The founding and long-time director of the Center for Continuing
Education, Thomas P. Bergin '45, died in May at age 79. Bergin
joined the business faculty in 1947 as a specialist in economic
growth and development and later served as head of the Department
of Business Administration. In 1964 President Hesburgh appointed
him founding dean and director of the Center for Continuing Education,
where he remained in charge until 1991. A leader in economic development
efforts and in arts promotion locally and beyond, Bergin received
four presidential appointments to positions with the Department
of Commerce and National Endowment for the Arts. . . . In the
latest survey, Notre Dame has the highest percentage of students
participating in study abroad programs among American research
universities, according to a report from the Institute of International
Education. For 2000-01, the most recent academic year for which
statistics were available, 39.2 percent of Notre Dame students
participated in study programs in other countries. Yeshiva University
in New York City was second with 38.8 percent, followed by Cornell
(28.2), Duke (26.5) and Georgetown (26.5). . . . Three seniors
this year graduated with perfect 4.0 grade-point averages and
had their names read at commencement. Students applauded in wonder
and admiration and sounded even more awed when it was announced
that two of the three, Daniel Connell of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania,
and Vanessa Pruzinsky of Trumbull, Connecticut, had majored in
chemical engineering. Engineering is widely perceived by students
to be a brutal major. Adding to Pruzinsky's marvels, she was also
an Academic All-American on the women's soccer team. The third
perfectionist was Nick Holovaty of South Bend, a graduate of the
Arts & Letters college (Program of Liberal Studies), as was
Valedictorian Margaret Laracy, (psychology) from Jersey City,
New Jersey. Laracy had a 3.97 GPA. The valedictorian is selected
from among a number of outstanding candidates with GPA being only
one consideration. . . . Many campus e-mail users received an
unsolicited message or "spam" this spring advertising a certain
product for sale. The text implied that the offer had been sanctioned
by the University, which it hadn't. The product? A teeth-whitening
kit. . . . Martial arts clubs come and go all the time on college
campuses, but Notre Dame's has been around for more than 20 years
now. Jim Hoff '87 says the club has always been student-run but
benefits from plenty of support from alumni, many of whom show
up each April for black-belt testing. . . . For the second straight
year, Notre Dame MBA students won grand prizes and good money
at the Arthur W. Page Society's corporate communication seminar
in New York. Two students shared a $5,000 cash award for their
case study of a pharmaceuticals company while four others split
$2,500 for "Hershey Foods, Inc.: It's Time to Kiss and Make Up."
. . . The economics department is undergoing a split. This fall
the existing program will be renamed the Department of Economics
and Policy Studies and continue its traditional less-quantitative
approach to the science. A new department, Economics and Econometrics,
will focus on mainstream mathematical or neoclassical economics.
. . . At the end of the winter sports season, Notre Dame stood
fifth in the national, all-sports Directors Cup competition, the
highest position the Fighting Irish have ever been at that point
in the college sports calendar. . . . The CSC celebrated its 20th
anniversary in April. Part of the commemoration involved a prayer
led by four priests, includling Father Hesburgh, who was supposed
to conclude by simply saying "In the name of Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit." Instead he first offered impromptu remarks about
how the CSC's efforts often appeared disorganized but that the
staff's hearts were in the right place. The president emeritus's
comments drew laughs but also turned some staff members' faces
red. . . . Speaking on campus in early April, former Clinton administration
attorney general Janet Reno described growing up in a household
of modest means in South Florida. As Matt Bramanti reported in
The Observer, Reno said that when her family outgrew their
small frame house, her mother built a new one -- with her own
hands. After Hurricane Andrew swept across Florida in 1992, Reno
said, the old neighborhood looked "like a World War I battlefield,
but the house had only lost one shingle." Reno later joked about
her appearance on Saturday Night Live opposite comedian Will Ferrell,
who often impersonated her as mannish and sometimes lovestruck.
Reno complimented Ferrell's versatility but added, "It was a ghastly
impersonation." . . ."Modern societies have a way to incapacitate
people without imitating their violence," Dead Man Walking
author Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, said in a talk on campus in
late March. She was referring to Pope John Paul II's position
that capital punishment be reserved for cases in which society
cannot otherwise protect itself from an individual. . . . The
pack, equipment and spacesuit astronaut Harrison "Jack" Schmitt
took into space weighed 375 pounds -- on Earth. On the moon, where
it he wore it during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, it weighed
only 61 pounds, Schmitt said in a talk on campus in February.
Among other details Schmitt divulged: astronauts refer to the
round, blue NASA logo on their uniforms as "the meatball," under
his pressurized suit wore water-cooled underwear, and no one ever
ate the salmon salad the agency stubbornly included in flight
rations. . . . Students voted online for student body president
and vice president this year for the first time. About 50 percent
of students voted, compared to about 40 percent normally, a student
government official told The Observer. . . . You probably
don't know that Notre Dame numbers a Hollywood director among
its alumni. He graduated nearly 100 years ago. Earlier this year
the Walter Reade Theater in New York screened a sampling of the
work of Allan Dwan, who earned his bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering in 1907. Dwan's movies include such well-known titles
as Heidi (1937), Suez (1938), Brewster's
Millions (1945) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). During
his college years he acted in many plays, played on the football
team, and after graduation he remained at Notre Dame as a physics
and math instructor and football coach. He died in 1981 at the
age of 91. . . . Philip Quinn, O'Brien Professor of Philosophy,
was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, regarded
as nation's leading learned society. It was founded during the
American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock and others. .
. . Kathleen Collins '93, assistant professor of political science,
was one of 13 scholars nationally to be named a Carnegie Scholar.
She'll receive $100,000 over the next two years to work on her
research project, exploring the relationship between Islamic identity
and violent conflicts. . . . An unusual feature of this year's
commencement was a commemoration of 30 years of undergraduate
coeducation at Notre Dame. The salute included English professor
Sonia Gernes reading one of her poems and a reflection by one
of the first woman rectors, Sister Jean Lenz, OSF, '67 M.Th.,
'98 Ph.D.
