From su-infocus at southwestern.edu Thu Dec 6 15:40:17 2007 From: su-infocus at southwestern.edu (su-infocus@southwestern.edu) Date: Thu Dec 6 15:42:01 2007 Subject: [InFocus] In Focus Message-ID: <47586C41.3010004@southwestern.edu> IN FOCUS: December 7, 2007 * TOP NEWS * *CALENDAR* SEVEN SOUTHWESTERN FACULTY MEMBERS RECEIVE AWARDS FOR RESEARCH AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT *CAMPUS CALENDAR * To view upcoming events at Southwestern by day, week or month, click here . Seven Southwestern University faculty members have been named 2007 recipients of awards from the Sam Taylor Fellowship Fund. The fund provides monetary awards for the continuing education and development of full-time faculty members of United Methodist colleges and universities in Texas. Applicants are required to submit programs that will "contribute to the improvement of the quality of intellectual, community or religious life of the state of Texas and the nation." Southwestern received a total of $13,270 in grant money from the fund this year. Each faculty member will receive between $1,500 and $2,000. The recipients plan to use their funds for projects ranging from cancer research to private lessons with some of the country's leading musicians. Read the rest of the story here . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOUTHWESTERN PROFESSOR PERFORMS AT CARNEGIE HALL DEC. 8 Pianist Kiyoshi Tamagawa, professor and chair of the Department of Music at Southwestern University, will perform in a chamber music concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City Dec. 8. The concert resulted in part from a recital held at Southwestern in the spring of 2006 with Tamagawa and Evangeline Benedetti, New York Philharmonic cellist for 40 years. Tamagawa and Benedetti began discussing ways to perform together again. A recording of their 2006 performance was submitted to Mid-America Productions, a company that produces concerts in major halls in New York. They will produce the recital for Tamagawa and Benedetti, which will also include Stanley Drucker, first clarinetist of the Philharmonic, and Serena Benedetti, an operatic soprano. Read the rest of the story here . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOUTHWESTERN PARTICIPATES IN NEW GEORGETOWN-BASED BIOTECHNOLOGY CENTER Southwestern University is among the founding partners of a new Georgetown-based biotechnology center that has the potential to revolutionize healthcare in the United States. The new center is called the Texas Life Sciences Commercialization Center (TLCC). Its purpose is to help companies that have commercially viable biotechnology products take them to the next step. "The center provides administrative support so companies can concentrate on product development," explains TLCC President Russ Peterman. Support services include business consulting, accounting, legal services, and advice on securing venture capital and other funding sources. TLCC has begun operation in a 15,000-square foot building located in the Georgetown South Commercial Park. Three companies are currently located at the center: Orthopeutics, Quantum Logic Devices and Radix BioSolutions. Read the rest of the story here . EVENTS RECOGNITION CEREMONY FOR SUMMER AND DECEMBER GRADUATES DEC. 16 The recognition ceremony for summer 2007 and December 2007 graduates will be held Dec. 16 in the Lois Perkins Chapel. The ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. NOTABLES *Romi Burks*, assistant professor of biology, gave a talk titled "Bad Eggs...Bad Snails: An update on the ecology of the Texas applesnail, Pomacea insularum" on Dec. 1st at the 3rd annual meeting of a group of central Texas ecologists and earth scientists. Burks was also elected to co-chair the academic program for the meeting next year. *Melissa Johnson*, associate professor of anthropology, presented "Cleaning the Yard: Trash and Bush in Rural Belize" in the panel "Rubbish, or Not" at the American Anthropological Association's Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., Nov. 28-Dec. 2. She also was a discussant for the panel "Landscape Interrupted: Reflections on Experiences of Place and Displacement." *Elizabeth Green Musselman*, associate professor of history, appeared in a half-hour interview about her South Africa research on the "Exploring Environmental History" podcast. The interview focuses on the relationship between environmental history and the history of science, the extent to which South Africa has a unique environmental history and how Africans' own environmental knowledge made its way into colonial science. The audio file is available online here . The program can be listened to directly from the computer or downloaded to an mp3 player. *Tim O'Neill*, professor of political science and holder of the Tower-Hester Chair in Political Science, published his review of Barbara Perry's "The Michigan Affirmative Action Cases" (Kansas, 2007) in the November issue of the Law and Politics Book Review. Students *Eva Graham*, *Kim Griffin*, *Leah Jones*, *Ursula James*, *Shannon Burge*, *Shaun Cooper*, *Tanlyn Roelofs*, *Melissa Dison*, *Shireen Tabrizi*, *Cameron Holland* and* Daniel Quentin* attended the first annual Powershift gathering in Washington D.C. Powershift is a gathering of college and high school students across the nation to stand together against climate change. The conference held panel discussions on activism, greening university supply chains or cafeterias, and how to engage other students in environmental issues. Speakers at the gathering included Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Green Party Candidate Ralph Nader. -- Katy Boose Editorial Coordinator Southwestern University 1001 E. University Ave. Georgetown, TX 78626 512-863-1487 boosek@southwestern.edu www.southwestern.