Castlight is a free online health care comparison and pricing tool for Notre Dame faculty and staff. Castlight may be used any time employees desire more information before choosing care.

Castlight maintains the highest standards of security and meets all federally mandated guidelines — including HIPAA — to ensure privacy and data security. Upon registration, claims data is obtained from Meritain, the third-party administrator of the Univerasity’s medical plan. Using Castlight is private — nothing is shared with the University.

What will Castlight show users?

• Past medical spending

• Remaining deductible

• Estimated costs — search for specific services and see personalized cost estimates based on health plan, location and how much deductible has been met.

• Patient reviews. See provider ratings and read the experiences of other patients in their own words.

• Provider quality. Use Castlight to compare providers. See where different doctors went to medical school, how long they have been practicing and what they charge.

To register, visit .

Explore more than two dozen works produced by a collaboration of ceramic artists in “Out of the Ashes.” The exhibit, first displayed at the Snite Museum of Art, moves to the South Bend Regional Museum of Art until June 18. There will be an opening reception April 7.

Notre Dame Professor of Art and visiting lecturer organized the Notre Dame Ceramic Art Symposium, which drew another 12 artists to campus for five days last October. The participants were mostly college and university teachers from across the country. Their focus became Notre Dame’s giant wood-fired kiln. The outcome: an eclectic mix of objects, mostly vessels, with organic patinas and nuanced earth colors.

The 30-foot long anagama kiln, located at Kremer’s Michigan studio, is modeled on an ancient concept adopted by the Japanese and Chinese from Korea. Temperatures in the cave-like structure can rise up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The burning produces ash and volatile salts that settle on surfaces and melt into a natural glaze, varying greatly in color, texture and thickness. Pieces closer to the fire are more dramatically impacted.

Kremer, Tate and a graduate student stoked the kiln 24 hours a day for five days after most of the other artists had gone from campus. Relinquishing control over this finishing stage of their works was just part of the collaboration. Artists also swapped ideas and creative elements. Tony Marsh, who teaches at California State University, Long Beach; Keith Ekstam, from Misourri State University; and Tate each added figures to a bowl thrown by Bede Clarke, from the University of Missouri. Lindsay Oesteritter fashioned an elegant stand for a fine cup thrown by Dan Molyneux. Both are independent artists. Oesteritter now works in Virginia. Molyneux works in Boston.

Kremer said that many artists who participated in similar Notre Dame symposiums in the late ’70s over the years have told him “it was one of the best experiences they had.” Kremer, who has two large abstract vessels on display in the exhibition, enjoyed affirmation from the group for his work. “One beautiful sunny day last fall, I was making cups,” he recalled, “and I realized I was in the best pottery class I’d ever been in.”

The Notre Dame Ceramic Art Symposium was made possible in part by support from the Henkels Lecture Fund, Institute for Scholarship in Liberal Arts, and College of Arts and Letters. Participating artists were: Bede Clarke, Keith Ekstam, Dale Huffman, Howard Koerth, Bill Kremer, Dick Lehman, Tony Marsh, Scott Meyer, Tom Meuninck, Dan Molyneux, Lindsay Oesteritter, Ann-Charlotte Ohlsson, Dennis Sipiorski and Zach Tate.

After his daughter Marisa was accepted as an undergraduate student at Notre Dame, brought her to his alma mater to show her around. That included a stop to visit his favorite teacher, Charles Crowell, a professor in the Department of Psychology. During their talk, Villano mentioned that he might one day like to move from private industry in Colorado back into academia. Crowell suggested an open position. “Suddenly,” Villano’s wife, Suze, recalls, “we were back in Indiana.”

Michael, class of 1983, is now a research assistant professor in the psychology department’s . He’s currently studying the moral decision making of drone pilots with data he collects at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He personally developed a performance assessment tool for pilots, as well. Using two separate video games, the tool compares baseline results to outcomes after pilots have been subjected to oxygen depletion and G-force.

Michael returned to Notre Dame a month before Marisa began her freshman classes 10 years ago. “I was happy for my dad, of course,” Marisa remembers, but as a high school student anticipating going off on her own to college, the family’s move to South Bend, “wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for.” Today, she embraces the turn of events. Every member of the family has worked at Notre Dame and has been otherwise engaged in campus activities. They all “get” the passion, she says, for the University that she and her brother share with their father as alumni.

Marisa graduated from Notre Dame in 2010 and is currently assistant director of undergraduate admissions. Suze is administrative director of ND’s Sacred Music Academy. The Villanos have three sons: Mike, a graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, who is an assistant middle- and high school band director in Anderson, Indiana; Tony, who graduated from Notre Dame in 2015 with an electrical engineering degree; and Rocky, a sophomore studying computer science at Purdue University.

The family also shares a love of music. Michael plays jazz organ. For the last four or five years, Suze and Marisa have sung in two campus choirs, the Basilica Scola and the Collegium Musicum. Rocky plays in the Purdue band, and Tony, who performed in the concert and marching bands and symphony at Notre Dame, continues to play at church.

“Being part of the University of Notre Dame has been a blessing,” says Suze. “Besides having two children attending, we have hosted grad students for dinner and choir members, before and after tours. Our son was in band, so we also have hosted band students at our home.” Though first and foremost Michael identifies as a Notre Dame alumnus, he values the perspective he’s gained as a Notre Dame parent and faculty member. Too, he says, his family’s involvement in the Notre Dame community has given him a “strong sense of pride.”

Lenette Votava, who handles marketing and communications for the grew up in Westchester, Illinois, as the oldest of four siblings. The family moved to South Bend in the summer of 1977, Lenette says. “My dad worked for General Electric and got a new job — the person who was selling appliances to the RV industry was retiring, and dad took the job.”

