Fall 2017 Honors Newsletter

The UNIVERSITY of OKLAHOMA Honors College

Honors at OU

The UNIVERSITY of OKLAHOM Ho n o r s C o l l e g e

Fall 2017

The UNIVERSITY of OKLAHOMA

Honors College

Continuity and Change Meet Interim Dean Doug Gaffin

Inside

American Arachnological Society Meeting Dean’s Used Book Sale First-Year Research Experience

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FEATURES

06 Honors Awards 12 First-Year Research Experience 18 Gaffin Named Interim Dean 24 Honors Alumni Spotlight Honors students attend American 36 Arachnological Society Meeting

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IN THIS ISSUE...

EK ROL ERR M CA

RS COLL

Honors at OU

UPDATES

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Honors Program Highlights

Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship 11 for New Americans

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Conversations with the Dean

Professor Marie Dallam to publish 33

second monograph Announcing the Katharine J. Gross 39 Memorial Scholarship

This publication, printed by University Printing Services, is issued by the University of Oklahoma. 550 copies have been prepared and distributed at no cost to the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma.

The University of Oklahoma, in compliance with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, gender expression, age, religion, disability, political beliefs, or status as a veteran in any of its policies, practices or procedures. This includes, but is not limited to: admissions, employment, financial aid and educational services.

Inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies may be directed to: Bobby J. Mason, University Equal Opportunity Officer and Title IX Coordinator, (405) 325-3546, bjm@ou.edu, or visit www.ou.edu/eoo.

DEAN David Ray ASSOCIATE DEAN Rich Hamerla EDITOR Will O’Donnell CONTACT US 1300 Asp Ave. Norman, OK 73019-6061 (405) 325-5292 | ou.edu/honors DESIGN AND PRINTING University Printing Services PHOTOGRAPHY Select images courtesy of Shevaun Williams & Associates, and Hugh Scott ON THE COVER Graduation May 2017

DEAN’S MESSAGE

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n 2015, an outside group took upon itself the task of evaluating Honors College programs at public universities in the United States. Without placing them in rank order, they identified the best twenty such programs, and the OU Honors College was among that select group. While this was of course gratifying and appreciated, to be honest we were not surprised. With the strong support of President David L. Boren and First Lady Molly Shi Boren, the OU Honors College has achieved some extraordinary things.

By providing substantial merit-based scholarships, OU has been able to attract at any one time nearly a thousand students who rank nationally in the top one-half of one percent of their high school class. These are not just students who could have been accepted at the top Ivy League schools, many of them were accepted at those schools but their families were unable to afford such high tuition. Any perceptive teacher will tell you that such students have a multiplier effect on everyone else, that the entire university is much stronger for their presence, and that work effort and intellectual rigor are increased across the campus.

The Honors College serves to help recruit and retain such students. The mission of the College is to provide the environment of a small, very fine liberal arts college inside a large public research university. The College provides its students with small, discussion-based seminar classes on a wide range of subjects, all with specially selected very talented teachers. The College also sponsors numerous programs organized and run by its students, including multiple weekly film series, guest speakers, websites, and social events.

STRENGTHENING THE FUNDAMENTALS As one would expect, it has always been the case that almost all entering Honors students go on to graduate, sometimes in four or five years but often in as little as three years (because so many of them enter with Advanced Placement credits from high school). But while almost all Honors students go on to graduate, prior to 2012 only about half of them had completed their Honors requirements by the time of their graduation. It has been a long-standing goal of the College to increase this percentage, and I am pleased to report that this has been accomplished: Fall 2017

Percentage of Graduating Honors Students Who Fulfilled Requirements To Graduate with Honors

Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

47 percent 60 percent 76 percent 75 percent 81 percent 90 percent

This success has been achieved by identifying that the problem had multiple causes, and then attempting to address those causes. Without question this was done by the focused hard work of three sets of people who deserve all the credit for this considerable accomplishment: (1) Dr. Carolyn Morgan and Tanya Miller, our Cum Laude Graduation Coordinator, who together continue our systematic and persistent outreach to Honors upperclassmen, including Honors-specific advising at multiple points. (As best we can determine, such outreach had never been provided prior to our first efforts in 2012.

The College had no systematic contact with all Honors students during the interval between their freshman and senior years.

(2) Associate Dean Rich Hamerla, assisted by Jeff Cooper and Dylan Juby, who created and continue to administer our first-ever annual cum laude progress review of every single Honors student, with automatic notification to those who were falling short of established milestones, offering encouragement and guidance to stay on track.

(3) the hard work of our new Honors Liaison to the College of Engineering. This position has been ably filled by engineering graduate students who were Honors College alumni (in sequence: Chris Dalton, Javen Weston, and Tayler Brumble). They provided Honors-specific advising to engineering majors and facilitated a substantial Honors at OU 3

expansion of opportunities for undergraduate research with engineering faculty and contracting-for-Honorscredit in required engineering courses. The College is also indebted to Dean Tom Landers of the Gallogly College of Engineering, who has graciously shared the funding of this liaison position on a 50/50 basis with the Honors College.

Another key foundation of the College is the Honors curriculum, in which students are required to take a specific number of credit hours of coursework in Honors format: small classes (capped at 19 students for freshmen and 22 for upper division courses), all students are Honors students, and an instructor specially selected because he or she is a highly talented teacher. At least two of these courses have an HON prefix and are taught by the Honors College faculty housed in David L. Boren Hall. The rest are Honors courses taught by almost all other departments and Colleges in the university. For reasons of budgetary

ORIGINAL PROGRAMS GROW EVEN STRONGER Many of the best programs offered by the Honors College were created at the time an already-strong Honors Program was elevated to College status in 1997. One of these is the summer program Honors-at-Oxford in which 20 to 40 Honors students study British history and British literature in Norman with Honors faculty during June. In July, along with the same faculty, these students all go to Oxford University in the UK, where they are housed in an Oxford College, and each student is assigned an Oxford tutor for the true one-to-one experience of an Oxford education. Pioneered and organized by Dr. Melanie Wright, this program has now included Associate Dean Rich Hamerla and Dr. Brian Johnson, Director of the Honors College Writing Center, both of whom will take over its leadership when Dr. Wright retires in 2018.

TO SERVE AS DEAN OF THE OU HONORS COLLEGE IS AN ENORMOUS PRIVILEGE AND RESPONSIBILITY, AND HAS BEEN A WONDERFUL WAY TO CAP A CAREER OF 45 YEARS AS A UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR.

categories used long ago, these other courses have been called “Code 6” courses, and constitute the majority of Honors format coursework.

In the first decade of this century, there had been an unintended but substantial decline in the number of Code 6 Honors sections offered each semester. Between academic year 2003-04 and academic year 2008-09, the number of these sections offered each year had declined by 40 percent, and Honors students began to report that there were not enough Honors classes available to allow them to fit such courses into their schedules.

Identifying the cause of this unintended decline was not difficult: the compensation paid to other departments for assigning one of their faculty to teach a small code 6 Honors section was quite low and had remained flat for more than ten years. The needed solution was also clear-cut. When apprised of the situation, President David L. Boren authorized the Honors College to triple this compensation, and since then there have been more Code 6 Honors courses available for our students than ever before. There is probably no better example of how strong presidential support has enabled OU to maintain an Honors College worthy of national recognition for its strength and quality.

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Another original and popular program that has grown even stronger is Honors Outdoor Adventure, which takes place two weeks prior to the beginning of each Fall semester. In this program, as many as 20 new Honors freshmen go on a mountain-climbing trip in New Mexico, accompanied by the same number of Honors upperclassmen who previously had gone on this trip when they were new freshmen. Such a program obviously requires competent and highly responsible staff leadership.

Originated and run for more than a decade by Dr. Julia Ehrhardt, this leadership has now been transferred successfully to Nicolette Nicar, Director of Financial Operations for the College, and Will O’Donnell, Coordinator of Student Programs.

Numerous other original programs continue to grow and flourish, and have been featured in previous issues of this newsletter. These include the Medical Humanities program, the annual Undergraduate Research Day, the student-edited publication THURJ (the Honors Undergraduate Research Journal), OU Scholars advising, and two programs that provide funded opportunities for Honors student to participate in original research: the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP, in which students may pursue research projects they themselves have devised), and the Honors Research Fall 2017

Assistants Program (HRAP, through which Honors students work as paid research assistants to OU faculty from all departments and Colleges). There is also the Honors Students Association, carried over from the original Honors Program, and which in the past five years has been reinvigorated under stronger student leadership and carries on energetic programming, working closely with faculty advisor Dr. Julia Ehrhardt and staff advisor Lisa Tucker.

STUDENT-INITIATED PROGRAMS AND THE INFORMAL READING GROUPS The Honors College tries hard to listen to its students and to support programming responsive to their perceived needs and desires. We have strengthened many of the programs that were launched in 2009-2011 that attempted to provide both intellectual stimulation and social interaction to Honors students. In this process, we have tried to be intensely pragmatic and experimental – meaning: we would try almost any suggestion or idea, we would constantly monitor effectiveness, and make modifications or mid-course corrections in response to that ongoing assessment. If a program was not successful, we tried to admit as much frankly, and to pull the plug, and devote those resources and energy to something else. There have been many student-initiated programs or groups and most have thrived. There is always a risk that when the “founding generation” of a student-initiated program graduates, there will be difficulty in passing the baton to successive generations of students. While the College has sponsored multiple weekly film series, we take considerable pride that the current weekly Classic Films series has undergone three changes in “generational” leadership and continues to flourish.

The Honors College continues to sponsor current affairs discussion groups (run completely by student moderators, there were seven groups involving about 70 students in Fall 2014, ten such groups involving at least 110 students in Spring 2015, and fourteen such groups involving 200 students in Fall 2016); a series of student presentations and discussions; and, for several years, a truly extraordinary alternative e-newspaper and Wordpress website (the Don Quijote Honors College newsletter, also student-run).

Beginning nine years ago, the College started its program of informal reading groups which now number between 45 and 50 groups each semester, open to everyone in the OU family, with between 400 and 500 participants. Funded entirely by very generous private donors, we have had three different groups read Ulysses, two groups have read War and Peace, and groups that have read books in Spanish, French, Arabic and German – all of this done by free Fall 2017

choice, not in any way as a requirement. Having received generous funding from our Board of Visitors and from Will and Helen Webster, there are now resources sufficient to continue the program for another twenty years in a way that should give the program a chance to continue without the presence of any one administrator or professor. The program is currently organized and managed by two very competent young people on the College staff, Dylan Juby and Will O’Donnell.

ONE FINAL, PERSONAL NOTE To serve as Dean of the OU Honors College is an enormous privilege and responsibility, and has been a wonderful way to cap a career of 45 years as a university professor. I have been extremely fortunate to have had this opportunity, and I owe debts of gratitude to far too many people to be able to name them all. I am of course indebted to the Honors College staff and faculty, all of whom are talented and genuinely decent people. I owe perhaps the largest debt to President David L. Boren and First Lady Molly Shi Boren, who have been constant in their strong support of what I have been trying to achieve for OU’s Honors students. To the students themselves, my debt cannot be exaggerated. This is exactly true: if I named (as I could) 100 extraordinarily talented and motivated students with whom I have had the privilege to work, (including my time at the OU Honors College but also 14 years at Georgia Tech and three years at Boston College), I could then immediately think of another 100 by name who I should have included in the list, and if I named the second 100, I would think of yet a third hundred who have enriched my life. And so on.

It seems clear that to most thoughtful people, this is a time in which our nation and our state are in deep trouble.

While this is not the place to share my views on that situation, I do want to assert that knowing many hundreds (literally thousands) of talented students when they have been of college-age has me completely convinced that our nation has a bright future when these younger generations move into full adulthood and positions of leadership.

While the short-term future may seem grim, I absolutely believe that the medium-term and long-term future of America is very bright.

As any teacher knows, the true payoff for our work is notes, messages, and letters from former students. One of the very best students I have been privileged to know recently wrote me “You have always made your students feel important and cared for.” I doubt if I have always achieved that, but it has been and should always be the aspiration and the goal.

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HONORSAwards (L-R) Student presenters Ben Johnson, Daniella Royer, Adella Kuster and Matthew Judy; Honors student Max Daniels presents; Award winners Matthew Judy, Ashley Palmer and Mark Yeary

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH DAY AWARD WINNERS Roland Lehr Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research

Honors College Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research

Will Kirkpatrick “Propellantless propulsion: the future of interstellar space travel”

Brittany Bingham and Ryan Frome “Carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of humans and animals in the Americas Southwest”

Thomas Givens “Quantitative analysis of grain shapes of fluvial sands as a potential climate proxy”

Catherine Wahpeconiah “Campfire verses and vampire curses: metathesis as a phonological device”

Hunter Harwood and Ian Pratt “Should I stay or should I go?

Retention in first-generation college students”

Johanna Masterson and Rachel Tran “Synthesis and characterization of alkul/prenyl pyrophosphate analogues”

Phi Kappa Phi Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research

Kendall Hughes “Deciphering sensory processing in the pectines of the striped bark scorpion”

Pranav Mohan “A goal-oriented, inverse decision based design exploration of a multistage hot rod rolling system”

Andrea Nguyen “Nature’s medicine cabinet: isolation and identification of secondary metabolites from a citizen science soil sample”

Matthew Judy and Ashley Palmer “A ground-based radar to enable the next generation of atmospheric measurements”

Sneha Sibimon “Nurturing a growth vs. fixed mindset through instruction: a comparative study”

Emma Sullivan “Misconceptions in international advocacy: the case of Amina Lawal”

Jake Khoussine “Using DGRP sequenced genomes to identify modifiers of cell death in Drosophila eyes”

Jordan Sylvester “Technical evaluation of raman spectroscopy for produced brine analysis”

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Kirby Mills “Predicting locations of informal barriers in Oklahoma waterways”

Fall 2017

Feature ALISON ROETH NAMED GOLDWATER SCHOLAR Honors student Alison Roeth has been named a 2017 Goldwater Scholar. The prestigious scholarship is awarded on the basis of potential and intent to pursue research careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering.

“We are extremely proud of Alison Roeth’s achievement in winning this very competitive national scholarship,” said OU President David L. Boren.

Roeth, a junior pursuing dual degrees in physics and Chinese, is from Charlotte, North Carolina.

She is working with Ian Sellers, OU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, to research intermediate band solar cells. She has presented her work with Sellers at the 2017 American Physical Society March Meeting. In addition, Roeth participates in ongoing projects with Kate Scholberg, professor of physics

and Bass Fellow, Duke University, to research supernova neutrinos. Her work with Scholberg has produced two publications presentations at the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment collaboration meetings in September 2016 and January 2017, and the 2016 Fall meeting of the Conference Experience for Undergraduates/American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics.

This past January, she joined researchers from the collaboration to continue work on her project at Fermilab. Her summer plans are to complete an intensive Chinese language immersion program in Taiwan. Upon graduation from OU, she plans to pursue a doctorate in physics and conduct research in experimental particle physics and teach at the university level.

Roeth is a member of the OU Honors College, president of the Chinese Language Club, and has been active in several organizations, including the Society of Physics Students, the Society of Undergraduate Philosophers and

FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS ANNOUNCED Hannah Baird* Joseph Brown Laura Burns* Molly Hacket

Rosemary Mahaffey* Hailey Powell Cody Williams

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Jordan Woodward Kate Bergum*

Honors College reading groups.

