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

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Brandon Draper’s recording dam to burst in 2024

LAWRENCE — An associate professor of the practice at the University of Kansas School of Music, percussionist Brandon Draper will make the Draper Family Band’s debut blues-rock recording the first of 10 he will release in 2024 under a new deal with Symphonic Distribution LLC.

School of Architecture & Design announces Spring 2024 Design Symposium

LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design will welcome award-winning animation development artist Angela Sung on Feb. 1 as the first speaker of the spring KU Design Symposium Lecture Series. Now in its 40th year, the design lecture series (formerly Hallmark Symposium) has introduced KU students and the local community to top designers and artists working in a wide range of disciplines and professional fields.

Experts in special education, social welfare and particle physics receive KU Research Achievement Awards

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas researchers expanding our understanding of special education, social welfare and particle physics have received this year’s Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award and the KU Research Staff & Postdoctoral Achievement Awards. The annual awards recognize outstanding unclassified academic staff, unclassified professional staff and postdoctoral fellows whose research has significantly influenced their fields and expanded intellectual or societal insights.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman

Brandon Draper’s recording dam to burst in 2024

LAWRENCE – The way Brandon Draper heard it all his life, it was the impending birth of his older sister that cost his keyboardist father a chance to audition for the Rolling Stones. In reality, he learned a few years ago — only when his dad thought he could handle it — it was his own birth in 1979 that compelled Paul Draper to rebuff guitarist Keith Richards’ 1981 entreaties to travel from Kansas to jam with the “world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band” at an East Coast recording studio.

Now an associate professor of the practice at the University of Kansas School of Music, percussionist Brandon Draper will try to make it up to his father when he makes their Draper Family Band’s debut blues-rock recording the first of 10 he will release in 2024 under a new deal with Symphonic Distribution LLC.

Brandon Draper’s own record label — Looking Up Productions — signed with Symphonic, a Tampa, Florida-based company that works with independent artists, in November.

Oz McGuire, KU music school graduate and friend of Brandon Draper, was named Symphonic’s vice president for artists and repertoire (A&R) and business development back in 2022, and he reached out to Brandon Draper to see what the multi-instrumentalist might have in his recording vault. McGuire had heard some of the ethereal music Brandon Draper has created to accompany meditation.

Brandon Draper said, “I told him, ‘Man, I’ve got more than just meditation stuff. I have 10 years’ worth of audio that I just recorded for me. I never had a place for it to go.’ And now he’s the conduit.”

Brandon Draper said that he released “Meditation Music, Vol. 1” on his own in 2018, but he planned to withdraw it from streaming services to re-release it through Looking Up via Symphonic.

“Me self-releasing it is like riding a scooter, and Oz releasing it is like a fleet of semi-trucks, and he’s in a Lamborghini leading the pack,” Brandon Draper said. “He has a way bigger reach. So the X amount of streams that I have received from my release … it’s done. It’s not gonna go much further. It had a bubble when it came out, and now it’s gone. But now it can have another life.”

The single “Aim All Around” by the Draper Family Band, with Paul Draper on the Hammond B3 organ, will be Brandon Draper’s first release on the Looking Up Productions label, scheduled for Feb. 2.

“My goal is that the first single from the Draper Family Band is released as soon as possible so I can start gaining some traction with that for summertime festival gigs,” Brandon Draper said.

Among the other recordings that Brandon Draper will release this year through Symphonic is one by Drum Safari, which has been his summertime job for several years. It’s a participatory, educational exercise in percussion for kids.

The other releases set for this year include:

Draper-Towne – organ-duo jazz.
DJB Nu Trios — jam band.
Brandon Draper Quintet live — modern jazz
Brandon Draper – “Meditation Music Vol. 2” featuring the hand pan, a type of steel drum.
Brandon Draper – “Summer of 808” re-release featuring the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer.
“I never stopped recording and making all this music,” Draper said. “I just never had the energy or the time to put into getting it out to people. But it’s all done, and now I have the label that I can send it to.”

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

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Contact: Dan Rolf, School of Architecture & Design, 785-864-3027, [email protected], @ArcD_KU

School of Architecture & Design announces Spring 2024 Design Symposium

LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design will welcome award-winning animation development artist Angela Sung on Feb. 1 as the first speaker of the spring KU Design Symposium Lecture Series.

