MSUM News/ December 2004
16 students study abroad this spring...
Student drawing, illustration sale...
Santa Land Diaries on stage Dec. 11...
December music events...
Student art exhibit opens...
MSUM graduates 435 in Dec. 17 ceremony...
Hearing impaired grade takes advantage of technology...
MSUM WILL GRADUATE 435 DURING
WINTER COMMENCEMENT FRIDAY
MSUM will award degrees to more than 435 graduates during its winter commencement program at 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17 at the Fargo Civic Auditorium.
Paul Marquart, beginning his third term as the Minnesota District 9B Representative and in his 21st year as a social studies teacher at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton High School, will deliver the commencement address.
Marquart was Dilworth’s mayor for 11 years before being elected to the Legislature. A graduate of the University of North Dakota, he earned a master’s degree in education administration from Tri-College University.
A reception for graduates, faculty, parents and guests will be held in the Centennial Hall, adjacent to the auditorium, following the recessional.
16 MSUM STUDENTS STUDY
OVERSEAS SPRING SEMESTER
The following MSUM students will be studying overseas spring semester, leaving in January or February:
Becky Johnson (Spanish major) will be studying at Universidad de Murcia in Murcia, Spain.
Rebecca Oster (English), Mollie Parks (Accounting) and Siri Larson (Undecided) will be exchange students at Keele University in Keele, England.
Katharine Middendorf (English / Mass Communications), Abby Peterson (English / Mass Communications) and Melanie Rudd (Mass Communications) will spend spring semester at Lincoln University in Lincoln, England.
Cortney Baso will study at Bond University in Gold Coast, Australia.
Megan Zadach (Biology), Lauren Stonehouse (Mass Communications), Tiffany Yarborough (Undecided), Eric Molitor (Political Science), Michael Monnat (Undecided), Sarah Feigum (Social Work), Megan Smith (Criminology) ) and Emily Puffer (Biology/Chemistry) will all be at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Maroochydore, Australia.
Rachel Stoos will be studying in Australia and New Zealand through Winona State University.
STUDENT DRAWING, ILLUSTRATION SALE DEC. 2 & 3
MSUM Drawing and Illustration division of the Department of Art and Design will be holding its annual Holiday Sale in conjunction with the Ceramics Guild on December 2 and 3. The sale will be held in the Comstock Memorial Union. Student and faculty work will be for sale. Some of the proceeds will be donated to student scholarship funds.
Talented drawing and illustration majors will also be doing caricatures on site from photographs or from life.
Hours of the sale are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m, Thursday and Friday. For more information: shortsh@mnstate.edu/477-2310.
SANTA LAND DIARIES ON STAGE DEC. 11
A wickedly funny one-man play, “Santa Land Diaries”, based on the short story by NPR commentator and best-selling author, David Sedaris, will be performed by professional actor Ray Schultz at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11 in MSUM’s Roland Dille Center for the Arts Gaede State.
The play recounts the writer's short-lived career as a Macy's holiday elf, having to deal with obnoxious customers, the pains of elf training, and the varying, and often weird techniques of different Santas - all the while trying to maintain an aura of dignity.
For tickets, $10, call the MSUM theatre box office, 477-2204.
Schultz is on the staff at the University of Minnesota-Morris.
DECEMBER MUSIC AT MSU MOORHEAD
The Minnesota State University Moorhead Concert Choir and Chamber Singers will present a concert Thursday, Dec. 2 at 8 p.m. at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1000 14th St. S., Moorhead. Directed by Charles Ruzicka, it will also feature the Symphony Orchestra performing Antonio Vivalidi’s “Gloria.”
The MSUM Wind Ensemble performs Sunday, Dec. 5 at 3 p.m. in Weld Hall Glasrud Auditorium.
MSUM Festival Choirs will be in concert Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1000 14th St. S., Moorhead.
MSUM STUDENT ART EXHIBIT OPENS DEC. 6
A Minnesota State University Moorhead student art exhibit featuring the work of four art students graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree will be on display Dec. 6-16 in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts gallery.
• Jessica Teckemeyer, sculpture, is the daughter of Robert and Anne Teckemeyer, Frazee.
• John Berry, painting, is the son of Charles and Mary Lou Berry, Brookings, S.D.
• Erin Zellers, graphic design, is from Breckenridge. She and her husband, Kevin, live in Fargo, N.D.
• Jocelyn Suess, graphic design, is the daughter of John and Yvonne Suess, Williston, N.D.
A reception for the artists will be held from 4-6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9 in the gallery. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.
Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Friday.
He’ll ‘listen’ to the ceremony through his laptop…
HEARING IMPAIRED GRAD TAKES
ADVANTAGE OF NEW TECHNOLGIES
Walking on the mall this fall, Chris Ficek thought he heard the sound of a saxophone coming from inside the Roland Dille Center for the Arts.
“Impossible,” he said to himself.
When he asked his girlfriend if she heard it too, she said yes.
“Amazing,” said Ficek, a senior Graphic Communications major at Minnesota State University Moorhead. “I’d never heard that before.”
