Senior year is the time when Butler University students can form a group of friends to live with outside the Butler Bubble. This year, students are starting that process earlier.

Sophomores have already signed leases for their 2014-15 senior year.

Sophomore Ellen Clauss signed her lease a couple weeks ago, though that’s not what she expected to happen.

“We were just going to weigh our options, see what there was to offer and try to find the best deal out there,” Clauss said.

That changed when the landlord her group was working with planned to be in town to show them the house.

“He said, ‘We have two other people about to close in on this house, so you might want to think about it,’” Clauss said.

The combination of that pressure and Clauss’ group liking the house, its location and the landlord gave them reason to sign the lease, she said.

“It was very unexpected,” Clauss said. “It was a way faster process than we thought. We kind of jumped on it—maybe too soon. We’ll never know.”

Sophomore Molly Swigart signed her lease March 23.

“We toured the house on Friday the 22nd and signed the lease Saturday morning, the 23rd,” Swigart said. “We didn’t get a chance to shop around that much, but we really liked the house and location and had heard good things about the landlord. We figured we might as well bite the bullet.”

Swigart said her mom was upset at the house’s price, but Swigart said the benefits of the house were worth the cost. She also said her group is off-setting some of the costs by having six people live in a five-person house.

“It’s cheaper than Apartment Village, and it’s more fun,” Swigart said.

Scott Jacobson rents out 11 houses in the neighborhood around Butler’s campus. He said he has students asking him about leasing earlier and earlier every year.

Jacobson said this time of year, students are recommended to him by those currently living in one of his houses.

“(Signing a lease early) is just one less thing to worry about, but it pushes up the stress,” Jacobson said. “I’ve been trying to calm people down. You really don’t need to sign a lease within the next two months. There are enough houses to go around.”

He said one of the challenges of signing a lease this early could be if a tenant has to leave the group for some reason, but Jacobson said he works with such groups to help them replace the member.

Swigart said she has heard a lot of groups are worried about how relationships between group members could change before senior year.

“I’m not worried, but some people are, and you can’t be sure,” Swigart said. “Things can change. Someone could transfer or go abroad.”

Swigart said if that were to happen, her landlord said she and her housemates would be responsible for finding a replacement.

Jacobson said he has not had very many tenants drop out of a lease but added that the number may increase with the number of students signing leases early.

Overall, students have to find the house that’s right for them.

“You have to find a house you can see yourself living in that will fit your needs but also find a landlord that will work for you as well,” Jacobson said. “Find a landlord you can trust.”

Butler University is going through a reaccreditation process by the Higher Learning Commission.
A team of six peer reviewers from the commission will be on campus March 25 through March 27 to evaluate the university and decide whether or not it should be reaccredited.
These six individuals are administrators from other colleges around the country who have been trained in accreditation evaluation.
The group will be meeting with President Jim Danko and his cabinet, along with faculty, staff and students. The team will also be stopping people walking around campus at random to ask questions about the university.
Judith Morrel, executive director of the Center for High Achievement and Scholarly Engagement, is the steering committee leader.
Morrel said the accreditation process comes from the Department of Education, which allows regional, non-governmental organizations to ensure the quality of higher education. The university was granted its last 10-year accreditation in 2003.
Butler is a part of the North Central Region, which is the largest out of the accreditation regions.
The Higher Learning Commission has a list of five general criteria universities have to meet to be accredited. Those criteria are admission; ethical and responsible conduct; teaching and learning quality resources and support; teaching and learning evaluation and improvement; and resources, planning and institutional effectiveness.
Each aspect has its components and subcomponents, which give more detailed requirements about each subject.
To be reaccredited, Butler must show compliance and a commitment to improving every one of the components, Morrel said.
The commission evaluates many different institutions. Morrel said the same people that accredit Butler also accredit the University of Phoenix, which has a different organizational structure than Butler.
So although each university is evaluated by the same criteria, the main component driving those criteria is each university’s mission. Each university does it in their own way, Morrel said.
Morrel said Butler’s mission has stayed the same since it was written in the original charter in 1850.
“The legislature passed in 1850 prescribed an institution of learning at the highest class for the instruction of the students in every branch of liberal and professional education,” Morrel said, quoting the charter. “That was 1850, and we’re still doing the same thing. The whole idea is if that’s our mission, everything we do should be driven by that.”
In preparation for the reviewers’ visit, Morrel and a team of more than 50 Butler faculty put together a self-study for the peer reviewers to read before coming to campus. The study was completed and submitted on Jan. 28.
The study required Morrel and her team to break into groups and report on the criteria on which Butler will be evaluated. The report is more than 200 pages long and can be found on Butler’s website.
Morrel said she is grateful for her team that helped put the study together.
While on campus, the peer reviewers will be holding three separate, open meetings: one for students, one for faculty and one for staff.
Morrel said the student meeting will be held March 26 at 4 p.m. in JH 141 and will only consist of the reviewers and students who choose to attend. No faculty or staff will be allowed in that meeting.
After meeting with all groups of campus, the peer review team will sit down with Danko before it leaves on March 27 to share with him its observations and recommendations for improvement.
Then the peer reviewers will write a report and send it back to Butler to correct any factual errors. The team will make its recommendations to the commission, which will then decide if the university should be reaccredited.
Morrel said it takes several months before the university will hear back once the report gets to the commission, but she said she thinks it will have to be before the end of 2013, when Butler’s current accreditation runs out.
“It’s a serious matter,” Morrel said. “I don’t think it’s a matter for concern, but I would like people to take it seriously.”
Morrel said she urges students to look at the report online and to attend the open meeting with the peer reviewers.
The meeting times and locations, along with all other information, regarding the accreditation can be found at www.butler.edu/accreditation.

