Arts
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t e x as t e c h u n i v e r s i t y
S a l ly d av i s , l u c y K r a n z a n d g i n g e r k e r r i c k
From Raiderland to the final frontier
dr. gary fish
ke e pin g a n e y e out for oth e r s n e a l yo u n g
fr om pla in v ie w to a n e w p l ani t Dr. bill hase
bringin g gr e at n e ss to c he m ist ry at t e xas te ch
A m e ssag e f r o m t h e d e a n
E ditor
Co o r din ator
Design
Emily Phillips
Mark Hartsfield
Richelle Detrixhe Hartsfield Design
Wr iter s
Danette Baker Randy Christian Jennifer Ritz Emily Arellano
Ph otog raphy
Neal Hinkle Ian Halpern Michael Cothran
P r in t er
Dean
Dev elopmen t
Crafstman Printers, Inc.
Dr. Lawrence Schovanec
Wendell Jeffreys Emily Phillips
a d m i nist rative staf f
Catherine Forrest Florence Ruiz
This publication was made possible by the generous donations of alumni and friends of the College of Arts & Sciences.
Cover photo courtesy of NASA
Feedback? Questions? Email the editor at emily.phillips@ttu.edu
The theme of this edition of the A&S Magazine illustrates how the College of Arts and Sciences has risen to the challenge issued by Paul Whitfield Horn, the first President of D r . L a w r e n c e S c h o va n e c Texas Tech university, when he stated: “Let our thinking be in worldwide terms.” The College of Arts and Sciences contributes in critical ways to Texas Tech’s vision of global engagement and the university’s mission to provide our students with multicultural and global competencies. The articles featured in our magazine tell an impressive story of the international impact of our college. Our global presence enriches the educational experience of our students and faculty scholarship. We can take pride in the many ways our alumni, faculty and students carry the name of Texas Tech around the globe, to the benefit of our university and our friends in other countries. Since last year’s issue of the Arts & Sciences Magazine there have been important developments in the college and university. Texas Tech, like most institutions of higher education across the country, is dealing with the challenges of budget reductions that reflect decreasing state support. In spite of these budget challenges, we remain focused on growing student enrollment and attaining the benchmarks that will enable Texas Tech to achieve Tier 1 status and to benefit from the National Research University Fund provided by House Bill 51. The College has a long-standing tradition of delivering an enormous teaching service to the university while maintaining exemplary standards of scholarship and creative activity. These teaching and research activities will benefit the college as the university transitions to a new budgetary system, Responsibility Center Management. This new budgetary system, to be implemented in September 2011, will reward the efficient and entrepreneurial spirit of the college, while helping us to meet the university’s growth and research goals. I want to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for your generous support of the college during this past year. Your contributions have a profound impact on the educational experience of our students. The College of Arts and Sciences is committed to delivering the finest liberal arts and sciences education for our students, and you play a critical role in making it possible.
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Contents
Arts & Sciences Around the Globe From Plainview to a New PlanIt Neal Young
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A Camera on a Conflicted History
Page 4 - Neal Young
Dr. Paul Bjerk
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Battling an International Epidemic Dr. Edward A. Graviss
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Keeping an Eye out for Others Dr. Gary Fish
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From Raiderland to the Final Frontier Sally Davis, Ginger Kerrick and Lucy Kranz
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Page 13 - Dr. Gary Fish
Bringing Greatness To Chemistry at Texas Tech Dr. Bill Hase
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Europe and Russia Americas Africa and Middle East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand Events Acknowledgements
Page 7 - Dr. Paul Bjerk
t e x as t e c h u n i v e r s i t y
* * Arts & Sciences Around the Globe * * In this year's magazine, we set out to illustrate the global reach of the college. Texas Tech is a national research university with an international impact and our goal is to convey that message. The illustration on these pages shows the locations both in the United States and abroad where faculty have conducted and presented research and where students have studied. I hope this map and the stories in the magazine will delight alumni to learn how far the college has come and our potential to do great things in the future.
