From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

Headlines

KU announces new director of Monarch Watch

LAWRENCE — Monarch Watch, an international program at the University of Kansas dedicated to the conservation and study of monarch butterflies, has a new director. Kristen Baum, well known for her work on monarchs and pollinators, began this week as director of Monarch Watch and as a senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

‘Infamous’ woman physician at center of criminalizing abortion profiled in new biography

LAWRENCE — The word “Restellism” used to be synonymous with abortion. The term was coined because of the notorious Madame Restell, a wealthy midwife who became a renowned and divisive figure in America during the 1800s. But who exactly was she? That is answered in a University of Kansas professor’s new book titled “The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime.” This account also features unmistakable parallels to current political and social issues that still divide the nation.

Distinguished professor lecture to highlight pay, promotion and grants in academia

LAWRENCE — Donna Ginther will give her inaugural distinguished professor lecture next week at the University of Kansas. The Roy A. Roberts and Regents Distinguished Professor of Economics will present “Turning the Research Lens on Ourselves: What Do We Know About Pay, Promotion, and Grants in the Academy?” at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 8 in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union. Individuals can register to attend the lecture.

Music theorist shows how EDM broke pop music’s chorus

LAWRENCE – Your ears are not fooling you. Electronic dance music DJs-turned-producers have affected the very form of popular music in the past decade, essentially breaking the chorus in half, a University of Kansas music theory professor says. In “Formal Functions and Rotations in Top-40 EDM” in the latest edition of Intégral, the Journal of Applied Musical Thought, Brad Osborn shows how electronic dance music producers like Calvin Harris who have recently dominated the Billboard magazine pop charts have broken apart the old rock top-40 structure.

Full stories below.

————————————————————————

Contact: Kirsten Bosnak, KU Field Station, 785-864-6267, [email protected], @KUFieldStation

Kristen Baum will lead Monarch Watch

LAWRENCE — Monarch Watch, an international program at the University of Kansas dedicated to the conservation and study of monarch butterflies, has a new director. Kristen Baum, well known for her work on monarchs and pollinators, began this week as director of Monarch Watch and as a senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

Baum comes to KU from the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University, where she was a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and associate dean for research. The Monarch Watch directorship will be supported in part by the Chip and Toni Taylor Professorship in Support of Monarch Watch, established last year by founding director Orley “Chip” Taylor and his wife, Toni Taylor. Chip Taylor announced last year that he would be stepping away from day-to-day operations of the program to focus on completion of several projects.

Baum has worked with monarchs and pollinators in the Great Plains for more than 25 years. Her research also focuses on the effects of land use and management practices on monarchs, native bees and other pollinators. She has served on numerous state, regional and national working groups to support pollinator conservation efforts.

“I started a small monarch tagging project in 1992. This project grew and changed through the years from a focus on research and outreach to an international program dedicated to monarch science and conservation,” Chip Taylor said. “When close to retirement, I realized that the program was reaching at least 100,000 people a year and that it simply had to continue.

“I’m excited and pleased to see this program continue and to be able to turn the directorship over to Kristen Baum. Kristen is an outstanding scientist, a dynamic and experienced leader with a strong research program. She also has an outstanding record as an adviser to developing scientists.”

Baum said she was excited about the opportunity to join the Monarch Watch team.

“I’ve participated in several Monarch Watch programs over the years, including tagging monarchs as part of my research and creating a Monarch Waystation at my home,” she said. “Under Chip’s leadership, Monarch Watch has developed an international reach through research, education and on-the-ground conservation efforts that have benefited the monarch butterfly, as well as other pollinators and wildlife. I’m honored to have been selected to lead Monarch Watch and build on these efforts that have been decades in the making.”

The Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research, a KU research center, houses a variety of environmental research labs and remote sensing/GIS programs in Takeru Higuchi Hall and the West District greenhouse. It also is the administrative home for Monarch Watch. In addition, the research center manages the 3,200-acre KU Field Station, a site for study in the sciences, arts and humanities.

-30-

————————————————————————

The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.

Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.

————————————————————————

Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]

‘Infamous’ woman physician at center of criminalizing abortion profiled in new biography

LAWRENCE — The word “Restellism” used to be synonymous with abortion. The term was coined because of the notorious Madame Restell, a wealthy midwife who became a renowned and divisive figure in America during the 1800s.

