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

Headlines

Effect of workplace sound level on physiological well-being revealed in new study
LAWRENCE — New research published in Nature Digital Medicine and co-written by a University of Kansas professor assessed how sounds experienced in an indoor setting affects individual well-being. The study recruited 231 office workers from the U.S. General Services Administration. “We have a fair understanding from a psychological perspective, but much needs to be understood in terms of physiological effects of prolonged sound level exposure,” said Karthik Srinivasan, assistant professor of business analytics.

School of Architecture & Design announces spring 2023 KU Design Symposium Lecture Series
LAWRENCE — The School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas has announced programming for the Spring 2023 KU Design Symposium Lecture Series, beginning with a panel discussion with designers from Hallmark at 6 p.m. today, Feb. 2.

‘Love and Information,’ a kaleidoscope of quick encounters, searches for meaning in collaborative production
LAWRENCE — Audiences at the University Theatre’s spring season opener will witness a unique performance from within the University of Kansas Department of Theatre & Dance with a script that’s been transformed by students. “Love and Information,” by British playwright Caryl Churchill, explores the intersections of belief, knowledge and the search for community. The show opens at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 9, and Kansas cast and crew members include students from Iola, Lawrence, Olathe, Overland Park, Shawnee and Topeka.

Spring 2023 KU Architecture Lecture Series opens Feb. 3
LAWRENCE — The School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas has announced programming for the Spring 2023 Architecture Lecture Series. The series will include the Health + Wellness Design Symposium on Feb. 20, featuring discussions on how architecture can bridge the gap between social equity and human well-being. It will lead off Feb. 3 with Stephen Grabow, professor emeritus of architecture at KU, who assisted in the design of the KU Vietnam Memorial.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
Effect of workplace sound level on physiological well-being revealed in new study
LAWRENCE — The sound made by a refrigerator is just 50 A-weighted decibels. A ringing telephone generates 70 dBA, a leaf blower 110 dBA and a jet engine 150 dBA.
But how do these noises affect employees who are exposed to them every day at their workplace?
“It’s a really complex relationship when you think about how sound affects people,” said Karthik Srinivasan, assistant professor of business analytics at the University of Kansas. “Some of us like quiet environments; some of us like noisy environments. We have a fair understanding from a psychological perspective, but much needs to be understood in terms of physiological effects of prolonged sound level exposure.”
That was the impetus for his new study titled “Discovery of associative patterns between workplace sound level and physiological wellbeing using wearable devices and empirical Bayes modeling,” published in Nature Digital Medicine. The study recruited 231 federal office workers who wore multiple devices (around the neck or strapped on the chest) that assessed how sounds experienced in an indoor setting affects individual well-being.
It reveals that physiological well-being is optimal when sound level in the workplace is around 50 dBA. At lower (<50dBA) and higher (>50dBA) amplitude ranges, a 10 dBA increase in sound level is related to a 5.4% increase and 1.9% decrease in physiological well-being, respectively. Age, body-mass-index, high blood pressure, anxiety and computer-intensive work are factors that contribute to specific variations in the results.
He said, “We looked at how we can capture the effect of sound on two different representations of physiological stress. One is primarily related to parasympathetic stress response; the other is a combination of parasympathetic and sympathetic stress response. So, in laymen terms, it means that when you are stressed, the parasympathetic and sympathetic responses are related to your body’s fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest functions respectively, to cope with stress.”
Srinivasan was lead author on the paper, which was part of the Wellbuilt for Wellbeing project led by the University of Arizona. It involved a large team of collaborators that included principal investigator Esther Sternberg, Faiz Currim, Matthias Mehl and Sudha Ram, all with the University of Arizona; Casey Lindberg, with the University of Arizona and HKS Architects; Javad Razjouyan and Bijan Najafi, both with Baylor College of Medicine; Brian Gilligan, Judith Heerwagen and Kevin Kampschroer, all with the U.S. General Services Administration; Hyoki Lee with University of Arizona and Best Buy; Kelli Canada, Logistics Management Institute; and Nicole Goebel and Melissa Lunden, both with Aclima.
The team was assembled to conduct this study for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), an agency with more than 10,000 employees that manages all the federal buildings in the nation. Research teams were composed of four groups: environmental, physiological, psychological and analytical. The study took place between 2015-2016 and focused on office workers in Texas and Washington, D.C.
“Ultimately, the GSA was very interested in understanding how we can make better workplaces,” Srinivasan said.
He said that one of the key lessons of the paper is that while sound level does affect individuals inside the office workplace, its effect is not linear as might be expected.
“Higher sound levels are not good, but so are very low sound levels,” he said, noting the optimal level resides around 50 decibels ampere.
“The second lesson we learned was this sound level association with physiological well-being is different for different people. We looked at various job roles and demographics, and we learned if participants who fell under the category of computer-intensive work or had high blood pressure, their physiological response to sound was different from the other participants.”
For example, the high blood pressure group proved more susceptible to sound, whereas the computer-intensive group was less affected when compared to the average participant.
Srinivasan began working on this project while a doctoral student at the University of Arizona. He’s now in his fourth year at KU, where his expertise is in machine learning interpretability.
“When we think about well-being, typically we think about emotional or mental well-being,” he said. “We hardly ever consider the physiological well-being or the actual ‘what’s happening in our body,’ which is also important to understand when we’re continuously exposed to environmental factors such as sound.”
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Contact: Dan Rolf, School of Architecture & Design, 785-864-3027, [email protected], @ArcD_KU
School of Architecture & Design announces spring 2023 KU Design Symposium Lecture Series
LAWRENCE — The School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas has announced programming for the Spring 2023 KU Design Symposium Lecture Series.
The KU Design Symposium Lecture Series (formerly the Hallmark Symposium) was established in the Department of Design in 1984 to enrich the education of KU students through exposure to designers, artists and educators from around the world. In its 35-plus-year history, the series has become a cultural asset to the local creative community beyond the Lawrence campus.
All lectures begin at 6 p.m. and are free and open to the public either in person in 130 Budig Hall or online via Zoom. See event site for details.

