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

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University to welcome back former Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little for building dedication ceremony Oct. 26
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas will host a building dedication ceremony for Gray-Little Hall – named after former Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little – at a celebration event at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in the building’s main auditorium. The ceremony will be hosted by Chancellor Douglas A. Girod, who will introduce Gray-Little for remarks and formally dedicate the building in her honor. RSVPs are not required but are appreciated for planning purposes.

KU-led national study asks people with disabilities to document their experiences
LAWRENCE — Beginning Oct. 2, people with disabilities are invited to participate in a national study based at the University of Kansas that aims to document their experiences with a variety of issues, including access to health care, housing, long COVID, transportation, employment and connection to their community. The National Survey on Health and Disability has gathered detailed, nationwide information on U.S. adults with disabilities and their experiences with health insurance and health care services since 2018. Individuals can specify how they would like to participate in the survey, whether online or by phone, and whether they would like to receive a link via email or text.

Kansas Population Center to host virtual seminar series
LAWRENCE — The Kansas Population Center at the University of Kansas will host a seminar series, “Life, Death, and Everything in the Middle,” to showcase information on demography specific to the Midwest, a region with its own unique population trends. The first event in the series, scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 16, will feature J. David Brown, principal economist at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Math department announces Undergraduate Research Award winners
LAWRENCE – The Department of Mathematics at the University of Kansas has awarded undergraduate research scholarships of $1,000 each to three KU students to support their fall 2023 research projects. Recipients include Aidan Bowen, senior in mathematics and computer science from Wichita (67226).

Full stories below.

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Contact: Joe Monaco, Office of Public Affairs, 785-864-7100, [email protected], @UnivOfKansas
University to welcome back former Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little for building dedication ceremony Oct. 26
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas will formally dedicate its premier Lawrence research facility in honor of the chancellor who made it a reality.
KU will host a building dedication ceremony for Gray-Little Hall – named after former Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little – at a celebration event at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in the building’s main auditorium.
The ceremony will be hosted by Chancellor Douglas A. Girod, who will introduce Gray-Little for remarks and formally dedicate the building in her honor.
“Chancellor Gray-Little guided KU to unprecedented success, elevated the university’s stature and transformed the way KU serves the state,” Girod said of his predecessor. “Among her many accomplishments was the development of Gray-Little Hall, which provided KU with new research space at a crucial moment in the university’s history. Beyond her accomplishments, Chancellor Gray-Little led with a special grace that made her a role model for Jayhawks everywhere. We are thrilled to welcome her back for this ceremony, and we look forward to the opportunity to reflect on her leadership.”
RSVPs are not required but are appreciated for planning purposes. If you plan to attend, please submit your RSVP here.
Today’s announcement is not the first time KU has announced a dedication ceremony for the building. In February 2020, KU announced a dedication event would happen in April of that year. But less than three weeks after the announcement, states began implementing shutdowns due to COVID-19. And just like that, the dedication ceremony had the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first major KU ceremony canceled due to the pandemic.