“She was famous enough that anyone who saw that word in a newspaper knew Restellism was referring to her,” said Nick Syrett, a professor of women, gender & sexuality studies at the University of Kansas.

But who exactly was Madame Restell? That is answered in Syrett’s new book titled “The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime.” This account also features unmistakable parallels to current political and social issues that still divide the nation. It’s published by The New Press.

Syrett first ran across her story while attending graduate school at the University of Michigan.

“She is basically a figure in everyone’s history of New York City or prostitution or contraception or abortion. She appears everywhere, but generally for only a page or two,” he said.

Madame Restell was the pseudonym of Ann Trow Summers Lohman, a British-born woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1831. She ran what was called a “lying-in hospital,” which was a place where women “could stay during their pregnancies and be delivered of their babies.”

“This is in some ways a conventional biography. A story from birth to death with what happened in between,” Syrett said.

Yet Restell’s life was anything but conventional.

He said, “Most of the dialogue about her in the 19th century was critical. No one stood up for her. So what I tried to do is understand what motivated her. What was she trying to do? How did she serve people’s needs? And why did she call herself what she did?”

The era in which Restell practiced is notable for being when abortion went from a vaguely regulated misdemeanor to a full-blown felony. It follows the trajectory over that period (1820s to 1880s) in which the act is increasingly criminalized.

“There are numerous reasons for why this occurred,” said Syrett, who is also an associate dean at KU’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

He said that beginning in 1857, doctors in the American Medical Association lobbied state legislatures to criminalize abortion, in part so that they could eliminate the competition of lay practitioners who did not have medical degrees.

“It’s also due to concerns about single women getting pregnant and being able to disguise and/or terminate a pregnancy and not get in trouble for having sex outside of wedlock,” he said. “It’s nativist fears about the white middle-class birthrate going down while immigrant birthrates are going up. It’s fears of middle-class married women taking control of their own reproductive lives and trying to have smaller families. And then it’s also a fear that the most successful abortion providers were women, and women were expected — like Madame Restell — to be housewives and mothers.”

While Restell was indeed a wife and mother, she was also a wildly prosperous entrepreneur in a society not eager to tolerate women in that role.

“She was convicted a couple of times,” Syrett said. “And once when the conviction was overturned on legal technicalities, she paid to have the entire opinion from the New York Supreme Court printed in the newspaper to prove to readers, ‘I’m not making this up.’”

The professor pored through thousands of articles while researching this story, which took him to New York’s municipal and state archives, and to the American Antiquarian Society in Massachusetts.

“The New York part was fun for me because I lived there for about 10 years. In doing the research, I went and walked the map and landscape of everywhere that she lived and practiced,” he said.

Madame Restell’s life did not have a happy ending. She was arrested by postal inspector and moral reformer Anthony Comstock, whose “Comstock laws” were aimed at banning the distribution of anything deemed obscene by the government (laws which are currently used to prosecute those sending abortion drugs through the mail). In the morning hours before her trial was to start, Restell was found in a bathtub with her throat cut. It was ruled a suicide, but rumors of it being murder have persisted to this day.

“I don’t think she was killed,” Syrett said. “I’ve seen the coroner’s report and the death certificate. It’s also quite clear that based on the testimony of the servants who worked in her household, no one would have been able to get in at night because the doors were still locked. This all demonstrates she took her own life.”

Now in his seventh year at KU, Syrett has investigated subjects ranging from maturity and masculinity to fraternities and queer history. His books include “An Open Secret: The Family Story of Robert and John Gregg Allerton” (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and “American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States” (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). He is also co-editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

“Madame Restell is a fascinating figure in her own right,” Syrett said. “But I also realize lots of people in the U.S. don’t know that abortion was legal in colonial America through the early 19th century. If this book educates us more about how it came to be criminalized, that can help us understand the debates we’re having now.”

-30-

————————————————————————

Subscribe to KU Today, the campus newsletter,

for additional news about the University of Kansas.

http://www.news.ku.edu

————————————————————————

Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, Office of the Provost, 785-864-6402, [email protected], @KUProvost

Distinguished professor lecture to highlight pay, promotion and grants in academia

LAWRENCE — Her work has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Economist, the New York Times and more. She’s testified before Congress and consulted on equity and diversity issues in science funding with organizations like the National Academies of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

And soon, Donna Ginther will present her inaugural distinguished professor lecture at the University of Kansas.