Lenette graduated from Valparaiso University with a major in journalism and a minor in communications and geography. She worked for 18 years as a marketing and advertising consultant for nonprofits and in the manufacturing and health care industries. She likes her job, because “I’m able to use a broad range of my communications and marketing background to help promote the OIT and its services across campus.” Her responsibilities include informing campus about IT services, providing IT project communication support and coordinating OIT’s participation at various campus and departmental events.

Lenette and Nancy’s parents still live in South Bend; they also have a brother who lives in Warrenville, Illinois, near where they grew up, and a sister (a Notre Dame Law 91��Ƶ alumna) who lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Lenette has a wide variety of interests outside work — she worked for years with a local cat rescue group. At the moment she has only three cats — Aiden (a seal point Siamese); Jeremiah (a white-and-black shorthair); and a tiny gray-and-white Persian cat named Violet (a five-pound ball of fluff also known as “Princess Puffytail”). She’s still informally involved in cat rescue and helps people with cat behavior issues. In addition, she’s a gardener (roses), a bird watcher, and a dancer who’s interested in tap and jazz, and often appears in performances of the Elkhart Civic Theatre, most recently “White Christmas” in November. She teaches tap dancing at Flint’s Dance Studio in Mishawaka.

Nancy Majerek, the youngest of the four, graduated from the Mendoza College of Business in 1986 with a finance degree. She worked for 13 years at 1st Source Bank, where she handled Notre Dame’s accounts. Then the University created a new position and needed a treasury person, she says, “and I was excited to accept the job. Now I manage the University’s banking relationships and continue work with the bankers.” She oversees the University’s bank accounts and operating funds including short-term investments and debt. manages the balance in the University’s bank accounts. We monitor the dollars coming in such as student account payments, donations, ticket sales and department deposits, and the funds going out such as accounts payable, payroll and taxes. It’s like how you manage your personal checkbook, with a few more zeros.”

The University’s international expansion has been interesting, says Nancy, as she works to open bank accounts and facilitate payments and transactions worldwide. Learning the ever-growing compliance requirements that govern movement of funds has been interesting and challenging. She also is involved with special donations and has had to liquidate gemstones, gold bars, Krugerrands, foreign currency and postage stamps.

Nancy and her husband like to travel all over the world to hike, experience other cultures and to scuba dive — recent trips have included Grand Turk, Antarctica, Galapagos and Costa Rica. She has a world map in her office marking both the places they’ve been as well as the places they’d like to go. She’s very active, and has run marathons and triathlons, including two half-Ironmans. Her latest passion, she adds, is paddle boarding — she gives people lessons on at St. Joe Beach on campus, and at Lake Michigan.

director of staff diversity and inclusion in the Office of Human Resources, joined the University with a goal of fostering a broad understanding of what diversity means. “No matter where you are from, your ethnic background, sexual orientation, religious ideology or affiliation, I want you to feel welcome at Notre Dame,” he says.

To that end, Love leads new hire onboarding programs, and has to date trained around 60 percent of staff — nearly 3,000 people — through “We Are All ND” seminars required for all non-supervisory staff and “Multicultural Competencies: Hiring Game Changers” aimed at managers and supervisors. He also presents a two-hour program during staff onboarding. These programs help those at the University define and understand diversity and inclusion, implicit and explicit bias, multicultural competencies and microaggressions, he says, while reinforcing the Catholic ethic of treating everyone with dignity and respect.

Next steps will focus on developing and encouraging staff to join employee resource groups, including the Notre Dame Black Faculty and Staff Association, THRIVE! Inspiring Women and Spectrum (LGBTQA). Groups are being formed for Hispanic staff and veterans as well.

After two years at the University, Love says, “I’m most proud of our training programs. I don’t know another college or university in the nation that offers such intensive training to faculty and staff. This will help with recruitment, hiring and retention of top quality diverse staff.”

For more information, contact Love at 631-2859, elove1@nd.edu or visit or .

There’s a family story about twins Jocie Antonelli and Jennie Phillips. Their older sister Angie was just six months old when their mother found out she was expecting again. When she was in the ninth month of the pregnancy, after a routine doctor’s visit, she came out into the waiting room crying. Her panicked mother (the twins’ grandmother, who was in the waiting room) said, “What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with the baby?”

“We’re having twins!” their mom cried. Their mother, Jennie adds, always maintains that they were tears of joy.

Jocie and Jennie (the elder by seven minutes) also have two younger brothers, Jason and Lennie. The family grew up in Indianapolis and Berwyn, Pennsylvania, and ended up in Elkhart for 10 years where four of the five graduated from Elkhart Central High 91��Ƶ.

“I stumbled into my job,” says Jennie, RecSports assistant director of fitness and fitness facilities. After graduate school at Miami of Ohio with a degree in exercise and health studies, she traveled to New Zealand and Australia for a few months. Jocie, who had taken a dietitian job in South Bend, invited Jennie to live with her. Jocie was getting married, and Jennie, the maid of honor, wanted to help with the wedding plans.

Jennie stopped by campus looking for summer opportunities in health and fitness or sports medicine. “Human Resources was still in the Old Security building over by the Rock,” she recalls. “This was before the Internet — job postings were printed on a piece of paper on a bulletin board.” She also paid a visit to the Rockne Memorial and the golf coach, George Thomas — the father of a grade school friend — who took her across the hall and introduced her to Sally Derengoski, then-manager of the golf course and assistant director of RecSports (Derengoski retired in 2012 as director of RecSports). A position was open in RecSports, and Jennie applied and was hired in August of 1994. A year or so later, Jennie saw a job posting on the bulletin board, and called Jocie to tell her there was a job opening on campus for a “manager of nutrition and safety.” Jocie holds a B.A. in dietetics and postgraduate certification as a dietitian (she did her internship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago).

