MSUM is expecting 1,275 new freshmen and 675 new transfer students on campus this fall, with total enrollment estimated the same as last year: 7,600 students.

The “Dragon Move-in Crew” will help move new students into the residence halls from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday. The crew consists of 50 Student Orientation Counselors and MSUM employees (including President Roland Barden and his vice presidents).

Orientation check-in at the welcome tent runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Students will meet their Student Orientation Counselors and other students during SOC Talk from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the courtyard outside Holmquist Hall.

On Thursday, the University Welcome Convocation by MSUM alum Kerstin Kealy from WDAY-TV runs from 9:15 to 10:15 a.m. in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts, Hansen Theatre. This is the first meeting for the incoming class of 2004 aimed at introducing new students to academic life.

Many other events will take place during the week, including dances, BBQ, a rock show, karaoke, breakout sessions, interactive games, and more.

Classes begin Monday, August 23.

TWO MSUM PROFS GET $197,000 NIH GRANT TO STUDY POSSIBLE CANCER-STRESS LINK
The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $197,000 research grant to two Minnesota State University Moorhead biology professors, Joe Provost and Mark Wallert, to study a possible link between cancer and stress.

Their research will involve more than 15 MSUM undergraduates over the next three years, working part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer.
While there’s no current evidence directly linking stress with cancer, Wallert said, the complex relationship between physical and psychological health is not well understood.

What scientists do know, he said, is that many types of stress activate the body's hormone system, which in turn can cause changes in the immune system, the body's defense against infection and disease, including cancer.

Provost and Wallert, working under a previous $156,000 grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at better understanding how normal cells become cancerous, recently identified one potential mechanism for a link between stress hormones and tumor progression involving the protein Phospholipase D.

With the new NIH grant, the two will continue investigating how the stress hormone adrenaline acts on lung cancer cells to increase the rate they invade normal tissue.

“We’re not going to find a cure for or a cause of cancer,” Provost said. “We just hope to add some pieces to the puzzle.”

However, the two hope their research will identify new potential targets for chemotherapy agents used to treat cancer.
Waller has spent most of his academic career studying transport and cell signaling at Emory University and MSUM. Provost did similar cancer research at Vanderbilt University before coming to MSUM.

Last spring, three students from the Provost and Wallert laboratory presented their research at the national meeting of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology along side thousands of professional Ph.D. and M.D. scientists.

Cancer is the number two cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease.

NEW BOOK BY MSUM PROF EXAMINES LIFE, MUSIC OF COMPOSER IANNIS XENAKIS
“Xenakis: His Life in Music,” a new book about the Greek-born contemporary composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) by MSUM music professor Jim Harley, was released last month by Routledge Publishing.

Xenakis, a pioneer in electroacoustic and computer music, was one of the most innovative composers of his time employing, among other things, a method of applying mathematics to form a piece of music. Seriously wounded as a Greek resistance fighter during WW II, he studied mathematics and architecture before music and later founded a School of Mathematical and Automated Music in Paris.

Harley, coordinator of MSUM’s Music Industry program, studied in Paris with Xenakis from 1985-87 under a Mendelssohn Scholarship from Great Britain. He’s published several articles on the music of Xenakis, edited journals devoted to the composer’s music and lectured widely on his work.

Harley’s book explores the notion that Xenakis’s theoretical formulations can be explained and understood without recourse to complicated mathematics, which has baffled and often alienated his followers.

The first study of Xenakis’s music in English, Harley’s book examines his compositional development, presenting the works together with their technical and conceptual innovations. Harley also takes a close look at the composer’s early unpublished pieces, his classics “Metastasis” and Pithoprakta,” and his evolving styles over 40 decades.

The 296-page hardcover book, which sells for $85, also includes an up-to-date bibliography and links to a comprehensive discography and list of works.

It is currently available at amazon.com or routledge-ny.com.

TRAVIS MAIER ELECTED SECOND TERM AS MSUM STUDENT SENATE PRESIDENT
Travis Maier, a senior mass communications major from Lemmon, S.D., was recently elected to his second term as president of the Minnesota State University Moorhead student senate. He’s only the third student in MSUM senate history to serve as president for two terms.

The senate represents the university’s 7,000-plus student body in the government of the university. Its activities are student centered and range from academic and social to consumer and legislative concerns.

Maier is a 2001 graduate of Lemmon High School and the son of Rich and Laura Maier of Lemmon.

NEW RIVERS PRESS ANNOUNCES THIS YEAR’S THREE MVP PRIZES
“Real Karaoke People,” poems by Ed Bok Lee of Minneapolis, “Love in An Expanding Universe“ by Ron Rindo of Oshkosh, Wis,, and “Second Language” by Ronna Wineberg of New York City are this year’s winners of the New Rivers Press Many Voices Project prizes.
Each will receive $1,000 and their books will be published by New Rivers Press and distributed nationally by The Consortium. One prize is national; the other two go to writers who reside in Minnesota or New York City

New Rivers Press, which since 1968 has published more than 300 books, is one of the oldest continuously publishing not-for-profit literary presses in the country. Since 2001, it has been located at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where it serves as a teaching press to provide academic learning opportunities to students in many areas of the curriculum.
The winners:

* Bork is from Fargo, by way of Korea, and developed his first full-length play, “St. Petersburg,” while enrolled in a doctoral program in Slavic languages and literatures at UC-Berkeley. Currently a writing fellow at the New York Theatre Workshop, he’s a two-time national Jerome Playwriting Fellow in Minneapolis and his stories and poems have been published widely.
* Rindo teaches English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh where he’s a John E. Kerrigan Endowed Professor. He lives with his wife and five children on five acres in Pickett, Wis. Rindo’s first collection of short stories, “Suburban Metaphysics and Other Stories,” was published by New Rivers Press in 1990; his second collection, “Secrets Men Keep”, was published in 1995. Both books received Outstanding Achievement Recognition from the Wisconsin Library Association for being among the top 10 books published by a Wisconsin writer in 1990 and 1995.
* Wineberg, who lives in New York City with her husband and three children, has been the fiction editor of the “Bellevue Literary Review” since 2000 and is a 2004 fellow in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications and she has taught writing at New York University.