That’s because Ficek, “profoundly” deaf since birth, was wearing new digital hearing aids, which he acquired over the summer.
It’s just another use of digital technology that’s made the Minot, N.D., native’s life more enjoyable.
While Ficek still can’t hear birds chirping or bees buzzing, or even his alarm clock ringing in the morning, he’s acquired a unique way of “listening” to his classroom instructors’ lectures using his laptop computer, a receiver, a wireless microphone, an Internet connection and a transcription service that provides him with real-time captioning of what’s said in class.
With less than a three-second delay, the instructor’s spoken words are sent through Ficek’s computer to a transcription service in California that uses a legal stenography machine to translate spoken words into printed text, which he can read on his laptop and save as notes.
“It’s similar to what they do in closed-captioning on national television,” he said.
Ficek will take advantage of that same technology during MSUM’s winter graduation at 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17. While waiting to accept his degree, he’ll “listen” to the proceedings by following a text transcription of it on his laptop computer.
The university’s information technology department, with the help of 702 Communications, provided an Internet connection to the Civic Auditorium that will allow Ficek to connect to his transcription service. Speakers at graduation will wear a wireless microphone.
“I can’t say enough about the technology or the people at MSUM who believed in Chris,” says his mother Koletta. “It’s given him the confidence he needed to finish college and develop faith in his own abilities.”
Ficek, who’ll graduate with magna cum laude honors, says he’s dealt with his hearing loss by using hearing aids and lip reading.
“I decided not to learn sign language because I didn’t want to separate myself from the ordinary world,” he said.
He doesn’t consider himself part of the “capital D” Deaf culture, which relies almost exclusively on sign language to communicate.
Caused by a hereditary disorder, Ficek’s father, brother and sister also have varying degrees of hearing loss. His, however, is the most severe.
“I was about three years old when I got my first hearing aid,” he said. “Through most of elementary school, I was placed in special education classes, where I learned to read and write, to lip read, and worked with a speech therapist. But I just wasn’t learning the basics of math, science and English.”
His parents had to intercede. “It’s been a constant struggle trying to get the proper help for Chris,” she said.
From seventh grade on, Ficek was mainstreamed in most of the classes, but still needed some tutoring. He nevertheless managed to graduate with honors.
In both elementary and high school, teachers in Minot accommodated Ficek by using an “auditory trainer” system in the classroom. Similar to how FM radios work, the system used a microphone to amplify the teacher’s voice and transmitted the sound to Ficek, who wore a receiver. Although a cutting edge kind of technology for its time, it was cumbersome, requiring lots of wires.
Always enchanted by computers, Ficek studied industrial technology at UND, then transferred for one semester to NDSU. Unhappy at his progress and accommodations, he reevaluated his choices.
The more he worked with computers, the more he liked graphic communications. He enrolled at MSUM in the fall of 2001.
“My mom, an early intervention specialist working with a state infant development program at Minot State, helped set me up in the dorms at MSUM. She’s always studied the technology developments for the hearing impaired, and she approached Greg Toutges, the MSUM coordinator of disability services. They made it all happen.”
Toutges arranged the details of acquiring the computer add-ons and the closed-caption transcription services.
“My TDD (telecommunications device for the deaf) telephone and alarm clock are connected to a vibrator in my bed,” he said. “So are the fire and smoke alarms in my room, which are also linked to strobe lights that flash in case of a fire alert.
The digital hearing aid he acquired this summer actually stunned him.
“That’s when I heard a car drive by my house for the first time,” he said. “But what really surprised me happened one day when I was talking to my mother, and all of a sudden I heard and understood my father talking on the phone behind me.”
His hearing loss, estimated to be about 80 percent, doesn’t prevent him from appreciating music. “I can hear the music, meaning the beats, the rhythms and the melodies. But unless I memorize the words, or read along with the CD notes, I can't understand the lyrics very well.”
His hearing loss doesn’t even prevent him from going to dances. “I can feel the vibration of the bass notes. And with my new digital hearing aids, those bass notes are much crisper when I do hear them.”
While his mother said Chris has always been a happy, smiley character as a youngster, and somewhat of a prankster, his personality seemed to have blossomed at MSUM.
“I think what happened is Chris finally believed someone in school had faith in him––Greg Toutges, I mean––which gave him the self-confidence he needed.”
Ficek admits he came out of a shell of sorts after arriving at MSUM. “I didn’t know anyone on campus, so to introduce myself I played a few pranks on my neighbors in the dorm. Nothing dangerous—maybe tying door knobs together with garbage bags, or leaning a cup of water against their door.”
He maintained a 3.7 overall grade point average, and a perfect 4.0 in his major. “My senior project is a tutorial on Web accessibility, and although I haven’t found a job yet, I’d like to work in web design, multi-media, animations, even drafting.”
Although Ficek’s speech is somewhat atonal and words occasionally blur together, he isn’t difficult to understand. He does, however, rely on lip reading to understand most conversations.
“What I want people to understand is that, although I have a few limitations,” he said, “ I’m no different than anyone else.”