• Do you remember the notorious 2007 Mother’s Day brawl at Toledo’s Golden Corral restaurant? Jane Bradley does; she made it the basis for the title story in her new collection of short fiction, Are We Lucky Yet?

The article by Cynthia Nowak goes on to provide a detailled background of the work and its author.  The full text of the article is available by clicking here.  Be sure not to miss the launch party for Are We Lucky Yet, which includes a reading, a raffle and a book-signing.  It all happens Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. at 20 North Gallery, 18 North St. Clair St., in downtown Toledo.

Prof. Douglas W. Coleman, Jack Crist, and Kelley Wherley presented a paper, “Controlling Input for Learner Success,” at the Ohio TESOL 2009 Annual Conference in conjunction with the Lau Resource Center, which was held October 30-31 in Columbus Ohio. Their paper described the results of an experiment which compared three different types of input provided to foreign language learners. The experiment showed that simply adding textbook visuals and multimedia provide no improvement over traditional translation-based approaches, unless certain design principles not commonly in use are applied to the design of the materials.

At the same conference, Prof. Coleman also presented a paper on “Machinima in Second Language Learning”, in which he showed how 3D animated movies can be created to enhance foreign language learning.

Ty Roth, MA-Literature, 2005

Ty Roth, who graduated with an MA in Literature in 2005 while teaching high school full time in  Port Clinton, Ohio, has just signed a two-book deal with Delecorte, a Random House imprint, based on their acquisition of his first novel, So Shelly. According to the official announcement at Publishers Weekly, So Shelly “transposes Romantic poets Keats, Byron and Shelley into present-day Ohio high school students, working in historical details about the poets themselves, with a sickly Keats, politically active Shelley and a lothario-like Byron.”  The book will be release in 2011 and initially marketed to a mature young adult audience, although Roth hopes for crossover into a broader commercial market.

“Irving Kane Pond: A Michigan Architect in Chicago,” an old publication of Professor Emeritus Guy Szuberla’s, has been reprinted as the introduction to a new book, The Autobiography of Irving Kane Pond (Oak Park, Illinois: Hyoogen Pr., 2009). Pond (1857-1939) is perhaps best known as the architect of the Hull-House complex in Chicago, the Michigan Union (Ann Arbor), and his work on Pullman, Illinois, the model city. He was working on the manuscript of his autobiography when he died in 1939.

David Swan, a Chicago architect, and Terry Tatum, Supervising Historian and Director of Research for the Landmarks Division [City of Chicago], edited the text of the autobiography and gathered the several hundred photos and line drawings that accompany it. Their work was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Michael Piotrowski, English Department Senior Lecturer, received a third place award in the Adult 2-D division of the UT Lake Erie Center 2009 Art Contest for his watercolor painting, “Washed Ashore.” Entries were expected to reflect the theme of “Nature on Maumee Bay.”

His painting illustrates a number of items you can find washed up on the beach of Lake Erie. He says, “I am particularly fond of finding sea glass—bits of broken glass washed smooth by the action of the lake water waves. They represent how the lake is influenced by both natural and man-made forces.”

Dr. Carol Stepien, Director of the Lake Erie Center presented awards to contest winners at a reception on Thursday, September 17 in the lobby of the LEC. The artworks will be on display in the Center during the month of October. For more information about the LEC, visit their website: http://www.utoledo.edu/as/lec/.

She also just returned from keynoting an awards ceremony  and leading student workshops in NY The keynote address was  “The Jigonsaseh, Woman of Peace” at the 2009 Jigonsaseh Women of Peace Awards, Indigenous Women’s Initiative, Buffalo State College. 19 September 2009.  The workshop was with Native American Studies Students at SUNY–Buffalo, 18 September 2009.

Rane Arroyo’s poem, “The Buried Sea”, which was included in his collection published by University of Arizona Press, was published in Mid-American Review, Volume XXIX #1:  pages 21-22.

Lijuan Zhang and Min Wang, who were visiting scholars in the English Department 2008-9, are shown here with Professor Bill Free in this picture taken during their stay with us last academic year.  Both are teachers at National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan Province, China.  They recently e-mailed department Chair Sara Lundquist to say hello.

Professor Douglas W. Coleman recently presented two papers at the August 4-8 annual conference of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States (LACUS), which was sponsored by Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA.  On one paper, “Lies and Lying in Hard-science Linguistics,” he was a co-author with Bernard Sypniewski (Rowan University), and was single author of the other, “Theory of Mind in Hard-science Linguistics.”  Prof. Coleman also serves as the current Conference Program Chair for LACUS.