Peter Borhauer ’09 has been awarded the rank of Eagle Scout.

A paper titled “Irreversible Work in Rapid Expansion of Gases Against the Atmosphere” by Fred Hilgeman, professor of chemistry, Gary Bertrand and Robert Lockwood ’08 has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Chemical Education.  The work is the result of collaboration between Hilgeman’s laboratory and Bertrand at the University of Missouri, Rolla.  The experimental work of data collection for the publication was done by Lockwood, a chemistry major, and was supported by the Welch Chemistry Department Grant as a part of Lockwood’s summer research.

May 5, 2006

Alisa Gaunder, assistant professor of political science, took Lissa Terrel ’06, Tyson Berger ’06, and Chris Bailey ’07 to the ASIANetwork Conference in Lisle, Ill., April 21-23 to present their research supported by the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Research Grant.  Gaunder and five Southwestern students received this grant to travel to Tokyo, Japan, to conduct research on “Political Leadership in Japan” last summer. At the conference, Gaunder and Terrel participated on a panel titled “Faculty-Student Collaborative Research: Process and Results” and presented findings from their research on women and politics in Japan. This research was co-funded by Mundy and ASIANetwork Freeman grants. Terrel, Berger and Bailey also co-presented a poster on their summer research on “Political Leadership in Japan” at a session featuring the research of the ASIANetwork Freeman grantees. 

Jacob Schrum, senior computer science and mathematics major, won first prize in the student poster competition held at Sam Houston State in Huntsville at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC), South Central Region. “Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks: The Building Blocks of Artificial Life” was his honors research under the supervision of Walt Potter.

Lauren Shepard ’06 was honored by the Central Texas American Chemical Society as Southwestern's outstanding graduating chemistry major.

April 21, 2006

Students, faculty, and recent graduates of the Psychology Department captured many of the undergraduate research awards at the Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) annual meeting in Austin April 13-15. First place in the Undergraduate Research Competition went to Emily Taylor, Mark Morrow and Richard Osbaldiston for “Size matters: Perception of nutrition through serving sizes.” Southwestern students also won four of 10 cash awards given for the best abstracts submitted to the Psi Chi program.  These research groups are Christine Chalmers, Samantha Borrego, Candace Tribble and Jacqueline Muir-Broaddus for “Autism and executive functions: The effect of motivational/attentional accomodations;” Sarah Gomillion for “Explaining changes in voting preference over time in university students;” Carlee McConnell and Elissa Lewis for “Prejudice and partisanship: The connection between racial and political attitudes;” and Mary Beth Pinnell, Molly Peterson and Bryan Neighbors for “Internal and external factors associated with sexual risk-taking in college students.”  In addition, Jessica DeFilippo, Elissa Lewis and Bryan Neighbors presented “Gender specificity in parental and romantic attachment;” Elissa Lewis, Mary Ann Erwin-Hartley ’04, Jessica DeFelippo and Bryan Neighbors presented “Loves me not: Current parental attachment and personality dysfunction.” Richard Osbaldiston chaired the Society for Applied Multivariate Research Workshop “Introduction to meta-analysis.” 

March 2006

A string quartet consisting of SU student violinists Kate Bizzell and Victoria Chang, violist Rohan Sreenivasan and cellist Kevin High performed at the Texas Music Educators' Association annual convention in San Antonio as participants in their Student Showcase. Showcase performers, selected by competitive audition, played full-length prelude concerts to performances by the All-State student ensembles (bands, choirs and orchestras) on Saturday, Feb. 18, the final day of the convention. The string quartet has been together two years and is coached by Eri Lee Lam, assistant professor of music.

Two Southwestern students received awards for papers they presented in February at the annual meeting of the Texas Chapter of the American College of Sport Medicine.

Junior kinesiology major Wade Green won third place among undergraduate student research papers for his paper titled "Effects of Intermittent Cervical Traction on Glenohumeral Flexion and Internal and External Rotation." December graduate John Hobbs won first place among undergraduate student research papers for his paper, "Use of the Critical Power Model to Prescribe the Elements of Intermittent Exercise."

Twelve biology students shared their research with other scientists at the 109th annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Science. SU students captured five of 14 possible presentation awards in the Collegiate Academy, which represents all undergraduate researchers across the state. A cash prize to the student accompanied each of the following awards:

The Outstanding Oral Presentation Award (first place) went to Brandon Boland for his talk titled "Distinct palettes: feeding preferences between native and exotic applesnail populations" in collaboration with Romi Burks.

Manjah Fernandez received Honorable Mention for his talk titled "Ubiquitin and heat shock proteins in the severed ventral nerve cord of the crayfish Procambarus clarki," which is co-authored with Biology Department Chair Rebecca Sheller.

Sheeba Varughese received Second Place in Outstanding Poster Presentation for her research titled "Salt tolerance mechanisms of panicoid grasses." This work represented an MERCK interdisciplinary effort between Varughese, Max Taub and Emily Niemeyer.

