What do Homer, Mohammed and Colonel Sanders have in common? WVU Days in North-Central West Virginia.
Some of the Universitys elite educators will discuss these and other topics when they visit high schools in Harrison, Taylor, Marion, Monongalia and Preston counties Nov. 8-10 as part of the schools annual road show to promote higher education.
Our faculty always enjoy visiting the public schools, WVU President David C. Hardesty Jr. said.It offers them a wonderful opportunity to share the WVU academic experience with the future generation of college students.
Bill Arnett, an associate professor of history, will be giving two presentationsone on ancient Greece Nov. 8 at Robert C. Byrd High School and another on post-9/11 issues Nov. 10 at Grafton High School.
InAspects of the History of the Ancient Greeks,Arnett will discuss the culture and history of the people who gave birth to democracy.
His talk will focus on aspects of Greek culture, including a discussion of the poets Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Alcaeus and Sappho and historian Herodotus. He will also discuss the city-state system of classical Greece.
He will complement the talk with a slide show featuring maps, artifacts and historic places.
Arnetts other talk will beSeptember 11 Revisited: Why Did It Happen? Why Do They Hate Us? Is This the Real Islam?
The topic, Arnett explained, is a timely one for young people to consider when faced with the news from Iraq, Afghanistan and other places dealing with Al-Qaeda, terrorism, Muslim rage and Islamic militancy.
It is my intention to address the realities of Islam and to dispel many of the misconceptions and misleading opinions influenced by the media, television and the cinema,he said.
Students will be encouraged to ask questions, and I will try to enter into a dialogue with them over the issues on the minds and in the hearts of terrorists as well as those harbored by the mainstream, non-violent majority of the worlds 2.3 billion Muslims,Arnett added.
New consumer marketing strategies that teen-agers can relate to will be the topic of Paula Bones talk,Rumors and Word of Mouth in the Marketplace,Nov. 9 at Robert C. Byrd High School.
Bone, the Nathan Haddad Professor of Business Administration, will discuss such strategies as buzz marketinga way of sparking word-of-mouth communicationand viral marketingWeb-based promotions passed on like a computer bug.
Chick-fil-A engaged in buzz marketing when it humorously portrayed its mascot cows as superheroes, while Mountain Dew used viral marketing to lend an air of mystery to the creation of its product Code Red, she said.
Bone will also discuss the ethical issues involved in word-of-mouth communication and illustrate what goes wrong when such strategies turn into rumors.
For example, when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC , a rumor, which isabsolutely not true,spread that the fast-food restaurant chain was replacing chickens with bioengineered chickens without feathers or bones, she said.
The Universitys top administrator will also be going into one of the schools.
Hardesty will give a 45-minute talk on leadership beginning at 1:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at Morgantown High School.
Other WVU speakers and topics: Ogden Newspapers Visiting Professor of Journalism George Esper, Reporting the World from Front Row Seats; Honors Program Director Keith Garbutt, Mutation: the Good, the Band, and the Indifferent; Human Resources and Educatinos Melanie Rogers, The Key to a Successful Transition from High School to Higher Education; Associate Professor of Business and Economics James Denton, Management Information Systems; Associate Professor of Music Paul Scea, Big Band Jazz Ensemble; and Assistant Professor of Management Linda Sypolt, You Can Bank on It: Checks and Digital Banking.
This years WVU Days is part of a weeklong slate of activities devoted to higher education.
The University will welcome dozens of prospective students and their families at a WVU Open House Saturday, Nov. 5, a day-long event that gets under way at 9 a.m. with a campus tour and includes an information fair, lunch in a WVU dining hall and a visit to the particular school or college that houses each students major. During the free fair, future Mountaineers will have the opportunity to meet representatives from various majors, Admissions, Financial Aid, the Mountaineer Parents Club and much more. WVU s second annual Education Summit will kick off the week Monday, Nov. 7, at the Radisson Hotel in Morgantown. The daylong summit offers a forum for guidance counselors, teachers, principals and other educators from West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania high schools to discuss preparation for higher education with WVU faculty and administrators, and to examine academic challenges and goals with colleagues.
West Virginias new Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine will give the keynote address. For more on the Summit:http://www.wvu.edu/edusummit/