“Jennie read me the job description, and I applied and got the job.” Today, Jocie is program director of nutrition services for Campus Dining, working out of the South Dining Hall. Notre Dame, both agree, is a great place to work. “That’s why we’ve been here so long,” Jocie says.

Says Jennie, “It’s been a fascinating journey. Recreation, in terms of the college experience, has changed so much since we’ve been here. From group fitness classes with boom boxes and foam steps in the Joyce Center gyms to Rolfs Sports Recreation Center and next year to the Duncan Student Center on the west side of the stadium. “It’s unique that my sister and I get to share this experience, helping people with health, fitness and nutrition. We’ve been able to provide people with the education to make healthy choices on their own. We refer people to each other all the time. And we walk the walk. Physical activity and good nutrition are important to us in our daily lives as well.” Jennie remembers thinking, when she saw that job posting for Jocie’s position, how great it would be to have her sister working on campus too. “I’m here because of Jocie, and she’s here because of me,” she says.

And their grandfather, who shared their June birthday was “a huge Notre Dame fan,” says Jennie. “He and our grandmother attended the 1979 Cotton Bowl, and have a picture with Joe Montana. Grandpa actually thought we were kidding when we told him Jocie also got a job here. He was so happy to have both of us working here.”

“While diversity and inclusion bring benefits to all colleges and universities, as a pre-eminent Catholic university, we are part of one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse organizations in the world, and we strive to reflect that diversity — and to make every individual who is part of the University community feel fully welcomed and included.“ President Rev. John I. Jenkins

director for academic diversity and inclusion, joined the University in April 2016. It is a newly created role, the result of the work of the and the emphasis President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., has placed on diversity since the committee was formed in 2013.

Nolan Young is a self-described “military brat” born in Dothan, Alabama. She received her juris doctor degree from the Notre Dame Law 91��Ƶ, and most recently worked as a private consultant on equity, diversity and inclusion issues for colleges, businesses and individuals. Previously she held positions in higher education, including director of institutional diversity and equity at Smith College and human resources director of North Shore Community College. Before the move to higher education, she held a variety of positions in Springfield, Massachusetts, where she was a practicing attorney, assistant district attorney and assistant city solicitor.

In the new position at Notre Dame, Nolan Young is responsible for coordinating the University’s academic diversity and inclusion efforts, and assisting with efforts led by vice presidents and associate provosts that focus on those issues. “I see my job in this way,” Nolan Young says. “My role is to work with all academic units so that they are places where our students, faculty and staff feel welcome and flourish.”

Her priorities in working with faculty are to engage in discussions around cultural competency and issues such as implicit bias that might affect hiring decisions. Nolan Young hopes to finalize a “best practices” document for recruiting in the spring. “I’m here to assist with recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups and women both among our faculty and our graduate student population,” she says. “During the fall I participated in the orientation programs for faculty and graduate students, co-facilitated workshops at the on cultural competency, micro-aggressions and race, class and gender. I also provided information on inclusive hiring practices to search committees. These activities will over time assist us in our larger goal.”

Additionally, Nolan Young has created other learning opportunities, such as a recent conference, “Are You All INclusive?” which was co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, Notre Dame Research and Foundation Relations. The conference addressed diversity and inclusion from the perspective of incorporating those elements into grant proposals. The event drew more than 65 participants.

“Whether a grant proposal is in the social sciences, STEM or humanities, federal agencies and private foundations almost always have a requirement that the grant seeker address diversity in some way,” she notes. “The conference provided attendees with the knowledge and tools needed to draft stronger grant proposals.”

One point she makes is that the benefits of diversity and inclusion are not limited to people of color or other underrepresented groups. “Much data and research exist to indicate that diverse and inclusive classrooms, offices, faculty and co-workers lead to better results,” she said.

Nolan Young co-hosts a diversity and inclusion practitioners group, with both faculty and staff representation. “The group is comprised of individuals whose work research or personal interest align with social justice issues,” she said. “We meet monthly to share information and discuss issues on campus.” Ultimately, the goal is inclusive excellence, she adds. Here at Notre Dame, a faith-based institution, the question, she says, “are we attracting and retaining students and faculty who will respect the faith tradition, and reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity we seek.”

Due to construction at the North Dining Hall, Café de Grasta in Grace Hall is now open extended hours; the new hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday.

Café de Grasta offers hot breakfasts (made-to-order eggs, pancakes, waffles, bacon and sausage, as well as hot oatmeal, yogurt and fruit) and two hot entrees daily. Also available is an extensive salad bar, hot soup and hot or cold grab-and-go sandwiches, as well as made-to-order sandwiches and wraps. There’s usually a line at the popular wrap station, where staffers make more than 140 per day. Five flavors of coffee are brewed fresh all day.

“Overall, the most popular entrees offered currently are grilled cheese and tomato soup, the tuna melt sandwich, burrito bowls and the Reuben sandwich,” says Reggie Kalilli, assistant director of marketing for Campus Dining.
Gwen Mottl, the new sous chef at de Grasta, has introduced a number of popular entrees, including tilapia tacos, hot turkey or beef Manhattan sandwiches, fried chicken and baked salmon.

is Patrick B. O’Donnell Distinguished Visitor at the at the University of Notre Dame. Widely regarded as the greatest living poet in the Irish language, this fall — as she does every third year — she’s teaching a course on 20th-century Irish-language poetry at Notre Dame.

She teaches the old-fashioned way, she notes, “Chalk and talk. No PowerPoint. But the students at Notre Dame listen. They’re very patient. We’re all involved in something called learning, which is bigger than both of us. I’ve taught at five different universities in the States, and I much prefer Notre Dame to anywhere else. It’s marvelous.”

