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Couple’s $1 million gift will add accessible entrance to KU Natural History Museum
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas alumni Jann and Tom Rudkin have made a $1 million gift to support the construction of a new accessible entrance from Jayhawk Boulevard to Dyche Hall, home of the KU Natural History Museum. Remaining funds after construction will go toward partial restoration of the historic Panorama exhibit, including taxidermy specimens and other items on display.
KU School of Education & Human Sciences to host 2026 Black History Month Celebration
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Education & Human Sciences will host its 2026 Black History Month Celebration, bringing together students, faculty, staff and community members to honor Black history, culture and contributions to education and society. The event will take place Feb. 11 and will feature a presentation from Aaron Smallwood, re-entry coordinator with Zephyr Products and Brothers in Blue.
Cleaner ship fuel is reducing lightning in key shipping lanes, research finds
LAWRENCE — Cuts in sulfur emissions from oceangoing vessels have been tied to a reduction in lightning stroke density along heavily trafficked shipping routes in the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, according to new research from the University of Kansas. Previous studies had found frequent lightning along shipping routes over the Bay of Bengal before a 2020 International Maritime Organization rule capped sulfur in fuel used by oceangoing ships, leading to a roughly 70% drop in sulfate emissions in the Bay of Bengal.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Daryl Bell, KU Endowment, 785-832-7322, [email protected]
Couple’s $1 million gift will add accessible entrance to KU Natural History Museum
LAWRENCE — For many, the University of Kansas Natural History Museum at Dyche Hall is their first introduction to the Lawrence campus. Countless school field trips and family outings have included this rite of passage for young Kansans and other visitors to see not only fossils, a live bee colony and other exhibits, but also the beauty of KU’s campus and all the possibilities it holds.
Jann and Tom Rudkin have made a $1 million gift to ensure this portal to KU is as welcoming and accessible as possible, for the benefit of all who visit. Their gift will support the construction of a new accessible entrance from Jayhawk Boulevard to Dyche Hall. Remaining funds after construction will go toward partial restoration of the historic and beloved Panorama exhibit, including taxidermy specimens and other items on display.
“Thank you, Jann and Tom. We are in awe of your gift,” said Nico Franz, professor and Krishtalka Director for the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. “It is incredibly generous, adding a new dimension to your amazing legacy of KU and museum support. It is also strategic and timely. The new entrance aligns with our mission to provide suitable access to all communities of biodiversity learners and museum visitors that we strive to reach. It builds momentum for us to be bold and further improve the iconic Panorama exhibit.”
The couple met at KU, and both graduated in 1973. Jann Rudkin’s Bachelor of Art degrees were in anthropology and chemistry, and Tom Rudkin’s Bachelor of Arts was in mathematics. His career as a software development engineer and manager spanned Intel, Bell Northern Research, VisiCorp, Control Data, Forethought and Microsoft.
While at Forethought, Rudkin was one of two developers who wrote the initial version of PowerPoint for Macintosh, released in 1987. He was awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006 by KU’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and a Distinguished Service Award in 2025 by the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.
Rudkin recalls first visiting the museum as a young boy during a family road trip from Wichita to Iowa.
“I can remember stopping through Lawrence and visiting the museum in eighth or ninth grade and thinking what a wonderful place it was,” he said.
Jann Rudkin was a self-employed information designer and now serves on the KU Biodiversity Institute board of advisers, which advocates on behalf of the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum to university, national and international audiences.
Now retired, the two split their time between Lawrence and the San Francisco Bay Area. They are longtime supporters of KU and are museum enthusiasts in general. Their honeymoon even included driving to Chicago to go museum hopping.
“This museum is a cultural institution,” Jann Rudkin said. “This will allow everyone regardless of mobility to experience the museum the way it was meant to be experienced. This is not just a ramp; it is a new beautiful entryway that will draw people in and showcase what a unique building it is.”
