Thiel Happenings

Hall, Rickens honored as December Students of the Month

Thiel College announces Austin Hall ’17, of Beaver Falls, Pa., and Jennifer Rickens ’17, of Pittsburgh, as its December Students of the Month.

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Thiel community rallies to hit United Way goal

During its sesquicentennial celebration, Thiel College employees to pulled together for another historic first for the institution. Staff and faculty combined to pledge more than $10,000 to the United Way of Mercer County.

Organizers–Martin Black, Associate Dean of Career Development; Morgan Steiner ’16, admission counselor; and David Miller ’61, Professor of Economics and Business Administration and Norman P. Mortensen Chair of Economics–thank everyone for their participation. 

“This sends a powerful message to our community,” the group said in a statement. “The campaign committee wishes to express its gratitude to all the donors whose generosity made this milestone possible.”

The deadline to sign up to contribute to the United Way through payroll deduction for 2017 is Thursday. United Way forms can be submitted to Debbie Marosy in Human Resources.

National Society of Leadership and Success induction

The National Society of Leadership and Success held its fall member induction ceremony Dec. 9 in the Stamm Lecture Hall of the James Pedas Communication Center. The event program included a keynote address by Professor of Religion and Director of the Dietrich Honors Institute Curtis Thompson, Ph.D. Thompson is retiring this spring after teaching at Thiel College since 1983.

Honorary membership awards were given to President Susan Traverso, Ph.D.; Vice President for College Advancement Roberta Leonard and Professor of History and Department Chair James Koshan, Ph.D.

Excellence in Teaching awards were given to Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Peter Rydberg, Ph.D.; Professor of Sociology Cynthia Sutton, Ph.D.; and Thompson.

Excellence in Service awards were given to Director of the Counseling Center Melanie Broadwater ’98, Assistant Director of the Career Development Center Clarissa Arbuckle ’11 and Director IT Support and Instructional Technology Eric Ulrich.

Student News

New statistics class culminates in poster presentation

Students from Assistant Professor of Psychology Kristel Gallagher, Ph.D., presented posters from their class Statistics for the Social Sciences on Monday in the Langenheim Memorial Library. The new Department of Psychology course uses the passion driven statistics model (developed by a professor at Wesleyan University from a National Science Foundation grant. Gallegher had two sections this fall with about 30 students. In the course, students learned how to code in a statistical program called SAS. It was a project-based course where students worked the entire semester on labs and assignments related to a single, culminating project.

Game-tying buzzer-beater gets Tomcats national attention

Thiel College guard Tyreik Burton ’18 drained a double-clutch buzzer-beater from half court Saturday against Geneva. The video of Burton’s shot spread on Twitter and made SportsCenter’s Top 10 on Monday. Burton’s shot sent Saturday’s game to double-overtime where the Thiel Tomcats went on to defeat the Geneva Golden Tornadoes, 79-76.

SportsCenter, ESPN’s flagship show, picked up the video and posted it on various nationwide platforms. The video has more than 1,000,000 views on Instagram and more than 1,000 combined likes/shares/retweets on Facebook and Twitter. 

Burton leads the Presidents’ Athletic Conference in points per game (18.6).

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