The University of Evansville wants you to be recognized for your achievements such as making the dean’s list, studying at Harlaxton, winning an award, or attaining an internship. The University publicizes these accomplishments through Merit, an online platform.

Merit allows UE to send news items about your achievements back to your hometown newspapers, notifies your local government representative, and publishes them on the Web. In addition, you can sync your Merit page with popular social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn so that updates to your page will reach your contacts in those networks, too.

The first time UE adds one of your achievements to Merit, you'll receive a Welcome to Merit email with instructions on how to sign into your page and customize it. You can add a profile photo and list on-campus activities and work experience.

As the University issues news stories about your accomplishments, you'll receive e-mails with links to view your story online.

Your online reputation is important – most employers Google an applicant's name during the hiring process for jobs and internships. By using Merit, UE helps you create a positive online profile.

If you have questions about Merit and how it can work for you, contact University Relations at ext. 2236 or uerelations@evansville.edu. 

SYMBOLIC MARCH LOCATION CHANGE: 
Note: Due to hazardous sidewalk conditions, the symbolic march will now take place on the track inside the fitness center immediately following the pre-march rally in the same location.

The University of Evansville will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day today. This year’s theme is a “Labor of Love.” The schedule of events follows. All events are free and open to the public.

Monday, January 21
11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Student Fitness Center
Symbolic March: Civil Rights March on Washington and Pre-March rally
Speakers include Christopher M. Pietruszkiewicz, UE president; LaNeeca Williams, UE chief diversity officer; Aaron Cochran, Black Student Union outreach liaison; and Keith Turner, UE John Wesley Minister and assistant chaplain. The march will then take place on the fitness center track. 

1:00-2:30 p.m., Student Fitness Center
Labor of Love: UE Gives Back
UE students and community members, including students from Evansville Day School, will stuff care bags for foster children as part of the Value Every Child program from the Lutheran Church of our Redeemer.  

1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., Student Fitness Center
Labor of Love: Panel Discussion hosted by UE’s Black Student Union
Local black professionals discuss why they chose their field, professional advice, and how they manage work-life balance at two 30-minute sessions. The audience will be encouraged to ask questions of the panelists.

6:00-7:00 p.m. Eykamp Hall, Room 251, Ridgway University Center
William G. and Rose M. Mays Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship and Reception
Keynote speaker is Cynthia E. Nance, dean emeritus and Nathan G. Gordon Professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law.

Nance serves as the law school’s director of pro bono and community engagement. She teaches labor law, employment law, workplace legislation and poverty law. Nance’s articles appear in journals including the Iowa Law Review, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Iowa Law Review, Rutgers Law Review, and Brandeis Law Review.

The generosity of William G. and Rose M. Mays funds the keynote speaker during UE’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. 

Join the Newman Club this Wednesday, January 23 at 5:00 p.m. for our weekly dinner and discussion. This week, John Payne will be joining us from the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. He'll be talking to us about the thrift store's efforts and how students can volunteer to help others. All are welcome!

Submitted by Michaela Kunkler mk305@evansville.edu

Faculty Recital: Josenhans, Fiedler
Tuesday, January 22, 7:30 p.m., Wheeler Concert Hall
Join us on Tuesday, January 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Wheeler for a recital featuring UE piano professor Anne Hastings Fiedler and clarinet professor Thomas Josenhans. Enjoy works by Johannes Brahms, Robert Muczynski, Charles Ives, and a more modern twist that you'll for surely find interesting from Nikola Resanovic. The recital will also feature Thomas Drury (piano).

The recital is free and open to the public. For complete program information, visit: www.evansville.edu/majors/music/eventDetails.cfm?eventId=14778.

Woodwind Day
Sunday, January 27, Noon -7:00 p.m., Krannert Hall of Art and Music
UE Department of Music's is pleased to host Woodwind Day 2019 on Sunday, January 27 from noon - 7 pm in the Krannert Hall of Art and Music. This year's event features special guests the Cumberland Woodwind Quintet and saxophonist Eric Scales, as well as members of the UE Department of Music faculty. The event provides concerts, exhibits, and clinics for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone and bassoonists of all ages!

Early bird registration is available through January 25.

For more information, and to register for the event, visit: www.evansville.edu/majors/music/outreachWoodwindDayPayment.cfm.

