Get silly at the 10th Biennial Madrigal

Huzzah and What Ho! It is time, once again, to let thy hair down and get silly at the Madrigal Dinner Feast presented by the Music Department.

Bud Clark, (alias King Budward), of the MSSU Music Department, has proclaimed once again that all peasants are welcome to dine in the Royal Banquet Hall of Clarkshire Castle, (Bud Walton Theater) at 7 p.m., March 7-10.

To join in the merriment, call the MSSU ticket office at (417) 625-9366, no later than March 6 to reserve your seat in the Banquet Hall. There is seating for as many as 12 at a table, so bring the whole family and plan on an evening of good food and fun, and “joust” about everything else!

Region 6 History Day today on campus

The Social Science Department hosts Missouri Region 6 History Day today on campus.

Students from area high schools, junior high schools, and middle schools have been invited to enter. Winners from the district contest, one of nine in Missouri, will have the opportunity to compete in Missouri State History Day on April 14 at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Winners from the state competition may go on to the National History Day contest in June at College Park, Maryland.

Tessman, Orchestra to feature music from Russia

Russian pianist Tatiana Tessman, Grand Prize winner of the 2006 Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, will present a concert of all Russian music at 8 p.m., Tuesday, April 3 in Taylor Performing Arts Center.

Tickets are $20 general admission, $10 for seniors and free to all students. In addition to solo works by Russian composers, Tessman will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Southern Symphony Orchestra.

For more information call (417) 625-9755.

Location/time changed . . .
MSSU, Taiwan Institute to Sign Agreement

Missouri Southern State University will sign an exchange agreement with the Nan Jeon Institute of Technology in Taiwan at 11:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 7.

In order to accommodate faculty/staff, students, guests and the news media, the signing now will be held in the lobby of Taylor Performing Arts Center on the MSSU campus.

This will be the sixteenth international exchange agreement MSSU has signed.

Founded in 1967, Nan Jeon has an enrollment of 6,000. Its specialties include business administration, finance, applied English, applied Japanese, hospitality management, engineering, and computer science.

Dr. Chad Stebbins, director of MSSU’s Institute of International Studies; Dr. J.R. Moorman, head of the Department of Communication; and Bill Trudeau, director of the International English Program, all visited the Nan Jeon campus in 2006.

Nan Jeon will be represented Wednesday by Dr. Chun-Huy Wang, deputy president and dean of student affairs; Yi-Fang Shen, chairman of the board of trustees; Zhong-Guang Shen, member of the board of trustees; and Dr. Yaw-Yih Wang, assistant professor of business and section chief of academic exchange and cooperation division.

Jack C.K. Chen, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office of Kansas City; and Henry G.F. Fan, director of division, also will attend the signing ceremony.

The delegation will tour Contract Freighters, Inc. in the afternoon. MSSU has exchange agreements in Chile, China, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and Sweden.

Service Learning Conference March 7

On March 7, 2007 MSSU will hold a Service–Learning Conference and Luncheon on the 3rd floor of Billingsly Student Center.

Service-Learning is a teaching and learning approach that integrates community service with academic study to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

Featured speaker, Margarita Maria Lenk of Colorado State University (CSU) was honored in 2004 and 2005 as one of the top ten finalists for the Thomas Ehrlich Award, the top Service-Learning award for faculty in the USA.

Over the past 15 years, Margarita has developed and taught ten different Service-Learning courses at CSU at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. During the past decade, she has been facilitating Service-Learning adoption and institutionalization on dozens of campuses and communities in the US, in Argentina (her native country) and in Japan.

Morning Sessions for Faculty:
9 - 10 a.m. Service-Learning Rationale and Fundamentals
10-11 a.m. Service-Learning Course Design Workshop
11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Building University – Community Partnerships (for Community Partners)
11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Partnership Building Luncheon (an opportunity for both Community Members and Faculty)

Afternoon Sessions for Faculty:
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Repeat of Service-Learning Rationale and Fundamentals
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Repeat of Service-Learning Course Design Workshop

To register, contact Pat Hurley, Career Services, at hurley-p@mssu.edu by noon on Monday, March 5. Please specify morning or afternoon sessions, and whether or not you will be attending the Partnership Building Luncheon.

Contemporary Film Series continues

The Contemporary Film Series will continue this semester as a Friday night continuing education class. To enroll, simply come to the next film and pay the tuition of $10 per person.

