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Saint Anselm College Campus Ministry aims to create an inclusive environment where students can freely practice their beliefs, fostering a supportive community that embraces religious diversity, while at the same time celebrating our Catholic identity.
Event
March 10, 2023
6:00 pm EST
March 11, 2023
6:00 am EST
In conjunction with the American Cancer Society, the Service Societies of Saint Anselm will be hosting its 16th annual Sr. Pauline Relay for Life. Sr. Pauline Lucier served Saint Anselm students for many years as a member of the Campus Ministry Office while she fought her battle against cancer. Sr. Pauline lost her struggle in April of 2009, shortly after the second Relay concluded. It is our intention that her memory and her celebration of life live on through Relay for Life at Saint Anselm. For more information about our Relay, please feel free to check us out on the web: https://secure.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLCY22NER?pg=entry&fr_id=101852
This year’s Relay will honor The Giard Family, Annee (Campus Communications and Marketing), her husband Greg, and their son James who will take the lead as the Giard family serves as our Grand Marshals. James, now 3, is a cancer survivor. Annee will share their story during our Opening Ceremony. A list of other Anselmians who will share their story will be announced closer to the event. The Opening Ceremony and celebration begins shortly after 6:00 pm in the Carr Center. All are welcome to attend.
Please seriously consider lending your support to the Sr. Pauline - Relay for Life. We sure could use your help.
Donations can be made by going on-line to the American Cancer Society Relay website: https://secure.acsevents.org/site/TR?pg=entry&fr_id=104704
Location Information
Carr Center
Contact Information
Susan S. Gabert`91 Ed.D. (she/hers)
Associate Dean of Students
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Please refer to the specified publications for completed information about college policies.
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Places to stay, eat, and explore in and near Manchester, New Hampshire
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On Monday, June 21, 2021, 131 alumni and friends gathered at Nashua Country Club for the 29th Annual Scholarship Golf Tournament,
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The Building a Better New Hampshire Roundtable Series offers discussions on matters of ethical interest to the business, nonprofit, and policy communities. Programs cover current statewide and local issues, innovative models for community growth and development, and ethical decision-making in business and governance.
Event
September 17, 2025
8:00 am EDT
September 19, 2925
4:00 pm EDT
This two-day holistic nursing conference, Honoring Stories: Healing Through Narrative and Holistic Practice, invites nurses and healing professionals to reconnect with the core of caregiving—the stories we carry, witness, and share. Through keynote presentations, plenary sessions, reflective activities, and experiential workshops, participants will explore how storytelling and narrative serve as powerful tools for healing, transformation, and professional growth.
From the wisdom of Florence Nightingale’s enduring legacy to the personal narratives of healing, courage, and leadership, this program honors the deep connection between holistic practice and the human experience. Attendees will engage in practices that amplify presence, creativity, and self-care, including guided journaling, expressive movement, and nature-based reflection. Offering a unique balance of education and retreat activities, this conference offers a space to be nourished, inspired, and renewed.
Target Audience:
This conference is ideal for nurses and care providers interested in enhancing their understanding of holism and exploring ways to integrate holism into the care of self and others.
Learning Outcome:
By the end of this conference, participants will be able to examine the role of narrative in holistic nursing practice by exploring personal, professional, and patient stories as pathways to healing, connection, leadership, and self-awareness.
Contact Hours: 10.75 hours
Planned Sessions:
Location: The Colony Hotel, Kennebunkport, Maine
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Every season, the Dana Center for the Performing Arts plays host to a steady stream of talented musicians, dancers, and performers—but, for a glimpse of a true musical master, take a peek behind the scenes.
Event
May 6, 2024
4:00 pm EDT - 6:30 pm EDT
The relationship between ethics and the arts has always fascinated thinkers. Join us on Monday, May 6th, for a discussion about the ethical complexities within artistic creation, consumption, and identity. During this time, our panelists will explore the intersections of gender, ethics, and art, and attempt to answer questions about how gender can and should inform the arts.
Some key topics that will be addressed:
Through these discussions, this event aims to highlight the transformative potential of art in addressing ethical dilemmas and promoting social justice.
Free and open to the public. Refreshments and coffee provided.
Presented by the Diversity and Inclusion Innovation Fund, the Center for Ethics in Society, and the Richard L. Bready Chair in Ethics, Economics, and the Common Good.
Panelists:
Hilary Poriss, PhD, is a Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music and the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University. Her primary research interests are in the areas of 19th-century Italian and French opera, performance practice, diva culture, and the aesthetics of 19th-century musical culture. She has published four books: Gioacchino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Oxford University Press), Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford University Press), Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Cambridge University Press), and of The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press). Her newest book project, a biography about the nineteenth-century diva Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), will be published by the University of Chicago Press.
Ann Holbrook, PhD, is a Professor of English and Chair of the English and Communication Department at Saint Anselm College. She specializes in twentieth-century British literature and literature by women writers, particularly the prolific journalist and novelist Rebecca West. She has edited and analyzed some of West's posthumously published fiction and published articles on Edna O'Brien, Virginia Woolf, Mary Lavin, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anita Brookner, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. She co-edited the 2022 collection For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt, to which she contributed an essay. An avid musician, she sings with several regional bands.
