University Highlights

Andrea McCauley and Kristen Owen were among incoming students who volunteered with faculty, staff and alumni for an orientation day of service.

Strategic Plan Calls for Growth
The Susquehanna board of directors has approved a new strategic plan charting a course for ambitious growth in quality, size, diversity and institutional strength over the next six years. "Planning Priorities for Susquehanna University 1998-2004" is the result of a year-long effort of a 15-member Strategic Planning Priorities Drafting Group, led by University President Joel Cunningham, with broad-based participation from faculty, staff, alumni and students.

The plan reaffirms the University's mission and essential character while recommending continued development. Specific goals are to enrich the learning environment, to enlarge the University's value to society and to enhance financial and institutional strength. An integral part of the plan is to increase in size from the current 1,600 students to 1,800 students by 2004. It proposes investments in programs, facilities, faculty and staff to sustain and enhance the educational and social experience of a larger student body.

Giving Reaches an All-Time High
Total giving to the University for the 1997-98 year exceeded $11.6 million, 40 percent higher than any previous year. Annual giving through the Susquehanna University Fund (SUF) produced record-breaking fund-raising success for the sixth straight year. More than 4,900 alumni, parents, friends, faculty and staff contributed a total of $1,343,470. As of June 30, 1998, the Susquehanna 2000: The Next Challenge capital campaign had raised more than $32.5 million in gifts and pledges on a total goal of $35 million. The total includes more than $1.2 million of the $1.4 million required by July 2000 to secure a $350,000 National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant. Launched in April of 1997, the campaign supports goals which include increased endowment for financial aid, the library, technology and equipment, and faculty and curricular development. Building projects include additional student housing completed in 1996 and a new Center for Business and Communications under construction. The campaign will also underwrite classroom and laboratory improvements, enhanced sports and fitness facilities, and ongoing support for the SUF.

Quality and Value Recognized
Current editions of selective college guides have once again recognized Susquehanna's educational quality and value. While campus visits continue to be the best way to choose a college, students and parents often consult guides to help narrow their search. The guides provide information in such areas as academic reputation, student retention, faculty, student selectivity and alumni giving. Susquehanna is cited in The Yale Insider's Guide to the Colleges, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, The Princeton Review's Student Advantage Guide to the Best 311 Colleges, Barron's Best Buys in College Education and Compact Guide to Colleges, Peterson's Competitive Colleges and U.S. News and World Report's "America's Best Colleges."

Kevin Cielinski '99 and Kimberly Pesce '99 were among Susquehanna summer interns at Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia.

Career Placement Strong
A strong economy combined with excellent student qualifications and efforts of the Center for Career Services helped propel more than 96 percent of the class of 1997 into jobs or graduate school within six months of graduation. In a class of 1998 survey at commencement, 65 percent reported employment, 32 percent graduate school plans and three percent expressed plans to engage in full-time volunteer work.

Contacts by employers increased 77 percent with on-campus recruiting up 33 percent in 1997-98. Experiential education remained a top priority with 135 internships and 65 externships. A new feature of the JobTrak web-based search service allows alumni, parents and friends of the University to register for mentoring activities. The Center also expanded its innovative Power Dining etiquette workshop program and sponsored new initiatives including a science career fair and a career conference for minority students.

Students Around the Globe
One hundred and three Susquehanna students studied abroad during the 1997-98 academic year. The total includes 22 with the Sigmund Weis School of Business Fall Semester in London program and 15 students pursuing an education emphasis in Puerto Rico. Students also studied in 54 other locations ranging from Ghana to Bali. The current academic year brings the first three Susquehanna students directly enrolled at Oxford University. International perspective on campus expanded with the growth of the University's Focus initiatives pairing multidisciplinary Core curriculum courses with short-term travel/study abroad. In 1997-98, the second "Focus: Ecuador" added international business to environmental science and Spanish components. In fall 1998, "Focus: Caribbean" will combine world music, Caribbean literature and biology, and "Focus: Southern Africa" will explore social history, cross-cultural psychology and sociology. A "Focus: Australia" program with biology, psychology and literature courses is slated for the spring of 1999.

Business and Science
The Sigmund Weis School of Business and the School of Arts and Sciences are preparing to launch a three-year pilot project to integrate professional studies and liberal learning for business and science students. The project is being partially funded by a $300,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation administered by the Associated New American Colleges (ANAC). A new sequence of courses will integrate principles of business practice into biology and chemistry curricula, and basic knowledge of the sciences into the business and accounting majors. The goal is to prepare students for the flexible roles they may face in their future careers.

Renovations and an addition to North Hall provided another 59 beds for a growing student population.

