November 2019

November 2019

Season of Gratitude and Celebration

Dear Friends:

The chill is in the air and we are in the holiday season of giving thanks. At Texas Woman’s, we are grateful for so many things—including your continued support and interest.

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Little Chapel in-the-Woods turns 80

^{From left, Ted and Nancy Paup; artist Margie Crisp; Regents Janelle Shepard, Bernadette Coleman and Jill Jester.}

We began the month celebrating the 80th anniversary of one of Denton’s most popular visitor and wedding venues, our Little Chapel in-the-Woods, which was dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt on Nov. 1, 1939.

Today, our chapel is among the state's 20 most outstanding architectural achievements, according to the Texas Society of Architects. It features student-created stained glass windows depicting scenes of women ministering to human needs, including nursing, teaching, speech, literature, dance and music.

Thanks to the generosity of alumna and former TWU Regent Nancy Painter Paup ('73 BS; '74 MEd) and her husband Ted, we now have a special anniversary painting of the chapel created by Texas artist Margie Crisp that's displayed on the first floor of the Blagg-Huey Library.

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Celebrating Justice O’Connor’s life, legacy

^{From left, Board Chair of iCivics Wendy May, biographer Evan Thomas, Jay O'Connor and TWU's Maj. Gen. Mary Saunders, Ret. ('70 BS), who leads the Jane Nelson Institute for Women's Leadership.}

More than 100 people attended a special Fort Worth luncheon that we co-hosted in honor of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the audience listened to anecdotes about her rise to the high court with rapt admiration, each of the speakers emphasized her greatest legacy was the 2009 founding of iCivics, an organization aimed at bringing an interactive civics curriculum to classrooms across the nation. Today, this program is taught by about 200,000 educators, reaching 6 million students in all 50 states.

In 2008, Justice O’Connor was inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame housed at TWU, and we will feature her as one of the pioneering women in the Sue S. Bancroft Women’s Leadership Hall, an interactive history exhibit set to open in spring 2020. Artifacts from Justice O’Connor’s personal and Supreme Court collection, loaned to the exhibit by her family, also will be on display.

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Center for Women Entrepreneurs hosts small business development training

^{More than 7,000 women attended this year’s Texas Conference for Women in Austin, and our university was among 150 exhibitors at the state’s premiere networking and educational event for women.}

In addition to the weekly Wednesday workshops co-sponsored by the Center for Women Entrepreneurs and our College of Business in Houston this month and next, we also host free "Women RISE" breakfasts (7:30–9 a.m.) every second Tuesday of the month in Denton at the Spring Hill Suites.

In addition, we just announced 10 annual microgrants to start or expand the businesses of innovative women across the state. This grant funding will be used for the purchase of machinery, equipment or technology, acquisition of new inventory or raw materials, purchase and installation of fixtures or display units, property improvements, marketing or other business-related activity that is aligned with the purpose of the program.

To receive funding, awardees are required to complete a small business training course hosted by the center covering topics such as business plan development, marketing, legal, accounting and financing.

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Dutch, TWU nurses collaborate in Houston

^{TWU Houston nursing faculty Rita DelloStritto ('84 BSN; '05 PhD), Ann St. Germain and Cathy Hueske joined Wim Breeman, Lillian Maas, center, and Karin Nobbe from the Rotterdam University.}

One of our nursing alumni, Lillian Maas ('90 BSN; '97 MSN), met with us in Houston this month with 30 students and faculty colleagues from The Netherlands—one of our longest-running Center for Global Nursing partnerships. Lillian is the international coordinator for the Master’s in Advanced Nursing Practice program and worked at many hospitals in the Texas Medical Center, including Ben Taub and St. Luke’s prior to moving to The Netherlands.

This partnership, which Lillian initiated 14 years ago, involves collaboration with our advanced nursing faculty and students on nursing best practices, discussions of health care challenges, issues and policies, cross-culturally sensitive patient care, and meetings with our health care colleagues in the world’s largest medical center.

The Dutch students also spent a week shadowing other advanced practice nurses in the Texas Medical Center. Our nursing faculty and students will visit The Netherlands next year to also shadow advanced practice nurses in various clinical settings, including the largest Dutch medical center, Erasmus Medical Center, and a collaborative mini-symposium at Rotterdam University.

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Dallas campus hosts health care mentorship

For the second consecutive year, Pat Driscoll ('72 MSN), our professor of health service management, hosted the American College of Healthcare Executives mentorship program closing ceremony on our Dallas campus.

With more than 40 years of health care leadership experience, including work in her private legal practice, Pat’s own mentorship to TWU alumnus and the evening’s keynote speaker Michael Mayo, president of Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville, Fla. also was in the spotlight.

Michael earned his master’s degree in health care administration from TWU in 1988 while commuting to Dallas from Fort Worth where he worked as evening administrator for John Peter Smith Hospital. “She brought the real world, and her leadership, into the classroom, making the textbook come alive.”

Pat already is planning a Women’s Health Care Executive Leadership Conference on our Dallas campus in March. Stay tuned!

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Texas poet laureate addresses community

On the heels of our national “Outdoorsiest University” win, we were thrilled to welcome to campus the 2020 Texas poet laureate Emmy Pérez, who draws much of her inspiration from the great outdoors. She led a daytime writing workshop followed by an evening poetry reading and was “so moved by questions from aspiring writers” that she shared a few of her earliest poems.