Butler University Health Services is seeing a spike in the number of pink eye cases on campus recently.

Dr. Maria Fletcher, Health Services physician, said the clinic was seeing around 11 cases per day as of press time.

She said students with pink eye first started coming in after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Health Services was only seeing about three or four cases per day then.

“It’s definitely not life-threatening.,” Fletcher said. “It’s definitely not horrible discomfort, but it is a nuisance because you see it. It’s in your face, so you can hardly ignore it.”

Just like the long lines in Starbucks, spotting Blue II at the HRC and unpredictable Indiana weather, scaffolding and construction crews have been the norm around campus, especially at Jordan Hall.

The current construction projects on Jordan Hall include repairing the entryway near the old post office location and the entryway by the College of Education.

Jerry Carlson, director of maintenance services, said the entryway project near the old post office started last June when some bulges were noticed around the entrance.

The crews have been working on tearing down the wall, putting in new mortar, relaying the stones and putting new limestone around that entry’s arches. The other entryway project near the COE consists of similar repairs.

The repairs are addressing stones that have become loose due to mortar disintegration around them.

The post office entryway is set to be finished March 1. The budget for the project is approximately $700,000, Carlson said.

The university’s own five-person mason crew is working on the entrance near the COE, and that

funding comes from the operations budget.

Eventually, the plan is to relay the stones around the whole building, Carlson said.

Richard Michal, executive director of facilities, said he likes to think of Jordan Hall as the Golden Gate Bridge, which constantly has crews touching up the bridge’s paint.

Michal said the repairs are not structurally important as far as holding the building up, but weather wears on the stone walls.

When the mortar around the stones begin to break down, cracks conform and let moisture into the building, and cause bubbles in the paint and plaster on the walls.

Michal said the cracks in the walls are also what allow leaks when it rains. The stair towers in the building have covers on the ceilings to collect leakage.

“Those are the bane of my existence,” Michal said. “I want to get the whole building fixed so we can eliminate those and restore the building back to original beauty.”

Taking on that challenge has not been without its challenges.

Charles Truax, structures supervisor, said along with inclement weather conditions, the building itself can get in the way of renovation.

“It’s the scale of the size of the building,” Truax said. “You can’t work everywhere on the building at one time.

“We have to always make adjustments to be sensitive to the activities of the building. It can be quite noisy, which can disrupt classes.”

Truax said to be respectful of classes, the crews occasionally have to rearrange their schedules to work around class time.

The more than 80-year-old building will require more work, so Carlson said he hopes to have some deferred maintenance money identified so work can continue.

Jordan Hall has been under construction for more than 25 years, but Carlson said officials hopes this relaying of stones will be more of a permanent fix, rather than just touching up the walls at the mortar or joints between the stones.

The tuck-pointing, or touching up the mortar, was a quick fix to address leaks but only lasted four or five years, Truax said. The relaying of the stones should last closer to 20 years.

Next up for Jordan Hall is a five-year plan to address the building’s most vulnerable aspects, which include many of the entryways.

Specifically, the entryway just to the west of the post office entrance will be fixed next. Then, over the summer, crews will start working on the entrance near the president’s office.

