If you have visited the Snite Museum of Art during the past few years, you might have seen exhibits on capital punishment, the environment and gender issues, along with 2,000-year-old stone figures from Mexico, photographs of Tennessee, and Rembrandt etchings.

That mix exemplifies the social conscience that underlies the mission of the museum as it marks its 25th anniversary of service to the campus and community, and one of the measures by which the Snite has grown to be acknowledged among the nations finest university museums.

Since opening in 1980, the Snite collection has increased from 8,000 mostly modest art objects to 23,000 items. The Snites curators have shifted the focus of the collection away from aiming to be encyclopedic, instead strengthening key collections, says Charles Loving, director since 2000.

Loving recalls having a conversation with an art scholar who said the Snites Olmec collection of Mesoamerican art was the best in the nation.I corrected him,says Loving.’You mean the finest at a university.He said, ’I mean the finest in any American museum.

The Snites acclaimed photography collection includes 10,000 images, up from a single photograph in 1974,and that was on the back of another artwork,says Dean Porter, Snite director from 1974 to 1999. It also features a notable collection of 19th century photographs as well as its Old Masters drawings and paintings and 18th and 19th century collections, which also are widely recognized, as is its Ivan Metrovisculpture collection.

By emphasizing areas where we have genuine strength, we have attracted scholars and researchers,says Loving.These collections also attract additional gifts.

In 1999, then-director Porters exhibit,Taos Artists and their Patrons,traveled the country in partnership with the Phoenix Art Museum.It was a high-water mark in original research and knowledge,Loving says. Since then, pieces from the photo collection have traveled in a national show titledA Gift of Lightand the Snite routinely lends single and small groups of objects to other museums.

As an exhibit space, the Snite is enjoyed annually by some 57,000 visitors, who see visual representations of a mission to nourish and challenge the human spirit and enhance understanding of world cultures.

“Its a mission that fits a Catholic university art museum well,” Loving says.Inspiring religious images are prominent in the Snite, he says,but Notre Dame also has a social conscience and a faith-based belief in service to the community that not many university art museums have.

As examples, he mentions museum tours for area schoolchildren (7,000 annually), award-winning after-school and summer art programs at the Robinson Community Learning Center, art camps for at-risk children, and teacher workshops. Supporting the Universitys mission to foster diversity was a show in the museum’s works-on-paper gallery by African American artists, as well as the permanent collection of Mesoamerican, Native American and African art.

The 2003 exhibitGirl Culture: Lauren Greenfield Photographs,depicting issues of body image and fashion in teen girls, solidified the Snites commitment to use exhibits to raise social issues. Student response remains on the minds of the staff.We had students with eating disorders coming in from the counseling center. They said how important the message was.

Loving intends to offer more exhibits with social messages.Our goal is to have a positive influence on individual lives,he says.

The student body is already a built-in presence at the museum, with 3,000 students annually participating in curriculum-related tours and exhibits tailored to particular faculty and their classroom goals. Among such efforts, about 600 students in Spanish language courses receive tours in Spanish. The Snite Essay Competition, based on essays written about art objects, encourages scholarship, and museum benefactors fund two art history graduate internships, as well as one for a graduate graphic design student.

“Its our job to train the next generation of museum curators,Loving says. One Snite intern is now a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Its also Lovings job to continue improving the museum and welcoming visitors. Its a frustrating task at times, he says, because galleries and storage space are inadequate, restricting the growth of the collection. Some traveling shows pass up the Snite because it lacks a loading dock, and some visitors pass by because theres no nearby parking. Even the annual Christmas benefit dinner had to move off-site three years ago due to lack of space.

Thus, we have Lovings dream for the Snites second 25 years: A 140,000-square-foot building (twice the current size), constructed on a site southeast of the new performing arts center. Loving also desires a public plaza and sculpture park to promote reflection, meditation and prayer. These plans have been formally outlined and financial support is being sought.

Imagine a time,Loving says,when you could park conveniently, enjoy an interesting meal, walk across the street to the museum for a new exhibition and then stroll over to a concert at the performing arts center.

Such a public space would attract and retain the nations brightest and most creative individuals, who would fuel research, business and economic growth, Loving says. He is eager for the Snite to play a role in that new cultural community.

