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Couple establishes professorship in support of Monarch Watch with $1.4M gift, encourages others to support the cause
LAWRENCE — With a desire to find more time for writing and experiments, Orley “Chip” Taylor, University of Kansas emeritus professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, says it’s time to step aside — but not before making sure Monarch Watch, the program he founded in 1992, is well-positioned for the future. Chip and his wife, Toni, have made a $1.4 million gift to establish the Chip and Toni Taylor Professorship in support of Monarch Watch.
Michael Krueger’s art offers a moment of humor, hope
LAWRENCE – Michael Krueger’s art is brightly colored and funny, but, like his MAD magazine inspirations, there is a serious subtext of interpersonal, international politics behind the floating cubist noses and revving hot rods. The University of Kansas professor of visual art will show work in Paraguay for an exhibition that opens Dec. 4 at a new contemporary gallery in Asunción.
KLETC announces launch of Kansas Law Enforcement Accreditation Program
YODER — The Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center (KLETC) serves as the facilitator of the new voluntary Kansas Law Enforcement Accreditation Program (KLEAP), launched statewide Dec. 1. So far, 12 agencies have enrolled in KLEAP participating as beta test agencies or early starters.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Michelle Keller, KU Endowment, 785-832-7336, [email protected]; @KUEndowment
Couple establishes professorship in support of Monarch Watch with $1.4M gift, encourages others to support the cause
LAWRENCE — With a desire to find more time for writing and experiments, Orley “Chip” Taylor, University of Kansas emeritus professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, says it’s time to step aside — but not before making sure Monarch Watch, the program he founded in 1992, is well-positioned for the future. Chip and his wife, Toni, have made a $1.4 million gift to establish the Chip and Toni Taylor Professorship in support of Monarch Watch.
“I turned 85 in August, and I have to step away in order to find enough time to finish six manuscripts and a couple of experiments — one of which has given me an idea for a new community science project,” Chip Taylor said. “There is always something new, and even if I’m not directing Monarch Watch, I’ll continue to contribute.”
Chip Taylor and Brad Williamson, a local high school science teacher, started Monarch Watch as a research project. The idea was to learn more about the monarch migration by applying tags to the monarchs’ wings. However, they knew that to get a reasonable amount of data they had to have a large number of taggers. To recruit taggers, they sent out news releases to Iowa early in the tagging season and later to Texas as well as a large number of schools in Kansas. The response was overwhelming, with more than 1,000 people volunteering to tag monarchs. With that, Monarch Watch was born.
Taylor estimates volunteers have tagged more than 2 million butterflies in the last 29 years. Of these, more than 20,000 have been recovered in Mexico. The data has proven to be a gold mine and has yielded information about the timing and pace of the migration, the success of monarchs in reaching Mexico from different regions, the effects of droughts and more.
In addition to the tagging program, Taylor and the Monarch Watch team are active in distributing milkweeds, the host plants for monarch caterpillars, through a number of programs. These efforts began as a response to the rapid decline in milkweeds that followed the adoption of herbicide-tolerant crops. To compensate for these declines, Monarch Watch initiated the Monarch Waystation program in 2005. The public was encouraged to create habitats for monarchs by planting milkweeds and nectar-producing plants in home gardens, at schools, businesses and other public places.
Today, there are more than 41,500 registered Monarch Waystations, including habitats in nine different countries, signifying the international reach of Monarch Watch. Overall, more than 1 million milkweeds have been distributed through various campaigns since 2010. The goal of these efforts has been to sustain the monarch migration.
Taylor can trace his love of nature, including butterflies, to summers spent on his grandmother’s land in Wisconsin.
“I was always growing or nurturing something,” he said. “It’s no surprise to me that the first research project I did on monarch butterflies has led to this. For me, it’s important that we sustain the monarch migration. The loss of monarchs would mean that we have lost habitats that support a large number of species ranging from important pollinators to hawks and owls. It’s all about sustaining the environment that sustains us.”
KU is currently accepting applications for the professorship that Taylor said will be critical to the program’s future success. He said the ideal candidate will have to be comfortable interacting with the press and the public, hosting events and engaging community scientists from all walks of life.
Like the fictional character Forrest Gump, Taylor and his wife invested in a little-known “fruit company” in its early days. After numerous stock splits, the couple found themselves holding shares in one of the world’s most valuable companies — Apple.
“I guess that was a pretty good investment,” Taylor said. “And investing in Monarch Watch is equally important. We need about $3 million to set up an endowed fund that will support the professorship and Monarch Watch for generations to come. We have provided the seed money, and we hope others will chip in for monarchs and help us reach our goal.”
Those wishing to donate to Monarch Watch can visit https://monarchwatch.org/donate/ for more information.
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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Michael Krueger’s art offers a moment of humor, hope
LAWRENCE – Michael Krueger’s art is brightly colored and funny, but, like his MAD magazine inspirations, there is a serious subtext of interpersonal, international politics behind the floating cubist noses and revving hot rods.