Although crews are constantly doing preventative maintenance and it requires a lot of resource, Michal said it comes with the territory when dealing with historical landmarks like Jordan.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Michal said. “Our challenge is to recognize it as that. What great opportunity and what beautiful buildings to have. You can never rebuild those buildings or replace them.

“We’re stewards of these resources, and it’s our responsibility to protect them and to preserve them while also meeting the mission of the university to provide safe, comfortable environments for our students, faculty and staff.”

The Student Government Association assembly will vote tomorrow on three recommended changes to the election process.

The Election Oversight Committee introduced the recommendations to assembly last Thursday.

The first recommendation shortens the campaign period from two weeks to 11 days. The second  allows each candidate to only run for one office. Finally, election results will not be released to protect the privacy of the candidates.

Evan Zahn, Election Oversight Committee chair, said the recommendations came from looking at the past year’s election and what could be improved or clarified.

Zahn said the committee hopes a shorter campaign period will make campaigns more exciting and bring better voter turnout.

He said the second recommendation was suggested to prevent someone from potentially winning multiple offices and not being able to fulfill all of those positions’ duties.

“There’s multiple scenarios that could play out, and we just want to avoid all those and have the best candidate for the position,” Zahn said.

Finally, Zahn said the third recommendation is the most controversial after the debate last year about whether or not to release the results.

The total percentage of how much of campus voted will be released, but the results will not be broken down and attributed to each candidate under the new recommendation.

“I’m very strongly against the election results being released,” Zahn said. “Yes, you could argue that other campuses do release the results, but we as a committee did not see any benefit to the results being released.”

He said it is sometimes hard to get people to run for class officer positions, and even SGA president. He said releasing election results could hurt the morale on campus if a vote were too close or hurt an individual if hardly anyone voted for him or her.

Abigail Springer, member of the public relations committee for election oversight, said the question of releasing election results was something that had never been questioned and something the committee  never worried about before last year.

“I feel very strongly about not releasing the numbers,” Springer said.

She said it would be easy for candidates to potentially be hurt by people talking about results, especially with social media.

“It’s the Butler Community of Care,” Springer said. “All of these issues were how do we make this election run more smoothly? And how do we protect our candidates and help our candidates achieve what they want to out of the election? Even if that means losing, then how do we encourage them to continue to be involved?”

Springer said she hopes assembly members believe in what the committee is working toward in terms of the recommendations and said she hopes things go well at assembly tomorrow.

SGA President Mike Keller said he is very intent about staying separate from the Election Oversight Committee but has mixed views on the recommendations.

“As a former candidate, I can really say that shortening the campaign period is a good idea,” Keller said. “That is a terrible two weeks for a candidate,

particularly an SGA president. It’s not good really for a student for that length of time. Personally, my grades didn’t do so well during the campaign.”

For the second recommendation, Keller said it’s a no-brainer to have each candidate only be able to run for one office. It was just never written in the rules.

Keller said the assembly and its constituents really have to think about what they want as far as open or closed election results.

“The biggest thing is that there had never been anything written about whether we do this or not,” Keller said. “That’s not good. We need to have rules and structure to point to and explain why we do these things.”

He said his personal opinion, though, is different than that of the committee.

“I have always felt there is little that goes wrong with an open election and open results,” Keller said.

As for the vote tomorrow, Keller said he hopes there is a great discussion about the recommendations but has a hunch that they will all be passed.

Zahn said he also has a positive outlook on the vote tomorrow.

“I’m very hopeful that the recommendations will be agreed upon because I think we have the best intentions for the campus, the potential candidates and the entire student body in mind when we made these propositions,” Zahn said.

If the recommendations are passed, Zahn said he does not foresee any challenges because they are settling this ahead of the election instead of during or after it, as was the issue last year.