TopicID: 14806

Potholes are a nuisance this time of year. Even civil engineer Theresa Harrison finds them irritating as she drives to her office inSouth Bendor her classes in DeBartolo Hall.Sometimes I think Im more frustrated than others. I know what causes and how to avoid or fix a pothole, but I cant just jump out of my car and do it,she says.

Instead she focuses on designing pothole-resistant roads and educating future engineers who might someday solve the pothole problem altogether. As an engineer at Lawson-Fisher Associates, one of her current projects is to widenDouglas RoadbetweenMain StreetandFir Road.

In January,Harrisonbecame an assistant adjunct professor, teaching Introduction to Transportation Engineering.

This isHarrisons first venture into teaching, and a beneficial one for theCollegeofEngineeringand its students. As vice president of the Indiana Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, she brought the groups annual meeting to campus last month.

About 200 engineers from around the state attended, and 14 speakers came from in-state and around the country. Topics ranged from storm water quality to the World Trade Center collapse. Members of the student chapter assisted with the planning.

And yes, the engineers discussed potholes.

One proposed solution was rubber roads: asphalt containing ground-up tires. Conventional asphalt is a combination of oil, rock and sand. It can expand and crack when moisture gets in, which is something rubberized asphalt supposedly prevents.

Harrisonis skeptical.No matter how flexible the surface is, if you get water under the road that cannot drain eventually the road will fail.

In the meantime,Harrisonfeels the best solution is to avoid the cause of potholes in the first place by building roads with good drainage. If the base under the pavement is controlled to drain water away, potholes are reduced, she says.

Have you ever noticed that on roads aroundLake Michiganwhere there are sand dunes, there are few potholes? The sand is probably 50 feet deep, and sand drains better. But some places, you might have a little streak of clay, trapping water, keeping it from draining, and that causes havoc on the road.

The problem is worse on older roads.

Maybe the road was good at first, but you cant control what is put in later and how it is put in that will block the drainage.Repeated freezing and thawing, like we had this winter, encourages potholes. A sustained freeze keeps them from developing as rapidly.

Like all of us this time of year,Harrisons travels take her past pothole repair crews. She notes that while we dont yet succeed in preventing them, our techniques for fixing them are becoming ever more sophisticated. The City ofSouth Bend, for example, now owns automated patchers that can fix up to 100 holes a day.

TopicID: 10830

Why would two dozen Notre Dame research engineers volunteer to spend a busy Sunday in December analyzing robots that children have made out of Lego bricks?

Carol Osmer, coordinator of the annual FIRST Lego League Tournament atStepanCenter, has a few ideas: To promote science and engineering, encourage children and reach out to the community. The volunteers mention Osmers persuasive spirit as well.

The kids make it fun,she told the 30 Notre Dame faculty, staff and graduate students she recruited to judge.They have such energy. You may find yourself smiling all day long.

The competition is her passion. It led to her job as administrative assistant in the Universitys Center for Nano Science and Technology, and keeps her volunteering evenings each fall with five Lego League teams atPrairieVistaElementary 91��Ƶin neighboring Granger.

I get to see them as they start, watch the progress,she says.Its a delight.

FIRST Lego League is affiliated with a non-profit organization called FIRST, which stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,founded by Dean Kaman, inventor of the Segway people mover.

An international program, FIRST Lego League challenges students to develop presentations and robots based upon a different theme each year. This years topic was equal access for everyone, including the handicapped. The tournament marked the culmination of 10 weeks of research and robot building for the students, ages 9 to 14, and their parent coaches.

It is the Little League of robotics,says judge Dane Wheeler, a Notre Dame graduate student in electrical engineering and a veteran of thePennHigh 91��Ƶrobotics team. His judging partner was Gary Bernstein, professor of electrical engineering, a volunteer for four years.

Osmer calls the competition sports for the mind, and emphasized that the experience teaches teamwork as well as research and robotics.

She learned about Lego League in 2000 while visiting theFIRSTHigh 91��ƵRobotics competition inFlorida. She introduced it to Prairie Vista, where her daughter was a student, and coordinated five teams of eight children that year. Their goal was to advance to the state tournament inFt.Wayne. They did better than advance. PrairieVistateams took home five trophies.