One of the questions she’s invariably asked is “Why?” Why does she write exclusively in Irish? Read the poem, she replies. In an essay she wrote for the New York Times (Jan 8, 1995) she said: “And yet, and yet . . . I know this will sound ridiculously romantic and sentimental. Yet not by bread alone . . . We raise our eyes to the hills . . . We throw our bread upon the waters. There are mythical precedents. Take for instance Moses’ mother, consider her predicament. She had the choice of giving up her son to the Egyptian soldiery, to have him cleft in two before her very eyes, or to send him down the Nile in a basket, a tasty dinner for crocodiles.
����
She took what under the circumstances must have seemed very much like “rogha an dá dhiogha” (“the lesser of two evils”) and Exodus and the annals of Jewish history tell the rest of the story, and are the direct results of an action that even as I write is still working out its inexorable destiny. I know it is wrong to compare small things with great, yet my final answer to why I write in Irish is this:                

The Language Issue
I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant
in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch,
then set the whole thing
down amidst
the sedge
and the bulrushes by the edge
of a river
only to have it borne hither and thither,
not knowing where it might
end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh’s daughter.
From “The Pharaoh’s Daughter,” 1994, translated by Paul Muldoon

Her mother, a native Irish speaker, didn’t hold much with the notion, Ní Dhomhnaill adds. When her mother called and — making conversation — asked what she’d been writing lately, Ní Dhomhnaill said, “Oh, an essay for the New York Times about what it’s like to write in Irish.” After a few seconds pause, her mother replied, “Well, I hope you’ll tell them it’s mad!”

Ní Dhomhnaill was born in Lancashire, England, to Irish physicians who worked in an Irish mining settlement in Lancashire. At the age of 5, she was sent to live with relatives in the Irish-speaking areas of West Kerry. Her parents returned to Ireland a few years later, in 1957.

In a 2006 interview, she recalled leaving Ireland in the early 1970s, when she met a man — a Turkish man — fell in love and married. Her husband Dogan Leflef was a geologist (“and a mathematician at heart”). He completed his Ph.D. in Holland, “Thought the nearest sedimentary rock, old red sandstone, was in Munster, Ireland. That’s where we met. There was pandemonium at home about it. So I left home when I was 21 and swore I would never set foot on that benighted island again.”

They lived in Holland, then for five years Turkey. “In those days our only contact with the rest of the world was by express letters. Four days there, and four days back. Turkey had cut itself off. But that five years made me. I learned more there than I’ve learned in my whole life. Now I have two countries that are my home.”

Her first volume of poetry was published in 1981, after their return to Ireland. “The language drew me back,” she wrote in the New York Times essay. “A loneliness for the language, and the music … Even in Dublin I’m quite lonely, because I can’t go out and speak Irish on the street or just ring somebody and have a conversation in Irish for fun. Radio na Gaeltachta is my lifeline. If it weren’t for that, I’d be as exiled in Dublin as I was in Ankhara.”

Ní Dhomhnaill hears poetry in Irish, a language, she says, “of beauty, historical significance, ancient roots and an immense propensity for poetic expression through its everyday use.” And the students who learn it have a wealth of written material to work with, since Irish is the oldest vernacular language in Northwest Europe — the earliest writings in Irish date to the third and fourth centuries, and there’s a vast amount of medieval material available.

“Notre Dame has the only Irish language degree program in the States. It’s way ahead of anyone else. Many of my students are math or biology majors. A good liberal arts background is very important for life. It’s part of education. It draws the best out of you. Some of my best students are not humanities majors. My husband was a scientist. He was logical and rational. We brought out different sides of each other. Two sides, making each a more well rounded person.”

The Irish language is ineffable, Ní Dhomhnaill adds, something that’s too powerful to express in mere words. “The language is spoken now, and has 1,500 years of written literature, a heroic culture, behind it. It’s not like anything else.” In her own poetry, Ní Dhomhnaill says, poems come in images and phrases, “Sort of insistent, musical phrases. As a musician would put down notes, I, as a poet, put down words. If it doesn’t come that way, it feels forced.

“It’s growing, mulling. I write the poem out, longhand. Then I type it up and see what it looks like. Sometimes I’m walking and wham! An eight-line stanza, or two six-line stanzas will come to me, but I have to wait for it to mature. It’s a kind of gestation. And,” she adds, “it’s the only thing I have a knack for.”

Contact the Department of Irish Language and Literature for more information, or Sarah McKibben, McKibben.2@nd.edu.

associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, has been selected as one of the first recipients of the National Endowment for the Humanities new which aims to bring the humanities to larger audiences and make scholarship relevant to contemporary life.

One of 36 academic nonfiction projects to receive funding in 2015, her forthcoming book will tell the story of the Cincinnati Board of Education’s decision to stop Bible reading in public schools and the ensuing court battles that riveted the nation in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Przybyszewski will tell the story through the eyes and experiences of many of the participants — complicated people grappling with complex issues as they faced their own questions of faith.

Przybyszewski’s most recent book, “The Lost Art of Dress,” put out by Basic Books in 2014, was a New York Times bestseller. It recounts explains how Americans learned — and forgot — how to dress in the modern age.

Designer didn’t start the tiny house movement in America, but she does take credit for being somewhat of an influence.

Cusato, a 1997 graduate of Notre Dame’s and associate professor of the practice at Notre Dame since 2014, is the internationally known designer of Katrina Cottages, 308-square-foot homes designed as an alternative to the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) trailers supplied as emergency housing for victims of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

Cusato was invited to participate in the rebuilding after Katrina by a mentor, Andres Duany, American architect, urban planner and founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a design movement that promotes the creation of environmentally friendly and walkable mixed-use neighborhoods.