“I’m excited for the chance to celebrate this remarkable science building,” Gray-Little said. “For our students, this building has provided new ways to interact with instructors and engage in a modern curriculum. For our researchers, the building has enabled them to do the kind of research that improves lives, grows the economy and advances knowledge. I am honored to have been part of the development of this building, and I look forward to the great work that will happen within its walls for years to come.”
The building – originally called the Integrated Science Building – opened in 2018 and comprises 280,000 square feet of space for teaching, learning and research in chemistry, medicinal chemistry, physics, molecular biosciences and related fields.
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Contact: Jen Humphrey, Life Span Institute, 785-864-6621, [email protected], @kulifespan
KU-led national study asks people with disabilities to document their experiences
LAWRENCE — Beginning Oct. 2, people with disabilities are invited to participate in a national study based at the University of Kansas that aims to document their experiences with a variety of issues, including access to health care, housing, long COVID, transportation, employment and connection to their community.
The National Survey on Health and Disability (NSHD) has gathered detailed, nationwide information on U.S. adults with disabilities and their experiences with health insurance and health care services since 2018. It is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research and directed by Jean Hall, who leads the KU Institute for Health and Disability Policy Studies (IHDPS) at the KU Life Span Institute.
“This project gives voice to the concerns of people with disabilities,” Hall said. “This year, we hope the information people provide will tell us whether access to health care has gotten worse for any subgroups of people with disabilities, whether those are people who are LGBTQ+, or people of color, or people of a certain age, or people who live in a certain geographic area. The survey will help us identify if that’s happening.”
The NSHD continues to gather information this year about people’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, including long COVID and its effects on their quality of life, health care access and employment.
Individuals can specify how they would like to participate in the survey, whether online or by phone, and whether they would like to receive a link via email or text.
“KU researchers share de-identified NSHD data and findings with other researchers and policymakers to inform and guide programs and services,” said Noelle Kurth, co-investigator for the project. “The survey reinforces the philosophy of ‘nothing about us without us’ when it comes to making decisions that will affect the lives of people with disabilities.”
For example, researchers have used survey results to determine that questions used in federal surveys to identify people with disabilities miss up to 20% of this population, especially those with mental illnesses. As a result, people with disabilities are likely undercounted and their needs underestimated.

“That, in turn, can affect the funds invested in serving the population,” Kurth said.
Using data from the NSHD, researchers have previously documented that people with a variety of disabilities report being denied care outright by physicians and other medical providers. The NSHD has shown that people with disabilities who are also LGBTQ+ experience worse health and poorer access to health care than straight, cisgender people with disabilities.
The survey also has documented that people who acquire disabilities later in life tend to have poorer health and greater health care expenditures than people who become disabled earlier in life.
“To understand the needs of underrepresented communities, we need data,” Hall said. “We want to hear directly from individuals with disabilities and quantify what exactly is happening and what needs to change to improve their quality of life.”
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Contact: Carrie Caine, Institute for Policy & Social Research, 785-864-9102, [email protected]
Kansas Population Center to host virtual seminar series
LAWRENCE — The Kansas Population Center at the University of Kansas announced that it will host a virtual seminar series, “Life, Death, and Everything in the Middle.” The series will showcase information on demography specific to the Midwest, a region with its own unique population trends.
“We are excited to bring this vibrant, innovative virtual seminar to the KU community. The Kansas Population Center focuses on encouraging and advancing cutting-edge population research on critical human experiences like life, death, health and well-being in the middle of the country,” said KPC co-director Misty Heggeness, research scientist at the Institute for Policy & Social Research and associate professor of public affairs & administration.
The first event in the series, scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 16, will feature J. David Brown, principal economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Brown will present work compiling a purely administrative record census on April 1, 2020, and comparing it to the 2020 census. His research uses sources like Social Security Administration records to arrive at their count of the U.S. population.
Attendees can register to attend this free virtual seminar.
The seminar series will meet most Mondays from 1-2 p.m. Upcoming sessions:
1. On Dec. 4, Nancy Folbre, professor emerita of economics and director of the Program on Gender and Care Work, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will present “Parental Expenditures of Time and Money on Children in the U.S.” Register to attend.
2. Spring 2024 presentations will include:
1. Martha Bailey, professor of economics, University of California, Los Angeles, and California Center for Population Research, NBER research associate
2. Chloe East, associate professor of economics, University of Colorado Denver
3. Anusha Nash, senior economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
The Kansas Population Center is a newly established institutional member of the Association of Population Centers center at KU. The focus of the center is on population dynamics in Kansas and the broader Midwest, exploring both individual and community patterns from cradle to grave. KPC is especially interested in population trends related to aging, gender, economic development, and health and well-being, with a focus on rural communities. KPC members use big data to understand how systems and organizations both help and hinder the health and economic well-being of rural (and rural adjacent) communities in the Midwest. KPC aims to foster and support widely defined population research for local and regional public policy decision-makers and to provide training opportunities for students.

