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Aug. 24, 2006

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St. Bonaventure treats students to world-class dining experience

Students arriving at St. Bonaventure University this fall, still savoring the memory of their last home-cooked meal and wishing they could bring mom along as a personal chef, are in for a treat.

The University, partnered with ARAMARK Higher Education Services, has reinvented the on-campus dining experience. With University dining services offering greater quality, variety, convenience and flexibility than ever before, St. Bonaventure students will have no problem surviving without mom’s cooking.

Before even taking their first bite, students will notice the convenience and flexibility of the University’s seven dining facilities. Students have the ability to grab a meal, refuel, or simply meet with friends anytime between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m. in at least one of the locations, including Hickey Dining Hall, Reilly Center Café, Francis Café, the Rathskeller, Heavenly Grounds, Clubhouse Restaurant and, coming soon, the Hickey Café.

Hickey Dining Hall, which, after major summer renovations, has been transformed into a friendly, comfortable all-you-care-to-eat facility, is the perfect place for students to find what they crave.

“This is a new, renovated, beautiful space,” said Anthony Criscone, director of dining services at St. Bonaventure. “The campus dining experience at SBU is going to be one of the best in the United States. It will be renowned and envied by other companies and universities around the country.”

The major residential dining hall on campus, Hickey now offers a wider variety of food choices. Students can enjoy made-to-order meals, international specialties or home-style entrées from the new Mongolian grill, a made-to-order sandwich station, centerpiece brick pizza oven, grill area, carving station, waffle station or refrigerated dessert cart.

Greg Farris is the new executive chef at the University. A native of Rochester, N.Y., Farris worked as produce category manager for Wegmans Food Markets for 10 years before receiving his culinary arts degree from Florida Culinary Institute in West Palm Beach, Fla. He spent the last six years as the executive chef at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

“I am very excited to be back in New York and here at St. Bonaventure. It is a beautiful campus, and we have a truly amazing dining facility,” Farris said.

Farris said students can expect higher-quality, fresher food choices, with about 80 percent of the food being prepared in front of them.

“Traditionally, a lot of food in institutional settings would be cooked all at once and then parked in warmer boxes to sit until it was needed,” Farris said. “Obviously that led to very poor food quality.”

The new deli, pizza, pasta and grill stations will all be exhibition stations where students will have direct contact with the cooks preparing the food. At the Mongolian Grill, a concept that has become popular in large metropolitan areas, students will select their food choices from a refrigerated display case and hand the selection off to a cook, who will then prepare the meal quickly on the Mongolian Grill surface. Students will have their choice of sauces and toppers as their meal is finished.

“The Mongolian Grill is a very exciting station concept, though the name itself may be a bit misleading for folks who aren’t ‘foodies.’ The basic idea is to allow your guests to become part of the experience,” Farris said. “The important thing to stress is that Mongolian Grill does not mean Mongolian food or necessarily even Asian for that matter.”

Sensitive to the unique tastes and needs of its students, St. Bonaventure dining services is delighted to introduce vegan, vegetarian, low-fat and low-carb meal options. “There will be a vegetarian or vegan option at every station and every meal. These will range from having the ability to substitute tofu for the protein on the pasta or Mongolian Grill stations, to having complete vegetarian or vegan entrees,” Farris said.

Dan Palombo, district manager for ARAMARK Higher Education, Eastern Region, said the transformation of St. Bonaventure’s dining services is extreme.

“There’s transformation with the new design of Hickey and major transformation in the types of foods and quality of foods we’ll be bringing to the University community. We’ll be launching new programs, new types of foods and cooking styles, all of which are more on trend with today’s colleges and universities,” Palombo said.

For the health-conscious student, nutritional information for most menu items will be readily available in Hickey at nutritional kiosks, a rare feature on college campuses. “Nutritional awareness is something we are keenly aware of,” Palombo said. “We’ll have an extensive salad bar, with not only salad, but also fresh soups and items of that nature.”