Cusato was singularly well placed to participate in the project. “I’ve always loved travel trailers,” she says. “My grandma had an Airstream, and I have fond memories. My family commercial fished in the summer — living in a travel trailer paid for my undergraduate degree.” Architects receive remuneration and fame in designing spectacular houses and monumental buildings, she notes. “I thought it would be amazing to design travel trailers.”

Duany and his wife, architect and University of Miami architecture professor Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, had been invited by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to lead a project to study 11 devastated Gulf Coast towns.

Duany invited Cusato to join a group of 200 architects, including 80 local practitioners, to envision “Katrina Cottages,” alternative housing that could both replace FEMA trailers and be built as permanent homes.They arrived six weeks after the storm, in the middle of October. “We were behind the National Guard barricades,” she says.

Cusato’s vision was of a small cottage that could be built quickly and affordably and could withstand a hurricane, as well as be a beautiful home people would be proud to
live in.

Katrina Cottage floor plan

Duany sent Cusato’s quick watercolor sketch of the cottage to the Biloxi newspaper in November. Then came one of those synchronous events that change everything.

In 2006 the International Builders’ Show took place in Orlando, Florida. “Outside the convention center, they had houses built in the parking lot,” Cusato says.

Duany got a call from his public relations agent, whom he shared with Sarah Susanka, architect and bestselling author of “The Not So Big House,” whose philosophy is “build better, not bigger.” Susanka’s group had reserved and paid for a space, but were pulling out. Did Duany have anything from the Mississippi project he’d like to display? He said, “Yes. We’ll build Marianne’s house.” Then he called Cusato.

“I stayed up all weekend preparing the construction drawings” she says, and the cottage was built in record time. “And that’s why you know about Katrina Cottages.”

The Washington Post picked up the story and featured the cottage on the front of the real estate section, with an article titled, “Katrina Cottages vs. the New American Home.”

“We could never have planned it,” Cusato says.

Marianne Cusato

The 308-square-foot Katrina Cottage design went on to win the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s 2006 “People’s Design Award.”

Eventually, Mississippi delivered 2,800 houses inspired by the Katrina Cottage to those who lost their homes in the storm. Louisiana has completed construction of 500 units featuring designs from the Katrina Cottage series.

Why did the Katrina Cottages, and the growing interest in tiny houses, strike such a chord with people? “The interest in tiny houses paralleled the explosion in the size of regular houses,” she says. In 1973, the average size of a home in the U.S. was 1,660 square feet. In 2006, that number had grown to 2,469 square feet.

“McMansions,” generic big luxury homes with no particular architectural style, mass-produced in the late 1980s and 1990s (and derided as “Garage Mahals”) typically had square footage of 3,000 square feet or more. The homes featured multiple bathrooms, four or five bedrooms and lavish interior features.

“The real estate reporter had noted that perhaps it was time for Americans to question how we live and build,” she says. “In 2005 and 2006, there was a feeling that things in the housing market were not right. It was the height of the mortgage mess, ARMs, the building boom. People were being choked by their mortgages. There was an overall awareness that we didn’t need so much space.”

Then in 2008, the mortgage market collapsed.

In Las Vegas — formerly a symbol of affluence and over-the-top homes — unemployment increased to more than 14 percent and the housing market slid into a steep decline. In 2010, a Business Insider feature noted that in Nevada, more than 65 percent of homeowners were underwater on their mortgages — they owed more than their homes were worth. Entire housing developments stood abandoned.

It’s not hard to see why people suddenly were longing for smaller, more affordable homes. The extremeness of tiny houses (with some as small as 80 square feet) and the concomitant popularity of tiny house TV shows she likens to the popularity of the History Channel’s “Ice Road Truckers.”

“There’s pure entertainment in tiny house shows. But gosh, I’d love to escape to Alaska.”
In terms of our homes, what we should be doing is considering what works for us, she says.

“Buyers accept things for retail value (too many bathrooms and expensive amenities) and end up living in homes that don’t meet their needs. A home’s live-in value is greater than its resale value. Instead of resale, think about whether you want to take care of a lawn, and how much time you want to spend commuting to your job before you buy a house.”

Ultimately, it’s not about tiny houses, but houses that feel like home. Today, she notes, Americans are aging. “People want to stay in their homes, but they can’t take care of a home. They’re isolated in the suburbs. Small is the new big. No more McMansions, unaffordable huge houses that are hard to heat in the winter and cool in the summer, in communities that make cars a necessity. You want to love where you live. Choose a place to live, rather than just a house to live in.”

For more information and to see more houses and house plans, visit mariannecusato.com.

Keri Kei Shibata, the University’s recently appointed police chief, is a 12-year veteran of the (NDSP).

Shibata most recently served as deputy chief for safety services. She previously has been responsible for the University’s 911 dispatch center, crime prevention and outreach, security and guest services, Clery Act reporting, training for NDSP personnel and campus safety officers, including security support of all residence halls on campus.

Shibata grew up in Harbor Springs, Michigan, where her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father a Michigan state trooper.

“But I really didn’t want to be a police officer when I grew up,” she says.

Shibata had been a residence hall director and taught students on academic probation at Bethel College, where she received her bachelor’s degree. In 2004, she was hired by the University as one of the first members of the residence hall security squad (the “Quad Squad,” she says.) A year later, there was an opening for a police officer, and she was selected.

She graduated from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield in 2005. She and her husband Dave, she adds, were in consecutive classes at the police academy — he works for the South Bend Police Department. Shibata is a 2016 graduate of Notre Dame’s Executive MBA program.

In her off hours, she’s is a member of a roller derby team, the South Bend Roller Girls (where she goes by Keri Khaos). The team, part of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, practices at the old Beacon Bowl and competes at Century Center. “We lay down track, put down resin like gymnasts use for their hands, and skate. I meet a lot of people I wouldn’t meet otherwise,” she says.

