Call for 2011 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship Applications

Dear Colleagues and Students:

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium invites qualified students to submit applications to the Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.  Approximately 35-45 students are selected nationally for this prestigious Fellowship to spend a year in Washington, D.C., working in Congress or the Executive Branch on critical marine policy and resource management issues.  The Knauss Fellowship provides a stipend and living expense allowance totaling $44,000 annually.  The fellowship begins February 1, 2011. Applications are due at the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, attention Rick DeVoe, no later than Friday, February 19, 2009.

All the details about the fellowship and how to apply may be found at: http://www.seagrant.noaa.gov/knauss/.

If you have any questions or want to make an appointment to discuss the fellowship, please call Rick DeVoe at 843-953-2078 or email: rick.devoe@scseagrant.org.

Thank you very much.

And, as always, be sure to check out the Paying for Grad School section of our website. We frequently add and update listings for grants, scholarships, fellowships, and jobs applicable to every program that we offer.

This is your personal invitation to submit a poster proposal for the

Fourth Annual Graduate Student Research Poster Session
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Graduate Student Presentations 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Stern Student Ballroom

As a graduate student who has worked on or is currently working on a research or creative project, you are encouraged to submit and present a poster at the Fourth Annual Graduate Research Poster Session.  We are inviting you to participate because you were accepted and have received a Graduate Student Research or Presentation Grant to support your research within the past year.

Poster session process and details can be found on our website under the link to research at http://gradschool.cofc.edu/currentstudents/research/research.php We have examples of past posters for reference in case you are unfamiliar with poster formats.  Please get in touch with our office for assistance if you need it when your poster proposal is accepted.   We will be sending out more detailed information later to all students whose proposals have been accepted.

We would like your program to be represented and will display as many posters as possible.  In the past all students who submitted poster proposals were able to present their posters and research or creative project, so it is a good idea to begin working on the poster early.

A brief timeline:

By November 17 – Deadline extended to November 20 — poster proposals are due to the Program Director from the student  (see website for proposal format)

By November 24 – reviewed and selected poster proposals are due to Dean McCandless, from the Program Director

By December 1 — ad hoc committee will select the 50 posters proposals to include in the poster session

By December 8 — students and program directors, supervising faculty, will have been notified of the selections (poster printing details will go out to those selected)

By December 20 — posters are due from students graduating in December, electronic versions to be sent to the Graduate School and posters to be printed and ready to hang

By January 15 — last chance for those students enrolled in spring classes to have posters printed and ready to hang

January 28 — Poster session — students set-up posters from 8 am to 2:30 pm and presentations are from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm, the selection of winning will also take place. Prizes will be announced and awarded the following week.

The members of the Board of Trustees will be on campus on the day of the poster session and will each receive personal invitations to attend that day. All faculty, staff and students will be invited to attend the event. Refreshments will be served.

Please contact Regina Semko with any questions: semkor@cofc.edu

The next meeting will be December 8th and will be feature Richard Hendry, Vice President of Programs for the Coastal Community Foundation.

Students & Colleagues,

We have received additional H1N1 live nasal vaccine and plan to administer it:

Stern Center Lobby

Tuesday, November 17^th

10 am – 12 pm     2 pm – 4 pm

We expect to have an adequate supply.  Please keep in mind this live vaccine is for those individuals who are no older than 49 years and who do not have chronic medical conditions.  If you are in doubt about which vaccine you should get, please email me.

Additionally, we have temporarily depleted our limited supply of the H1N1 injectable vaccine which we had been giving to those at high risk for complications of this virus.  If you have not done so, please email to the following address, your name, contact phone # and your high risk condition H1N1highrisk@cofc.edu You will be contacted by a Student Health Service staff member as vaccine becomes available.  Please be patient the list is long.

Seasonal flu vaccine is still available please call Student Health Services for an appointment.

Again thanks go out to all of our colleagues and students who have helped in this important campaign.

Jane Reno-Munro, ANP

Director of Student Health Services

College of Charleston

Charleston, SC 29424

843-953-5520 Phone

843-953-6377 Fax

As always, we will keep you posted if any additional announcements regarding H1N1 Influenza are issued from Student Health Services.

Students & Colleagues,

Thank you for your patience as we slowly receive supplies of the H1N1 vaccine.  Just to give you an update, initially we received 100 doses of injectable H1N1 vaccine.  These doses were given to the highest risk students, faculty and staff on our campus.  We then received 300 doses of the Live Nasal Spray H1N1 vaccine which were given to students and other healthy individuals.  We have recently received another shipment of the live nasal H1N1 and will conduct another clinic, details follow:

Stern Center Lobby
Thursday, November 12^th
9 am – 12 pm     2 pm – 4 pm

We expect to have an adequate supply.  Please keep in mind this live vaccine is for those individuals who are no older than 49 years and who do not have chronic medical conditions.  If you are in doubt about which vaccine you should get, please email me.

