Jeanne Murray Walker

By Ashley Duran

“I want everyone to stop what they’re doing and be completely still,” shouts the excited English professor.

The semi-circular room in Memorial Hall goes quiet at Professor Jeanne Murray Walker’s command, as her confused students look slowly around.

“Close your eyes and think about where you are right now. Pay careful attention to your surroundings,” says Walker.

She tells her students to think of a feeling that they’re experiencing at that moment and write a sentence about it. The students are then told to go outside, find something that reminds them of their feeling and write a metaphor relating to both the sentence and object.

After returning to the classroom, sophomore James Chasteen seems puzzled. He raises his hand and says, “I don’t really understand what we’re supposed to be doing.”

Arienne Gomes

By Lori Goldson

As a child in Plainfield, New Jersey, university alumna Arienne Gomes spent Friday and Sunday nights at her grandmother’s house for dinner with her family. The kids ran around until the porch lights came on, playing “ghost in the graveyard” around the house.

Adults indulged in laughter as everyone ate until they couldn’t eat anymore. Occasionally partaking into a “crack session” of teasing each other, the family sat on the steps of Emerson Avenue house until the wee hours of the night, with neighborhood kids and parents throughout Plainfield joining the festivities.

Arienne recalls some of her best memories as just sitting and laughing with her family, which has always been close, as her grandparents welcomed everyone who knew them with open arms.

At the age of seven, Arienne’s family’s tradition changed. No longer would there be the fun-filled gatherings at her grandparents’ house. Her grandmother was hospitalized with breast cancer that became terminal after spreading to her colon.

Move over horse whisperer, it’s Newark’s dog whistler

By Sonia Dasgupta

Walking along the Green to class, university students may hear a faint whistle chant in the distance. Suddenly, a spunky Border Collie appears out of no where, swiftly running across the path of students rushing to class.  Soon a shirtless man, with glowing white locks, runs along the grass full speed, whistling. He follows in the first dog’s direction and then another Border Collie follows him.

Any university student that regularly walks around campus has seen this so called “Dog Whistler” otherwise known as Steve Cottrell. This 55-year-old native Delawarean has a Facebook page called “WTF Is Up With That Whistling Shirtless Dog Runner?” dedicated to him and his dogs.

Reflections from alum Michael Fosina

By Alex Honeysett

It’s 1983 and Michael Fosina is standing in a mattress store on Main Street in Newark, Del., educating himself on the health benefits of waterbeds. This is no hobby. Fosina has a meeting with the director of housing at the University of Delaware and needs to defend the 5-foot by 7-foot hand-built frame and the waterbed that lay atop it, lying not so comfortably in his 8-foot by 10-foot Pencader dorm room. The latest addition to his bedroom had been found days earlier by his R.A.

“It started as a joke, just ha ha, having a little fun with this thing” Fosina says. “Then I figured, if I need to explain myself, I should know what I’m talking about.”

After rumors of the boy with the waterbed circulated UD’s campus, Fosina was approached by his swim coach, Edgar Johnson, who insisted Fosina visit the doctor.

“The doctor thought it was completely ridiculous,” Fosina says. “And, well, they let me keep it.” A grin passes over Fosina’s face as he stifles a laugh. “There’s a picture of me in the yearbook laying on it,” he says. “It says something like, ‘Michael on the waterbed: very relaxing and illegal.’ ” He shakes his head and continues to laugh. “And no, I do not have a bad back,” he says.

Former PhD student communicates with the past

By Dane Secor

When Alexander Long was visiting the university for the Arak Award celebration in May 2005, he didn’t expect to receive news about his writing.

“I was on the steps of Memorial Hall and I got a call on my cell phone,” Long says. “It ended up being the editor and he said, ‘We want to take your book,’ and I said, ‘Holy crap – I mean this is great.’ ”

Long, a recent Ph.D at the university, had his collection of poems selected in an open competition by New Issues Press. His book was released Oct. 3.

The collection, “Vigil,” is a series of documentations of where Long was at certain times in his life, he says. The collection is primarily elegies and many of the poems were influenced by the deaths of two close friends in the same year.

Professor digs for knowledge

By Sarah Lipman

Digging for buried treasure isn’t just for little kids in a playground sandbox. Or at least anthropology professor Marc Meyer doesn’t think so.

In fact, he’s been doing just that.

Meyer, who has been splitting his time commuting from Philadelphia to teach biological anthropology at the university and gross human anatomy to medical students at the University of Pennsylvania for the past four years, spends his summers abroad on various archaeological digs.

“I’ve been all over the world on these digs,” Meyer says. “They’re absolutely fascinating; we’ve discovered some really insane fossils.”

He says he has excavated and done research in Lebanon, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, some U.S. states, and his personal favorite, Republic of Georgia.

“We found fossils of early humans that are 1.77 million years old there,” Meyer says. “They’re not quite human and they’re not quite ape. In some ways they are human, but at the same time they’re just so far from it — and I love that.”

Granny serves up smiles

By Kristin Vorce

On the first day of class students file into the Kent dining hall, less than enthused about the menu choices of “roasted red bliss potatoes” and “vegan zesty organic soy chik filet.” One by one, they shuffle in and hand the front-desk worker their student ID cards.

“Welcome home,” she says.

It’s Granny: 4’11”, with gray hair, bright blue eyes and a big smile. She looks like the type of grandma who whips up a batch of chocolate chip cookies just to see delighted looks on her grandchildren’s faces.

Students can’t help but smile back.

Rabbi chooses religious life over Wall Street wealth

By Stefanie Gordon

Ever hear the one about the rowdy frat boy who made a killing on the stock market and left it all to become a rabbi?

Rabbi Eliezer Sneiderman became campus rabbi in a very unconventional way. He grew up in a mostly non-observant household.

“I wasn’t religious,” Sneiderman said. “My dad was in the military and got transferred every 18 months, so we just went to whatever synagogue was nearby where we moved.”

Professor doubles as “Ghost Guy”

By Maria Michelli

Chains clang and metal doors slam in the Cecil County Detention Center. Inmates chat and create a disturbance. Sounds normal, except the prisoners are long gone, and the building was converted to a retirement center in 1985.

In the new jail, on Landing Lane in Elkton, Md., prisoners are held down by “phantom Indians” until the sun comes up. The Native American burial ground underneath the prison was not respected.

By People’s Plaza, in the Turnquist housing development in Cecil County, heavy footsteps are heard on carpeted floors. Cabinets and refrigerator doors are left open, and lights flicker. The neighborhood was built on top of the wreckage of 81 passengers, whose plane was struck by lightening in December 1963.

Ed Okonowicz, author, storyteller, and University of Delaware professor, told these and other ghost stories at Historic Elk Landing, in Elkton, Md., on September 30. In this program, “Spooky Ghost Tales of Cecil County and Maryland,” Okonowicz entertained audiences with his unique brand of ghost stories, based on factual events and interviews in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Great Scott: skating coach offers Olympic experience

By Kaitlin DeRoy