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SALISBURY, MD---ºÚÁÏÍø welcomed new students to the campus during Fall Convocation, a colorful ceremony featuring faculty in full regalia, the pomp and circumstance of the University mace and flag, and the Alma Mater on Friday, August 24, in Red Square.

MSNBC correspondent Jeannette Walls, author of this year’s New Student Reader book, The Glass Castle, was the Convocation speaker. From wearing shoes held together with safety pins to coloring her skin with markers to disguise holes in her clothes, Walls grew up the child of poor, eccentric parents who created a dysfunctional but vibrant home life. The Glass Castle recounts her experiences.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves thanks to—and often in spite of—their free-spirit mother, a brilliant but often drunk and destructive father, and others who became part of their young lives. A New York Times bestseller, The Glass Castle is “nothing short of spectacular,” said Entertainment Weekly. The award-winning author is an engaging speaker who was most recently seen on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

The community is invited to peruse new students’ art and essays related to the book during an exhibit of works submitted by those reading the book, on display in the Atrium Gallery of the Guerrieri University Center Thursday-Tuesday, August 23-28. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. Students themselves participated in small group discussions regarding the book during their first day on campus.

In addition, new students had the opportunity to become an immediate part of SU history with a new tradition, an incoming student class photo. From there, the Class of 2011 went to a signing-in ceremony led by President Janet Dudley-Eshbach, Provost Tom Jones and Student Government Association President Matthew Ng. The embossed register will be archived at the University.

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.