Archive for February, 2009
February 28, 2009
This is a repost of an entry on the IT&S blog. All members of the community are encouraged to check the blog periodically at http://blogs.guilford.edu/its/ to keep up to date on technology issues that may affect the community.
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Last week we experienced an issue that resulted in external e-mail not being deliverd to Lotus Notes users starting on Feb. 26 around 5 p.m. and ending Feb. 27 at 9 p.m. Due to the volume of queued e-mail during the outage, it was likely mid-week before all the held e-mail was be delivered. IT&S is very aware of the impact this has been having and will continue to have on the community, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
While the current issue has been resolved, IT&S is anticipating that the continually growing volume of SPAM will overwhelm our filtering system on a fairly regular basis. Our expectation is ongoing external delivery delays of up to four hours (and perhaps longer in some cases) to Lotus Notes users. Community members with a need for more consistent delivery of external e-mail are encouraged to consider moving to Google Apps. Information about the process of migrating to Google Apps is available here.
If you are interested in the details of the outage, please read on.
As you may or may not know, our current SPAM filtering system in over five years old and somewhat past its useful life. This issue was one of the technical and financial reasons behind moving to Google Apps. In the last year we have continued to apply different band-aid fixes to try and keep this system running. The primary strategy has been to have yet another server in front of the main one that throws up a large chunk of the SPAM we get before it ever gets to the more advanced filtering system. The secondary strategy has been to route all incoming mail through Google and set our firewall to only allow e-mail from Google’s servers.
As of last week that “fronting” server started being overwhelmed as well and eventually ran out of hard drive space. IT&S staff worked to bring up a new version of that server with more resources, and that was the change we made Thursday. That change required a change at Google in the firewall, and for some reason during that change the firewall wouldn’t let any e-mail from the outside world through to the new server. Because changes at Google cascade over 24 hours through all their servers, It took some time for us to realize we had an issue, and by 5 p.m. yesterday no external e-mail was getting through at all.
After working with Google and our network vendor, we finally resorted to removing the security rule that allowed e-mail only from Google. That has, for now, resolved the delivery issue.
February 27, 2009
TOM PALOMBO earned the Old Dominion Athletic Conference Bob Johnson Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year honors and a school-record three Quakers garnered all-conference laurels Feb. 26. CLAY HENSON ’10 and TYLER SANBORN ’10 were First Team All-ODAC honorees, while RHETT BONNER ’10 garnered second-team recognition. The league’s 11 head coaches nominated and selected the award winners.
Palombo captured his third ODAC Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year Award, one shy of the league record held by former Bridgewater College boss Bill Leatherman. This season marked the first the honor was named for longtime Emory & Henry College men’s basketball coach Bob Johnson. Guilford compiled a 21-4 regular-season mark and captured the top seed for the ODAC Tournament with a 14-2 record. While the Quakers are the defending league champions, Guilford graduated four seniors (three starters) from last year’s club, including two-time ODAC Player of the Year BEN STRONG ’08, a two-time First Team All-American. Palombo’s finished the regular season on an eight-game winning streak into this year’s tourney and was ranked 19th in the Feb. 22 D3hoops.com Top 25 Poll.
The ODAC’s sixth three-time Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year, Palombo won his 200th game as a men’s coach earlier this season and has a 212-114 overall men’s coaching record. He owns a 112-52 mark in six-plus seasons with the Quakers and has guided Guilford to consecutive NCAA Division III Tournament berths. The Virginia Beach, Va., native ranks third on the school’s all-time men’s basketball coaching wins list and has directed seven Quakers to a combined 10 All-ODAC commendations.
A three-time ODAC Player of the Week this year, Henson entered the tournament as the ODAC’s top scorer (19.4 ppg.) and ranked second in the league with 2.88 three-pointers per game. The 6-1, 165-pound guard stood sixth in the conference with a team-high .818 free-throw percentage and seventh with a .385 three-point shooting percentage. He stood 11th among ODAC assists leaders (2.72 apg.). Henson has led Guilford’s scorers 15 times and has 10 20-point games, including a career-high 33-point outing Nov. 25 at Averett University. He became the 28th 1,000-point scorer in school history Feb. 21 versus Randolph College and has set a Guilford record with 187 three-point attempts this season. With a team-best 75 three-pointers, Henson set the school’s season standard.
