Toledo’s Barry Church is among the 12 semifinalists for the Jim Thorpe Award, given annually to the nation’s best college defensive back.

Defensive back Barry Church, right, has 82 tackles so far this season.

He has earned first-team All-Mid-American Conference (MAC) honors in each of his three seasons as a Rocket, and has a chance to become just the second player in UT history to earn first-team all-league honors in four consecutive seasons; the other was Nick Kaczur, now a starting offensive lineman with the New England Patriots. Church also is on the Bronco Nagurski Award watch list as the nation’s top defensive player.

Church is eighth in the MAC in tackles (82) this season, with 7.5 tackles for loss, one interception and three blocked kicks. He blocked the potential game-winning field goal with 37 seconds left in a 20-19 win over Northern Illinois Oct. 17. He was named fourth-team All-America on Phil Steele’s mid-season All-America team.

The Jim Thorpe Award list will be narrowed again Monday, Nov. 23, to three finalists who will be invited to the nationally telecast Home Depot ESPNU College Football Awards Show Thursday, Dec. 10. The winner will be announced on the show, and the official presentation will be at a banquet in Oklahoma City Feb. 9.

The 2009 award marks the 24th presentation of the trophy, first won in 1986 by Baylor’s Thomas Everett. Last year’s winner was Ohio State University’s Malcolm Jenkins, who now is playing for the New Orleans Saints.

Jim Thorpe Award winners are selected for performance on the field, athletic ability and character. The 2009 semifinalists are:

• Javier Arenas, senior, Alabama;

• Eric Berry, junior, Tennessee;

• Church;

• Perrish Cox, senior, Oklahoma State;

• Joe Haden, junior, Florida;

• Brandon Harris, sophomore, Miami (Florida);

• Taylor Mays, senior, USC;

• Tyler Sash, sophomore, Iowa;

• Darrell Stuckey, senior, Kansas;

• Earl Thomas, sophomore, Texas;

• Alterraun Verner, senior, UCLA; and

• Kyle Wilson, senior, Boise State.

The screening committee was allowed only 12 candidates on the semifinalist list, but determined five additional outstanding players deserved recognition and were given honorable mention status. They are Kam Chancellor, senior, Virginia Tech; Ras-I Dowling, junior, Virginia; Brian Jackson, senior, Oklahoma; Rahim Moore, sophomore, UCLA; and DeAndre McDaniel, junior, Clemson

The Jim Thorpe Award is a member of the National College Football Awards Association, which was founded in 1997 as a coalition of the major collegiate football awards to protect, preserve and enhance the integrity, influence and prestige of the game’s predominant awards. The association encourages professionalism and the highest standards for the administration of its member awards and the selection of their candidates and recipients.

UT safety Mark Singer picked off a pass when the Rockets played Ohio State in September.

UT sophomore safety Mark Singer was named ESPN The Magazine second-team Academic All-District IV by the College Sports Information Directors of America Nov. 5.

Singer has a 3.70 GPA and is undecided upon his major. He has played in all nine games as a backup this season, making 13 tackles. His sole interception this season came against Ohio State Sept. 19.

He was one of five Rockets nominated for Academic All-America. The others were senior linebacker Beau Brudzinski (finance major, 3.521 GPA), sophomore long snapper Colin McHugh (pre-finance major, 3.969 GPA), sophomore Malcolm Riley (undecided, 3.469 GPA), and sophomore Mike VanDerMeulen (pre-business, 3.339 GPA).

To be nominated for Academic All-America, student-athletes must have at least sophomore eligibility standing, have at least a 3.30 grade-point average, be starters or significant contributors, and have played in at least half of their team’s games. A College Sports Information Directors of America committee will then select the Academic All-America teams from the players on the first-team academic all-district teams.

The Village Players Theatre this month will present “Murder Among Friends,” which is written by Bob Barry and produced by special arrangement with Samuel French Inc.

The show will run Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Nov. 6-21, with curtain time at 8 p.m. There also will be a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday, Nov. 15. Performances will take place at the Village Players Theatre, 2740 Upton Ave.

“The play is a farce/mystery and full of humorous theatrical references,” said director Jennifer Rockwood. “This particular play’s cast is mostly UT theatre alums, and many were my students years ago.”

