Griffin Forum / Awe & Wonder concert / Museum exhibit at Ganiard Elementary /

Violence and genocide conference

Political leaders discussed the state’s stretched budget and the role of higher education in Michigan’s economic future during the Griffin Policy Forum in November. Seated from left to right are House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche, Speaker of the House Andy Dillon, forum moderator and host of WKAR’s “Off the Record” Tim Skubick, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, and Senate Minority Leader Mark Schauer.

State's top legislators visit CMU for Griffin Policy Forum

A crowd of more than 700 students, faculty and citizens had the unique opportunity to observe Michigan’s top legislators debate issues affecting the state’s future during Central Michigan University’s Griffin Policy Forum Nov. 6 in Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium.

The semiannual public forum, “Now What? Managing the Budget Crisis While Promoting a Positive Future for the State of Michigan,” brought together the top four ranking political leaders in the state Senate and House of Representatives.

The panelists included Speaker Andy Dillon of the Michigan House of Representatives, Minority Leader Craig DeRoche of the Michigan House of Representatives, Majority Leader Mike Bishop of the Michigan Senate and Minority Leader Mark Schauer of the Michigan Senate.

Tim Skubick, host of WKAR’s “Off the Record,” moderated the forum.

The political leaders discussed options for managing the state’s stretched budget, allocating funding for higher education and preparing Michigan’s workforce to compete in a global economy.

They also disclosed their gubernatorial aspirations, with all but Bishop ruling out a bid for the governor’s race in 2010.

DeRoche, a 1991 CMU graduate, says he always looks forward to returning to his alma mater, adding that the forum is an excellent way to bring CMU students, the community and political leaders together to discuss key issues for our state.

“We want to give people a chance to get a deeper understanding of what matters to them,” DeRoche said. “I hope we also can draw on our visions for better days in Michigan, so that we can all come together and move this state in a different direction.”

The Griffin Endowed Chair in American Government was established in 1999 through private donations to CMU. It provides continuing support to fund the salary and associated costs of a government and public policy expert who serves as a faculty member in CMU’s political science department.

The Griffin program seeks to build interest and increase engagement in politics among young adults, faculty and the general public. The endowment honors former U.S. senator Robert Griffin and his wife, Marjorie Griffin, both distinguished CMU alumni.

This was the first forum organized under the direction of Gary Peters, who began his term as CMU’s Griffin Endowed Chair in American Government in August.

For more information about the forums, visit www.chsbs.cmich.edu/griffin.

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CMU senior and religion major Chris Freeman (left) plays the sitar while religion faculty member H. Talat Halman (right) plays the saz during the ‘Awe and Wonder’ concert Feb. 8.

Religion program hosts sacred music concert

The Central Michigan University religion program treated students and faculty members to an evening of culture, music and spiritual artistry during an event billed “Awe and Wonder: Sacred Music from Two Worlds” on Feb. 8.

The concert showcased both Indian sitar and African-American spiritual music. The performers included CMU senior and religion major Chris Freeman of Iron Mountain and philosophy and religion faculty members H. Talat Halman and Donald Matthews.

“With this event we are venturing into a new realm in order to show the way religion connects with music and the arts,” said Guy Newland, chairperson of the philosophy and religion department at CMU. “It’s a great opportunity to learn about both culture and music, but it’s also fun and entertaining.”

The evening began with Matthews’ one-man narrative of York, the slave owned by explorer William Clark. York made significant contributions to the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but his efforts are widely unknown.

Matthews sang several spirituals, including “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” to help describe the hardships faced by York and other slaves.

The event concluded with a blend of world music featuring a sitar performance by Freeman. He was accompanied by Halman, who sang Turkish spirituals and played a saz, and five other musicians playing instruments such as tabla drums, a guitar and a violin.

“It was such a thrill to integrate and synthesize these related and yet also disparate musical styles, particularly that we had fused Indian, African, Turkish and Euro-American musical frameworks together into one sound,” Halman said. “I am grateful and excited that the CMU religion program decided to offer this event as a way for people to access religion through music and that we covered so many musical bases.”