Submitted by James Sullivan js820@evansville.edu

If you were at Harlaxton last semester, come by the Dunigan Lounge in the Schroeder School of Business Building this Thursday, January 24, anytime from 3:00-5:00 p.m. for a sweet treat and official welcome back from the Harlaxton office and Harlaxton Society! This will be an opportunity to tell us about your experience at Harlaxton and share your best advice by writing postcards to future Harlaxton students as well. We hope to see you there!

Submitted by Kaylynn Carver kc205@evansville.edu

Dreaming of that item you never bought at the Harlaxton Boutique? Want to find a new way to show off your love for Harlaxton while also supporting future Harlaxton students?

Introducing the Harlaxton pop-up boutique!

Every month this semester there will be a pop-up boutique around campus selling a variety of limited edition Harlaxton apparel items with 100% of the proceeds going towards the Harlaxton Society Scholarship.

The catch: you’ll have to be following our social media accounts to find out when and where the boutiques will be! We’ll be posting the details on the day of each pop-up and will have a limited quantity of each item, so it’s first come, first served. To keep up with where we’ll be, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: @UEStudyAbroad.

Make sure to spread the word so people know how to find us and support our future Harlaxton students!

Submitted by Greta Becker gb91@evansville.edu 

Join the Newman Club this Tuesday, January 22, at 8:00 p.m. in Neu Chapel to celebrate a Catholic Mass! Fr. Chris Forler will be the celebrant. All are welcome! 

Submitted by Michaela Kunkler mk305@evansville.edu

The Libraries are currently hosting the Faculty Scholarship Display until January 26. Works produced or published or grants received from August 2017 until July 2018 were eligible for inclusion. You should wander over and take a look at your colleagues' impressive scholarship!

A reception in honor of all Faculty Scholars will be held during the Fridays@5 on January 25 from 4:30 – 7:00 p.m. in the Melvin Peterson Gallery.

Submitted by Meg Atwater-Singer ma35@evansville.edu

Attention, all engineering majors. On Wednesday, January 23, Career Services and SWE will be hosting the 14th annual Engineering Career Forum in Eykamp Hall in Ridgway University Center from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Dress code is business professional and all attending students are asked to sign up ahead of time in Kim's office. The night will include job-search strategy sessions and a networking reception to meet employers and present resumes. All engineering majors are encouraged to attend.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Amanda Aders at aa415@evansville.edu.

Submitted by Amanda Aders aa415@evansville.edu

It is with great excitement that the Office of Residence Life announces that its RA application for Fall 2019 is now available on UEngage!

The Resident Assistant position provides opportunities for growth and leadership for both the Resident Assistants and the students on their floors.

Serving in the residence halls or campus “villages,” the Resident Assistant is a full-time undergraduate student whose responsibility it is to serve as a student advisor to 15–60 undergraduate students, depending on their placement. The RA is a para-professional staff member of the Residence Life Office and the Division of Student Affairs. In this capacity, the overall responsibility is to provide leadership, assistance, and support to the students living in their area. Each Resident Assistant serves in diverse roles with many different responsibilities. Working in cooperation with the professional staff, the Resident Assistant strives to facilitate and maximize the residential experience.

If you are interested in speaking with a current RA about his or her position, please join us for our Open House on January 28 from 9-9:30 p.m. in Eykamp Hall, Room 252, Ridgway University Center.

You can access the online application by logging on UEngage and finding it under "Forms" or following this link: https://uengage.evansville.edu/submitter/form/start/225623.

Applications are due by February 10 at 11:59 p.m. Interviews will be scheduled on an individual basis on February 21 and 22.

If you have any questions, please contact Megan King at mk225@evansville.edu or Karyssa Vasquez at kv54@evansville.edu.

Submitted by Megan King mk225@evansville.edu

Are you a recent Harlaxton alumna or alumnus who loves to share your experience with others? Or do you know a student who fits that description?

The Harlaxton office is currently taking applications for students who want to volunteer as Harlaxton Ambassadors to recruit, prepare, and encourage Harlaxton applicants and to represent Harlaxton at various recruitment events and other campus activities. Harlaxton Ambassadors have the opportunity to develop professional skills, stay connected with Harlaxton, and receive exclusive Harlaxton apparel.