Laura Elizabeth Shea, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Art History at Saint Anselm College who specializes in the history of photography and global and contemporary art. Her work analyzes the production and reception of images that engage with the intersections of race, gender, movement, and memory in American and global contexts.
Tina Philibotte, is the Chief Equity Officer for the Manchester School District. She is also an educator, having taught both Dance and English at Goffstown High School. During this time, she was a finalist for the NH State Teacher of the Year award and a two-time fellow with the National Writing Project. She’s served as a NH Listens fellow since January 2021 and an advisory member to the Endowment for Health’s Race & Equity Series.
Katie Collins is Director of Development at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord. An English and Theater graduate of College of the Holy Cross, she has more than 30 years of non-profit development and management experience. Katie has led the successful management of major gifts acquisitions, capital campaigns, grants programs, and corporate giving programs. Katie is also a freelance writer and editor, and an active theatre professional, acting on stage with companies such as theatre Kapow. Her talents have been recognized by the NH Theater Awards who honored her as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy or Drama in 2013.
Aaron Tolson is an internationally renowned dance professional, choreographer, and show producer. Aaron has appeared on Broadway, toured nationally, directed non-profits dedicated to instructing youth in dance, and taught both in several institutions of higher education as well as prestigious dance schools in NYC. He starred for six years in Riverdance, co-created and was the assistant producer of Imagine Tap!, and is currently the director of the pre-professional tap company “Speaking in Taps.” In Fall 2024, he will join the Fine Arts Department at Saint Anselm College as a Professor of Practice in Dance.
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Tucked behind a heavy, white door in the Psychology Department at Saint Anselm College is a maze of hallways. Entering the first door, one is bombarded by the clanging sounds of machinery and the squeaking of rats which echo off the walls. Enthusiastic students dart in and out of small rooms, gloved hands gripping syringes and bottles of carefully measured solutions. Here, these students, along with Psychology professor Dr. Joseph Troisi, are using rats as test subjects in a series of experimental research related to drug addiction. Students’ eyes light up when asked about the time they are spending working in the lab. Patrick Conley, a senior Psychology major, says he is particularly interested in using his major for animal research. “Reading an article on this kind of thing is boring, but doing it in person is wicked cool. I think it’s awesome that we have this accessibility to the rats here.” Olivia Koporek, also a senior Psychology major, agrees with Patrick. She says, “Without Dr. Troisi's passion for the research and the Saint Anselm Psychology Department's generation of resources, I find it hard to believe I would have this opportunity at any other college. Many friends I've spoken to who attend other schools, large and small, are not aware of any similar opportunities.” The rats experience counterbalanced, varied states of consciousness - neutral or under the influence of caffeine or nicotine. Under each condition, the rats undergo a form of operant conditioning in which they are reinforced with food pellets by pressing their nose to a lever in their chamber. The twist is this: some “nose touches” are rewarded by food; others are not. Professor Troisi explains that “for some animals, the drug state is used to indicate that their behavior in the operant chambers will be reinforced. For those same animals, the non-drug state is used to indicate that responding won’t be reinforced.” Rats are also tested on days where there are no pellet rewards under either condition. On these test days, a high
er response - a larger number of “nose touches” - is found in rats who experienced the drug condition which was rewarded with a food pellet in the past. A lower response - a smaller number of “nose touches” - is found in rats who experienced the drug condition with no reward in the past. Because the rats experience reward - and lack thereof - in both the drug condition and the non-drug condition, their tendency to “nose touch” for a reward is related to whether they received a reward in the past rather than directly related to how the drug makes them feel. In this way, the tendency toward behavior due to the drug state alone and the tendency toward behavior due to experiencing reward are separated - the drug and the environment become two different factors entirely.
As Professor Troisi notes, “Environmental cues interact with interoceptive cues to regulate behavior - it’s not one or the other. When a person engages in a behavior for taking a drug, they’ve learned a relationship between the emotional state that occurred before it, the behavior that occurred under that state and the reinforcing effect of the drug.” More simply put, focusing solely on extinguishing the behavior of taking the drug is insufficient. What Professor Troisi and his team of students have come to believe is necessary is “extinguishing the behavior in the presence of those cues, but also in the presence of other environmental and internal cues that have no relationship with the drug.” At the same time, it is important to create new habits and behaviors which provide alternative types of reinforcement - rather than drug effects - when those environmental and internal cues are present.
This multitude of valuable, innovative research has incredible translational importance in the arena of drug addiction and related psychological therapy. It is an unfortunate but true fact that drug addiction, in numerous forms, is a continuing problem in our country - even particularly in the city of Manchester. Noelle Michaud, a junior Psychology major, is a newer member to the student team of researchers. She says, poignantly, “A vast majority of people have experience with family or friends being affected by addiction. It is something that will always be relevant because addiction will always exist. This research is a huge contribution to better understand both the psychological and biological processes that come into play for those with an addiction- with the ultimate hope to form effective solutions to extinguish them.” As psychologists, the goal is to examine every element of the issue and target areas to focus on for decreasing its prevalence; this is exactly what Professor Troisi and his team of students have attempted to accomplish in their research. “It’s not just the environment, it’s not just the emotional state, it’s both,” he says. That means working with patients over long periods of time, in multiple contexts, in lots of different situations, and that’s probably the best way to treat drug addiction rather than to treat it just with drug replacement therapy. That’s why we’re studying it.”