A National Merit Scholar, Roeth’s honors and awards include the William Schriever Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Physics and Astronomy; the Lowell and Frances Dunham Scholarship from the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics; and the J. Clarence Karcher Scholarship for the study of Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics and Engineering Physics, which she has won twice. She also is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

The national scholarship competition is conducted by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program. This year, 1,286 college sophomores and juniors across the country competed for the 240 scholarships. 307 students received Honorable Mentions. The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

Congrats

STUDENTS

* = Honors student/alum

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HONORS PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

2017 OUTDOOR ADVENTURE FIRST-YEAR TRIP Each year before school starts, Honors students and incoming first-year students can participate in an innovative and exciting orientation program – Outdoor Adventure. Outdoor Adventure builds character and develops fellowship in participants by leading them on a five-day backpacking trek in the Pecos Wilderness, part of the Santa Fe National Forest outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This past year, Outdoor Adventure was led by Honors students Caleb Cooley, Miranda Schene and Greg Olson. Schene, who was unable to attend the trip because a summer internship, was replaced by Joe Dal Santo during the hiking trip. Three leaders, 12 guides, 27 incoming first-year students and Honors staff advisers Nicolette Nicar and Will O’Donnell made the 10-hour drive to New Mexico, staying from Aug. 2-9 and returning home in the wee hours of the morning.

Guides and participants spent the first day acclimating to the altitude and attending training sessions on pitching tents, hanging bear bags, lighting camp stoves and providing first aid response. The next

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day, they set off on the trail in three groups based on experience and ability level, each group averaging between 5-10 miles on the trail per day. Despite rainy nights and heavy fog in the mornings, many students summited both Truchas and East Pecos Baldy peaks, while others managed to summit both Truchas and North Truchas peaks in the same morning.

“I had a phenomenal experience, and would definitely recommend this trip to people in the future,” said one first-year participant.

Outdoor Adventure is a great opportunity for incoming first-year Honors students to meet upperclass students while enjoying the great outdoors. For all participants, the program cultivates a love of nature and the outdoors while promoting conservation, self-respect and responsibility for oneself, the group, and the natural environment.

For more information on this program, contact Will O’Donnell at (405) 325-3040 or willodonnell03@ou.edu.

Fall 2017

CAPOEIRA CLUB COMES TO OU On Sept. 14, students in the Perspectives class Latin American Music and Politics, taught by Honors professor Amanda Minks, gathered in the South Oval for a workshop on capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian tradition that combines music, dance and martial arts.

Will Rose, who runs the studio OK Capoeira at the Foster Community Center in Oklahoma City, taught the workshop with the help of Isaac Moaning, a senior marketing major in the Price College of Business. The class read anthropologist Greg Downey’s book Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning From an AfroBrazilian Art (Oxford University Press, 2005).

A few resident Brazilians joined the workshop, including Mauro Dourado, an engineer and DJ

Honors Program Highlights

who appears in the photo playing the berimbau, a single-string percussion instrument made from a bow and a gourd.

Several students have co-founded a new Capoeira Club at OU with Professor Minks as adviser. Isaac Moaning is the president, Ian Pratt is the vice president and Eli Boulton is the communications director. They will focus on Capoeira Angola, a slow style of capoeira with minimal bodily contact that has a safe, systematic method of learning. They are meeting weekly for practices and workshops.

Any OU student can join the Capoeira Club via OrgSync, and other OU community members can contact amandaminks@ou.edu for more information.

INFORMAL READING GROUPS At the beginning of each semester, hundreds of OU students, staff and faculty members anxiously await an email announcing open sign-ups for one of the most popular, rewarding and innovative programs offered by the Honors College – the Informal Reading Groups.

The groups, composed of 10 to 15 participants and a volunteer moderator (or two) from the Honors College faculty, staff or student body, meet just one hour per week to discuss about 50 pages of reading from specific books. The books, all chosen by moderators, range from classics of literature to current events, New York Times bestsellers to esoteric philosophy – everyone can find a title that sparks their interest!

To participate in the groups, the only commitment is that each participant makes a good-faith effort to do the reading and come to the group meeting as often as possible, with the understanding that there may be one or two weeks when students need to do other things.

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This is a great chance to meet other people at OU with similar interests. The goals of the program can be summarized as “maximum information and enjoyment, with zero stress.”

The Informal Reading Groups program has its origin in the Department of Political Science, where over a decade ago students and faculty began to meet to discuss a single book over the course of a semester. Beginning in 2008, the groups were organized and expanded by the Honors College and were opened to all Honors students.

Generous donations from supporters of the Honors College have allowed the program to grow to over 40 groups per semester, many of which read two or more titles.

While sponsored by the Honors College, the program is now open to the entire OU family of students, staff and faculty. For questions or to learn more, contact Will O’Donnell, coordinator of student programs, at (405) 325-3040 or willodonnell03@ou.edu.

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Honors Program Highlights

DEAN’S USED BOOK SALE Members of the Honors College hosted a used book sale Oct. 2 to raise money for the OU Food Pantry.

The Food Pantry, inaugurated last spring, has been experiencing shortages of funds. Most of the books from the sale were generously donated by Dean David Ray from his private library. Honors Professor Julia Ehrhardt also donated books from her own collection.

Despite a publicized start time of 9 a.m., excited students and faculty could be found browsing the selections as early as 8:15. For most of the morning, the Honors College hallways were swarming with excited students and faculty perusing and snagging titles by the boxful. Most of the books were sold off by noon, and by the time the sale ended at 3 p.m., only two books remained of the initial thousands.

“I was ecstatic to see so many folks pursuing educational advancement to support such a noble

cause,” said Erik Baker, director of development and alumni engagement at the College of Architecture.

The sale took in $625, Dean Ray donated $190 for the cash box and Honors dean emeritus Steve Gillon generously agreed to donate an additional $500 if at least that much were raised. In total, the Honors College raised over $1,300 of direly needed funds for the OU Food Pantry.

CLASSIC FILM CLUB The Classic Films Club, founded by Honors alumnus Daniel Meschter, is set to go strong for another year.

The club meets on Sunday evenings in David L. Boren Hall to eat popcorn, watch movies and discuss classics of the genre. This year, the club will be led by Jonathon Kim, senior majoring in math and economics, and Hannah LeComte, ballet performance and history sophomore. Both Kim and LeComte joined the club during their freshman years.

“I was living in Boren [Hall], so it was really convenient to just walk downstairs for a movie,” said Kim. The pair have already selected several films to screen during the fall semester, including Hayao Miyazaki’s anime classic My Neighbor Totoro and Alfred Hitchcock’s slasher Psycho, just in time for Halloween.

“We tried to compile a diverse group of films to show this semester, including films from multiple decades and countries,” LeComte said. Typically, the club’s leader chose the films for the fall semester while titles for the spring semester are proposed by participants.

“We like to take a broad definition of what constitutes a ‘classic,’” said Kim, citing the criteria used by the National Film Registry to determine “culturally,

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historically or aesthetically significant films” as a model, adding, “I think most conventional definitions of classic films end up being really biased in favor of American films produced by major studios, when there have actually been a lot of significant films made by foreign and/or independent producers.”

“A film may be considered ‘classic’ due to its method of storytelling, societal or political message, or its technical and artistic qualities,” added LeComte.

Asked about the appeal of such a club to Honors students, Kim said, “I think that the club [gives] them the chance to be exposed to a variety of films that are intellectually or artistically inspiring. It’s also a great way to meet other students who share an interest in movies

Fall 2017

and to have the chance to discuss movies with others.

In that way, we’re kind of like a film-oriented version of the Informal Reading Groups.”

This year, the Classic Films Club has become an official registered student organization, allowing the group to apply for funds through OU Student Life.

According to Kim, the club also received a $500 grant from Sooner Parents to build up the Honors College film library, something that will ensure the group’s success well into the future. The group will continue meeting most Sunday nights in David L. Boren Hall for film screenings and discussions afterward.

Honors Alumnus Caleb J. Gayle Awarded Soros Fellowship for

New Americans

F

or the second year in a row, an OU in 2011, Gayle, a Harry S. Truman Honors alumnus has been awarded Scholar, worked for Crea Comunidades de the prestigious Soros Fellowship for Emprendedores Sociales, a social enterprise New Americans. Caleb J. Gayle was that creates customized programs to empower awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship women entrepreneurs from marginalized for New Americans for 2017. areas in Mexico. After completing his The Soros Fellowships for New Americans graduate work at the University of Oxford provide opportunities for continuing as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, Gayle Caleb Gayle generations of able and accomplished New returned to Mexico to support scaling Americans to achieve leadership in their chosen the work of Crea as a federal government fields and to partake of the American dream. Gayle was program, Mujeres Moviendo México. awarded the fellowship to support work toward a master In 2013 Bayle joined the George Kaiser Family of business administration degree in business and public Foundation to increase the scope of programs focused policy at Harvard University. on improving the livelihood outcomes of low-income Born in New York to Jamaican immigrants, families and children. His team’s work has been Gayle remembers a childhood that was defined by his chronicled in The New York Times, The Atlantic and grandfather, a strict but loving reverend who cherished Education Week. Gayle’s essays have been featured in the pursuit of the American Dream and believed there The Huffington Post’s Black Voices series, the Chronicle was no excuse for anyone who fell short. It wasn’t until of Philanthropy and Sojourners. He is a Sheila C. Gayle’s family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, that he Johnson Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy began to grapple with systemic racial and economic School’s Center for Public Leadership. injustice, an experience that led to his interest in A proud adopted son of Tulsa, Gayle has served nonprofits and government. on the boards of the Tulsa Day Center for the While at the University of Oklahoma, Gayle Homeless, the Tulsa Area Salvation Army and the began replicating the community development work MetCares Foundation. Eventually, Gayle hopes to he had done in Oklahoma, this time with burgeoning, return to philanthropy and emerge as a political leader. low-income female entrepreneurs in Mexico. After Congratulations, Caleb! graduating with a degree in international studies Fall 2017

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FIRST-YEAR RESEARCH

Experience O

n April 19 of this year, United States Congressman Tom Cole visited University of Oklahoma chemistry professor Charles Rice’s lab for a site visit. Five Honors students had been conducting research in Rice’s lab during the spring semester as part of the First Year Research Engagement program.

Senior Summer Wright and freshmen Erica Moen, John “Jack” Diseker, Beatrice Wilson and Sungjin “David” Park were all invited to meet and talk with the Congressman, who told professor Rice he was very impressed with all the students. He thought it was amazing how much they knew about the research and how well

they articulated what they had learned in the lab, saying that the students were the best part of his visit and that they represented the lab, the department and the Honors College very, very well.

The First Year Research Engagement Program, known more commonly as FYRE, began in 2011 as a partnership between the Department of Chemistry and Biochemisty and the Honors College. Rich Hamerla, associate dean of Honors, created the program with Mark Morvant, professor of chemistry, who currently serves as associate provost for teaching and technology and executive director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, with the

goal of providing opportunities for Honors students to participate in laboratory research during their undergraduate studies at OU. Through the FYRE program, students gain perspectives about research and mentoring for developing their career plan.

Among other things, the program provides a safe, constructive, instructive and immersive experience in experimental research for the FYRE students and provides a gateway to understanding scientific research, in its many manifestations, as a possible professional/career path.

In addition, it creates a nucleus of undergraduate researchers to increase the overall numbers of

US Congressman Tom Cole (R-OK) visits with FYRE students at Prof. Charles Rice’s lab

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Fall 2017

Feature

2016-2017 FYRE participants

OU STEM majors, graduates and professionals.

Students interested in FYRE complete an application and choose between 14 and 15 topics related to the expertise of the participating professors. The students are matched with professors based on their majors, research interests and short paragraphs written about their top three choices. The topics may change each year depending on which faculty members participate.

Students who are chosen from the competitive application process participate in active laboratory research in the spring, receiving three

of chemistry and biochemistry.

Kothapalli earned a bachelor of science degree in microbiology and biochemistry and a master of science degree in biochemistry from the University of Mumbai. She earned her doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of NebraskaLincoln and completed postdoctoral training at the National Institute on Aging under the direction of Sebastian Fugmann. Kothapalli has worked hard to expand FYRE to a four-year program, renaming the program the Four Year Research Engagement program. So far, FYRE I, II and III are active with FYRE

and fall semesters in addition to the 100 students accepted for the spring. It is specifically designed to increase the number of OU undergraduates in their first year at OU to participate in research.

The spring semester program is conducted in coordination with Honors College to award Honors course credit for selected freshmen to conduct a mentored, semesterlong experimental project in an OU research laboratory. The spring program currently involves research groups from 12 departments from different OU colleges, including the College of Arts and Sciences; Gallogly College of Engineering; College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, and Mewbourne College of STUDENTS GAIN PERSPECTIVES ABOUT RESEARCH AND Earth and Energy. Student MENTORING FOR DEVELOPING THEIR CAREER PLAN. participation in this program has been steadily increasing starting with hours of credit in both chemistry and IV to be offered for the first time in 12 students in the first year to 98 Honors for successfully completing fall 2017. According to Kothapalli, students in 2017. the course. Some students do not the subsequent years are so that As a part of FYRE II, students continue after the first year, but “students can understand the impact will learn about the impact of others continue research with the of their research on society and how scientific research on society. same professors through their entire to communicate [their research] to Students are required to enroll undergraduate career. the public.� in a 1-credit-hour seminar course Since spring 2014, the program FYRE 1 is expanding to include for participation. Students are has been administered by Naga around 20 students (including encouraged to continue their research Rama Kothapalli, associate professor non-Honors) during the summer

THROUGH THE FYRE PROGRAM,

Fall 2017

Honors at OU 13

Feature pursuits to help them in this endeavor. This course covers the role individual science, engineering and mathematics (STEM) researchers pay in advancing society, while also focusing on the mechanisms through which scientific researchers impact society today.

The course is designed to give students interested in a career in STEM research a wider perspective of the impact of this profession.

The course consists of a series of case studies examining specific scientific breakthroughs, both recent and in the past. Case studies cover the chemistry and scientific content of the discovery, and the broader context of the discovery, including the effect on society and the personal biographies of the researchers involved. The scientific breakthroughs covered will be drawn from a diverse array of STEM disciplines, and these topics will be broadly accessible and of interest to all STEM student, regardless of research discipline.

FYRE III also is designed as a 1-credit seminar course to be taken concurrent with continuing research projects. The course is designed to emphasize the importance of science communication and science writing. Students participate in moderating scientific discussion with audiences ranging in their knowledge and experience with STEM disciplines. For example, students may discuss current trends in agricultural research with Oklahoma state farmers or a lifelong learners group from OU. Students discuss different kinds of scientific publications, including scientific bulletins, publications, editorials and instruction manuals.

14 Honors at OU

The final part of the program, to be debuted in fall 2017, FYRE IV is designed to help students get ready for their future beyond college.

It is designed as a 1-credit-hour seminar course also cross-listed as a community learning course. During this course, students build and finetune their individual development plans. Individual guidance is provided for applying to graduate schools and job-seeking.