Rockwood, director of the UT First-Year Experience Program, was a longtime faculty member in the Department of Theatre and Film.

UT graduates James Norman plays Palmer, an aging, exceedingly vain actor, and Kate Abu-Absi, director of the UT Arts Living and Learning Community, plays Angela, his spoiled wife. UT alumnus Bill Lancz is Ted, a double-dealing, double-loving agent.

Angela and Ted are lovers and plan to murder Palmer during a contrived robbery on New Year’s Eve. But the actor and the agent also are lovers and have an identical plan to do in the wife.

Rounding out the cast are Matt Black, who plays Marshall, and UT alumni Jennifer Lake as Gert and John Meadows as Larry.

Kate Abu-Absi and James Norman rehearse a scene from “Murder Among Friends."

“I want the audience to have a great time and many belly laughs,” Rockwood said. “I also think they will see some superb acting nurtured long ago in UT theatre.”

The Village Players approached Rockwood about sitting in the director’s chair for “Murder Among Friends.”

“They asked me about a year ago if I wanted to direct again,” she said. “I did ‘True West’ there 20 years ago.”

Now in its 53rd season, the Village Players Theatre is a nonprofit community troupe run by volunteers.

Tickets —$14 for general admission and $12 for seniors and students — are available by calling 419.472.6817 or at the box office.

The University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University have teamed up with the Regional Growth Partnership to host northwest Ohio’s VentureTech Week, three events focused on technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, commercialization and wealth creation.

All VentureTech Week events will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn, 6165 Levis Commons Blvd. in Perrysburg.

Listed by date, the events will be:

• Wednesday, Nov. 11 — Tech Connect, 5 to 8 p.m. With more than 300 people in attendance at recent sessions, this free event will feature casual networking, speakers that address entrepreneurial topics, and information exchanges.

• Thursday, Nov. 12 — Venture Fair, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. This event will include live investment pitches, extensive networking opportunities, and panels with venture capitalists and successful entrepreneurs from some of the nation’s leading solar, information technology and life science companies. In addition, Jim Haudan, co-founder and CEO of Root Learning, and Roger Newton, co-discoverer of Lipitor and founder, president and CEO of Esperion Therapeutics Inc., will deliver keynote speeches. Tickets for this event are $100 for college students and $295 for non-students.

• Friday, Nov. 13 — Entrepreneurial Boot Camp, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. This educational event is for individuals aiming to finance, establish and market a high-technology dependent business. This event also will include a keynote address by Jim DelVerne, a local entrepreneur who sold his software company, Gateway Defender, to MX Logic, which was recently acquired by McAfee Inc. Tickets for this event are $25 for college students and $100 for non-students.

The Regional Growth Partnership is extending special student pricing, and UT Innovation Enterprises is offering scholarships to UT students or faculty members to cover event admission. Eight scholarships will be given for the Entrepreneurial Boot Camp, and eight will be given for the Venture Fair.

To apply for a scholarship, contact Pamela Moore of UT Innovation Enterprises at 419.383.6966.

For more information or to register for these public events, visit www.rocketventures.biz/events/venturetech.

The University of Toledo Department of Theatre and Film will conclude its documentary film series this fall with two works that bring into question how corporate practices impact the moral and social responsibilities of higher education Friday, Nov. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Law Center Auditorium.

Henry

Kyle Henry’s “University Inc.” and Laura Dunn’s “Subtext of a Yale Education” will be followed by a panel discussion that will address how UT’s idealistic and community-minded mission of improving the human condition both meshes and collides with its fiduciary duties and its societal responsibilities. Henry, a filmmaker in residence at UT this semester, will lead the panel discussion.

Henry, professor of editing at the University of Texas in Austin, will present his film. He and Dunn take an intimate look at how their educations were altered by today’s dominant financial ideology of intense competition and bottom line profits.

“University Inc.,” released in 1999, is an hourlong documentary that, according to The Austin Chronicle, “… uses the closing of the University of Texas’ Union Film Program as a paradigm for exposing the true corporate order. The film exposes the dominance of big business over education, student power and workers’ rights.”

