Catawba College Alumnus Thomas J. Shone of Mocksville ’81 will be the first one to tell you just how influential his father was in shaping his life and career. “He was a loving, supportive and understanding father who offered me a great balance of expectation and demand.”

SALISBURY, N.C. – For the nineteenth consecutive year, the Catawba College Department of Music presented its annual Christmas Choral Concert, A Service of Lessons and Carols, Tuesday and Thursday, December 5 and December 7, in the Omwake-Dearborn Chapel on campus.

Mary Omwake Dearborn, beloved former first lady of Catawba College, died December 6 after a short period of declining health. Mrs. Dearborn, 95, was the daughter of Catawba's 13th president, Dr. Howard R. Omwake (1931-42) and the wife of Catawba's 15th president, Dr. Donald Dearborn (1963-1967).

Thanks to the efforts of three Catawba College alumni, the College's athletic training program now has a customized golf cart which will be used for transporting injured athletes. All three alumni are associated RoMedical Care, Inc. and its affiliates – Comadoll, Watts & Ellison Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, and Proformance Physical Therapy.

Catawba College has been selected as one of the participants in the Learning Spaces and Technology Workshop that is being organized by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) in collaboration with Project Kaleidoscope and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Dr. Rhonda Truitt, assistant professor of teacher education at Catawba College, has been awarded a Learning to Teach, Learning to Serve subgrant in the amount of $20,000 by the Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education for the project year 2006-07.

Dr. Paul Baker, a professor of mathematics at Catawba College, made a presentation in late October to the National Convention of the School Science and Mathematics Association. The Convention was held in Missoula, Montana.

Dr. Calvin Hunter, an assistant professor of physical education recreation at Catawba College, was inducted into the Guilford College Athletic Hall of Fame earlier this month. He was one of the top quarterbacks in Guilford College history, winning the Old Dominion Athletic Conference's Football Player of the Year Award and guiding the Quakers to the league title in 1991. He graduated from Guilford with a degree in sports management and 13 school records, three of which stand today.

Dr. John Wear, director of Catawba College's Center for the Environment, was one of the featured speakers at a national public conference, "Simple Living and the Rekindling of Public Life," held earlier this month in Leavenworth, Wash. Wear's topic was "Creating Sustainable Communities at the Grassroots Level."

Dr. Kenneth Clapp, Catawba College's chaplain and senior vice president, and Jim Mallinson, an adjunct professor in Catawba's School of Evening and Graduate Studies, recently participated in the Carolinas Conference on Addition and Recovery in Chapel Hill. That conference was sponsored by the Bowles center for Alcohol Studies at UNC Chapel Hill and the Addiction Recovery Institute.

The N.C. Council of Campus Health Professionals met on the campus of Catawba College in early November. The organization was started by campus nurses across the state and membership is open to health professionals, both campus nurses an counselors at private and public institutions of higher education.

Karen G. Gaskill, an adjunct professor of accounting at Catawba College, has been tapped for service on a newly formed Financial Literacy Council established by the N.C. Association of CPAs.

Several Catawba College students were selected to make presentations at professional association meetings. Senior Christopher Junker of Salisbury's paper, "Synthesis of photochromic organometallic cyclopentiadienyl manganese tricarbonyls" was accepted to the 58th Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society held in early November in Augusta, Ga.