Additionally, we also received a limited supply of the H1N1 injectable vaccine which we are arranging to give to those at high risk for complications of this virus.  If you have not done so, please email to the following address, your name, contact phone # and your high risk condition H1N1highrisk@cofc.edu You will be contacted by a Student Health Service staff member as vaccine becomes available.

Special thanks to all our flu volunteers and the extraordinary staff at the Stern Center.  Thanks again for your patience as we make our way through this challenging semester.

Jane Reno-Munro, ANP
Director of Student Health Services
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424

843-953-5520 Phone

843-953-6377 Fax

David Wojslawowicz is certainly no exception. A 2008 graduate of our M.A. in  History program, and now a student in our Master of Public Administration program, Senior Police Officer Wojslawowicz embodies the qualities that so many of our graduate students share: a dedication to the greater good, a strong intellect, and a desire to make a positive impact on the world. As an officer with the City of Charleston’s DUI task force, he makes a definitive impact by keeping drunken drivers off our streets and literally saving the lives of the city’s residents and visitors.

His outstanding work caught the attention of The Charleston Post and Courier’s David MacDougall, who wrote this article about him in today’s paper:

DUI’s Worst Enemy

Officer among state’s most prolific in enforcing drunken driving laws

By David MacDougall

The Post and Courier

Monday, November 9, 2009

Charleston Sr. Police Officer Matthew Wojslawowicz administers a field sobriety test to a driver. He was testing for horizontal gaze nystagmus, an involuntary jerking of the eyes as a result of intoxication.

It’s a Friday night, and Charleston Senior Police Officer Matthew Wojslawowicz is staring intently into the eyes of a young man he’d just pulled over.

Wojslawowicz, a member of the city’s DUI Task Force, is among the most prolific officers in South Carolina in enforcing the state’s drunken driving laws.

He was staring into the young man’s eyes to see how smoothly they were able to follow a moving object, a ballpoint pen he was slowly and ever so deliberately moving far to the mans’s left, and then far to his right.

It’s the first part of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test. He was looking for horizontal gaze nystagmus, an involuntary jerking of the eyes as a result of intoxication. The other parts include the “nine-step walk and turn test” and the “one-legged stand.”

Pronouncing his last name correctly (voy-sla-VOH-vitch) is not part of the test. If it were, most of his fellow police officers would fail. They simply call him “Wojo.”

Wojslawowicz, 28, is a certified instructor in the Standardized Field Sobriety Test and frequently holds classes for other officers.

A native of Bayonne, N.J., Wojslawowicz decided in high school that he wanted to be either a police officer or a teacher. He enrolled at University of Richmond with plans to teach history in high school or college.

“One day I woke up and decided my skills would be better used in law enforcement,” he said. After graduating with a master’s degree in history, he applied to the Charleston Police Department. He wanted to move even farther away from the cold weather he grew up in, and he was fascinated by the region’s history, he said.

Wojslawowicz was hired by former Police Chief Reuben Greenberg in 2003 and worked as a regular patrol officer for the first three years.

In 2006, he moved to the Traffic Division and started handling more DUI cases. In June 2008, he wrote up a proposal for a DUI Task Force and presented it to police Chief Greg Mullen. This year, the S.C. Department of Public Safety honored Wojslawowicz as Officer of the Year for his DUI enforcement efforts in 2008.

He said he likes working DUI cases, despite the verbal abuse he often gets from drunks. “Some people get into this because they have a relative killed by a drunk driver or something,” he said. “Fortunately, that hasn’t happened to me. That’s not why I do it. I think I am really doing something that saves people’s lives.”

Not only the lives of drunk drivers, he said, “but the lives of countless others who could be killed by them.”

Mullen has beefed up traffic enforcement considerably and emphasized getting drunk drivers off the road. There were two officers on the task force when it started. Now there are six. The department just received a $169,697 highway safety grant that will be used to strengthen the task force, said police Lt. Chip Searson, supervisor of the traffic unit.

“Over the past several years, the Charleston Police Department, with the inception of the DUI unit, has made a renewed commitment to remove individuals who chose to drive impaired from our streets and highways,” Searson said. “Matt Wojslawowicz is a dedicated professional who has made a significant impact towards that unit’s success.”

Arrest records show that the effort has been successful. In 2006, there were 143 DUI arrests. In 2007, there were 489 and in 2008, there were 662. The department had more than 600 DUI arrests in 2009 as of last Friday.

Officers on the task force would not have such high DUI arrest numbers were it not for the participation of all of the city’s police officers. Task force members can, and will, spot drunken drivers on their own, but many of their cases begin with a call for help from a regular patrol officer.

