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KU names executive dean of College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas has selected Arash Mafi to be executive dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Mafi currently serves as the interim dean at the University of New Mexico, a position he has held since July 2021. His appointment as executive dean of the College is effective March 1, 2023.

Dole Institute honors Bob Dole on the first anniversary of his death
LAWRENCE — The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas will mark the first anniversary of Bob Dole’s death with an open house from noon to 4 p.m. Dec. 5, featuring music and reflection, as well as the debut of a newly renovated permanent exhibition case.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Evan Riggs, Office of the Provost, 785-864-1085, [email protected], @KUProvost
KU names executive dean of College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas has selected Arash Mafi to be executive dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Mafi currently serves as the interim dean at the University of New Mexico, a position he has held since July 2021. His appointment as executive dean of the College is effective March 1, 2023.

“The feedback from our community members highlighted Dr. Mafi’s commitment to listening, his record of excellence in research and education, and his enthusiasm for innovation,” said Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, provost and executive vice chancellor. “He appreciates KU’s history of excellence as well as our opportunities to strengthen equity and to more fully serve our state while having greater impact nationally and internationally. I welcome Arash to KU, and I’m truly excited to work with him as he leads the College in future years.”

The College, the largest academic unit at KU, is composed of 9,500 undergraduates, 1,600 graduate students, 650 faculty and 300 staff. It provides students with a broad foundation of arts, humanities, mathematics, social and behavioral sciences, and natural sciences to expand their knowledge and provide new ways of thinking about challenges. Its academic programming reaches all undergraduate and many graduate students on the Lawrence and Edwards campuses.

“I am honored and excited by the opportunity to lead the College at KU and promote our shared vision of supporting student success, fostering healthy and vibrant communities, and advancing research and discovery,” Mafi said. “KU is an internationally renowned university with a distinguished past and a bright future. I look forward to working with the administration, faculty, staff, students, alumni and community to ensure that KU and the College continue to expand their global prominence in higher education.”

A faculty member at UNM for eight years, Mafi has served in a variety of administrative roles at UNM, which has one of the most diverse student bodies of any flagship university in the nation and is one of only a handful of research-intensive Hispanic-serving institutions. He spent five years as the director of UNM’s Center for High Technology Materials, an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research center. He also served one year as the chair for Optical Science and Engineering.

He is currently a full professor of physics and astronomy in addition to serving as interim dean.
Mafi is a fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics, a fellow of Optica (formerly Optical Society of America) and a senior member of IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. His research has resulted in high-impact publications in several disciplines.

Mafi earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, a master’s degree in physics and a doctorate in theoretical particle physics from The Ohio State University. He held postdoctoral fellowships in particle physics and photonics at the University of Arizona. He worked as a senior research scientist for four years at Corning before returning to academia as an assistant professor and then associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Mafi will be the first executive dean of the College, a title that reflects the size of the organization, as well as the breadth of scholarship and academics available through its people, departments, programs and research centers. The College is home to about 50 departments, programs and centers, as well as the School of the Arts and School of Public Affairs & Administration. Those departments, programs and centers offer more than 150 majors, minors and certificates and prepare students with fundamental skills and knowledge that will serve them in any career.

“I am especially thrilled by the diversity of disciplines in the College,” Mafi said, “and the possibilities to connect various departments, programs and centers to advance the College’s collective education and research mission.”