Now in its 40th year, the design lecture series (formerly Hallmark Symposium) has introduced KU students and the local community to top designers and artists working in a wide range of disciplines and professional fields. See a complete list of past lecturers at the Design Symposium Speaker Archive.

Spring 2024 lectures begin at 6 p.m. in 130 Budig Hall on the KU Lawrence campus. Events are free and open to the public.

Feb. 1: Angela Sung is a plein-air painter and animation development artist for film and television. Combining traditional painting techniques and digital design, Sung has worked on projects for Disney, DreamWorks, Netflix, Warner Brothers and other studios. Credits include “Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts,” “Kung Fu Cooking Girls,” “Legend of Korra,” “Voltron: and the 2022 animated feature “The Bad Guys.”

Feb. 15: Spandita Malik is a visual artist from India. Her work is concerned with the current global sociopolitical state of affairs with an emphasis on women’s rights and gendered violence. Malik specializes in process-based work in photography, recently with photographic surface embroideries and collaborations with women in India.

Feb. 29: Polymode is a bicoastal, queer and minority-owned graphic design studio leading the edge of design with thought-provoking work for clients across the cultural sphere. The studio’s specialties include books, curation, education, exhibition, identities, interfaces, publications, visual design, websites, workshops and writing. Clients include the city of Los Angeles mayor’s office, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, David Kordansky Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, Phaidon Press and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

March 7: Harlan Bozeman is a lens-based artist whose research-driven practice has focused on confronting the erasure of Black culture and its histories and investigating the legacies of slavery and its aftermath in the American South. His previous work explored the Gullah Sea Islands communities, specifically Wadmalaw Island, where his family is from, and the narratives that serve to prolong their cultural significance. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, British Journal of Photography, Der Grief, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

March 21: Alana Louise is an award-winning creative working in branding, illustration, typography, visual design and user experience design. She is currently a creative executive at Wheelhouse Labs and is the creative director at Kimmelot. A first-generation immigrant with a deep passion for the outdoors, she is listed as one of the first 100 people to complete the “Expert” level of the Western Native Trout Challenge. Find Louis’s most recent work on Instagram.

April 4: Alan Tipp, a KU industrial design graduate, has developed products for some of the world’s best-known brands and contributed to numerous U.S. and foreign patents. Just five years after graduating from KU in 2000, Tipp was named director of Performance Eyewear at Under Armour, where he went on to be recognized on all of the company’s design and utility patents, including the tool-free football visor clip used in the NFL. Tipp now maintains an independent studio and consultancy based in Omaha, Nebraska.

April 18: Travis Millard is an artist, illustrator and art director who brings the intimacy of one artist’s hand to work spanning media and scale. Since graduating from the KU illustration program in 1998, Millard’s work has appeared around the world in gallery exhibitions, magazines, brand campaigns, video games and on the sides of buildings. He has developed products, collections and campaigns with brands such as Burton Snowboards, The Hundreds, Lakai, The Quiet Life, Vans and Volcom. Other clients include Disney, Nickelodeon and the filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. His illustrations have been featured in publications such as The Hollywood Reporter, Juxtapose, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and Thrasher. See some of Millard’s most recent drawings on Instagram.

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Contact: Vince Munoz, Office of Research, 785-864-2254, [email protected], @ResearchAtKU

Experts in special education, social welfare and particle physics receive KU Research Achievement Awards

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas researchers expanding our understanding of special education, social welfare and particle physics have received this year’s Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award and the KU Research Staff & Postdoctoral Achievement Awards.

The annual awards recognize outstanding unclassified academic staff, unclassified professional staff and postdoctoral fellows whose research has significantly influenced their fields and expanded intellectual or societal insights. This year’s recipients:

Tyler Hicks, director of quantitative methodology, KU Center on Developmental Disabilities, Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award
Pegah Naemi Jimenez, associate researcher senior, School of Social Welfare, Research Staff Achievement Award
Georgios Konstantinos Krintiras, postdoctoral researcher, physics & astronomy, Postdoctoral Achievement Award
The three will be recognized at a ceremony this spring along with recipients of other major KU research awards.

The Office of Research established the Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award in 2006 to honor unclassified academic staff researchers. Winners receive $10,000 in research funds. The KU Research Staff & Postdoctoral Achievement awards were established in 2018, with honorees receiving $5,000 for approved research or professional development activities.

