September 2011 Articles
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Welcome Back: CODFA President's Address by Ken Gray
CIT: Improving Homeland Security Through INFOSEC Training by Tony Chen
Excerpts from Cabin Fever by Tom Montgomery Fate
Beyond a Boundary: Teaching Music as a Seamless Art by Lee R. Kesselman
Welcome Back: CODFA President's Address by Ken Gray
Welcome back for another school year. If you recently moved to a new location on campus, I hope that you have
settled in comfortably. I am still living out of boxes in my new temporary office. I figure I
should be unpacked right about the time I have to pack to move into my permanent office in the east side of the BIC (I'm
not kidding).
I always get excited about the start of a new school year. Most of my students are in their first semester of college, and I am honored to have the opportunity to help them get started on the right foot. I also like to use the beginning of the school year to reflect and refocus on my goals and purpose. This year, my reflections include thoughts about the Faculty Association. According to the mission statement contained in our Bylaws, "CODFA enables faculty to work collectively to shape a positive direction for the College. It improves the welfare of faculty so they can perform their duties to the best of their abilities; thus our students can learn to the best of their abilities."
The keys to our mission are the goals: "to shape a positive direction for the College" and "thus our students can learn to the best of their abilities." In other words, improving the welfare of faculty is not the end; it is the means to the end. Everything that I do as the president of the Association and as an individual faculty member is in service of those two ultimate goals. But that does not make me special. In fact, it makes me quite ordinary at the College of DuPage. I have had the opportunity to get to know quite a few people during my eight months as the CODFA president, full-time and part-time faculty, classified staff, administrators, and trustees. I have witnessed (and participated in) disagreements about what we should do to accomplish the goals. But as time goes on, I am more and more convinced that we all share those goals.
Whenever disagreements become more intense, I always remind myself that we really are all on the same side. We all want to shape a positive direction for the College. We all want our students to learn to the best of their abilities. Yes, some of us may continue to disagree about the specific actions that are most likely to lead to those outcomes. But as long as I remain convinced that we share the goals, I am confident that we will succeed.
This issue is the first under the guidance of new editor Nicole Matos. Thanks, Nicole, for stepping up for this important job. I would also like to thank outgoing editor Karin Evans for her leadership and contributions.
CIT: Improving Homeland Security Through INFOSEC Training by Tony Chen
College of DuPage is building a state of the art facility, the Homeland Security Training Institute. At the same
time Computer and Internetworking Technologies (CIT) is building a state of the art Information
Security professional training program. We are proud to announce that CIT has been certified by the Committee on
National Security Systems (CNSS) and National Security Agency (NSA) in the summer of 2011 as one of the institutions
across the country that can offer training for Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) Professionals under the
authority of CNSS and NSA.
Many faculty and students are asking for a definition of this INFOSEC certification training and an explanation of how students can earn this certificate. INFOSEC training is described in the National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security (NSTISS) Document No. 4011. This sets the training standard for training INFORSEC professionals in telecommunication security and automated information systems security. There are 7 groups of instructional content and 257 categories of behavioral outcomes needed to secure our national system. It also establishes the minimum training standards for the training of INFOSEC professionals in the disciplines of telecommunications and automated information system (AIS) security. With a collaborative effort from both our CIT and Criminal Justice program, we have selected 11 courses that are 100% mapped to the content and outcomes described in the document. This mapping included 9 courses from CIT and 2 courses from the Criminal Justice program.
With the approval of CNSS and NSA, once a student has completed these 11 courses, College of DuPage is authorized to issue a letter of recognition to the student to acknowledge their having met the training requirements of an INFORSEC professional. This will empower our students with a greater opportunity of seeking employment in either government agencies or the private sector, gaining them a position responsible for protecting and defending information systems and security.
Students who have completed this certificate will also equipped with the knowledge of CompTIA A+, CompTIA Security+, Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and CCNA security exams. All of these are high value certification exams for any individual desiring to enter the field of information systems and information system security.
Without the help of fellow faculty members Joanne Wagner, Justin Wagner, Clyde Cox, and Theodore Darden, we would not have been able to obtain the approvals from CNSS and NSA for this certificate. For more detailed information on this exciting new coursework, please take a look at our webpage or contact me, Tony Chen, either by email or phone (630-942-2537) and I will be more than happy to answer any questions.
Excerpts from Cabin Fever by Tom Montgomery Fate
When I first read Henry David Thoreau's classic nature memoir, Walden, I was an intensely idealistic 18-year-old college
freshman at the University of Iowa. When I read it again, thirty years later (during a
sabbatical), I was a harried and married 48 year-old father of three in suburban Chicago. And while the famous hermit-philosopher
had again inspired me, it was different from the first time I read it. The book called me with more urgency—from my distracted
middle-class, middle-aged life into the wild solitude it conjured. So, over the next four years, I wrote my own seasonal memoir
in response to Thoreau and to Walden—an attempt to explore its modern relevance. The result was Cabin Fever: A Suburban
Father's Search for the Wild (Beacon Press, 2011). Several short excerpts follow.
