Eric Townsend

Six panelists expressed excitement – as well as concerns – when discussing the Obama presidency during a Jan. 16 program sponsored by the Multicultural Center, Phi Beta Kappa, the Council on Civic Engagement and the Office of Civic Engagement.

RecycleMania returns to Elon this month for the university’s third year taking part in a national recycling competition involving hundreds of college and universities. Leaders hope to surpass the nearly 54 tons of recyclable materials collected last spring on campus during the contest.

A North Carolina civic activist and former mayor of Charlotte challenged students on Wednesday to not just reexamine their personal goals, but to then exceed them, while reaching beyond the Elon campus to give back to their communities. Harvey B. Gantt was the keynote speaker for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Program.

Harvey B. Gantt, the first African American elected to lead North Carolina’s largest city, visits Elon this month for an annual commemorative program to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The former Charlotte mayor will speak Jan. 14 at noon in Whitley Auditorium.

Gary Palin, executive director of the Doherty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, was one of three judges this month for the 2009 National Model Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Program at a conference hosted by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Steve Friedland, Senior Scholar and Professor of Law of the Elon University School of Law, provided analysis for WFMY News 2 in Greensboro, N.C., for a Jan. 12 segment on the bond amounts set for defendants charged with driving while impaired in wrecks that end with fatalities.

Legal minds from the United States, Japan, Scotland and Germany will share their expertise with Elon Law students this winter in “Constitutions and Cultures: The Idea of a Constitution,” a course taught by noted constitutional law expert A.E. Dick Howard.

During World War Two, many captured German soldiers were transferred overseas to prison camps in the United States. After discovering an unlikely connection to one of these POWs, Tom Nelson, an associate professor of communications, began work on "Prisoners of Plenty," a documentary that tells the Germans' stories due out this year.

David Noer, the Frank S. Holt Jr. Professor of Business Leadership in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, had his monthly column published Jan. 4, 2009, in the (Greensboro, N.C.) News & Record. "Use the economic downturn as a wake-up call, not a panic call" uses the tale of Chicken Little to encourage readers not to listen to those whose response to the current financial meltdown as a cry that "the sky is falling."

Charles Becton, president of the North Carolina Bar Association and a former judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, comes to the Elon University School of Law on Jan. 14 for a program sponsored by the Black Law Students Association in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.