She also lives with three dogs, two Airedales (Rooney and Briar), a pug (Ella) and a cat named Ernst.

There are no major changes planned to the department, she notes. “We’ve been moving in the right direction. We will continue to provide exceptional service — continuous improvement is important to us.”

Her service at Notre Dame, and her promotion to chief, “is a testament to the leadership of the department as they worked to develop me as a person, an officer and a leader. I started out on midnight shift,” Shibata says, “now I’m blessed to be working with my colleagues in this leadership position as we serve our campus community.”

Contact: NDWorks Managing Editor Carol C. Bradley, 574-631-0445 bradley.7@nd.edu

, director of the , has been honored by the Network for Change and Continuous Innovation: Higher Education’s Network for Change Leadership (NCCI) as a 2016 Leader of Change.

The recognition program identifies leaders of change throughout higher education, recognizes them for their accomplishments, and links them with their peers to help leverage the impact of their work.

The award citation notes that over the past five years, Mullaney “has formulated and deployed a far-reaching, campus-wide culture of continuous improvement. With limited staff, her strategy for growth and expansion has been to ‘teach others to fish,’ through a succession of Lean Six-Sigma tools and techniques — a ‘belting system’ that recognizes successful projects and leaders that improve processes and impact the University’s effectiveness and efficiency. Under Mullaney’s leadership, about 70,000 hours of faculty and staff capacity have been restored.”

Said Bob McQuade, vice president for human resources, “Carol has been instrumental in inspiring our employees to acquire Green Belt certification. She is a champion of continuous learning and through her sharing of innovative ideas, the entire campus community has been provided with an invaluable resource that has helped imbue the spirit of continuous improvement across the University.”

Contact: Carol C. Bradley, NDWorks, 574-631-0445, bradley.7@nd.edu

Notre Dame faculty and staff are asked once again to pull out their cameras — or smartphones or tablets — for the 2016 NDWorks Photo Contest.

Those who work on campus see things visitors don’t: the beauty of campus at sunrise and sunset; hidden spots that the typical visitor doesn’t see; close encounters with the squirrels that call Notre Dame home.

We’re looking for smartphone (or iPad, tablet or traditional camera) photos taken by faculty and staff that celebrate your favorite people, places and things on campus this spring and summer.

Photo contest guidelines

Photos can be taken with any device but must be a high-resolution image (300 dpi) with a file size of 1-2 MBs to be printed.

Enter your images of campus people, places and things any time through Friday, Aug. 26. We’ll post submissions on our Pinterest page where they can be liked or re-pinned (create your own, free Pinterest account to view all the submissions). You can see both recent and last year’s entries at .

We’ll print some of our favorites in NDWorks, and feature entries throughout the season on the news.nd.edu Campus Spotlight.

Copyright remains with the photographer. Each digital image submitted should be labeled with your name and a title (i.e., yourlastname_tulips.jpeg) Email submissions and any questions to Carol C. Bradley, bradley.7@nd.edu.

is chair of the and a widely known anthropologist specializing in primatology and human evolution. This fall, , an adjunct faculty member in Anthropology, will be teaching her popular course “Cultures of Fear: Anthropological Perspectives on Horror Films.”

During the summer, they have another gig — he’s an independent film producer working with director, screenwriter and partner Snively on short horror comedies including “Confederate Zombie Massacre,” “Teenage Bikini Vampire” and, this summer, “Bride of Frankie” — a “feminist take on the Frankenstein story with a ‘Taming of the Shrew’ subplot,” says Snively.

“Bride of Frankie” was filmed in South Bend’s historic downtown Birdsell Mansion over five days in July. The goal is to have the film through post-production in time for the Berlin and Sundance film festivals in January 2017.

For updates on the movie, visit . For more images from the film shoot, visit photographer Justin Benzel’s blog, .

BY CAROL C. BRADLEY, NDWorks

Waldo Mikels-Carrasco hadn’t been involved with the United Way until he was called in to provide information to the agency on health disparities in St. Joseph County. 

“They wanted to know what they could be funding in health,” he says. “I was impressed that the United Way was asking the question, and that they took the information and did something with it.”

 Mikels-Carrasco is a community health program manager for ICeNSA, the University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications. In 2013, ICeNSA scientists collaborated with the United Way in a project, supported by an Indiana Association of United Ways grant, to address the need in the community for improving childhood nutrition and reducing obesity.

The goal is large-scale social change—which is why Mikels-Carrasco is excited about the United Way’s new focus, which looks at alleviating poverty in the county by providing basic services for those in need, but also developing strategies for overcoming the structural forces that keep families in poverty.

The extent of those social forces became clear when he was asked to sit on a UW funding review panel, “and I actually got to see the struggle between the need, the agency proposals and what money there actually was to give. There is no fat. It’s a very lean operation.”

When discussing the United Way, Mikels-Carrasco sometimes hears the objection that the agency takes an administrative fee of 20 percent. But it’s not a valid criticism, he says. 

“It’s the same at the University—a grant to the University also covers facilities and administrative costs. That allows for grants, resources and the interconnectedness of the entire research endeavor. Results don’t happen on their own.”

Another frequent response is that individuals prefer to give to a single organization.

“You can give to one organization, but with the United Way, you can leverage across all the organizations, expanding and adding value to every program. No one organization can meet all the need in the community.”

The 2-1-1 referral number is a great example, he notes. “If you’re desperate—if you’ve lost your job, the kids are hungry and the heat is off, 2-1-1 is the place you can go for help with all those needs.”

The 2-1-1 line (see fact box on page 6) can connect people to a wide variety of services, from shelter from domestic abuse, food and clothing to legal and financial assistance.