Tyler Hicks

Hicks is the director of data science, research design and methodology as well as an assistant research professor at the KU Center on Developmental Disabilities housed within the Life Span Institute. He also holds an appointment in the research design and analysis unit at LSI. Hicks has been instrumental in designing new ways to analyze special education practices and collaborating with colleagues to make their projects work.

Hicks began his time at KU as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Special Education in 2017. He then served as a research associate at LSI’s SWIFT Education Center.

Methodology specialists don’t often have the opportunity to serve as the primary investigator on funded projects, but without their expertise, many proposals wouldn’t get off the ground. To date, Hicks has served as a co-PI or lead methodologist on funded projects totaling more than $34 million. He is noted as a leading expert in analyzing cost-effectiveness of special education interventions.

Hicks earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and doctorate in special education, both from the University of South Florida.

Pegah Naemi Jimenez

Naemi Jimenez is an associate researcher senior in the School of Social Welfare. Prior to her current role, Naemi Jimenez was an associate researcher at KU’s Center for Public Partnerships & Research from 2015 to 2021.

Naemi Jimenez’s scholarship focuses on cross-system approaches and community-engaged research that addresses social problems experienced by children and families in marginalized communities. This involves working with communities, practitioners and other interested parties, such as state agencies in Kansas, Missouri and Texas. She has received multiple federal grants to support this work.

Naemi Jimenez serves as the principal investigator on three multiyear state and federally funded research projects: Safe Sleep Program Evaluation, in partnership with the Missouri Children’s Trust Fund; THRIVE, a sexual health program for foster care professionals and youth involved in foster care, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin; and Kansas Bravely Raising and Activating Voices for Equity, a collaborative initiative that centers Black and Brown youth and family experts to advance racial equity in child welfare, for which she recently was awarded $2.5 million in federal funding to implement. She also leads evaluation for Kansas Strong: Parent Youth Facilitation Strategy and the Racial Equity Collaborative. At the university level, Naemi Jimenez represents the School of Social Welfare on the Campus Council on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging.

Naemi Jimenez’s equity research goes far beyond the region. She also conducted a study of how Iranian women use social media in social justice movements.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Davis, a master’s degree in psychology from California State University at Sacramento and a doctorate in social psychology from KU.

Georgios Konstantinos Krintiras

Krintiras is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. His work on some of the smallest building blocks of matter has attracted considerable international attention in the discipline.

Many learn that atoms are composed of subatomic particles, including protons and neutrons. But these particles are in turn made up of smaller components called quarks. Quarks normally remain confined within the protons and neutrons, but they can be studied when certain heavy elements, such as lead, collide into each other in large scientific instruments. Krintiras uses such instruments to study free quarks at KU and at Fermilab as a distinguished researcher.

Krintiras serves in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the largest collaborative efforts ever formed, hosted at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. He has served as a convener of the luminosity group and the heavy ion group, which help coordinate research at the facilities. Under Krintiras’ tenure, the luminosity group released the first publication that now counts more than 400 citations, and the heavy ion group was one of the most productive teams with CMS, producing almost one paper per month despite being one of the smaller teams.

Beyond his project management skills, Krintiras’ luminosity-related work has been recognized with a CMS achievement award, and he has made notable discoveries in his field. The American Physics Society praised his observation of top quarks in collisions between protons and lead nuclei in 2017. He also participated in the association’s particle physics community planning, which set a roadmap for future research.

Krintiras earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and a bachelor’s degree in experimental nuclear physics from Lund University, Sweden. He also holds a master’s degree in experimental astroparticle and elementary particle physics from the University of Amsterdam and a doctorate from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

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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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Editors: See Lawrence outreach.

Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch

Researchers seek to understand how regions of ‘cosmic web’ influence behavior of galaxies

LAWRENCE — Researchers at the University of Kansas hope to better understand intricate mechanisms behind the evolution of galaxies, which travel through a “cosmic web” of different environments during their lifespans.

Gregory Rudnick, professor of physics & astronomy at KU, is leading a team that recently earned a $375,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study “gas content and star-formation properties of galaxies” that are altered depending on where they are moving through the cosmos.

“The primary objective of this project is to comprehend the impact of environmental factors on the transformation of galaxies,” Rudnick said. “In the universe, galaxies are spread in a non-uniform distribution characterized by varying densities. These galaxies aggregate into large clusters, comprising hundreds to thousands of galaxies, as well as smaller groups, consisting of tens to hundreds of galaxies.”