New online and hybrid courses will bring in new technology and flexibility to students interested in taking summer courses.
There will be nine fully online courses and 12 hybrid courses, with both online and in-classroom work, offered this summer as part of a pilot program.
Mary Macmanus Ramsbottom, associate provost for Student Academic Affairs, said the university is introducing these courses because they are becoming more common at other universities and because students have shown interest in them.
Last April, a survey went out to both students and faculty to guage the level of interest for summer online or hybrid courses.
More than 700 students took the survey, and two-thirds indicated they would be interested in online or hybrid summer courses.
“It’s driven by trying to anticipate and address the student’s desire might be to move in this direction, while at the same time ensuring they’re going to get Butler quality in terms of the teaching and faculty involved in it,” Ramsbottom said.
Ramsbottom said not only do these courses offer time and place flexibility for students, the courses also offer security in knowing the course is guaranteed to count for Butler credit and was developed by Butler faculty.
Julianne Miranda, director of eLearning, works with the different colleges at the university to help figure out ways to provide diverse course offerings for students.
Miranda and the Center for Academic Technology train faculty in the methods of teaching fully online or hybrid courses to help them take course content and transform it to fit the new formats.
The hybrid courses have been used before in the College of Education for some graduate classes. An example of how a hybrid class works would be meeting once a week on campus, but the rest of the work and communication is done over the Internet, Miranda said.
The fully online courses are new to Butler this year and will be using Moodle as the platform, Miranda said. Faculty will also be experimenting with live video-chat tools to communicate with students, along with live discussion boards and real-time chat.
Joseph Colavito, English professor, will be teaching an online course this summer, but this is not his first time. Before coming to Butler, he gained experience teaching online courses for Northwestern State University in Louisiana.
Colavito will be teaching scientific writing this summer.
Colavito said his past experience at Northwestern State was not as technologically up-to-date as it will be this summer at Butler. To teach and communicate with students, he would send PowerPoints, have virtual office hours and use the textbook publisher resources.
His four-week course for this summer is already mapped out. Colavito said the course will not be as expansive as a 15-week course and will focus on individual student tasks for them to complete.
Colavito said the biggest difficulty of teaching an online course is availability.
“With a face-to-face class you know you’re going to see your students most of the time,” Colavito said. “It’s very, very difficult to get everybody accommodated as far as when they can actually sit and talk to the teacher.”
Because of the challenges of not seeing students everyday, Colavito said flexibility is key.
“Every new version of something is going to need shaking out,” Colavito said. “There are going to be occasional issues that are out of everybody’s control. But it’s just like regular teaching. You have to have a Plan B.”
Elizabeth Mix, associate art professor, taught a hybrid course last summer, but this will be her first time teaching a fully online course. She will be teaching introduction to visual art.
Mix said the biggest benefit of an online course to students is the flexibility.
She said her concern is how engaged students will be in the class and how they are progressing through the course material.
“In the online environment, that means making sure that each element is as engaging as possible and that I set benchmarks for moving through the material so they aren’t encouraged to leave everything until the last minute,” Mix said in an email.
Mix said while the Center for Academic Technology has helped her a lot with setting up her course, in the future, she hopes to learn more about the technology because there is less flexibility in delivery when teaching a fully online version of the course.
Overall though, Mix said she is looking forward to the new format.
“I’m really excited to be part of a learning community that is exploring and implementing online courses in such a thoughtful and supportive way,” Mix said.
With this summer being the program’s pilot, Ramsbottom said the university will be using the same cost structure for students as well as the same pay structure for faculty. After this summer, they will take a closer look and evaluate if a change in those structures is needed.
Students can begin registering for these new courses on Feb. 3.

Butler University’s Student Government Association channeled Oprah Winfrey with its annual “favorite things” giveaway.

Today’s SGA meeting will feature giveaways from different executive members, just like last week’s meeting.

SGA President Mike Keller said he and his colleagues were not exactly sure when the holiday gifting began but said it’s been going on for at least five or six years.

Keller said this end-of-the-year tradition is an opportunity to reward the SGA representatives who have been at the meetings each week throughout the semester.

Each officer, except the parliamentarian, is allotted a section of the budget that he or she can use for programming.

Scott Nemeth, vice president of administration, said funding for gifts essentially ends up being what is left over at the end of the semester.

“When you’re a member of SGA, we have appreciation dinners and give you a polo shirt to show that you’re a member,” Nemeth said. “But with assembly members, they don’t really get any recognition for going to meetings every week.”

“The favorite things are a way to give back to assembly.”

It is up to each officer to decide how much of the budget to use, but Nemeth said it is normally around $100.

The officers use the money to buy gifts that represent their personality. They then give the gifts away.

This year, giveaways include  touch-screen gloves, items from the bookstore, Starbucks gift cards and the big prize—from Derek Friederich, vice president of finance—a Keurig.

Nemeth gave out three-month subscriptions to Netflix. He said he figured students could use a break while studying for finals.

“Netflix definitely shows my personality because I love movies, and I love the show “Madmen,” so I use Netflix a lot,” Nemeth said.

