A message from University Advancement: On Wednesday, April 8, SPU will host its first-ever hybrid Giving Day and we want to feature faculty and staff and their impactful programs and work! How? Look for an email from Monica Hubert in University Advancement titled, “Count Me in for Giving Day," for ways to get involved — e.g., pray, give, volunteer, or simply join in the fun of the day. We would love every department to participate!

Sneak peak for ways you can get involved.

• Join the fundraising fun with other SPU departments in a campus competitions to win prizes for your department.
• Volunteer to support our fundraising work throughout the day.
• Be an ambassador to spread the word and help inspire others to give to your projects and SPU by sharing the day on social media.
• Submit a short summary of your department, its mission, top three wins or achievements or current projects, and how donors and SPU community can help or get involved.
• Make your gift to SPU at givingday.spu.edu.

Staff Council would like to encourage you to nominate a staff member to be recognized for their outstanding contribution to the SPU community at the upcoming Celebration of Service. Submit your nomination now through March 18.

A message to faculty from Bryan Jones, associate vice president for admissions: Each year we try to convey to incoming students the kind of learning community they will find here at SPU. An example of this has been a project that the Undergraduate Admissions team spearheads in asking faculty to write a personal note to each admitted student for the coming fall. Each year we get unsolicited feedback at our spring events, as well as from our admitted student research, that receiving a personal notecard from a SPU professor is a powerful message that they will be known and begin an actual relationship with a faculty member.

We are asking faculty to sign up for the number of cards they can write (even just a few), and those cards will be delivered on campus. Please COMPLETE THIS BRIEF FORM (takes about 30 seconds to complete).

A note to SPU staff. This project is primarily for faculty, but we welcome you to sign up if you are interested in participating. We may have undecided students or specific academic areas that could use additional support in writing these notecards.

Additional information

• Most faculty will write to students within their own academic disciplines, but please know that you may still be asked to write a “general” note of welcome to students from outside your program’s majors or to those whom are undecided.
• All notecards will be pre-labeled and pre-stamped and we will include suggested text for your note. (Though it’s a wonderful touch if you can include one of your business cards if you have them.)
• We are hoping to have all notecards mailed by Friday, March 20, so that our students will hear from our faculty while they are deciding which college to attend.

Again, thank you for all that you are doing for our current students and we thank you in advance to those who help us with personal touches of recruitment!

Previous Golden Falcon Penholder Award Winners:

2021 Tim Nelson
2022 Randy Beavers
2023 Andrew Ryder
2024 Grace Blum
2025 Grace Blum

The next Resume Rescue for students is Thursday, April 9, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. in the Center for Career and Calling. Students can drop by for quick, personalized resume feedback and get their materials polished ahead of the Fall Career Fair (more details to come). All students are welcome. Please help spread the word! 

The Faculty/Staff Bulletin is published every Monday during the academic year. The next deadline is Thursday, March 12, and the next Bulletin will be published on Monday, March 16. 

If you have information or event news, send it as soon as possible with an image or graphic to Bulletin editor Tracy Norlen at fsb-editor@spu.edu. Submissions may be edited for clarity and will be published for two consecutive issues; they can be resubmitted for an additional two weeks.

Alberto Ferreiro, emeritus professor of European history, presented an invited paper titled, “Introduction of Select Canons of the Council of Neocaesarea (315) in the Capitula Martini of St. Martin of Braga (c. 520–c. 579) in Suevic Gallaecia,” at the Provincial and Diocesan Councils – Synodal Life in the Local Churches conference at the University of Vienna in February 2026. The paper will be published in the Annales Historiae Conciliorum of the Konziliengeschichte Society. Here is the abstract: The Council of Neocaesarea in Pontus met around 314–315, shortly after the Council of Ancyra. It was composed, for the most part, of the same bishops who assisted at the latter, and Vitalis of Antioch is believed to have presided  Fifteen canons of discipline were issued by the bishops on various subjects. One of the ways some of the canons found their way to the West in the sixth province of Gallaecia in Northwestern Hispania, then ruled by the Sueves, was through Martin of Braga, metropolitan bishop, at the Second Council of Braga (572). The canons were part of an 84 Greek canons collection, known as the Capitula ex Orientalium Patrum Synodis a Martino Episcopo Ordinata Atque Collecta. He and his pupil, Paschasius of Dumium. translated them into Latin to introduce them into the Gallaecian church. Of the 15 Neocaesarea canons, Martin chose nine: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13. We ask: why these? What did they address that Martin believed was lacking in the Gallaecian church? These and corollary questions are investigated in this study.

Alumni Bill Taylor and his brother, Paul Taylor, reflect on their company now entering its fifth generation of famly ownership in a feature story in The Seattle Times on March 3.