Her experiences working with Native American reservation communities, female prison inmates and young people in juvenile detention centers shape her work. She noted that many of her ideas come to her while exploring the outdoors. “I wrote a lot of my poems outside, sweating,” said Emmy of a poem composed during a bike ride through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas. State Representative Lynn Stucky, DVM, joined the evening event sponsored in part by the Texas Commission on the Arts.

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Student debuts 'Fashion for Good' collection

Texas Woman’s University fashion design student Jennifer Stanley premiered her three-piece collection, “Rise of Venus,” at Fashion for Good’s Celebrate Texas event at Silver Street Studios in Houston. The runway collection highlighted designs from established and emerging local artists while promoting an industry culture of sustainability, inclusion, accessibility and philanthropy.

For Jennifer, who designs under the moniker Jen•Ley, the event provided an important platform to showcase her work and advocate for the support of victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. As a young mother and survivor of abuse and assault herself, the show represented a defining moment in her own rise to rebuild her life and reimagine her future.

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Pioneer Kitchen offers new dining options for Denton neighbors, visitors

With the opening of our new Dining Hall, TWU’s Pioneer Kitchen has added more than just a state-of-the-art facility and expanded menu. It also has introduced new options that make it easier than ever for our friends and neighbors to visit and grab a bite.

One such innovation is the new FED program, Pioneer Kitchen’s version of HelloFresh™ that began taking orders this week. The program offers healthy meal kit preparation packages that can be ordered and picked up at the new Dining Hall. Menu options will vary but they include chef-inspired options like spiced gumbo and BBQ chicken tacos with lime cilantro slaw. To place orders and access nutritional information, download the FED app (iPhone: "Fed-Fresh," Android: "Fed").

In addition, you also can pay a visit to another new and already popular dining venue on campus, the Oakland Café. Check out the #DentonFoodTours video.

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Holiday Gift Program keeps on giving

For more than 30 years, TWU’s Holiday Gift Program has been helping student parents in need provide gifts to their children during the holiday season. The program supports student parents at all three TWU campuses and online. Every year, faculty, staff and community members participate by donating toys, clothes, cash or online via the eToyBox.

Last year our Holiday Gift Program helped give 359 children of TWU students a very special holiday season, and this year it’s expected to reach 391 children. My special thanks to all who have helped this program grow every year to support our students’ families.

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Mack Minded wins 3rd in NASA film fest

^{Above from left, Mack Minded’s cinematographer Claire DeJarnett, director Susan Davis and associate producer Deanna Titzler represented the documentary’s production team at the CineSpace awards ceremony on Nov. 16 in Houston.}

TWU continues to share the story of TWU’s former Research Director Pauline Beery Mack, PhD, who conducted bone density research on America’s early astronauts. This time, NASA took notice and awarded Mack Minded: Humanly Possible third place in its annual CineSpace film competition. More than 400 films from around the world competed in this festival.

Event organizers remarked that Dr. Mack’s story was not well known in NASA, but now is helping us spread the word about TWU’s own “hidden figure”—including the film’s broadcast to the international space station! Also, this past weekend, Mack Minded won Best Film and Best Documentary at the Sigma Xi STEM Art and Film Festival in Madison, Wisconsin.

The film has one last screening in 2020—at the Palm Beach (Florida) International Mini Movie and Film Festival on Dec. 10 where it will receive an award for its impact on youth and college student interest in science fields of study.

In other NASA-related news, TWU sent its third team to the Texas Space Grant Consortium Design Challenge Showcase in Houston this week. Our team won best oral presentation and earned second place in the overall design team competition out of 19 teams. Learn more about TWU’s involvement.

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University names new Athletics Director

The members of our soccer team will be among the first to meet our new Athletics Director, Sandee Mott, when they travel this month to take on No. 5 seed Dixie State in Colorado Springs, Colorado—where Mott currently oversees the women’s soccer, baseball, women’s lacrosse, golf and softball programs. And if our Pioneers win in their first-ever NCAA Division II Championships appearance, they will go head to head with Mott’s no. 1 seed soccer team!

We are thrilled that Sandee will join TWU in January, advancing her 26-year-career. She has held key leadership roles on institutional, conference and national committees, including serving as chair on NCAA Division II women’s golf and basketball committees.

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Jennifer Staubach Gates to receive Virginia Chandler Dykes Leadership Award

Congratulations to Dallas City Councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates who has been selected as the 2020 Virginia Chandler Dykes Leadership Award recipient. The award, established by Texas Woman’s in 2002, is given to outstanding Dallas leaders who are committed to improving their communities and furthering education.

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And applause to our TWU alumna...

I was thrilled to join TWU alumna Leigh Glendenning ('79 BS) to celebrate Regent and alumna (center) Stacie McDavid’s ('80 BS) induction into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, which took place in Fort Worth Nov. 13.

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I invite you to explore my new "Connecting the Dots" publication, which highlights TWU’s accomplishments over the past several years.

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Thank you for your interest in Texas Woman's University. I invite you to email me if you have any comments or questions, and I am delighted that you have spent a few minutes with me today.

Warm Regards,

 

 

 

 

 

Follow Carine M. Feyten, Ph.D.

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Page last updated 8:42 AM, April 10, 2024