Feb. 2
This panel discussion with designers from Hallmark’s global headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, will provide insights about what it is like to be a creative professional at one of the nation’s most iconic companies. Hallmark, which began as a one-person greeting card business in the early 20th century, is now a multifaceted media, retail and manufacturing company employing more than 20,000 staff around the world. Among topics the panel will discuss is how designers in Hallmark’s in-house creative studios create, contribute to and lead projects at various scales made for diverse audiences around the world.

Feb. 16
Janelle “Longanisa” Quibuyen is a Filipina-American graphic designer and artist. Her most recent work has been in the digital realm, strategizing and designing social media campaigns that transform complex ideas into digestible content and compelling stories that build and mobilize online communities.

March 2
Donny Rausch is an animator, visual effects artist and KU alumnus. After completing several award-winning animation shorts, he was recruited to work as a paint artist on “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Since then, Rausch has worked on feature films such as “Spider-Man 2,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and many others. In 2016, his work on the bear attack sequence in the Academy Award-winning film “The Revenant” was honored by the Visual Effects Society.

March 23
Pixy Liao is a multidisciplinary Chinese artist based in New York City. Born and raised in Shanghai, Liao explores the fluidity, tensions and persistence of cultural norms. Liao has participated in exhibitions internationally, including at Fotografiska, Rencontres d’Arles, Asia Society, the National Gallery of Australia and many other others.

April 6
Gabriele Fumero is a graphic and type designer for the Associazione Archivio Tipografico, an organization focused on the preservation, study, and the practice of typographic arts in Torino, Italy. Fumero is one of five designers practicing within Archivio Tipografico’s in-house design collective, Studio 23.56. The studio has worked with clients that include A24, Apple TV, Gabriela Hearst, Marc Jacobs and Taschen Books.

April 20
Jason Decker is an industrial design manager at Textron Aviation. A graduate of the KU Industrial Design program, he entered the aviation design field with extensive experience in graphic and illustration work and then quickly developed into a leading designer in the industry. A recipient of a 2022 Business Aviation Top 40 Under 40 Award for Innovation, Decker now leads multidisciplinary teams of design specialists for the global aviation company.