The University of Kansas professor of visual art will take his show on the road again to Paraguay for an exhibition that opens Dec. 4 at a new contemporary gallery in that nation’s capital, Asunción. It is the outgrowth, Krueger said, of an exchange program from 1996 that brought the acclaimed Paraguayan artist Carlos Colombino to KU for a residency.
When Colombino reciprocated by inviting him down to Paraguay to show his work in 1997, Krueger said, “I met all these wonderful young artists and connected with so many people there.” He returned again in 2001 and has since hosted other Paraguayan artists here. He likes the Paraguayan art scene for its intergenerational collegiality and distinct lack of competitiveness, he said.
Carlos Colombino died in 2013, but his daughter, Lia Colombino, invited Krueger back for a solo show at the new Galeria Fuga Villa Morra, which she helped to establish.
“I am honored to be, so far, the only U.S. artist to show at Fuga Villa Morra, run by the stalwart of the scene, the great Bettina Brizuela,” Krueger said.
Krueger thanked the KU-UCR Exchange Support Fund for grant funds to make the art and to pay for his air travel. After working on some rather large paintings in recent years, Krueger deliberately created smaller works on paper for this show that he can carry himself back and forth on the airplane. The works are a combination of computerized drawing, physical collage and colored-pencil tinting.
Krueger said he has been working with Lia Colombino via email, phone and FaceTime in her role as the show’s curator. Its title is “Nobody’s Perfect: A Political Message of Imperfection.”
All the Basil Wolverton- and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth-inspired grotesquerie, he writes in his artist’s statement, “is simply about giving space to absurdist thinking and offering a moment of humor and hope. It is the radical idea that accepting you for who you are might be a politically healthy position, that encouraging this position might help others, and lead to changed attitudes. Changed attitudes may be the best solution we have to fighting hate and self-loathing, moving ever closer to a culture of empathy and acceptance.”
Krueger has given each drawing a title and written some text about it, which has been translated into Spanish. In addition to the original artwork on the gallery walls, Krueger will offer for sale handmade, spiral-bound books collecting the prints and displaying their titles on the facing pages.
The images in the show and book, Krueger wrote, are “about being real, accepting one’s flaws, finding delight in perfections and acknowledging that everyone has defects of character that make them human. The images are unique examples of internalized imperfections, manifest as cars, eyeballs, hand gestures and bananas. Each offers cultural clues to a life lived in imperfect ways. The texts are designed to help decode the images through optimism, and images that encourage mindfulness.”
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Contact: Suellyn Hooper, Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center, 620-694-1549,
[email protected], @kletc
KLETC announces launch of Kansas Law Enforcement Accreditation Program
YODER — The Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center (KLETC) serves as the facilitator of the new voluntary Kansas Law Enforcement Accreditation Program (KLEAP), launched statewide Dec. 1. Since 1968, KLETC has served as the headquarters for all law enforcement training in Kansas and is a unit of the University of Kansas. This unique association with KU, a major research institution, allows KLETC to leverage the strength and resources of an AAU research university to better educate and train students. KLETC’s statutory mission is “the promotion and development of improved law enforcement personnel and procedures throughout the state.”
In 2021, KLETC applied for and was awarded a grant through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) with the goal of establishing a voluntary state level accreditation program for law enforcement agencies in Kansas. At the time of application, Kansas was one of only 14 states that did not have a state-level law enforcement accreditation program.
In February 2022, nine members were appointed to the Kansas Accreditation Council (KAC), the guiding body for KLEAP. KAC members were appointed by the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police (KACP) and the Kansas Sheriffs’ Association (KSA) and represent a geographically diverse range of agencies of all sizes. KLETC Executive Director Darin Beck appointed one additional council member from a law enforcement agency not led by a sheriff or municipal chief of police, as a member-at-large. Two remaining council members are permanent appointments from KLETC staff, are nonvoting members, and are not eligible to hold the seats of chair or vice chair.
Accreditation strengthens the professionalism of law enforcement and encourages transparency with the communities they serve. It is also a time-proven means for helping agencies evaluate and improve their overall performance. KLEAP is designed to be meaningful, obtainable, and affordable for any Kansas law enforcement agency. The KLEAP standards, the fee schedule and a multitude of resources for Kansas agencies is available on the KLEAP website. Additionally, free ongoing training is provided to any Kansas agency desiring to participate.
Twelve agencies have enrolled in KLEAP participating as beta test agencies or early starters. KLEAP’s goal is to increase the number of Kansas law enforcement agencies that elect to participate in a voluntary accreditation program. The KLEAP vision is “to be a compass on the journey towards law enforcement excellence in Kansas.” Accreditation offers many benefits, such as lower insurance rates and reduced liability and susceptibility to lawsuits. It sends a message to communities that their law enforcement agency is committed to excellence.
KLETC is a division within Jayhawk Global, KU’s education innovation center that advances and delivers nontraditional forms of learner engagement, including online degree programs, professional and workforce development, certifications, competency-based educational offerings, credit for prior experience, employee training and enrichment learning.
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