Ginther, the Roy A. Roberts and Regents Distinguished Professor of Economics, will present “Turning the Research Lens on Ourselves: What Do We Know About Pay, Promotion, and Grants in the Academy?” at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 8 in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union.

Individuals can register to attend the lecture.

Ginther’s research focus includes scientific labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality and children’s educational attainments.

As the director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research since 2019, Ginther develops the institute’s multidisciplinary research program and manages the direction of the center. The institute is a faculty-driven research center supporting scientists who focus on policy-relevant issues and social problems.

In addition to her leadership work at the institute, Ginther is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adviser to Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s Council on Tax Reform. During her service in the latter role, the council recommended the successful repeal of the state food sales tax.

Some of Ginther’s recent research covered the economic impact of COVID-19 and its effect on the Kansas economy. During the pandemic and through 2022, IPSR provided regular updates on economic conditions in the state, as well as county infection rates.

Ginther and her colleague Carlos Zambrana showed that Kansas counties that adopted mask mandates before vaccines became available experienced a 60% reduction in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. This work received national attention, and Ginther received the COVID-19 Pivot Award from the KU Office of Research and the Don Steeples Service to Kansas Award.

She has also won multiple teaching and research awards, including the Byron T. Shutz Award for Excellence in Teaching, the University Scholar Award and the American Society of Cell Biology Public Service Award.

Ginther has previously served as vice president and board member of the Southern Economic Association, member of the Nominations Committee and the Board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, and member of the American Economic Association Committee on Equity, Diversity and Professional Conduct.

Before joining the KU faculty in 2002, Ginther worked as a research economist and associate policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and taught at Washington University and Southern Methodist University.

Ginther earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The first distinguished professorships were established at KU in 1958. A university distinguished professorship is awarded wholly based on merit, following exacting criteria. A complete list is available on the Distinguished Professor website.

-30-

————————————————————————

Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”

a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.

https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack

————————————————————————

Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman

Music theorist shows how EDM broke pop music’s chorus

LAWRENCE – Your ears are not fooling you. Electronic dance music DJs-turned-producers have affected the very form of popular music in the past decade, essentially breaking the chorus in half, a University of Kansas music theory professor says.

In “Formal Functions and Rotations in Top-40 EDM” in the latest edition of Intégral, the Journal of Applied Musical Thought, Brad Osborn shows how electronic dance music producers like Calvin Harris who have recently dominated the Billboard magazine pop charts have broken apart the old rock top-40 songs’ verse-chorus-bridge structure.

Instead, Osborn writes and shows in diagrams, these producers have substituted “a hybrid section” he calls the “riserchorus” and paired that with a beat-heavy “drop” section that provides the release of psychic tension that the old-fashioned chorus did.

Osborn writes that the riserchorus “blends the anticipatory sonic functions of a riser (including rising pitch with a rhythmic build) with the lyrical-melodic memorability of a chorus.”

In retrospect, Osborn said, he noticed this change in structure around 2014.

“All of a sudden, I heard music in which it was really unclear what the chorus was,” Osborn said. “Essentially, instead of one big section that we could all point to, you had two sections. In the first one, you had the memorable vocal hook that we all love in a chorus — the title of the song — but there’s no beat. And it’s quiet.

“I was like, ‘That’s not what a chorus is supposed to do.’ And then the next section would have the big, thumping beat, but no vocals. That’s the drop section.

“And so the question becomes, ‘Is there a chorus in this music anymore? Or have we split the idea of chorus into two separately functioning sections, such that one of them has the catchy hook, and the other has the beat, but never the two shall meet?’”

Osborn believes this stems from producers like Harris, David Guetta and Skrillex bringing their club-pleasing ways to their recorded collaborations with pop singers, then condensing that into a three-minute package.

“You’ve got these producers behind the boards now working in pop music, but where they all started were sweaty clubs in Detroit and Berlin. And that music was not about melody at all. That music was about beat. Building up textures slowly and then taking them away and then dropping the beat. So what we hear starting around 2014 is some of that being made more radio-friendly in these collaborations with vocalists. So now, all we’re really doing is putting a catchy melody on top of that stuff.”

That’s if you bother to build at all, Osborn said.

“A lot of times what you’ll hear now are songs starting right on their chorus, because we have such short attention spans. There’s no time for an intro, no time for a buildup, no time for verse. We start on the chorus. And we still get three choruses. But usually that comes at the expense of only one verse.”