May 4
Shawn Brackbill is a photographer and director who has worked with some of the most iconic publications, brands and artists in the world. His extensive portfolio includes editorial, fashion and promotional projects for a range of clients that include publications such as ESPN, The New York Times and Vogue as well as brands such as Burberry, Nike and Oscar de la Renta. He has captured portraits of musicians ranging from Earl Sweatshirt to Elvis Costello to St. Vincent.

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Contact: Lisa Coble-Krings, Department of Theatre & Dance, 785-864-5685, [email protected], @KUTheatre
‘Love and Information,’ a kaleidoscope of quick encounters, searches for meaning in collaborative production

LAWRENCE — Audiences at the University Theatre’s spring season opener will witness a unique performance from within the University of Kansas Department of Theatre & Dance with a script that’s been transformed by students.

In collaboration with their professors during a fall 2022 class, KU students chose the order and setting of over 50 scenes for “Love and Information” by Caryl Churchill. The scenes explore the intersections of belief, knowledge and the search for community. All cast members, as well as some of the creative team members, took the course, which has now morphed into a fully produced production.

It is highly unlikely any two productions of “Love and Information” are alike, and that is by the playwright’s design, according to Jane Barnette, associate professor of theatre, who is directing KU’s production alongside James Moreno, associate professor of dance. “Our course included dramaturgy and scene analysis as well as movement workshops and storyboarding,” Barnette said. “This is an exceptional group of students, representing not just theatre and dance but other majors as well.”

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Feb. 9, 11, 17 and 18 and 2:30 p.m. Feb. 12 and 19 in the William Inge Memorial Theatre at Murphy Hall. Tickets can be reserved at kutheatre.com, by calling 785-864-3982, or in person at noon-5 p.m. weekdays at the Box Office in Murphy Hall.

Among the questions the play asks: How do we know what we know? How do we love without support? Whose truth is the truth in any given relationship? With its fast-moving sequence of scenes, “Love and Information” may feel a little like being part of a social media community, where one sees quick slices of life go by.

“Love and Information” has been lauded for its poetic language. Audiences may relate to the everyday experiences, exploration of memory, and conflict with family and friends, though there are also moments of lightness. The British playwright has been the recipient of multiple Obie Awards for her work and is in the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Two talkbacks are scheduled. A discussion about the show’s scenography, featuring the designers, will follow the performance Feb. 11 in 341 Murphy Hall. A discussion with the cast will follow the performance Feb. 18 in the Inge Theatre.

Barnette is a theatre maker who writes about adaptation dramaturgy. In 2018, she published “Adapturgy: The Dramaturg’s Art and Theatrical Adaptation,” the first book of its kind to address the theory and practice of adaptation dramaturgy. In 2014, she and Michael Haverty produced their adaptation of Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” for 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta. Locally, she most recently directed the regional premiere of “Sycorax” by Susan Gayle Todd in 2019. Barnette teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and serves as head of dramaturgy in the Department of Theatre & Dance.

Moreno is a choreographer and dance studies/performance studies scholar. His current research examines how we use everyday movement techniques to perform our cultural identities and how we position our identities within continuums of authenticity. His ethnographic fieldwork for this research is being conducted in Mexican American communities in Chicago. Interviews from this fieldwork will form the basis of the dance-theatre piece on Mexican American cultural identity scheduled for winter 2023/24. Moreno holds a doctorate in performance studies from Northwestern University and is author of “Dances of José Limon and Erick Hawkins” (Routledge, 2020).

The creative team is rounded out by Rana Esfandiary, assistant professor of design and technology, as scenic designer; Sara Baird, first-year MFA student from Tulsa, Oklahoma, as lighting designer; Kieran Spears, senior in psychology from Lawrence, as sound designer; Hanah Glimpse, a local educator, freelance designer and recent alum of the department, as costume coordinator; Jonah Greene, doctoral student from Fayetteville, Arkansas, as dramaturg; and Kaitlin Nelke, a guest artist from Kansas City, Missouri, as stage manager. In addition, Spears is an ensemble member.

