President Botzman, administrators accept ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

08-25-14

Misericordia University President Thomas J. Botzman, Kit Foley, vice president of student affairs, and Amy Lahart, dean of students, accepted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that was made by student orientation coordinators and each were doused in a bucket of ice-cold water in the Wells Fargo Amphitheater during the annual Opening Day picnic.

A few days earlier, Misericordia University welcomed 446 first-year students to campus during move-in day and for the annual Convocation ceremony, which officially marks the beginning of the new academic year for the campus community. During the weekend, first-year students participated in orientation activities, including the annual Orientation Day of Service in the Back Mountain communities.

The campus community came together on Monday, Aug. 25 the first official day of classes to have an old-fashioned picnic in the campus quad to celebrate the start of classes and to renew friendships and make some new ones as well. Misericordia features a record enrollment of 3,141 undergraduate and graduate students in full- and part-time formats for the fall semester.

Misericordia orientation coordinators Zachary Sabaday of Saint Clair, Pa., Tori Dziedziak of Shenandoah, Pa., and Julie Bogaert of Bangor, Pa., who had earlier issued the challenge slowly poured the buckets of ice water over the heads of the President Botzman, Vice President Foley and Dean Lahart. In turn, President Botzman challenged student leaders in the Student Government Association to participate in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in order to raise additional funding for research and to continue to increase awareness about the disease that afflicts some 5,600 people annually in the United States, according to the ALS Association. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised $79.7 million as of Aug. 25, according to the ALS Association.

For more information about Misericordia University, please log on to www.misericordia.edu or call (570) 674-6400. Founded and Sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy in 1924, Misericordia University is Luzerne Countys first four-year college and offers 34 degree programs on the graduate and undergraduate levels in full- and part-time formats. Misericordia University ranks in the top tier of the Best Regional Universities North category of U.S. News and World Reports 2014 edition of Best Colleges and was designated a 2015 Best Northeastern College by the Princeton Review.

Caption:

Misericordia University President Thomas J. Botzman accepted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge from student orientation coordinators. Amy Lahart, dean of students, first row at left; President Botzman, center, and Kit Foley, vice president of student affairs, get ice water poured in them by orientation coordinators, from left, Zachary Sabaday of Saint Clair, Pa., Tori Dziedziak of Shenandoah, Pa., and Julie Bogaert of Bangor, Pa.