-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

From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

Headlines

Fossils tell tale of last primate to inhabit North America before humans

LAWRENCE — The lone ranger primate Ekgmowechashala — the last to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens — is actually member of a species that evolved in Asia and migrated to North America during a surprisingly cool period, most likely via Beringia, according to new research led by KU paleontologists that rewrites his origin story. The new work was published today in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Kansas Public Radio launches KPR’s Community Spotlight

LAWRENCE — This fall, Kansas Public Radio is offering a new program to help spread the word about local community organizations. KPR’s Community Spotlight will give these organizations an opportunity to spread awareness using KPR’s airwaves each month. They will also have a small feature on-air, in KPR’s monthly e-newsletter and on the KPR website. Local organizations that serve the KPR listening area may apply through Nov. 30, and 12 organizations will be selected for 2024.

Full stories below.

————————————————————————

Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch

Fossils tell tale of last primate to inhabit North America before humans

LAWRENCE — The story of Ekgmowechashala, the final primate to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens or Clovis people, reads like a spaghetti western: A grizzled and mysterious loner, against the odds, ekes out an existence on the American Plains.

Except this tale unfolded about 30 million years ago, just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition during which North America saw great cooling and drying, making the continent less hospitable to warmth-loving primates.

Today, paleontologists from the University of Kansas and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing have published evidence in the Journal of Human Evolution shedding light on the long-standing saga of Ekgmowechashala, based on fossil teeth and jaws found in both Nebraska and China.

To do so, the researchers first had to reconstruct its family tree, a job helped by the discovery of an even more ancient Chinese “sister taxon” of Ekgmowechashala the team has named Palaeohodites (or “ancient wanderer”). The Chinese fossil discovery resolves the mystery of Ekgmowechashala’s presence in North America, showing it was an immigrant rather than the product of local evolution.

“This project focuses on a very distinctive fossil primate known to paleontologists since the 1960s,” said lead author Kathleen Rust, a doctoral candidate in paleontology at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. “Due to its unique morphology and its representation only by dental remains, its place on the mammalian evolutionary tree has been a subject of contention and debate. There’s been a prevailing consensus leaning towards its classification as a primate. But the timing and appearance of this primate in the North American fossil record are quite unusual. It appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago.”

In the 1990s, Rust’s doctoral adviser and co-author Chris Beard, KU Foundation Distinguished Professor and senior curator of vertebrate paleontology, collected fossils from the Nadu Formation in the Baise Basin in Guangxi, China, that closely resembled the Ekgmowechashala material known from North America. By that time, Ekgmowechashala was notoriously enigmatic among North American paleontologists.

“When we were working there, we had absolutely no idea that we would find an animal that was closely related to this bizarre primate from North America, but literally as soon as I picked up the jaw and saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is it,’” Beard said. “It’s not like it took a long time, and we had to undertake all kinds of detailed analysis — we knew what it was. Here in KU’s collection, we have some critical fossils, including what is still by far the best upper molar of Ekgmowechashala known from North America. That upper molar is so distinctive and looks quite similar to the one from China that we found that it kind of seals the deal.”

Beard left it to Rust to conduct the morphological analysis that tied Ekgmowechashala and its cousin Palaeohodites from China in a phylogenetic tree to establish their evolutionary relationships.

In the course of the work, Rust was able to draw conclusions about how Ekgmowechashala came to be discovered in Nebraska, millions of years after its fellow primates died out in the continent’s fossil record.

“We collected a substantial amount of morphological data to create an evolutionary tree using a phylogenetic reconstruction software and algorithm,” Rust said. “This evolutionary tree suggests a close evolutionary relationship between North American Ekgmowechashala and Palaeohodites from China, which Chris and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. The results from our analysis unequivocally supports this hypothesis.”

The KU researchers said their discovery is not only exciting in terms of discovering a new primate species from late Eocene China — but also in settling the origin story of Ekgmowechashala. Based on their investigation, Ekgmowechashala did not descend from an older North American primate that somehow survived the cooler and drier conditions that caused other North American primates to go extinct. Rather, its ancestors crossed over the Beringian region millions of years later, anticipating the route followed by the first Native Americans much later in time.

