Colleges boost entrepreneurship classes, seminars
Hartford Business Journal
…The Entrepreneurial Center, part of the University of Hartford’s Barney School of Business, is among a growing number of programs offered by colleges and universities in the region to help aspiring or existing entrepreneurs build the knowledge base to start a business or advance one. Some programs, like those through the Entrepreneurial Center, don’t offer college credit. Others, including at the Barney School, UConn, Trinity College and Post University, offer credits, entrepreneurial minors or tracks, internships or other academic building blocks useful to running a business. Schools, like the state at large, are increasing their focus on entrepreneurship as a critical element in the state’s economy. … With small business the growth sector in the local economy, Tim Cresswell, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs at Trinity College, has seen interest in entrepreneurial education increase among students, faculty and even parents. Entrepreneurship is “a slightly difficult thing to grasp because it’s not an established field of study, or a particular way of teaching, so really a lot of it’s about combining academic work with internships, with the ability to connect with entrepreneurs who have been successful or even haven’t been successful — they’ve got lessons to teach,” too, Cresswell said. For undergraduates, Trinity has a minor in formal organizations, which includes an entrepreneurship track, internships and visiting entrepreneurs who share their experiences with students. Trinity also is considering entrepreneurship-related education and a master’s program at the new site it’s developing in downtown Hartford at Constitution Plaza, although nothing is definite yet, Cresswell said. Trinity also hopes to be part of the new innovation places program headed by CTNext to develop certain areas in Connecticut into magnets for talent…

Ask Us: Where does the Tire Tread go?
Mankato Free Press
Searching the internet, it doesn’t appear many other people have wondered about it either. However, there was one site — Science Netlinks (an education resource produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science) — that tackled the question. Science Netlinks went to Alison Draper, a toxicologist at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, for an answer since she had done research on the potential impact of pulverized tire tread on water quality. “Basically, there are two avenues by which the rubber disappears off the tire,” Science Netlinks reported. “The smaller particles are small enough that they’re airborne, and then the larger particles are large enough that they’re too heavy to be airborne and fall to the side of the road. And then the large particles are washed off the roadway with rainwater and end up in our lakes and streams and rivers and such.” Draper knows of no one who has attempted to make a comprehensive estimate of the amount of rubber entering surface water from tire wear or what its impact might be. Ask Us Guy discovered that a few organizations are concerned about the tiny tire particles that become airborne. One report suggested that tire rubber ranked 13th among the most significant sources of pollution in the air of Los Angeles…

Exploring the Transition Home from Prison Through Art
“Where We Live” – WNPR
“Brave in a New World” premieres next week, September 15, at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts — weaving spoken word and dance around the experiences of ex-offenders and their families. It’s the latest piece from the Judy Dworin Performance Project. This hour, we hear about the upcoming artistic performance that digs deep into what it means to live in prison — and what it means to leave. Artistic Director Judy Dworin joins us as well as two former inmates who perform in the production…

Assaiante, Bramall and Stauffer Named as Hall of Fame Class of 2016
US Squash
The United States Squash Hall of Fame proudly announces the class of 2016: Paul D. Assaiante, Norman B. Bramall and Jane Austin Stauffer. The first two are arguably the greatest squash coaches ever of men and women and Stauffer was one of the finest doubles players in history. The ceremony will be at noon on Friday, October 14, 2016 at Drexel during the Delaware Investments United States Open. …  Paul Assaiante, the Ganek Family US Squash Head National Coach, began coaching forty years ago at West Point Military Academy. After nine years there, two years at Williams and brief stints as a teaching pro, Assaiante came to Trinity in 1994. Since then he has led the Bantams to fifteen national intercollegiate teams titles, putting him just two shy of the all-time collegiate record of seventeen set by Hall of Famer Jack Barnaby at Harvard. At one point, Assaiante’s teams captured 252 consecutive matches, a win streak unmatched by any collegiate sports team in U.S. history. His record at Trinity alone (403-21) speaks to his extraordinary will for excellence and his family coaching tree—more than two dozen of his former players now work as teaching professionals and coaches—speaks to his emphasis on mentoring and leadership. Since 1997 he has been the national coach for Team USA, leading the U.S. into over a dozen international team competition including three Pan American Games. Assaiante is the author of two books, including Run to the Roar: Coaching to Overcome Fear, which is being turned into a major motion picture…

