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<div class="style10" align="left"> IN FOCUS: February 2, 2007</div>
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<div align="left"><b> TOP NEWS </b></div>
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height="15" width="167"><b><span class="style7">CALENDAR </span></b></td>
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<div align="left"><strong>MARCH 5-6 SYMPOSIUM AT SOUTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY TAKES A NEW LOOK AT OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ANIMALS</strong></div>
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<p><strong>February</strong></p>
<p><strong>2-17</strong> Fine Line: Mental Health/Mental Illness,
Fine Arts Gallery<br>
<br>
<strong>3</strong> Baseball, alumni game, 2 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>4</strong> Faculty recital: David Asbury, guitar, and Hai
Zheng, cello, 3 p.m., Mood-Bridwell Atrium<br>
<br>
<strong>7</strong> Gallery talk: “Madness in the Media: Mr.
Monk’s Postmodern Identity,” <br>
5 p.m., Olin 105<br>
<br>
<strong>9</strong> Women’s basketball vs. Trinity, 6 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>9</strong> Men’s basketball vs. Trinity, 8 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>10</strong> Baseball vs. Schreiner, 2 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>11</strong> Baseball vs. Schreiner, 1 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>12</strong> Women’s basketball vs. University of Dallas,
6 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>12 </strong>Fleming Lecture in Religion, 7 p.m., McCombs
Ballroom<br>
<br>
<strong>12</strong> Men’s basketball vs. University of Dallas, 8
p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>15</strong> Baseball vs. Huston-Tillotson University, 3
p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>16-18</strong> Family Days<br>
<br>
<strong>16</strong> Women’s basketball vs. Austin College, 6 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>16</strong> Men’s basketball vs. Austin College, 8 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>17</strong> Honors Convocation, 9:30 a.m., Lois Perkins
Chapel<br>
<br>
<strong>17</strong> Guest artist recital: Walter Stout, organ, 3
p.m., Lois Perkins Chapel<br>
<br>
<strong>17</strong> Baseball vs. Concordia, 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>17</strong> Women’s basketball vs. Hendrix, 6 p.m.<br>
<br>
17 Men’s basketball vs. Hendrix, 8 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>21</strong> Baseball vs. McMurry, 2 p.m.<br>
<br>
<strong>23-March 4</strong> Company, Fridays and Saturdays, 8
p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m., Jesse and Mary Gibbs Jones Theater<br>
<br>
<strong>25</strong> Baseball vs. University of Dallas, 1 p.m. and
4 p.m.<br>
<br>
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<p>Animals. Sometimes we consider them our best friends and other
times we experiment on them, mass produce them for food, use them for
entertainment, and encroach on their habitats.</p>
<p>This “dualism” will be the topic of the 29th Brown Symposium
to be held at Southwestern University March 5-6. The symposium is
titled “Who Do We Think We Are?!”</p>
<p>Conference organizer Laura Hobgood-Oster, chair of the
Religion and Philosophy Department, says the conference will take a new
look at our relationship with animals from a variety of perspectives,
including the scientific, legal, ethical and religious.</p>
<p>She says the conference topic is timely because of our growing
reliance on mass-produced animals for food. Most of the livestock and
poultry we eat today are raised in confined feedlots or tiny cages
known as CAFOs – concentrated animal feeding operations. “Factory
farming is arguably the cruelest interaction humans have had with
animals,” Hobgood-Oster says.</p>
<p>Speakers participating in the symposium include Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Alice Walker; Marc Bekoff, a professor of biology
at the University of Colorado – Boulder and co-founder with Jane
Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; Ines
Talamantez, a professor of religious studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara; and Paul Waldau, director of the Center for
Animals and Public Policy at the Tufts University Cummings School of
Veterinary Medicine. Tufts has the only veterinary school in the
country that does not do research on live animals unless they are
already sick or injured. </p>
<p>The symposium also will include an art exhibition organized by
Professor of Art Star Varner. The exhibition is titled “Measured
Strokes, Spontaneous Beasts: Paintings by Sarah Canright and Melissa W.