Thanks to the faculty members from the following departments who are participating as faculty mentors for FYRE: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering – Hamidreza Shabgard Anthropology – Brian Kemp and Krithisvasan Sankaranarayanan Biology – Daniel Allen, Elizabeth Bergey, Jeffrey Kelly, Katie Marshall, Matthew Miller and Cameron Siler Biomedical Engineering – Michael Detamore and Han Yuan Chemistry and Biochemistry – Christina Bourne, Anthony Burgett, Ronald Halterman, Ulrich Hansmann, Chuanbin Mao, Rakhi Rajan, Charles Rice, George Richter-Addo, Valentin Rybenkov, Bayrammurad Saprov, Yihan Shao, Indrajeet Sharma, Paul Sims, Shanteri Singh, Robert Thomson, Si Wu, and Zhibo Yang Electrical and Computer Engineering – Lei Ding, Caleb Fulton, Hong Liu, Yuchen Qiu and Jessica Ruyle Geology and Geophysics – Andrew Madden and Brad Wallet Mathematics – Michael Jablonski, Alan Roche and Ying Wang

Meteorology – Phillip Chilson and David Parsons) Micro and Plant Biology – Anne Dunn, Heather McCarthy, Abigail Moore, Lara Souza and Bradley Stevenson Physics – Eddie Baron and Mukremin Kilic Psychology – Scott Gronlund, Jorge Carvalho, Jennifer Barnes-Burgett, Lauren Ethridge and David Liu FYRE students, in their own words:

CHRISTOPHER BOURGEOIS “I participated in FYRE during this past spring semester and was paired with Dr. Alan Roche in the Department of Mathematics.

I presented a research poster at the poster session at the end of the semester. Overall, I am very satisfied with my experience in FYRE. The program definitely served its purpose in introducing me to the breadth and diversity in scientific research here at OU. I do not plan on researching during the fall, but I am definitely interested in continuing during the next spring.”

CASEY CAI “I participated in FYRE during my freshman year, spring 2015. My faculty sponsor was Professor Anthony Burgett in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr. Burgett’s lab focuses on natural products research. We are studying Fall 2017

Feature OSW-1, a natural product with selective anticancer activity. OSW-1 is derived from the bulb of a South African lily and interacts with oxysterol binding protein and members of the OSBP-related protein family. My FYRE project focused on cloning ORPs for future studies to better understand how OSW-1 works. I really enjoyed the mentorship that I received in FYRE, not only from the graduate student that I worked with, but also from other members of the lab — especially Rama [Kothapalli].

As part of FYRE, we had biweekly talks from professionals who were engaged in various fields of scientific research. I really enjoyed the lectures from M.D./Ph.D.s who performed clinical research. I presented my research at the FYRE poster session at the end of spring 2015. I have continued to work in Professor Burgett’s lab and have presented my subsequent research at Undergraduate Research Day (2016 and 2017) and at the 2016 Midwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society. I also presented my research and represented OU at the 2017 Research Day at the Capitol, which emphasized the importance of undergraduate research to the public and to Oklahoma legislators. I continued to work in Professor Burgett’s lab after FYRE and plan to stay in the lab until I graduate this spring. My research experience in his lab has inspired my career goals — I am currently applying to M.D./Ph.D. programs and plan to pursue a career in clinical research, focusing on cancer. I received the Goldwater Scholarship in spring 2016, and I definitely would not have gotten it if I did not have my research experience in Professor Burgett’s lab. My research experience has Fall 2017

also made me a more competitive applicant for summer research internships — I have now interned at MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. My current research in the lab is focused on how OSW-1 affects cellular metabolites in cancer cells to betterunderstand its mechanism of action.

During this project, I have been able to code and explore computational biology techniques, and I plan to incorporate computational biology into my future research.”

LEANNE HO “I participated in FYRE during spring 2017, my second semester at college. My faculty sponsor was Professor Mauricio Carvallo in the psychology department. I conducted research into the Culture of Honor, which is a set of beliefs that emphasizes physical strength, hyper-masculinity and warrior virtue. In a culture of honor, small disputes — for example, comments disparaging someone’s family — are viewed as challenges to reputation and social status, thus resulting in physical retaliation. In our research, we wanted to see how people who either identified or did not identify with honor culture treated people who adhered to or violated honor culture norms. In order to do so, we gave study participants an online survey with the following scenario: a student is in risk of suspension for property damage to his room.

The student explains that he was at the bar with his girlfriend and

that another guy was flirting with her. In the honor culture adherence scenario, the student inflicts physical violence on the other guy, while in the honor culture violation scenario, he lets it go. Research participants were then asked their likelihood of suspending the student.

Participants who identified strongly with honor culture were more likely to suspend the student who violated honor culture than the student who adhered. Participants who did not identify with honor culture reported the opposite. On an individual level, my tasks included reviewing literature on the Culture of Honor, observing the study and its results, and compiling our results in a research poster. One of my best experiences with FYRE was getting to discuss our research with other psychology students at the Sixth Annual Graduate and Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference.

Over the course of the semester, I grew incredibly passionate about our research topic, so it was a rewarding experience to share my excitement with other people. I created a poster for this research and presented that poster at the Sixth Annual Graduate and Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference, where I earned the Fan Favorite Award. I also presented the same poster at the FYRE Poster Session, where I earned the 2017 Best Project Award.

I had a great research experience with Dr. Carvallo and his lab and would love to continue working with them this fall, but I’m currently exploring different options for research involvement. Seeing all the other FYRE participants’ posters at the FYRE Poster Session helped me realize the diversity of research opportunities available at OU.”

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Honors at OU 15

Feature WILL KIRKPATRICK

MAGGIE MARTIN

“I participated during spring 2017.

My sponsor was Professor Kilic in the physics and astronomy department. I primarily did coding in Python to assist in processing the data we received about possible white dwarf binary stars; I had to correct the magnitudes of the observed stars for reddening before they could be plotted against their synthetic magnitudes. I also helped calculate R values for these stars with much more rigorous calculations than had been done before. Once these magnitudes were plotted, we then looked for stars that deviated from the 1-to1 line that white dwarves should follow, as these could be the white dwarf binaries we are looking for.

I think my best experience with FYRE was the connections I made with the graduate students in my majors’ department. They are all quite friendly and strengthened my resolve to pursue my majors. Also, being involved in the research process itself and being treated like the other graduate students were treated … was a very valuable experience for me. I presented a poster for this research at the FYRE conference at the end of the spring semester.

Professor Kilic was kind enough to allow me to begin working with him in the semester before FYRE even began, and from the looks of it, I will be able to continue working with him through the next semester.

I am currently working on a coding project for him this summer.”

“I participated in FYRE in the spring of 2015.

I worked under Professor Ulrich H. E. Hansmann in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

My research was in the field of computational biophysics; specifically, I used C-based software to test various computational models of human and mouse prion proteins in order to compare the models and their physical properties to the physical properties of real human and mouse prion proteins. My goal was to find a good model for the prions to establish a model for the N-Terminal Domain folding mechanism of the human prion protein. The folding mechanism would later be tied to prion aggregation. My best experience in FYRE was winning Outstanding FYRE Student. My second-best experience was working with computers in a researched based capacity. As a geophysics major, I didn’t realize how potent that experience would be. I’m entering my senior year and I’ll be doing researched-based computation.

I presented my research at the 2015 FYRE Poster Session, OU’s Undergraduate Research Day 2015, and the International Conference for Computational Biophysics and Systems Biology 2015. The link to the paper published as a result of this study is cited here: Alred, E. J., Nguyen, M., Martin, M. and Hansmann, U. H. E. (2017), Molecular dynamics simulations of early steps in RNA-mediated conversion of prions. Protein Science. doi:10.1002/pro.3178 I worked with Professor Hansmann through the summer

16 Honors at OU

of 2015 to finish my portion of the project. I left the lab in August 2015 because ,as previously mentioned, I am a geophysics major. My place in that lab made sense only to the end of the project. I now work under two different research groups in the ConocoPhillips School of Geology and Geophysics (groups Elmore and Nakata; geology and geophysics, respectively).”

OLIVIA ROBSON “I participated in FYRE spring semester 2017.

My faculty sponsor was Professor Jennifer Barnes in the psychology department.

Her lab is really excellent because they study the psychology of fiction in all sorts of different ways. For instance, the study I was helping run was examining the effects of science fiction, specifically whether it increased the likelihood of one’s belief in futuristic technologies.

The semester before I arrived at lab, they had studied it using written science fiction, and this semester they were testing it using science fiction television shows. Helping run that was part of what I did in lab — once a week showing study participants either an episode of Jane the Virgin, Castle, Firefly or Continuum before administering a set of surveys. I had never imagined research looking like that before and I loved it. During the rest of the week, I helped one of the graduate students in coding previously collected data and helped develop a small survey of our own with anther FYRE student in the lab, Yomna Helmy. I was interested in studying political television and how it related to the political Fall 2017

Feature orientation, morality and activism of viewers. Yomna was investigating the psychology of why people might prefer villains over heroes. We sent out our survey to as many people as we could, and got over 200 people to participate. Of course, not all the data was useable, but it was so much fun. It was an incredible opportunity to be able to design and analyze a IRB-approved project. Over the course of the semester, all of my best experiences with FYRE were in the lab. When I applied to FYRE, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity but didn’t expect to be placed in a lab I was so interested in. I think that was what I enjoyed the most about FYRE — learning about research in fields that aren’t chemistry or biology. I learned about counterfactuals, Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory, and so much more about the psychology of fiction than I could have ever imagined. I certainly hope to continue to work in Professor Barnes’ Lab.”

ZAINAB SANDHU “I participated in FYRE last semester, spring 2017. My faculty sponsor was Professor Brad Stevenson from the microbiology department.

Professor Stevenson’s lab focuses on the study of novel microorganisms. I worked with a group of bacteria called myxobacteria, soil bacteria that have the capacity to act as predators to a diverse range of bacteria, including E. coli. Throughout the semester, I attempted to isolate myxobacteria from the OU Duck Pond and measure its predation rate among different strains of E. coli. In order to conduct my research, I had to Fall 2017

learn a lot of new research techniques like PCR and quadrant streaking.

Although I completed a project through FYRE, it was ultimately a formative experience. Through each step of my project, I learned a new skill or built on skills that I had learned previously. I would say that the entirety of FYRE was an incredible and valuable experience.

Coming into my freshman year, I was really unsure about what I wanted to study and haphazardly chose microbiology as a major, knowing little about what the major entailed.

Being matched to Dr. Stevenson’s lab through the FYRE program really helped me foster a love for microbiology and really helped me solidify what I wanted to spend my college years studying. Moreover, FYRE allows you to see another side of your major, outside of what you see in a classroom. As an undergraduate, I probably would not have been able to work with a microorganism like myxobacteria in my laboratory classes, or at least would not have learned about their existence until my junior or senior year. What is special about the FYRE experience is you get to work with amazing professors at OU who work on such cool projects so early in the game. I am currently working in Professor Stevenson’s lab for the duration of the summer and will continue in the coming fall.

Eventually, I hope to start working on a project for my senior thesis.

Another advantage of FYRE is that you can find faculty members who are willing to mentor you early in your college career without you having to approach them. The process of contacting a professor to do research can be quite intimidating, especially as a freshman. FYRE helps you overstep that process and can help you plan for things in the future that might not be on your

mind as a freshman, like writing a senior thesis.”

DAT TRUONG “I participated in FYRE during the spring semester of 2016, and my faculty sponsor was Professor Adam Duerfeldt from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. I was conducting natural product discovery research in the hopes of identifying a new compound that could be used to target activation mechanisms of a specific type of bacterial protease. In a world where antibiotic resistance is rapidly increasing, our goal was to expand the current library of Caseinolytic protease P (ClpP) activators, a known bacterial protease that when chemically activated can induce cell death through uncontrolled proteolysis. Our approach is creative as it attempts to exploit the activation of a bacterial process to cause cell death, rather than the inhibition or disruption mechanisms exhibited by current antibiotics. Hence, during FYRE, I had the opportunity to screen a marine extract library to probe for potential novel ClpP activators. I really enjoyed conducting research that was specifically aimed toward our research goal. Having the opportunity to work with talented senior undergraduates and graduate students also greatly expanded my hands-on research expertise, and the final FYRE presentation provided me valuable experience in public speaking and scientific presentation.

We also presented our research on the 2017 Spring Undergraduate Research Day. I am still currently working with Professor Duerfeldt.”

Honors at OU 17

Doug Gaffin Named Interim Dean of Honors

D

oug Gaffin, an awardwinning professor and researcher best known for his work on the navigation systems of scorpions, has been named interim dean of the Honors College after it was announced that current Dean David Ray will be retiring this fall.

“I am excited by the opportunity. I am also scared to be following the incredible performance of Dean Ray,” said Gaffin.

Gaffin, David Ross Boyd Professor of Biology, was director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Zoology at OU from 1995-2002, and from 2002-2012 he was dean of University College. Throughout that time, he also taught OU’s enormous Introductory Zoology course to over 20,000 students.

Many students, staff and faculty members in the Honors College already know Professor Gaffin from his time as a Presidential Teaching Fellow in Honors from 2015-2017. During this time, he developed and taught three courses: a Perspectives class introducing students to biological research using scorpion navigation as a model; an Honors colloquium entitled “Beyond Darwin: Selection in Thought, Religion, and Politics”; and a second colloquium called “Sensory Manipulation: How Technology Exploits Our Ancient Senses.”

“Being a presidential teaching fellow was a real education for me,” Gaffin said. “I’m used to classes of a thousand students, but these smaller classes are a challenge!”

Gaffin said that, at first, he was intimidated by the intellectual quality of Honors students, but also that this motivated him to try different things.

“I’ve gotten better at cultivating discussion,” said Gaffin, crediting Dean Ray for his advice to “give

18 Honors at OU

students something interesting and engaging to discuss, and just let ‘em go!”

Doug Gaffin came to OU from Oregon State University in 1995. His future wife, OU microbiology and plant biology professor Mariëlle Hoefnagels, followed him a year and a half later.

“We met playing volleyball in Oregon,” said Gaffin, an avowedly competitive player. “I only later learned that she was a biologist, too.”

Never expecting to end up in Oklahoma, Gaffin and Hoefnagels quickly made a home out of Norman and OU. “Mariëlle and I got married in Jacobson Hall. President Boren always used to say it was on our honeymoon we moved into the dorms,” Gaffin said, quick to note that the couple actually became faculty-in-residence several months after their marriage and honeymoon.

The couple lives close enough to campus to ride their bikes everywhere and hold season tickets for OU’s fine arts events.

“Everything we do is somehow related to the university,” Gaffin said.

He gives credit for his success as an academic, researcher and educator to the enormous influence of his wife.

“She’s one of the best writers on the planet – and she has the textbooks to prove it,” Gaffin said. Professor Hoefnagels is also an accomplished editor, having reviewed most of Gaffin’s works before publication.

“In college, she even helped to edit some of her professors’ papers,” he added.