One of the parents she met was Wolfgang Porod, Center for Nano Science director and Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering. He invited her to a meeting to discuss Notre Dame hosting a Lego League regional tournament. Then Porod asked her to help coordinate the first tournament, which took place in December 2001.

This past December, Notre Dame held its fourth tournament, hosting 35 teams from aroundIndiana.

Whats next? Osmer and Porod would like to design the challenge some day. That would involve coming up with a research topic and robot tasks. It would be great to have Notre Dame leading the challenge around the world, they say.

Grace Huili Xing, assistant professor of electrical engineering and contest judge, relates Lego League to her childhood inChina.

It was my childhood wish to live near a university, for the resources, the bigger library,she said.I pushed my parents to move.

They never did, but since starting work at Notre Dame this fall, she has looked for a way to bring resources of the university to the community. Lego League has helped, she said.

Judge Zoltan Racz, a graduate student fromHungary, said that growing up,we did not have a big event like this with complex tasks. It is something I would want for my own children someday. When I see my advisers – who are so busy with research -volunteering their weekend, I say, ‘I can do the same.

TopicID: 9706

When Paul Helquist was a budding scientist in the 1960s, he had two experiences that led him to where he is today as a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Notre Dame.

The first came at a National Science Foundation summer program he attended as a high school student.

“It was cool to do real research with instruments, and some computer programming,” he remembers.

Later, as an undergraduate in chemistry at the University of Minnesota, he connected with a mentor who invited him to do research in chemistry, math and organic chemistry for three years. They published two papers in scientific journals, and the mentor eventually helped him with decisions about graduate school.

Helquist earned his doctorate from Cornell University in 1972. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he joined the faculty of State University of New York at Stony Brook, then moved to Notre Dame in 1984.

Today, Hellquist is part of a Notre Dame team searching for new antibiotics and anti-tumor agents, and treatments for illnesses ranging from cancer to Niemann-Pick Type C disease (the disease being addressed by the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation). But for a period last month, he stepped into the role that had been so useful for him: that of mentor.

Helquist served as the chief judge of the Midwestern Regionals of the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition, a leading scholarship and awards program for high school students. The competition is nationally famous for identifying the coming generations of scientific researchers. Notre Dame has been hosting the Midwest Regionals since 1998.

Judging at his side was David Leighton, Notre Dame professor of chemical engineering, who took part in the Westinghouse Talent Science Search as a high school senior in 1976.

“It played a big role in my career development, and influenced me to pursue chemical engineering” Leighton says. “I learned how to do research before I ever got to college.”

He also formed a life-long friendship with another contestant who eventually became his roommate at Princeton University.

Leighton also organizes the judging for the Northern Indiana Science and Engineering Fair for area students in fourth grade through high school, which takes place in March at Stepan Center. Working with the various science competitions is a way to “contribute back, and make opportunities for future scientists,” Leighton says.

Helquist praises the Siemens contestants. “They are highly talented, beyond their years. Many are doing graduate-level research. We want to give them further encouragement toward research careers.”

Regional winners were in Washington, D.C., this week (Dec. 5-8) for the national competition, competing for the top prize of a $100,000 scholarship.

How does a high school junior or senior get to that level? Mentoring is the key, says Helquist. Many have opportunities to work with nearby colleges, or with special teachers in high school. Some attend academies that emphasize science and math.

Growing up north of Duluth, Minn., Helquist says he did not have the opportunities to do research that many current students have, but he had a high school physics and chemistry teacher who inspired him. “He has been retired for many years, and must be in his 80s, but I had contact with him last month,” Hellquist said.

The Siemens Foundation regional competition is organized through the Office of Pre-College Programs and overseen by Joan Ball, director. Other regional hosts are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Universities of California, Berkeley, and Texas, and Carnegie Mellon University.

During their weekend at Notre Dame, student competitors have more than just the opportunity to compete with one another or to win scholarship money.

The University sponsors a presentation by a noteworthy speaker, the kind of brilliant scientific mind any Nobel Prize hopeful would be pleased to meet. This year, the speaker was Roald Hoffmann, poet, playwright and 1981 Nobel Laureate in chemistry. A native of Poland who was interned in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, he came to the United States in 1949 and studied chemistry at Columbia and Harvard Universities. He is the Frank H. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell.