Tracey Einem captured Third Place for Outstanding Poster with her presentation titled "Effects of 4-OH tamoxifen on HEC 1B endometrial cancer cells." The Merck Scholars Program also sponsored Einem's collaborative research with Maria Cuevas and Maha Zewail-Foote.

Elizabeth Williams received an Honorable Mention for her poster presentation titled "Determination of the Lon recognition site on the UmuC protein in Escherichia coli" co-authored with Martin Gonzalez.

In addition to representing the University well in presentations, junior Brandon Boland and senior Matthew Barnes each received a $750 grant for continued research. The two tied for one of only two grants given by the Texas Academy of Science for undergraduate research. To qualify for this award, Barnes and Boland each submitted six-page research proposals at the beginning of the semester with the help of their advisor, Romi Burks. Boland will continue his research as a BSRP student this coming summer. His project, "Eat to live or live to eat? Feeding preferences at different life history stages of exotic versus native applesnail populations," will extend his work comparing Texas and Uruguayan populations of applesnails.

Barnes' award will contribute to his Senior Honors Thesis. His research has explored fecundity and early life history in applesnails. This new project, "The Snail or the Egg: determining susceptibility to predation of different life history stages of applesnails," will extend his work into examining survivorship.

February 2006

Thirty students from Southwestern have been named to the 2006 edition of Who's Who among students in American Universities and Colleges. The students were selected based on academic achievement, service to the community, leadership in extracurricular activities and potential for continued success.

The students selected from Southwestern are: Ana Baida, Eric Baker, Matt Barnes, Mitch Barnett, Brandon Boland, Brian Boswell, David Crockett, Megan Davidson, Amanda Faulkner, Scott Froehlich, Casey Gorder, Jenna Hardy, Vinitha Jacob, Jason Jones, Andrew Kerr, Bhavik Kumar, Ben Lake, Lauren Liston, Kyle Marshall, Carlee McConnell, Karlee Miller, Molly Peterson, Mary Beth Pinnell, Ty Ragland, Erin Ready, Brodie Reynolds, Lesley Schutts, Iliana Sosa, Fanny Tang and Kari Torres.

Senior Alexandra "Ali" O. Hendley won the 2006 Odum Student Paper Competition at the Southern Sociological Society for her paper, "Barreras del Lenguage: Children's Negotiation of Adult-Created Exclusionary Structures." This paper examines the dynamics between English-only, Spanish-only and bilingual speakers on a children's soccer team. Hendley will present the paper at the upcoming Southern Sociological Society meetings in New Orleans in March.

Sophomore Bethany Leidlein will present her paper "Great Expectations: Anxiety and the Writing Center" at the annual conference of the South Central Writing Center Association Feb. 23-25, in Little Rock, Ark. Writing center professionals from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas will attend the conference. Leidlein is a consultant at the Debby Ellis Writing Center and developed her work as part of Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton's Teaching of Writing class.

Senior biology major Matt Barnes and Romi Burks, assistant professor of biology, gave an invited presentation at Rice University titled "A Tale of Two Snails: Investigating Life History Traits of an Exotic vs. a Native Population of Applesnails (Pomacea )" that summarized the research that has been conducted on applesnails in their lab. The presentation was a part of Barnes' interview for graduate school in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program at Rice.

Senior political science and history major Christina Griffin was one of 15 college students selected for a recent trip to Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League. Students were given the opportunity to tour Israel and engage in a series of briefings with a broad spectrum of voices from Israeli and Palestinian perspectives. The group met with Israeli government officials and Palestinian representatives. After graduation, Griffin plans to work for an international law firm in Houston and then move to Washington, D.C., to attend law school.

January 2006

Students Ian Bothwell and Josephine Thinwa presented their research at the Texas-Missouri Branch meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Denton, Texas. Their research, which focuses on the regulation of DNA repair and damage tolerance mechanisms, was conducted in the laboratory of Martin Gonzalez, assistant professor of biology, and funded through a three-year grant awarded from the National Institutes of Health. Thinwa's poster presentation titled "Targeting of the Escherichia coli UmuC protein for destruction by the Lon protease" was awarded outstanding undergraduate student presentation. The runner-up outstanding undergraduate student presentation went to Bothwell for his presentation "Developing a model for MucAB mutagenesis: Examination of posttranslational pathways for MucA/MucA' regulation in Escherichia coli."

Junior Melanie Stanzer has been awarded a $1,500 grant from the Journal of Emergency Medical Services in cooperation with Pre-hospital Care Research Forum (PCRF) to conduct a study on the psychological well-being of paramedics. The project titled "Stress, Social Support and Partner Preference of Paramedics" was one of the two proposals nationwide that were funded. Stanzer has been invited to present the results from her study at the 2007 Emergency Medical Service Today Conference and Exposition. Her results also will be published in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Emergency Medical Services.