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Contact: Maria Fisher, Dole Institute of Politics, 785-864-4900, [email protected], @DoleInstitute
Dole Institute honors Bob Dole on the first anniversary of his death
LAWRENCE — The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas will mark the first anniversary of U.S. Sen. Bob Dole’s death with an open house from noon to 4 p.m. Dec. 5, featuring music and reflection, as well as the debut of a newly renovated permanent exhibition case.
The museum at the Dole Institute is typically closed Mondays but will be open to the public for the event. Pianists will play in the gallery all afternoon, and the public is invited to sign a condolence book and view the refreshed exhibition case.
The new exhibition case has two sections which honor Dole’s post-political service and death. The first section, “Lasting Legacy,” tells the story of his continued advocacy with veterans, people with disabilities and the food-insecure, as well as notable awards he received such as the World Food Prize, Congressional Gold Medal and an honorary promotion to colonel in the U.S. Army. “Faithful Servant,” the second section, includes photos and items from remembrance events honoring Dole’s life and service following his death Dec. 5, 2021.
“While we honor Senator Bob Dole’s legacy each and every day through our bipartisan mission, on this historic anniversary, we invite the public to join us at the Dole Institute to reflect on the senator’s remarkable life of service to our country,” said Dole Institute Director Audrey Coleman.
The Dole Institute of Politics is located at 2350 Petefish Drive.
The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics is dedicated to promoting political and civic participation, as well as civil discourse, in a bipartisan, philosophically balanced manner. It is located on KU’s West Campus and houses the Dole Archive and Special Collections. Through its robust public programming, congressional archive, and museum, the Dole Institute strives to celebrate public service and the legacies of U.S. Senators Bob Dole and Elizabeth Dole.

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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

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School of Social Welfare launches Master of Social Work partnership with Kansas State University Salina
LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas School of Social Welfare will begin offering a Master of Social Work degree at the Kansas State University Salina campus. The cooperative between KU and K-State Salina will increase the availability of graduate-level social work education in rural areas of Kansas while meeting the gaps in coverage that human service agencies in rural areas of Kansas have been experiencing.

Biography gives leading 20th-century Black writer Margaret Walker her due
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas professor has written a biography of writer Margaret Walker, a major figure in the Black women’s literary renaissance whose notable contributions to literature were overshadowed later in life by her disputes with two of the leading Black male writers of her day, Richard Wright and Alex Haley.

More than 600 students attend KU’s Carnival of Chemistry
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Department of Chemistry recently hosted the annual Carnival of Chemistry, a free celebration with activities geared toward students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The Nov. 20 event was the first in-person Carnival of Chemistry since 2019.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Jason Matejkowski, School of Social Welfare, 785-864-5851, [email protected], @KUSocialWelfare
School of Social Welfare launches Master of Social Work partnership with Kansas State University Salina
LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas School of Social Welfare will begin offering a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree at the Kansas State University Salina campus.
The cooperative between KU and K-State Salina will increase the availability of graduate-level social work education in rural areas of Kansas while meeting the gaps in coverage that human service agencies in rural areas of Kansas have been experiencing. The partnership will allow students to maintain their relationship with their community while learning valuable social work education skills.
“K-State Salina is committed to respond to the needs of our region by providing a trained workforce for our social service partners. Qualified, experienced social workers play an integral role in the success of any community by working with people to improve their circumstances in a variety of situations. This opportunity furthers our mission by training students to be leaders and make an impact on our state,” said Deb Marseline, K-State assistant dean for diversity and student success.
In summer 2023, students will be able to apply to the Advanced Standing MSW, which is the three-semester plan of study that requires applicants to already have their Bachelor of Social Work. These classes allow students to specialize in either clinical or macro practice and are taught in a blended format. This format combines online learning with in-person classes taught every other week on the Salina campus. Graduates of the program will receive their MSW degree from KU. Applications are open Oct. 1 to Feb. 1.
In fall 2024, the partnership will expand to offer both the Advanced Standing and the Traditional MSW plans of study. The Traditional MSW is a two-year plan of study that allows applicants who already have a non-social work bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited university to pursue the MSW degree. For the Traditional plan of study, students will complete their first-year generalist coursework in-person on the K-State Salina campus. At the completion of generalist coursework, students enroll with KU for their specialist coursework, which is delivered at the K-State Salina campus and in the same blended format as the Advanced Standing plan of study.
“We are thrilled to expand our MSW partnership education in Salina. Social work is one of the fastest-growing career fields, and there is a particular need for rural social workers here in Kansas. This partnership with Kansas State will bridge the gap and meet students where they are, all while continuing to offer them one of the best social work educations in the country,” said Michelle Mohr Carney, KU School of Social Welfare dean.
The KU School of Social Welfare has an established MSW partnership with Pittsburg State University. That program, established in 2019, offers a similar curriculum and course structure.
Students can begin applying for admission to the KU and KSU Salina cooperative through the KU School of Social Welfare application process through Feb. 1, 2023, to begin Advanced Standing coursework in summer 2023 on the Salina campus.