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Contact: Gloria Prothe, Department of Mathematics, [email protected]
Math department announces Undergraduate Research Award winners
LAWRENCE – The Department of Mathematics at the University of Kansas has awarded undergraduate research scholarships to three KU students to support their fall 2023 research projects.
Math Undergraduate Research Awards (MathUGRAs) are $1,000 scholarships provided to undergraduate math majors pursuing original research or creative projects under the general guidance of a KU math faculty member. The awards are funded by the department’s endowment. MathUGRAs are awarded to students conducting semester-long independent projects culminating in an oral presentation or written work, demonstrating the student’s own development of a topic in mathematics and its applications. Recipients of the award were selected on the merit of the applicant’s proposal, the applicant’s academic record and the recommendation from a faculty member who is familiar with the applicant and project.
Fall 2023 recipients and their projects:
1. Aidan Bowen, senior in mathematics and computer science from Wichita: “Exploration and Analysis of Options Pricing Models Using Monte Carlo Simulations,” a research project to explore and analyze a few of the options pricing models and validate or compare them using Monte Carlo simulations to understand the difference between theory and space. Research mentor: Weizhang Huang, professor of mathematics.
2. Haley Cabrera, junior in mathematics from Portland, Oregon: “Mathematical Modeling and Climate Change: A Statistical Analysis on the Effects of Global Warming on Prairie Ecosystems in Kansas.” This is a joint project with the Kansas Biological Survey. This project will investigate the effects of worsening climate on grassland ecology, restoration and plant-microbe interactions within prairie ecosystems in Kansas. Once the relevant data is gathered, it will need to be imported and processed in R and apply techniques from linear regression. Research mentor: Jeffrey Oregero, visiting assistant professor of mathematics, and Vadim Karatayev, postdoctoral researcher in ecology & evolutionary biology.
3. Viet Le, senior in mathematics and computer science from Binh Dinh, Vietnam: “Dependent Sampling Forest,” which introduces a novel class of ensemble learners. DSF employs a dependent sampling procedure to construct the individual trees within the ensemble to alleviate the correlation among trees, thus potentially reducing the generalized error; research mentor: Joonha Park, assistant professor of mathematics.

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Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]

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

Headlines

Value of experienced CEO fades when working in regions vulnerable to corruption, political instability
LAWRENCE — A new study from a University of Kansas professor of business finds that the value of industry experience of CEOs to firm growth increases with initial years of experience but levels off around the 11-year mark. For small and medium-sized firms in less corrupt developing countries, further years of CEO industry experience do not affect firm growth. However, firm grow rates start to deteriorate after 11 years of CEO industry experience in countries vulnerable to corruption and political instability.

KU Debate team wins tournament at Missouri State University
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Debate team of Zachary Willingham, sophomore from Topeka, and Sabrina Yang, sophomore from Overland Park, won the Missouri State University College Debate Tournament, which took place Sept. 22-24. The KU duo defeated the University of Oklahoma in the championship debate.

