Food for Thought

Want to know which residence hall is leading in this year's Cat Cup Challenge? View Campus Recreation's overall standings and results web page, which is updated after every event.

Has your resident hall ever won the Cat Cup trophy? Click here for the list of Cat Cup winners since 1994.

~Leslie Fazin

Annual Cat Cup Challenge

The Center for Recreation and Sport saw a unique crowd of athletes last week during an intense game of Melonball. Students from Adelphi's six residence halls made their way to the gym to compete against one another.

Their common goal? To be reigned the next Cat Cup champions.

"Cat Cup is a residence hall competition to bring a sense of community to the residence halls and to also spur on competition," said Linda Gundrum, director of Campus Recreation.

The year-long competition is funded by the Resident Student Association (RSA) and programmed by Campus Recreation, and has been an Adelphi tradition since 1994. "We thought if [residents] competed against each other, they would have residence hall pride," said Gundrum.

Cat Cup is a series of events based upon resident hall participation and an accumulation of points, which are dependant upon the type of event being played. For example, in Melonball, residence halls are awarded points for the amount of wins they receive during a match. This year, New Hall came in first place.

Yet besides Melonball, Cat Cup sponsors seven other events, including kick-off (penny wars), scavenger hunt, shopping spree, dodgeball, student feud, cook-off and last blast.

The next scheduled event, shopping spree, will take place on Friday, December 4 at 2:45 pm. "There are two teams per hall and they are each given a $40 gift certificate to Target," said Diane Lindenmayer, graduate assistant of special events and promotions for Campus Recreation.

Each residence hall is given a specific list of toy-based items, pre-determined by RSA, and they have 45 minutes to collect as many as they can without going over the spending limit. All toys will be donated to Winthrop University Hospital.

At the end of the 2009 - 2010 academic year, the Cat Cup trophy will be awarded to the residence hall with the most overall points. Each year the trophy moves from one residence hall to the next, depending on the year's win. The trophy currently resides in New Hall, the 2008 - 2009 Cat Cup winners.

"[Cat Cup] brings a good school spirit to the whole campus. It introduces you to new people and then, of course, you have the whole teamwork aspect of it," said Lindenmayer. "It gets you active and it gets you around campus too."

For more information about participating in this year's Cat Cup challenge, contact your resident assistant (RA), resident hall director (RHD) or Campus Recreation at (516) 877-4242.

New Hall residents and RHD Robert Kiley pose with the infamous Cat Cup trophy at the end of the 2008 - 2009 academic year. Photo courtesy of Campus Recreation.

~Leslie Fazin

Food for Thought

Check out the podcast below to hear what the Adelphi University Bells sounded like today at noon.

~Leslie Fazin

The Adelphi Bells

Every college or university has some sort of tradition: school colors, school mascot, school emblem. And maybe even a school song.

But have you ever walked across Adelphi's campus and heard the chiming of bells coming from the Science Building? Every hour, a set of carillon toll, as well as play two full-length songs at noon and 4 p.m.

These bells, now pre-recorded, were once played live from the lobby of the Science Building and broadcast around campus through the use of an organ. "The carillon was repaced with a new electronic system about eight years ago at the request of the President," said Robert Shipley of the Facilities Management.

"When the bells were purchased, you could make a decision about various song packages," said Kali Chan, Media Relations Director for the Office of Public Affairs. "The package that was chosen included a few hundred songs and the computer system plays these songs at random."

During the holiday season, beginning in December, these bells also start playing Christmas music, which is an easy way to get students, faculty and staff into the spirit.

The carillon on top of the Science Building are not the only bells on campus, however. A bell was once located in the old tower of Post Hall as a gift from the class of 1948. "The bell was taken down many years ago and was hanging in the University Center on a bracket. We moved it to Chasner Street for storage for a while," Shipley said. "When we built the Adele and Herbert J. Klapper Center for Fine Arts Building, [it was thought to] be a nice feature to install on the building. It is now hanging at our main entrance and we have a framed plaque in the lobby of the original architectural drawing of the bell system."

Interested in finding out more about Adelphi's traditions and fun facts? Visit the Did You Know? section of Adelphi's Web site to learn more.

~Leslie Fazin

The bells, broadcast from a computerized speaker system, are played from the top of the Science Building. Photo courtesy of Leslie Fazin.

Food for Thought

Did reading about "Talking With..." get you interested in attending other performances at the Performing Arts Center?

Check out this link to view the entire 2009-2010 season brochure.

~Leslie Fazin

"Talking With..."