SGA assembly is always serious, Nemeth said. The giveaway meeting is a way for members to get to know the officers.

“It is nice because it gives assembly a chance to see the board’s personal side,” he said. “It’s a way to take a break from all the business and have a little fun. It comes at the right time with finals coming up.”

Senior James Pascascio won a scarf from the bookstore last Wednesday. He said he is not a member of assembly but was filling in for the representative of the men’s basketball club.

“It’s pretty cool, the one meeting I happen to go to, I win a prize,” Pascascio said.

Despite being excited about his new winter wear, Pascascio said his thoughts about the giveaways are not completely positive.

“I think it’s more mixed emotions,” Pascasio said. “It’s mixed because they’re using student money to buy gifts for the members. If I’m a student who’s paying my dues, and I catch wind of this, and I’m not benefitting from it, I’m going to start asking questions. ‘How come I didn’t get a prize? How can I be a part of that?’”

Keller said any who attend the assembly meeting the day they give away gifts are eligible to have a chance to receive one.

The last SGA assembly of the semester will bring more gifts.

Keller said Stevan Tomich, vice president of programming, and Marielle Slagel, vice president of operations, combined their gift budgets for a big gift, which they did not have time to prepare before last week’s meeting.

Keller said he did not want to give away any details about what Tomich and Slagel have in store.

Butler Univeristy Police Department and other campus groups will review the recent lockdown on campus.

So far, assessment of the situation has been positive.

“I think, all in all, it went well, but there’s room for improvement,” Assistant Police Chief Andy Ryan said.

Ryan said he recieved positive feedback from students and parents about how the lockdown was handled, especially regarding BUPD’s communication with the campus.

Campus was locked down Sunday, Nov. 4, after a robbery at a nearby CVS turned into a police chase on the campus.

Ben Hunter, executive director of public safety, said a debriefing is being planned with representatives from groups all over campus to review how the lockdown process went from all ends.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘Yeah it went fine from our perspective,’” he said. “That doesn’t mean it went well from other folks’ perspectives.”

Overall, Hunter said he thought the lockdown went well.

“From my standpoint, when no one gets hurt and we’re able to send a message out and we’re able to protect the campus, life and property, it’s a good day,” Hunter said.

Hunter said this doesn’t mean the campus won’t be looking at external and internal processes and how they can improve.

Ryan said deciding when the university should go into lockdown is done on a case-by-case basis.

The dispatcher made the decision in this case, he said. There’s a button in the dispatch center, and, once pressed, the card readers all over campus go into lockdown mode.

The campus was not in a total lockdown at first, Ryan said. BUPD officers had to manually lock some doors that do not have card-reader access at  Gallahue Hall, Robertson Hall, Fairbanks Center and Jordan Hall.

“We could really use some more funding for more card readers,” Ryan said.

Once a lockdown is called, BUPD handles the situation at hand. In this case, officers helped the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department catch one robber.

When the robber was secured, BUPD officers went through each building on campus to search for his accomplice.

During the lockdown, students are expected to listen to BUPD’s communication and stay off campus, but that is not what Assistant Police Chief Bill Weber found.

“When I was out walking, I still saw students out and about,” Weber said. “Just because we lock down a building, we cannot force you to stay in.”

Weber said students might not have listened to BUPD’s warnings because they did not get the message or because students did not feel it applied to them.

Ryan said most students did cooperate, but he said he thinks they might have not taken it seriously at first.

“People have to make informed decisions, and that’s why we’re trying to give them the information as quickly as we could,” he said. “I wish they would trust our judgment as the university police department to recognize the seriousness of the situation.”

Students walking around campus when they should be indoors could also cause confusion with the investigation and search for potential danger, Ryan said.

“IMPD had K-9s with them to help with the search,” Ryan said. “Dogs don’t care who they bite.”

During emergency situations, BUPD only has one dispatcher to field all calls.

Weber said it’s important for students to subscribe to DawgAlert for their email or phone because that is the best way to find out what to do in an emergency situation.

Each department on campus is supposed to have an emergency response plan, Ryan said.

This case was Butler’s first lockdown. Ryan said the only other time the campus has come close to being on lockdown is when Officer James Davis was shot in 2004.

The planned debriefing will take place after Thanksgiving Break.

Butler University colleagues and students remember Amos Carpenter as a man of knowledge and humility.

An extremely organized person (though it wouldn’t look that way, according to faculty in the math department), Carpenter was kind, and he encouraged others’ input and questions.