The Rudkins were partially inspired by their nephew’s use of a powerchair due to spinal muscular atrophy. They have witnessed the challenges posed by those who visit buildings without equal access, especially buildings as historic as Dyche Hall. The new construction will be in keeping with preserving the unique aesthetic and will be located along the southeast front of the building, leading to the main Panorama entrance. Local limestone is being sourced from quarries to maintain the look and grandeur of the building.
About Dyche Hall
One of KU’s signature buildings, Dyche Hall was built as the Museum of Natural History in 1901-03. The building was named for Professor Lewis Lindsay Dyche after his death (1857-1915). Its first purpose was to house the famous Panorama of North American Mammals he created for the Kansas Pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Panorama was unique and revolutionary in depicting, for the first time, preserved specimens of North American mammals in their natural surroundings.
The Panorama has grown over the years to include more habitats and species. It represents the university’s early efforts to document and understand past and present life on Earth — research that continues today through the KU Biodiversity Institute.
“The museum is in the process of stabilizing the environment in the Panorama, which prepares us for the next phase of renovation, including repairing and conserving the mounts, landforms and painted murals,” said Lori Schlenker, associate director of collections and facilities. “This will be a complex project as we figure out how to access specimens and murals while working around fragile, historic parts of the display. It is both our responsibility and privilege to be good stewards of this iconic exhibit, and I’m so appreciative to Tom and Jann for their continued support.”
The Biodiversity Institute’s natural history research collections are ranked among the 30 largest globally, with 13 million biological specimens and archaeological artifacts. More than 150 research scientists and students in the institute study biological species, ecosystems, evolution and past human cultures in Kansas and around the world. They use this information to model and forecast environmental phenomena that are critical to human well-being, including threatened and endangered species, the potential spread of diseases and pest species, the effect of climate change on Earth’s biodiversity, habitats and more.
“We want to make the building welcoming because it is an interesting place to visit,” Tom Rudkin said. “But this can also help highlight the vital research that’s ongoing there as well.”
Construction of the new entryway is expected to take place in the summer of 2026.
KU Endowment is the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment was the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.
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KU is nationally recognized as a
Center for Academic Excellence in Cyber Research.
https://cae.ittc.ku.edu/
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected]
Cleaner ship fuel is reducing lightning in key shipping lanes
LAWRENCE — Cuts in sulfur emissions from oceangoing vessels have been tied to a reduction in lightning stroke density along heavily trafficked shipping routes in the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, according to new research from the University of Kansas.
Previous studies had found frequent lightning along shipping routes over the Bay of Bengal before a 2020 International Maritime Organization rule capped sulfur in fuel used by oceangoing ships, leading to a roughly 70% drop in sulfate emissions in the Bay of Bengal.
“I think there are two reasons for this,” said lead author Qinjian Jin, assistant teaching professor of geography & atmospheric science at KU. “The first is the shipping activity is so frequent that it releases a lot of sulfate aerosols, more than other oceanic regions. The second is that the Bay of Bengal is an area where we see lots of strong convection that is required for lightning to occur. I think both reasons contribute to the observed frequent lightning activity over this region.”
Jin said these two ocean regions best revealed the connection between shipping emissions and lightning. The KU researcher and his colleagues found lightning-stroke density — the number of individual lightning discharges, or “strokes,” per square kilometer — to be about 36% lower than before the 2020 IMO sulfur cap.
“The drop in sulfates from ships can cause fewer cloud condensation nuclei, larger cloud drops, weaker convection and storms, and thus fewer ice crystals and less frequent lightning,” Jin said.
The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. Jin’s co-authors were Jianping Huang of Lanzhou University in Lanzhou, China; Jiangfeng Wei of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in Nanjing, China; and Bing Pu, KU associate professor of geography & atmospheric science.
A similar drop in lightning strokes was detected along other busy shipping routes, according to their findings.
“There is another region very close to the Bay of Bengal, which is the South China Sea,” Jin said. “We see very similar enhanced lightning there. Another region is a very small area in the Red Sea. We see a very weak signal there, not as strong as in the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.”