"A young woman tests her Christian faith by handling poisonous snakes. A baton twirler sees the face of Jesus 30 feet in the air. A destitute woman wants to live in McDonald’s, where the sick are cured by Big Macs and no one ever dies. A housewife escapes to Oz every day."

Adelphi University's Performing Arts Center (PAC) is showcasing just some of the characters described above in "Talking With...," an eccentric production starting tomorrow and running through November 22 in the Black Box Theatre.

The show, directed by the theatre department's chair, Nicholas Petron, is a collection of 11 monologues, each portraying an aspect significant to a particular woman's life.

The New York Times referred to this show as a "Dramatist with an original voice...[and] gladsome humor," according to a press release sent out by Managing Director Blake Seidel and the PAC's Facebook page (type AU PAC in the search bar).

Written by playwright Jane Martin, "Talking With..." is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the American Theatre Critics Association Award for Best Regional Play in 1982.

Now in a revival at Adelphi, students, faculty and guests are encouraged to support the arts and watch 11 theatre students portray 11 eclectic stories. Ticket prices are $10 for senior citizens, alumni and faculty, $7 for students and $15 for the general public.

To purchase tickets, visit or call the box office at (516) 877 - 4000 or place an order online.

Unable to make it to the show this week? Don't fret. The next issue of the Delphian, which will be out on stands Monday, November 24, will feature a review written by staff reporter Chelsea Preister.

~Leslie Fazin

Photo courtesy of Leslie Fazin.

Food for Thought

This Tuesday, November 10, the Center for Career Development will be holding a Resume Workshop from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. In addition, there will be an Interview Workshop on Thursday, November 12 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Both workshops will be held in Post Hall.

To keep track of other events held throughout the remaining Fall 2009 semester, or read stories about students' experiences in the "real world," click here.

~Leslie Fazin

A Closer Look at Adelphi's Career Center

Jennifer Fauci, a senior English major, wrote her resume for the first time during her sophomore year at Adelphi University. Yet with only two years of college experience, and a bulk of her achievements stemming from high school, she had no idea where to start. So, she turned to the Internet for help.

"I used a lot of templates and Web sites to find out how to format my information to fit onto one presentable page," she said. "No professional help, just whatever Internet sources I had at hand."

Though she commutes to and from school, an easier route would have been to access Adelphi's Center for Career Development, a career counseling service helping students and alumni create resumes and prepare for job interviews.

It's always recommended to have an extra set of eyes, but students often neglect the professional career counseling staff found in Post Hall, who are available and trained to read over resumes through e-mail or by appointment. "People don't realize that their student activities fee here at the University pays for services like this," said Elaine Boylan, associate director of the Center for Career Development.

By visiting with or e-mailing one of the four career counselors, students can receive a full critique of their resume and can even request the center's handbook with sample resumes and cover letters inside.

"Your resume is the one document in your life that needs to be constantly and repeatedly updated. It's a live document and it should always reflect the honesty, accuracy and completeness of one's background," said Boylan, who stresses the importance of a strong, well-written resume.

On any given day, employers often spend anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds reading a resume, looking only for pieces of information that will peak their interest. It is essential, therefore, to keep a resume as concise as possible. Wordiness, too many bullet points, and not being specific enough, will often draw potential employers away.

"In addition, sometimes people have too much description and it's really not necessary," said Boylan. "And sometimes people express concern that if they don't put everything that they've ever done on their resume, that somehow that's lying. And it's not; lying is putting something on there that you never did."

Unless a student has more extensive experience, a resume should be no longer than one page in length, which is exactly why carefully picking and choosing the most important and relevant pieces of information are the key to success.

Boylan makes clear that there is not one specific way to create an ideal resume but each should always contain three basic categories: education, experience and skills. Students are not limited to these categories, however. Other topics include research (for medical students), publications (for journalism students) and student teaching (for education majors).

Other tips? Purchase special resume paper, which can be found at Staples, in either ivory, white, off-white or light gray. Pastel colors and decorative borders will only be thrown in the trash. Boylan also suggests paying close attention to the cover letter, which is equally as important as your resume.

"People don't spend quite as much time agonizing over their cover letter, but they should," said Boylan, "because their resume is not going to get read unless the person gets past their cover letter."

The Center for Career Development is open Mondays through Fridays from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and on Wednesdays from 8:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. To schedule an appointment for resume or interview assistance, visit the center, call them at (516) 877 - 3130 or send an e-mail to careercounselor@adelphi.edu.

~Leslie Fazin