From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu
Headlines
KU Alumni Association, Black Alumni Network celebrate young alumni with inaugural Emerging Leaders Award
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Alumni Association’s Black Alumni Network this year begins a new tradition of honoring young alumni for their professional achievements and community service. Seven Jayhawks, including two Lawrence residents, will receive the inaugural Emerging Leaders awards at the network’s biennial reunion Oct. 14-17.
‘To Boldly Go’ book examines leadership through lens of science fiction
LAWRENCE — A phrase from Captain Kirk’s opening monologue in the original “Star Trek” series still endures more than 55 years since it first aired. Now it’s also the title of a new book that examines leadership through the lens of science fiction. Steven Leonard, program director in organizational leadership at the University of Kansas, is co-editor of “To Boldly Go: Leadership, Strategy, and Conflict in the 21st Century and Beyond.”
KU student receives prestigious doctoral dissertation award
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas history of art doctoral candidate Rachel Quist has received the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award. Quist, from Brookline, Massachusetts, has been granted $55,214 from the U.S. Department of Education to conduct research in Japan for 12 months. Each year, about 100 fellows representing about 40 institutions receive the award from the Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays International Education programs.
Full stories below.
————————————————————————
Contact: Jennifer Sanner, KU Alumni Association, 785-864-9782, [email protected]; @KUAlumni
KU Alumni Association, Black Alumni Network celebrate young alumni with inaugural Emerging Leaders Award
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Alumni Association’s Black Alumni Network this year begins a new tradition of honoring young alumni for their professional achievements and community service. Seven Jayhawks will receive the inaugural Emerging Leaders awards at the network’s biennial reunion Oct. 14-17, during Homecoming weekend:
1. Michael Austin, Lawrence, who earned his master’s degree in economics in 2016;
2. Marcus Hollinger, Atlanta, a 2014 journalism graduate;
3. Nicole Humphrey, Coral Gables, Florida, who received her bachelor’s degree from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in 2016 and her doctorate in public administration in 2020;
4. Craig Jackson Jr., Sacramento, California, who completed his master’s degree in higher education in 2014;
5. Paul Pierce II, Lawrence, who earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2015;
6. Dr. Margaret Pruitt, Silver Spring, Maryland, who completed her doctorate in molecular and integrative physiology in 2017 and her doctorate in medicine in 2019; and
7. Joshua Robinson, Cedar Park, Texas, who received his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2016 and his master’s degree in public administration in 2018.
About the honorees:
Michael Austin is a public-sector economist and policy researcher and president of Knowledge & Decisions Economic Consulting LLC. He previously directed fiscal policy for the Kansas Policy Institute and as the chief economist for two governors. He volunteers as a high school tutor and debate coach.
Marcus Hollinger is senior vice president for marketing of Reach Records and co-founder of Portrait Coffee Roasters, an award-winning company that seeks to use coffee as a mechanism for doing good across Atlanta.
Nicole Humphrey is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Miami who researches the impact of organizational structures and processes on gender and racial inequities. She also chairs the Student & New Professionals Section of the American Society of Public Administration.
Craig Jackson is senior director of development for the University of California-Davis School of Engineering. He also co-chairs the diversity, equity and inclusion committee for development and alumni relations at UC Davis. For the KU School of Education & Human Sciences, he serves on the dean’s advisory board.
Paul Pierce, former assistant athletics director for compliance with Kansas Athletics, in July was promoted to associate athletics director for inclusive excellence to lead all diversity and inclusion efforts for staff, coaches and athletes. He participates in the Multicultural Excellence in College Athletics and Minority Opportunities Athletic Association.
Margaret Pruitt completed a fellowship at the Milken Institute’s School of Public Health and now serves as a resident physician at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and a member of the departmental council for diversity, equity and inclusion at the GW School of Medicine. She also guides high school students as a mentor and tutor.
Joshua Robinson is a senior associate and network manager at Living Cities, an organization focused on building economically and racially inclusive cities. He also is an active member of the Austin Area Urban League and the Sigma Kappa Sigma Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
For more information about the Black Alumni Network and the 2021 Reunion Weekend Oct. 14-17, visit kualumni.org/ban.
About the KU Alumni Association
Through the support of members and donors, the KU Alumni Association advocates for the University of Kansas, communicates with Jayhawks in all media, recruits students and volunteers, serves the KU community and unites Jayhawks. As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, the KU Alumni Association and its networks remain strictly nonpartisan and are not affiliated with any political party, nor do they endorse any candidates for elected or appointed offices in local, state or national government. For more information, visit kualumni.org.
-30-
————————————————————————
The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.
Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.
Tweets by KUnews
————————————————————————
Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
‘To Boldly Go’ book examines leadership through lens of science fiction
LAWRENCE — “To boldly go …”
That phrase from Captain Kirk’s opening monologue in the original “Star Trek” series still endures more than 55 years since it first aired. Now it’s also the title of a new book that examines leadership through the lens of science fiction.
“Everybody recognizes those three words,” said Steven Leonard, a retired senior U.S. Army strategist and program director in organizational leadership at the University of Kansas.
“If you’re going to lead, you boldly go. Not only is it the impetus behind this book, it’s also my personal philosophy of leadership in general that you have to be willing to embrace risk to create opportunities for yourself.”
Leonard is co-editor of “To Boldly Go: Leadership, Strategy, and Conflict in the 21st Century and Beyond.” His compendium recruits 30 writers — strategy experts, senior policy advisers, professional educators, experienced storytellers and ground-level military commanders — to produce essays exploring this topic. It’s published by Casemate.
“Captain Kirk was the prototypical leader I grew up with who typifies the idea of ‘there’s your ship captain,’” said Leonard, a senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. “He’s bold, he’s audacious, he always leads from the front and always leads by intuition.”