Though task force members specialize in DUI cases, they also write regular traffic tickets.

On this past Friday night, Wojslawowicz parked his cruiser in a position where he could aim his radar at traffic crossing the Ashley River Memorial Bridge from the peninsula into West Ashley. The posted limit on the bridge is 35 mph. Few people were driving that slow. Wojslawowicz could get them all for speeding if he wanted to.

“I don’t write anybody a citation for anything that I would do myself,” he said. “We all go over the speed limit.”

Like most police officers, Wojslawowicz allows a certain amount of leeway between the posted speed limit and the speed that will get him coming at you with blue lights flashing.

A pickup truck came off the bridge at 54 mph. Wojslawowicz flipped on the blue lights, wheeled the cruiser around and pulled the driver over. Wojslawowicz sees every stop for speeding as an opportunity to look for a DUI. This driver was not visibly intoxicated. He was issued a citation for speeding.

Wojslawowicz doesn’t let people off with warning tickets. “How can I let one person go with a warning and give a ticket to another person? I go to sleep at night knowing I was fair to everybody,” he said.

His cruiser, a police-package 2008 Dodge Charger with a 5.7-liter, 368 horse power V-8 engine, serves as his office, complete with a laptop computer, a printer, a radar system, and an in-car video system. Personal accessories include a GPS navigator and a satellite radio receiver.

He described himself as a huge sports fan and said he listens to games on the satellite radio. That Friday night, he was listening to NCAA basketball games.

Though he is single with no children, Wojslawowicz said he doesn’t have a lot of time for fun because he’s working toward a master’s in public administration at the College of Charleston. The coursework keeps him busy, but he has season tickets to Cougars basketball games. He and his father attend them whenever they can. His parents moved to Charleston last year.

Though he loves the satellite radio, the most valuable gadget in his car is the video camera. It records video and sound for every traffic stop, every DUI arrest. In DUI cases, the video alone is often enough to elicit a guilty plea, he said. And the camera protects him from citizen complaints.

“If you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing on this job, the camera will be your best friend,” he said.

He has set a personal goal of writing at least 10 traffic tickets and taking at least one drunk driver off the street every night he works. “It’s a goal,” he said. “Not a quota.”

There are no quotas in the department, he said. Still, there was a misunderstanding recently when Searson sent out a motivational memo with suggested goals for traffic officers, Wojslawowicz said.

Meeting his self-imposed goal is rarely a problem, he said.

On that same Friday night, he was able to write four speeding tickets while watching the traffic coming off the bridge. Then he started cruising the streets of the city, looking for intoxicated drivers.

The crunch and squeal of a pickup truck’s tire hopping a curb as it turned onto Calhoun Street caught his attention. He followed the driver closely for a block and saw the truck swerving from side to side. He flipped on the blue lights and pulled the truck over.

Wojslawowicz approached the driver, a 21-year-old college student, and smelled alcohol on his breath. The driver said he’d been to a party where he’d had a few drinks.

Wojslawowicz asked the driver to step out of the truck and he began the field sobriety test. The driver failed the test, and he was arrested and handcuffed for a trip to police headquarters on Lockwood Drive.

There, in a jail cell where the city’s two Datamaster breath analysis machines are installed, Wojslawowicz gently instructed his prisoner on the procedure. The driver refused to take the breath test, choosing instead to lose his driving privileges for six months.

All told, it took about 90 minutes from the time Wojslawowicz pulled over the driver to the time a police transport officer took charge of the prisoner for the trip to the county jail. Had the man’s friends not been on the scene and able to drive away his truck, there would have been additional time spent waiting for a tow truck, Wojslawowicz said.

And he would spend an additional half-hour or so back in his cruiser, writing up his arrest report, before being able to go back on the street to hunt for another DUI offender.

Wojslawowicz doesn’t mind the time it takes. “When you take someone off the street for DUI,” he said. “You’re making a sizable impact.”

So, we send our congratulations and much-deserved appreciation to David Wojslawowicz for his outstanding service, and we wish him the best in his continued studies at The Graduate School of the College of Charleston.

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Howdy,

The Graduate Student Association has formed a team to participate in this year’s Dance Marathon and we want you to be a member.

Dance Marathon is the largest philanthropic event on our campus. This is the third year at CofC raising money for Children’s Miracle Network and MUSC Children’s Hospital right down Calhoun Street. Each participant pledges to raise at least $150 leading up to the 15 hour event February 26th-27th. This event is essentially an all-night party for all of the participants to thank them for their hard work and dedication. There are various bands throughout the night, energy drink flip cup, root beer pong, great giveaways, and excellent food. Also, every hour participants will learn segments of a 6 minute dance that is performed for the patient families in the morning. It is an amazing event that helps others in our community as well as bringing students from our campus together.