Additionally, galaxies can be part of elongated filamentary structures or they can reside in an isolated state in lower density regions of the universe, he said.

Previous efforts focused mostly on comparing galaxies in clusters and groups to those in the lowest density regions of the universe, called “the field.” These studies neglected the highway of filaments that connect the densest regions. Rudnick’s team will consider the full dynamic range of densities in the universe by focusing on how galaxies react to the environment in filaments that channel them toward galactic groups and into galaxy clusters, altering the evolution of galaxies along the way.

“Galaxies follow a path into these filaments, experiencing a dense environment for the first time before progressing into groups and clusters,” Rudnick said. “Studying galaxies in filaments allows us to examine the initial encounters of galaxies with dense environments. The majority of galaxies entering the ‘urban centers’ of clusters do so along these ‘superhighways,’ with only a minimal number taking rural routes that bring them into the clusters and groups without interacting much with their surroundings. Whereas filaments are akin to interstate highways, these less-traveled routes into dense regions are akin to the analogy of driving on rural roads in Kansas to access city limits. Galaxies can exist in filaments or be in groups that reside in filaments like beads on a string. Indeed, most galaxies in the universe exist within groups. Therefore, with our study we will simultaneously gain insights into both the onset of environmental effects on galaxies and into how galaxies behave in the regions where they are most commonly found, filaments and groups.”

A key focus of study will be how conditions within these filaments, fields, groups and clusters of galaxies alter the “baryon cycle” of gases within and around galaxies. Each cosmic neighborhood changes how the gas behaves in and around galaxies and can even affect the densest molecular gas from which stars form. Disruptions of this baryon cycle can therefore either boost or hinder new star production. Recently, a federal report by the astronomical community to establish astronomical research goals for the 2020s — the Astro2020 Decadal survey — named understanding the baryon cycle a key science topic for the coming decade.

“The space between galaxies contains gas. Indeed, most of the atoms in the universe are in this gas, and that gas can accrete onto the galaxies,” Rudnick said. “This intergalactic gas undergoes a transformation into stars, although the efficiency of this process is relatively low, with only a small percentage contributing to star formation. The majority is expelled in the form of large winds. Some of these winds exit into space, termed outflows, while others are recycled and return. This continuous cycle of accretion, recycling and outflows is referred to as the baryon cycle. Galaxies can be conceptualized as baryon processing engines, drawing gas from the intergalactic medium and converting some of it into stars. Stars, in turn, go supernova, producing heavier elements. Part of the gas is blown out into space, forming a galactic fountain that eventually falls back to the galaxy.”

However, Rudnick said when galaxies encounter a dense environment, they can experience a pressure caused by their passage through the surrounding gas and this pressure can in turn disrupt the baryon cycle either by actively removing gas from the galaxy or by depriving the galaxy of its future gas supply. Indeed, in the centers of clusters, galaxies can find their star-making power quenched as their gas supply is removed.

“The disruption affects the intake and expulsion of gas by galaxies, leading to alterations in their star formation processes,” he said. “While there may be a temporary increase in star formation, in nearly all cases, it eventually results in a decline in star formation.”

Rudnick’s collaborators at KU will include graduate students like Kim Conger, whose work helped shape the grant proposal, along with undergraduate researchers. His co-primary investigator Rose Finn, professor of physics and astronomy at Siena College, will also employ and train students.

The researchers will use astronomical datasets like DESI Legacy Survey, WISE and GALEX imaging of around 14,000 galaxies. Additional new observations will be carried out by personnel at both campuses using Siena’s 0.7-m Planewave telescope to obtain new imaging of galaxies equipped with a custom filter to be purchased via the grant. KU students will be able to observe remotely with the Siena telescope, as they have already through a joint Observational Astronomy course in 2021 and 2023.

Community outreach

The work also will include high school students in both Kansas and New Jersey, as the grant extends a program Rudnick began years ago to bring university-level astronomy coursework into secondary schools. The new grant founds a high school astronomy class affiliated with Siena College and extends the course already offered at Lawrence High School close to KU’s Lawrence campus. Rudnick’s work on this class earned him a Community Engaged Scholarship Award from KU in 2020.

“These funds will extend the high school program’s longevity through 2026,” Rudnick said. “In collaboration with funds from KU, we were able to purchase 11 MacBook Pros for the school. Given that students only have iPads, which aren’t suitable for the research activities they needed to undertake, this grant facilitated the acquisition of computers that will enable their research.”