But the larger issue, is the “give a man a fish” problem, Mikels-Carrasco says. Basic needs for emergency food and shelter can be met, but what are the structural forces that keep people in poverty?

“We want to move the needle, so they’re not coming back again and again. We want to make sure good systems are in place to provide long-term help such as job training or certification, so they can make enough money to support their families. With many families in need, we find that they’re working several part-time jobs at minimum wage.

“People are employed, but they’re underemployed. They’re one car repair or heating bill away from disaster. The car breaks down, and they can’t go to work—it creates a cascade of problems.”

Leveraging dollars across programs means (for example) if a grant is given to provide flu shots, it could be combined with an opportunity to gather information so more is known about the families participating. “We could combine it with a career fair, so the investment is further enhanced—we could ask people if they’re interested in furthering their education or attending college, and provide referrals.”

Ultimately, the question that needs to be addressed is how to change the social structure of the community, so we don’t have another generation of children born in need.

“I can give my time and my talent.  A donation to the United Way will mean a lot to somebody. There are many of us on campus that volunteer, who contribute and advocate. We’re organizing not just for today, but also for tomorrow. We want to help the community be as prosperous as it can be.”

It’s not that anyone has to give a lot, he points out. All it takes is for everyone to give a little. “These impoverished kids go to school with my kids,” he says. “You don’t want your child walking around and living in a community you don’t care about.”

Originally published by Carol C. Bradley at on October 24, 2014.

On Aug. 16 (Friday), the University of Notre Dame celebrates the 125th anniversary of the consecration of the . The Most Rev. Daniel Robert Jenky, C.S.C., bishop of Peoria, Ill., will preside at a special 4 p.m. Mass that will also feature music from alumni of the . A reception in the Rotunda of the Main Building will follow. All are welcome to attend.

The Basilica serves as the oldest and principal church of the in the United States and as the cornerstone of liturgical life at Notre Dame. The Mass and reception will commemorate the consecration of the Basilica by the Most Rev. Joseph Gregory Dwenger, bishop of Fort Wayne, Ind., on Aug. 15, 1888.

“The Basilica is central to the life and mission of Notre Dame,” said Basilica Rector “It is a place of worship for students, faculty, staff, alumni, pilgrims, community members and countless visitors. It is also a place of new beginnings, a place of confirmation, a place of love and a place where the deceased are commended to God. The Basilica helps us to experience the splendor of God’s glory at Our Lady’s University, and we couldn’t be happier about celebrating this milestone with both the Notre Dame and South Bend communities.”

The Basilica Museum, located in the Sacristy, is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 a.m. and 1 to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Tour availability is subject to change due to weddings, funerals and other special liturgies.

To take a self-guided tour, that points out and describes many points of interest in the Basilica, including the statue of Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C., in the Our Lady of Victory Chapel; the famed Ivan Mestrovic Pietà; and the Pentecost window, designed by the Carmelite Sisters of Le Mans, France, and painted by Eugène Hucher and associates.

Originally published by Carol C. Bradley at on Aug. 1, 2013.

Be careful what you eat, says University of Notre Dame stream ecologist .

If you’re catching and eating fish from a Lake Michigan tributary with a strong salmon run, the stream fish — brook trout, brown trout, panfish — may be contaminated by pollutants carried in by the salmon.

by Lamberti, professor and chair of , and his laboratory has revealed that salmon, as they travel upstream to spawn and die, carry industrial pollutants into Great Lakes streams and tributaries. The research was recently published in the journal .

It’s a problem inadvertently created by people with good intentions, he notes.

“Most people don’t realize that salmon are a non-native species in the Great Lakes,” he says. “They were introduced to control alewives — another non-native fish species.”

Although salmon fed on and contained the alewives — and have become important to sport fishing—there were unintended consequences. That’s because of a lengthy history of industrial pollution of the Great Lakes.

“All the Great Lakes have some level of pollution,” says Lamberti, “especially near cities — Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland. There are far fewer pollutants now than over the past century, but many are persistent. There are hot spots, and Lake Michigan has a lot of them — heavy metals, mercury, organic pollutants like PCBs.”

PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) come from fluids in older electrical transformers. Also present is DDE (dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene), a breakdown product of the banned insecticide DDT, and PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers). PBDEs, notes Lamberti, are flame retardants used in furniture, mattresses and children’s clothing. “They wash out when you do the laundry.”

Brook trout with salmon eggs pumped from its stomach

Even intentionally introduced species such as the Pacific salmon can result in unintended consequences for the ecosystem and the environment.

Salmon acquire pollutants through the lake food chain. When they are young, they feed on invertebrates — worms and insect larvae. As they grow larger, salmon consume more and more fish, such as alewives — which have also picked up pollutants through invertebrates they eat, which have picked up pollutants from algae and bacteria.

Salmon are a fatty fish, and these polluting chemicals are particularly “sticky,” Lamberti says. “They are lipophilic — they absorb into fat tissue.”

The consequence is that the salmon magnify the pollutants as they move up the food chain. “Salmon are longer lived, eat more, and the pollutants are then bio-concentrated.”

The concern is that salmon are naturalized to many tributaries of the Great Lakes. “And it’s a one-way street for them,” Lamberti says. “They spawn, die in the stream where they spawn, and then leave their contaminant load in the stream. Stream fish eat salmon eggs, and may also eat carcass tissue as they decompose.”

Fish in streams and tributaries with large salmon runs — fish that never go out into the lake, he notes — show contaminant levels very similar to that of Great Lakes salmon.

“Let’s keep in mind,” he adds, “there are FDA advisories for pregnant women and children on the risks of eating large Great Lakes fish, because of the danger of chemical contaminants.

“But there are no warnings for stream fish — that’s the specter. If you’re eating fish from a stream with a lot of salmon, you might as well be eating the salmon. I would err on the side of caution when eating any fish from a salmon river. Either that or harvest fish only upstream of where salmon spawn.”