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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Biography gives leading 20th-century Black writer Margaret Walker her due

LAWRENCE – After her poem “For My People” propelled Margaret Walker to fame in 1937, while she was in her early 20s, she was considered a peer by nearly every important African American writer and thinker of the mid-20th century, from Langston Hughes to John Hope Franklin.
But Walker’s fame waned while she raised four children and toiled in academia at a historically black college in the South. Her later-in-life, headline-grabbing literary and legal disputes with two of the leading Black male writers of her day, Richard Wright and Alex Haley, only reinforced to her the intersectional disadvantage – Black and female – that she fought against her whole life.

So why does her biographer call Margaret Walker “the most important person that nobody knows,” and what can the first major biography of Walker do to enhance her legacy?

“Margaret Walker is every woman who is brilliant, who has ideas, but who is ahead of her time,” said Maryemma Graham, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Kansas and author of the new “The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker” (Oxford University Press). “She was a midwife for the Black women’s literary renaissance.”
Beyond recounting her triumphs, Graham hopes the previously unpublished journal entries and photographs she has brought to light will contextualize the later-life caricature of Walker – that of “an embittered old woman who was jilted” in love by Wright and who wrote an unflattering biography of him, which added to the humiliation of losing her plagiarism suit against Haley.
Connecting Walker to the present day, Graham reminds readers that in one of her last widely published essays, “Whose ‘Boy’ Is This?,” Walker excoriated both Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his former co-worker Anita Hill, whose accusation of past sexual harassment rocked Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearing, as “complicit in a process driven by racist and sexist standards. … Thomas had placed himself on the side of a system that abused and misused Black people. Hill became a victim by playing into the system and getting burned.” It was emblematic, Graham said, of Walker’s prickly intelligence and fearlessness.
Graham details Walker’s life as a preacher’s daughter in the Jim Crow Deep South and her initial fame as a poet. Walker had completed her education at Northwestern University and was living in Chicago and working for the WPA when she won the Yale University Series of Younger Poets Award in 1941 for her volume “For My People.”
Its fame soon spread.
“You couldn’t grow up in the segregated South and not know it,” said Graham, who recited the title poem herself as a young woman for church programs. “It is one of the most recited poems in the Black canon. A long poem, it stretches through the slavery and migration periods, on through urban America. It’s lyrical. It has actually been put to music. It rings in your ears so that when you hear it again, you remember the feeling you got the first time you heard it.”
Walker’s experiences in Wright’s influential Leftist writers’ group in pre-war Chicago are an important chapter of the biography. Walker and Wright fell out before his novel “Native Son” made him the man of the hour in 1940.
Walker then found love with the man she would marry, Firnist James Alexander, and a professional home on the faculty of historically Black Jackson State University. And despite the lull in her career that giving full attention to her husband and their four children caused, Walker forged on. Her career reached its zenith with the novel “Jubilee” in 1966.
“It is the first book written in the authentic voice of an enslaved Black woman in the modern period,” Graham said. “It’s a classic in that tradition. She was the precursor to an entire genre that Toni Morrison helped to consolidate in ‘Beloved,’ which today we call the neo-slave narrative. But when the book was published, there was nothing like it out there.”
Graham said “Jubliee” is “a family chronicle. It’s her great-grandmother’s story fictionalized.”