“Our analysis dispels the idea that Ekgmowechashala is a relic or survivor of earlier primates in North America,” Rust said. “Instead, it was an immigrant species that evolved in Asia and migrated to North America during a surprisingly cool period, most likely via Beringia.”

Species like Ekgmowechashala that show up suddenly in the fossil record long after their relatives have died off are referred to as “Lazarus taxa” after the biblical figure who was raised from the dead.

“The ‘Lazarus effect’ in paleontology is when we find evidence in the fossil record of animals apparently going extinct — only to reappear after a long hiatus, seemingly out of nowhere,” Beard said. “This is the grand pattern of evolution that we see in the fossil record of North American primates. The first primates came to North America about 56 million years ago at the beginning of the Eocene, and they flourished on this continent for more than 20 million years. But they went extinct when climate became cooler and drier near the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, about 34 million years ago. Several million years later Ekgmowechashala shows up like a drifting gunslinger in a Western movie, only to be a flash in the pan as far as the long trajectory of evolution is concerned. After Ekgmowechashala is gone for more than 25 million years, Clovis people come to North America, marking the third chapter of primates on this continent. Like Ekgmowechashala, humans in North America are a prime example of the Lazarus effect.”

Rust and Beard were joined in the work by co-authors Xijun Ni of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and Kristen Tietjen, scientific illustrator with the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

According to Rust, the tale of Ekgmowechashala is worth people’s attention because it happened in an era of profound environmental and climatic changes, much like our own that’s driven by human activity.

“It’s crucial to comprehend how past biota reacted to such shifts,” she said. “In such situations, organisms typically either adapt by retreating to more hospitable regions with available resources or face extinction. Around 34 million years ago, all of the primates in North America couldn’t adapt and survive. North America lacked the necessary conditions for survival. This underscores the significance of accessible resources for our non-human primate relatives during times of drastic climatic change.”

The study is also a part of a larger story that represents the earliest chapters of our own evolutionary journey that ultimately led to our own species, Rust said.

“Understanding this narrative is not only humbling, but also helps us appreciate the depth and complexity of the dynamic planet we inhabit,” she said. “It allows us to grasp the intricate workings of nature, the power of evolution in giving rise to life and the influence of environmental factors.”

-30-

————————————————————————

The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.

Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.

————————————————————————

Contact: Joanna Fewins, Kansas Public Radio, 785-864-2468, [email protected]

Kansas Public Radio launches KPR’s Community Spotlight

LAWRENCE — This fall, Kansas Public Radio is offering a new program to help spread the word about local community organizations. KPR’s Community Spotlight gives these organizations an opportunity to spread awareness using KPR’s airwaves each month. They will also have a small feature on-air, in KPR’s monthly e-newsletter and on the KPR website.

KPR’s Community Spotlight program values nonprofits that share a commitment to the arts, education, health, well-being, sustainability and diversity of the areas KPR serves. By focusing on institutions that benefit local communities, KPR hopes to grow awareness of valuable services and programs in northeast, east-central and southeast Kansas.

Once per year – in 2023, the applications will be open Nov. 1-30 – local organizations that serve the KPR listening area may apply to participate. Twelve organizations will be selected for 2024.

One nonprofit organization per month will be chosen to receive 100 free announcements in KPR’s “Run of Schedule” programming, or the equivalent of $2,000 of free advertising on Kansas Public Radio. These messages may be used as a general awareness campaign to get the word out about services provided to local communities.

More information about how to apply, who is eligible and for a link to the application form may be found on the KPR website.

KPR, a 22-time Kansas Association of Broadcasters Station of the Year, licensed to the University of Kansas, broadcasts on 91.5 FM and 96.1 FM in Lawrence, 89.7 FM in Emporia, 91.3 FM in Olsburg-Junction City, 89.9 FM in Atchison, 90.3 FM in Chanute, and 99.5 FM and 97.9 FM in Manhattan. KPR can be heard online at kansaspublicradio.org. KPR also operates KPR2, a news-talk programming stream, which can be heard on an HD receiver or on KPR’s website, and on 96.1 in Lawrence and 97.9 in Manhattan.

-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

From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

Headlines

KU announces ExCEL Award winners, concludes 111th Homecoming

LAWRENCE — Two University of Kansas students were named winners of the 2023 Excellence in Community, Education and Leadership (ExCEL) Awards, presented by Konica Minolta. Libby Frost of WaKeeney and Thanh Tan Nguyen of Phu Yen, Vietnam, were recognized during the KU-Oklahoma football game Oct. 28 in David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which concluded a week of activities for KU’s 111th Homecoming celebration.