This year the Dance Marathon committee is trying to get 650 participants and GSA wants to help them accomplish this goal. If you are interested in participating in Dance Marathon as a member of our team you can register for the event at:  www.dancemarathon.clubs.cofc.edu

When you are filing out your registration form, add yourself as a member of the GSA team. Also, please send me an email at keclancy@edisto.cofc.edu, with your name and your t-shirt size is so that I make sure we have all of our participants. Please join us for a night of fun and help the Children’s Miracle Network and MUSC Children’s Hospital.

Thanks,
Kathleen Clancy
keclancy@edisto.cofc.edu
GSA Social and Outreach Committee Chair

I returned to my hotel that evening, ready to write a Monday Motivation post providing links to blogs that talk about life after college. My hope was to provide enough links to show those facing graduation that they’re not alone. There are so many people, from those ready to graduate to those ready to retire, who have no idea what they want to do with their life. And then, like the woman I talked with in Florida, there are some who have an idea but they have yet to clearly identify the path that will lead them to their career aspiration.

I was Googling phrases like, “life after college” and, “after I graduate” when I found this gem of an article from the NPR archives. Then I found another referencing the same book. And then finally in his own words, the author of What Should I Do With My Life has a six-page feature in Fast Company. This morning, I read that Po Bronson has released a sequel, What Should I Do With My Life, Now?

“Your calling isn’t something you inherently ‘know,’ some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before getting it right.” -Po Bronson

Graduate school is full of people looking to fulfill their calling, whether they’re changing careers or enhancing the knowledge they already have in a certain field. But, it will not help you find your calling unless you can decide whether,  “your choice is something that will stimulate you for a year or something that you can be passionate about for 10 years?”

Bronson’s first book is a journal about the experiences of 900 people realizing their dreams and making them happen. I haven’t read the book yet, but the two articles mentioned above are enough to make me consider purchasing a copy. Hopefully, they will spark hope and inspiration with those getting ready to graduate and those who are still trying to figure out what it is they want to be when they grow up.

(Photo Credit: brunkfordbraun)

Related posts:
What questions do you ask at a grad school fair?
How to waste time productively
Monday motivation: choosing a grad school

The College of Charleston Library is part of a consortium of 40+ academic libraries across the state that make borrowing quick and easy.  The consortium is called PASCAL (PARTNERSHIP AMONG SC ACADEMIC LIBRARIES) and the service is called PASCAL Delivers.  (We librarians are clever folks)

If  you don’t find the book in the College catalog, you might see the bright blue PASCAL Delivers logo:

Click on the logo and you’ll  see the other libraries in South Carolina that own the book.   And if you click “Request this item,” you can quickly request the book and get it delivered to the Interlibrary Loan Office within three days.

It’s that simple – as many of your colleagues have already discovered.

Of course,  you may need books that are not owned by any South Carolina academic library.  In those cases,  fill out the standard Interlibrary Loan Request form  and our staff will borrow the book from libraries beyond SC borders.  But you’ll discover, PASCAL Delivers will make Interlibrary Loan even faster and easier than ever before.

Questions – call the friendly staff at Interlibrary Loan at 843-953-8010.

Hypergraphia: an overwhelming urge to write.

One would assume hypergraphia might come in handy if you’re writing a thesis for your graduate or doctoral degree. But let’s face it, everyone suffers from writer’s block and struggles when writing their thesis. Since College of Charleston graduate students have eight weeks left to submit their thesis, this Monday’s Motivation is focused on tips that hopefully renew some writing energy. And if you’re planning on submitting your thesis this semester or next, you may want to consider attending our thesis submission seminar on November 11.

Get a regular writing routine
In this post, Peg Boyle Single debunks two writing myths. This is her first installment in a four-part series that focuses on finding your voice and creating a regular writing routine.

Find a good idea
If you’re going to spend nearly two years thinking about, researching and writing your thesis, you might want to find a topic that genuinely interests you. If you’re lost on ideas, this post will help ignite your creativity.

Make sure you’re focused. Have enough in the bank.
Having enough cash in reserve while you finish your thesis is helpful in a multitude of ways. First, you’re not concerned about finding additional ways to make sure you can pay all the bills. Second, you may need to travel to conduct more research to complete your thesis. This post lists even more reasons why you should have extra cash on hand.

If you have the option of choosing a thesis over an internship, choose wisely.
Nova doesn’t have any tips to offer in this post, but it does give you insight to one woman’s life and her thoughts on completing a thesis.

Know your timeline
Our thesis manual provides a recommended timeline for thesis development on page four.

Related posts:
Monday Motivation: Finding balance as a grad student
Monday Motivation: Paying for grad school
The rantings of a thesis writer