Nick Kyle, Art, says the film for tonight, Friday, March 2 , is Oliver Twist (Great Britain, 2005; 130 min.)

"Even if you’ve seen David Lean’s classic version and the musical film Oliver!, you need to see Roman Polanski’s recent twist on Dickens’ novel," Nick says. "Polanski imbues the story with unflinching realism and an autobiographically-based sensitivity to the plight of an orphan who has to make his way through a world of self-interested, often cruel adults."

The film features a probing portrayal of Fagin by Ben Kingsley.

The films are presented on DVD format at Cornell Auditorium in Plaster Hall.

Wake up to Career Services!

Career Services will be coming to a location near you next week with the "Coffee, Cookies & Careers" outreach program.

Students and faculty are encouraged to stop by for a complimentary cup of coffee and morning snack to find out about upcoming Career Services events, including Spring Job Expo on March 21 and Education Job Fair on April 4. Visitors also can pick up materials about career choices, resumes and cover letters, interviewing, and more.

Coffee, Cookies & Careers sessions, all slated for 8:30 - 11 a.m., include:

Monday, March 5: Plaster Hall, East Doors
Tuesday, March 6: Reynolds Hall, North Doors

MSSU Students represent India

The Model UN Club attended the Midwest Model United Nations in St. Louis, Feb. 21-24, where the MSSU delegation represented the country of India.

Before the conference, the nine participating students researched important global issues and prepared positions reflective of the foreign policy of India. During the conference, they worked with students from other colleges and universities to find solutions to problems on the agenda. For more information about the conference, see http://mmun.org.

Kenote speaker Barukh Binah, Consul General at Israeli consulate in Chicago, expressed hope that the United Nations would play a more even-handed role in the disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. He also called for reforms that would make it possible for Israel to participate in the Security Council and in ECOSOC.

Paul Teverow, History, accompanied the delegation. Paul attended sessions on proposals for reform of the Security Council and on best practices for preparing students for Model UN conferences.

For information on students taking part, see www.mssu.edu/news/modelunspring07.htm.

Author Speer Morgan to speak

Author and teacher Speer Morgan is coming to Joplin as part of the Missouri Southern State University Department of English and Philosophy’s Visiting Writers Series.

Morgan will give a reading in the Spiva Art Gallery of MSSU at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 8. A reception will follow the reading.

He will also be giving another reading and a Q&A session at 10 a.m., Friday morning at the University Java coffee shop on the bottom floor of Spiva Library at MSSU.

Speer Morgan grew up in Fort Smith, Ark. and is the author of five novels, all set in the four state area.

His first novel was a work of historical fiction about 19th century outlaw Belle Starr. His most recent novel, The Freshour Cylinders, won an American Book Award in 1999.

He is currently teaching in Columbia, Mo. at Missouri University and is the editor of The Missouri Review. For more information, contact Joey Brown, English, at (417) 625-9708 or e-mail brown-jr@mssu.edu.

The Institute of International Studies and the Missouri Southern Film Society are sponsoring the 45th Annual International Film Festival's next feature is the 1945 French film Battle of the Rails (La Bataille du Rail).

The film will be presented at 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 6 in Cornell Auditorium in Plaster Hall. The showing is free and open to the public.

Directed by Rene Clement, this remarkable and courageous film was completed during the final months of World War II under extremely dangerous conditions. Using a cast of non-professionals, Clement followed railway workers who resisted the Nazis on many fronts. Shot in a gritty, semi-documentary style, it has been compared to Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist masterpiece Open City but, due to poor distribution it remained in obscurity until it was recently rediscovered and restored.

The Southern Symphony Orchestra will perform Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf to introduce the orchestra through story-telling to the young and the young at heart. The concert is at 1 p.m., Wednesday, April 25 in Taylor Performing Arts Center on MSSU campus. The concert is free, but reservations are needed. Please contact the orchestra director Kexi Liu at (417) 625-9681 or e-mail liu-k@mssu.edu.

The Division of Lifelong Learning will host Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt training this August.

The eight day Six Sigma Green Belt training will be taught on the Missouri Southern campus Aug. 13 - 16 and Aug. 27 - 30. Classes are taught 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. The training fee is $2,200.