Nutritional facts, along with weekly menus, dining hours, employment opportunities and much more, can also be found on the dining services Campus Dish Web site at www.sbudining.com.

University dining services, recognizing that students will be living on campus for the better part of the academic year, strive to make the dining experience unique and enjoyable with exciting special events, premium monthly specials and holiday festivities.

Best of all, students with a meal plan can come and go into Hickey Dining Hall as they wish with the new anytime access plan. This means meal plans are no longer based on a set number of meals for students to use.

“Students can come and go as they please, whether for a full meal, a quick snack or a sit-down with friends,” Criscone said. “It is on their time frame.”

Students living in residence halls are required to choose from one of the University’s three meal plan options – Bona Platinum, Bona Gold or Bona Silver. Each includes the anytime access plan to Hickey Dining Hall, seven days a week. Bona Platinum and Bona Gold also include 300 and 150 flex dollars, respectively, which can be used in the RC Café, the future Hickey Café, the Rathskeller, Hickey Dining Hall and Concessions.

Townhouse and off-campus students have the option of purchasing the Advantage 500 plan, or the Advantage 300 plan, which include 500 and 300 flex dollars respectively. Off-campus students, as well as faculty and staff, can also purchase block meal plans with 25, 50 or 70 meals to use.

Opening soon, a 5,500-square-foot Hickey Café, complete with wireless capabilities and an outdoor terrace, will feature a wide selection of gourmet coffees, teas and blended fruit smoothies. With comfortable couches for relaxing and ample table space for working, Hickey Café will also offer fresh and healthy soups, sandwiches, salads and delicious desserts.

The reinvention of dining services at St. Bonaventure was completed with the students’ interests in mind. Input from more than 600 students, staff and faculty helped to determine the future of dining at the University.

“Food service is not standardized. It is an evolution. It constantly evolves to be more and more tailored to students. Students we are serving today are not the same students we will be serving tomorrow, so we strive on communication. We want to know what students want, and we want to tailor our services to fit these desires,” Criscone said.

To learn what students want, the University will conduct online surveys twice a year for students, faculty and staff to provide feedback about their dining experiences. There will also be a food service committee with students that meets bi-weekly to address any food or dining suggestions or concerns. Many of the changes in the program from semester to semester and year to year will be a direct result from the voices of the students on the committee.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony and blessing of the new Hickey Dining Hall will be held for the campus community on Thursday, Aug. 24.

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SBU remains 'Great School' at a 'Great Price' in national rankings

U.S.News & World Report has again rated St. Bonaventure University among the best college values in the nation.

St. Bonaventure placed 12th in the magazine’s annual “Great Schools, Great Prices” ranking for master’s-level universities and colleges in the North. The University also finished in the top 20 percent overall of the best northern regional universities, ranking 31st out of the 165 colleges and universities in the region.

The 572 institutions in the 2007 “Best Universities – Master’s” category, which provide a full range of undergraduate and master’s-level programs, are divided into four regions: North, South, Midwest and West. They are then ranked in tiers on criteria including peer assessment, retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate and alumni giving.

The “Great Schools, Great Prices” ranking relates a school’s academic quality to the cost of attendance for a student receiving the average level of need-based financial aid. More than 70 percent of Bonaventure students received need-based aid in 2005, discounting a student’s total cost to attend the University by almost 40 percent.

“These rankings again reinforce the value of a degree from St. Bonaventure,” said University president Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., S.T.D. “With all the exciting new construction projects going on here, from the spectacular renovation of Hickey Dining Hall that will greet returning students next week to the ongoing work on our new science center, I’m certain we’re on the path to becoming an even greater value.”

“America's Best Colleges,” produced annually by U.S.News & World Report, serves as a guidebook for college-bound students. A complete listing may be found on the magazine’s Web site (www.usnews.com).

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Author Ron Suskind to discuss 'A Hope in the Unseen' on campus

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind will be on the St. Bonaventure University campus Thursday, Sept. 28, for a free lecture at 8:15 p.m. in the Reilly Center Arena. The public is invited.

