As the weather gets cooler, and after all the Halloween candy is consumed, we turn our attention to the remaining weeks of the year. These are special times in which we surround ourselves with friends and family, thankful for their love and friendship. Whether you’re hosting or guesting Thanksgiving this year, you could probably use some inspiration for travel or cooking.

Travel

• Flying home on a student budget can take some creativity, but The Dakota Student offers some options for anyone looking to find a bargain.
• If you’re a new pet owner, you might be weighing the options to travel with your new companion. CitySpur covers all the basics to keep you and your pet happy travelers.
• The Indie Travel Podcast talks about how to pack and when to book, and the best way to get from the airport to the house or hotel.

Menu

• Are you frying a turkey this year? Local blogger, Heather, has some very useful tips on how to make it a success. I encourage you to read the rest of her posts counting down to Turkey Day.
• I’ve always wanted to experiment with a vegetarian Thanksgiving menu. Food & Style lays out a perfect menu, complete with a game plan.
• There’s always the option to leave the cooking to the pros. I personally wouldn’t want to do this every year, but it is much more relaxing not having to worry about kitchen timers and stacks of dishes.

Amber in Costume at Charles Towne Landing

Amber Clawson, a candidate for the Master of Arts in History and a Graduate Assistant here in the Grad School Office, is quite obviously a woman of many talents. In addition to her academic and professional career at The Graduate School of the College of Charleston, she has distinguished herself as a volunteer and researcher at the Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site.

For those who may not know, Charles Towne Landing is a park and interpretive center depicting the lives of the earliest settlement in Carolina Colony, established in 1670. Special exhibits include living history interpreters in costume, a native forest featuring flora and fauna indigenous to the area during the time of European settlement, and a fantastic replica of a seventeenth-century ship. You can see the park for yourself this Saturday as they celebrate Colonial Trades and Harvest Day. Demonstrations such as musket and cannon firing and natural wool dying will be on display, and Amber will be giving a featured presentation on the first women of Carolina. This is a history topic that is not very often explored in depth, and Amber will be presenting some fascinating original research. Here’s a summary of what she’ll be discussing:

Women, at first glance, appear absent from the historical record but further research demonstrates that women played a vital role in the establishment of the Carolina colony.  Despite hardship, servitude and enslavement, the women of Charles Towne forged a community in the Atlantic World.  This presentation examines the initial settlement at Albemarle Point from 1670 until 1700, specifically the European, African, and Native American women.  Grounded in court documents and personal correspondence, the work highlights themes of family, diversity, and power in the colonial community.  In the historical memory the colonial South is a place characterized by plantation hierarchy.  This presentation provides a glimpse at the multitude of experiences of the first women of Carolina, before the plantations, when the success of the colony was still uncertain.

This has been an in-depth project for Amber, and she wishes to express her thanks to Dr. Scott Poole, our Graduate History program director, for his support and guidance. She also wishes to thank Interpretive Park Rangers Michelle Crouse and John Hiatt, who introduced her to the world of state historic sites, shared their research, and were always willing to help.

Be sure to come and witness a day of engaging history and learn about lives of women who have so often been overlooked in history. Amber will be presenting her findings in the Visitors’ Center Classroom at 1 P.M. The park is open 9 A.M. -  5 P.M.; for admission prices and park details visit the Charles Towne Landing website.

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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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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

First of all, our office will be open with normal hours (8:30-5:00) on Monday and Tuesday. Feel free to stop by and pay us a visit if you have any questions at all about the Graduate School. We’ll be here ready to dispense advice about the application process, talk to you about our programs, and answer any academic policy or registration questions you may have. In case you didn’t know, we’re located in Suite 310 of Randolph Hall.

The Addlestone Library will be closed on Saturday and Sunday, but will be open from 7:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. on Monday, and 7:30 A.M.-2:00 A.M. on Tuesday. So if you need any books to work on class projects over the weekend, you should get them soon!

Also important to note for  hungry graduate students: Dining Services will operate with reduced hours over the break. The Stern Center Food Court, The Hungry Cougar, Einstein Bros. Bagels, and Java City will all be closed from Saturday-Monday. Market 159 and The Liberty St. Fresh Food Company will remain open, but with less hours than normal. To view the complete details, check the Dining Services site.