The project now has a dedicated laptop cart for the class, enabling students to carry out their research projects, he said, and the influx of computers has allowed organizers to expand the class size.

“Previously, class sizes at the high school level were around 8 to 10 students,” Rudnick said. “Now, at the start of the year, we have 22 students. It’s a significant growth, aiming to double the class size.”

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KU News Service

1450 Jayhawk Blvd.

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Phone: 785-864-3256

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

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Media advisory

Editor’s note: This event has been rescheduled for 2:25 p.m. Feb. 9. The story below and online reflects the new time and date for the event.

Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, [email protected], @kuengineering

Rescheduled live Q&A with NASA astronaut, KU Engineering alumna Loral O’Hara from International Space Station

LAWRENCE — An out-of-this-world conversation — quite literally — is coming to the University of Kansas.

NASA astronaut and KU School of Engineering graduate Loral O’Hara will host a live Q&A with KU students and faculty from her post on the International Space Station. O’Hara is scheduled to connect via live satellite link at 2:25 p.m. Feb. 9. The public is invited to watch the event live.

O’Hara traveled to the space station in September 2023 and is due to return in mid-March. She is part of the ISS Expedition 70 crew. According to NASA, the astronauts and cosmonauts are studying an array of microgravity phenomena to benefit humans living on and off the Earth. The crew is also exploring heart health, cancer treatments, space manufacturing techniques and more during their long duration stay in Earth orbit.

Rick Hale, professor of aerospace engineering, will moderate the Q&A session, which is scheduled to last approximately 25 minutes.

Hale, who also serves as aerospace engineering department chair and taught O’Hara when she was a student at KU, said this unique opportunity is extremely valuable.

“Having a former student in such a high visibility position, when the odds of achieving such a position are so limited, is a tangible reinforcement to the professional development plans of current and future aerospace engineering students,” Hale said. “Loral’s professional development path is a testament to what can be achieved with a long-term vision and focus. The opportunity for students to interact with her in real time makes the experience more real and brings the community closer.”

O’Hara graduated from KU with a degree in aerospace engineering in 2006. She was selected as part of the 2017 NASA astronaut class. She is the fourth KU graduate to travel into space, joining 1955 KU engineering graduates Joe Engle and Ron Evans, and 1973 physics & astronomy graduate Steve Hawley.

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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

Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman

Exhibition affirms ongoing relevance of Kansas artist ‘Grandma’ Layton

LAWRENCE – When Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton rocketed to art-world fame — capped by a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition in the late 20th century — it was her unflinchingly honest yet beautiful portraits of old age that won her acclaim.

A new exhibition of her work reminds viewers of that but also the more overtly political stances she took in her work.

Mary Frances Ivey, a doctoral candidate in the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas, has curated an exhibition titled “Elizabeth Layton: Drawing as Discourse,” opening Jan. 25 and running through July 28 at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College.

The show grew from the first chapter of Ivey’s forthcoming dissertation, titled “Picturing Age in the Work of Three Contemporary American Women Artists.”

Ivey said Layton, who was the former managing editor of the Wellsville Globe, had what is now known as bipolar disorder. She underwent more than a dozen electroshock treatments before discovering her artistic talent in a drawing class – her one and only bit of formal training – at Ottawa University.

“Layton was very, very interested in representing mental illness to advocate for others suffering and to remove the stigma of both experiencing mental illness but also seeking mental health care,” Ivey said. “All of that is related to the fact that making her art … she credited it with treating her mental illness — the fact that she could represent visually something that’s basically indescribable and try to convey to people what it’s like.”

Using and expanding upon the rudiments of her class in blind contour drawing, Layton drew self-portrait after self-portrait, often including her husband, Glenn, flowers and objects from their Wellsville home.

“She has a very visually distinct artistic style,” Ivey said. “You know it when you see it.”

The curator said Layton’s “interest in line is very closely connected to the way that she’s interested in older people. She uses a kind of frazzled, frizzled, wobbly line that is so perfectly suited to representing the crinkled skin and knobby knees and gnarled joints and the amoeba-like liver spots on the skin. I see a kind of connection between the line quality that she likes and the people she likes to draw.”

Layton was also inspired, Ivey said, to “make work about the times in which she lived — current events — and, sadly, so many of the current events and social issues that she was most interested in still feel very timely and fresh and new.”