Library Sees Record Use
Students and faculty are using the resources of the University's Blough-Weis Library in greater numbers than ever before. Measured use of print, microform, media and seven of 34 electronic databases in 1997-98 reached a record total of more than 146,000, a 34 percent increase over the previous year. Recorded use of electronic collections surpassed the print collection for the first time. The Library added books, periodicals, videos and CDs to the collection while continuing to expand access to major new electronic databases. Available through the Internet from any networked computer on campus 24-hours-a-day, the databases provide abstracts, and increasingly full-text articles from journals, newspapers and encyclopedias.

Technology Enhances Learning
Demand for software, hardware, telephone, e-mail and printer services from the Center for Computing Services in 1997-98 grew by 23 percent over the previous year. Although approximately half of Susquehanna's students now bring personal computers to campus, the use of machines in six computer labs continues to expand. The growth reflects an increased use of the Internet to enhance classroom instruction and communication among students and faculty. A new Susquehanna home page and electronic search engine help visitors locate information in the more than 12,000 pages currently available on the University's World-Wide Web site. In preparation for the turn of the century, the University has implemented a Year 2000 Readiness Review program to check computer hardware and software throughout the campus.

Welcoming Honored Visitors

Renowned author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman joined the 1997-98 Visiting Writer Series.

William H. Gray, III, president of The United Negro College Fund, addressed the class of 1998 at Susquehanna's 140th commencement. The University conferred honorary degrees on Gray; baccalaureate speaker, author and educator Carl Frederick Buechner; community leader and philanthropist Dr. Muriel M. Berman; British actor John Bennett; and minister, author and former Susquehanna board member Robert R. Clark '35.

Distinguished guests enriched the campus throughout the year. Jurek Martin, retired editor of the London Financial Times, spent a week on campus as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Other prominent speakers included Brian Stern, executive vice president of the Xerox Corporation, and Michael Collins '73, senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, who presented the Sigmund Weis Memorial Lecture. The well-received Visiting Writer series welcomed novelist and short story writer Melanie Rae Thon, poet Lee Upton and Art Spiegelman, world-renowned cartoonist and author of the Holocaust-inspired Maus, among others.

Non-Degree Programs Expand
In fall of 1998, the Continuing Education division reintroduced a certificate program in computer science, management, accounting and communication. The program will help meet the demand of non-degree students for rigorous, short-term education in highly specific career-related areas. The division's three-year-old computer training center saw corporate training grow by 27 percent in the 1997-98 academic year. The center also offers non-credit computer classes to non-profit groups and community members of all ages.

Service Tops 40,000 Hours
Nearly two-thirds of the Susquehanna student body volunteered more than 40,640 hours of service - the equivalent of 19-and-a-half years of full-time work - in the community in 1997-98. The total includes the work of 354 students who contributed a minimum of two-to-four hours per week while living together in the University's 12 volunteer Project Houses. A Greeks-in-Service effort involved 387 members of fraternities and sororities in projects to benefit programs such as the American Cancer Society, Adopt-A-Highway and Walk-Safe, a student escort program. Three hundred students also contributed at least ten hours each in service learning courses ranging from Environmental Hazards to Literature, Writing and Practice. For the fourth year in a row, incoming students joined with faculty and alumni to volunteer at 29 sites during freshman orientation.

A Rich Season of Lively Arts
Internationally acclaimed pianist Vladimir Feltsman thrilled the audience with works by Bach, Mozart and Schumann at a recital sponsored by the Stella Freeman Weis Cultural Endowment. The University Artist Series presented a record number of 11 programs ranging from Yesterday: A Tribute to the Beatles and piano virtuoso Philip Thomson to the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Opera Nazionale Italiana. Two performances by the University's new chamber orchestra helped boost the number of recitals and concerts by Department of Music faculty and students to 60 for the year. Student thespians staged West Side Story and classic Shakespeare in As You Like It. A video of the WVIA television production of the University's 1996 Christmas Candlelight Service was nominated for an Emmy Award in the Outstanding Entertainment Program category of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

The Lore Degenstein Gallery once again presented a thought-provoking series of exhibitions including "Public and Private Eyes," 30 original examples of photojournalism from the Library of Congress, and "Landscapes of Jewish Experience: Paintings by Samuel Bak," as well as shows of paintings by James Fitzgerald and Robert Birmelin.

Sports and recreation activities continue to play a key role in University life. Charles Barley '99 competed with the outdoor men's track and field squad.

Athletic Success
Varsity and club athletics continued to play a vital and successful role in the Susquehanna experience in 1997-98. Six teams - men's and women's basketball, field hockey, football, golf and softball - were nationally ranked in the past year. In basketball, both teams made the Middle Atlantic Conference playoffs -- the men for the seventh time in nine seasons and women for the ninth year straight. Women's soccer secured the first winning season in its four-year history. The men's track and field and golf teams repeated as MAC champions. Freshman Janee Shaner became the first women's track and field national champion in Susquehanna history in May with a win in the javelin at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships in St. Paul, Minn. The softball team had its best season ever, finishing as conference runner-up. On the water, the women's rowing varsity four won the title at the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Crew Championships in Occoquan, Va.