College as Constant Restart: A Review of Practice for Life – By Jason B. Jones
The Chronicle of Higher Education – “ProfHacker” blog
“Sometimes books arrive for review like a gift: a new book, on exactly the right topic, at exactly the right time. This summer, as I was preparing to teach a first-year seminar for the first time at my new school, and to teach anything at all for the first time in three years, I was delighted to receive Lee Cuba, Nancy Jennings, Suzanne Lovett, and Joseph Swingle’s new book, Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College (Harvard UP, August 2016), an intensive study of student experiences at seven New England liberal arts colleges, including Trinity. It has been invaluable as a way of thinking about helping my students adjust to college. Practice for Life followed some two hundred students from seven colleges–Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Smith, Wellesley, and Trinity–over five years, surveying them repeatedly during each academic year, and then again after graduation. They also did an intensive series of interviews with a subset of this group. The resulting book mostly allows the students to speak for themselves about such topics as the experience of time, a sense of connection to campus and friends, whether the campus counts as “home,” how they seek out advice, and their academic engagement. The students’ stories and observations yield a key insight that Cuba, et al. work to great effect: “Students don’t just start college and then finish it. They start and then re-start college many times”…

Religion in public life: a 20-year perspective: The Greenberg Center at Trinity College marks a milestone
Connecticut Jewish Ledger
There are plenty of examples of religious influence in politics, but perhaps none more resonant in recent Jewish memory than the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin by a far-right ultranationalist Israeli Jew in November 1995. In the wake of the murder, then-Trinity College president Evan S. Dobelle attended a conference in Israel on fundamentalism and democracy and returned to Hartford to announce the establishment of the long-discussed Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. “Little did we know that this tragic event in Israel would provide such a historic context for the idea and concept Trinity has been developing,” Dobelle said at the Nov. 13 press conference. Funded with seed money from Hartford native Leonard E. Greenberg [’48, H’98], a Trinity alumnus, business leader, and philanthropist, the center opened its doors in fall 1996, led by Director Mark Silk. On April 30, 2000, the Center was renamed in honor of Greenberg. Over its 20-year run, the center has had no shortage of opportunities to explore its mission, as religion seeps more and more into politics, and news is produced and disseminated in radically different ways. Through publications and programs, the Center works to advance knowledge and understanding of the varied roles that religious movements, institutions, and ideas play in the contemporary world; explore challenges posed by religious pluralism and tensions between religious and secular values; and examine the influence of religion on politics, civic culture, family life, gender roles, and other issues in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Non-sectarian and non-partisan, the Center sponsors public lectures, organizes conferences and workshops, contributes to the liberal arts curriculum, and supports the publication and dissemination of materials for both academic and general audiences. Its initiatives are designed to foster discussion of religion in public life both within the campus community and among various external publics…

How cars have transformed China
Science Nordic – University of Oslo
As the history of the rise of car cultures has shown, cars do not simply enter a landscape, they radically transform it. A huge infrastructure is needed to support a society dedicated to automobility. There not only have to be places to refuel cars, places to purchase and repair cars, but also places to drive them and park them. Beth E. Notar is an anthropologist of China at Trinity College, Hartford, in the US. She has for several years studied what it means for a society to transform itself from one dominated by walking, biking and taking public transport – to one dominated by automobiles. “City streets in China, once dominated by bicycles, have been rebuilt to accommodate cars. There has been a demolition and reconstruction of the old urban centres of most Chinese cities, to create highways, ring roads and overpasses. This has happened in other times and places, but the speed and scale of the transformation of Chinese cities is unprecedented,” says Notar…