Henry’s “University Inc.” and “American Cowboy,” a film about a gay rodeo champ, received worldwide festival play, with the former touring more than 50 colleges and universities throughout the United States as part of an initiative titled “The McCollege Tour,” funded in part by filmmakers Michael Moore and Richard Linklater. His feature narrative directing debut, “Room,” premiered at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals in 2005, and was nominated for two Find Independent Spirit Awards. He is also the editor of the Sundance/Tribeca/SXSW award-winning feature narrative titled “Manito” and seven documentary features, including “Audience of One,” “Light From the East” and the PBS/ITVS-funded “Troop 1500, Letters From the Other Side,” and the soon-to-be-broadcast “Where Soldiers Come From.”

His in-progress feature film, “Fourplay,” is executive produced by Jim McKay and Michael Stipe via their C-Hundred Film Corp. production company and will premiere in 2010.

Dunn

“Subtext of a Yale Education,” a 31-minute short released in 1998, documents, from the filmmaker’s perspective, Locals 34 and 35 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union and their struggle from 1995 to 1997 to secure a new contract and defeat subcontracting within Yale University’s food services. According to Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, “In the film, an unidentified national union organizer states his disbelief that anyone would expect corporations to behave any differently than they do. ‘They are supposed to be greedy,’ he says. Corporations are legally bound to make a profit for their shareholders. The university must behave as it does not because it is immoral or unethical, but because it is an elite, private capitalist corporation.”

Dunn’s film won best documentary at the 1999 National Student Film Festival. She has numerous award-winning documentaries to her credit. Most recently, Dunn was awarded a Rockefeller Media Fellowship for “Mai Mayim,” a documentary that looks at the Middle East conflict from within the context of the ecological need for water in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Both the screenings and discussion are free; however, a $3 donation per person is requested to defray costs and help support future film screenings.

For more information, visit the UT Department of Theatre and Film online at www.utoledo.edu/as/theatrefilm.

It’s been a half-and-half week for UT’s annual Community Charitable Campaign, with the pledge goal nearly half-met as the program reaches its halfway mark.

Robin Green, registration specialist in Registration, waited for her change from Jennifer Reynolds, secretary in Family Medicine, after picking up a treat at a bake sale last week on Health Science Campus. Dr. Mark Weiner, assistant professor of family medicine and medical director of physician assistant studies, helped Reynolds during the sale, which raised about $200 for UT’s Community Charitable Campaign.

Ongoing pledges, a bake sale, an online auction and more activities brought the pledge total to more than $103,000 with about three weeks until the campaign’s Nov. 20 completion.

UT’s student population has joined the effort. Members of Student Government will man the traditional milk jug drive during the UT football team’s Friday, Nov. 20, game against Eastern Michigan in the Glass Bowl. It’s a win-win situation — get rid of some loose change as you cheer for the Rockets. Kickoff will be at 7 p.m.

The new online auction fundraiser, UTBay, continues to generate pledges. Items are added weekly to the auction, which can be viewed at www.utbay.org. A special item up for bid this week is a 12-inch-by-16-inch framed oil portrait donated by UT Medical Center faculty member Dr. Paul Brand. The portrait recreates a colorful scene in Susquehanna Valley, Va.

Brand joined the former Medical College of Ohio faculty in 1975. Currently, he is an associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology.

His paintings have won numerous awards at the Parkwood Gallery, Spectrum, the Toledo Artist’s Club, the Northwest Ohio Watercolor Society Annual and the Fifth Third Bank Show. In addition, his works have been accepted in competitive regional and national exhibitions, including the Ohio Watercolor Society annual shows, the Ohio Art League Fall Juried Show in Columbus, Ohio, the Touchstone Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Great Lakes Pastel Society Annual in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Brand has taught courses and demonstrated techniques at several local organizations, including the Toledo Museum of Art.

Those who gave to UTC3 last week also received, as the prize patrol found winners in Dr. Nancy Collins on Health Science Campus and Tonya Tressler on Main Campus. Two winners — one each from Health Science Campus and Main Campus — will be selected each week.