Additional cast members are Zoe Arp, first-year student in political science from Overland Park; Tanner Ashenfelter, sophomore in film production and theatre performance from Camp Verde, Texas; Ashleigh Contos, senior in dance from Castle Rock, Colorado; John Dawkins, senior in film & media studies from Olathe; Rianna DeHart, junior in applied behavioral science and pre-occupational studies from St. Louis; Marissa Gaffen, senior in biotechnology from Tulsa, Oklahoma; Pey Hadley, senior in film & media studies from Shawnee; Brandon Heflin, first-year microbiology and pre-pharmacy student from Olathe; Isabella Lind, senior in theatre performance from Solvang, California; India MacDonald, senior in theatre performance from Topeka; Brad Mathewson, senior in English and theatre, culture & society from Topeka; Jordan Nevels, junior in theatre performance from Overland Park; Caleb Jonathan Parish, senior in theatre performance; Lauren K. Smith, senior in theatre performance from Topeka; and Jonathan Wall, a sophomore in theatre and history from Iola.

The University Theatre and University Dance Company are production wings of KU’s Department of Theatre & Dance, offering five to six public productions throughout the academic year. The University Theatre and University Dance Company productions are funded in part by KU Student Senate fees, and the theatre’s season is supported by Truity Credit Union.

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Contact: Dan Rolf, School of Architecture & Design, 785-864-3027, [email protected], @ArcD_KU
Spring 2023 KU Architecture Lecture Series opens Feb. 3
LAWRENCE — The School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas has announced programming for the Spring 2023 Architecture Lecture Series.
The Architecture Lecture Series welcomes architectural and experiential design leaders from across the country to KU to illuminate new ideas and inspire purpose-driven design practice. Lecturers bring a wide range of expertise in areas such as sustainable building, digital environments, public interest design, historic preservation, health and wellness design, and more.
Spring 2023 lectures will be offered in-person in the Forum at Marvin Hall and livestreamed. See events site for streaming information.

Faculty Spotlight: Stephen Grabow, 5 p.m. Feb. 3
Stephen Grabow is a professor emeritus of architecture at KU. As chair of the University Committee on Art in Public Spaces, he assisted in the design of the KU Vietnam Memorial with Doran Abel, an architecture student. He is the author of several books and numerous journal articles on architectural and urban design, and he is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Fulbright Commission. At KU he taught the principles of modern architecture, history of urban design and architectural design studios for 44 years and was a recipient of the Bradley Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Health + Wellness Design Symposium, 2 p.m. Feb. 20
The KU Institute of Health + Wellness Design presents the sixth annual Health + Wellness Design Symposium: Health, Equity & Architecture. The event will feature discussions on how architecture can bridge the gap between social equity and human well-being. Panelists will include Diamond Bronson of Hoefer Welker, Curtis Moody of Moody Nolan and Bonny Slater of Gensler.
Jonathan Heppner: Timber Futures: 5 p.m. March 24
Jonathan Heppner is a principal at LEVER Architecture, a Portland, Oregon, architecture firm specializing in mass timber design. He has over 20 years of design and management experience working with significant civic and creative organizations. As a native Oregonian, his interest in timber detailing and construction led to his management role on Framework, the first 12-story mass timber high-rise project in the U.S. to receive permitted approval.

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Headlines

Just one quality conversation with a friend boosts daily well-being, study shows
LAWRENCE — Conversing with a friend just once during the day to catch up, joke around or tell them you’re thinking of them can increase your happiness and lower your stress level by day’s end. These are among the results of a new study co-written by Jeffrey Hall, University of Kansas professor of communication studies and friendship expert. “Quality Conversation Can Increase Daily Well-Being” was published in the journal Communication Research.

New program to match STEM undergraduates, faculty mentors to increase diversity, mitigate effects of pandemic
LAWRENCE — A team of scientists from the University of Kansas has received a five-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to match undergraduates in STEM disciplines with faculty mentors as a means of increasing diversity in STEM graduate programs and careers while combating career challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

KU School of Business earns extension of prestigious AACSB accreditation
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Business has maintained its global accreditation in business and accounting for another five years with AACSB International, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. KU is one of just 194 institutions that hold both a school and an accounting program accreditation. AACSB accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business and accounting education, and less than 6% of business schools worldwide meet the organization’s accreditation standards.

