develop a much more complete sense of our history. ... We began to develop a really good Rolodex of who we are and where we’ve been.”

Between 1969 and 1973, French, Dutch, German and American congregations developed projects to modify — independent of each other — the Rule of 1927 to adhere more closely to their own expression of Franciscan life. Together with the Madrid Statement of 1974, which sought to strengthen the bond between TOR friars and sisters, these separate Rules served as building blocks for the unifying efforts of 1980-81.

The first 10-day work session in Reute, Germany, was … well, pick an adjective: grueling, contentious, confusing, exhausting and, in the end, unfulfilling. Representatives from Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, Colombia, India and the United States made communication a challenge. French served as the spoken word of the work group, Latin the written word.

Four First Order friars, including Godet-Calogeras, served as experts, responsible for the methodology of the group and helping to facilitate the communication.

“We thought we had failed after that first meeting,” Sr. Margaret said. “The days were very long, 20 hours some days, and the group began to fragment as we went along. But we eventually realized that we had achieved enough to be a stepping stone.”

Sr. Margaret and Fr. Thaddeus shared the TOR Rule draft with their superiors in the U.S., stressing the need for more research and education for their congregational members to help them understand the writings of Francis, and the distinct identity, charism and history of the TOR and its previous Rules.

Third Order religious in the U.S., many of whom will attend this weekend’s festival, were allowed to comment on and critique the draft of the Rule, as were all TOR members worldwide. The American input helped sway opinion and build cooperative bridges at the second 10-day session in Brussels eight months later.

“The stakes were high,” Sr. Margaret said. “I had to answer to my superiors at home, and yet I had to compromise like everyone else. The experience of the first session really made us focus on working together.”

The Brussels draft was written almost entirely in the words of Francis and was a radical departure from all past TOR Rules. Its intent was to give Francis’ proposal for TOR life – a life of total and continuous conversion to God through literal living of the Gospel.

In March 1982, nearly 200 Superior Generals, representing 35 countries and more than 200,000 TOR members, convened in Rome to discuss the Brussels draft. With only three minor amendments, the draft was approved, 188-2.

A letter to TOR brothers and sisters from Pope John Paul II, dated April 30, 1983, informed them of his approval. The pope wrote:

“Since we know how diligently and assiduously this Rule of Life has traveled its path ... and how fortuitously it arrived at the desired convergence of different points of view through collegial discussion and consultation ... we trust that the longed for fruits of renewal will be brought to full realization.”

Twenty-five years later, Sr. Margaret is convinced John Paul’s sentiments have been realized.

“There is just a great deal of excitement about this event, to see all these people who contributed so much to this effort,” she said. “This new Rule has been the motor that’s driven Franciscan renewal the last 25 years.”