Gaffin will become the sixth dean of the Honors College when he takes the position in January. The Honors Program at OU, founded in 1963, was elevated to college status by President David L. Boren in 1996 and is

Fall 2017

housed in a building bearing exposed to great professors, his name. The Honors those professors are also College is a cornerstone of exposed to great students his legacy at OU. and bring those experiences “President Boren put back to their respective [the Honors College] front disciplines. and center in his remarks Along with student announcing his retirement,” engagement, Gaffin has a Gaffin noted, adding, vision for undergraduate “Boren has meant so much research on campus. to this University. I feel so He expressed interest in grateful that he’s thought continuing already-strong Prof. Gaffin demonstrates a scorpion’s glow under ultraviolet light of me and given me this research programs like opportunity.” the Four Year Research Gaffin has already Experience, Undergraduate begun to prepare for his Research Opportunities new role, meeting with Program and Honors Dean Ray and Asssociate Research Assistants Dean Rich Hamerla to Program while clarifying discuss the future of the their missions to students Honors College. and ensuring that the “Dean Ray has provided programs don’t work a great model for what an against one another. Gaffin Honors dean should be,” also expressed interest in Gaffin with former Honors student Randall Proctor at Harvard Gaffin said. He noted that expanding Undergraduate Ray continues teaching Research Day and learning a full course load on top more about how awards of his duties as dean and are decided. has overseen an expansion Above all, Gaffin hopes of student-led groups and that the Honors College programs intended to will continue to help attract keep students involved the best and brightest and engaged. minds to OU. Gaffin also plans to “Some of the best meet soon with Honors students are in Honors.

College faculty, whom he They sometimes forget met while a Presidential about the clock and forget Teaching Fellow. about sleep because they’re “They are some of so engaged with a question. the strongest teachers on They’re driven by the desire campus,” Gaffin said. “They to explore the unknown.”

Volleyball match at Cate Center really reached out to me Gaffin, who taught the and made me feel welcome scorpion navigation course in Honors.” during Fall 2017, will not Gaffin is most excited to begin working with Honors teach during Spring 2018 to focus on his duties as interim students again. dean. He plans to resume teaching classes in Fall 2018.

“I want to model student engagement,” said Gaffin.

“My feeling is that I just want this place to go on as “It’s not altruism, we take from each other,” he added, strong as it’s been going.” explaining that while students in the Honors College are

Fall 2017

Honors at OU 19

Nine Years of

Conversations with the Dean

We have modified the guest speaker series “Conversations with the Dean,” to include presentations by panels of students from a particular demographic group regarding their experience at OU. In 2014-15 the first such panel included three students from the Muslim student organizations on campus. That was followed by a panel of four students on the perceptions and experiences of Native Americans as students at OU. Generating student turnout for such events is always problematic, and perhaps the achievement in which I take the most pride is that turn-out for both these events was beyond the capacity of our largest room – at least 65 to 70 students seated and 30 more on a standing-room-only basis, with all 30 standing patiently and courteously during a 60-minute discussion. —Dean David Ray

Majors and Careers In A Volatile Economy

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Two Honors alumni, one working in the field who has done recruiting interviews for his company, and one a current OU graduate student, discuss computer science education at OU, including majors and minors, and how it prepares them for life in the real world.

Tim Burr

grew up in

Goodrich, Michigan; a National Merit Scholar, he graduated from OU in 2012 with a BS/MS n he moved to Boise, Idaho, where in Computer Science. After graduation works as a software developer for Clearwater Analytics.

Zack Burgess

Thursday, Sept 3rd 5:15 – 6:15 180/181 David L. Boren Hall Refreshments provided.

is from

Tulsa, OK and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Computer Science in December of 2014. He completes his Masters in Computer Science in December of 2015. During college, Zack had four internships, started his own company and lived in three other states.

OU Honors College www.ou.edu/honors.

For accommodations on the basis of disability, please call 405.325.5291 The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution. www.ou.edu/eoo

“Don’t hesitate to try for something just because you think you aren’t good enough. You are capable of more than you think you are...” By saying these words to me during a period of great uncertainty in my life, Dean Ray inspired me to try my best at every step of the way and apply for every opportunity that came in my path. His words also gave me the courage to apply to my dream medical school, which I have now been given the chance to attend.

—Maria Thomas Whether it was a formal speaking event or a short conversation in the office, I was (and am) continuously struck by the balance that Dean Ray strikes between unmatchable intellect and a fierce sense of compassion. Whether he intends to or not, our conversations constantly challenge my worldview because they almost always lead to him asking significantly more thoughtful and well-constructed questions than the ones we started with. —Jake Mazeitis Dean Ray’s unshakable belief in the power of higher education and unflinching faith in his students left a lasting impression on me, even years after I first attended a Conversation with the Dean. Dean Ray opened our eyes to injustice, unfairness, and corruption because of a genuine conviction that we had the capacity to do something about them. Because Dean Ray believed in us, we began to believe in ourselves, meaning Dean Ray will forever make a tangible, positive impact on OU and the world. —Jesse Coker I attended Josh Landis’ talk on Middle Eastern Studies at OU and Abroad in 2009. This was one of the first events that introduced me to Prof. Landis’ work and led me to take several of his courses during my time at OU. Prof. Landis’ courses gave me a foundation in Middle Eastern history that I have drawn on consistently throughout my academic career. —Maura Cremins Freshmen year I received a grant to pursue activities raising awareness of human trafficking.

Ecstatic but overwhelmed, I reached out to everyone I thought could advise me, including Dean. Ray. I was not expecting a reply but he met me personally and offered advice and ideas for the grant. He assured me the Honors College would support me. Although it was a brief moment in my college career, it stays with me. A highly respected dean met me (a newbie to campus) within days of my asking. He continued to inspire me through my college years.

I was fortunate to take the course “Multigenerational Approach to America’s Problems” by Dean. Ray, with half OLLI, continued learning adults, and half Honors students. It has made me a better citizen and a critical consumer of policy, media, and the world around me. So grateful for the dedication Dean. Ray shows every day to the students and world around him. He’s a blessing and inspiration. —Lucy Mahaffey 20 Honors at OU

HONORS ENGINEERING MAJORS Please join us for a talk on

PREPARING FOR INTERVIEWS IN ENGINEERING

Scott Hoyte is Engineering Director for GE Oil & Gas, Oklahoma City, where he leads a global engineering team responsible for developing new technology and providing engineering support for downhole products within the Well Performance Services Division. He earned a B.S. in Aeronautics at the University of North Dakota, M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Nevada, and M.B.A. from Indiana University.

Wednesday, September 3 – 5:00PM to 6:00PM 180/181 David L. Boren Hall Honors College Series on Preparing for Interviews

H Afghanistan to Zanzibar Honors College alumni and students serve and study

Dana Mohammad-Zadeh A National Merit Scholar, Dana graduated summa cum laude in 2012 with majors in economics and international studies. A Rhodes finalist, she was named Outstanding Graduating Senior by TWO different colleges (receiving the Carl Albert Award from the College of Arts & Sciences and the William J. Crowe Award from the College of International Studies.)

Dana was the principal founder of The Oklahoma Group, serving as President for four semesters. She also participated as an intern and team leader on various projects related to economic development through the Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth. Since graduation, Dana has been living and working in Afghanistan in the development sector.

Evan is a triple major in economics, political science, and psychology with minors in Math and African American Studies. Last year he won the David L. Boren Critical Languages scholarship to study Swahili in Zanzibar for five months. During this time, he worked with an organization that builds improved latrines in rural Zanzibar to decrease waterborne illness, and lobbies for institutional changes to water consumption behavior at hotels, schools, and restaurants. On a weekly basis he taught English to a group of Swahili students, translated papers for a local academic, and cleaned up trash from the streets of Zanzibar.

Evan DeFilippis

Sunday, February 10th - 3:00 to 4:00PM - Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall For more information or accomodations on the basis of disability please call 405.325.5291.

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAN McClendon Honors College

Fall 2017

Conversations with the Dean A native of Oklahoma, Jack Hobson received his BA in 2000 in French language and literature from OU while serving as Special Assistant to President David L. Boren. After graduation, Hobson worked in Washington DC for two years. He returned to OU in 2002 to work in the Office of Education Abroad. During this time, he also completed his M.A. degree in Global Affairs, with a thesis based on his research in Ethiopia and Senegal. Hobson is currently completing his PhD in political science. In 2009, Hobson was named the Director of the OU’s Office of Education Abroad, where he is overseeing a significant expansion in the overall number of OU students from the Norman campus going abroad.

“Study Abroad Opportunities for OU Students” Jack Hobson

Director of Study Abroad

Conversations with the Dean "One of the most popular teachers at OU, Joshua Landis is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies. He writes the blog “Syria Comment,” which is read widely by officials in Washington, Europe, and Damascus, and by over 2,000 readers a day. He is a frequent analyst on TV and radio, having appeared recently on the Charlie Rose, Jim Lehrer News Hour, CNN, BBC and al-Jazeera.

Dr. Landis regularly travels to Washington DC to consult with government agencies and to Syria and Lebanon. He has published numerous articles on Syria and his book, SYRIA'S LIBERAL MOMENT, is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. He won OU’s Excellence in Teaching Award and has been the recipient of three Fulbright Grants and a Social Science Research Council grant."

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Sept 17th 4:30-5:30 Room 180 David L. Boren Hall

Conversations with the Dean The year’s first event in our series titled “Conversations with the Dean” has an unusual history. In the spring of 2009, the newly appointed Dean of the Honors College asked: “what do OU’s extremely bright students who are pre-med or science/engineering majors most need to know? What would be most useful to them if we could help them figure it out before they normally would otherwise?

When the question was put to Dr. Douglas Gaffin, Dean of University College and enormously popular professor of zoology, he answered: immediately: “How to find a lab.” When the question was put to one of OU’s very brightest students who is a zoology major (now a senior) and who has MCAT scores that any premed would envy, she also answered immediately: “How to find a lab.” We have asked them to explain what that means, and how it is done. This was one of the most popular events sponsored by the Honors College last year, and one that was highly praised by Honors students. The College is deeply indebted to Dr. Gaffin and to Sarah Swenson for their willingness to do a repeat performance. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 (405) 325-5291

Doug Gaffin and

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Sept 24th 4:30-5:30 Room 180 David L. Boren Hall

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

THE INTERVIEW PROCESS at MEDICAL SCHOOLS Alim Ramji

Biochemistry, Summa Cum Laude 2012 Alim Ramji is a biochemistry major from Oklahoma. He is active in the Honors College and is currently facilitating the informal reading group, THE ALEPH and OTHER STORIES. Alim will graduate summa cum laude in May 2012.

He plans to attend medical school in the Fall.

Jay Kumar

Multidisciplinary Studies, Summa Cum Laude 2012 Jay Kumar is a multidisciplinary studies major from Oklahoma, and is minoring in medical humanities and general business.

“How To Find a Lab” Wednesday, October 6th 5:00 — 6:00 Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall

“OU Students in Turkey, Turkish Students at OU”

How Do Others See Us? Two Increasingly Polarized Nations and How That Makes Cross-Cultural Understanding Even More Complicated Oct 29th 4:30—5:30 Room 181 David L. Boren Hall

Fall 2017

David Edger served over 30 years as a CIA operations officer, including multiple foreign assignments as a human intelligence collector, counterintelligence officer, paramilitary operative, and manager. He was the Associate Deputy Director for the National Clandestine Service, directing worldwide espionage, paramilitary, and covert action operations. Since retiring from CIA, Mr. Edger has taught at OU on both the Norman and Oklahoma City campuses. He is the Chairman of the board of directors for the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and the managing director of a highly specialized consulting firm. He is the co-author of Islamic Radicalism and the Global Jihad (2009). And the author of Intelligence Operations in Business.

Fourth in a series of “Great Teachers at OU”, as identified by honors students

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Conversations with the Dean

Sarah Swenson

Conversations with the Dean Three OU Students who have visited or studied in Turkey will be joined by three Turkish students who are currently studying at OU. The panel will discuss very briefly their perceptions of each other’s country and culture, and then answer questions about the current situation in both countries and the world, as well as the possibilities to build stronger connections at OU between international students and American students.

Among the speakers will be Zehra Tosun , president of the Turkish Students Association, and Arif Keceli, president of Turkic Cultures Student Association .

They will be joined by Veronica Sauer and Daniel Fields, who both have studied abroad at Bogazici University in Istanbul, and Jess Eddy who toured Turkey this summer with OU’s Religious Studies Program.

Josh Landis

Assoc. Professor and Director of the Center for Mid East Studies at the School of International and Area Studies

Third in a series of “Great Teachers at OU”, as identified by honors students

“In my judgment, one of the three or four most intelligent people on campus and certainly the most hilarious.”

- David Ray, Interim Dean, McClendon Honors College

“Middle Eastern Studies at OU and Abroad”

Conversations with the Dean

An Honors College enthusiast, he will graduate summa cum laude in May 2012.

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019

TUESDAY, MARCH 6 6:30 — 8:00 ROOM 180 / 181 David L. Boren Hall

Conversations with the Dean Jim Hartline graduated from OU summa cum laude in 2008. He is currently a second-year medical student at OU College of Medicine.

While at OU he enjoyed serving as a guide with the Honors College Outdoor Adventure FirstYear trip, and also moderating the Issues in Medicine informal discussion group. He was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship in 2007. A 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army, after graduation he will begin his residency at a military teaching hospital.

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 405-325-5291

“What Medical School is Really Like”

Ronald M. Peters, Jr., is Regents’ Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. He was educated at Indiana University (B.A. 1969, M.A. 1971, Ph.D. 1974). He is the author of The American Speakership: The Office in Historical Perspective (Johns Hopkins, 1990, 1997) and The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: A Social Compact (University of Massachusetts, 1978), and the editor of several other books on Congress. At OU, he has won the Amoco Good Teaching Award and the Regents Award for Distinguished Teaching, and was named Outstanding Oklahoma Political Scientist for 1995. From 1979-2001 he served as the founding director of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. He is currently (with Cindy Rosenthal) completing a book on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Second in a series of “Great Teachers at OU”, as identified by honors students

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Oct 1st 4:30-5:30 Room 180 David L. Boren Hall

“Is the U.S. Constitution Up to the Job?

Ron Peters

Regents’ Professor of Political Science and Founding Director, Carl Albert Center

Sept 10th 4:30-5:30 Room 180 David L. Boren Hall

Conversations with the Dean Are you graduating in December or May and have questions about next steps? This informal Conversation will feature Honors College professor Marcia Chatelain and a small panel of people with perspectives on graduate school, work and the many issues that arise as you prepare to graduate. Come if you want some advice on how to handle life after OU.

Jim Hartline

Second in a series of distinguished recent Honors College graduate

If espionage is the world’s second oldest profession, what is different about practicing the craft in today’s world? What is the strategy of the new intelligence collector in a networked, fragmented environment working against illdefined threats? I’ve got my BA, seen all the movies, how do I get in?

Conversations with the Dean

“Next Steps for Seniors”

Marcia Chatelain

summa cum laude, class of 2008 LT, US Army: 2nd year OU College of Medicine

Thursday, February 11 4:30—5:30 Room 145 Nancy Mergler Library

David Edger “Cloak, Dagger and MacBook: Outfitting the Secret Agent in 2010”

Assistant Professor Honors College Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019

Nov 12th 4:30—5:30 Room 180 David L. Boren Hall

Honors at OU 21

Conversations with the Dean Professor Melissa K. Stockdale is the Coordinator of Russian and East European Studies and a specialist in modern Russian history, whose publications include Paul Miliukov and the Quest for Liberal Russia, 18801918 (Cornell U.P., 1996) and “‘My Death for the Motherland Is Happiness’: Women, Patriotism, and Soldiering in Russia’s Great War, 19141917,” American Historical Review (Feb 2004), winner of the AWSS Heldt Prize for Best Article in 2004.

