Summer S.T.E.M. camp available

For the 10th consecutive year, a summer program will be offered to students entering grades six through nine who live in Rowan County and are interested in advanced study in science, technology, engineering and math. The program will take place during July 2017 at Salisbury High School.

To receive information about the summer program, parents and students are invited to attend a presentation and question-and-answer session at Salisbury High School on either Thursday, March 9, at 7 p.m. or Sunday, March 12, at 3 p.m. Applications for admission to the program will be available to parents in attendance at both informational sessions, and also available in the main office at Salisbury High School.

For additional information, contact Barbara Peach at Salisbury High School at 704-636-1221 or email her at peachbj@rss.k12.nc.us

Faith Elementary kindergarten registration

If your child was born before Aug. 31, 2012, he or she is eligible for kindergarten registration at Faith Elementary. Call the school at 704-279-3195 or go to https://goo.gl/7PDj6k to sign your child up for a screening. Day and afternoon appointments available.

Catawba to offer K-12 math teachers professional development program on March 17

Catawba College will offer a free, national professional development program at 2 p.m. on Friday, March 17 in the Center for the Environment room 319 on campus. This program offering, the second scheduled for this academic year, is of the newly formed Central N.C. Math Teachers’ Circle and is slated on an early release day for Rowan-Salisbury Schools.

During the first session last fall, 12 local teachers from nine different schools participated. The participants collaborated on exploring the mathematics behind different voting techniques.

All interested teachers are encouraged to visit the website http://catawba.edu/mathcircles/ to register for the session. For more information contact Dr. Sharon Sullivan, associate professor and chair of mathematics at Catawba at slsulliv@catawba.edu.

In addition to Dr. Sullivan, Dr. Karen Lucas, an assistant professor of teacher education at Catawba, and Rowan-Salisbury middle school teachers, Renee Fox and Elizabeth Henley, will serve as the leadership team for the March 17 professional development workshop.

Catawba College competes in ethics bowl

The Catawba College team that participated in the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities’ Ethics Bowl held in Raleigh on Feb. 17 and 18 went 3-1 over the course of the event. The Catawba team ended day one with a 3-0 record against Wingate, Barton and Campbell, before falling to Louisburg College on day two of the competition.

Catawba’s team was one of the 22 from private colleges participating in the annual event. Cases it debated included “Paper, Pen and Guns,” which addressed issues surrounding recent laws permitting firearms on campuses in several states; “When Free Speech and Hate Speech Collide,” which addressed the challenges college campuses face when weighing free speech protections against hate speech and other types of speech some might find offensive; “Probable Cause, Civil Rights and Fairness,” which weighed individual rights of privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure against the government’s responsibility to maintain public safety and “Individual Rights vs. Community Standards,” which considered the rights of transgender students to use the restroom that matches their identity.

Catawba’s team, coached by Assistant Professor of politics Dr. Norris Feeney, included Blake Brewer, Brianna Gordon, Sarah Bushey, Jonathan (Jon) Rife and Taylor Cielo.

The team enjoyed a reception and dinner at the N.C. Museum of History after competition on day one, followed by remarks from Samuel James Ervin IV, an associate justice of the N.C. Supreme Court.

Catawba College psychology faculty and students attend SEPA annual meeting

Three faculty of the department of psychology and 13 students will travel to the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association in Atlanta, Ga., March 8 through 11.

All three faculty (Dr. Erin Wood, Dr. Amy Holmes and Dr. Sheila Brownlow) served on the program committee; two (Holmes, Brownlow) are chairing sessions.

Wood and Holmes are presenters at a symposium titled “Keeping students’ interest: Class activities for undergraduate psychology courses.”

Several students worked with faculty on research and nine students will present seven research studies, including:

“How social status influences ‘affect language’ in tweets” by Jennifer C. Beach, Sheila Brownlow and Dr. N. Clayton Silver of the University of Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nev.; “How space constraints influence physiological and psychological processes” by Hope J. Woods, Joshua A. Edwards, Breki Bjarnason and Sheila Brownlow, and “Do color primes influence gender-typed behavior?” by Shannon Wright, Jenna Thompson and Sheila Brownlow.

The following papers were sponsored by Brownlow and are being presented in a session for undergraduate researchers:

“Effects of glucose in chewing gum on memory performance,” by Joshua Edwards and Sheila Brownlow; “Cross-cultural patterns in liking of names and name letters,” by Taylor King, Gudny Jonsdottir and Sheila Brownlow; “Perceptions of infant temperament and behavior as a function of attractiveness and sex-typed expectations,” by Isabel Vasquez and Sheila Brownlow and “Effects of background color presentation and word emotionality on recall of text” by Shannon Wright and Sheila Brownlow.