More information and applications are available on the Harlaxton website here: https://studyabroad.evansville.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=11522

Submitted by Kaylynn Carver kc205@evansville.edu

Do you have an interest in studying abroad? Whether you’d like to study at Harlaxton or anywhere else in the world, we can help find the right program for you. Fall and summer deadlines are quickly closing, so make sure to stop by our table at Ridgway University Center to ask any question you might have and find out how you can start your adventure abroad! The study abroad office will be in Ridgway University Center on Tuesday, January 22, from 12:00-1:30 p.m. If you can’t stop by during these times, you can always e-mail studyabroad@evansville.edu or stop by Room 261 in the Schroeder School of Business Building.

Submitted by Greta Becker gb91@evansville.edu

The Diversity Resource Center opened its doors for Spring 2019 on Tuesday, January 22. The center, located at 436 Weinbach Avenue, will be open Monday through Thursday, 9:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. and from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. on Friday. The center is open to students, student organizations, and the University of Evansville community as a place for students meet, hold events, or to regroup after each day.

The Diversity Resource Center is also looking for student volunteers that are willing to be present and complete tasks at the center to during its open hours. Those interested can contact Darrion Culler at dc199@evansville.edu.

The Diversity Resource Center can be reserved with the use of the following link: www.evansville.edu/offices/diversity/downloads/Diversity-Resource-Center-Space-Request-Form.pdf.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact. LaNeeca Williams, chief diversity officer, at lw161@evansville.edu; or Darrion Culler, assistant director of diversity initiatives, at dc199@evansville.edu.

Submitted by Darrion Culler dc199@evansville.edu

The Fitness Center will be open on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Monday, January 21) from 8:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Submitted by Lori Adams la87@evansville.edu

This is a reminder to all faculty and administrators that if you need regalia rented for the Presidential Inauguration for the first week in March you must contact the UE Bookstore immediately. Rental orders need to be processed this week to insure timely delivery. Also note that if you need your regalia for inauguration, Spring graduation and August Convocation you will be able to rent for all three occasions for 1 1/2 the rental rate and be able to keep your garments until after Convocation. This is a one-time deal with the rental agency so please place your orders now. There is a link under the "faculty link" tab on the UE Bookstore website where you can email in your order.

Submitted by Doug Gustwiller dg57@evansville.edu

The Writing Center will open Monday, January 28. Our hours are Monday through Thursday, 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. and Friday, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Here are instructions on how to use the writing center.

• Make an appointment! It’s really easy! Go to:  Acelink … Areas … Writing Center … Appointments … Create an Appointment.
• Register for an account - or sign in if you have used the Writing Center before - you can then access the center from any mobile device to schedule or cancel a session. This site manages your appointments, cancellations, and reports.
• You will receive an email reminder before your appointment and your professor will receive feedback from your tutor afterward.
• Next - bring the assignment (writing prompt) or draft of your paper.
• Prepare questions for your tutor to get the most out of a session. For example, “Can you help me to see if my thesis statement is clear?”
• Plan to visit the Writing Center well in advance of an assignment due date. If you come in the day an assignment is due, you may not have enough time to make the revisions discussed during a session. Seems obvious, but…
• Arrive a few minutes early for appointments and don’t be late. If another student is waiting, that student will be helped first if you are over five minutes late.

Professors - please encourage your students to utilize UE’s Writing Center for their papers. If you would like to have a representative of the Writing Center visit your class to give a brief presentation of our services, or if you would like to visit to the center with your class, please e-mail im30@evansville.edu to arrange it.

Submitted by Ian McDonald im30@evansville.edu

Orientation Leader (OL) applications are now available! Visit our website at www.evansville.edu/orientation/welcomeweek.cfm to complete an electronic application before the deadline date of January 29.

Information on "What It Takes to be an Orientation Leader" and the "OL Code of Conduct" can be found on the website along with the application and reference form.

Current Orientation Leaders will be available in the Ridgway University Center Lobby on January 21-25, if you have any questions. You can also contact VPSA/Dean of Students office at 812-488-2500 or stop by Ridgway University Center, Room 230, during business hours.

Submitted by Carleen Barnes cb131@evansville.edu 

UE assistant professor of political science Richard Maass has helped to design a board game called Coral Islands. The project is now live on Kickstarter, and was almost fully funded in its first 24 hours.

Coral Islands includes two dice-stacking games in one beautiful box. Maass designed the first game, Coral, which is a very fun and “puzzly” game that involves stacking translucent dice to create a coral reef and trying to score points by completing specific tetris-style shapes. The second game, Islands, is also very fun, involving moving dice into stacks and drafting colors of dice to score points.