Suskind is the author of “A Hope in the Unseen, An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League,” (Doubleday/Broadway, 1998), which follows the two-year journey of a prickly, religious honor student as he escapes from a blighted Washington, D.C., terrain to find a home at Brown University. The book, which was launched by a series in The Wall Street Journal that won him the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, has been a favorite on U.S. campuses and in book clubs. Hundreds of universities and colleges across the nation have used his book in the classroom. This year, the freshman reading program, All Bonaventure Reads, selected “A Hope in the Unseen” as the common text all first-year students were asked to read before coming to campus in August.

Relying on unique access to former and current government officials, Suskind’s latest book, “The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies since 9/11,” reveals for the first time how the U.S. government — from President Bush on down — is frantically improvising to fight a new kind of war. Suskind shows readers what he calls “the invisible battlefield” — a global matrix where U.S. spies race to catch soldiers of jihad before they strike.

Suskind’s previous book, “The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill,” was a sweeping tour of the inner working of the Bush administration. The New York Times No. 1 Bestseller follows the two-year arc of Paul O’Neill, the former Treasury Secretary and a principal of the National Security Council, as he and other senior officials assess the conduct and character of this presidency. Forbes selected “Price” as the “Business Book of the Year,” Fortune cited it as one of the 75 “smartest” books ever written, and it was awarded first prize as Best Book of 2004 by the Investigative Reporters and Editors.

From 1993 to 2000, Suskind was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal. He was a contributor to “Profiles in Courage for Our Times,” (Hyperion, 2002), along with other prize-winning authors. He writes for various national magazines, including The New York Times Magazine and Esquire magazine. His Oct. 17, 2004, cover story in The New York Times Magazine — “Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush” — is widely cited among the most definitive articles about President Bush in recent times.

Suskind has appeared on various network news programs as a correspondent or essayist and is a distinguished visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and lives in Washington with his wife, Cornelia Kennedy Suskind, and their two sons.

Suskind’s visit is sponsored by St. Bonaventure’s Journey Project and First-Year Experience initiative. For more information about the author, go to http://www.ronsuskind.com/about/.

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Constance Pierce showcases her art at Houghton College

Constance Pierce, artist and assistant professor of visual arts at St. Bonaventure University, has opened a solo exhibition of her works at The Ortlip Gallery at The Houghton College Center for the Arts.

The exhibition, titled Bearing Witness, features works on paper including several series of drawings, monotypes, intaglio prints and photographs.

Two of the most dominant series of works in the exhibition express the theme of Bearing Witness in different ways. One series emerges from Pierce’s personal experience and the other series expresses itself through universal archetypes. Both series, though in different media, utilize black and white in powerful ways.

Lamentations of War, a series of drawings in graphite and wash, offer a sequence of intense images presenting the haunting and disturbing consequences of world dissonance and division. Works titled “The Lost Children,” “The Dispossessed” and “The Prisoner Bound” explore difficult issues of faith and ethics.

“I am compelled by sacred narrative in a contemporary idiom,” Pierce said. “I hope to express the betrayed, the imprisoned and the afflicted, yet also the presence of divinity in ministering spirits alive upon the earth. These figures, in their mythic and consuming drama, reveal to me ancient archetypes reborn in our current world.”

Appalachian Spring, another series of figurative works, is comprised of nine photographs. The series tells the story of a chance meeting the artist had with an Appalachian family when she was driving on the back roads through southern Ohio.

“When I first saw the family they were sitting on a bare plank porch illuminated by the purple light of a summer storm. I stopped and we talked all afternoon and they let me take the photographs. Even in their isolation and poverty, I sensed, in spite of everything, an elemental strength and a consciousness of the earth,” Pierce said. “I was aware of a certain delicacy in their eyes that has long haunted me. I felt I was able to tell some of their story through these photographic images.”

Other works in this exhibition include several intaglio and monotype prints. Pierce considers the monotype printmaking process a contemplative spiritual practice. She teaches a simple form of monotype to students in her Imaging Journal course and in her Clare 109 Arts and Literature course at St. Bonaventure.