Its a great opportunity to host the competition, says Dennis Jacobs, himself a professor of chemistry and an associate provost. Its an event in which students, Notre Dame representatives and the Siemens organization direct their focus to pure scientific research.

TopicID: 8463

What is the role of fine arts in building a more Christian civilization?

Many consider this to be a key question as Notre Dame enters a new era in the arts with the opening of the DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, and it was the central question of “Epiphanies of Beauty: The Arts in a Post-Christian Culture,” a fall conference organized by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.

The phrase “Epiphanies of Beauty” comes directly from Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, which says artists can give others a chance to encounter the divine in our increasingly secular world, according to David Solomon, W.P. and H.B. White Director, Center for Ethics and Culture.

This deeper side of beauty goes beyond paintings and stained glass, and touches on creativity in all the arts. Conference discussions centered on a revival of interest in the arts throughout the Catholic Church that is taking place in Europe and Latin America, as well as this country, Solomon said. Topics related to architecture, art history, the visual arts, poetry, literature, film, music, education, philosophy and theology, were explored with papers presented by 122 scholars.

Solomon says the opening of the DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts has the potential to spark tremendous interest in the arts on the Notre Dame campus.

“When I came here in 1968 as a faculty member, the arts were dead,” he says. "The students were good solid people, but many were not very interested in the arts. The good news is that is changing. The revival in interest in the arts has the potential to be as dramatic as anything Ive seen.

“Most people picture artists as rebelling against religion, but on the contrary, many are discovering the divine through their art. After the conference, one artist told me she couldnt sleep because she was so inspired by what she heard; she couldnt wait to get into her studio.”

Solomon said he was a bit worried about putting on a conference with art as its theme.

“I’m used to working with philosophers and theologians,” he said. “Here we had all these artists.”

But the experience brought together a diverse group, including working painters and musicians, parish priests, lawyers and undergrads, as well as philosophers, and turned out to have the largest attendance of any conference yet, he said. More than 600 attended, demonstrating there is significant interest in this topic.

As a practical response to Notre Dames Catholic mission, the conference provided a meeting ground for artists.

“Some of the artists work alone, and are lonesome, painting from their own spirituality, and they found working friendships with those of similar interests,” Solomon said.

Solomons personal highlight was the honoring of William Schickel, celebrated artist and Notre Dame alumnus, who remains on the cutting edge of art even in his mid 80s.

“He mentioned the inspiration he got from his teachers and the traditions at Notre Dame in the 1940s, and yet he is still daring, still thinking, not bound by the limits of tradition,” Solomon said.

On the topic of literature, Gregory Wolfe, publisher and editor of Image, a journal of the arts and religion, compared the work of contemporary writers with those working in the 1930s and 40s, during the “Golden Age of Catholic Literature,” such as Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.

“He said we are experiencing a revival in Catholic writing, and many people might be surprised by that,” Solomon said.

Notre Dame professors and authors Ralph McInerny and Kevin Hart spoke on their approach to their literary and poetic works.

Another highlight was the talk by Alasdair MacIntyre, research professor of philosophy, on “What Makes a Painting a Religious Painting?” by comparing the works of El Greco and Mark Rothko.

The conference also featured presentations on architecture and urban design featuring Philip Bess, Thomas Gordon Smith and Duncan Stroik of Notre Dames 91��Ƶ of Architecture. Diana Matthias of the Snite Museum, led tours of the Snites collections.

A musical highlight was the performance of Oliver Messiaens “Visions de lAmen.” The two-piano performance and a lecture by Stephen Schloesser of Boston College, explored Messiaens connections to French Catholic Revivalism.

“Epiphanies of Beauty” was one of several conferences this fall that addressed the issue of Catholicism and spiritual influences across multiple disciplines. “Faith, Ethics and Environment: The Response of a Catholic University” in early November assembled theologians, ethicists, scientists and environmentalists to explore the ways a Catholic university can respond to environmental challenges facing society.

Earlier, leading ethicists, engineers, economists and energy industry decision makers gathered for a conference titled “Ethics and Changing Energy Markets: Issues for Engineers, Managers and Regulators.” A discussion, " Notre Dame: What’s Next?" ** sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters under the auspices of the Erasmus Institute, featured a panel of scholars who discussed the idea of the Catholic college.

TopicID: 8281