UT’s goal is to pledge $250,000 or more by the campaign’s conclusion. Donations may be made via e-mail or pledge cards, which are available throughout campuses. Credit cards, cash, checks and payroll deduction will be accepted.

Hurd

Dr. Barbara Hurd, author and professor of creative writing at Frostburg State University, will read and discuss her works Thursday, Nov. 5, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in Wolfe Hall Room 1205 on Main Campus.

Her free, public talk, “On the Fecundity of Limits: Readings and Remarks,” will showcase her personal essays and poetry as part of The University of Toledo’s Science and Sensibility Series.

Hurd’s award-winning essays are reflections inspired by her experiences in natural environments and have appeared in numerous journals, including Best American Essays, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Orion and Audubon, among others. She has written several books, including Objects in This Mirror, Entering the Stone, and Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs and Human Imagination.

“Her rich, pleasurable and thought-provoking essays lead us to reflect upon imagination, creativity, and our connections to the unbuilt environment,” said Dr. Charles Blatz, UT professor of philosophy. “These writings are invitations to investigate the creative process and its place in both our everyday life and our relationships within the environments where we are embedded.”

Blatz said Hurd’s title poem in a collection, The Singer’s Temple, makes reference to an ancient Greek practice of erecting temples at crossroads so those on a journey can stop and sort their direction. “She applies this to the various paths of our reflective journeys suggesting that there are no fixed and final means of directing this traffic of thought,” he said. “Intersection of divergent paths is inevitable. But then, thinking of the travelers’ rest, she suggests that these meetings give rise to conversations that mutually inform and enrich.

“The Science and Sensibility Series has aspired to such an idea. Bring together those whose disciplines place them in science, technology, medicine and mathematics to engage in reflection with those whose disciplines place them in the humanities, the arts and related areas of the social sciences. Provide an opportunity for intellectual engagement. Conversation, mutual challenge, understanding, intellectual community, personal integration of ideas can all rise out of such meetings.

“Barbara Hurd’s visit will create a perfect meeting place as we stop in our intellectual travels and sort our direction,” Blatz said.

Hurd was the recipient of a 2002 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction and winner of the Sierra Club’s National Nature Writing Award and Pushcart Prizes in 2004 and 2007.

Her talk for the Science and Sensibility Series is sponsored by the Office of the Main Campus Provost through a Program Academic Excellence Award.

The University of Toledo College of Business Administration will dedicate the new Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement Thursday, Nov. 5, at 1:30 p.m.

Construction continues on the Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement.

“This will be a remarkable day of achievement for The University of Toledo, the College of Business Administration, the students we serve, and our partners in the business community,” said UT President Lloyd Jacobs. “With more than 3,400 students currently preparing for their futures in the global business arena, this 54,000-square-foot facility is an essential expansion that will provide the sophisticated environment requisite of superior business schools such as ours.”

The Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement includes 10 state-of-the-art classrooms seating from 30 to 125 students; five breakout rooms with videoconferencing capabilities; eight conference rooms; the 40-seat FirstEnergy Boardroom, and a rooftop garden.

This view shows the Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement from West Bancroft Street.

The complex also includes five action-learning labs where students can sharpen their business skills through recordable training sessions, team projects and hands-on experience. They are the:
• Richard W. and Martha McEwen Information and Technology Management Lab;

• John B. & Lillian E. Neff Trading Room;

• PNC Entrepreneurship Lab;

• Huntington Professional Sales Lab; and

• Ernst & Young LLP Leadership Lab.

The Savage & Associates Complex also will serve as an enhanced portal to the regional business community. It has suites for the region’s largest MBA/EMBA programs, the Executive Center for Global Competitiveness, Center for Family & Privately Held Business, Center for Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Ronald Langenderfer Office of Business Career Programs, the Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales, and the Institute for Supply Chain Management and Information Assurance.

“Our positive relationship with the region’s business community enables us to provide real-world experience to our students,” said Dr. Thomas Gutteridge, dean of the UT College of Business Administration. “At the same time we want businesses to know that the knowledge and expertise within the college are here to help them, and that the Savage & Associates Complex will be a focal point for businesses to access these resources.”