Most professors will be just as ready to jet out of here as the students, so you probably shouldn’t expect to be able to meet with them during Fall Break either. If you have a specific question about the availability of a particular professor or program director, you should e-mail them directly to inquire about their availability over Fall Break.

Students enrolled in joint programs with The Citadel should remember that any classes you are taking at The Citadel operate on a different schedule, so you will need to attend those classes on Monday and Tuesday unless your professor has explicitly canceled them. Academic departments and resources at The Citadel, including the Daniel Library, will be open as normal during College of Charleston’s Fall Break.

As always, feel free to e-mail us if you have any questions about The Graduate School or life on campus in general. From all of us at the Graduate School Office, we wish you a safe and restful Fall Break!

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Members and guests of the Clarendon Historical Society were treated to an interesting and entertaining program last week, entitled “Brazen Belles – Three South Carolina Women of Dis­tinction” by Dr. Amy Thompson McCandless, professor of history and dean of the Graduate School at the College of Charleston.

McCandless’ lecture set out to dispel the long-held myth and stereotype of the Southern woman.

“The southern plantation was idealized as a place where slaveholders and the enslaved mingled as one, big happy fam­ily,” she said. “Women were af­forded but one right – the right to protection from her husband or family, and the obligation to obey. In essence, she was also a slave.”

The “ideal” Southern woman was submissive, pious and vir­tuous and her only responsibili­ties were to have children and keep the home, McCandless ex­plained.

“She was not a legal person,” she said. “She could not own property, testify in court, make a will or control any money she might earn or inherit. Children belonged to the father, and in case of separation (there was no divorce), the mother had no right to them.”

However, as McCandless noted, there were some great exceptions to that rule, and she discussed one from each of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722- 1793) was a somewhat self-edu­cated botanist and one of the leading producers of indigo in her time. At the tender age of 17, she was left in charge of three plantations, her mother and a younger sister. McCand­less reports that her own father attempted to sabotage her efforts to thwart her business success.

Nevertheless, though histori­ans have not given Pinckney her due according to McCandless, Pinckney was the first woman inducted into the S.C. Business Hall of Fame in 1989.

From the 19th century, Mc­Candless gave her audience Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823- 1886).

“We are so lucky to have Chesnut’s Civil War Diary, which is considered one of the finest literary works of the Con­federacy,” McCandless said.

Chesnut was an early critic of slavery and likened her position as a woman to that of a slave.

“I think these times make all women feel their humiliation in the affairs of the world,” Chesnut wrote. “With men, it is on to the field – glory, honor, praise, etc., … power. Women can only stay at home. Oh, that I was a man.”

Boykin had no children and described herself in her diaries as a “useless wretch.”

And from the 20th century, McCandless introduced the Historical Society to Anita Pol­litzer (1894-1975), one of three Charleston sisters who were all very politically involved and leaders in the suffrage move­ment in Charleston.

“There were few suffragettes in Charleston in the 1920s, but the Pollitzer sisters were formi­dable ones,” said McCandless.

Pollitzer was an advocate for gender equity, fair labor prac­tices and the right for women to keep their American citizen­ship when they married foreign nationals.

Prior to the passage of The Cable Act of 1922, a woman lost her U.S citizenship if she mar­ried a foreign man, since she assumed the citizenship of her husband – a law that did not ap­ply to men who married foreign women. Though Pollitzer traveled widely in her political work, she always claimed South Carolina as her home.

“In my many travels and in life away from the state … I of­ten think with deepest gratitude of the fact that I am a Charles­tonian. So many influences here – so much beauty of the city – gave me a tremendous sense of important and permanent values which have stayed with me al­ways,” Pollitzer wrote in 1954.

Dr. Amy McCandless re­ceived her undergraduate degree from Sweet Briar College in Vir­ginia, an MBA degree from the University of South Carolina and her master’s and doctorate in British history from the Uni­versity of Wisconsin. She is the author of “Women’s Higher Education in the 20th Century South, Past and Present.” She has been a Charleston resident for more than 30 years.