Study shows students felt more engaged by augmented reality but learned less than those viewing video
LAWRENCE — A new study from the University of Kansas found that an augmented reality lesson scored highly among student users, who reported that they felt more engaged with the content than from a similar video lesson. However, data showed that those who interacted with the AR model learned less than those who watched the video. The results suggest that educators must carefully consider when and how to use augmented reality as part of the learning environment.

Media advisory: Social media expert can comment on ‘messianic figure’ in Nigerian election
LAWRENCE – Like Barack Obama, upstart Nigerian presidential candidate Peter Obi is younger than his main rivals and more astute in his deployment of social media. But Nigerian social media expert James Yékú said there are many differences between Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign of 2008 and the Obi-dient Movement of 2022-23 that is rallying young voters across Nigeria. Yékú can speak with reporters about Obi’s campaign ahead of the Feb. 25 election.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Just one quality conversation with a friend boosts daily well-being, study shows
LAWRENCE — Conversing with a friend just once during the day to catch up, joke around or tell them you’re thinking of them can increase your happiness and lower your stress level by day’s end.
These are among the results of a new study co-written by Jeffrey Hall, University of Kansas professor of communication studies and friendship expert. “Quality Conversation Can Increase Daily Well-Being” was published in the journal Communication Research by Hall and co-authors Amanda Holmstrom, Natalie Pennington, Evan Perrault and Daniel Totzkay. The study was informed by and provides further support for Hall’s Communicate Bond Belong (CBB) theory of relationships. Hall is the director of KU’s Relationships and Technology Lab.
“This paper was an attempt to define quality communication in the context of relationships,” Hall said. “The types of communication we chose to study were ones shown in past research to make people feel more bonded through conversation.”
They studied seven types of communication:
1. Catching up
2. Meaningful talk
3. Joking around
4. Showing care
5. Listening
6. Valuing others and their opinions
7. Offering sincere compliments
Over 900 study participants from five university campuses — before, during and after pandemic lockdowns — were directed to engage in one of the seven communication behaviors on a single day, then report back that night about their feelings of stress, connection, anxiety, well-being, loneliness and the quality of their day.
As it turned out, Hall said, it didn’t matter which of these quality conversations someone had. The very act of intentionally reaching out to a friend in one of these ways was what mattered most.
“One of the take-home messages of this study is that there are many paths toward the same goal,” Hall said.
He said the study also was designed to explore the effects of both the quality and quantity of daily communications.
“There’s a lot of good research that says the number of interactions you have as well as the quality of interactions are both associated with being a less lonely, happier and more connected person,” Hall said.
This study found that once is enough, but more is better. Participants who chose to have more quality conversations had better days.
“This means the more that you listened to your friends, the more that you showed care, the more that you took time to value others’ opinions, the better you felt at the end of the day,” he said.
“The experimental design means that it’s not just people who are already having fulfilling lives who have higher-quality conversations,” Hall said. “This study suggests that anyone who makes time for high-quality conversation can improve their well-being. We can change how we feel on any given day through communication. Just once is all it takes.”
The study also brought in Hall’s past research on different ways to connect in the era of social and mobile media. The study found high-quality, face-to-face communication was more closely associated with well-being than electronic or social media contact.
“If at least one of their quality conversations was face-to-face, that mattered,” Hall said.
The paper also explains why quality communication makes people feel better. CBB theory claims that people use conversations with friends to help meet their need to belong.
“Across these three studies, quality conversation mattered most for connection and stress,” Hall said. “This supports the idea that we use communication to get our need to belong met, and, in doing so, it helps us manage our stress.”
What is exciting about this research, Hall said, is that it shows there are a host of good things that come along with just one good conversation with a friend. This drives home the point that making time for quality conversation makes our days better.
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Contact: Blair Schneider, Kansas Geological Survey, 785-864-0663, [email protected]
New program to match STEM undergraduates, faculty mentors to increase diversity, mitigate effects of pandemic