The show includes drawings and lithographs that touch on such topics as sexism, gay rights, fatphobia, police brutality, censorship, the Holocaust, the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans by European settler-colonialists and more.

Ivey said she gathered the 30 works in the show from Nerman Museum itself, as well as KU’s Spencer Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Wichita Museum of Art and the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University.

A few works also came from private collections, including that of former journalist Don Lambert, who helped to first popularize Layton’s works. Lambert, who lives in the Kansas City area, and Ivey will have a gallery conversation with a reception to follow March 28 at the Nerman.

“I would credit him as an adviser to the exhibition,” Ivey said. “We’re lucky because we’re living in the destination for Elizabeth Layton studies, if you will.”

Not only are the topics Layton addressed still relevant, but so is her status as a “naive” or “outsider” artist, Ivey said.

“We are increasingly interested in listening to so-called outsider voices — people who are not immediately embraced by the art world — and saying, ‘What can we learn here, not just from the content of the work, but also their approach to art making?’ There is an interest in inclusivity and a desire to see more variation in style that really benefits someone like Elizabeth Layton, who – as an older person, a rural Kansan and a minimally trained artist — is kind of on the edge.”

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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 Legal Aid Clinic, community partners to host criminal record expungement clinic

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Law’s Legal Aid Clinic will host a Clean Slate Criminal Record Expungement Clinic this spring in partnership with the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office and Lawrence Public Library. The clinic will take place in person from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Feb. 12 in the library’s auditorium, 707 Vermont St.

KU gains new Department of Defense research expertise

LAWRENCE — A former senior leader in the Department of Defense (DOD) research community has joined the University of Kansas’ Office of Graduate Military Programs as its director of national security research. Kurt Preston comes to KU with over 35 years of combined experience leading research programs in DOD and the U.S. Army. He most recently led the Resource Conservation and Resilience portfolio within DOD’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program.

Property rights ‘laws’ historically manipulated by businesses, research finds

LAWRENCE — A new scholarly paper from University of Kansas business scholars observes both recent and historic periods when different nations’ “institutional environments” were affected through political struggles. In such struggles, social actors such as states and firms determined how property rights were defined, allocated, delineated and enforced.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Emma Herrman, School of Law, [email protected], @kulawschool

KU Legal Aid Clinic, community partners to host criminal record expungement clinic

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Law’s Legal Aid Clinic will host a Clean Slate Criminal Record Expungement Clinic this spring in partnership with the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office and Lawrence Public Library. The clinic will take place in person from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Feb. 12 in the library’s auditorium, 707 Vermont St.

“As a public library, we understand that knowledge is power and helps people thrive,” said Marc Veloz, library community resource specialist. “We see it as part of our mission to work closely with partner organizations like KU Legal Aid Clinic and the Douglas County DA’s Office to host these types of outreach events to help community members master the network of existing resources that can help them live their best lives.”

Expungement seals an arrest record, diversion or conviction from public view, with certain exceptions. The Legal Aid Clinic will provide free legal representation to eligible individuals seeking to expunge records in Douglas County District Court and/or Lawrence Municipal Court.

“We are always grateful to have a hand in this event that serves as a catalyst for change for so many,” District Attorney Suzanne Valdez said. “It’s a privilege to help people shed the weight of a criminal record and unlock opportunities.”

The clinic can accept clients with income up to 250% of the federal poverty level. Clients who qualify for Legal Aid Clinic representation but who do not qualify for a waiver of the court’s per-case filing fee will need to pay that court fee, but no attorney’s fees, if they are eligible for services.

After the intake clinic day at the library, clients will need to attend one additional appointment and any required court hearings with their Legal Aid attorney.

“Criminal records impose so many barriers for individuals – in employment, housing and education – long after they have served their sentence,” said Meredith Schnug, associate director of the Legal Aid Clinic. “Expungement is an important legal remedy for people to move beyond their past mistakes. The Legal Aid Clinic is excited to partner with the Lawrence Public Library and the Douglas County Attorney’s Office to offer this expungement clinic and the opportunity for a fresh start.”

For any questions regarding the clinic and expungement eligibility, contact the Legal Aid Clinic at 785-864-5564.

