Final presentations

The end of a semester at Bloomsburg, especially spring semester, always brings a flurry of activity.

A hallmark of the university is the opportunity for undergraduates to conduct research with faculty and their fellow students. The final weeks include several events dedicated to students presenting their work.

The top photo is a nursing student presenting on a study related to diabetes as part of the university Honors Program. 

Below that are photos of an anthropology student discussing archaeology and two education students discussing their work as part of Bloomsburg's Research Day, in which students from all the university's college present their work at locations throughout campus.

The final photo, taken by communications student worker CJ Shultz, is at the Frederick Douglass Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference held in April. 

It's remarkable to see how poised, professional and confident the students become in just a few years.

Athletics and art

We live in a screen-based culture. Televisions, computers, cell-phones, tablets. You're looking at one right now. Our lives are increasingly, and to me a little worryingly, digital. Digital media are powerful tools, but do have we lost something human in the process?

Art and athletics are sometimes conceived as opposites. Depending on your high school, the "jock" and the "arts" crowds were likely two different groups. But I think they share something very powerful in common. At their best, art and athletics remind us of what it means to be human.

Sports reminds us that we are not merely receptors of digital data flashed before our eyes but flesh, bone, blood and spirit. Sports can remind us that striving is valuable simply for the sake of striving.


I'm not a big sports guy. I played soccer as a teenager, but aside from college basketball, I generally don't watch games and I don't care who wins. I've been at Bloomsburg for 20 years and if asked on a given day, I might say that Bloomsburg is a great school for smart jocks. Athletics is an important part of our identity, in a positive way, because the athletes aren't disconnected from the university. They are part of it. Club and intramural athletics are a big part of what we offer as well.

I don't follow the scores, but there are few people on campus I like better than football coach Danny Hale. While I generally do non-athletic photography for Bloomsburg, I shot a portrait of him for a magazine story several years back (The second photo of Hale).

Fast forward a few years and I'm waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts and I get a big bear hug from the coach himself. For Hale, people count. When you're talking with him, you're the most important person in the world and he doesn't forget. It's a quality I've noticed that a lot of leaders share in common.

The field was named in Danny Hale's honor last week (April 28) and it couldn't have been done for a better guy. And maybe, this coming fall, I'll go to some more games.

The photos here (with the exception of the Hale portrait) were shot last fall very early in the season. Sports is not my specialty, my lenses tend toward wide angle rather than telephoto end, but it was a lot of fun.

The final photo of the Husky mascot I believe was taken by my colleague Jaime North. We traded cameras at the sidelines for a while during the game and I'm pretty sure he took that one.

Click on any image to see them larger.