April 23, 2002
The Lion’s Eye
Page 3
A man with a mission
B® Dr. Madden brings his
own blend of knowledge,
humor and guidance to
Penn State Delco
By MEREDITH BECKER
Staff Writer
"Knowledge is dead,
Learning is living."
— Albert Einstein
With these words written on the board Dr. Michael
Madden begins his principles of psychology class. He
endeavors to make his class memorable, "a moment in
time" that the students will walk away from knowing that
/ were respected and that, pe s they even taught the
cr.a thing or two.
Dr. Madden looks at home in his therapy offi
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is classes are an eclectic mix of student presentations
format ne book, stories of how the infor-
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ur lives.
Madden holds a "guided visualization.”
Many do not know what to expect when someone says,
ided visualizations." This is when Dr. Ma takes
students through a breathing exercise trying to get them
totally relaxed, talks students through a place, a city for
example, and tries to get them to really think about "who
we are." :
This is just one of the few questions he feels are the big
questions in life, and he wants to help steer us towards our
OWN answers.
He also assigns the classes a series of abstracts on dif-
ferent articles of his choosing so he can try to get a one-
on-one understanding of each student. It’s the kind of
extra touch other professors don’t have the time to do.
Some of Delco’s professors teach upwards of five differ-
ent classes a semester. They can't allow themselves the
"luxury" of getting to know each of their students.
Dr. Madden is different from all of those people; " the
system” he calls it, when students and professors never
take the time to connect with one another. He feels that
every student has their own story to tell, and that profes-
sors really need to take the time that they are given with
those students and learn as much about each as possible.
Madden received his doctorate at the age of 35 after
teaching high school. If he looks familiar, you may have
met him when he was teaching at Strath Haven High
School.
Madden is an ordained non-denominational minister he
was ordained while working for his doctorate.
Why’d he become a minister?
"I was at a low point in my life and I
realized psychology wasn't giving me a whole lot of
answers," he said. ~
He met a Catholic priest at a workshop who told him
that psychology literally means the study of the psyche, or
soul. Then one of his clients passed away, and their fami-
ly ‘asked Madden to. speak at the funeral, "which just
meant so much to me.” Soon after he heard about an ordi-
nation class and he got ordained.
"Ever since people have been asking me to do their wed-
r textbook being," he say
ANC uUsSuaiiy
dings,” Madden said. “I've done over 50 by now."
At the end of the semester he asks students to write a
field study paper on a topic of interest, whether it's their
major or not. Students figure out what type of group they
want to interview, then ask them questions to try to uncov-
er a theme among them.
Some people choose to interview doctors; others inter-
view fellow students on various issues like working while
attending school or being parents and students at the same
time.
Madden uses his life for so many purposes. He leads
retreat weekends for fathers and sons (occasionally moth-
ers and daughters or fathers and daughters) where there is
no civilization in sight — no phones, no TV, not even a
watch. He gets rid of all the "static" as he puts it, in order
for the pairs to open up to each other, work together
towards a
goal like starting a fire in the rain.
We begin talking about cultures starting with the
Amazon and different tribal ideologies. Then from there
we veer off into uncharted territory: American culture and
how we're constantly changing it.
He views America as a culture that is still trying to find
its place in society. He shows me a catalog, which he
claims to "live off of." In it are descriptions of different
types of weekend retreat classes, one topic of these class-
es seems to keep popping up in the list: Yoga, the latest
fad in the U.S.
He comments on how ironic he finds it for people to jam
into one weekend, what took hundreds of years to master,
and in the end call themselves "masters."
We discuss the problem of young adults using drugs, and
how he feels like maybe we as a culture have reached a
Photo by Meredith Becker
Dr. Michael Madden offers his thoughts on teaching, the world and his contributions to it.
point where since we have no "rights of passage” into
adulthood that maybe these are becoming those rights.
This is a topic that would regularly enter into the class-
room discussion; Madden wants to understand what it is
that we young adults do and why we do it.
He genuinely worries about our generation, not for his
own good but for ours. Everyday he has patients who are
dealing with the same problems :
that we face, only we apparently deal with them better,
because we are not sitting in his office talking about them
to him. He says he hopes that from his classes that he can
achieve a better grasp on what students face day to day, so
he can help the ones who come to him for advice.
"9-11 changed a lot of our reality," our final topic of dis-
cussion was the events of September 11, Madden taught
the first class I had after hearing the news, at that point it
was all still fuzzy as to what was happening.
He was visibly shaken by the whole scenario, he asked
us to bow our heads and reflect on what this meant in our
lives.
He said a few words, he didn't start pounding out vers-
es or anything, he just simply said a prayer for the people
suffering to be protected and to keep others safe from dan-
ger; nothing controversial, just a moment of peace.
I walked out of that classroom and stood in the entrance
to the Classroom building next to Madden and watched
in horror as the first tower crumbled on the television in
front of me.
Looking back, as a student, that prayer at that point
meant everything in the world to me. When I told Madden
that he replied: :
"I've been in the classroom for 30 years now, and that
was the first time I led a public prayer."
Showalter to lead student government in Fall ‘02
By MEREDITH BECKER
Staff Writer
Photo by Anteia Consorto
The new SGA team has lots of plans for next year.
Come next August there will
be some familiar faces in new
places in the SGA hierarchy.
The Student Government
Association of Penn State
Delaware County held elections
on March 25-27 for the student
body to vote for who they want
in power for the year.
For the next term the former
treasurer Lauren Showalter will
be stepping up as president, with
Christine Ferroni at her side as
vice president. The secretary
will be Sandy Sylvestri, co- sec-
retary will be Jamila
Bishop who will be taking over
the position totally at the end of
the fall semester, treasurer will
be David Prentice and senate
leader will be Nanaesi Cato.
SGA is a student- run organi-
zation, which has helped out
with programs like "Toys for
Tots" and the Chinese New Year
celebration. It deals with some
of the financial issues along side
the Allocation committee: basi-
cally trying to spread enough
money around for all the clubs
to be able to have a chance for a
good year.
Showalter says she has big
plans for SGA next year. She
wants to make the group more
accessible to the students.
“You can talk to the SGA lead-
ers about anything that you may
be having a problem with,”
Showalter said, “from trying to
select a major, to raising money
towards an event for your club.”
Showalter says she under-
stands that, "not a lot of people
know who we are." She wants to
rectify this problem and rebuild
the bridge she feels there should
be for the students.
The staff alongside Showalter
will be replacing this year's
leaders they were: Andrew
Lowry, president; Keith Farrell,
vice president; Ivena John, sec-
retary; Lauren Showalter, treas-
urer and Dan Zacher, senate
leader.
The SGA is looking forward to
hearing from students, after all
nothing can be changed if it's
not talked about. You can be a
part of the SGA at Penn State
Delco, if you're interested just
log onto the SGA's web site at
clubs.psu.edu/delcoSGA and
see how you can be a part of the
team. ahs