Miller.” Canright and Miller are nationally acclaimed artists whose
works have been in prestigious museum exhibitions and have garnered
attention from the most influential art critics and publications
including <em>The New York Times</em>, <em>Art in America</em> and <em>Art
Forum</em>. </p>
<p>Also, on the evening of March 5, there will be a viewing of a
2002 documentary by Sarita Siegel titled “The Disenchanted Forest.” The
documentary focuses on orphaned orangutans that are rehabilitated and
returned to their rainforest home in Borneo. Hundreds of orangutans in
southeast Asia have been threatened by the destruction of their habitat
and the illegal pet trade. The film will be shown at 9 p.m. in Olin 105.</p>
<p>The symposium is free and open to the public. All the lectures
will be held in the Corbin J. Robertson Center. For more information,
visit <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.southwestern.edu/brownxxix">www.southwestern.edu/brownxxix</a> or call 512-863-1669. </p>
<p>Read the entire story <a
href="http://www.southwestern.edu/newsroom/news/070201.html">here</a>.
</p>
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<div align="left"><strong>SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR LEADS
PROJECT TO GATHER STORIES OF FEMALE COMPUTER SCIENCE PIONEERS</strong></div>
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<p>This year, only one female student will be graduating from
Southwestern University with a degree in computer science. Nationwide,
the statistics are pretty much the same: only about 20 percent of
students receiving degrees in computer science are women.</p>
<p>Encouraging more women to enter the field of computer science
is among the goals of a project being led by Barbara Boucher Owens, an
associate professor of computer science at Southwestern.</p>
<p>Owens is working on an oral history project to document the
stories of the women who pioneered the field of computer science.</p>
<p>The project began several years ago after a number of papers
and books reported alarming trends in the number of students pursing
careers in computer science, particularly women.</p>
<p>Shrinking numbers are especially problematic for women, Owens
said, because research shows that one of the keys to success for women
in computer science is to have the support of other women.</p>
<p>“As fewer women enter the field, there is no one for other
women to talk to,” she said. </p>
<p>In 2004, Owens organized a meeting to discuss the problem with
colleagues in the Association for Computer Machinery’s Computer Science
Education Special Interest Group. Owens has been a member of this
group’s board since 1995 and currently serves as its vice chair. One
idea they came up with was to collect oral histories of women who have
persevered in the field.</p>
<p>The group got several experts to train them on how to collect
oral histories, and Owens has received several grants to fund the
project. In 2005, she received a grant from the Sam Taylor Fellowship
Fund which helped her purchase the equipment needed to record the
stories.</p>
<p>Just recently, she received a $40,000 grant from the National
Science Foundation that will help her and her colleagues continue
planning the project. Still to be determined, she said, are questions
such as how many people to interview and what age range should be
covered. She noted that some men also will be interviewed for the
project.</p>
<p>Boucher helped collect the first interview for the project in
2005 with Maria Klawe, the first woman to serve as president of Harvey
Mudd College, one of the country’s premier undergraduate colleges for
engineering, science and mathematics.</p>
<p>Since then, Owens and her colleagues have collected oral
histories from 11 women and three men. Excerpts from some of the
interviews are posted online at a temporary Web site Owens set up at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://cs.southwestern.edu/OHProject/">http://cs.southwestern.edu/OHProject/</a>.</p>
<p>This semester, students in the computer science capstone class
at Southwestern are working on improvements to this Web site. The class
is being taught by Vicki Almstrum, a well-known software engineering
educator from The University of Texas at Austin who is working with
Owens on the oral history project. </p>
<p>In addition to posting the stories online, Owens hopes to
publish a book with selected stories.</p>
<p>Read the entire story <a
href="http://www.southwestern.edu/newsroom/news/070201a.html">here</a>.