“He always had a great, big smile with a twinkle in his eye,” Bill Johnston, chair of the math department, said. “He was kind and upbeat. He went on to influence others by that. It was his own Butler Way.”

Carpenter died in his home Oct. 30, after his battle with pancreatic cancer. His wife of 46 years, Della, and his daughter, Boi Carpenter-Mellady, survive him.

Carpenter was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa. He went to England to attend Durham University and University of Leeds and then to the United States to study at Kent State University.

Carpenter came to Butler in 1984. He was the head of the math department from 1992-2000 and again from 2007-2011.

“He was a rock that stabilized the department and upheld the high standards of this department,” Johnston said.

Carpenter was a member of the Mathematical Association of America and received the Distinguished Service Award for the association’s Indiana Section in 2008.

“He was so smart,” Johnston said. “He had a thoroughness that is enviable.”

At the weekly math department meeting, Lacey Echols, coordinator of math support services, remembered Carpenter as someone who loved cheesecake and New Orleans food and who was a wine connoisseur.

She also said he was someone who took an interest in his colleagues.

“He was good at seeing other people’s talents,” Echols said. “He really knew people.”

Kathie Freed, mathematics and actuarial science instructor, said Carpenter not only knew people, but he put everyone at ease.

“He was open to listening,” Freed said. “He never made you think your input wasn’t welcome.

“He would stay with students after class for two hours if he had to. If the student needed another hour, he would stay another hour. It was a part of his giving.”

Junior Lauren Nasci said Carpenter was all about putting students’ learning first.

“You could ask him anything,” said Nasci, who had Carpenter for a complex analysis class. “He was very approachable and amiable. He wanted students to understand the material.”

Sophomore Nathan Ellingsen said he will remember Carpenter for his knowledge.

“There wasn’t something you could ask that he wouldn’t know the answer to,” Ellingsen said. “I really enjoyed having him as a professor.”

Ellingsen said it is unfortunate people won’t be able to take Carpenter’s classes anymore.

“Butler is losing a key component to the math department,” he said.

Nasci said she agreed.

“Butler is losing a great logician, a very friendly man and a math mentor,” Nasci said. “He would find a thousand different ways to teach something to help you understand. He wanted people to learn.”

The Butler University Risk Project is calling on Butler community members to take risks and will begin accepting proposals today.

The goal of the project is to bring the Butler community together in the multidisciplinary project, which has the central theme of risk, said Jessica Moore, assistant communication professor and co-chair of the project.

Moore said in the past, the project has been dominated by proposals submitted by faculty, but this year, the goal is to involve more students and staff.

“My hope as co-chair of the Risk Project is that students, faculty and staff will consider how their individual or collective interest may in some way be framed by the construct of risk,” she said. “Risk is all around us, and taking risks is a certain part of the human condition.”

Moore said some examples of projects the community can engage in are faculty members trying out a new teaching style or dance students exploring a new type of dance not offered at Butler.

Debra Lecklider, associate education professor and co-chair of the project, said she volunteered to be on the committee when she found out the theme was centered on risk.

“I got involved because it ties in perfectly with what the president is trying to do with the changes and innovation he wants to bring to the university,” Lecklider said.

As someone from the College of Education, she said she was especially interested.

“It all goes back to teaching and learning,” Lecklider said.

Lecklider said each individual or group that has a proposal approved will receive a small amount of funding to support the project.

Total funding for the project is $15,000 from the provost’s fund, said Kathryn Morris, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs.

This project is the fourth sponsored by the provost’s office, Morris said.

Past project themes included earth, water and sunset.

The project committee is composed of volunteers from all over campus, Morris said.

She said she sent out an announcement last spring asking for topic suggestions. She then brought together a group of people who submitted ideas, and the conversation led them to this year’s theme of risk.

“We could conceptualize multiple interpretations of the notion of risk,” Morris said in an email. “This gives members of the campus community a lot of leeway in interpreting risk in a way that is interesting to them.”

Morris said the intellectual aspect of the project blends with the university’s mission.

“The goal of the project is to foster a sense of collaboration and intellectual inquiry,” Morris said. “I like the way in which the notion of risk interfaces with President Danko’s emphasis on innovation. Innovation requires risk.”

Proposals will be granted on a rolling basis until funding runs out, Lecklider said. The committee is working on planning an event at the end of the year to recognize people who participated in the project.

“Go forward,” she said. “Try something new. If it fails, it’s not negative. It’s an opportunity to try more new things.”