When Sarah Seberger and the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) had a breakfast meeting with then Truman President Darrell Krueger in the fall of 2009, the topic of discussion was school spirit and how to increase spirit across the campus. Seberger, who was serving as the vice president of SAAC, proposed to the committee that they have a designated day of the week for wearing Truman apparel. The committee thought it was a great idea as most of them had spirit days in high school. Once she got the approval of Linda Anderson, Truman’s associate athletic director and the SAAC advisor, she reached out to Laura Bates, Center for Student Involvement director, Liz Jorn, instructor in exercise science, and the members of Student Senate. This informal group brainstormed and ended up with the foundation for Truman’s Purple Fridays with the ultimate goal to encourage campus pride in being a member of the University and being a Bulldog. Student Senate voted on a resolution* deeming the first Purple Friday as Dec. 11, 2009.

The group worked hard to encourage students, faculty and staff to wear purple every Friday to show their Truman Spirit. A more formal Purple Friday committee was formed in the fall of 2010 and additional activities were added that included student gatherings in the Student Union Building and music on the Mall, as well as giving out prizes every Friday to reward those who were found showing their Truman Purple Spirit.

The Purple Friday Committee is now under the umbrella of Truman’s Student Government, but continues to have involvement from Residence Life, the CSI and SAAC, along with other students dedicated to showing their support and pride for Truman State University by wearing purple every Friday.

Beyond Campus Purple Fridays
Seberger graduated from Truman in 2010, but she still tries to wear purple on Fridays. “In law school, that wasn’t hard, but now that I am actually practicing law it is going to be a little more difficult,” Seberger said. “Wearing purple is actually a great way to accidentally bump into Truman alumni or people familiar with the school who want to talk about it. I ran into an alumna at Costco who was wearing a Truman T-shirt. We happened to unload our carts at the same time and both of us had Truman car decals. It was great to talk for a few minutes about Kirksville and Truman athletics. I certainly continue to feel that sense of pride in Truman and being a Bulldog.”

* THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT THE  STUDENT GOVERNMENT,
•    Supports in conjunction with Student Athlete Advisory Committee “Purple Fridays”—a day in which students, faculty and staff are encouraged to wear purple and visibly show support and pride for Truman State University;
•    Encourages all students, faculty, staff, student organizations, Student Affairs departments, the Athletics department and all other departments to participate in the “Purple Fridays” event beginning on Dec. 11, 2009; and
•    Supports programs designed to increase school spirit and respect for the quality institution in which they attend.

• As of July 1, 2013 three new departments emerged from the former Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. The three departments are now Statistics, Mathematics and Computer Science. Susan LaGrassa will serve as the chair for the Department of Mathematics, while Jon Beck will be the chair for the Department of Computer Science and Jason Shaw will serve as the chair for the Department of Statistics. Their three-year terms also began July 1. The central office for these departments will remain in Violette Hall 2100.

• The Nursing Department received a $150,000 grant from the Missouri Department of Higher Education-Missouri Board of Nursing for “Accelerating BSN Graduates with a Second Baccalaureate Degree” thanks to the work of Stephanie Powelson, chair and professor of nursing, Carol Cox, professor of health science and Janet Gooch, dean of the School of Health Sciences.

• A group of mathematics and computer science faculty members, led by Dana Vazzana, director of the Faculty Professional Development Center and professor of mathematics, received a National Science Foundation grant in the amount $587,144 for “Preparing and Advancing Scholars in Mathematics and Computer Science.” Others contributing to the grant include: Jason Shaw, associate professor of mathematics and chair for the Department of Statistics; Alan Garvey, professor of computer science; Eric Howard, professor of mathematics; and Robert Matthews, associate professor of computer science. Additionally, Truman biology professors Brent Buckner and Diane Janick-Buckner received an NSF grant in the amount of $395,507 for “Genetic Networks Regulating Structure and Function of the Maize Shoot Apical Meristem,” a collaborative effort with the University of Cornell.

• The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, administered through the National Science Foundation, provides generous scholarships to promote the development of K-12 teachers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines. Thanks to the work of several Truman faculty from different disciplines, Truman has received a $1.2 million grant to support students interested in becoming high school mathematics and physics teachers. The Truman Noyce Scholarship Program aims to train and certify 20 teachers in both secondary mathematics and physics over the next five years. These teachers will be able to meet a critical demand for high-needs school districts. The Truman team is led by Ian Lindevald, professor of physics; Susan LaGrassa, chair and professor of mathematics; and Paul Yoder, associate professor of education.

• The U.S. Department of Education awarded Truman a grant of $1,275,000 in support of the Ronald E. McNair Program from 2012-2017 thanks to the work of program director
Sylvia Macauley, professor of history.

• Professor of foreign language Tom Capuano’s “Nine Technical Treatises for the Practical Professions in Spain: Electronic Texts and Concordances of Selected Texts on Agriculture, Sericulture, Commerce, and Medicine, 1400-1777,” was published in May by the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies in New York. Since the late 1980s, thanks to Truman’s generous support for undergraduate research and its institutional and scholarship student worker program, Capuano has been able to mentor numerous students in the techniques of transcription of medieval and early modern manuscripts and printed texts for the Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language project sponsored by the Hispanic Society of America in New York. The transcriptions these students helped prepare, while intended primarily as a source of specialized vocabulary for the dictionary project, represent relatively rare and unstudied texts on diverse practical arts (commerce, medicine, horticulture, etc.) dating from as early as 1400. Alumni who contributed to the project as students include: Noelle Striplin (’91); Daniel Stites (’99); Jeremy Loscheider (’00); Stephanie Noll (’01); John Becker (’05); Raymond Feilner (’06); Kelly (Schute) Ponte (’10); and Anthony Baldwin (’12).

• The Truman School of Business received notification by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International that they have maintained their business accreditation. AACSB accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business education, and has been earned by less than five percent of the world’s business programs. The Truman School of Business enrolls 840 undergraduate students in three degree programs: Bachelor of Science in accounting, Bachelor of Science in business administration and Bachelor of Arts in business administration. The School has 42 students enrolled in the Master of Accountancy program.