A 6-10, 255-pound junior center, Sanborn has stepped out of Strong’s shadow and into the limelight with a career year. He entered the tournament averaging 15.1 points per outing and leading the ODAC in rebounds (12.2 rpg.) and blocks (2.42 bpg.). Sanborn ranked fifth among NCAA Division III rebounds leaders and 17th in blocks through games of Feb. 22. His team-best .528 field-goal percentage stood eighth in the league and his scoring average stood ninth. He has a league-best 15 double-doubles, including a career-high 28-point, 16-rebound effort versus North Carolina Wesleyan College Dec. 2. Sanborn corralled a career-best 21 boards Feb. 27 against Washington and Lee, one of his 19 games with 10 or more rebounds.
Bonner, who Feb. 22 captured his second ODAC Player of the Week Award this month, entered the tournament ranked among the league’s top-eight in seven different categories. His 15.7 points per game stood seventh and his .824 free-throw percentage ranked third. The 6-0, 175-pound guard shot just under 41 percent from three-point land and averaged 2.52 trifectas per game, the ODAC’s fourth-best figures. Bonner averaged a club-high 3.40 assists per game, which stood sixth in the conference, and boasted a 1.13 assist-to-turnover ratio. He has scored in double-digits 25 times this season and led the Quakers’ scorers six times. Bonner has six 20-point games this year, including a career-high 28-point effort Feb. 26 versus Washington and Lee.
February 27, 2009
DIYA ABDO’S English senior seminar class presents the third film in the Arab Women Film Series Wednesday, March 18, at 6:30 p.m. in the Joseph M. Bryan Jr. Auditorium. The screening is free and open to the entire campus community.
Algeria: Women at War offers a rare insight into the key role Algerian women played in their country’s liberation struggle from the French over forty years ago and their equally important place in today’s politics. Produced for Channel Four Television, this high-quality documentary uses a combination of interviews and archival footage to ponder the position of women in Algeria in the light of decades of single party rule, the rise of Islam and increasing political violence. It raises critical questions about the balancing act between women’s and national liberation struggles.
For information, contact Diya Abdo at 316-2214 or abdod@guilford.edu.
February 26, 2009
Guilford’s Board of Trustees will be on campus Friday, Feb. 27, and Saturday, Feb. 28, for its winter meeting. The full board meets three times annually to hear from college representatives and conduct business.
On Friday, the trustees will begin with a special plenary session, “Current Economic Issues and Effects on Guilford College.” Committee meetings will follow, along with an opportunity for trustees to see presentations in the Undergraduate Research Symposium.
On Saturday, the regular board meeting will be held, with highlights including an update on the capital campaign, a report on the development of an integrated marketing plan, review of the diversity plan, consideration of FY 2009-10 tuition and fees and the FY 2009-10 budget.
Please welcome the trustees to campus when you see them.
February 26, 2009
O. GORDON BREWER ’60 received the Bob Jones Award–the United States Golf Association’s highest honor–Feb. 21 in Newport Beach, Calif.
The tribute wasn’t lost on the former USGA Executive Committee member, who served from 1996-2001.
“It’s beyond my wildest dreams,” said the 72-year-old Brewer. “It doesn’t get any better than being identified with the man who set the standard, a man of the highest integrity.”
The Bob Jones Award is given for sportsmanship in golf and seeks to recognize a person who emulates Jones’ spirit, his personal qualities and his attitude toward the game and its players.
Since 1955, the list of previous winners reads like a who’s who in the annals of golf. The likes of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gene Sarazan and Nancy Lopez have been honored.
Brewer, a two-time USGA Senior Amateur champion, became passionate about golf at Guilford after playing basketball at the college. It was also where he met his wife, Gail, of 49 years. Brewer acknowledged her with adoration, calling her his “partner and lifelong mate” who has been with him the whole way.