The sitar is a many-stringed, long-necked instrument that occupies a prominent position in Indian classical music. The saz is a plucked string instrument popular in Turkey, Iran and other Eastern Mediterranean countries. Freeman, a locally known artist, has released six compact discs of his own original scores. For more information, visit www.clfmusic.com.

Above, right: Religion faculty member Donald Matthews performs a narrative of York, a slave owned by explorer William Clark.

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Kirsten Nicholson (right), curator of natural history for CMU’s Museum of Cultural and Natural History, and CMU senior Daedre Craig review a display with students at Ganiard Elementary School in Mount Pleasant.

Museum brings nature exhibits to local elementary school

Central Michigan University’s Museum of Cultural and Natural History has expanded its outreach to local students by placing four educational displays in Ganiard Elementary School in Mt. Pleasant.

The displays showcase 18 birds – including ducks, owls, woodpeckers, hawks, and cardinals – a frog, a butterfly, and a fish.

Staff and students from the museum developed displays to correspond to learning benchmarks for students in all grade levels. The CMU students also created teacher manuals to accompany the displays.

“This is a novel program that benefits people at all levels, from school children and their teachers to CMU students and the community, and to us,” said Kirsten Nicholson, a CMU biology professor and the museum’s curator of natural history. “It brings new resources to students and teachers . . . it’s fun and dynamic, and it gives us a new opportunity to share the museum’s resources with local students.”

Third-grade Ganiard teacher Sandy Jansen says the displays have been a big hit with students, parents, and teachers.

“The displays make learning about nature more meaningful, fun and exciting for the students. We’ve had entire classes sit in front of the displays for lessons. They’re wonderful resources to provide our students with a vivid, three-dimensional view of nature and wildlife,” Jansen said.

The project is very timely, said CMU senior and biology major Daedre Craig of Mount Pleasant, who helped set up the displays.

“Everyone knows that rising gas prices are preventing schools from going on as many field trips,” said Craig. “The ‘Birds in the Schools’ program is working around that inconvenience. This is exactly what the community needs.”

The displays will stay at Ganiard through the remainder of the school year, so that teachers at each grade level can use them over time. Leaders of the project hope to bring the program to more schools in the Mount Pleasant area if they can secure additional resources.

“It’s been a fabulous experience, and we’re very excited to be able to pilot this program,” Jansen said. “We want our students to gain an appreciation for wildlife and perhaps catch the ‘spark’ to learn more about nature. We may have future conservationists and zoologists in our classrooms!”

To learn more about the nature displays or to help expand this outreach program through a financial contribution to the CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History, call 989-774-3829 or visit www.museum.cmich.edu.

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History department hosts international conference on genocide and violence

Participants of the "Violence and Genocide in Latin American History" conference discuss research during the two-day event hosted at CMU.

Scholars from three continents converged on Central Michigan University’s Mount Pleasant campus last August to explore whether genocide and violence have decreased worldwide over time.

 

The conference, “Violence and Genocide in Latin American History,” was sponsored by CMU’s Center for Transnational and Comparative History and Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Additional support was provided by the state of Michigan, CMU and the National Research Council of the Netherlands.

 

The conference was the first of a series of four conferences that will provide an arena for analysis of the long-term history of world violence. Scholars from across the globe will share these findings in a number of publications and ultimately a book. The remaining conferences, to take place over the next three years, will focus on Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. The sites for those conferences have yet to be set.

 

“CMU is going global, and this is an effort on our part to have global presence,” said history professor Eric Johnson, who organized the conference with Pieter Spierenburg of Erasmus University.

 

“We were gratified to be able to host many distinguished scholars from leading universities in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, and to leave them with a positive view of this university and community,” Johnson said.

 

The conference participants learned that violence in Central and South America has largely been declining, and that examples of political violence in the twentieth century are not necessarily unusual when compared to violence throughout previous centuries, Johnson said.

 

Other participants included scholars from the University of Buenos Aires and Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Argentina; Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University and Oxford University in England; the University of Hannover in Germany; McGill University in Canada; Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico; the University of Arizona; Columbia University; and the University of Oregon.

 

CMU’s Center for Transnational and Comparative History has master’s and doctorate level exchanges with Erasmus, the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany and Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico.

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