She is currently finishing her second book, “A Hard Country to Love”: Patriotism and National Identity in Russia's Great War, 1914-1918. An award-winning teacher, Professor Stockdale offers an array of undergraduate classes in Russian history, a course on World War I, a course on capitalism and socialism (cotaught), and a graduate seminar, "Nations and Nationalism." She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Sixth in a series of “Great Teachers at OU”, as identified by honors students

Melissa Stockdale

“A Hard Country to Love.

Russia, Russians and the World” Oct 15th 4:30—5:30 Room 181 David L. Boren Hall

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Jenna Morey graduated from OU summa cum laude in 2007. She served as FundRaising Director for Lieutenant Governor Jeri Askins’ campaign for office, and then on LT GOV Askins’ staff. She was the first OU graduate to be named a Luce Scholar (a very prestigious and highly competitive award that funds a year of study in Asia), and spent much of that time in Indonesia, as well as traveling extensively in East Asia, including China. She is currently working on a two year Master's degree at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. In the summer of 2010, Jenna goes to Afghanistan where she will be working on development and reconstruction for a major non-governmental organization.

Help Plan Spring 2011 at the Honors College

David Ray, PhD, Dean Friday, December 3 and

Sunday, December 5 Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 405-325-5291

4:00 – 5:00 PM Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall

Students may choose either of two sessions.

Conversations with the Dean

“Make Your Own Opportunities”

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 405-325-5291

Jenna Morey Thursday, January 28 4:30—5:30 PM Room 180 David L. Boren Hall First in a series of distinguished recent Honors College graduates

DEVELOPING YOUR PRESENTATION SKILLS: How To Make A Power Point Presentation

How can the Honors College best help its students develop the presentation skills that are so necessary for success?

Come to an open discussion about the most useful format for a regular “Presentation Skills Workshop.”

Two distinguished Honors juniors will provide a short sample by discussing the best methods for using Power Point in making an effective presentation.

SAM CLANCY is a Letters and Pre-Med major from Oklahoma. He is Vice President of Development for The Oklahoma Group, and a CCEW alumnus. Sam will graduate cum laude in May 2013.

MONDAY, MARCH 12 6:00 — 7:00 ROOM 180 / 181 David L. Boren Hall

Conversations with the Dean

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 (405) 325-5291

22 Honors at OU

“Texas Teaching Fellows: Possible Alternative to Teach for America” Texas Teaching Fellows is a highly selective non-profit alternative certification program dedicated to bringing achievement-oriented individuals into Texas’ most high-need schools and subject areas. Practice teaching in a summer school classroom, combined with our rigorous training during the school year, helps our Fellows to be effective in the classroom from day one. Fellows earn their certification during their first year of teaching, and are eligible for a standard teaching certificate by the end of the school year.

with

Becca White Recruitment and Staffing Manager

As the Recruitment and Staffing manager for Texas Teaching Fellows-Dallas, Becca White is responsible for the development and implementation of recruitment strategies that are designed to attract high-caliber candidates. After candidates have enrolled into the program, Ms. White serves Fellows as a facilitator for the district hiring process. Prior to working with Texas Teaching FellowsDallas and joining The New Teacher Project, Ms. White gained her standard certification through the Texas Teaching Fellows program and is a Fellow alum of the 2007 Austin Cohort. Ms. White spent three years teaching science grades 6-10 for high need schools in the Austin area, most recently KIPP Austin Collegiate. After graduating with a degree in biology and minor in chemistry from Texas Tech University in the spring of 2006, Ms. White felt compelled to use her strong background in science as a tool to close the widening achievement gap. It is this mission that continues to fuel her work today.

Wednesday, April 18 6:00 –7:00 Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Ave. Norman, OK 73019 (405) 325-5291

Peggy Chambers

Instructor and Academic Adviser, Classics and Letters

First in a series of “Great Teachers at OU”, as identified by honors students

Sept 3rd 4:30-5:30 Room 180 David L. Boren Hall

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Prof. Jill Irvine was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan and received her PhD from Harvard. Formerly a faculty member in OU’s Political Science Department, where she established her reputation as one of the university’s truly great teachers, she currently divides her time between the Religious Studies Program and her job as Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She teaches courses on Religion and Violence; Religion, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict; Women and World Politics; Women, Religion and Secularism; and Feminist Theory. Dr. Irvine is the author of The Croat Question, Partisan Politics and the Formation of the Yugoslav Socialist State (1995) and numerous articles, book chapters, and government reports. Her research interests focus on gender, democratization and ethno-religious conflicts worldwide.

Seventh in a series of “Great Teachers at OU”, as identified by honors students

ZACH LANIER is a Letters and Political Science major from Oklahoma. He is Vice President of Campus Relations and Recruitment for the Oklahoma Group, and President of Beta Theta Pi. Zach will graduate cum laude in May 2013.

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 David L. Boren Hall (405) 325-5291

“The Letters Major at OU”

Conversations with the Dean

Promoting International Economic Development Through Business Javier Ewing is the driving force behind the Center for African MidMarket Expansion (CAMME), an innovative center focused on scaling up small and medium-sized enterprises across Africa and other emerging markets. The objective of CAMME is to utilize marketbased solutions and private-public partnerships to facilitate inclusive economic growth, including job creation for low and middleincome families, improved access to essential goods and services, environmental sustainability, and support for young and women entrepreneurs. Ewing is a Managing Director at Excelsior Firm and has an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is visiting OU this week as a keynote speaker at the Social Entrepreneurship Symposium.

Peggy Chambers teaches Honors Intensive Latin in the Classics and Letters Department, as well as courses on Ancient Greece and Rome. She is the Academic Adviser for the Letters major and has taught at OU since 1980; she has received numerous awards for outstanding teaching as well as outstanding service as an adviser. Before returning to school for her graduate education in Classics, she majored in science and had worked as the head ASCP Medical Technologist at the Pediatric Metabolic Research Laboratory in Galveston. At OU, Peggy Chambers has the somewhat unusual reputation of being a demanding teacher who is nonetheless extremely popular with her students.

Conversations with the Dean

Conversations with the Dean This month’s “Conversation with the Dean” will be a bit unusual, in that it actually will be a conversation with the Dean of the Honors College.

We will try to have a wide-open and completely informal discussion about your educational and intellectual experience thus far as an Honors student at OU. Have you been challenged?

How much have you learned? What can the Honors College do differently to provide a better intellectual experience for you? Among other things, we will discuss student suggestions about books or subject areas for informal reading groups to be sponsored by the Honors College during Spring semester. We will discuss alternative formats or schedules for the informal reading groups. We will also discuss a schedule and format for campus-wide small-group or online discussions of the major challenges facing America in the near-term future. All Honors students are invited to attend either one of two alternative sessions: Friday, December 3rd, 4 to 5 PM, or Sunday, December 5th, 4 to 5 PM, both in 180/181 David L. Boren Hall.

Conversations with the Dean

Conversations with the Dean

Thursday, March 31 4:30 — 5:30 PM Nancy Mergler Library David L. Boren Hall Free pizza for all

Jill Irvine

“What's Gender Got to Do with It? Gender, Identity and Everyday Life" Oct 22nd 4:30—5:30 Room 181 David L. Boren Hall

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 325-5291

Conversations with the Dean Why wait until you graduate to gain valuable work experience while giving back to the underprivileged kids in your community? Breakthrough Collaborative trains students to be teachers in their own classroom while helping middle school students on their path to college. Annually, Breakthrough Collaborative trains more than 700 student teachers and prepares more than 5,400 students for college in 33 cities in the US and Hong Kong. After a week of training, you become the teacher in your own classroom, with support from mentor teachers. You experience every aspect of education, from lesson planning and classroom discipline to field trips and spirit weeks. But most importantly, you ignite the desire to learn and the confidence to excel inside a student who is likely to be the first in his family to attend college. If you are ready to find out more about this paid internship that Princeton Review has ranked among its top ten, stop by this information session to learn more about the program and hear about the experiences of a former Breakthrough Atlanta teacher!

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 (405) 325-5291

Breakthrough

Collaborative

with

Amanda Niedzwiecki International Area Studies major

Tuesday, November 15th 7:00—8:00 Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall

Fall 2017

CCo

HOW TO FIND A MENTOR

The Interview Process at Medical Schools Mubeen Shakir

Majors and Careers In A Volatile Economy

2013 Rhodes Scholar Biochemistry,

Summa Cum Laude 2013 Mubeen Shakir was named a 2013 Rhodes Scholar, becoming OU’s fourth in 13 years. He is a biochemistry major from Oklahoma, and will graduate summa cum laude in May 2013.

After graduation, Mubeen will attend Oxford University in England to obtain Masters Degrees in immunology and medical

SARAH SWENSON 2011 Rhodes Scholar

anthropology. Upon returning to the United States from Oxford, he will enter Harvard Medical School.

summa cum laude, class of 2011 Sarah Swenson was named a Rhodes Scholar in 2011, becoming OU’s third in 11 years. She came to OU from South Dakota and graduated summa cum laude in zoology - biomedical sciences. In 2012, she completed her Master's degree in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at Oxford University in England and is currently pursuing her PhD. Her research explores the social and political context in which biological theories of social behaviors were developed in the 1960s and became popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Upon finishing her PhD, she will enter medical school at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

5:30 – 6:30 Thursday, October 3 Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAN McClendon Honors College

Dana Zadeh,

a National Merit Scholar from San Diego, California, and cofounder of The Oklahoma Group, graduated summa cum laude with double majors in economics and international studies in 2012. After graduating, she pursued a career in international development in Afghanistan. This experience inspired her to obtain a Master's degree in Accounting at the University of Southern California, which she completed in May 2015. She will begin working for KPMG in Los Angeles this month.

Monte Simms Biology,

Summa Cum Laude 2013 Monte Simms is a biology major from Oklahoma, and is minoring in medical humanities. She will graduate

summa cum laude in May 2013. Monte plans to attend Duke University School of Medicine in the Fall.

Thursday, April 11 Room 180/181 David L. Boren Hall 6:30 – 7:30

For more information or accommodations on the basis of disability, contact the Honors College at 405.325.5291.

For more information or accommodations on the basis of disability contact the Honors College at 405.325.5291

Islam 101: The Perspectives of

Thursday, Sept 24 5:00 – 6:00 PM 180/181 DLBH Refreshments provided.

OU Honors College www.ou.edu/honors. For accommodations on the basis of disability, please call 405.325.5291.

The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution www.ou.edu/eoo

VOLATILE

Conversations with the Dean

Muslim Students at OU Alizay Paracha, President Muslim Student Association

Thomas Parker-Simpkins Arabic Flagship Scholar CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAN McClendon Honors College

6:30 to 7:30 Tuesday, March 11 Room 180-181 David L. Boren Hall

Come hear an OU engineering graduate describe the challenges of the field, detail the current realities of the job market, and discuss strategies to make you a more marketable candidate. There will be a question-and-answer session to follow.

BLAKE MYRICK Process Engineer at ExxonMobil Houston, Texas

Blake Myrick grew up in Yukon, Oklahoma and graduated with honors from the University of Oklahoma in 2011. While pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, he interned for Conoco Philips during the summer. He moved to Long Beach, California after graduating to work for Phillips 66. Blake has been involved in recruiting and hiring since 2011. He currently works as a process engineer for ExxonMobil in Houston, Texas.

Thursday, October 22nd 6:30pm David L. Boren Hall, Room 180/181 Refreshments Provided!

OU Honors College www.ou.edu/honors. For accommodations on the basis of disability, please call 405.325.5291. The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution www.ou.edu/eoo.

For more information or accommodations on the basis of disability, contact the Honors College at 405.325.5291.

VOLATILE

Dr. Amanda Cobb-Greetham, Ph.D.

Opening Career Paths with Native American Studies Learn more about the NAS major/minor and exciting opportunities that can help jumpstart your career. Presentation by Dr. Amanda Cobb-Greetham, Coca-Cola Professor and Director of Native American Studies.

Thursday, October 15 4:30pm

Conversations with the Dean How do you create a new discipline that represents American Indian communities and challenges conventional paradigms of knowledge in the academy?

Dr. Jerry Bread has devoted his career to making this happen at the University of Oklahoma and throughout the nation.

Dr. Bread is one of the founders of American Indian Studies at OU and has been a leader in American Indian policy making at the national, state, tribal and local levels. He holds a B.S. degree in Education from Northeastern State University (emphasis on Indian history and education); an M.S. in Education Administration (Indian education policy and history); and a Ph.D. in Education Administration (research, policy, leadership and curriculum development) from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Bread is a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and also has family ties to the Cherokee Nation.

David L. Boren Hall, Room 180/181

OU Honors College www.ou.edu/honors. For accommodations on the basis of disability, please call 405.325.5291. The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution www.ou.edu/eoo.

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019

Catherine Garmon, is a National Merit Scholar and Rath Scholar from Vernon, TX and will be graduating in December 2015 with a BBA in Accounting and Masters in Accounting with a taxation focus. During college she interned with a local government, a public accounting firm, and a large privately-owned company.

Jack Hobson is a native of Oklahoma.

Jack Hobson received his BA in 2000 in French language and literature from OU while serving as Special Assistant to President David L. Boren. After Graduation, Hobson worked in Washington DC for two years. He returned to OU in 2002 to work in the Office of Education Abroad. During this time, he also completed his M.A. degree in Global Affairs, with a thesis based on his research in Ethiopia and Senegal.

Hobson is currently completing his PhD in political science. In 2009, Hobson was named the Director of the OU’s Office of Education Abroad, where he is overseeing a significant expansion in the overall number of OU students from the Norman campus going abroad.

Bobbi Lakin is a first year medical student at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center. She graduated from OU Summa Cum Laude with a BA in International Area Studies in May 2010. She has studied abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico; Oxford, England; and most recently to Lima, Peru. All of these trips were funded through scholarships and personal earnings. In particular, the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship funded her trip to Peru. In her undergraduate years, Bobbi worked at the OU Scholars office and volunteered in free health clinics, performing triage and translating for Spanish speaking patients. She was also an active member of the Arts and Science Leadership Scholars, Pi Beta Phi Women's Fraternity, and the Honors College. Her extracurricular activities include Team Everest, Students Today Alumni Tomorrow, and the Community Health Alliance.

Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College David L. Boren Hall 1300 Asp Norman, OK 73019 (405) 325-5291

“Study Abroad Opportunities for OU Students” Jack Hobson,

Director of Study Abroad

Bobbi Lakin,

First Year Medical Student, BA in International Area Studies

Tuesday, February 15

NEW TIME AND LOCATION

5:30 PM Lounge in Cate Main (food court)

OU and Columbia University President’s Mentorship Program in Cancer Research

Decolonizing Knowledge: American Indian Studies and Educational Sovereignty

Dr. Jerry Bread Native American Studies Program

Nov 5th 4:30—5:30 Room 181 David L. Boren Hall

The President’s Mentorship Program provides one OU Honors student with the opportunity to participate in high-level cancer research at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City in the lab of Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Staff Oncologist, and Pulitzer Prize Winning Author of THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES. The Program will fund the student for eight weeks this summer, beginning June 2nd and providing both travel and living/boarding stipends. This program is open to Honors students who desire a career in biomedical research or medicine, with preference to those who will continue graduate studies in research.