LAWRENCE — A team of scientists from the University of Kansas has received a five-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to match undergraduates in STEM disciplines with faculty mentors as a means of increasing diversity in STEM graduate programs and careers while combating career challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The program, Building Emerging STEM Scholars of Tomorrow (BESST), will recruit students in their third and fourth years of college, a critical juncture as students make decisions about their postgraduation futures. In addition to providing quality mentored research experiences, BESST will help students build the skills necessary to transition to graduate school or the workforce through monthly professional development workshops and the opportunity to meet with career coaches from the University Career Center.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted undergraduate students in many ways, including limiting access to research opportunities and constraining their budding professional networks,” said Blair Schneider, Kansas Geological Survey science outreach manager, associate researcher and principal investigator for the program. “The detrimental effects manifest in both the retention of majors and the retention of undergraduates transitioning into the workforce or graduate school, which has further exacerbated inequities that already existed in demographics of the STEM workforce.”
BESST, funded through an NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) grant, will focus initially on earth and environmental sciences, with plans to broaden to additional STEM fields. It will recruit students primarily from two existing programs: the Emerging Scholars program that matches first- and second-year Pell-eligible undergraduates with mentors and the Military-Affiliated Student Community program, which includes a large population of students that have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields.
“The experience a student has in their first lab will often determine whether they choose to complete a STEM degree and continue on with additional education. If that experience is bad, we lose great potential — minds we know we need to solve the big problems facing society,” said Amy Burgin, co-PI, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and the Environmental Studies Program, and senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research. “We want all students who want to be scientists to have a good experience — to engage in a welcoming community, to build a professional relationship with a trusted mentor and to gain confidence and self-efficacy that they can be a scientist and belong in science.”
Though the COVID-19 pandemic affected all college students, those in STEM majors that require fieldwork for graduation faced cancellations of field activities or required courses, deferred or delayed graduation, and changes to research projects. Effects may have been worse for populations underrepresented in earth and environmental sciences, including women and students of color. BESST is meant to mitigate these challenges.
Faculty members from three academic programs (environmental studies, ecology & evolutionary biology and geology), three environmentally focused research centers (Kansas Geological Survey, Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and the Biodiversity Institute) and two key support offices (Center for Undergraduate Research and the Office for Diversity in Science Training) have signed on in support of the program.
“The breadth of experience means that students will be able to find a mentor who aligns with their particular scientific interests. The ability to meet a student where they are and to support them to explore their own interests is a key factor in student persistence and retention,” said Alison Olcott, director of the Center for Undergraduate Research, associate professor of geology and co-PI.
BESST will build on Emerging Scholars, an existing mentoring program operated out of the Center for Undergraduate Research that serves first- and second-year students in STEM programs. Scholars accepted into the BESST program will work with their mentors during the academic year and will be paid through the KU Work Study program, the same model used by the Emerging Scholars program.
“We hope to follow the successful footprints of the Emerging Scholars program, which has shown increased retention and higher graduation rates among their student groups as compared to the whole student population at KU,” Schneider said.
BESST will require professional development for mentors as well as students, a feature that sets it apart from many other mentoring programs.
“Mentor training is often not formally part of graduate education, so many faculty and scientists only have their own experiences to draw on when mentoring students,” said Erin Seybold, co-PI and KGS assistant scientist. “It is important to provide mentors tools, strategies and knowledge about how to effectively mentor that doesn’t rely solely on personal experiences.”
The program’s mentor training will address the unique challenges associated with field-based mentoring, field safety, and responding to hostile or exclusionary behaviors.
“Sometimes field safety issues can involve the unpredictability of being outside: weather, animals, unstable ground. Sometimes field safety issues can be more nebulous and involve ensuring that the trip leader or senior scientist is welcoming everyone, no matter their background or cultural affiliation or gender or sexuality or financial situation,” Olcott said.
BESST mentor training will incorporate strategies to help mentors understand what “safety” means in terms of their students’ experiences and help prepare them to address issues that arise based on students’ identities. The training will be required for BESST mentors but open to faculty from other programs across campus and, in the future, will be more widely available through an open-access professional development curriculum.
“For STEM fields at KU, the mentor training will be an invaluable experience that we hope will build community and engagement so that faculty and staff can better train and prepare future scientists with support from their university,” Schneider said. “Beyond this, we hope to work with other universities and colleges so that they can develop a program of their own using our framework. How great would it be to see this type of program sprout at universities across the United States?”