KU Theatre to open its season with ‘Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties’
LAWRENCE — The University Theatre will open its 2023-24 season with a play that unapologetically dives into taboo topics, dips into a revolution happening around the globe and features puppetry to help tell the story. A provocative exploration, “Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties” by Jen Silverman will be performed in William Inge Memorial Theatre at Murphy Hall. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 and 2:30 p.m. Oct. 8.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
Value of experienced CEO fades when working in regions vulnerable to corruption, political instability
LAWRENCE — Apparently, experience is not always a good thing. In fact, for CEOs of small and medium-sized enterprises, it can eventually prove to be a liability.
“At some point in time, our knowledge becomes obsolete. If we spend too long in one particular industry — like in high-tech, where the knowledge base is changing — we will become less effective at some point,” said Vincent Barker, the Edmund P. Learned Professor at the University of Kansas School of Business.
But this becomes further problematic when CEOs run businesses in less-than-optimal locations.
That’s explored in Barker’s new article, “CEO’s industry experience and emerging market SME performance: The effects of corruption and political uncertainty.” It finds that the value of industry experience of CEOs to firm growth increases with initial years of experience but levels off at around the 11-year mark. For small and medium-sized firms in less corrupt developing countries, further years of CEO industry experience do not affect firm growth. However, firm grow rates start to actually deteriorate after 11 years of CEO industry experience in countries vulnerable to corruption and political instability.
The article appears in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights.
Co-writing the article with KU doctoral graduate Juan Carlos Morales-Solis of West Texas A&M University and Arkangel Cordero of the University of Texas at San Antonio, Barker compares a CEO’s tenure to that of a football team’s head coach.
“As a coach, you employ a system. You come into a new program and establish your system, and then you stick to that system. Then new systems come along and pass them up, and you can’t adapt to the new ones,” he said. “So you rarely see coaches be effective with the same team for more than a decade.”
Similarly, there may be an optimal amount of industry experience for a CEO in any industry. And the complexity of the industry may determine how quickly their knowledge becomes obsolete.
“The surprise in our study is how quickly it starts to deteriorate,” Barker said.
“Eleven years is not that much time spent in an industry. It suggests that the value of additional years of industry experience is offset by the depreciation of the value of your existing industry knowledge.”
This depreciation is more substantial in countries susceptible to corruption and political instability. Essentially, those factors make running a small or medium-sized enterprise that much more challenging.
“You have this extra set of things to plan for and figure out such as who do we have to pay? Who is going to be in charge next year? Is somebody new going to come in and ask for money?” he said. “Some of this stuff at the government level is comparable to organized crime.”
Barker said it’s already demanding running a business as it is — even in a nation like the U.S. that has strong property rights and is relatively predictable in terms of laws and lack of corruption.
He said, “A whole new slate of problems is introduced once you get into a country where somebody can come up and say, ‘Well, your nice little plant here that employs 50 people, we’re going to shut it down unless you pay my cousin 5,000 bucks to inspect it for the regional health department.’”
The researchers tested their hypotheses using data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey of firms in emerging economies from 2006 to 2019. They received responses from 91,017 SMEs in 106 emerging market countries. (The survey defines SMEs as firms between 10 and 250 employees.)
At KU since 2002, Barker’s main area of expertise focuses on chief executive officers.
“I study everything from how they affect strategies to what happens to them after they get fired,” he said.
Barker said it’s always interesting peering into the world of powerful people.
“In some ways, it would be nice to be one, moneywise. But their lives are under a microscope. Their personal lives are probably messier than the average person’s,” he said.
Now he’s confirmed such messiness — at least as applied to a firm’s growth — is exacerbated once corruption and political instability enter the mix.
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Contact: Scott Harris, KU Debate, 785-864-9878, [email protected], @KansasDebate
KU Debate team wins tournament at Missouri State University
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Debate team of Zachary Willingham, sophomore from Topeka, and Sabrina Yang, sophomore from Overland Park, took first place at the Missouri State University College Debate Tournament, which took place Sept. 22-24. The KU duo defeated the University of Oklahoma in the championship debate.
Other schools competing at the tournament included Kansas State University, Missouri State University, Missouri Valley College, Oklahoma University, the University of Central Oklahoma, the University of Houston, the University of Texas- Dallas and Wichita State University. Willingham and Yang went 5-1 in the preliminary rounds to qualify for the single eliminations. In the elimination rounds, they defeated Wichita State in the quarterfinals and the University of Texas -Dallas in the semifinals before meeting the University of Oklahoma in the tournament championship.
