Saint Vincent College is a welcoming environment, sharing the core values of the Benedictine tradition, especially hospitality, community, love, prayer and respect for the dignity of all.
Founded in 1848 by Boniface Wimmer, a monk from Bavaria, we are the first Benedictine college in the United States. Saint Vincent College has striven to embody the ideals and character of the 1,500-year-old heritage of Benedictine education. For 170 years, the monks of Saint Vincent have exemplified and carried on this living Benedictine tradition.
Those who have read my blogs or have taken my classes know that I love to relate popular culture to organizational behavior, leadership and management concepts. For example, recently I facilitated a discussion for Saint Vincent’s Benedictine Leadership Studies program in which we explored transformational and servant leadership in the film Wonder Woman (Jenkins, 2017). I love watching movies and TV shows to see illustrations of concepts that I study and discuss in class. Music is also a big passion of mine, and I am often inspired by that as well (in a previous blog, I wrote about musicians Glenn Miller and Kenny Rogers in relation to leadership).
Most Ph.D. programs require that doctoral candidates pass a comprehensive exam prior to writing their dissertation. Ph.D. stands for “doctor of philosophy” and the “philosophy” that the doctoral candidate studies is typically the viewpoint of a particular specific academic discipline. In my case, I studied the “philosophy” of the management and organizational behavior (with concentrations in human resources and communication) academic disciplines at the University of Cincinnati. In my program, our comprehensive exams were structured like this: students chose to answer one of two questions in a secondary sub-field within management and two of three questions in their primary area of study within management. Students had four hours to answer each question and this portion of the exam took two days. Mid-week, students had a day break before being given a 48-hour portion of the exam where they had to evaluate a piece of research from their primary field, analyze the major findings, articulate what was well-done about the research and suggest what could be improved upon.
Recently, I corresponded with 2008 graduate Jared Bundy about his life and career. Jared was one of my top students both inside and outside of the classroom. His body of work in media at Saint Vincent is unparalleled. In this blog, we discuss what he is doing now, how he got there, and how Saint Vincent guided him along the way.
Last year, I did a recap of my year in video, and I see no reason why I shouldn't do it again. Being that I work in academia, a year for me begins when an academic year ends, so for the purposes of this blog, I will be recapping videos that I made from July 2012 until now.
In September of 2009, we hosted internationally-acclaimed poet Jose Kozer, and in one of his talks, he said that he "measures his life in poems." That makes me think I should start measuring my life in videos. You'll start to see why as you progress through the blog.
I will begin with a video that concluded a series begun the previous year, and that was actor Phillip Winters discussing his role as Art Rooney, Sr. in our summer theatre's production of The Chief.
The next video I'd like to highlight also has a Steelers theme to it. It was the video that played on the big screen at Heinz Field during all home games. This ranks as one of the coolest videos I have ever had the honor making, especially when I saw it play at a Steelers pre-season game.
Once the semester begins, I start documenting many of the campus events that take place, such as...
Freshmen Move-In Day
Service to the Community Day
Homecoming
Founders' Day
December Commencement
This brings me to the winter of 2012-13, which goes down as one of the most productive and rewarding of my entire video-producing career (professionally and personally).
It begins with a road trip to York, PA, to report on our Wimmer Scholarship Recipient.
And finally, Fire and Ice: The Saint Vincent Fire of 1963. I can say with all humility that this is the video I will most be remembered for. It was a daunting project that involved collaboration of the highest level with Jerome Oetgen, Albert Oetgen, Jordan Hainsey and Kim Metzgar.
And as I was wrapping production on the fire documentary, I began production on my thesis film for my Master of Fine Arts degree from Chatham University - The Birthday Present.
On evenings and weekends in February and March, I worked diligently on my thesis, while at work, I continued producing videos for...
Threshold Lecture
Academic Conference
Honors Convocation
Commencement
Summer Theatre
Even as I write this, I cannot believe how fast this year went by, and how many videos I have made.
Because the end product of my work lives on the internet, there is no physical product that I can stack on a shelf, so it is a blog like this that lets me document what I have done.
In putting them all in one place like this, I hope all who helped me can appreciate how much they have done as well.
No doubt you have probably seen one of the several Bearcat on the Street videos either embedded on our homepage or on our (or other) Facebook pages. These videos were produced by students in the Communication course, Advanced Multimedia Production.
The students "on the street" were Carly Marsh, Eric Arbore, Charlie Kurtz, Nick Higgins, Pete McGee, Dillon Monier, Max Schrenk, Krissy Mazzenga, Rory Mitrik, Josh Spellman and DP Harris.
Here is a playlist featuring the series in its entirety.
I call this series version 3.0, because it is the third iteration of the Bearcat on the Street videos.
The series was originally produced in 2009 by students such as Ale Muzika and Sarah Ralutz. Here is one of the more popular episodes produced by them.
The series was revived the following year by students such as Sadie Stresky, Jeremy Smith and Rob DiVincenzo. Take a look back at some of their work.
I hope to continue producing this series as part of my Advanced Multimedia Production course. The videos are at their best when they are made for student by students.
One of my favorite videos is the Wimmer Scholarship Prize Patrol. In my time here at Saint Vincent, I have been a part of four of them. Below you'll see our own Shawn Gouch awarding a full scholarship to Alexander Pawlikowski, a senior at York Catholic high school two weeks ago.
Michelle Gil-Montero is an associate professor of English and director of creative writing at Saint Vincent College. She runs the visiting writers series on campus, oversees the student literary magazine, and serves as guru to aspiring poets on campus. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2007, and she has been on the Saint Vincent faculty since that year. She is an active poet and literary translator from Spanish. She is spending part of the 2016-17 school year travelling to Argentina on a Howard Foundation fellowship and Fulbright grant.
Dr. John J. Smetanka has been a member of the full-time faculty since 1997 and currently serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Academic Dean of Saint Vincent College, a position he has held since January 2008. Dr. Smetanka has taught courses in Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry and Geology as well as interdisciplinary seminars. He has published scientific research articles in physics and astrophysics journals, numerous conference proceedings and also works in science education reform and the interaction between science, technology and theology.
Jim Kellam is an associate professor of biology at Saint Vincent College and our resident ornithologist. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2003, and is taking this semester as a sabbatical. What does that mean? He'll explain in his blog posts.
Dr. Michael J. Urick is Graduate Director of the Master of Science in Management: Operational Excellence program, and Associate Professor of Management and Operational Excellence at the Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics, and Government. Dr. Urick teaches courses related to organizational behavior, human resources, culture, leadership, diversity, conflict, supply chain, operations and research methods. Professionally, Urick serves on the board of the Institute for Supply Management (Pittsburgh) and belongs to the Society for Human Resource Management and APICS. For fun, Urick enjoys music and, since 1998, has led and performed with Neon Swing X-perience, a jazz band that has released multiple albums and toured portions of the US. He enjoys watching movies, is an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction, and also likes to fence.
David Safin, C'00, has been a lecturer in the communication department since the Fall of 2003, and has served in a variety of administrative roles since the summer of 2004. Currently, he teaches multimedia in the communication department as an assistant professor.
Dr. Michael Krom received his Doctorate in philosophy at Emory University in 2007 and is currently the chair of the philosophy department at Saint Vincent. He has authored a book on religion and politics and continues to publish works in Catholic moral and political thought. Dr. Krom also directs the Faith and Reason summer program every summer.
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