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

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Contact: Erin Wolfram, Academic Success, 785-864-2308, [email protected]

KU students to present at Kansas Undergraduate Research Day at the Capitol

LAWRENCE — Undergraduate researchers from the University of Kansas Lawrence and Medical Center campuses will present their research projects March 1 as part of Kansas Undergraduate Research Day at the Capitol.

The KU students will join their peers from other Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) public four-year universities to deliver in-person poster presentations at the Kansas Capitol Rotunda in Topeka. Presentations will be viewed by other students, faculty, KBOR members, state lawmakers and members of the public from across the state of Kansas. The event is intended to raise awareness of the research being conducted by undergraduate students at state universities.

The presenters are listed below by name, year of study, hometown, major, mentor and title of research project:

From KU Lawrence

Elizabeth Miller, sophomore from Emporia in applied computing with a chemistry concentration mentored by Zarko Boskovic, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry: “Twisted Intramolecular Charge Transfer (TICT) State Addition to Electron-poor Olefins.”
Joohye Oh, junior from Lawrence in English literature and Spanish mentored by Marta Caminero-Santangelo, University Distinguished Professor of English: “We Are Here: Latine Immigrants and Their Journeys to Kansas.”
Olivia Sourivong, senior from Kansas City, Kansas, in social welfare mentored by Claire Willey-Sthapit, assistant professor of social welfare: “Intergenerational Trauma, Domestic Violence, and the Potential for Healing: A Qualitative Research Study with Service Providers and Advocates Who Have Worked with Lao Domestic Violence Survivors.”
Sivani Dayakar Badrivenkata, senior from Lawrence in pharmacy mentored by Michael Hageman, Valentino J. Stella Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry: “Assessing the Viability of Lactoferrin Protein as a Preventative Therapeutic for Vaginal E. coli Infections in Pregnant Patients.”
Vivian Marshall, senior from Topeka majoring in biology with a concentration in ecology, evolution & organismal biology mentored by Raymond Pierotti, associate professor of ecology & evolutionary biology: “The Responses of Budgerigars to Different Emotional States.”

From KU Medical Center

Isabel Basurto, senior from Basehor in respiratory care mentored by Dave Burnett, associate professor of respiratory care & diagnostic science: “Feasibility of a Digitally Enhanced Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program.”
Larry Massobos, senior from Cameroon, Central Africa, in respiratory care mentored by Dave Burnett, “Feasibility of a Digitally Enhanced Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program.”

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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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   KU center to bring festival celebrating Eastern European and Eurasian culture to downtown Lawrence

LAWRENCE — The Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas will hold its annual Spring Festival on March 3 at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence. The free public festival brings Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian culture to Lawrence by providing music, dance, food and crafts from the region.

New books examine how to foster meaningful interactions between students, faculty to bolster college success

LAWRENCE — Two new books co-written by a University of Kansas education researcher examine how to move beyond the conventional measures of student-faculty interactions to consider new ways of building meaningful relationships between educators and pupils. Eugene T. Parker III, associate professor of educational leadership & policy studies, co-edited “Fostering Sustained Student-Faculty Engagement in Undergraduate Education” and “Promoting Meaningful Student-Faculty Experiences in Graduate Education,” both published by Routledge.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Megan Luttrell, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, [email protected], @KUCREES

KU center to bring festival celebrating Eastern European and Eurasian culture to downtown Lawrence

LAWRENCE — The Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Kansas will have its annual Spring Festival on March 3. The festival brings Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian (REE) culture to Lawrence by providing music, dance, food and crafts from the region.

The free public event, which will take place at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence, shares the beauty of these cultures with the community, and CREES hopes to inspire more people to learn about this often misunderstood region.

The festival will have free food from the REE region, live performances, a photobooth, door prizes, a craft area and more.

Performances will include live music by Hrvatski Običaj, a 20-piece Croatian band featuring traditional stringed instruments. The group, which also performed at the 2023 festival, is dedicated to preserving Croatian national music.