The Clarendon Historical So­ciety meets three times a year, in January, March and September. For more information about the Historical Society, contact the Clarendon County Archives at 435-0328.

A panel of campus authors will discuss the process of writing textbooks for fun and (perhaps) profit as part of the continuing series, “So, You Want to Write a Book,” from 2:30-3:30 p.m., Wednesday, October 14 at 227 Addlestone Library.

The panelists will include Doug Ferguson (Communications Department); Lynne Ford (Political Science Department), Chris Boucher (History Department) and Mick Norton (Mathematics Department).

The panel discussion is aimed at demystifying the process of writing textbooks. It should interest anyone who has an interest in writing a textbook but doesn’t know how to get started and then what to do next.

Each of the panelists will speak 5-7 minutes. A question-answer period will follow.

The panel discussion is part of a series on “The Community of the Book,” where professors, staff and others discuss book writing. The November panel will discuss writing book proposals.

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences sponsors the panel.

For information, call or e-mail Chris Lamb, 843-953-6591 or lambc@cofc.edu.

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For some of us, the decision is already made because certain graduate programs only allow one specific test. For the rest of us, we have some options. It makes sense to evaluate the different tests in order to determine which test(s) might be appropriate.

Education and The Humanities

If you are applying to a program in education or the humanities, you often get the option of choosing between two tests: The Miller Analogies Test (MAT), or The Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Both tests are drastically different, and as this article points out, you should consider each on the basis of what you consider to be your academic strengths and weaknesses.

Some education degree programs may require PRAXIS exam scores for entry as well, especially ones designed for already-certified teachers.  Ultimately, many state departments of education also require PRAXIS tests to obtain certification at the end of degree programs that are designed for beginning teachers.  To learn more about the PRAXIS tests, visit this website.

Business/Accountancy

Business and Accountancy programs most often require the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). The GMAT is designed to test skills required by students entering into business or accountancy degree programs. To find out more about the GMAT, read this helpful article.

The Sciences, Public Administration, Historic Preservation, and Everyone Else

Here at The Graduate School of the College of Charleston, the standard requirement for most other programs continues to be the GRE. If you have questions about the test requirements and deadlines for specific programs, check the Application Requirements Grid.

Law School and Medical School

Everyone who is considering a law school program will have to become familiar with the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), and everyone who plans on entering medical school should prepare adequately for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). For specific requirements on these tests, contact the admissions office of the law or medical school that you’re interested in.

To everyone taking an entrance exam this Fall, we wish you the best of luck. As always, if you have any questions please feel free to drop us an email or visit us on the web.

Test Registration and Information Sites:

GRE
MAT
GMAT
PRAXIS

Related Links
Monday Motivation: Choosing a Grad School
Monday Motivation: Preparing for grad school
Monday Motivation: Finding balance as a grad student

As I mentioned before, we plan to visit cities and universities up and down the East coast through mid-November. Below is our schedule blocked according to week:

Tuesday, September 15: Charleston Young Professional’s Luncheon (College of Charleston)

Thursday, September 24: Walterboro, SC’s Business & Community EXPO
Monday, September 28: Virginia Tech
Tuesday, September 29: James Madison University
Wednesday, September 30: University of Virginia
Thursday, October 1 – 2: Appalachian State University

Tuesday, October 6: Wofford
Wednesday, October 7: Furman University

Thursday, October 15: South Carolina State University
Thursday, October 15: Verizon Wireless Education Fair (Charleston, SC)

Tuesday, October 20: Florida State University
Wednesday, October 21: University of Florida

Tuesday, October 27: BOSCH (Charleston, SC)
Wednesday, October 28: Charleston Southern University
Wednesday, October 28: The Citadel
Thursday, October 29: College of Charleston

Thursday, November 12: Elon University

If you’re in the area and want to talk grad school, let me know and we’ll work out a time to meet. Adam will be holding down the office and @GradSchool while I’m on the road, so you can find me at @ndeweese. You can also email me and follow my adventures as a part-time grad student holding down a full-time job.

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