Brewer’s ties with the USGA began with the 1968 U.S. Amateur, his first national championship as a player. Along the way he competed in more than 40 USGA championships.
Off the course, Brewer got involved as a committee member with the USGA in 1981 before ascending to the Executive Committee. The current president of Pine Valley Golf Club, he was the president of the Pennsylvania Golf Association, chairman of the J. Wood Platt Caddie Scholarship Trust Fund and served on the PGA Board of Directors from 2001-03.
After a five-minute introductory highlight video that featured comments by family, friends, including Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, Brewer spoke ardently about the game.
“One fact remains: the primary factor in golf is skill,” he said.
February 26, 2009
In classes and with campus projects, students examine ways to practice environmental sustainability. Recently, a group of students got the chance to see those principles put into action at Greensboro’s Proximity Hotel, the only hotel in the country to earn the U.S. Building Council’s LEED Platinum certification.
“It’s not sustainable to go broke,” the hotel’s owner Dennis Quaintance (a member of Guilford’s Board of Visitors) told students in Political Science 319: Modern Environmental Problems and IDS 400: Environmental Planning. In designing, building and operating Proximity, Quaintance has to balance his passionate commitment to environmental sustainability with the bottom line.
“If we’re going to change the way corporations behave, then we’re going to have to make [sustainability] more profitable,” he said. “Absent an environmental emergency, there’s one of two ways that’ll make a difference. There’s a market difference–that is, it becomes popular…The only other way is by a slow build-up of regulations. As a capitalist, I’d prefer it come from the market–from all of us realizing how powerful we are.”
A great deal of thought went into Proximity’s design and construction. LEED standards reward not only tangible structures like solar panels, but also construction methods (such as recycling waste) and the quality of the occupant’s experience in the finished building (focusing on everything from air quality to the availability of natural light).
Quaintance described to the students how his team decided to use “sandwich panels”–layers of concrete and carbon fiber, which does not conduct heat–on the building’s exterior. Not only do the concrete panels reduce the amount of wood used in the building, but with no space in the walls for mold or mildew to grow, air quality is improved. (The concrete mix also contains four percent fly ash, removing hundreds of thousands of pounds of the coal byproduct from landfills.)
Many commercial developers shy away from sustainable practices because they’re wary of increased costs, Quaintance said. Contractors who are unfamiliar with sustainable construction options often charge extra for some services. Quaintance insists that many of the methods used building Proximity–such as recycling almost 90 percent of construction waste–added very little to the initial costs. But more importantly, Proximity will be cheaper to operate over time. Already, the building uses 41 percent less energy than a typical hotel/restaurant of its size.
Quaintance says that building Proximity to be as environmentally sound as possible was personally important to him. “Your influence transcends your lifetime,” he said, something that he says he didn’t realize until after he and his wife had children.
“We wanted to make a sincere effort to adjust the trajectory of our generation,” he said. “And we thought the best way to do that was in a suit and tie, not with an axe and a log cabin out in Montana.”
To read more about sustainable practices at Proximity Hotel, click here.
For more about Guilford’s sustainability initiatives, click here.
February 26, 2009
An upcoming exhibition at the Guilford College Art Gallery documents life in the Amazon and destruction of the area by multinational companies. “The Road and The Wilderness: Beauty & Destruction in the Peruvian Amazon” is a moving collection of paintings, photographs, maps and video by artist DAVID HEWSON ’89.
The exhibition will run from March 16-April 29, and a “meet the artist” reception will take place Tuesday, March 31, from 5-7 p.m. Both the gallery exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.
Hewson has been living in Iquitos, Peru since 2006, painting, studying shamanism and observing the dismantling of the area’s native culture and ecosystem. In addition to pieces chronicling the negative impacts of the oil, mining and lumber companies on the rain forest, Hewson includes portraits of “curanderos” (healers) and paintings of the myths and legends of the jungle centered around plant-healing shamanism.