Pierce is a graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Art. She did her graduate work at The Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, studying with the renowned abstract expressionist painter Grace Hartigan. Since then she has exhibited regionally, nationally and in Europe. Her sketchbooks and prints are included in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Women in the Arts, The National Gallery of Art Rare Book Library and The Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, all in Washington, D.C. She has also served as artist-in-residence at The Henry Luce III Center for Art and Religion in Washington, D.C., and was a research fellow at The Yale Divinity School before coming to St. Bonaventure.

Her solo exhibition at The Ortlip Gallery of The Houghton College Center for the Arts will run through Sept. 1. Gallery Hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Houghton College will host a reception for the artist on Sept. 1 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. with a gallery talk at 7 p.m. All are welcome to attend.

To get to Houghton College, take Route 86 East to exit 30 and then turn left on Route 19 to Houghton. For more information, contact Pierce at (716) 375-2696 or cpierce@sbu.edu.

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ARAMARK matches quality dining program with quality staff

To implement its first-rate dining services program at St. Bonaventure University, ARAMARK Higher Education Services has enlisted a first-rate dining services management team.

The team is led by Anthony Criscone, the new food service director at the University. Criscone is a 13-year veteran of the food services and business world. He has spent the last six years with ARAMARK, as food service director for St. Joseph University in Philadelphia and then Vasser College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. ARAMARK has partnered with St. Bonaventure to provide dining service management.

“I was able to elevate food services at these institutions,” Criscone said. “Over the years, we have received some of the highest student survey results as compared to the national average.”

Criscone is optimistic he can achieve the same results at St. Bonaventure. He is supported by a staff of experienced and dedicated food services personnel.

Mary Isaman and Amy Vleminckx are returning to the University’s dining services staff as members of ARAMARK’s new team.

Isaman has been with St. Bonaventure since December of 2002 when she became assistant manager at the Clubhouse Restaurant. Becoming manager in February 2003, she worked with all areas of the Clubhouse, including scheduling, inventory, cost control, menu development, banquet reservations and budget control.

In March of this year, Isaman assumed the role of catering manager in addition to her responsibilities at the Clubhouse. After the University partnered with ARAMARK in June, Isaman was hired by the new management as director of catering at the University and director of operations at the Clubhouse.

Isaman, who has her associate’s degree in liberal arts and human services from Cazenovia College, has been working in all areas of the restaurant industry since 1984. She has experience as server, bartender and dining room supervisor and in catering and inventory.

“I have a deep connection to area people who I have developed a relationship with through this industry,” Isaman said. “Customer satisfaction is very important to me. I have also established some very close connections to the St. Bonaventure community through my job at the Clubhouse and now on campus.”

Isaman is currently working toward her bachelor’s degree at St. Bonaventure University, where she plans to major in accounting with a finance minor. She has experience in banking, especially working with loans, mortgages and escrow accounts.

Amy Vleminckx joined the dining services staff at St. Bonaventure in 2004 as cash operations manager for the Reilly Center Cafe. Under ARAMARK she is serving as the director of residential dining.

With her bachelor’s degree in hotel, restaurant and institutional management from Mercyhurst College, Vleminckx has been involved in higher education since 1999. She worked at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford as the general manager of food service before coming to St. Bonaventure in 2004.

Prior to her career in education services, she worked in the health care industry for nine years holding various management positions in food service. “This is my third dining services renovation,” Vleminckx said. “I should be a pro at this by now.”

Vleminckx lives in Bradford, Pa., with her husband and two children.

Isaman and Vleminckx are just two of the experienced dining services staff members ARAMARK has hired to oversee its top-rate dining services program. Dan Palombo, district manager for ARAMARK’s Eastern Region Campus Services, said ARAMARK strives toward four main goals – transformation, growth, community and loyalty.