INFORMATION MEETING: Thursday, February 14th, 6:30 to 7:30 PM 180/181 David L. Boren Hall CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAN McClendon Honors College

For more information or accommodations on the basis of disability, contact the Honors College at 405.325.5291.

Fall 2017

Honors at OU 23

Alumni Spotlight

HONORS ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT KENNETH AGEE Kenneth Agee graduated magna cum laude in 2010 with degrees in letters and economics and a Spanish minor. While at OU, Agee studied abroad in Castelló, Spain, at the University of Jaume I. He participated in some of the earliest reading groups with Dean David Ray when they covered just one book over the course of the semester and met in the conference room of the political science department.

Exposure to great professors instilled in Agee a thirst for knowledge and a desire to make a difference.

Dean Ray and Professor Robert Lifset deserve special recognition. In the Honors College, Agee enjoyed a variety of classes and being surrounded by a culturally diverse and intellectually engaging student body.

After graduating from OU, Agee attended New York University law and studied abroad at the Catholic University of Leuven in Leuven, Belgium. He graduated from NYU in 2013. Among his proudest achievements was assisting a gay client in being granted asylum in the United States from Russia. Agee currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and practices law as an associate in the corporate group at Akerman LLP.

KATIE BAKER Katie Baker came to OU in 2007 on a National Merit Scholarship and graduated summa cum laude in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a teaching certificate.

As an undergraduate, she was involved in the Student Oklahoma Education Association and sang in the University Choir.

Much of her time outside of class was spent working with OU Amnesty International, helping to organize letter-writing campaigns on behalf of prisoners of 24 Honors at OU

conscience and other events that raised awareness of human rights issues. The rest of it was likely spent playing Dungeons and Dragons.

While at OU, Baker won the Lupita Thompson Award and the Patricio Jimenez Award for excellence in Spanish. In 2009, she studied abroad at La Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in Spain and thus also was afforded the opportunity to travel to Great Britain, France and throughout Spain.

For Baker, the Honors College took her OU experience from good to excellent. The professors in the Honors College taught her to see the world outside her academic bubble and to think broadly about world problems by considering a variety of perspectives and sources. The students she encountered changed her vision of what was possible for an undergraduate and inspired her to read more widely.

Baker also gained essential life experience through her job working in the OU Scholars Office in the Honors College. During senior year, the Honors College encouraged her to carry out a research study on language learning and teaching. The skills she developed through this semester-long project have proved highly valuable working in the education field and also have been useful in reading scientific research papers with a critical eye.

Since graduation, Baker has focused on teaching, writing and traveling. After working in Oklahoma for a year, she moved to Boise, Idaho, where she works as a middle school Spanish teacher. Her primary goal is to inspire students to explore the world, travel and appreciate diverse cultures while learning a language along the way. She was chosen as the 2015-2016 Teacher of the Year for Heritage Middle School and this year was nominated as the World Language Teacher of the Year for the state of Idaho.

In 2014, she published a short novel for young Spanish readers, La Llorona de Mazatlán, through Fluency Matters Publishing. In 2016, she published a second book, inspired by her travels in Bolivia and Peru, titled El Ekeko: un misterio boliviano.

Fall 2017

Alumni Spotlight MATTHEW BRUEHL Matthew Bruehl graduated summa cum laude in 2008 with a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology. He was an Oklahoma State Regents Scholar, and during his undergraduate studies he was awarded the Cortez AM Ewing Public Service Fellowship, serving as a congressional intern in Washington, D.C. He served on the editorial board of the Honors Undergraduate Research Journal in 2007 and as secretary-general of the Model United Nations of the Southwest from 2007-2008. Other undergraduate honors included OU’s Big Man on Campus Award, election to the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the Iva Schmidt Springstead Award as the best overall graduating senior in anthropology.

He worked as a student employee in the hands-on Discovery Room area at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History from 2006-2008. He volunteered at the Manos Juntas Medical Clinic, based at the Epworth United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City throughout his undergraduate career. He met his wife, Kelsey Kemp (Class of 2008), in Dean David Ray’s Politics of US Economic Policy course in the spring of 2008.

Bruehl studied medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, earning his medical degree in 2012. He won the annual “Neuro Idol” award from the OU Department of Neurology, which his presented to the medical student who could perform a complete neurological exam on a standardized patient, without error, in the shortest amount of time. He received the Michael Lynn Stratton Scholarship in his final year.

After medical school, Bruehl pursued post-graduate training in pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the top programs in the nation.

In 2014, he was elected to the UNC School of Medicine Academy of Educators, an honor bestowed on those who emphasize scholarship and excellence in teaching during their medical career. He pursued further specialization in pediatric pulmonology after developing an affinity for the care of children with chronic respiratory conditions, especially cystic fibrosis.

During his fellowship at UNC, he has focused his research on the development of precision medicine Fall 2017

assays to customize therapies targeting the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator, the defective protein in cystic fibrosis. He was awarded a grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to investigate differences in the responses of nasal and bronchial epithelial cells to CFTR activation. He also is involved in NIH-sponsored research examining the utility of nasal epithelial organoids to predict individual response to CFTR-modulating therapies.

His other career interest is clinical informatics – the study of how information technology can be applied to the health care field to improve patient outcomes and reduce physician burnout. He currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife, Kelsey, and is pursuing a career in academic medicine.

JORDAN CANNON

Jordan Cannon graduated summa cum laude in 2012, majoring in international security studies and Arabic. He was active in such campus organizations as the Arabic Club, the Honors Undergraduate Research Journal and the International Advisory Committee. He also worked as a teacher’s assistant for an Honors College professor, helping to compile data about Islamic organizations and their influence in America.

During his time at OU, he also received the Arabic Flagship Scholarship and the Boren Award for Arabic Study. This allowed him to spend over a year between Morocco and Egypt to improve his Arabic language ability and witness the rebuilding of their societies both during and in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Cannon went from never having taken a foreign language before college to fluency in both Arabic and Chinese after. Coming from a small town, he had never been exposed to an especially vibrant intellectual environment before entering the Honors College. It was the first time he realized there were many young adults

Honors at OU 25

Alumni Spotlight like him. The sense of community inspired him to pursue his intellectual passions.

This epiphany first occurred during Dean Ray’s American Federal Government course. It was during those intellectually stimulating classes that Cannon finally acquired the confidence to challenge himself academically throughout his life. Professor Olberding’s Law and Punishment course also taught him to hold himself to a much higher and more rigorous standard, a standard he has striven to maintain throughout his life.

After graduation, Cannon taught English for a year in Seoul, South Korea, then accepted an English teaching position at a private school in Nablus, West Bank. He taught there for a semester and hopes to use his first-hand experience to bring greater understanding of the conflict back home. He then returned to Asia with the Peace Corps and spent two years at Qiandongnan National Polytechnic College in Guizhou province in rural China teaching American culture and literature. He had the honor of personally teaching thousands of students, some of whom will go on to become nurses, doctors and dentists in areas that just a few decades ago were desperately impoverished and without access to basic medical services.

After completing his Peace Corps service, Cannon will attend law school at the University of Michigan, where he will enroll in the J.D./M.A. program with a Masters in Chinese Studies. Michigan Law’s Program in Refugee and Asylum Law will be his primary focus. He hopes to couple his experiences abroad and legal education to advocate for human rights and judicial independence all over the world.

RACHEL MUCHMORE CHAUDHARY Rachel Muchmore Chaudhary graduated from OU summa cum laude in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a minor in Arabic. While at the Honors College, she was awarded a Fulbright Hays grant to study Arabic in Jordan and to pursue a summer internship at the offices of Congressman Dan Boren. She also was active in student groups, including student congress and a film discussion group, Subtitles and Subtexts, that she helped establish.

Today, Chaudhary is a senior counsel in the Data Protection & Privacy Office of SAP, a global leader in enterprise software. She specializes in advising on global privacy issues with a focus on U.S. and European laws.

26 Honors at OU

Previously, she worked at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP, a global law firm, as a corporate associate focusing on mergers and acquisitions. Prior to that, she was a legal fellow at Kiva Microfunds, a nonprofit microlending platform.

Chaudhary earned her juris doctorate and master of law degrees in international and comparative law in 2009 from Duke University School of Law, where she served as symposium editor at the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law. She enjoys building and refining her expertise in comparative law and privacy law in her role at SAP. Chaudhary’s OU degree has proven invaluable to her in her work at a multinational company. In fact, she has taken up learning German to indulge her passion for languages! Chaudhary lives with her husband and newborn daughter in Menlo Park, California.

EVAN FRY Evan Fry graduated summa cum laude from OU in 2014 with degrees in biochemistry and economics. During his time on campus, he was involved with the Ronnie K. Irani Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth, the Integrity Council, the Honors Student Association and the Oklahoma Group.

He spent a summer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and another in China structuring a partnership between OU’s Dean McGee Eye Institute and a public hospital in Sichuan.

One of Fry’s most formative college experiences was his summer study abroad program in Italy with Honors College professor Julia Ehrhardt; there, he spent four weeks traveling across Italy taking courses in Italian art, architecture and literature. Not only did he develop strong bonds with the other Honors students on the trip, but he had the opportunity to study subjects widely outside his areas of concentration. These experiences stoked his curiosity and provided him the tools to critically evaluate art and architecture throughout the rest of his tenure at OU and in Chicago, where he currently resides.

Additionally, Evan enjoyed the Informed Citizens Discussion Groups that launched during his senior year.

That was his first time to truly engage with current affairs, and his small discussion group of students with diverse backgrounds meant that discussions were

Fall 2017

Alumni Spotlight thoughtful, passionate and frequently extending long into time he should have spent studying.

After graduating, Fry spent time in Chicago working in health care consulting, advising hospitals on payment models and patient quality initiatives. He currently is a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry and conducts research on oral health disparities between economic classes and neighborhoods in Chicago.

He plans to specialize in oral and maxillofacial surgery after graduating.

He also runs marathons and serves on the Young Professional Board of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, both interests he developed as a student at OU.

JAMES HARTLINE James Hartline came to OU as a National Merit Scholar and graduated summa cum laude in 2008 with a major in microbiology and minors in history and history of science. He worked as an undergraduate research assistant in Tyrrell Conway’s E. coli lab and as an official campus tour guide.

As an undergraduate, he was honored to become a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, becoming permanently indebted to Melanie Wright for her support along the way. Other honors include being awarded the Letzeiser Gold Medal as well as being selected as the Outstanding Senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.

It would be impossible to overstate the impact of the OU Honors College on Hartline’s education and personal growth. Many of his favorite experiences occurred in the OU Honors College, including the Outdoor Adventure First-Year Trip (both as a participant and later as a guide), studying abroad as part of the Honors at Oxford program, and spirited discussions both in and out of the classroom.

His fondest classroom experiences include taking Professor (now Dean) David Ray’s CIA and Congress course (almost certainly his favorite class of all time), President Boren’s Honors small-group American Federal Government course, the Honors What Is Science course, Professor Sarah Tracy’s Modern Epidemics course, nearly all of his History of Sciences classes and, of course, the real-life lessons taught to him by Professor Julia Ehrhardt as she sponsored the First-Year Trip.

Hartline attended the OU School of Medicine and completed his residency training at Madigan Army

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Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington. He went on to serve as an active-duty Emergency Medicine Physician for the U.S. Army. He currently is stationed in Germany, where he is assigned to the 212th Combat Support Hospital while also working as a staff physician at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. He currently lives with his wife, Sandra, and young daughter Avery, who delights and inspires him every day.

DEREK R. KOLB Derek R. Kolb majored in International & Area Studies and Public Affairs & Administration, graduating magna cum laude from OU in 2005. While studying at OU, Kolb worked in both University Housing serving as first an RA and then Programming Assistant for Couch Center and for the Office of Education Abroad.

He also played bassoon in the OU Wind Symphony.

He studied abroad during his sophomore year in Quito, Ecuador and between his junior and senior years in Kyebi, Ghana.

For Kolb, the OU Honors College is, in hindsight, the best education he could have wished for. The small class sizes and personal relationships with professors were aspects not even available in graduate school. Kolb can still remember details from honors courses taken with Dean David Ray and Professor David Levy — the joy in comparing American literature across history and how the works revealed such a richer understanding of the times than a history book. Outside of the Honors College, Kolb still uses skills from Professor Franklin’s public administration courses in his daily work. But, perhaps his best experiences were in Professor Thomas’s courses on constitutional law and working with Prof. Thomas on his honors research thesis, which went on to win both the OU Benson Undergraduate Paper Award and the Oklahoma Political Science Association’s Best Undergraduate Paper Award in 2006. After working at and visiting other universities after leaving OU, Kolb appreciates even more the opportunities and resources he had as an undergraduate, especially the ability to use and study in the Bizzell, Honors, and Donald E. Pray Libraries.

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Alumni Spotlight After graduating from OU, Kolb joined the U.S. Peace Corps in 2005, serving two years in China where he met his future husband and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Gilberto Lucero. Kolb earned a master’s degree in international relations from the University of California San Diego in 2009 before becoming a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department in 2010. Kolb has served tours in Havana, Cuba; Vancouver, Canada; and Merida, Mexico. Currently, Kolb serves as the American Citizen Services Chief for the Yucatan Peninsula, protecting the safety and security of the over 7.3 million U.S. Citizens who visit the region annually.

Derek and Gilberto legally married in Washington, D.C., in 2011 and have twins, Leo and Luna, born in India in 2012.

MADISON MELON Madison Melon graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from OU in December 2011 with a degree in women’s and gender studies. She was a founding board member of The Oklahoma Group and also served as a team leader on a consulting project during TOG’s first semester.

Melon also worked for the Center for Social Justice and was an executive officer in her sorority, Alpha Phi. During her senior year, she led a feminist reading group as part of the Honors College Informal Reading Groups program. She also participated in N.E.W. Leadership in 2008 (through the Carl Albert Center) and was a Ewing Fellow in 2011.

Melon ended up spending an extra semester at OU just so that she would have the opportunity to study abroad in Arezzo, Italy, with Professor Julia Ehrhardt. She still maintains relationships with Ehrhardt and former Honors professor Marcia Chatelain. Their classes helped Melon discover a passion for women’s studies and social justice, leading her to her career today as an assistant public defender. Melon also met all her best friends now in college through the Honors College. She appreciated the size and format of Honors college classes as well as the opportunity to engage in discussions with professors and fellow students, all of which helped prepare her for postgraduate life.

After graduating from OU, Melon was accepted to Georgetown University Law Center in Washington,

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D.C. Once she passed the bar exam, Melon became an assistant public defender in Oklahoma County. She currently works with Drug/DUI and Mental Health Courts on diversion programs to keep individuals with substance abuse and mental health needs out of prison and get them in to treatment services. These programs give criminal defendants a chance to lift themselves out of the system, often for the first time in their adult lives. There are about 600 participants from all walks of life. Melon helps them not only with their legal issues, but also with case management (housing, transportation, other social services). She also is starting an adult education program for participants so they have a more tailored approach to earn their GEDs.

SHANE MORGAN Shane Morgan attended OU as a National Merit Scholar, graduating in 2006 with majors in Letters and Classics, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. While at OU, he was active in Student Government, serving on Student Congress and as Election Chairman for student body elections in the 2005-06 school year. Shane spent as much time in the Honors College as he was able to, working as an Honors College Writing Assistant and Research Assistant to Professor Samuel Huskey.