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Contact: Lauren Cunningham, School of Business, 785-864-9540, [email protected], @KUbschool, @ksgeology
KU School of Business earns extension of prestigious AACSB accreditation
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Business has maintained its global accreditation in business and accounting for another five years with AACSB International, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
KU is one of just 194 institutions that hold both a school and an accounting program accreditation. AACSB accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business and accounting education, and less than 6% of business schools worldwide meet the organization’s accreditation standards.
“We are honored to retain our affiliation among this elite group of business schools,” Dean Paige Fields said. “This extension of dual AACSB accreditation validates our collective work to deliver excellent, comprehensive business and accounting education.”
AACSB-accredited schools must meet standards of excellence in areas relating to strategic management and innovation, faculty research productivity, learning and teaching, and academic and professional engagement. Accounting accreditation involves an additional set of standards specific to the discipline and profession of accounting.
Every five years each accredited institution undergoes a continuous improvement review process that includes a self-evaluation report and an evaluation conducted by a team of deans or directors from fellow AACSB-accredited business schools. These peer review teams make recommendations after assessing quality and continuous improvement in relation to the school’s mission and AACSB accreditation standards. Business and accounting accreditation reviews are separate processes completed synchronously.
The KU School of Business first earned AACSB accreditation in 1925, one year after the business school was founded. The school’s accounting program first attained its accreditation in 1998.
Stephanie Bryant, executive vice president and chief accreditation officer of AACSB, congratulated each institution that recently achieved or extended accreditation.
“Every AACSB-accredited school has demonstrated a focus on excellence in all areas, including teaching, research, curricula development and student learning,” Bryant said. “The intense peer-review process exemplifies their commitment to quality business education.”