The lightning data used come from a network called the World Wide Lightning Location Network, produced by the University of Washington.
“That network has been developed for more than a decade, starting in the early 2000s,” Jin said. “It provides very high-resolution lightning data. It is global data. Based on this dataset, the phenomenon of lightning decrease has been observed in those regions.”
According to Jin, sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere, emitted naturally or from human activities, have two major climatic impacts.
“One is scattering solar radiation, causing a cooling effect on Earth’s climate,” Jin said. “The other is modifying cloud microphysical properties, such as cloud droplet size and cloud droplet number concentration. By changing clouds, they can also influence radiation.”
Jin explained that once sulfate aerosols are released into the atmosphere, they can act as cloud nuclei, which is the mechanism by which sulfates released in ship exhaust can boost lightning strokes.
“When we have more sulfate aerosols, or more cloud nuclei, the cloud droplets become smaller,” he said. “When they’re smaller, it’s harder for precipitation to occur. Clouds can last longer in the atmosphere. With a longer lifetime, they have a higher chance to develop into high clouds, where ice clouds form. When we have more ice clouds, we have a higher chance of lightning. That is how sulfate aerosols can be connected to lightning.”
While the 2020 regulations on shipping were intended to clean up the air, the reduction in lightning can be seen as a side benefit, as lightning can be dangerous to mariners and equipment, and can hinder visibility and normal operations at sea. Jin said another consequence of the shipping regulation might be warmer global temperatures.
“Due to the 2020 emission regulation imposed by the International Maritime Organization, we observed a decrease in sulfur emissions from ships after 2020,” he said. “With less sulfate aerosol emitted from ships, we observed darker clouds over the North Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Because clouds become darker, they absorb more solar radiation. Our previous studies imply that the decrease in shipping sulfate aerosols could be responsible for the record-breaking global warming temperatures in 2023 and 2024.”
Jin said his future research will aim to better understand this potential effect.
“This is an even bigger impact of changes in ship-emitted sulfate aerosols,” he said. “Most current studies use modeling simulations with global climate models. One drawback of global climate models is their coarse spatial resolution, which have limited ability to resolve boundary layer cloud processes in the atmosphere. That affects the accuracy of aerosol impacts on radiation and clouds. In the future, I plan to use regional climate models with high spatial resolutions. These can resolve cloud formation, especially stratocumulus clouds, which are low clouds and very reflective. With high-resolution regional climate models, we can have a better estimation of the impacts of the decrease in ship-emitted sulfate aerosols on global temperature increase.”
Further, Jin plans to study the effects of regulations by nations in Asia that cut sulfate emissions beginning about 15 years ago.
“Based on our results, we know that with less sulfate aerosol, we could have less lightning activity,” he said. “This is a very important conclusion. During the past decade, many Asian countries implemented clean air acts to improve air quality. Our study in 2021 shows that starting around 2010, we observed a decreasing trend in sulfate aerosols and other aerosol species. This could result in less lightning in Asian countries. We have a plan to look at the long-term trends in lightning in Asian countries.”
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For every dollar a student invests in a KU education,
they gain $5.70 in lifetime earnings.
https://economicdevelopment.ku.edu/impact
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Contact: Tiffany Reddig, School of Education & Human Sciences, [email protected]
KU School of Education & Human Sciences to host 2026 Black History Month Celebration
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Education & Human Sciences will host its 2026 Black History Month Celebration, bringing together students, faculty, staff and community members to honor Black history, culture and contributions to education and society.
The event will take place from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Feb. 11 in 150 Joseph R. Pearson Hall. Aaron Smallwood, re-entry coordinator with Zephyr Products and Brothers in Blue, will give a talk titled “Hope, Change, and Resilience: The Story of Us All.”
The celebration highlights the school’s dedication to building community and will offer opportunities for reflection, learning and connection. The KU community and public are welcome to attend. See additional event details.
For more information, contact Icelda Beltran, SOEHS events coordinator and alumni relations specialist, at [email protected].
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