“Whenever we come in to partner with a university we strive to work with that university’s goals and plans and try to assist them in any way we can,” Palombo said. Criscone said his team is always looking for friendly, ambitious and enthusiastic students who are interested in job opportunities in the food service industry.

“We want to have as many students as possible,” Criscone said. “We strive on putting students in these positions.”

To learn more about employment opportunities and other members of the Dining Services staff, visit the Campus Dish Web site at www.sbudining.com. In order to continuously enhance their services, staff members welcome any questions or feedback concerning the dining experience at St. Bonaventure. Contact information can be found on the Web site.

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Search committee named for athletics director's position

St. Bonaventure University president Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., S.T.D., has appointed the search committee for the position of athletics director.
George Solan, vice president for Student Life, will chair the committee. The rest of the committee is: Dr. Patrick Casey, director of education leadership; Danielle Grobmyer, a senior student-athlete on the women’s swimming team; Paul Grys, an alumni from the class of 1971; Heather Jackson, University registrar; Tracy Schrems, professor of English; Anthony Solomon, head men’s basketball coach; Larry Sorokes, dean of the Cattaraugus County Campus of Jamestown Community College and a 1982 St. Bonaventure graduate; and Dr. Denny Wilkins, professor in the Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication and St. Bonaventure’s faculty athletic representative.

The committee, which will begin work this week, is charged with finding a successor for Dr. Ron Zwierlein, who has been at St. Bonaventure since the start of 2004 and will finish a three-year tenure.

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Paul Moore returning to University Relations staff

Paul Moore will be rejoining the St. Bonaventure University Relations staff as executive director of development and senior major gifts officer for one year beginning Aug. 28.

Moore will be covering the maternity leave of Andrea Triscuzzi, associate vice president for development and campaign director, and handling certain responsibilities, as needed, during the medical leave of Matt Tornambe, director of major gift and planned giving. Tornambe’s leave begins on Aug. 23.

Moore's primary duties will be to take over the travel responsibilities of Triscuzzi and Tornambe, to be the point person for overall campaign benchmarks, and to handle managerial duties for the major gifts and planned giving programs when needed. Moore will be spending about two weeks every month on campus, with the rest of his time spent on the road or at his regional office in Florida.

Moore was at St. Bonaventure as director of planned giving and then senior director of development planning from 2000-2005.

Before coming to St. Bonaventure, he was a planned giving officer at the American Cancer Society in Florida. His most recent position was at the University of Florida as associate director of development for planned giving.

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Newsmakers ...

Stephen M. Horan, Ph.D., CFA, professor of finance, has received a major research award. Sponsored by Janus Investments and the Financial Planning Association (FPA), the $10,000 award is intended to promote advanced research that expands the body of knowledge in wealth management and financial planning, and provides ground-breaking ideas and practical solutions to financial services professionals.

Horan’s paper, titled “Optimal Withdrawal Strategies for Retirees with Multiple Savings Accounts,” investigates the impact of various distribution strategies from tax-advantaged savings accounts, such as traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs. It stems from his growing body of work related to tax efficient wealth accumulation, an area in which he has published many peer reviewed articles, earned several other research awards, received research grants, and presented papers in academic and practitioner venues. Horan will present his award-winning paper at the FPA’s annual convention is Nashville, Tenn., in October. In addition, the paper will be published in the Journal of Financial Planning this year.

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Lee Coppola, dean of the Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will be one of four panelists at a Sept. 30, 2006, program on censorship in Buffalo. “On The Front Lines: Journalists Assess The New Censorship” is the second in a series of three public programs on the topic of censorship sponsored by The Buffalo Central Library and the State University of New York at Buffalo Humanities Institute.

The Sept. 30 program begins at 1 p.m. in the Mason O. Damon Auditorium at the Central Library on Lafayette Square. Joining Coppola on the panel will be Geoff Kelly of Artvoice, Margaret Sullivan of The Buffalo News and Tom Toles of The Washington Post.

Coppola will also moderate a Sept. 16, 2006, public hearing on health care issues at Allegany-Limestone Central School. All candidates for public office have been invited.

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