Reflective of both the high technology within the complex and the global impact of business in the 21st century, former UT President Dan Johnson will speak at the dedication ceremony via videoconference from the United Arab Emirates, where he is provost at Zayed University.

“Dan Johnson was president of UT when this project started, and his participation in this dedication from the other side of the world is consistent with the global reach of the UT College of Business,” Gutteridge said.

Dan Steinberg, co-president and CEO of Savage & Associates, said, “This essential project was supported by talented professionals throughout Savage & Associates. We recognize the excellent educational programs provided at the UT College of Business Administration and how a remarkable building such as this complex truly facilitates learning. We thank all the businesses, donors and sponsors who made this complex a reality.”

Before the building dedication, the College of Business Administration will have a private ceremony to formally name the John B. and Lillian E. Neff Department of Finance, and the John B. and Lillian E. Neff Trading Room in the Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement.

“The Neffs have been outstanding and enduring patrons of our business students,” Gutteridge said. “The college’s trading room would not exist without their extremely generous gifts. We are honored to name the Department of Finance after John B. and Lillian E. Neff, whose leadership will impact and inspire thousands of business students for years to come.”

Gutteridge added, “The current global economic situation further crystallizes that a UT business degree can strengthen one’s future. As the college pursues its mission to develop lifelong leaders for the world of business, the new Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement will provide an enriched setting for their educational journey.”

Work will continue inside the building after the dedication to prepare the facility for classes beginning in January. A schedule of dates and times will be announced in January so UT faculty, staff and students can tour the Savage & Associates Complex.

Due to an increasing number of students showing up to classes and the Student Medical Center with flu-like symptoms, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution last week suspending the institution’s attendance policy for the rest of the academic year.

The Faculty Senate previously had passed a resolution encouraging faculty to relax their attendance policies.

“We want to send a strong message to students that they should not go to class if they have flu-like symptoms,” said John Barrett, associate professor of law and president of Faculty Senate. “We respect the faculty’s ability to run their classes as they see fit. However, given the severity of the potential risk to our student-age population, it is imperative that we do everything possible to break the cycle of transmission. As such, Faculty Senate thought this was the best course of action.”

The full resolution is as follows: “[The Faculty Senate] resolved, that The University of Toledo’s mandatory attendance policy be suspended from this day forward through the current academic year for students with influenza-like symptoms without the need for documentation, provided that the faculty may require that they be notified of the student’s intent to miss class due to illness.”

Despite any illness, students are reminded they are still responsible for contacting their professors at the beginning of an illness, not after the fact, and for completing all course work and exams.

The University also continues to fight the transmission of the virus by holding vaccination clinics. This week, students and others in high-risk categories can receive the H1N1 nasal mist vaccine Wednesday, Nov. 4, from noon to 6 p.m. in the Crossings dining area and Thursday, Nov. 5, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Student Union Room 2579.

Human Resources has added more education programs and scheduled table time on both Health Science and Main campuses to answer questions and accept open enrollment forms.

An education session aimed at employees who work evening hours will take place Thursday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. in Rocket Hall Room 1520.

Since many employees have had questions regarding new facets of their benefits options, Human Resources personnel will be available to accept enrollment forms in person Monday, Nov. 2, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Skyview Food Court, and Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the second floor of the Student Union.

The updated schedule of education programs is listed below:

• Monday, Nov. 2, 2 p.m., Health Education Building Room 105;

• Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2 p.m., Nitschke Hall Auditorium;

• Wednesday, Nov. 4, 9 a.m., Student Union Ingman Room;

• Thursday, Nov. 5, 7:30 a.m., Health Education Building Room 105; and

• Thursday, Nov. 5, 8 p.m., Rocket Hall Room 1520.

Open enrollment continues through Friday, Nov. 13. All employees must re-enroll by completing enrollment forms and bringing them to HR, whether they elect to make changes in 2010 benefits choices or not, to ensure their coverage continues after Dec. 31.

Forms have been posted on HR’s Web site at http://hr.utoledo.edu. Employees who do not have access to computers may pick up enrollment packets in HR, which is located in the Transportation Center on Main Campus and is open Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Employees who have questions following the educational programs may e-mail benefits@utoledo.edu with their specific inquiries. HR personnel will respond within 48 hours.