That’s why, Graham said, it hurt when Walker recognized elements of “Jubilee” in Haley’s 1976 novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.”
As it emerged later, Graham said, “Haley did, in fact, use her book and others, and she went ballistic when she recognized it. She took to her journals and spoke out publicly. What most people interpreted her to be saying was: Look at this Johnny-come-lately, stealing everybody else’s stuff and getting all the accolades.”
So Walker sued. And lost.
“He had stolen other people’s property, and when you steal that’s a cardinal sin,” Graham said of Walker’s thinking. “She wanted people to know it. But she didn’t have the kind of high-priced representation that she needed. That part of her life, I don’t think, ever got resolved. Her reputation suffered miserably.”
That was only exacerbated by her biography, “Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius,” which came out in 1988 after delays caused by a lawsuit (later dismissed) filed by Wright’s estate claiming copyright infringement for Walker’s use of their correspondence. Graham said Walker learned her legal lesson from the Haley suit, but perhaps not any larger ones.
“She was saying basically that Wright was brilliant, yes, but crazy,” Graham said. “Life in Mississippi, for a genius like him, does distort and can cause self-hatred as much as it can be a powerful motivator for creativity. It’s what segregation often did to the best and brightest of people. It represses … it suppresses … and the intensity of your experience can be beautiful. But it can also be ugly.”
Graham said Walker was an inspirational figure to a young scholar like herself when they first met in the early 1970s. By tracing the highs and lows of Walker’s life in “The House Where My Soul Lives,” Graham hopes to unravel a complicated story that can inspire a new generation.
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Contact: Angie Erdley, Department of Chemistry, 785-864-6749, [email protected], @KUChemistry
More than 600 students attend KU’s Carnival of Chemistry
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Department of Chemistry recently hosted the annual Carnival of Chemistry, a free celebration with activities geared toward students in kindergarten through eighth grade. This was the first in-person Carnival of Chemistry since 2019.
This year’s carnival, which took place Nov. 20 in Gray-Little Hall, offered more than 20 unique activities and demonstrations spanning three floors. The event had a focus on the Chemistry of Fabulous Fibers but also had a healthy mix of chemistry, physics, engineering and geological science activities. The department welcomed more than 600 attendees who enjoyed activities such as no-touch putt-putt (electrostatics), cereal flake races (magnetic properties) oobleck (non-Newtonian fluids), slime, CO2 bubbles and tie-dye butterflies.
“This carnival was one of the best I have ever seen. It was very special to have such a success in both activities and attendance after taking a two-year break due to the pandemic. We really brought it back in a grand way, and I hope we inspired some future chemists,” said Robert Dunn, professor and chair of the chemistry department.
The department recruited more than 100 volunteers for the event, sourcing from local high schools, its undergraduate and graduate student population, KU Medical Center respiratory therapist undergraduate students, faculty, staff and others.
This event was made possible by support from the following sponsors: KU’s chemistry department, KU Chem Club, Eileen’s Cookies, ACS Wakarusa Valley Local Section and Hy-Vee.
As a worldwide leader in training and research in chemistry, the KU Department of Chemistry is highly interdisciplinary in nature, spanning research in organometallic, materials, environmental, surface, bioinorganic, bioorganic, biophysical, bioanalytical, computational & theoretical, synthetic, combinatorial and “green” chemistry as well as photochemistry, NMR, laser spectroscopy and polymers. The department provides cutting-edge education and research opportunities, and the majority of faculty members have research collaborations that involve other departments at KU, around the country and abroad.
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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

