SMARTS’ open house will celebrate season

SMARTS’ open house
will celebrate season

YOUNGSTOWN — SMARTS (Students Motivated by the Arts) will hold an open house from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday at the SMARTS Center, 258 Federal Plaza West. The event, which will celebrate the holiday season, will feature hands-on activities for kindergarten through 12th-graders, music, decorating and refreshments. Groups of 10 or more must have reservations; call (330) 941-2787.

Local youth collaborate
with Israeli students

AUSTINTOWN — Eighth-grade students at Austintown Middle School are participating in the International Book Sharing Project with students from Israel and communicating through e-mail about a book written by Uri Orlev. On Thursday, two Israeli teachers will meet with Austintown students and teachers at Austintown Public Library. The event will be open to the public from 7 to 8 p.m.

YSU Heritage Award
seeks nominations

YOUNGSTOWN — The deadline is Dec. 31 to nominate former faculty or administrative staff for the Youngstown State University Heritage Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed upon former faculty and administrative staff for outstanding contributions to the university. Nominees are screened by a 16–person committee of alumni, faculty, staff and YSU Retiree Association representatives.

Award recipients are honored with plaques mounted on the wall of the concourse of Maag Library. Fifty–three awards have been made since the program was initiated in 1981.

Nomination forms are available at the HR Web site, www.cc.ysu.edu/hr and clicking on Heritage Award, or at the Office of Alumni Relations. For more information, contact Carol Kordupel in Human Relations at (330) 941–3360 or cakordupel@ysu.edu.

Students get involved
in extreme leadership

GROVE CITY — This year, area high school students participating in Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV’s monthly Extreme Leadership program are reading the New York Times best-seller, “Our Iceberg is Melting” by John Kotter, leadership and change expert from the Harvard Business School. This fable of a penguin colony in Antarctica is a story about what happens when one curious penguin discovers a potentially devastating crack in their iceberg and how the penguin community reacts to this crisis. The actions that save the colony are based upon the Eight Steps of Change developed by Kotter.

Addressing the first two steps, Create a Sense of Urgency and Pull Together the Guiding Team, featured speakers Army Major Larry Scheetz, a petroleum liaison officer assigned to the 475th Quartermaster detachment, Farrell, Pa., and Valerie Grandy, president of Yellow Ribbon Families, Mercer, Pa.

Major Scheetz started Operation: School House in which school supplies were collected for the 30 elementary schools that volunteers had adopted. Grandy worked with the Red Cross and Services for the Armed Forces to create a support group for military families.

YSU students help
company do survey

YOUNGSTOWN — Fireline Inc., a Youngstown company that manufactures high-performance ceramics, elicited the help of Youngstown State University engineering and science faculty and students for a variety of partnerships over the past few years. Last spring, the company conducted a satisfaction survey of their customers with the help of students from YSU’s Williamson College of Business Administration.

Kimberly Berry, Fireline marketing director, said Amber Gallagher and Stephanie Haschenburger, juniors majoring in marketing and advertising and officers in the YSU chapter of the American Marketing Association, took on the task. They conducted research on customer service, developed a questionnaire, helped distribute the survey to Fireline’s customers, analyzed the results and presented the findings to Fireline.

Westminster to host
alternative market

NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. — Westminster College will host the fourth annual Alternative Gift Market in the Carlson Atrium of McKelvey Campus Center from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday and from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday.

Sponsored by Westminster’s Young Presbyterian Scholars, the market is an outreach and education project staffed by students. Alternative Gifts International is a nonprofit, interfaith agency that educates about global needs and raises funds through its markets.

Campus chapters of the Sierra Student Coalition, The Newman Club, Habitat for Humanity along with Amnesty International, Shoulder to Shoulder Pittsburgh, Kenya Children’s Project and The Silk Road will present displays.