KU School of Music dean candidates to present visions for school

LAWRENCE — Three candidates will hold public presentations this month in a bid to become the next dean of the School of Music at the University of Kansas. The name of each candidate will be announced one to two business days before their respective campus visit. Paul Popiel, current interim dean and professor of music at KU, will give the first presentation, which will take place 11 a.m.-noon Nov. 6 in Swarthout Recital Hall.

Graduate students to compete in 3-minute thesis competition

LAWRENCE — Entrepreneurs often have an “elevator pitch,” a concise speech to explain their business in 30-60 seconds. Research can be more complicated, so a group of University of Kansas graduate students will get a full 180 seconds to explain their projects in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition this month. Approximately 23 students will participate in the 3MT preliminary heats beginning at 2 p.m. Nov. 7, and finals will take place at 2 p.m. Nov. 14. The public is invited to attend.

KU to host inaugural First-Generation Student Conference

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas will join institutions across the country by participating in the National First-Generation College Celebration (FGCC) on Nov. 8. The inaugural First-Generation Student Conference will provide an opportunity for making connections, discovering community and developing skills for students, faculty and staff. This full-day event is one of many activities taking place throughout the weeklong KU celebration of first-generation college students.

Full stories below.

————————————————————————

Contact: Paige Freeman, KU Alumni Association, 785-864-0953, [email protected]

KU announces ExCEL Award winners, concludes 111th Homecoming

LAWRENCE — Two University of Kansas students were named winners of the 2023 Excellence in Community, Education and Leadership (ExCEL) Awards, presented by Konica Minolta. Libby Frost of WaKeeney and Thanh Tan Nguyen of Phu Yen, Vietnam, were recognized during the KU-Oklahoma football game Oct. 28 in David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which concluded a week of activities for KU’s 111th Homecoming celebration.

Frost, a senior in business administration on the pre-med track, is president of the KU Panhellenic Association and vice president of marketing for her sorority, Alpha Delta Pi.

Nguyen, a senior in business analytics and supply chain management, is executive director of Student Union Activities and president of the board for KU Memorial Corp. He is active in the University Honors Program and led the Homecoming Steering Committee as executive director.

ExCEL Award nominees were selected based on their leadership, communication skills, involvement at KU and in the Lawrence community, academic scholarship and ability to work with a variety of students and organizations. The ExCEL Award was first given in 1991.

The KU Alumni Association also honored Yash Prajapati, a junior in applied mathematics and interdisciplinary computing in economics from Gujarat, India, with the Jennifer Alderdice Homecoming Award, which recognizes students who demonstrate outstanding loyalty and dedication to the university. Prajapati is a student ambassador for the Office of Admissions and a research assistant for the Center for Design Research. Alderdice, of Lawrence, led student programs for the Alumni Association from 1999 to 2009 and earned her master’s degree in education from KU in 1999.

Other 2023 Homecoming award and competition winners:

Rich and Judy Billings Spirit of 1912 Award

Kansas City artist Megh Knappenberger is a 2004 graduate of the School of Fine Arts. During Homecoming week, she unveiled 11 commissioned paintings for the recently renovated Adams Alumni Center.

Student organization overall competition winners

Large group:

· First place: Pi Kappa Alpha and Alpha Chi Omega

· Second place: Sigma Kappa, Delta Tau Delta, and Triangle

· Third place: Delta Delta Delta and Alpha Tau Omega

Student organization individual event competition winners

Jayhawk Jingles

Large group:

· First place: Alpha Delta Pi and Zeta Beta Tau

· Second place: Pi Kappa Alpha and Alpha Chi Omega

· Third place: Delta Delta Delta and Alpha Tau Omega

Chalk ’n’ Rock

Large group:

· First place: Delta Delta Delta and Alpha Tau Omega

· Second place: Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Gamma Phi Beta and Phi Kappa Tau

· Third place: Alpha Delta Pi and Zeta Beta Tau

Sign competition

Large group:

· First place: Sigma Kappa, Delta Tau Delta and Triangle

· Second place: Pi Kappa Alpha and Alpha Chi Omega

· Third place: Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Gamma Phi Beta and Phi Kappa Tau

KU’s Homecoming was sponsored by Central Bank of the Midwest, Konica Minolta, KU Bookstore, Pepsi Zero Sugar and StoneHill Hotel.

