Scholarship Festival and special keynote highlight academic achievement at Mount Mercy

Mount Mercy University will showcase a rich array of academic achievement, faculty-student research partnerships and interactive demonstrations during the Scholarship Festival on Wednesday, May 2. Events will be held throughout the day, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., in Betty Cherry Heritage Hall and the University Center Commons, culminating with a keynote address by linguist expert Anne Curzan at 4 p.m. in Flaherty Community Room, Basile Hall. The festival is free and open to the public. Seating may be limited.

The Scholarship Festival will showcase diverse student projects, representing a variety of academic subjects which are chosen from outstanding senior theses, capstone experiences, honors projects, and independent research projects. Vibrant poster displays and interactive demonstrations will also be made available throughout the day. Disciplines include history, mathematics, computer science, biology, film studies and chemistry. A few titles of presentations include: “Mutants, Clones and Earthworms,” “Fractals, Cryptography and Clusters,” and “Humor and Human Life.”

Special keynote address by Curzan at 4 p.m. will conclude the day's activities as she explains to audience members fuzzy word usage and puzzling linguistic mysteries. For instance, where did the word “Problematize” originate? Why is it “asterisk” and not “asteriks”? Why do we pronounce “colonel” as “cur-knell”?

Curzan currently serves as associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. She also has faculty appointments in the Department of Linguistics and the School of Education, and currently serves as director of the English Department Writing Program, and co-director of the Joint Ph.D. Program in English and Education.

Curzan works with universities around the country on how to better prepare graduate students for teaching, and is co-author of the book First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student's Guide to Teaching. Curzan has also published the books Gender Shifts in the History of English and How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction (with Michael Adams). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

For the complete schedule of the Scholarship festival, please visit www.mtmercy.edu/fest-info.

To view Curzan's “The Word on Language” video clips, visit: www.lsa.umich.edu/alumni/wire

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