There will also be a performance by Mavka, who will perform both Ukrainian folk dance and character dance. Mavka is a Ukrainian dance company united in love for Ukraine, dance and performing.

Last year, the Spring Festival had so many attendees that it became clear the event had outgrown its usual venue. Through sponsorship from local businesses, CREES will have the Spring Festival at Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts St. Local sponsors include the KU Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging; Central Bank, Summit’s Steps Minerals, Kizer Cummings Jewelers and Pane e Vino Wine Bar & Academy.

For more information about CREES or the Spring Festival please visit the CREES department site or Facebook page.

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Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”

a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.

https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack

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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings

New books examine how to foster meaningful interactions between students, faculty to bolster college success

LAWRENCE — Two new books co-written by a University of Kansas education researcher examine how to move beyond the conventional measures of student-faculty interactions to consider new ways of building meaningful relationships between educators and pupils.

Eugene T. Parker III, associate professor of educational leadership & policy studies at the University of Kansas, and Teniell L. Trolian of the State University of New York – Albany, have dedicated nearly a decade of research to better understand how students and faculty interact in higher education and how that affects student success. They noticed literature in the field tended to focus largely on frequency of those interactions. The result is two books that consider college environment, different types of interactions and the quality of those experiences to help educators provide meaningful engagement.

Engagement in undergraduate education

Trolian and Parker co-edited “Fostering Sustained Student-Faculty Engagement in Undergraduate Education.” The book brings together educators and scholars to discuss how to improve and foster student-faculty interactions in four parts:

Frameworks for thinking about student-faculty engagement.
Student-faculty experiences that improve undergraduate outcomes.
Student identities and student-faculty engagement.
Student-faculty experiences in the undergraduate classroom.

Traditional research that focuses largely on frequency of student interactions with faculty only looks at part of the experience, according to the editors and authors.

“During college, students are hopefully transformed in some way by the environment, which leads to positive outcomes,” Parker said. “We look at how student-faculty interactions influence or impact things like degree aspirations, sense of belonging and perceptions of the environment.”

The editors urge educators to first consider student identities, including race, religion, age, socioeconomic status, veteran or disability status, if they are first generation college students and more.

Further, faculty should consider their interactions with students beyond the traditional lens of experiences in the classroom or during office hours, the editors wrote. That could include feedback on students’ work, how they communicate outside of the class, providing services such as letters of recommendation or even social interactions. And instead of simply considering frequency of interactions as a sort of quota to meet, editors said quality of interactions must be considered as well.

“We want students to have positive interactions, and we want to make sure it’s not just minimizing interactions that might be negative, but providing the types of experiences that foster success,” Parker said.

To that end, authors contribute chapters on considering new modalities of interactions. Today’s students have learned remotely during the pandemic and virtually in ways that were unavailable just a few years ago. Faculty can therefore be accessible in ways including video conferencing that can be both convenient and meaningful for students.

The book’s contributors also encourage faculty to look beyond student identities. In fact, they should consider their own identities and experiences in shaping their engagement with students.

“One thing we’ve learned is that we need to work toward sustained engagement instead of just one or two interactions here or there,” Parker said. “Building those relationships can allow students and faculty to be comfortable enough to have critical conversations together. We also need to think about faculty members. When we have conducted research on student-faculty interactions, it’s largely been surveys of students’ experiences, but not of the faculty. That’s something we need to consider more.”

The book closes in encouraging faculty to consider student outcomes beyond the traditional measures of grade-point average or graduation rates. Students’ sense of belonging, perceptions of campus environment, psycho-social well-being and how interactions affect each of those are meaningful as they can all influence the more traditional measures. Parker said post-college measures beyond employment, such as civic engagement and long-term mental health, hold value as well.

Meaningful experiences in graduate education

Students who have continued their education to graduate level courses also benefit from sustained, quality engagement with faculty. To that end, Parker and Trolian co-edited “Promoting Meaningful Student-Faculty Experiences in Graduate Education.”

The book also brings scholars from across the country to contribute chapters on fostering meaningful engagement, in this volume in three parts:

Curriculum and teaching.
Identity and experiences.
Graduate student mentoring.

“There are similarities in interactions, but there are also some key differences,” Parker said. “In graduate contexts, it’s very discipline-specific. In many fields, for example, it will be research heavy and require a greater emphasis on mentoring, considering how closely faculty and students work together on research. Mental health is also key.”

Both works, published by Routledge, are part of Parker and Trolian’s work to build a conceptual map of the facets of student-faculty interactions. Such a map can not only help faculty find their way to providing meaningful interactions, but to understand there is no single route that will ensure success.

“We are not attempting to provide a one-size approach that will work for everyone,” Parker said. “We need to understand that every student is different and be malleable and adjustable in our approaches.”

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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

Headlines

Study shows news organizations still lead in sharing difficult information on social media

LAWRENCE — As media organizations across the country fold and news deserts grow, it remains to be seen who will ask difficult questions traditionally posed by journalists. While social media provides an opportunity for community organizations and leaders to take that role, a new study co-written by a University of Kansas researcher shows that in the case of difficult conversations regarding racial disparities and the COVID-19 pandemic, news outlets still lead the way.

KU welcomes Ukrainian food anthropologist, historian as visiting professor

LAWRENCE — A historian from Lviv, Ukraine, with expertise in the cultural exchange and culinary traditions of Eastern Europe has joined the University of Kansas faculty for the 2024-25 calendar year as part of the Scholars at Risk Network. Ihor Lylo will deliver a public talk at 7 p.m. April 15 titled “Food as Power: Between Decolonization and Nationalism of the Gastronomic Culture.”

Full stories below.

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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings

Study shows news organizations still lead in sharing difficult information on social media

LAWRENCE — As media organizations across the country fold and news deserts grow, it remains to be seen who will tell the tough stories and ask difficult questions traditionally posed by journalists.

Social media provides an opportunity for community organizations and leaders to take that role, but a new study shows that in the case of difficult conversations regarding racial disparities and the COVID-19 pandemic, news outlets still take the lead in sharing such information.

The pandemic saw pronounced health disparities and negative outcomes falling disproportionately on communities of color. That happened around the same time as the murder of George Floyd and resulting protests for racial justice across the country. Those concurrent events provided an opportunity to examine how organizations discussed a difficult topic, said Christopher Etheridge, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at the University of Kansas.

“This raises some interesting questions like, ‘What civic conversations are taking place online as organizations become increasingly reliant on social media to communicate?’” said Etheridge, a contributor to the project. “If everyone has their own Facebook page to control the message, are the difficult conversations necessary to a healthy community taking place?”

Researchers from the Civic Infrastructure Lab at Michigan State University and colleagues conducted two studies to examine the question. They analyzed more than 1,250 Facebook posts made by civic organizations, including news outlets, nonprofits, community organizations, public libraries, universities and local public Facebook groups from March of 2020 to September 2021. They also interviewed 17 communications managers from the organizations about what they posted and the strategy behind those decisions.

Data showed that 14.5% of posts mentioned the pandemic and 2.5% mentioned racism and/or Black Lives Matter, though only .06 percent of posts from across the organizations mentioned racial or health disparities pertaining to COVID-19. Of those, nearly 70% were made by news organizations, followed by nonprofits at 29.7%, health organizations with about 5%, government officials at 1.7%, educational organizations with 1.2%, politicians at 1% and civic service organizations at .31%. Libraries and neighborhood groups made no such posts.

The post analysis and interviews were conducted within six communities in the Great Lakes region: Flint and Lansing, Michigan; Bemidji and Duluth, Minnesota; and Gary and South Bend, Indiana. The communities were chosen for a high variation of racial diversity of residents, number of local news outlets and metrics of economic equality.

“We didn’t see a ton of conversations about health disparities even among organizations where that might be a part of their mission,” Etheridge said. “We thought the summer of 2020 might be an opportunity for these organizations to raise topics connected to health and race, but we found people hesitant in part because of the perception that there is already so much negativity, trolling and unpleasant comments already out there.”

The paper, published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, was co-written by Ava Francesca Battocchio, Kjerstin Thorson, Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice, Marisa Smith, Hyesun Choung, Chuqing Dong and Moldir Moldagaliyeva of Michigan State University; Yingying Chen of Renmin University of China; Stephanie Edgerly of Northwestern University; and Kelley Cotter of Pennsylvania State University.

The researchers also conducted interviews with storytellers on how they decide the content to share via their social media channels. The communications managers indicated they were aware of racial health disparities and COVID-19, but outside of news organizations, they understood their role in creating content regarding race and health disparities in different ways. Interviewees said they were concerned about their organization’s reputation and that their financial well-being could be negatively affected if their reputation suffered from posting about controversial issues. They also indicated hesitancy to impugn the reputation of their community by implying social inequity was a problem there, the study found.

And while managers indicated they were aware of racial disparities in health outcomes, few respondents indicated they saw it as a problem in their own community, the study found.

Interviewees from news organizations said that they saw their role differently and that they had a responsibility to share information about disparities in health and injustice, even if it was uncomfortable or difficult to accept, the study found.

“Non-news organizations didn’t say, ‘We need to be leading public thinking on these topics,’” Etheridge said. “A lot of people were craving engagement but didn’t want to have conversations online that could turn nasty or negative. News organizations recognized that having tough conversations was part of their mission, shining light on these issues in a public way. So this leads us to wonder what happens if these news organizations go away or shrink in size.”

The pandemic coinciding with renewed attention to systemic racism in the wake of Floyd’s murder provided a unique opportunity to “stress test” local civic information infrastructure, the researchers wrote, and the findings validate the importance of local journalism to facilitate difficult, yet necessary conversations.

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The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.

Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.

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Contact: Wyatt Haywood, Department of Slavic, German & Eurasian Studies, [email protected]

KU welcomes Ukrainian food anthropologist, historian as visiting professor

LAWRENCE — An anthropologist and historian from Lviv, Ukraine, with expertise in the cultural exchange and culinary traditions of Eastern Europe has joined the University of Kansas for the 2024-25 calendar year.

The departments of Slavic, German & Eurasian Studies and History are supporting Ihor Lylo as a visiting assistant professor as part of the Scholars at Risk Network’s initiative to protect scholars in crisis.

As part of his appointment, Lylo will deliver a public talk titled “Food as Power: Between Decolonization and Nationalism of the Gastronomic Culture,” which will take place at 7 p.m. April 15 at the Hall Center for the Humanities Conference Hall, with an option for audiences to watch online.

The event will explore the cultural significance and influence of Eastern European gastronomic traditions, particularly on Ukrainian cuisine. Lylo argues that traditional gastronomic practices of social and religious groups play a crucial role in shaping collective memory. This poses a danger to totalitarian regimes that use food and supply security as a tool of terror or political propaganda.

During his time at KU, Lylo also teaches the SGES course REES 110: Understanding Russia and Eastern Europe as well as HIST 390/SLAV 379: Cultural Heritage of Ukraine while continuing his own research.

Lylo recently served as a visiting professor of history as part of the Scholar at Risk program at the University of California, San Diego. He was a researcher and educator at the King John III Palace Museum in Warsaw and held professorships at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine.

Lylo’s publications include the co-written “Lviv Cuisine” (in Ukrainian), published by Znak Krakow in 2023 and “UKRAINE: Food and History” (in English, French, Italian and German), published in 2021. He has written several travel guides of Ukraine.

Lylo’s appointment has been made possible through contributions from various university units, including the SGES and history departments, Office of Research, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the Hall Center, the Institute for Policy & Social Research and Institute for Global & International Engagement, as well as the Scholars at Risk Network.

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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