Six Sigma Green Belt course topics include six sigma fundamentals, DMAIC model, project management, team effectiveness, project selection, project charter, process maps, measuring defects, customer analysis, data collection plans, descriptive statistics, check sheets, cause & effect diagrams, histograms, SPC, capability analysis, graphical improvement tools, Pareto charts, root cause analysis, correlation analysis, scatter plots and measurement systems analysis.

The ten day Six Sigma Black Belt training will be taught on the Missouri Southern campus Oct. 1 - 5 and Dec. 10 - 14. Classes are taught 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

The training fee is $3,000. All Black Belt course participants will have to complete the Missouri Southern Green Belt course prior to enrollment in the Black Belt course.

The Six Sigma Black Belt course topics include Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA), Industrial Experimentation, Hypothesis Testing, Single Factor Designs, Multifactor Designs, Fractional Factorial Designs, Decision Analysis and Response Plans.

To request registration forms or inquire about the program, contact Elke Howe, School of Technology, at (417) 625-9849 or e-mail howe-e@mssu.edu.

Mapping Missouri

Spiva Library invites you to travel through time with the traveling exhibit, Mapping Missouri. This exhibit features more than 100 maps from the Missouri State Archives' collection, some of which have never been shown before.

Mapping Missouri uses stunning examples of colorful cartography to show how maps express our attitude about the world around us, illustrating such topics as the evolution of land surveying methods, the process of creating geographical inventories of natural resources, and methods of using maps to recreate events that took place long ago.”

Mapping Missouri will be on display on the main (3rd) floor of the library through March 4. The library invites everyone to take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about how Missouri became what it is today.

St. Louis Cardinals over-the-air telecasts return to KGCS-TV, for the 20th consecutive year. "We're proud to once again bring the action of the Cardinals to area television viewers," says Judy Stiles, KGCS General Manager. "After winning the World Series last year, a lot of fans are looking forward to watching the Cardinals play."

This year's schedule features 2 Spring Training games, and 21 regular-season games. The first Spring Training telecast will air at noon, Sunday, March 11. The Cardinals will play the Atlanta Braves in Florida. Regular-season telecasts will air primarily on Sunday afternoons. The first regular-season telecast on KGCS will be Sunday, April 15.

Persons wishing to have a copy of the telecast schedule may stop by the lobby area of KGCS-TV or e-mail Judy Stiles, KGCS General Manager at stiles-j@mssu.edu.

Ozarks Public Television and the Joplin Museum Comlex are sponsoring the 7th Annual Artist's Reception and Art exhibit to show appreciation to the area artists. The exhibit, which began Feb. 23, is open to the public through March 9 during regular museum hours. Carolyn Hale, Communications, has two landscape oil paintings, "High in the Himalayan Mountains" and "Ice Storm in Joplin, 2007," in the exhibit.

Chris Moos, International Business, presented sessions on Business Ethics and Leadership to the Joplin Chamber of Commerce at "Leadership Joplin 2007" retreat February 6 and 7. The Joplin Chamber conducted a two-day retreat at Camp Maranatha north of Mt. Vernon for the forty-one participants in this year's class.

For Sale: Weider PowerMax 70072, 3 station home gym/cross trainer. 200-lb. max bench press, vertical AB flex and step station. Also 110-lb. barbell set. $75 for all. Call ext 9666.

For Sale: Two St. Louis Blues hockey tickets for March 10. Great seats in Section 102, Row K. Regularly $100 tickets, now $75. Call ext. 9503.

For Sale: 2001 Casita Travel Trailer 16' Spirit Deluxe. All fiberglass construction. Fully self-contained. Includes: toilet, shower, AC, awning, elec. brakes, cook top, microwave, 3-way fridge, furnace. Pull with SUV or minivan. Contact 625-9314 for price and to make appointment to see.

For Sale: Forty-eight inch round oak table w/ 18" leaf, 6 chairs; $450. MT Cannondale Tandem bicycle. $1100. Like new. Must see to appreciate. Contact Becky Gallemore at 659-5425.

Free: In cleaning out a closet, one department ran across some things we can no longer use, free to whomever makes contact first. Please reply email or phone (ext. 4461). First come, first serve. The items include:

Location/time changed . . . MSSU, Taiwan Institute to Sign Agreement

Location/time changed . . .
MSSU, Taiwan Institute to Sign Agreement