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.southwestern.edu/pipermail/su-infocus/attachments/20071206/6b509f1c/attachment.htm From su-infocus at southwestern.edu Thu Dec 13 16:22:18 2007 From: su-infocus at southwestern.edu (su-infocus@southwestern.edu) Date: Thu Dec 13 16:24:03 2007 Subject: [InFocus] In Focus 12/14/07 Message-ID: <4761B09A.8030807@southwestern.edu> IN FOCUS: December 14, 2007 * TOP NEWS * *CALENDAR* CLASS USES CHOCOLATE TO HELP STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT TOPICS FROM ADVERTISING TO EVOLUTION *CAMPUS CALENDAR * To view upcoming events at Southwestern by day, week or month, click here . College credit for tasting chocolate? It almost seems too good to be true. But listen to Romi Burks talk about the course she has created, and you realize that she is quite serious. Burks, an assistant professor of biology at Southwestern, has developed a course that uses chocolate as a model to help students learn about everything from different cultures to marketing and fair trade. The course, titled "Multi-Chocolated: An Aesthetic, Historical and Scientific Journey into the Wonders of Chocolate," is one of 28 "First-Year Seminars" offered to incoming students at Southwestern. The seminars are designed to be fun, yet at the same time expose students to important skills such as reading, writing, critical thinking, discussion and creativity. Read the rest of the story here . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOUTHWESTERN STUDENTS CONTINUE TO RANK ABOVE THEIR PEERS IN NATIONAL SURVEY OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT For the sixth year in a row, students at Southwestern have ranked above students at peer institutions -- and significantly above the national average -- when it comes to being engaged in their academic endeavors. The findings come from the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which was sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and administered by the Indiana University Center for Survey Research. The NSSE is given annually to first-year students and seniors. This is the sixth year that Southwestern has participated in the study. Forty-five percent of eligible Southwestern students responded to the 2007 survey. Nationwide, about 298,000 students from 587 four-year colleges and universities participated in the survey. The survey measures five areas that are associated with high levels of learning and development: level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environment. Read the rest of the story here . EVENTS RECOGNITION CEREMONY FOR SUMMER AND DECEMBER GRADUATES DEC. 16 The recognition ceremony for summer 2007 and December 2007 graduates will be held Dec. 16 in the Lois Perkins Chapel. The ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. MEDIA COVERAGE The /Austin American-Statesman/ ran an item about Kiyoshi Tamagawa playing at Carnegie Hall. The /Williamson County Sun/ ran a feature story on students from SEAK who went to the Power Shift 2007 conference in Washington, D.C. NOTABLES *Edward L. Kain*, professor of sociology and University Scholar, presented a lecture and co-led a workshop at Rutgers University Dec. 10. His presentation was titled "Fruitful Partnerships between Faculty and Librarians - the Integration of Information Literacy into the Sociology Curriculum." It was part of a half-day workshop for the Rutgers University Libraries titled "Information Literacy in the Disciplines: The Sociology Experience." Participants included subject librarians from the libraries at Rutgers, selected faculty in sociology, and several administrators involved with undergraduate education and teaching excellence. The workshop was co-presented with Triveni Kuchi, Social Sciences/Instructional Services and South Asia Librarian. This workshop is one result of a two-year collaboration with the American Library Association/ ACRL / Anthropology and Sociology Section Instruction and Information Literacy Committee. Near the beginning of the collaboration, Kain worked with *Joan Parks*, head of Reference Services in the Smith Library Center, to develop a set of materials about collaboration between faculty and librarians on issues of information literacy. *Max Taub*, associate professor of biology, is the co-author of a paper that will be published in a forthcoming issue of /Global Change Biology/. In the paper, he and co-authors Brian Miller and Holly Allen analyze data on the effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide on the protein content of food crops. They conclude that the protein content of many crops (paticularly wheat, rice, barley and potatoes) is likely to decline given the increase in CO2 over the 21st century. The paper can be found online at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01511.x LAST ISSUE OF IN FOCUS FOR THIS YEAR This will be the last issue of In Focus published in 2007. Publication will resume after the holiday break. Happy Holidays from the In Focus staff -- Ellen Davis, Katy Boose and Kalie Trueper! -- Katy Boose Editorial Coordinator Southwestern University 1001 E. University Ave. Georgetown, TX 78626 512-863-1487 boosek@southwestern.edu www.southwestern.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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