The Honors College fundamentally shaped Shane’s academic career. In Professor Ellen Greene’s Honors course on Homer, Virgil, and Dante, Shane discovered an abiding interest in Classical literature. He pursued this interest throughout his time at OU, and after graduation, followed it through a Master’s degree in Classics at Texas Tech, where he focused on Latin satire. After finishing the Master’s degree, Shane remained at Texas Tech teaching Latin, Classical Mythology, and Ancient Sports and working for the American Journal of Philology.

After he left Texas Tech, Shane earned a J.D. at a “University” in “Texas”, where he was the Managing Editor of the Law Review. He worked at major law firms in New York, Houston, and Washington, D.C. before taking his current position as Corporate Counsel at a large construction firm. In his current role, he advises his client on a range of corporate and transactional matters, and enjoys seeing his client’s name on cranes around town. He uses skills he developed in the Honors College, like the

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Alumni Spotlight ability to think and write critically and persuasively, in his practice every day. Shane lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, fellow OU Honors College (and UT) alumna Jennifer Lindley.

BLAKE MYRICK Blake Myrick graduated magna cum laude in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a Spanish minor. While at OU, Myrick participated in AIChE, the Chem-E car competition and served as a Dean’s Leadership Council mentor. He studied abroad in Chile for a semester at the Universidad Viña del Mar and had the opportunity to travel through Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru.

In fall 2007, Myrick took the course Generational Politics with Dean (then-Professor) David Ray. Just about the only thing the course adhered to in the syllabus was the reading list, because a significant portion of the course was spent reading and discussing articles about credit default swaps and the subprime mortgage bubble.

It didn’t have a whole lot of meaning for Myrick until it became clear that the impending financial crisis the class had been discussing was underway. Myrick realized then how important it is to stay well read (in books and articles) and to pay attention to world affairs. Graduating with Honors was a nice achievement to have – a good goal for motivation. The real value that the Honors College provided Myrick was the realization that there is a deeper understanding of the world available through reading and discussion.

After graduating from OU, Myrick took a job with Conoco Phillips in Long Beach, California. He relocated to Washington, D.C., and then Houston, to work for Exxon Mobil. Myrick currently works as an account manager for Haldor Topsoe and splits his time between Houston and Los Angeles.

DAVID POSTIC David Postic graduated magna cum laude in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in business management and a minor in religious studies. As an undergraduate student, he was active in a number of organizations, including President’s Leadership Class, Campus Fall 2017

Activities Council, The Oklahoma Group, Student Alumni Association, Rotaract and Student Government Association.

He also was selected as a Letzeiser Honor Awardwinner and Big Man on Campus, was named the first-ever “Mr. OU,” and presented a TED Talk at TEDxOU in 2013.

Some of Postic’s fondest memories of school are from the Honors College. His first Honors College experience was a Presidential Dream Course, “The Atom in the American Experience,” taught by associate dean Rich Hamerla and Professor Robert Lifset. He enrolled in the class blindly, picking it simply because it gave him the most desirable course schedule, but he quickly became engrossed in the engaging course material, lectures and classroom discussions that define the Honors curriculum.

The Honors College exposed him to a wide variety of subjects he would have never studied in business school: art, philosophy, nuclear physics and monetary policy, to name just a few. In fact, it was Professor Marie Dallam’s colloquium Death, Dying and Religion in the US that convinced him to pursue a minor in religious studies.

Most importantly of all, the Honors College helped Postic rediscover the joys of reading and writing, which remain two of the greatest pleasures in his life.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Postic worked for Congressman Tom Cole in his Washington, D.C., office before returning to Oklahoma to earn a J.D. from the OU College of Law, where he graduated with Honors in 2016.

While pursuing his law degree, Postic served as a note and comment editor of the Oklahoma Law Review, was named to the prestigious Order of the Barristers and was the 2015 National Champion of the Ruby R. Vale Corporate Law Moot Court Competition. He credits the Honors College with cultivating the study habits and intellectual curiosity that allowed him to excel in law school.

Postic now practices law at Postic & Bates, P.C., in Oklahoma City, where he works primarily in the areas of estate planning, probate, adoption and general litigation.

He is an active member of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg American Inn of Court, South Oklahoma City Lawyers Association and the Oklahoma City Real Property Lawyers Association.

Outside of law-related activities, he dedicates most of his time to Rotary International and its young-adult program, Rotaract. While in school, he founded OU Rotaract PolioPlus Banquet, an annual community Honors at OU 29

Alumni Spotlight fundraiser that has helped raise over $30,000 to buy polio vaccines for children in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. From 2013–2015, he was a member of Rotary International’s Rotaract-Interact Committee, advising the Rotary International Board of Directors on Rotaractrelated policy issues, and he currently serves as general secretary of the Rocky Mountain Rotaract Multi-District Information Organization, overseeing the development of Rotaract organizations in the central United States.

SHANE PRUITT Shane Pruitt graduated summa cum laude in 2011 with a degree in microbiology and a minor in chemistry.

In 2013, he completed a master’s degree in higher education administration at OU as well. Being a part of OU’s campus life had great influence on who he has become.

Some of his most memorable involvement opportunities were being named to the President’s Leadership Class, being elected as an officer of the Honors Student Association and serving as an official campus tour guide. Pruitt also served as the president of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity and enjoyed working on many projects with the Campus Activities Council, including the High School Leadership Conference. By the end of his time at OU, Pruitt had been named Big Man on Campus, selected to Homecoming Court and garnered a Letzeiser Medal, the top citizenship and achievement award offered on campus.

Pruitt took advantage of the Honors at Oxford program, and that trip was the very first time he had ever been on a plane. In addition to all the new experiences, being able to study Shakespeare in the country of his birth was life-changing. Taking side trips to places like Spain, Italy and Ireland changed his perspective on the world. A truly great faculty member, Professor Ronald Schleifer, stands out as offering one of the most memorable courses Pruitt took while at OU. Literature and Medicine used literary texts and popular descriptions of medical practice, as well as other kinds of narratives, to examine the relationship between the “art” and the “science” of medicine. However, it was the ability of Schleifer to help us understand human nature — including ways of thinking, feeling and acting — that taught him how to truly empathize with people holding different experiences than his own. Being a part of the 30 Honors at OU

Honors College gave Pruitt a second family. The courses were rigorous and set him up for future academic and career success, but more important were the connections he made that helped him to overcome much of the homesickness and lack of confidence of a first-generation college student.

He was able to obtain the highest quality education possible by throwing himself into thick of the Honors program, and that set of experiences has been invaluable.

This past year, Pruitt competed a doctorate degree in higher education from the University of Memphis.

Studying in this field has allowed him to research ways in which students are bound to their colleges with a critical eye toward how student life directly impacts the ability of students to persist to graduation. This year alone, he had over a dozen speaking engagements on this subject all around the country.

Pruitt currently serves as director of student engagement and leadership at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. In this role, he applies many of the lessons learned in the OU Honors College to students who are looking to get the most out of their college experience.

OSMAN SHEIKH Osman Sheikh graduated magna cum laude from OU in May 2010 with a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry. He served on the Honors College Committee and as lecture chair for the Honors Student Association. The first of the “Popular Professors” Lecture Series was in November 2009, and the invited speaker was Professor Tom Boyd, David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at OU. Sheikh remembers the event in the Mergler Library as a fun, engaging and intellectually stimulating event.

After Boyd’s lecture, Sheikh remembers going to dinner with his wife, Meagan, and talking about his future career plans and how he needed to decide on something he was passionate about: in Shekih’s case, science and the curiosities of life. Boyd’s lecture was one of the reasons Sheikh was motivated to pursue a doctorate and career in science.

The Honors College prepared Sheikh for life after graduation by offering specialized courses in topics that he would not usually have taken for his major. One of his favorite Honors courses was The Atom and the American Experience, coordinated by professors Rich Hamerla and Fall 2017

Alumni Spotlight Robert Lifset in fall 2008. With two professors, students were able to experience different styles of teaching, an exceptional literature selection and discussions about an important topic in American history relevant to today’s world.

In addition to The Atom and the American Experience, Sheikh took Music and Culture in Everyday Life with Professor Amanda Minks and International Relations in the Middle East with Professor Joshua Landis. The atmosphere of being close to other honors students where they could bounce around ideas, concerns and various thought processes opened his mind to alternative ways of thinking about various topics.

Motivation to become an independent scientist actually began as an undergraduate in the OU Honors College, where Sheikh successfully obtained funding through a grant from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and the OU Honors Council under the mentorship of Professor LeRoy Blank. Sheikh learned analytical techniques, such as gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, for the study of his project, titled “The Toxicology of Malathion on Select Species of Blow Flies,” which was selected for presentation at American Chemical Society, 55th Annual Pentasectional Meeting in Norman, Oklahoma.

After finishing his undergraduate degree at OU, Sheikh pursued graduate training under the advisement of Christopher M. West, a glycobiologist at the OU Health Sciences Center, where Sheikh was trained in biochemical and biophysical characterization of glycosylated proteins from the protozoan model organism Dictyostelium discoideum in an effort to understand the proliferation of Toxoplasma gondii, a distantly related protist pathogen.

During his doctoral studies, Sheikh became skilled at new techniques outside the scope of his primary laboratory through collaborative studies to investigate protein structure and dynamics. These techniques include small-angle X-ray scattering, solution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and circular dichroism spectroscopy.

At the completion of his dissertation work, Sheikh was selected for the 2015 Fred and Marie Gray Research Achievement Award from the OUHSC Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which recognizes graduate students for their early career achievements in successful publications and presentations at local and national conferences.

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Sheikh currently is a postdoctoral researcher associate at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia. He also is an adjunct chemistry instructor at Athens Technical College in Athens, Georgia, teaching General Chemistry I and II.

ALEXANDER SPRAY Alexander Spray attended OU as a National Merit Scholar, graduating summa cum laude in 2010 with a degree in international and area studies and minors in economics and French.

While at OU, he attended the Honors College Informal Reading Groups and worked as a peer learning assistant. He was privileged to spend a semester abroad studying at l’universite de Bordeaux and found a home in coursework pursued through the School of International and Area studies and the Honors College.

Spray also completed an internship with the Impact Young Lives Foundation in support of the development of talented South African youth and volunteered in support of Hurricane Katrina cleanup and as an aide for instruction of conversational English in American Samoa.

Honors College coursework stimulated and expanded Spray’s intellectual life. Following a high school career focused heavily on STEM, the challenging and critical nature of the studies he pursued at OU encouraged and developed a social consciousness and interdisciplinary mindset that has continued to this day.

Spray remembers and frequently revisits works by Steiner, Said, Foucault and others to which he was first introduced in the Honors College, through excellent curricula under Dean David Ray’s instruction. A turning point in his academic life came through an International Finance course taught by Firat Demir, which in part prompted his undergraduate thesis on uncertainty and subsequent graduate work in economics.

Spray completed a masters’ degree in economics in 2012 at the University of Denver, where he was awarded the Satish Raichur Award for excellence in the graduate study of political economy, and a later iteration of his undergraduate thesis was awarded the Association for Institutional Thought Student Scholar Award. He has since returned full circle to STEM, and Norman, and currently works in data science in the financial services sector.

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Alumni Spotlight BRYCE ROWLAND Bryce Rowland graduated from OU magna cum laude with a major in International Studies and minor in Business in 2014. While at OU, he was active in President’s Leadership Class, Crimson Club, Delta Upsilon, Camp Crimson, Native American Student Association, and was named a Leadership Fellow of the College of International Studies. He was also the chair and founder of Campus Activities Council’s Oklahoma Creativity Festival, and enjoyed being the vocal director for his fraternity’s University Sing and Sooner Scandals shows on numerous occasions. Rowland spent a semester abroad in Arezzo, Italy during the spring semester of his junior year. Upon graduating from OU, Bryce spent a year at Wake Forest University School of Business obtaining his Master’s in Business Management.

Rowland believes that his time in the Honors College tremendously enhanced not only his college career, but also his life in general. He relished the opportunities he had to interact with students who genuinely valued knowledge and learning. He was particularly fond of Dean Ray’s Politics of U.S. Economic Policy course.

This course acted as a catapult for understanding and critiquing the underbelly of American economic discourse. It also caused him to become visibly upset around his colleagues several years later when he watched “The Big Short,” upon realizing that the film hardly scratched the surface of the issues surrounding the economic crisis of the late 2000’s.

Rowland now has the pleasure of waking up in a new city nearly every day as he travels across the country enjoying his dream job as a Sales Training Specialist for the Lexus division of Toyota Motors North America— the largest automotive company in the world. Based in Atlanta, GA, Rowland has the opportunity to design and present courses focused on enhancing guest experiences at Lexus dealerships, whether through increasing product knowledge among dealer personnel or improving dealership processes using technology. A long-time car fanatic and Lexus enthusiast, Rowland uses his expertise to transform the arduous and untrustworthy car-buying process that has plagued the industry for decades.

Additionally, Rowland often represents Lexus in front of automotive media and ensures that product information is transferred and published accurately to the purchasing 32 Honors at OU

public. It is without a doubt that the Honors College experience influenced Rowland’s path toward becoming a purveyor of knowledge and insight within an industry that is seeking solutions for adapting to an all-new set of young, knowledgeable consumers.

BRADY WILLIAMS Brady Williams graduated summa cum laude from OU in 2016 with a dual degree in philosophy and sociology.

While at OU, Williams served as a vice chair of the Informed Citizens Discussion Group and participated in the Informal Reading Groups program.

After studying abroad in Uganda during the summer of 2015, Williams started a call for donations through OU Students for Social Justice to relocate to the United States four Ugandans who had suffered persecution in that country because of their LGBTQ status. Williams also received an alumni scholarship from the sociology department in 2016.

After graduating, Williams began pursuing his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. During his first year at Berkeley Law, he volunteered at the East Bay Community Law Center’s Consumer Rights Workshop, where he helped provide free consumerrelated legal services to low-income members of the Bay Area community. Williams will lead the Consumer Rights Workshop for the upcoming academic year and will sit on the board of Berkeley’s Consumer Advocacy and Protection Society.

After finishing his first year of law school, Williams worked in the Consumer Law section of the California Attorney General’s Office in Los Angeles. At the Attorney General’s Office, he assisted several deputy attorneys general in investigating potential violations of California’s various consumer protection statutes. Williams hopes to one day work as an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission or Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

SHARE YOUR NEWS Are you an Honors alumnus or alumna? We are currently soliciting profiles for future Honors newsletters and would love to hear your stories. If you’d like to share, please contact Will O’Donnell at (405) 325-3040 or willodonnell03@ou.edu.

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Professor Marie Dallam to publish second monograph, Cowboy Christians

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pread across the American South and West are Christian churches with a certain distinct, western heritage character. Some offer services in barns or rodeo arenas. Others hold team-roping events or invite congregants out to ride ATVs. While not theologically distinct, these “cowboy churches” share a casual approach to ministry and tend to attract congregants who are involved in ranching, farming, or otherwise have an affinity for the culture of the American West. After five years of research, Professor Marie Dallam is preparing to publish her second book on these cowboy churches, titled Cowboy Christians.

The idea to research and write about cowboy churches originates from Dallam’s first weekend in Norman as a new professor.

