New Honors College at BloomU

July 1, the University will implement a new Honors College featuring small, discussion-focused classes and new opportunities for academic enrichment. Congratulations to Julie Vandivere, the current director of the Honors College and an English professor, who will continue to direct the new Honors College. Thank you for all your hard work in making this possible. The college will be located inside a new space in Lycoming Hall.

Reserve a Spot on the Husky Career Road Trip!

English majors in all tracks who are juniors and seniors should consider the Husky Career Road Trip sponsored by ProfessionalU to WebFX on Friday, April 12. The Harrisburg-based company is ranked as one of the top "Best Places to Work for Millennials" in the nation. WebFX (http://www.webpagefx.com) is a full-service internet marketing company offering innovative web marketing solutions to mid to large sized companies across the globe.

Megan Berbaum, a 2014 Bloomsburg graduate with a Creative Writing major and Professional Writing minor, has worked at WebFX since 2016. Megan says she really likes working there and encourages upcoming graduates to check out the company because they are hiring content creators. Megan would be happy to answer questions for any current Bloomsburg students about WebFX. Her email is mberbaum@webfx.com.

To find out more information, or to reserve a spot on the trip, follow this link to Handshake:
https://bloomu.joinhandshake.com/events/287377.

Upcoming Event: Warren Open Mic Contest

Happy Monday!

Guidelines for Warren's Open Mic Night have been released. Read below to find out how to join this event!

Bloomsburg University's Warren Literary Journal will be hosting an Open Mic Night that will be held at 6pm in the Student Service Center (SSC) room 004 on Tuesday, April 9th. Submissions are due no later than Monday, April 1st to the litmag@bloomu.edu email. The email subject must include the category of the submission that corresponds with one of the categories listed below.

Categories for Open Mic Night contest April 9th:

Poetry: Maximum 350 words, no specific form/style is required

Fiction: Involves imaginary events and people in the form of prose. Please limit pieces to 2,000 words maximum.

Creative Nonfiction: Wikipedia defines creative nonfiction as a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Please limit pieces to 2,000 words maximum.

Critical Essay: Thoughtco.com defines critical essay as a form of academic writing that analyzes, interprets, and/or evaluates a text. In a critical essay, an author makes a claim about how particular ideas or themes are conveyed in a text, then supports that claim with evidence from primary and/or secondary sources. Please limit pieces to 2,000 words maximum.

Contest winners will be notified no later than Friday, April 5th and are encouraged to read their pieces aloud at the Open Mic Night. However, all participants are welcomed to attend and read their submissions to the public. There will be pizza and refreshments available during the event.

Find the contests here:  

https://warrenliteraryjournal.wordpress.com/contests/

Summer & Fall 19 Course Offerings Released

Happy Wednesday!

You can now use your MyHusky account to view course offerings for the summer and fall 2019 semesters. April 1 might seem far away, but spring break is a great time to go over your major and degree requirements to make sure you are on the right track to graduation.
If you haven't already, set a time to meet with your advisor asap to make sure you know what courses to sign up for when your time slot opens.
Use this link or check your email for more information.
http://adminapps.bloomu.edu/coursesearch/search

Have a great and productive spring break!

Meet Our Professors: Dr. Costanzo

Dr. Angelo Costanzo, Associate Professor of English

“My grandfather was a coal miner. He came to this country to work in the mines. He’s from Pittston. I grew up hearing about all these places, and to finally be here and doing research in them, it kind of feels like I’m meant to be here. Basically, I’m studying my grandfather. And that’s so cool.” 

Q. You studied linguistics during your undergraduate, what introduced you to this subject?
A. I’ve always been interested in languages. I got into linguistics through studying other languages; I studied Spanish for a really long time and a teacher suggested that I look into linguistics, as an undergraduate. When I started my undergraduate degree I was a major in Aerospace Engineering and I did not like that, so I went back to what I liked which was languages and linguistics.


Q. What has been your favorite course to teach so far?
A. I really like teaching History of English, because it’s the closest match up to what I’ve studied in the past. My background is mostly not in english, it’s in other languages, and I get to incorporate a lot of what I know of other languages in the History of English, because if you go back far enough a bunch of other languages used to all be one language. I also really enjoy teaching Structure of English, which I teach as kind of an introductory linguistics class.


Q. What brought you to BloomU?
A. What’s interesting is that when my family came to America they settled in this region. I was raised in Southern California, but I ended up coming back to where my family originally was from, which is kind of cool, it’s kind of come full circle. I like the area; I like Northeastern Pennsylvania. I feel like I belong here, even though I grew up some place very different from here.


Q. What projects are you currently working on? 
A. I’m working on a bunch of stuff right now, what I really want to be focusing on is a study of linguistic variation in the coal region. I have a personal connection the coal region; I like to do research wherever I am, I think it’s important to engage the community with the research. So I’m looking forward to in the future doing a lot of research in the coal region. I also have projects I’m working on based off my dissertation, which is based on Romania. So I do a lot of study of Romanian, the verb system, which is pretty boring, but I’m really excited to finally work on the coal region.


Q. What do you do in your spare time?
A. I have three children, so most of my spare time is spent with them. I enjoy cooking; I watch basketball a lot. Yeah, mostly try to spend time with my children. Every year I try to go to the Linguistic Society of America conference.


Q. If you were sponsored to travel anywhere to study linguistics for an extended period of time, where would you choose to go?
A. My favorite place, the place I’m most interested in, that I’ve spent some time in the past is the Balkans. I would love to go back to places like Macedonia and Albania, and study linguistics there. That area of the world interests me a lot. The culture is really, really interesting. It’s such a mixture...I found that was fascinating. I was lucky enough to spend some time there already; I fell in love with the area.


Q. What is your favorite thing about teaching at Bloom?
A. I think the students are great. The students are interested, they’re enthusiastic, they’re willing to mess around with language. A lot of learning linguistics is messing around, doing puzzles. I found the students here are willing to try.


Q. Do you have any visions for the linguistics program at Bloom?
A.  I want there to be more collaboration with other departments. The linguistics minor is already a collaboration between our department and Speech Pathology, I would love for there to be opportunities to make those connections stronger. I think co-teaching classes, these kinds of collaborations...We have so many interesting faculty doing so many interesting things.


Thank you to Dr. Costanzo for the interview!

Taste of the Arts Today!

This is just a reminder that the Taste of the Arts will be held today (Saturday 3/2) from 2pm to 5pm at the Greenly Center, 50 E Main St. This is an event sponsored by the BU College of Liberal Arts and the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, and it will feature performances by student musicians, video productions from mass comm majors, poetry/prose, and art gallery demonstrations.
Be sure to stop by and check it out!