October/News Releases...
* Conteh: Minnesota Professor of the Year...
* $153,625 fed grant to ensure technolgy skills of future teachers
* God's Child Atkinson speaks here....
* Monk reads...

Third such honor for MSU this decade….
CARNEGIE FOUNDATION PICKS MSU’S CONTEH
AS MINNESOTA’S PROFESSOR OF THE YEAR
Moorhead, MN…The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has named Moorhead State University’s Andrew Conteh as its 1999 Minnesota Professor of the Year.

Conteh, a 53-year-old MSU political science professor, is one of 48 winners selected from 420 faculty members nominated by colleges and universities across the country.

The announcement of winners is being made today (Friday, Oct. 22)  in Washington, D.C. A campus reception honoring Conteh is scheduled at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9 in the university’s library porch.

He is the third MSU professor this decade to win the Carnegie Foundation teaching award. Evelyn Lynch, an MSU elementary and early childhood education professor now dean of education at Arkansas State, won in 1992; and David Mason, an MSU English professor now teaching at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, won in 1994.

The Carnegie awards are recognized as among of the most prestigious distinctions honoring professors.

Originally from Sierra Leone, a country of 3.5 million people on the west coast of Africa, Conteh holds a doctorate in jurisprudence from Kiev State University and a master’s of law in international law and relations. He served as Sierra Leone’s ambassador  to the Soviet Union from 1976-81, and for four years after that was a lecturer and visiting professor at Kiev State University, Columbia University, The Polytechnic South Bank in London and the University of Kansas. He also taught at the U.S. Army Staff Command College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., before coming to Moorhead State in 1985.

Conteh has won the MSU Student Senate’s "Professor of the Year" award three times in a vote by the student body. He has also received a $2,500 achievement award for teaching excellence from the Burlington Northern Foundation.

Students who come into his  classroom "are immediately part of my tribe," says Conteh, who’s quick to drop aphorisms from his African heritage. "I have an obligation as a tribal leader to protect and help them. But in turn, I expect them to do their work and tell me the truth."

And when one of his students graduates, "it’s like winning the lottery," he said. "I’m the happiest guy on earth."

Conteh  advises MSU’s Model United Nations, chairs the Tri-College University’s World Seminar Series, originated MSU’s annual student research conference and chaired MSU’s global studies committee for five years. And during a sabbatical leave, he taught international law at Portsmouth University in England and the Ukrainian Institute for International Relations.

His advice to other teachers: "You have to believe that what you’re doing is important. Only then will your enthusiasm overflow into the hearts of your students."

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education established the Professors of the Year program in 1981 and selects annual award winners in cooperation with the Carnegie Foundation and other higher education associations.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a policy center located in California, is devoted to strengthening America’s schools and colleges.

MSU GETS $153,625 FED GRANT
TO ENSURE TECHNOLOGY
SKILLS OF FUTURE TEACHERS
Moorhead, MN…..Moorhead State University has received a $153,625 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to ensure that its teacher graduates are proficient in the latest computer assisted classroom technology.

MSU was among 220 universities selected to share more than $75 million appropriated by Congress to bolster teacher classroom technology skills. More than 530 institutions applied for a share of that money.

The funding comes on the heals of a $353,000 grant MSU received last year as part of a $2 million package the Minnesota Legislature set aside for the state’s six public universities that produce licensed teachers. It too was aimed at teacher technology skills.

MSU used last year’s grant to build an electronic classroom in Lommen Hall equipped with 35 G-3 Power Macintosh computers along with state-of-the-art multi-media equipment. The university also hired a curriculum specialist to help professors incorporate technology in their teacher education classes. A technical specialist was also hired to maintain the facility and teach students and faculty how to use the latest software.

"The $153,625 federal grant will help us continue staffing and improving that electronic classroom," says Paul Beare, MSU’s director of teacher education who’s coordinating the project. "Next year we hope to apply for a three-year $1.2 million federal grant to further update our technology efforts."

The federal grant program, called Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology, is aimed at improving the skills of more than 2 million teachers who must be recruited to replace retiring teachers in the next decade. According to the Department of Education, only 20 percent of the 2.5 million teachers currently  working in public schools feel comfortable using new computer technologies in their classrooms.

More than 330 students receive their teacher licensure through MSU each year.

Beare said the MSU education department will use some of the money to develop collaborate projects with local schools, including Perham Middle School where a team of MSU faculty and students will cooperate in a wolf tracking study. MSU will also develop a training partnership with Great Plains Software and show student teachers how to create electronic portfolios for job searches.

The grant proposal was written by Beare along with his technology team consisting of Tim Harms, Rhonda Ficek, Mary Worner and George Davis.

BENEDICTINE MONK READS FROM
HIS MEMOIR OCT. 28 AT MSU
Moorhead, MN….Brother Benet Tvedten, a Benedictine monk at the Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota for more than 40 years and the author of the recently published memoir,, "The View from the Monastery," will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28 in Moorhead State University’s King Hall Auditorium.

The reading is a feature of MSU’s Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series.

Brother Tvedten (pronounced TWEE-den), who grew up in Casselton, N.D., entered the Marvin, S.D., Blue Cloud Abbey in 1954 and has served as its prior, oblate, director, novice master and director of development.

His novella "All Manner of Monks" won the 1985 Minnesota Voices competition sponsored by the Minneapolis-based New Rivers Press. "The View from the Monastery,"  a book of 40 chapters averaging four pages each, took second place in the competition. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in several literary magazines.

GOD’S CHILD DIRECTOR
PATRICK ATKINSON
SPEAKS AT MSU FRIDAY
Moorhead, MN….Bismarck native Patrick Atkinson will present a slide and video program about his experiences  saving more than 8,000 Guatemalan children from the ravages of poverty and violence from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 8 in Moorhead State University’s Center for Business 105.

Atkinson, in town to accept an Outstanding Young Alumni award from MSU, is founder and executive director of The God’s Child Project, Central America’s largest private foster care program.

During his 16 years working in the slums and garbage dumps surrounding Guatemala City, Atkinson has been shot at, bombed and extorted. He’s survived two knifings, two car accidents and one motorcycle accident. He’s been sick four times with malaria, infected twice with hepatitis, three times with dengue fever and endured repeated tapeworm, amoeba and lice infections.

For this, he works 16 to 20 hours a day without salary, and house-sits for shelter.

The goal of his non-profit organization is to break the grimy chain of poverty by feeding, clothing and educating the poorest of the poor.

"We survive by donations and we’re always on the edge," said Atkinson, who graduated magna cum laude from MSU in 1981 with both a criminal justice and social work degree. "Half of the $350,000 or so we raise each year comes from North Dakotans."

Atkinson will be accompanied by Luis Enrique Sanchez, the son of a prostitute mother and a violent alcoholic father who spent much of his youth sleeping under a park bench, fighting off rats and insects. When he cam to Atkinson in 1983, he said he wanted to become a doctor. Today, thanks to The God’s Child Project, Sanchez is a doctor, who still does volunteer work for Atkinson’s poor children.

Atkinson’s talk is free and open to the public.