“I saw an ad for a cowboy church in the local paper, and it was like a big question mark,” she said.

Dallam looked to the library for answers but couldn’t find anything academic, just short articles in various newspapers and magazines.

“I realized there wasn’t anything written,” said Dallam, who began research for her book in 2010-2011.

Cowboy Christians draws from historical and sociological fieldwork, dozens of interviews and even firsthand experience as a participant observer.

“I started with some interviews of random cowboy church pastors,” Dallam said. A new avenue of exploration opened in 2012 when Dallam first attended “Cowboy Church University,” a weekend-long clinic affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene created for pastors to learn how to establish and sustain their own cowboy churches.

What, in particular, makes a cowboy church?

“The feel of it,” Dallam responded. “The approach to church services, the way members interact with one another in and around church, the attitudes about sin – you know, ‘we take all people, no matter how bad your sins.’”

Dallam also mentioned the importance of countrywestern music, a specific Western heritage idiom, handshakes, kindness and a lack of judgment, etc. Cowboy Fall 2017

churches are, in Dallam’s words, “deliberately casual and low-key,” with many churches leaving a donation bucket (or cowboy boot/hat) by the door in place of passing an offering plate during service. A similarly casual view is taken toward evangelism.

Institutions bearing the name “cowboy churches” have been in existence since the 1980s and 1990s but were very different both from one another and from the cowboy churches of today. Pastor Ron Nolen, who Dallam interviewed for her book, was instrumental in unifying and codifying the cowboy church movement beginning around 2000.

In spite of this, there isn’t always comity between churches. Dallam pointed out that some churches judge Honors at OU 33

each other based on the pastor, especially if that pastor is not considered to have real “cowboy credentials.”

“Some pastors say that if you don’t have an arena, you aren’t a cowboy church,” added Dallam.

Overwhelmingly English-speaking and white, there are nevertheless a few Spanish-speaking churches and at least one known African-American cowboy church in east Texas. While most congregations are split fairly evenly along gender lines, Dallam has noted that most cowboy churches are particularly eager to attract more men, which aligns the movement with the ideals of muscular Christianity, an approach to Protestantism that first emerged in the nineteenth century. The subordination of women to more participatory roles within the churches, Dallam notes, may be a future challenge to these institutions in a time of increasing gender equality. In Cowboy Christians, Dallam presents the long history of cowboy Christianity and the religious and cultural significance of the movement today, particularly in relation to contemporary evangelical Protestantism.

This fall, Dallam is teaching the courses Religion and State and American Religious Biography. She will return in spring 2018 to teach the Religion and Pop Culture colloquium course. Dallam also is excited to be joining the

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Honors at Oxford program in England for the first time in summer 2018, where she will be teaching the three-week course Religion in Modern Britain, focusing mostly on the history of religious dissent.

“I feel very lucky to teach Honors students at OU. Most days, I go into class and simply have engaging conversations about interesting material with a group of smart, focused students. I often learn from them. It’s a genuine pleasure.”

Professor Dallam is an associate professor of religious studies and joined the Honors College faculty in 2009.

She earned a doctorate in religious studies from Temple University. Her teaching and research focus on American religion and culture. Her previously published books include Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer (2007) and Religion, Food, and Eating in North America (co-edited anthology, 2014), and she also has authored numerous articles and book chapters. Dallam also is co-editing an academic journal, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.

Cowboy Christians will be available in hardcover by Christmas 2017 and has an official publication date of early 2018.

Fall 2017

HONORS COLLEGE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH DAY Undergraduate Research Day is an annual conference and celebration hosted by the Honors College for students who were funded in their research or creative activities from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and students in general who want to show what they have discovered in their fields.

This one-day conference showcases outstanding undergraduate research and creative activity for an audience of other students, faculty and parents. The Honors College invites all undergraduates at accredited institutions to apply.

Participants give a short talk (10 to 15 minutes) on their research. These presentations may be Powerpoint, video and/or performances. Topics can include the arts, natural sciences, life sciences, business, engineering, social sciences, critical studies in ancient or modern literature, and the humanities. Prose and poetry submissions and other forms of creative activity also are encouraged.

For more information, please contact Jeff Cooper at jdcooper@ou.edu or Melanie Wright at mwright@ou.edu.

HONORS RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROGRAM The Honors Research Assistant Program provides Honors students the opportunity to work with professors as research assistants on specific projects on which the professor is studying. Participants are expected to work 10 hours a week

for 10 weeks for a $900 stipend. Honors College students with at least 15 hours of college credit and a GPA of 3.4 or above are eligible to apply. Please contact Jeff Cooper at jdcooper@ ou.edu for questions.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM With the generous support of the Office of the Vice President of Research, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program offers financial assistance for scholarly and creative projects under the mentorship of a faculty member.

Dozens of research projects are funded each year so that undergraduates may undertake ambitious and exciting research endeavors. This competitive program is open to all University of Oklahoma Norman campus and Health Sciences Center students who compete for research grants of up to $1,000 each semester.

Students and faculty from across the university discover the benefits of these hands-on research opportunities in laboratories, studios, libraries and field sites. At the conclusion of their work, UROP recipients present the results of their research or accounts of their work in progress at the Honors College’s Undergraduate Research Day, a professional-like conference held in April of each year. Contact Jeff Cooper at jdcooper@ou.edu or Rich Hamerla at rhamerla@ou.edu with questions.

FIRST-YEAR RESEARCH EXPERIENCE In partnership with the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Honors College offers an opportunity for first-year Honors students to participate in laboratory research each spring. This course, the Honors First-Year Research Experience, is open to Honors College students from all Fall 2017

majors. Students are chosen through a competitive application process and participate in active laboratory research. They receive three hours of credit in both chemistry and Honors for successfully completing the course. For more information, please contact the Honors College at honors@ou.edu.

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Honors students attend

American Arachnological Society Meeting in Mexico

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his past summer, former Presidential Teaching Fellow in Honors and biology professor Doug Gaffin took OU students Kendall Hughes, Nina Rivera-Roldan and Max Daniels to the American Arachnological Society meetings in Juriquilla, Querétaro, Mexico to present some of the findings of their research. Both Rivera-Roldan and Hughes won awards for their work, and as a result, the Gaffin lab carried two of the three student awards given out this year.

OU alumna Nina Rivera-Roldan won first place, a small cash award, a copy of Spiders of North America and a 2019 membership in the society for her poster, “New, sensitive behavioral assay shows that scorpions respond to UV, green, and red light.” Rivera-Roldan, a native of Vieques, Puerto Rico, majored in biology, minored in chemistry and currently attends medical school in Washington state. She performed research in Dr. Gaffin’s scorpion lab for 2 years, initially assisting Kendall Hughes with her electrophysiology research until Rivera-Roldan found her area of interest concerning scorpion photoreceptors in the eyes and their behaviors in certain wavelengths (or colors) of light. For RiveraRoldan, the AAS meeting in Mexico was her first time abroad and a thoroughly enjoyable experience. As the only Spanish-speaker on the trip from OU, Rivera-Roldan also served as the group’s interpreter! Rivera-Roldan, currently attending medical school in the Pacific northwest, is interested in emergency medicine and trauma surgery and hopes to be a director for an ambulance service someday.

Kendall Hughes took second place in the oral presentation competition with a talk titled “Deciphering 36 Honors at OU

sensory processing in the pectines of the striped bark scorpion” – the same presentation won her an Honors award at last spring’s Undergraduate Research Day at OU. Hughes is an Honors senior majoring in multidisciplinary studies with a theme in neuromedicine, which explore how biology and psychology influence health and behavior. She is also minoring in chemistry and serves as the president of the AED pre-health Honors society and the donor engagement and stewardship chair of the Student Alumni Association. Hughes, in her third year of research at Prof. Gaffin’s scorpion lab, became interested in Prof. Gaffin’s research while studying abroad in Italy with the President’s Leadership Class.

Max Daniels, also an Honors student and chemical engineering major, gave a talk titled “Paired-wheel scorpion testing apparatus” about the method he developed for testing the navigational mechanisms used by scorpions in a more controlled environment.

“One of the problems we’ve had in the lab shows up when we do behavioral tests with the scorpions,” said Daniels. “The animals tend to hide around the corners and edges of whatever container they’re in.”

Daniels has solved the problem by putting the scorpion on a pair of wheels and holding it in place with a tether, allowing the scorpion to move its legs and turn the wheels like on a treadmill.

“Now there are no corners or edges [for the scorpion] to hide in, and we can present behavioral cues to the scorpion with much more precision than before,” Daniels said. The talk was exceptional, with Prof Gaffin saying he “received many, many positive comments about Max’s talk.”

Fall 2017

Paired-Wheel Scorpion Tes3ng Apparatus Max Daniels and Douglas Gaffin; Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA 73019

3 The Device

1 Introduction Scientists have proposed many hypotheses to explain how scorpions navigate. One of the most prominent ideas is path integration. In path integration, the distance and direction of travel are monitored and used to return to the starting point.

The direction to the starting point of a path-integrated walk is continuously updated by comparing the current orientation to a predictable reference, such as Earth’s magnetic field or polarized light patterns. To test whether scorpions use either of these cues, we created a device that tethers a scorpion on top of two wheels (22.9 cm diameter and 5.3 cm wide) so that the subject is held in place while still able to walk. We expect that our paired-wheel device will allow for more accurate and thorough testing of magnetic fields and polarized light than previous experiments.

2 Current Methods and Their Shortcomings • Part of the problem with testing scorpions in closed spaces is that they tend to stay close to corners or edges.

• A Helmholtz coil placed on the arena’s edge to induce a magnetic field has a limited effective area, and a scorpion is likely to escape its influence periodically as it moves within the arena.

10 cm

• The paired-wheel design seeks to minimize these limitations.

Typical scorpion behavior in current behavioral chambers.

Top: Current arenas consist of sand-filled drain pans (71 cm diam). Bottom: A plot of a scorpion’s movement shows pathways concentrated around the edges of the container.

Rigid tether to hold scorpion in place (side view) Tether height: 0.61 m

Wheel width: 5.3 cm each Wheels are coated in sand to simulate natural environment

4 Upcoming Tests

Paired USB laser mice translate wheel movements to digital output

Code to print the wheel output to an Excel file

The two lightweight 22.9-cm diameter Styrofoam wheels are spaced 2 mm apart on a shared axle. Low-friction bearings ensure the wheels rotate independently. A wooden arm extending above the wheels holds a wooden dowel rod vertically above the wheels. This rod is used as the tether. A small patch of hook-side Velcro is attached to the bottom end of the rod, which is used to hold a scorpion prepared with a similarly sized patch of loop-side Velcro affixed to its back, as seen in the figure inset. When the scorpion tries to move, its legs rotate the wheels, and the subject has the illusion of movement. In this way, corners and edges of containers are not presented to the scorpion.

Turns can be measured based on the rotation of the wheels. If the scorpion is turning while walking, then one wheel will rotate faster than the other.

• Currently, we are testing the baseline behavior of animals on the wheels.

Total frame height: 1.22 m Total frame width: 0.31 m

• We will next position Helmholtz coils on both sides of the wheels to test scorpion responses to magnetic fields.

• Additional experiments will test scorpion responses to polarized light patterns.

Helmholtz coils mounted on the paired-wheel rig

5 Acknowledgments We thank Brad Brayfield for his invaluable suggestions, as well as the University of Oklahoma Department of Biology for use of its facilities.

(L-R): Nina Rivera-Roldan presents her findings to a conference participant; Prof. Doug Gaffin, Max Daniels, Nina Rivera-Roldan and Kendall Hughes; Max Daniels’ scorpion testing apparatus

(L-R): Rivera-Roldan, Hughes and Prof. Gaffin; Hughes receives 2nd place award for oral competition; Rivera-Roldan wins first prize for her poster; Rivera-Roldan

Fall 2017

Honors at OU 37

Calling ALL Honors College Alumni!

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

1996 to 2017

In the spirit of loyalty and camaraderie, we invite you to join the Honors College Alumni Association. We’ll keep you up to date on the latest news and happenings in David L. Boren Hall. If you would like to receive newsletters, invitations to special events, and communications on other points of interest within the OU Honors College community, click here to become a member of the newly formed OU Honors College Alumni Association http://ou.edu/content/honors/alumni.html.

To fulfill a cornerstone of the college mission, the Honors College Alumni Association will foster friendships, provide support for alumni and student communities, and advocate for a small liberal arts-like learning experience within the University of Oklahoma.

As a valued member of the Honors College Alumni Association, the following benefits are yours to enjoy: ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

Spring and Fall “Honors at OU” newsletter.

Invitations to special events such as Undergraduate Research Day, Presidential Dream Course Lecture Series, Board of Visitors and Honors College Awards Receptions, future homecoming and tailgating activities (to name a few).

Opportunities to reconnect with faculty and friends. Mentor a student.

Professional networking. Attend or host Honors College alumni events in your hometown.

Opportunity to serve as a member of the Honors College Alumni Council.

Together, we can impact the future of the Honors College in positive ways. Stay connected! Get involved! “Support the habit!”

Lisa Tucker, Director of External and Alumni Relations OU Honors College ljtucker@ou.edu (405) 325-9088 CONNECT WITH US! ou.edu/honors

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38 Honors at OU

Fall 2017

Announcing the KATHARINE J. GROSS MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP Katharine J. Gross, July 29, 1958 to July 30, 2011

In April 2011, Kathy was awarded a “20-Year Service” pin as a staff member at the University of Oklahoma. Prior to her joining the Honors College, Kathy worked in the Goddard Medical Center.

Kathy was the first person hired by Steve Gillon, the inaugural dean of the Honors College. Her commitment to the future of the Honors College provided crucial and continuous financial stewardship of the College, as it expanded in new, and sometimes unanticipated, ways. All who worked with Kathy—faculty, staff, and students—could not help but be struck by her competence and professionalism, as well as her dedication to her OU family.

While managing the Honors College budget, Kathy enrolled as a returning student in the College of Liberal Studies. Indeed, as she worked in her position as the Honors College financial administrator, Kathy completed her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies. Earning her bachelors degree from the University of Oklahoma was one of the proudest moments of Kathy’s life. A high point of her academic achievement was carrying the College of Liberal Studies banner at Commencement in 2004.

Kathy’s achievements at the University of Oklahoma are even more remarkable when one considers the health issues that she faced for most of her life. As someone with Type I diabetes, Kathy never let her condition compromise her personal and professional commitments. She fulfilled her responsibilities throughout life with grace, patience, and determination.

This scholarship fund honors Kathy’s life and her contributions to the University of Oklahoma and Honors College.

Beginning Spring 2018, one student will receive a check for $500.00 and recognition as recipient of the Katharine J. Gross Memorial Scholarship. Any full-time Honors College student with a minimum 3.4 GPA eligible to graduate with cum laude distinction may apply. From those students who meet the selection criteria, consideration will be given to non-traditional adult female students, single working mothers, and adult female students who are employed in a part-time or full-time capacity in addition to a full-time academic schedule.

For more information on the Katharine J. Gross Memorial Scholarship, contact Lisa Tucker at 405-325-9088 or ljtucker@ou.edu.

Fall 2017

Honors at OU 39

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The UNIVERSITY of OKLAHOMA Honors Col l ege 1300 Asp Ave. Norman, OK 73019-6061

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