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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
Study shows students felt more engaged by augmented reality but learned less than those viewing video
LAWRENCE — As virtual reality and augmented reality move into more prominent roles in everyday life, scholars hope to determine how effectively they could work in the classroom. A new study from the University of Kansas found that an augmented reality lesson scored highly among users, who reported that they felt more engaged with the content than from a video lesson. However, objective data showed that those who interacted with the AR model learned less than those who watched the video. The results suggest that educators must carefully consider when and how to use augmented reality as part of the learning environment.
Mugur Geana, associate professor of health communication and director of KU’s Center for Excellence in Health Communications to Underserved Populations, led the study in which 44 students completed an educational module about the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the infectious agent responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic). Half watched a video that shared information on the virus, its protein spikes, the virus capsule and its genome. The other half interacted with an AR model of the virus in which they used a tablet that imagined a 3D virus model in the experimental room, where they could move around the virtual model and click on the 3D graphic. While doing so, they received audio instructions with the same information about the viral components as in the video.
“We are curious to explore how we can use mixed reality to address teaching and learning,” Geana said. “We’re all familiar, especially after COVID, with watching things and learning on a small screen. So, we thought it would be interesting to see how we can move beyond that 2D environment.”
The study, conducted in collaboration with Dan Cernusca, associate professor of instructional design at the School of Pharmacy, North Dakota State University, and Pan Liu, assistant professor at Marian University, has been accepted for presentation at the 2023 International Communication Association conference in Toronto.
Before participating in the study, subjects answered questions about their knowledge of the virus causing COVID-19. They were then randomly assigned to either the video or the AR arm of the study. During the experiment, participants in the video arm had their eyesight tracked to account for their attention to the video’s graphical elements. For the AR arm participants, a camera in the room and the camera in their tablet recorded their interaction with the virtual 3D model for subsequent analysis. All the participants were then exposed to distractor videos, after which their retention of the presented information was tested. Finally, interviews were conducted to record their experiences and feedback on the instruction.
“We were interested in students’ interaction with the viral model for both arms of the study. We measured which graphic elements they were paying attention to and to what degree for both experimental treatments,” Geana said. “In the AR arm, they could take the tablet, move behind the virus, get closer or engage on other levels. We also looked at if they watched all the instructional modules or skipped some.”
The results suggest that while the AR model that projected a representation of the virus into their physical environment was novel and more engaging, that novelty likely distracted from the information it was meant to convey. And while those in the video group learned more, that does not mean that AR is unsuitable for educational purposes, Geana said. Instead, researchers need to understand how it can be successfully adapted and used in classroom or distance-learning settings to engage and inform learners effectively.
The study results were consistent with previous research findings on AR in education, Geana said, while raising new questions for future projects. Upcoming studies at CEHCUP will aim to test diverse AR educational information delivery models and their effectiveness.
Geana said he firmly believes that immersive visualization technology is the future. To that end, CEHCUP is hosting its first research exhibition featuring entirely virtual research posters presenting health communication studies from doctoral students, faculty and alumni. The AR event will take place from Feb. 15 to March 15 at the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications. A smartphone or tablet is all that is needed to experience the immersive research exhibition.
For most of the study participants, the experiment was their first exposure to a mixed-reality environment. The novelty factor and the excitement of exploring a virtual 3D model were prominent causes for the lower information retention observed in the AR group compared to those exposed to video, Geana said. As students become more used to mixed reality as part of everyday life, the novelty factor of this technology will likely decrease. Therefore, the authors argue that a better understanding of its potential and most effective use in education is increasingly important.
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Media advisory: Social media expert can comment on ‘messianic figure’ in Nigerian election
LAWRENCE – Like Barack Obama, upstart Nigerian presidential candidate Peter Obi is younger than his main rivals and more astute in his deployment of social media. But Nigerian social media expert James Yékú said there are many differences between Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign of 2008 and the Obi-dient Movement of 2022-23 that is rallying young voters across Nigeria.
Yékú, University of Kansas assistant professor of African digital humanities, is available to comment on how the political battle is being waged online ahead of the Feb. 25 election.
Unlike Obama’s successful election, Yékú predicted that Obi will lose to one of his two main “gerontocratic” rivals – Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress or Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party – or perhaps even to a fourth contender, Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, who was once was courted by the Obi camp to join forces to upstage the more established parties.
That’s partly, Yékú said, because the realities of a class-based social media in Nigeria are often not directly translatable outside digital spaces. Also, there is the geographic (north-south) and ethno-religious (Muslim-Christian) political balancing act that successful Nigerian political leaders must consider. Having picked a northern Muslim as his vice presidential running mate, Obi is aware of this, Yékú said, but he still must contend with the common assumption that he lacks the “ground game” and infrastructure the two major political parties are known to have. Obi has claimed this advantage reflects the ages-long structure of criminality and corruption he wishes to disrupt. But as he left the PDP to run under the Labour Party banner, some commentators are not so convinced.
But Obi has clearly been a success in mobilizing followers via social media, said Yékú, whose 2022 book, “Cultural Netizenship: Social Media, Popular Culture and Performance in Nigeria,” (Indiana University Press) is a cultural analysis of his native country’s vibrant online discussion space.
Yékú said Obi has drawn strength from the online energy generated by the #EndSARS campaign that began in 2017 and, in 2020, became an intense and comprehensive movement against a culture of police brutality and corruption by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of Nigeria’s police.
“The Obi-dient Movement is basically the necessary emergence of a proverbial third force in Nigerian election discourses, because in the last couple of election cycles, the contest has always been between the PDP and the APC — two parties that are essentially the same in terms of ideologies and their constantly cross-carpeting personnel,” Yékú said.
“Being the youngest, the most progressive and ideologically sound of all the candidates, Peter comes to resemble a political messiah whom the Nigerian youth, most of whom are fed up with the country’s political elites, imagine as the man to deliver the country from the plagues of endemic corruption and economic mismanagement which they spoke out against during #EndSARS. So the Obi-dient Movement is basically this youth-based, post-#EndSARS, social media-driven campaign for Peter Obi where everybody sees him as a messianic figure as well.
“The challenge for the Obi-dient movement,” Yékú said, “is whether Obi and his supporters can translate their online momentum and the frenzy of clicks and hashtags into offline electoral victory.”
To interview Yékú, contact Rick Hellman, public affairs officer, at [email protected] or (913) 620-8786.

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