The KU Alumni Association welcomes feedback on this year’s Homecoming festivities. For more information about Homecoming, go to kualumni.org/homecoming.

-30-

————————————————————————

The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.

Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.

————————————————————————

Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, Office of the Provost, 785-864-6402, [email protected], @KUProvost

KU School of Music dean candidates to present visions for school

LAWRENCE — Three candidates will hold public presentations in a bid to become the next dean of the School of Music at the University of Kansas.

Dean candidates will describe their vision for the school under their leadership. The name of each candidate will be announced one to two business days before their respective campus visit. The presentations additionally will be livestreamed through links available on the Provost’s Office website.

Paul Popiel, current interim dean and professor of music at KU, will be the first candidate to give a public presentation. His presentation will take place 11 a.m.-noon Nov. 6 in Swarthout Recital Hall. The event will be livestreamed, and the passcode is 684789.

The public presentations for the remaining candidates are scheduled for the following dates and will also take place in Swarthout Recital Hall.

· Candidate 2: 1:30-2:30 p.m. Nov. 9

· Candidate 3: 4-5 p.m. Nov. 15

Members of the KU community are encouraged to attend each candidate’s public presentation and provide feedback to the search committee. Feedback surveys will be open for two business days following the conclusion of each finalist’s visit. The survey and a recording of each candidate’s presentation will be available after their presentation on the search page until the survey closes.

Additional search information, including candidate bios and CVs, is also available on the search page as each candidate is announced.

“Any of these candidates would bring valuable leadership and expertise to the School of Music,” said Derek Kwan, executive director of the Lied Center of Kansas and co-chair of the search committee.

Mahbub Rashid, dean of the School of Architecture & Design, also serves as co-chair of the committee.

In addition to serving as the School of Music’s interim dean since January, Popiel is a conductor and professor within the school. He previously was the director of bands since 2010 and has annually led the historic Lawrence City Band and the Crossroads Wind Symphony through multiple concerts. Popiel recently completed a four-week professional conducting residency with the Osaka Shion Wind Orchestra in Japan.

His previous appointments include the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Oklahoma State University.

Popiel has lectured and performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He is a contributing author to several volumes of “Teaching Music through Performance in Band” and the Alta Musica journal, as well as the editor-in-chief of The Wind Music Research Quarterly.

In 2013, Popiel was elected to the membership of the American Bandmasters Association and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Popiel earned his bachelor’s degrees in instrumental music education and trumpet performance from Truman State University, a master’s degree in trumpet performance from the University of Notre Dame and a doctorate in wind conducting from Michigan State University. He also earned a postgraduate diploma in 20th century music from the University of Bristol in England.

The dean of music will oversee the school’s strategy, academics, research and creative activities, and is responsible for fostering community engagement and service activities. The dean will ensure talent development of faculty, staff and student employees and fiscal stewardship of administrative structures and the school’s endowment. Additionally, the dean will locally and globally guide partnerships to bring an international audience to its program.

The School of Music seeks to become a model of diverse, creative and innovative approaches to the study and performance of music in the 21st century. The school brings together students and faculty in music composition, education, history, performance, therapy and theory.

WittKieffer, an executive search firm specializing in higher education, aided with the search process and development of a robust and diverse candidate pool.

-30-

————————————————————————

Subscribe to KU Today, the campus newsletter,

for additional news about the University of Kansas.

http://www.news.ku.edu

————————————————————————

Contact: David Day, Office of the Provost, 785-864-0236, [email protected], @KUProvost

Graduate students to compete in 3-minute thesis competition

LAWRENCE — Entrepreneurs often have an “elevator pitch,” a concise speech to explain their business in 30-60 seconds. Research can be more complicated, so a group of University of Kansas graduate students will get a full 180 seconds to explain their projects in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition this month.

Approximately 23 students will participate in the 3MT preliminary heats beginning at 2 p.m. Nov. 7 in the Burge Union, forums A-C. The six or seven top presenters in the preliminary round will compete in the finals at 2 p.m. Nov. 14 in the Burge Union, Forum C. All members of the KU and Lawrence communities are invited to attend the events.

KU’s competition is part of the Global 3MT, which highlights graduate student research by challenging students to explain their work concisely and effectively to an audience of nonexperts.