The next submission deadline for the New Rivers competition is November 1. Send entries to: New Rivers Press, c/o Minnesota State University Moorhead, 1104 7th Ave. S., Moorhead, MN 56563, or contact managing editor4 Donna Carlson at www.newriverspress.com

EIGHT CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD FILMS SHOWING AT MSUM THIS SUMMER
Eight Hollywood film classics featuring some of the greatest stars and scenes from the silver screen will be showing in Minnesota State University Moorhead’s 28th annual “Summer Cinema 2004,” a series of weekly film programs beginning June 14.

Including some rare, seldom-seen movies along with masterpieces of American cinema, the series offers a special film every Monday evening through Aug. 2. Show time is 7:30 p.m. weekly in the air-conditioned Weld Hall Glasrud Auditorium. Admission is $2 and each feature runs about two hours. Tickets are available at the door.

In vintage Hollywood tradition, each film is preceded by a short subject. Pre-show pipe organ music and scores for the silent pictures are performed by members of the Red River Chapter of the American Theater Organ Society.

On the marquee this summer:

Monday, June 14:
Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall star in the 1953 comedy romance “How To Marry A Millionaire.” Directed by Jean Negulesco, this “golddigger” story by Nunnally Johnson is a remake of the 1932 film, “The Greeks Had a Word For Them.” Three New York models set out to marry rich men but instead confront the conflict of true love and money. Negulesco had been a journeyman at Warner Brothers in the 1940s and upon moving to 20th Century-Fox in 1948 he became one of their top directors with such hit films as “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Daddy Long Legs,” and “Boy on a Dolphin.”

Monday, June 21:
Buster Keaton and Kathryn McGuire star in the 1924 silent comedy “The Navigator.” It’s the story of two spoiled rich kids who inadvertently end up on an adventure together aboard an abandoned ship. This was Keaton’s most profitable feature film and is filled with the trademark “battle of man and machine” that is characteristic of the Keaton film persona. An original score will be performed on the Ted Larson Wurlitzer Pipe Organ by Lance Johnson.

Monday, June 28:
Gregory Peck and Helen Westcott lead the cast in the 1950 western “The Gunfighter.” Directed by Henry King, the film is the story of The Ringo Kid, an aging gunslinger who’s trapped by his fame. Weary and alone, Jimmy Ringo tries to escape his lawless past and regain what was once good in his life, his wife and child. The film is one of a series of adult westerns that portrayed a more complex relationship between hero and villain than traditional Hollywood fare. Peck and King had just completed the film “Twelve O’Clock High” (1949) before working together in tonight’s film.

Monday, July 5
Mary Pickford and Norman Kerry star in the 1917 melodrama “A Little Princess.” Pickford was the most powerful woman in the film industry during its first half century. She turned her sweet impish little character into a worldwide phenomenon and joined, in marriage and as business partner, with the King of Hollywood, Douglas Fairbanks, to form the United Artists Corporation. “A Little Princess,” her 28th feature, is the story of a child who is placed in a boarding school by her father when he goes off to war, but doesn’t understand that the headmistress is a cruel, spiteful woman. An original score will be performed on the Ted Larson Wurlitzer Pipe Organ by David Knudtson.

Monday, July 12:
Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake star in the 1941 Hollywood satire “Sullivan’s Travels.” Directed by Preston Sturges, it’s the story about an idealistic movie director John L. Sullivan who wants to make a social drama, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” while the studio holds out for the “Ants in Your Pants of 1939” sequel. So Sullivan sets out to explore Human Misery for himself, with a luxurious studio van in tow and peek-a-boo-hairdo.

Monday, July 19:
Emil Jannings and William Powell star in the 1928 social drama “The Last Command.” Directed by Joseph von Sternberg, it’s a story about Hollywood and a former Imperial General to the Czar of Russia who ended up working as an extra in pictures. von Sternberg is best known for his 1930’s films starring Marlene Dietrich ( “The Blue Angel,” “Shanghai Express,” and “Blonde Venus”) . Lance Johnson at the console of the Ted Larson Memorial Wurlitzer Pipe Organ will perform an original score.

Monday, July 26
Donald O’Connor, ZaSu Pitts and Chill Wills star in the 1949 comedy “Francis, The Talking Mule.” The plot it simple, A young and naïve soldier, Peter Stirling, is sent to the psycho ward because he insists that the mule assigned to him talks. This is the first in what became a series of seven “Francis the Talking Mule” films. O’Connor plays straight man to Francis in the first six films, with veteran actor Chill Wills supplying the raspy voice of Francis. Director Arthur Lubin went on to direct a television series, “Mr. Ed,” which was inspired by the “Francis” films.

Monday, August 2:
Ronald Coleman and Mary Brian star in the 1926 mystery adventure “Beau Geste.” Directed by Herbert Brenon, this is the first of four movie versions of P.C. Wren's adventure novel, “Beau Geste.” This is a complex story of three brothers who leave their beloved England to join the French Foreign Legion. A jewel robbery, mysterious happenings at a “haunted” African garrison, and the love and loyalty of three brothers contributes to critics often citing it as one of the best films of the silent era. David Knudtson at the console of the Ted Larson Memorial Wurlitzer Pipe Organ will perform an original score.

Summer Cinema Series is sponsored by the university’s speech communications and theatre arts department.