Hewson graduated from Guilford with a double major in sculpture and economics, and then moved to New York, where he apprenticed in the studio of Marco Grassi, an Old Master painting restoration specialist. He then spent several years in Italy, where he studied drawing at the Florence Academy of Art and later earned a diploma in conservation of paintings on canvas and wood panel at the Istituto per l’Arte e il Restauro, Palazzo Spinelli.
A practicing artist for two decades, Hewson has completed major commissions in churches and hospitals in North Carolina and Virginia. In addition to Italy and Peru, he has also traveled extensively in India.
The Guilford College Art Gallery is located in Hege Library. Its operating hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and on Sundays from 2-5 p.m. For more information, call 316-2438 or visit the Art Gallery Web page.
February 26, 2009
SANDRA ANN WINTERS, continuing part-time lecturer in English, will have a poem published in the fall issue of The North Carolina Literary Review.
Winters also read her Irish poetry collections at the Cork Poetry Society, Cork City, Ireland, on Dec. 31. The reading received good reviews.
February 26, 2009
Past residents of Mary Hobbs Hall, Guilford’s historic women’s cooperative residence hall, will hold a reunion on campus April 17-19. Registration will continue through March 27.
Planned activities will explore the history and legacy of the groundbreaking community, which operated as a co-op for more than 90 years, including discussions of life in Mary Hobbs Hall over the decades and on the hall’s founder, MARY MENDENHALL HOBBS. For a full schedule of events, click here.
MIRIAM LEIVA ’61 will give the keynote address at the luncheon on Saturday. Leiva, who lived in Mary Hobbs Hall, is Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Emerita at UNC Charlotte. She was the first woman for whom English is a second language to earn a doctorate in mathematics/mathematics education in the United States.
Throughout the weekend, Friends Historical Collection will collect oral history interviews with former Hobbs residents of all ages to be added to the college’s archives. Interviews typically can be conducted in under an hour. To schedule an interview, contact the Friends Historical Collection at 316-2264.
Mary Hobbs Hall opened in 1907 (named New Garden Hall at the time). Mary Mendenhall Hobbs, the wife of the college’s president LEWIS LYNDON HOBBS, envisioned cooperative housing where female students could prepare their own meals and perform their own housekeeping in exchange for lower board costs. Generations of women were able to attend Guilford because of the reduced costs. Mary Hobbs Hall’s dining room closed in 1997. The building remains a residence hall for women. Read about life in Mary Hobbs Hall in the fall 2008 issue of the Guilford College Magazine.
For more information about the reunion of Mary Hobbs Hall residents, contact the Office of Alumni Relations by calling 336-316-2321 or e-mailing alumni@guilford.edu.
February 26, 2009
Guilford is accepting nominations for the 2007 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards through March 6.
The award honors “excellence of character and service to humanity” by a resident of the Triad and a graduating senior at Guilford. The recipients will be recognized during the college’s spring awards convocation April 15.
The award was established in 1925 by the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation to honor the man for whom it was named. Sullivan made important charitable contributions to the welfare of young people in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Guilford is among a select group of colleges and universities authorized to present the award.
Past community recipients of the award are Joseph M. Bryan Jr. in 2002, Jessie Lee Howard in 2003, Stanley Frank in 2004, Alan Duncan in 2005, JAMES F. MORGAN ’66 in 2006, Omer A. Omer in 2007 and W. GROOME FULTON JR. ’60 in 2008.
Past student recipients are SHANEENA ROBERTSON in 2002, JACQUELINE GASKILL in 2003, KENYONA “SUNNY” MATTHEWS in 2004 and ELIZABETH BALOF-BIRD in 2005, HATICE DOGAN in 2006, JADA MONICA DREW in 2007 and IRVING ZAVALETA-JIMENEZ in 2008.
Nominations will be accepted via an official form that may be obtained from HELEN ALLEN in the Office of Advancement by calling 336-316-2166 or e-mailing hallen2@guilford.edu. Letters of support may accompany the nomination forms. All materials must be submitted by the deadline of March 6.
The community recipient shall not have been an employee of Guilford for at least five years before the nomination.
