The World Discovers Our X Appeal The world seems to be discovering what we always knew—X is really cool. Since the turn of the millennium, a wide array of products are now attaching themselves to the X factor—Xterra sports utility vehicle, for instance, or the Xtreme III shaver from Schick, or the X Games sporting events.
There’s also “The X-Files” and “Murder in Small Town X” television shows, 7-11’s X-treme Gulp drink and Microsoft’s X-Box game system.
Why the sudden interest in X? It started with the X Games, which push typical sports to extreme limits, says Tom Hayes, a professor of marketing. They created a thought pattern that X means taking things to the brink, and that’s where people want to be.
One New York advertising executive even described X as now being “hip, edgy, independent.” Of course, we always knew X was that way.
An Accounting for Taste After visiting Paris, Kim Phillips returned with more than a Mona Lisa T-shirt and an Eiffel Tower keychain. She came back with the culinary inspiration to fulfill a dream.
“When I was in Paris, I saw great menus and I thought, ‘We have to have that in America,’ ” she says.
So the 1992 graduate and her husband, Gary, a 1988 graduate, modified them into American dishes and opened Daybreak, an eatery in Cincinn-ati’s Hyde Park neighborhood that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch.
Although both of the Phillips are certified public accountants with no restaurant experience, Kim’s no stranger to the kitchen. “I grew up cooking for my family,” she says, “and I thought that this was the time for me to get out and do something I’ve been dreaming of doing.”
French Connection Vive la France—and LaJeunesse. True Francophiles, the LaJeunesse family is living the French connection at Xavier. Since 1965, the University has sent 118 students to study in France as part of the Fredin scholarship program, including three generations of the LaJeunesse family.
It started in the 1960s with Joseph Bourgeois, father of adjunct French professor Madeleine LaJeunesse. Then, she and her husband, Richard, made the yearlong trip in 1973. Finally, their oldest daughter, Christine, completed a year of study abroad and is wrapping up her last semester on campus, with a double major in biology and, of course, French.
The scholarship competition is open every fall, with the winners spending a full year, half year or a single quarter at the Sorbonne, living in a residence hall or Parisian home.
Psyched for New Jobs For Nicole Falvo, the payoff was worth the work. After spending 11 years in undergraduate and graduate school, she’s doing a post-doctoral internship at Children’s Hospital Medical Center helping children suffering from chronic pain handle it better through bio-feedback relaxation therapy.
“We’re trying to get them back into school,” Falvo says. “For the most part, they have to live with it day in and day out and our job is to help them cope.”
Falvo is a member of the first class of clinical psychology doctoral graduates, all of whom are working in paid internships this year before sitting for Ohio’s licensing exam. Their jobs range from counseling college students to working with criminal defendants.
“They’ve all got good skills, good ethics and a real dedication to service, which is important because our program is very mission-driven,” says Janet Schultz, director of clinical training.
Other graduates include: Janet Castellini, who works at Central Clinic, part of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and is doing some independent research; Rosemarie Wetterau, who works at the UC Health and Counseling Center; Jennifer O’Donnell, who works with Hamilton County defendants; Kara Marciani, who does similar forensic work for Montgomery County; and Shealynne Baus, who works with children at an agency near Sandusky, Ohio.
Aplying Yourself The days of trying to line up the admission application in the typewriter and painting the page with correction fluid are going, going… well, not quite gone. But they are definitely on their way out. Last year, in the first full year the University posted its admission form on the web, the number of web applications more than doubled, accounting for 16 percent of the 3,500 total applications. And that number should increase to more than 20 percent this year, says Marc Camille, dean of admission.
Whether it will ever reach the point where paper applications are a thing of the past is questionable, Camille says, because there’s still some worry that the electronic versions will get lost in cyberspace.
Plus, there’s also trepidation among some guidance counselors because electronic applications restrict their ability to oversee the process.
Still, he says, it’s how students are now applying themselves.
Good Grief When Mary Ann Emswiler married James Emswiler in 1991, she got more than a husband. She inherited a widower and three grieving children. “On our honeymoon, he was bemoaning that there weren’t any services for grieving families,” she says. “I said, ‘So let’s do something about it.’ ”
They did. The couple started the New England Center for Loss and Transition, which provides training for professionals, and The Cove, a peer support program for kids and families. They also wrote Guiding Your Child Through Grief, one of the only books on dealing with grieving children through the long term.
“Lots of books deal with grief in the short-term,” says Mary Ann, who has one degree from Edgecliff and two from Xavier, “but as kids grow up and understand more, they continue grieving.”
The couple also started the National Symposium of Children’s Grief Groups and the National Conference on Loss and Transition. However, their dedication for the field remains at home. “Our kids are doing great now,” she says, “but it was a long struggle for them, and for us, to put the pieces back together.”
High-tech Move:In November, Carol Rankin became the University’s seventh vice president, heading the newly created division of information resources. The division was created to lead the University further into the high-tech world. From telephones to teleports, she’s overseeing all of the University’s communications and information services. We asked her about the new division.
Why was this new division created? “In planning for the University’s future, we not only wanted to symbolize the importance of technology, but also determine how to effectively use this technology as a skill to teach students, and use the tools we have available to us to allow them to make sense of the different technologies and communicate in different ways. Father Graham wanted someone whose job it was to think about those things. By doing this, he’s saying that the University is going to put increasing emphasis on technology, and that we recognize the importance of it in terms of the strategic plan.”
What services are you responsible for? “The libraries, instructional technology services, information system and services, web development and the office of strategic information resources.”
How will students, faculty and staff be affected? “I hope the most significant impact is bringing together a number of units that will allow us to plan more strategically, whereas before we were more separate entities. This is a new position we hope will be much more proactive to the University than reactive. I hope students leave here being very facile with the use of technology. For faculty, there will be better service training. And for staff, we are reviewing the administrative systems to see what changes need to be made.”