The retired colonel wanted to assemble something that addressed this level of leadership but had broader appeal than simply a project aimed at either “Star Wars” aficionados or business management enthusiasts. Here, you find subjects that can be appreciated by readers of both Isaac Asimov and Peter Drucker.
Leonard himself writes three of the 35 chapters, including one partnered with co-editor Jonathan Klug that dissects the Battle of the Mutara Nebula.
“It’s the set piece for the conflict between intelligence and experience,” he said of the climactic clash found in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
“Intelligence without experience is wonderful, but it’s the experience that wins those fights, and that plays out with Kirk and Khan.”
Another of his chapters focuses on the 1968 movie “Planet of the Apes.”
“I was just going to write about how it was a contemplation of that late ’60s era. But it instead turned into a class society reflection of how screenwriter Rod Serling weaved his own personal life experiences into the film’s script while growing up dealing with anti-Semitism,” he said.
The book boasts contributors who represent some of the top writers in the genre.
Best-selling author Max Brooks (“World War Z”) composes “Romulans and Remans,” a futuristic examination of desegregation which uses the Romulan War as a metaphor for the Tuskegee Airmen returning home.
Leonard also cites the chapter “Space Battleship Yamato and the Burden of Command” by August Cole (“Ghost Fleet”) as an example of a more obscure sci-fi property that generates provocative material.
“August has a beautifully written chapter dealing with what happens when you’re tasked with an impossible mission, you have the improbable crew and things are stacked against you. How do you bring all that together to find success?” he said.
Craig and Steve Whiteside tap into the cultural zeitgeist with a chapter concerning Stephen King’s “The Stand.”
“It looks at the emergence of a pandemic, which couldn’t be more timely,” Leonard said. “There was no intent to produce a piece on how to lead through COVID-19 because we started this project pre-pandemic. But it becomes a perfect chapter that’s particularly relevant now as the delta variant gains a foothold.”
Leonard isn’t the only KU contributor. Kelsey Cipolla, a communications coordinator in the School of Business, gives insight into the challenges faced by women in positions of power by analyzing the divergent viewpoints of Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron from “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”
Now in his seventh year at KU, Leonard has provided chapters to the books “Strategy Strikes Back: How ‘Star Wars’ Explains Modern Military Conflict” (Potomac Books, 2018) and “Winning Westeros: How ‘Game of Thrones’ Explains Modern Military Conflict” (Potomac Books, 2019). He is the co-editor of “Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War” (Middle West Press, 2019).
He’s also the creative force behind the subversive web comic “Doctrine Man!!” and its four collected volumes.
“‘To Boldly Go’ wraps up things that I had worked on in earlier anthologies. We had more science fiction to draw from, not just ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Game of Thrones.’ We could open the aperture wide and then bring in more people with a more diverse background for a better, fuller perspective,” he said.
As Major General Mick Ryan of the Australian Army describes in the book’s foreword, “science fiction provides a telescope to the future, a mechanism to think about future challenges.”
Leonard said, “There are a series of messages here that allow us to use science fiction in a way to talk about really important, timely topics. We see the role of leadership in times of crisis — and this is a time of crisis.”
-30-
————————————————————————
Subscribe to KU Today, the campus newsletter,
for additional news about the University of Kansas.
http://www.news.ku.edu
————————————————————————
Contact: Christine Metz Howard, International Affairs, [email protected], @KUintlaffairs
KU student receives prestigious doctoral dissertation award
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas history of art doctoral candidate Rachel Quist has received the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award.
Quist, from Brookline, Massachusetts, has been granted $55,214 from the U.S. Department of Education to conduct research in Japan for 12 months. Each year, about 100 fellows representing about 40 institutions receive the award from the Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays International Education programs.
The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship Program provides opportunities to doctoral candidates to engage in full-time dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies. The program is designed to contribute to the development and improvement of the study of modern foreign languages and area studies in the United States.
“I am thrilled to see Rachel Quist selected for this highly competitive and prestigious award. Her research will shed light on an important and understudied area of Buddhist imagery, and I am confident she will be an outstanding representative for KU in Japan,” said Rachel Sherman Johnson, KU director of internationalization and partnerships.
In January 2022, Quist plans to travel to Japan, where she has been accepted as a visiting researcher at Osaka University and will conduct research for her dissertation.
Quist’s dissertation explores the relationship between the Japanese imperial family and the temple Daigoji between the 10th and 12th centuries. Daigoji, a Buddhist temple in the mountains bordering Kyoto, was originally founded in 876 as a private hermitage. Through the patronage of the Emperor Daigo (reign 897–930) and his successors, it became a major Buddhist worship site and, as Quist argues, a family temple through which the imperial lineage solidified power and influence.
Quist’s research investigates Daigoji’s icons and monuments to illustrate the centrality of Buddhist imagery to the Japanese court. Her dissertation examines major icons and worship halls created in relation to the imperial lineage and explores the worship of these images and their developing use in imperial rituals throughout the following centuries.
The Fulbright award will allow Quist to visit Daigoji regularly to conduct fieldwork and attend rites and festivals on the temple grounds.
“The opportunity to view the icons and architecture of Daigoji in person will have an immense positive impact on my research,” Quist said. “This funding will also allow me to gather research materials and visit other temples that are significant to Daigoji’s history throughout Japan.”
Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grants are part of the larger competitive Fulbright-Hays Program, which dates to 1961 when the late U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright sponsored legislation for several programs that aim to increase mutual understanding between America and the rest of the world.
Since the broader Fulbright program’s inception in 1946, 485 KU students, including Quist, have been awarded Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays grants.
-30-
————————————————————————
KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-3256
Fax: 785-864-3339
[email protected]
http://www.news.ku.edu
Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]
Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs