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Contact: Mike Denning, Office of Graduate Military Programs, 785-864-1684, [email protected]

KU gains new Department of Defense research expertise

LAWRENCE — A former senior leader in the Department of Defense (DOD) research community has joined the University of Kansas’ Office of Graduate Military Programs as its director of national security research.

Kurt Preston comes to KU with over 35 years of combined experience leading research programs in DOD and the U.S. Army. He most recently led the Resource Conservation and Resilience portfolio within DOD’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program.

“We are excited to have Dr. Preston join the university,” said Mike Denning, director of the Office of Graduate Military Programs. “His experience inside the Beltway and leading DOD research programs aligns with the research and discovery institutional priority of Jayhawks Rising.”

“The opportunity to return to the heartland and be involved in the vibrant KU community is a joy,” Preston said. “DOD basic and applied research enterprise provides academic thought leaders a key pathway to advance their work and contribute to our national security. I am excited to be at KU to help connect and colleague our researchers in these efforts.”

In addition to his insight into the DOD research enterprise, Preston brings expertise in environmental and climate change challenges around the globe. He played a lead role in the recently released National Climate Assessment, which summarizes the impacts of climate change on the U.S., and he recently led an interagency team that wrote key portions of the federal government’s 2022-2026 Arctic Research Plan.

His academic experience includes serving as a tenured professor and associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Nebraska. In addition to his assignment within the Office of Graduate Military Programs, Preston will serve as professor of practice in the School of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]

Property rights ‘laws’ historically manipulated by businesses, research finds

LAWRENCE — Within most countries, businesses operate under the notion that their property rights are stable. A set of operational rules and a political system that protects those rules are firmly entrenched, right?

Not necessarily.

“According to organization and management theory, mostly we assume the external environment — such as a political, economic and social one that we collectively call the institutional environment — is a given,” said Jun Ho Lee, assistant professor of strategy and international business at the University of Kansas School of Business.

“Even in daily life we usually say, ‘It is what it is.’ In this paper, we challenge that conventional wisdom.”

His article titled “The Endogenous Creation of a Property Rights Regime: A Historical Approach to Firm Strategy and Governance Structure” argues that private firms can manipulate this institutional environment by legitimizing an existing one that protects their property rights or by delegitimizing another that threatens their property rights. It appears in the Academy of Management Perspectives.

Co-written by Minyoung Kim, the Frank T. Stockton Professor of Strategic Management at KU, and Marcelo Bucheli of the University of Illinois, the paper observes both recent and historic periods when the institutional environment was affected through political struggles. In such struggles, social actors such as states and firms determined how property rights were defined, allocated, delineated and enforced.

“If you look back at the history of the United States, you can look at the collusion of the so-called ‘robber barons’ — Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan — in the election of American president William McKinley,” Lee said.

His article notes how after these magnates created huge business empires through aggressive processes of vertical and horizontal integrations, they came together to provide generous funding to Republican candidate McKinley’s 1896 presidential campaign against Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who campaigned with a platform against the big “trusts” in transportation, energy and finance. Bryan’s defeat was followed by the “great merger movement,” in which large firms consolidated into even larger giants without being challenged by antitrust legislation.

“This shows how private firms could advance certain types of governance structures after ensuring the consolidation of a particular property rights regime,” Lee said.

Private actors can also play an important role in promoting changes in the institutional environment to delegitimize the property rights and institutional arrangements of other private actors.

“A similar argument was used in South Africa, but this time to support the expropriation of domestic property owned by ethnic white people,” Lee said.

After Nelson Mandela’s release from jail in 1990, some members of the African National Congress’ radical wing argued that contracts signed under apartheid should be declared void because they had been enacted under a racist, undemocratic regime. Those advocating this point were defeated by Mandela’s wing, which supported the 1990 Groote Schuur agreement that the African National Congress signed with the last apartheid president, Frederik de Klerk, committing to keeping the bases of the economic system intact.

Lee and his team arrived at their research conclusions by conducting comprehensive historical analyses.

“The history behind a particular regime, as well as the degree of contestability and stability it enjoys, can provide us with strong analytical tools to understand why property rights are more secure in some regimes than in others,” Lee said.

He said he believed this paper offers strong evidence that any type of institutional environment can be changed by an organization in some way.

“Extending our theory about a firm’s role in endogenous creation and change of institutional environments, we hope to offer the implication of corporate activities for creating a positive and sustainable institutional environment,” Lee said.

“We can do much more proactively, not just to simply say, ‘It is what it is.’”

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