You can find more information on the game and its Kickstarter project here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/alleycatgames/coral-islands-2-interactive-dice-stacking-games-in?ref=e7izz6.

For anyone not familiar with Kickstarter, it is a website where people contribute money to projects they believe in, usually in exchange for a product or other reward once the project is completed. It has become something of a pre-order store for board game publishers, which use it to raise money before they pay to manufacture the game. So if you create a Kickstarter account and back Coral Islands for £25 ($31ish, the "Blue Coral Tier"), you'll receive a copy of the game shipped to you by next October (possibly earlier), in plenty of time for next Christmas! If you back for £31 ($40ish, the "Great Barrier Reef Tier"), you'll get both the game and its expansion (which provides extra cards offering more fun ways to play) Alley Cat Games is a British publishing company, which is why the prices are in British pounds.

Atefeh Yazdanparast, associate professor of marketing, has had a paper accepted by the Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services. The paper, titled "Does Parasocial Interaction with Weight Loss Vloggers Affect Compliance?," draws on parasocial interaction theory and social comparison theory and follows an experimental research design. The research examines the role of video blogger (vlogger) characteristics, consumer readiness, and health consciousness among white Caucasians and Mexican Americans using structural equation modeling and mediation analysis techniques.

K.J. Riley and John Hall led the University of Evansville men’s basketball team with 19 and 18 points, respectively, but Illinois State shot 51.9% on their way to a 78-70 win over the Purple Aces on Saturday afternoon inside the Ford Center.

Riley was 13-of-18 from the free throw line with six assists.  Hall was an efficient 8-for-12 from the field while knocking down two of his four tries from outside.  He posted his third double-double of the season as he added 11 boards. The Aces (9-10, 3-3 MVC) saw Noah Frederking and Marty Hill finish with nine points apiece.

“We let lot of plays get away from us.  We need to be locked in better and understand what we need to do,” UE head coach Walter McCarty said.  “We need to be better, we let them shoot without resistance and that made a big difference.”

Six lead changes took place in the first half as the Aces and Redbirds (11-8, 4-2 MVC) battled in the early-going.  After the Redbirds scored a three on their opening possession, the Aces took their first lead at 5-3 as John Hall hit a bucket before Marty Hill connected on UE’s first long ball of the game. 

Triples by Noah Frederking and Hall saw Evansville go up by a 15-13 tally, but ISU kept fighting back.  They took a 24-23 lead with just under eight minutes remaining in the half and went on a 9-0 run to push the lead to 10 points.  The Aces were scoreless for close to six minutes, going 0-for-8 with a turnover. K.J. Riley ended the stretch with a bucket before Shea Feehan added a three.  Hall’s fifth basket of the game helped UE get within five - 35-30 - going into halftime.

Illinois State scored five of the first six points of the second half to open up their largest advantage at 40-31 before a pair of Riley free throws cut back into the gap.  The Redbirds lead reached double figures for the first time with a 44-33 score before a Noah Frederking triple got the Aces within eight tallies. Near the midway point of the half, consecutive ISU triples put their lead at a game-high 13 points - 56-43.

A Marty Hill triple, combined with consecutive layups by Hall, got Evansville back within seven tallies (59-52) with 8:24 left in the game.  UE would later cut the gap to six points, but the Redbirds countered each time. The Aces never relented as a Jawaun Newton trey made it a 69-62 game with just under four minutes remaining.  Hall got the Aces even closer a minute later, drilling his second from outside to cut the deficit to four.

With a minute remaining, the ISU lead stood at 74-67, but on the next UE trip down the floor, Shea Feehan was fouled on a 3-point attempt and hit all three tries.  ISU hit its free throws on the other end and were able to finish with the 78-70 win.

The shooting for ISU was the difference as they finished at 51.9% along with 52.6% from outside (10-of-19).  Evansville finished at 38.2% for the game while hitting 11 3-pointers.

UE will spend the next several days in the state of Iowa - starting with a Wednesday evening game at Drake before playing at UNI on Saturday.  Both contests start at 7 p.m.
 

The UE women's basketball team faces Drake on Sunday, January 27 at 1:00 p.m. as part of Mental Health Awareness Day! Come grab a stress ball and pen courtesy of Counseling Services and stick around post game for a FREE yoga session on the floor led by Stacey Shanks! Please call 812-488-2237 for more information.