From "In the Time of the Cicadas" (Chapter 7):
Over the next few days the cicada population explodes: up to a million per acre—maybe 300,000 in our back yard. Some of our neighbors are repulsed by the swarms of bugs clinging to their bushes and flowers, or falling out of trees into their hair during an evening stroll. But others, like me, find them miraculous: seventeen years of patience, of darkness, followed by a few weeks of passion, of sunlight and sex. Each night, I sit outside and listen to the newest arrivals move through the grass and leaves: chaotic platoons of red-eyed soldiers crunching over thousands of their own brittle casings. Then up the trees they march to wait for the sun and sing for a mate.
From "The Art of Dying" (Chapter 15):
I have been dead for a long time when I finally catch the delicate scent of my carnation—just a trace, just for a second. A pigeon coos as he struts along the edge of my sheet. Then a little girl—one of the children of the temporarily dead—starts giggling about something. Her clicking shoes skip through the odd labyrinth of flower-adorned bodies.
I'm not sure why I came to this demonstration. I need to go grocery shopping and I have stacks of papers to grade. What motivated me? Guilt? Yes, partly. The belief I'm making a difference? No. I don't think so. The hope that this theater of the absurd will help alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people? No, not really. It's less noble, less clear. I'm just trying to learn how to believe in something, how to see in the dark.
From "Deliberate Life" (Introduction):
My 7-year-old son, Bennett, sometimes tries to balance himself on the creaky iron fulcrum of a wooden teeter totter at the playground. He jumps up on the heavy plank and puts one foot on each side of the center. Then he shifts his weight, pushing one end of the plank down, causing the other end to rise. He tries to stay balanced and level but can't for more than a few seconds. One side always starts to teeter up or totter down. He doesn't stay centered, but neither does he ever fall off. This struggle for balance, the rising and falling between the earth and sky, gives him great joy. And he gives that joy to me, if I'm paying attention.
Beyond a Boundary: Teaching Music as a Seamless Art by Lee R. Kesselman
I always have a bit of trouble when a form asks for 'occupation'. Professor? Teacher? Conductor? Composer? Musician? I have always
been a generalist. And while my COD contract says 'professor,' it's not so simple when you're a
musician.
The model is age-old: musicians in the past composed, performed, studied, taught. Palestrina, Di Lasso, Bach, Haydn, Liszt, even Bernstein. Now we know those names as composers, because their legacy is in the music they left on this earth. But composers like J. S. Bach played, conducted, wrote, and taught, and didn't draw hard lines between these functions.
I teach the mandated load required in our faculty contract (to the .01%, of course). But at least three of those courses each semester are performing choral ensembles—acting as music director and conductor for each. But it would be unnatural for me to stop there. I've been a performing pianist since I was in my single-digits. I do some guest-conducting, lead the New Classic Singers (which was once a COD sponsored ensemble), compose 4-6 new musical works a year, serve as a music editor for a music publisher and do the requisite number of outreach, guest clinics, workshops, and outreach projects. Why wear all these hats?
For me, it's all the same game. My insights as a composer inform the way I teach music theory. My piano performance reminds me of how it feels to produce the sounds I conduct or write. I find the boundaries artificial. As a teacher and advisor, it all helps me meet the needs of a wide variety of students—it also gives me some credibility in the eyes of my students, as they realize that the act of musical creation is a long seamless line from inspiration and conception to practice and performance.
Once upon a time, the College celebrated the PR potential of having faculty who wore these different hats and performed so publicly. While that's no longer the case, the reasons for doing so are intrinsic to teaching a performing art. So, while I look forward to every class and rehearsal, my musical life is also marked by the concerts I conduct or play and the performances of my own works.
A few recent highlights:
March 2011 - conducting performances of David Lang's a little match girl passion in Glen Ellyn, Chicago, and Live from WFMT-FM with New Classic Singers
April - June 2011 premieres and performances of newly composed choral works in White Plains (NY), Carnegie Hall, Kansas City, Eugene (OR) and on tour in Italy and Scotland
June 2011 - conducting a part of the grand finale on the Make Music Chicago celebration, also live-broadcast on WFMT
June 2011 - Grant Park Chorus performed my composition BUZZINGS at the Harris Theatre. The concert will be released on a new commercial CD later this year
August 2011 - premiere of Duo Mythologique for flute and string bass at the national conference of the National Flute Association in Charlotte (NC)
And upcoming:
September 16-18, 2011 - the COD Chamber Singers will sing one of my works at a concert on the International Beethoven Project in Chicago. Later that weekend, a new piano work of mine will be premiered at the same festival
Premieres this season of new choral works in Casper (WY), White Plains (NY), Wheaton (IL), and here in Glen Ellyn. A 'tribute' concert in La Rochelle (FR). A recent work is programmed on six all-state high school choirs in the US this year.
New Classic Singers will sing on a Remembrance/Peace concert at the Harris Theatre on 9/11.
And, of course, all of our COD choirs will perform under my direction here at the Arts Center, as they do every semester, with a broad mix of music from the past and present, from the US and the world. And you can find me in the classroom and in my office during office hours, trying to impart the same love of music that fuels my life to our students and community. Just like my other music faculty colleagues. Because these are the things that we musicians do.
