In Focus
In Focus: 12/6/2012
Senior Art Exhibition
Senior philosophy major Mike Russo looks at some paintings by Noel Kalmus that are part of the fall senior art exhibition. The exhibit will be on display in the Fine Arts Gallery through Dec. 7.
Top News
KING CREATIVITY FUND SUPPORTS 14 STUDENT PROJECTS FOR 2012-2013
As an aspiring violinist, Marie Smith wants to learn as much about the violin as possible. This includes learning about the earliest violins, which are different from the violins that are used today.
Smith will have an opportunity to do this in the coming months thanks to financial support from the King Creativity Fund.
Smith plans to use a grant from the King Creativity Fund to rent a Baroque violin from a company in California called Ifshin Violins.
“Many of the modern classical instruments we know of today, like the violin, underwent a great deal of development during the Baroque era,” Smith said. “The famous Stradivarius violins were crafted during the Baroque and creativity in composing new styles of music for violin seemed to explode.”
Read more here.
FIVE FACULTY MEMBERS RECEIVE FUNDING FOR RESEARCH PROJECTS
Five Southwestern University faculty members have received research funding for the upcoming year from the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church.
The funding comes through the board’s Sam Taylor Fellowship program, which awards fellowships to full-time faculty members at United Methodist-related colleges in Texas.
The five faculty members receiving funding for 2012-2013 are:
Steve Alexander, professor of physics, received $1,950 to study how combining nano- and phyto-technologies could enhance the remediation of soil contaminated by petroleum products.
Maria Cuevas, associate professor of biology, received $2,000 to continue her research on possible hormonal regulation of the tight junction proteins claudin-3 and -4 in breast epithelial and endometrial cancer cells.
Maria Lowe, professor of sociology, received $2,000 to conduct a study on how the introduction of a Division III football team affects a university’s campus climate.
Thom McClendon, professor of history, received $2,000 for a study of South African students in the United States and the anti-apartheid struggle.
Brenda Sendejo, assistant professor of anthropology, received $2,000 to continue her intergenerational oral history project titled “Spirit Stories: Narratives of Spirituality and Social Justice.”
Events
HERITAGE SOCIETY SPONSORS HOLIDAY HOME TOUR DEC. 8-9
The Georgetown Heritage Society is sponsoring its annual Holiday Home Tour Dec. 8-9 from noon to 5 p.m. The tour will showcase six homes in Old Town, several of which have connections to Southwestern.
Among the houses on the tour will be the Chesser-Morgan House at 1202 E. 15th St., which was originally located on the Southwestern University campus and is exactly the same as the building that now serves as the SU Police Station. Past owners of the house include Ruth Morgan Ferguson, who served as Dean of Women at Southwestern from 1935 until her retirement in 1960.
Also on the tour is a recently restored bungalow at 1502 Ash St. which was first owned by Linnie Young Campbell, who was the first woman to hold public office in Williamson County when she was elected county clerk and served in that role from 1918 to 1922. She died in 1954 and is buried in the IOOF cemetery behind Southwestern. Campbell’s daughter, Linnie Lucille Campbell (later Duke), attended Southwestern from 1904-1908.
Another house on the tour with ties to Southwestern is the house at 911 Walnut St., which was built by the Belford Lumber Company for Charles Byron Atkinson, who attended Southwestern from 1900-1903. The Belford Lumber company also remodeled the house at 303 E. 9th Street which was owned from 1972 to 1986 by Elizabeth May Ellyson, who was a 1927 Southwestern graduate.
Tickets for the tour are $15 in advance and $18 the day of the tour. Tickets may be purchased in advance at several locations on the Georgetown Square and online at http://www.georgetownheritagesociety.com. On the days of the tour, tickets may be purchased at Grace Heritage Center, 811 South Main St.
For more information, call 512-869-8597 or visit http://www.georgetownheritagesociety.com
Media Coverage
The Williamson County Sun did a story about sophomore women’s basketball player Annie Bourne.
A story in the Williamson County Sun highlighted some of the items related to Georgetown builder Charles Belford that are in Southwestern’s Special Collections.
Notables
Bob Bednar, associate professor and chair of communication studies, has had a chapter titled “Being Here, Looking There: Mediating Vistas in the National Parks of the Contemporary American West” published in Observation Points: The Visual Poetics of National Parks (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), edited by Thomas Patin.
Francie Larrieu Smith, a former Olympian who is now in her 15th season asSouthwestern’s cross country and track & field coach, was inducted into the Running Specialty Hall of Fame Dec. 4. Read more here.
Alison Marr, assistant professor of mathematics, had her book Magic Graphs published by Birkhauser on Nov. 6. The book is co-written by W.D. Wallis from Southern Illinois University and is a second edition of a book originally written by Wallis. The book can be used as a textbook or research manual and is the only text on the topic. Marr also has been awarded a $1,500 grant by the Academy for Inquiry-Based Learning. The grant will be used to plan and write course notes for her spring special topics course in graph labeling.
Sandi Nenga, associate professor of sociology, published an article titled “Not the community, but a community: Transforming youth into citizens through volunteer work” in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Youth Studies, an international journal headquartered in Glasgow, UK.
Katy Ross, associate professor and chair of Spanish, attended the 62nd annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., in October. She presented a paper titled “Mother Blame: Lucía Etxebarria’s Amor, curiosdad, Prozac y dudas.”
Ron Swain, senior advisor to the president for strategic planning and assessment, has been selected to serve as a member of the 2012-2013 Board of Examiners for the Quality Texas Assessment and Feedback Program of the Quality Texas Foundation. The Quality Texas Foundation helps businesses, hospitals, schools, government agencies and non-profits improve performance by encouraging use of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and other methods that drive efficiency and effectiveness.