For comparison purposes, Lamberti’s research analyzed the tissue of fish upstream from where salmon spawn and die.

“The upstream section of the same river was not contaminated. Below the salmon, the river had measurable levels of contaminants. There’s no other way for the contaminants to get there but the salmon. Water doesn’t flow uphill.”

The conclusion?

Although salmon are an economic benefit to the Great Lakes and perform important ecological functions (such as controlling the population of alewives), we need to consider the impact of salmon on streams where they spawn.

“If we want to remove a dam on a river — and that will allow salmon to move upstream — we need to realize that the salmon will carry pollutants with them and disperse them into the food web,” Lamberti says.

“In sensitive areas with a lot of native fish, we might want to prevent salmon from moving upstream. And in the Great Lakes, maybe we should consider restoring the native populations of lake trout and whitefish rather than encouraging more salmon.”

Contact: Gary Lamberti, lamberti.1@nd.edu

Collaboration among University of Notre Dame faculty and students, and Notre Dame’s has resulted in a $50,000 Sappi grant to , a campaign to combat xenophobia in South Africa.

The Ideas that Matter grant program is an initiative of Sappi Fine Paper North America, producer of fine coated papers for the print industry. The program — the only grant program of its kind in the industry — was established more than a decade ago to recognize and support designers who donate their time and talent to a range of charitable activities.

In Johannesburg, South Africa, design students Dan Azic, Kassandra Randazzo, Lynn Yeom, Amelia Bernier, Brandon Keelean and Ali Tourville, with Professor Robert Sedlack.

The goal of the University’s design curriculum, says , associate professor of design and director of graduate studies in the , is to develop students who can make a difference — both in business and in the world. “It makes all the sense in the world given the mission of the University.”

In his class, “Graphic Design III: Design for Social Good,” Sedlack’s students spend 16 weeks exploring the intersection of design and social issues.

The idea to develop a campaign to unite a South African community divided by xenophobia was born out of community-based research done by the Center for Social Concerns and its community partner, (KNF), an organization based in a Johannesburg neighborhood greatly affected by xenophobia-fueled violence.

In April 2011, Paul Horn, KNF’s director of community outreach initiatives, approached Sedlack and Andréa Pellegrino, Class of 1985, founder of , a consulting group that partners with corporations, nonprofits and educational institutions to develop strategies, actions and communications for social impact.

“There was a critical need in the refugee community for some outside agency to try to address the problem of xenophobia, and I thought it would be a perfect fit for design and communication,” Horn says. “I knew both Andréa and Robert had a strong interest in and belief that design could effect positive change and be used for social good.”

Robert Sedlack walks in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, with Kassandra Randazzo and Daniel Azic.

Sedlack and Pellegrino traveled to South Africa over fall break to do research and fact-finding. “When I came back, I knew the project wasn’t going to stop at the end of the fall semester in December,” Sedlack says. Of the 12 students in the class, only two — BFA students with thesis projects due — weren’t able to continue with the project the following semester.

The class ultimately developed four projects designed to effect change through communication: a book on refugee rights; a campaign for health care rights, written in six different languages (English, Zulu, Sesotho, Portuguese, French and Afrikaans); a replicable community event where people gathered for a cookout and painted over hateful graffiti; and a children’s book, “Blooming Together.”

Sedlack was able to take seven students to South Africa over spring break 2012. “It wasn’t a deep immersion, but it was enough to help them better understand the variety of challenges that the refugees are facing.”

The trip, funded in part by the , was critical to the project, he adds. “We put the projects in front of the people they would affect. We got to talk to teachers and students, did in-home interviews — it really changed the way the students thought about their ability to be agents of change through design.”

One student told him that she realized that in her lifetime, she’d moved from bubble to bubble. Meeting refugees is much different than seeing them on TV, or on the Internet, he says. “They realized that design is a powerful tool, that it can really make a difference in the world.

The grant will be used to produce and distribute the various projects that the students created. Plans for the future include expansion of the story and curriculum for older children, impact measurement tools and scaling the campaign for other South African communities, as well as refining it for other regions of the world affected by xenophobia.

Says KNF’s Paul Horn, “This grant takes together+ from a theoretical level to practical implementation. What’s really exciting is that because of the committed partners who are part of this program, the project has a major chance to influence thousands and thousands of people and really make a difference in society.”

Originally published by Carol C. Bradley at on Oct. 18, 2012.

For the third consecutive year, the University of Notre Dame has received honor roll distinctions as one of the top 10 higher education workplaces in the country in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual “” survey.

The Great Colleges program, now in its fourth year, is the premier recognition program in higher education. The program is designed to recognize institutions that are great places to work and to compile benchmarking data about industry trends, as well as to recognize institutions for best practices and policies. The University has participated in the program for three years, and has taken top honors each year.

All accredited institutions in the U.S. are invited to participate in the survey. This year, results were based on responses from nearly 44,000 people at 310 institutions across the country.

The Chronicle identified 12 features of excellent academic workplaces and asked faculty and staff at colleges of all sizes and types from across the country to assess their employers. Each institution was asked to submit a list of full-time employees randomly selected across three categories: administration, faculty and exempt professional staff.

The assessment, administered and analyzed by ModernThink LLC, a human resources consulting firm based in Wilmington, Del., was conducted in March and April of this year.

Employees answered questions on factors such as supervisor or department chair relationships, opportunities for professional/career development, compensation and benefits, job satisfaction and workplace diversity.

Honor roll recognition, awarded to four-year colleges, was given to the 10 institutions in each size category (based on enrollment) that were cited most often across all of the recognition categories—leadership, careers, compensation and workplace satisfaction.