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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
NIH funds trial giving AI-powered digital tools to clinicians treating teens for anorexia
LAWRENCE — Called a “pandemic within a pandemic,” the prevalence of anorexia nervosa (AN) among young people has spiked during COVID-19. According to research, in-patient interventions are effective for up to 75% of adolescents with AN. However, about 30% of these teens relapse following recovery in the “post-acute treatment window” as they return to their day-to-day lives.
“We know anorexia nervosa is one of the deadliest mental health conditions a person can have, and we also know that interventions tend to work best in youth,” said Kelsie Forbush, professor of clinical child psychology and director of the Center for the Advancement of Research on Eating Disorders (CARE) and the Center for Overcoming Problem Eating (COPE) at KU.
“In many cases an individual needs intensive focused treatment at a higher level of care for weight restoration,” Forbush said. “Upon restoring weight, they discharge to lower levels of care. But what often happens is that individuals or their families lack resources in their community to get highly effective outpatient interventions — and they relapse. It ends up being a revolving door in which a teen goes to a high level of care, discharges back to their community, does not get evidence-based intervention and eventually needs to return again to higher levels of care.”
To improve outcomes and improve access to care for adolescents in this window of vulnerability to relapse, Forbush is leading a three-year clinical trial by researchers at the University of Kansas and Children’s Mercy Kansas City to assess a suite of new digital mHealth tools, dubbed Smart Treatment for Anorexia Recovery, or STAR.
The STAR intervention, developed by Forbush and her collaborators, will assist outpatient community therapists by providing them with support tools to assess and treat clients ages 13-21 during this post-acute treatment window. The randomized controlled trial will enroll 129 participants with AN and AN-related conditions (such as atypical anorexia nervosa, where AN traits are present but a body-mass index measure might be too high for a classic AN diagnosis). A pilot trial of usability and acceptability, already underway, is showing positive results.
Their work is supported by a new $700,000 award from the National Institutes of Health. Centers involved in this network include McCallum Place – Kansas City and St. Louis, InSight, Children’s Mercy Eating Disorders Center and the Eating Recovery Center in Denver.
“The majority of teens coming home from residential care are returning to communities without eating disorder specialists,” said co-primary investigator Sarah Gould, director of the Eating Disorders Center at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. “This project has the potential to hugely increase access to proven interventions and to track teens’ response to the intervention. I have been honored to partner with Dr. Forbush and her team to develop the STAR app and am excited to see this project fully launch and benefit so many.”
The research collaborators at KU and CMKC developed STAR to improve outcomes for AN patients and aid clinicians who often juggle massive caseloads. Patients answer questions on an app that uses computerized adaptive testing to shorten the length of the test for users. Based on patient’s answers, they will get personalized evidence-based lessons, videos and interactive activities that are tailored to the problems that they experienced that week.
On the clinician’s side, the KU researcher said STAR uses statistics called machine learning to predict each patient’s likelihood of recovery each week, support decision-making in treatment, and alert a clinician when user-entered data points to a lack of progress in recovery. When a patient visits a clinician face-to-face, their time is better focused on that patient’s self-reported hurdles to recovery.
“The app will give feedback to the clinician each week,” Forbush said. “The clinician goes to an online dashboard and can chart how their patient is doing. That feedback alone has been shown in other types of mental health conditions to really improve treatment outcomes.
“Participants are entering information that’s available to the clinician to guide a course of treatment that’s going to be most effective. It’s hard to know from just seeing somebody how at-risk they are and how they’re responding to treatment. A lot of times, clients come in and want us to feel good about how they’re doing. They don’t want to disappoint us. Here, when we get that report each week on how they’re really doing, it can give clinicians deeper insight.”
Recovery success for patients tracked via the STAR tools will be compared in the randomized controlled trial against patients treated with Present-Focused Anorexia Nervosa Coping Treatment (PACT), a therapeutic approach that provides support for coping with life stressors.
A supplementary $230,000 NIH grant to the main STAR award will allow the collaborators to further develop the mHealth intervention to have maximum impact in diverse populations.
“The supplement was designed to help include diversity, equity, inclusion, access and belonging principles into the treatment from the get-go,” said Forbush. “Because usually treatments are more targeted toward young white females. But we know, in terms of who has an eating disorder, that eating disorders don’t discriminate. So, building an inclusive intervention to start with we thought could help improve the impact and reach of the intervention. And we want to provide impactful treatment to as many teens as possible to help them recover — why wait to be inclusive?”
Other KU co-investigators for the STAR trial include Alesha Doan, associate professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration and the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, who is spearheading the qualitative interviews for the pilot portion of the study; and Christopher Cushing, associate professor of applied behavioral science, who is advising on the use of digital interventions in youth. Kara Christensen, former KU postdoctoral scholar and now assistant professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, has been instrumental in content development for the intervention while serving as a consultant. Other KU personnel involved in the research are Yiyang Chen, a postdoctoral researcher and statistician at the CARE lab, and Trevor Swanson, former collaborator and statistician.
For more information about participating in the full randomized controlled trial, which will start enrolling in a few months, parents/guardians of a teen with anorexia nervosa or related conditions or therapists who are treating teens with anorexia nervosa or related conditions can email [email protected].

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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