</p>
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<div align="left"><b> EVENTS </b></div>
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<p>Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature
at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of <em>The Art
of Biblical Narrative</em>, <em>The Art of Biblical Poetry</em>, <em>Necessary
Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem</em>,
and numerous other books and publications, will present the 2007
Fleming Lecture in Religion on “The Body in Psalms” Monday, Feb. 12, at
7 p.m. in the McCombs Ballroom. A reception will follow.</p>
<p>As a scholar of comparative literature, Alter caused a
revolution in Biblical studies by applying newer methods of literary
analysis to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. His translation and notes
for <em>Genesis</em>, and also for the books of Samuel under the title
of <em>The David Story</em>, are probably the best that exist in
English.</p>
<p>The Fleming Lecture in Religion, a series named in honor of
former President Durwood Fleming and his wife, is funded by a gift from
St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Houston.</p>
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<p>The Sarofim School of Fine Arts presents “Madness in the
Media: Mr. Monk’s Postmodern Identity,” a lecture by Davi Johnson,
assistant professor of communication studies, at 5 p.m. in the F.W.
Olin Building, room 105, Wednesday, Feb. 7. </p>
<p>Contemporary television is filled with images of mental
illness. Recent statistics show, for example, that more than 20 percent
of prime-time television shows feature representations of mental
illness. In the past, these images have been very negative: examples
might include typical stereotypes such as “psycho,” the serial killer,
or the fool. Persons with mental illness have most commonly been
portrayed as different, aggressive, violent and dangerous. This is
starting to change; positive representations are becoming more
frequent. For example, shows including “ER” and “Scrubs” have won
awards from advocacy groups for their constructive images of persons
with mental illness. In the talk, Johnson will address what is at stake
in these changing patterns of representing mental illness. These
representational shifts reflect broader transformations in social
understandings of mental illness and what it means to be “normal.”
Johnson will look at the hit show “Monk” (the USA Network series about
a detective with obsessive compulsive disorder) to illustrate the
specific ways in which television representations reflect a more
positive image of persons with mental illness. <br>
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<div align="left"><strong>FACULTY FORUM</strong></div>
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<p>Dan Hilliard, professor of sociology, and Mary Young,
professor of economics, will lead the noon Faculty Forum titled
“Attempts to Measure and Improve the Health of Williamson County Youth”
on Monday, Feb. 5, in the Lynda McCombs Room. </p>
<p>Sodexho will provide a hot lunch for $4.25 per person and
coffee and tea will be available for 50 cents. </p>
<p></p>
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<div class="style8" align="left">MEDIA COVERAGE </div>
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<p align="left">President Jake Schrum recorded a commentary on
college tuition that aired Jan. 30 on National Public Radio stations
across the country. It ran as part of the program called the
“Marketplace Morning Report” that airs during NPR’s “Morning Edition.” </p>
<p align="left">Listen to the program on the Marketplace Web site
at <a
href="http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/01/30/AM200701302.htm">http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/01/30/AM200701302.htm</a>l.</p>
<p align="left">The <em>Williamson County Sun</em> ran an
article about Southwestern University receiving a $2 million gift
toward the Center for Lifelong Learning.</p>
<p align="left">The <em>Austin American-Statesman</em> ran an
article about Edward L. Kain, professor of sociology and University
Scholar, receiving the 2007 Distinguished Contributions to Teaching
Award.</p>
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<div class="style8" align="left">NOTABLES</div>
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<p align="left"><strong>David Tabb Stewart</strong>, assistant
professor of religion and philosophy, presented the paper “Stories as
Shades: (Bat-)Yiftach as Specter for the Outrage at Gibeah” at the
annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in San Diego on
Dec. 17, 2006. In November, he also presented two papers at the annual
conference of the Society of Biblical Literature. The first was titled
“Deafness and Temple Service: Why the Priests Don’t Need to Hear;” the
second, “The Politick Text: 17th-Century Text-Reception of Leviticus in
English.”<br>
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