Both KU debaters also won individual speaker awards. Willingham was the fourth-place individual speaker, and Yang was the seventh-place speaker.
“Sabrina and Zach were completely dialed in at the tournament,” said Brett Bricker, Kansas Debate head coach. “They were flexible and responded very well to unique and surprising arguments from their opponents. I’m very proud of them. This was a victory for the squad. We had students and coaches back in Lawrence helping them succeed, and a 2018 alum, Jacob Hegna, whose work helped them defeat the University of Texas-Dallas in the semifinals.”
KU debate teams will be competing at 17 tournaments over the course of the season through April 2024. This year’s debate topic is “Resolved: The United States should restrict its nuclear forces in one or more of the following ways: adopting a nuclear no-first use policy; eliminating one or more legs of its nuclear triad; disarming its nuclear forces.”
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Contact: Lisa Coble-Krings, Department of Theatre & Dance, 785-864-5685, [email protected], @KUTheatre
KU Theatre to open its season with ‘Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties’
LAWRENCE — The University Theatre will open its 2023-24 season with a play that unapologetically dives into taboo topics, dips into a revolution happening around the globe and features puppetry to help tell the story. A provocative exploration, “Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties” by Jen Silverman will be performed in the intimate setting of the William Inge Memorial Theatre at Murphy Hall. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 and 2:30 p.m. Oct. 8. The play is directed by Marzieh Ashrafian, a doctoral student in the Department of Theatre & Dance.
Many of the Betties’ stories combat age-old constructs of exhaustion and repression through a diverse array of modern feministic and queer viewpoints. A Shakespearean play-within-a-play and bluntly feminine puppetry advance the narrative and convey a powerful transformation in this dark comedy, which premiered in 2016 and moved off-Broadway in 2018. The author and playwright has had her plays performed nationally and internationally, along with a forthcoming debut novel.
Owners of Simple Mischief Studio Grace Townley and Spencer Lott, who is also a KU Theatre alumnus, will serve as guest artists on the production and have been working since early summer designing three puppets critical to the action, including the final scene. Simple Mischief is a creative studio co-founded by Townley, an artist, and Lott, a “Sesame Street” puppeteer. The company builds puppets for film and TV and teams up with local creative partners, like The Rabbit hOle. Credits include “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (2019, Tristar) and “SpongeBob’s Pineapple Playhouse” (2020, Nickelodeon), among others. Their participation is made possible in part by the department’s Ronald A. Willis Visiting Scholar/Artist Fund.
A talkback with the cast and dramaturg will follow the performance Oct. 10 in the theatre. Tickets are available for purchase at kutheatre.com/collective-rage, by calling 785-864-3982 or in-person at the box office in Murphy Hall from noon to 5 p.m. weekdays.
“In the heart of the women’s liberation movement, where the battle for freedom and equality raged, I found my muse. My homeland, Iran, bore witness to a stirring revolution. Though movements for change have arisen worldwide, the shackles of patriarchy persist. No longer do we need metaphors; it’s time to address taboos and injustices candidly and sincerely,” Ashrafian said. “Our five characters embark on a transformational journey, seeking to change the world by first changing themselves. Realistically, we may not revolutionize the world with a play. However, it is my sincere hope that we can share this story with our spectators to ignite conversations and inspire change.”
Ashrafian is an accomplished Iranian theatre scholar and director with a Master of Arts in Puppet Theater from the University of Tehran. Currently a third-year doctoral student at KU, her expertise encompasses the semantic dimensions of cyborg representation on stage, Middle Eastern theatre, feminism and the intricate interplay of trauma and identity within the theatrical realm. Her journey led her to establish and lead as director of the theatre department at the SGHK Institute in Iran. Her directorial ventures, such as “There was a Home,” “Dream of Shoe” and “Wolf and Sheep,” have earned acclaim at national and international festivals.
Additional creative team members are Sara Baird, a theatre MFA student, and Dennis Christilles, associate professor of scenography, as scenic designers; Taiane Lacerda, a third-year MFA student in scenography from Florianopolis, Brazil, as costume designer; Riley Sansbury, a junior in theatre performance and psychology from Houston, Texas, as lighting designer; Hana Rose North, a sophomore in theatre design from Salina, as sound designer; Tiffani Brooks Hagan, doctoral student in theatre studies, as dramaturg and intimacy director from Spartanburg, South Carolina; Alireza Mirzaeinezhad, MFA student in expanded media, as video designer; and Kennedy Tolar, a sophomore in theatre from Tulsa, Oklahoma, as stage manager.
The cast members are Enya Sullivan, a freshman in theatre performance from Scottsdale, Arizona, as Betty 1; Natalie Loftus, a student in theatre and English from Hays, as Betty 2; Maya Perez, a senior in film & media studies, as Betty 3; Jayden Warf, a sophomore in theatre performance from Winchester, Virginia, as Betty 4; and Mak Mendelsohn, a student in fine art and psychology from Hayward, California, as Betty 5.
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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KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-3256
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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