“As KU students and researchers make discoveries that change the world, they must be able to help the world understand the significance of that research,” said Jen Roberts, vice provost for academic affairs and graduate studies. “Researchers can talk to each other for hours about their work, but explaining to a general audience for just three minutes may actually be harder. The 3MT competition encourages students to build that skill.”

The competition judges, who are not experts in the research fields presented, will select a first-place winner to receive a $600 award and a second-place winner to receive $300. The audience will select a People’s Choice winner, who will receive $150. The first-place presenter will serve as KU’s representative at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools 3MT Competition in the spring.

Research topics this year include antibacterial properties of bioactive glass in bone cement; predicting drought from outer space; understanding and developing techniques to break chemical bonds in spent nuclear fuel rods; addressing the gender gap in low brass music sections and using exhaust gas recirculation to enhance internal combustion engine performance and reduce harmful nitrogen oxides.

“The 3MT competition is an amazing platform that allows you to look into the creative aspect of the complex research we conduct. It is a nice feeling to have your five-year-long thesis summarized in a way that everyone can finally get you,” said Sayuri Niyangoda, KU doctoral candidate and last year’s first-place and people’s choice winner.

The University of Queensland in Australia founded the 3MT competition in 2008, and more than 900 universities in over 85 countries currently participate.

“The competition offers a dual opportunity,” Roberts said. “Students learn to be concise and engaging in describing their research, and the audience gets a quick introduction to groundbreaking research in a variety of fields.”

For more information, contact the Office Graduate Studies at [email protected].

-30-

————————————————————————

Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”

a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.

https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack

————————————————————————

Contact: Dalton Allen, Hawk Link, 785-864-6744, [email protected]

KU to host inaugural First-Generation Student Conference

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas will join institutions across the country by participating in the National First-Generation College Celebration (FGCC) on Nov. 8.

The inaugural First-Generation Student Conference will provide an opportunity for making connections, discovering community and developing skills for students, faculty and staff. This full-day event is one of many activities taking place throughout the weeklong celebration of first-generation college students.

The 2023 theme of Breaking Barriers was chosen to shine a spotlight on a shared experience by first-generation college students. Being a first-generation college student means neither of the student’s parents or guardians has a bachelor’s degree, and graduate students are in the first generation of their family to earn a bachelor’s degree and are now earning a graduate or professional degree.

All the speakers and facilitators at this year’s conference identify as first-generation. The day’s activities include a welcome address by Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, KU provost and executive vice chancellor, as well as four concurrent sessions, two discussion panels, a faculty/staff plenary professional development session and a keynote from nationally renowned youth engagement speaker Carlos Ojeda Jr.

“Navigating college as a first-gen student can feel daunting and lonely,” said Dalton Allen, Hawk Link Coordinator and chair of the conference planning committee. “Our goal is to help first-gen students gain insights into their strengths and build a community to help them persist to graduation and beyond.”

There are two tracks for the conference: a full day for students and a shorter professional development block for faculty and staff.

Student sessions

Undergraduate and graduate students attending from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. will have the opportunity to choose from multiple workshops and student panels, attend a resource fair, a student-focused plenary session and enjoy a luncheon keynote. Interested students should register before Nov. 6. While all students are invited to attend, space is available for 150 students, and preference will be given to students who are first-generation and who can attend the full event.

Faculty and staff sessions

KU faculty and staff are invited to join the event from noon to 2 p.m. for a free luncheon keynote with students followed by a professional development session on engaging first-generation students. Interested faculty and staff should register before Nov. 6.

“This event demonstrates KU’s commitment to serving our first-generation students,” said Misty Chandler, assistant vice provost of academic success. “This is a powerful combination of a student learning experience and staff professional development in support and celebration of our first-gen initiatives. This is a critical strategic priority that we are approaching in partnership with others on campus, and that is what our students deserve.”

KU’s celebration of first-generation college students goes beyond the conference. Events hosted by the KU community throughout the week include a Celebration Kick Off, professional portraits for students, the Center for Educational Opportunity Programs I Am First Too Poster Reception, Tea at Three and Donut Feel Good To Be First-Gen. The week concludes with a FIRST Hawk Link Tailgate at the Nov. 11 KU football game. The full-week schedule and details can be found on Hawk Link’s website.

KU has been recognized as a First-Gen Forward Institution by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

-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