WA S H I N G TO N - 4
Americas
Emily Phillips, Editor
C A N A DA - 9
MARYLAND - 3
NEW HAMPSHIRE - 1
M O N TA N A - 1
M A S S AC H U S E T T S - 5
OREGON - 2 W YO M I N G - 1
RHODE ISLAND - 2 CONNECTICUT - 1
MISSOURI - 2
C O LO R A D O - 4 CALIFORNIA - 19
N E W YO R K - 4
TEXAS - 19
NEW JERSEY - 3 D E L AWA R E - 1
NEBRASKA - 1
WA S H I N G TO N D C - 1 0
NEW MEXICO - 5
OHIO - 3
OKLAHOMA - 2 A R I ZO N A - 4
INDIANA - 3
NORTH CAROLINA - 2
BELIZE - 3
SOUTH CAROLINA - 1
C O S TA R I C A - 2 PA N A M A - 4 PERU - 1
VIRGINIA - 1
ILLINOIS - 2
KANSAS - 1 MEXICO - 3
CHILE - 1
ARGENTINA - 3 BRAZIL - 6
GEORGIA - 2 TENNESSEE - 4 LO U I S I A N A - 2 F LO R I DA - 4 CUBA - 3
PA R AG U AY - 2
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MAINE - 1
P E N N SY LVA N I A - 4
N E VA DA - 4
2
VERMONT - 1
M I N N E S OTA - 2
MICHIGAN - 4
SWEDEN - 1
L AT V I A - 1
FINLAND - 1
DENMARK - 2
RUSSIA - 6
GERMANY - 12
UKRAINE - 1
IRELAND - 1
S LOVA K I A - 1
UNITED KINGDOM - 13
CORINTH - 2 NETHERLANDS - 3
Europe
S C OT L A N D - 4 PORTUGAL - 3 S PA I N - 1 5
SWITZERLAND - 3
GEORGIA - 2 AZERBAIJAN - 2
ROMANIA - 1
HUNGARY - 4
AUSTRIA - 3
I TA LY - 1 2
FRANCE - 10
Russia
GREECE - 5
CZECH REPUBLIC - 2
Africa Middle East
ISRAEL - 5 K A Z A K H S TA N - 1
TURKEY - 6
KY R GY Z S TA N - 2 U G A N DA - 2 I R AQ - 4 PA K I S TA N - 1
R WA N DA - 1
TA N Z A N I A - 3
SOUTH AFRICA - 2
Asia, Australia New Zealand J A PA N - 2 CHINA - 8
TA I WA N - 1
INDIA - 2
L AO S - 1 VIETNAM - 4
SRI LANKA - 1
CAMBODIA - 2
THAILAND - 1 SINGAPORE - 1 M A L AYS I A - 1
AUSTRALIA - 3 NEW ZEALAND - 1
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FROM
TO A
w r i t t e n B y R a n d y C h r i s t i a n
Photo by I a n H a lpe rn
A W e s t T e x a s B oy ’ s j ou r n ey Neal Young was born in Plainview, Texas in 1943. Like all small towns in West Texas, it was a great place to grow-up. Riding bikes, playing Little League baseball and swimming at the YMCA was what kids did. It was almost expected. Young gladly fulfilled those expectations and in some instances exceeded them. Today, he’s quick to admit that his West Texas roots still run deep. They are the foundational source of the principles he has drawn upon throughout his life. At age 6, Young made his first of many trips to the law office where his mother worked as, what we would today call, a paralegal. For whatever reason, Young felt very comfortable N e a l a n d M a ry Ja n e Yo u n g '66 Political Science
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there and was a frequent visitor. The more Young came to the law office, the more intrigued he became with the idea of someday becoming a lawyer himself. “When I look back, I was probably about 8 years old when I began seriously thinking about becoming a lawyer,” he said. “It was something I was attracted to ‘right out of the chute.’ By the time I was in the eighth grade I had already made up my mind I wanted to go to law school.” Because everyone knew Young, he was a logical “hire”, at age 14, to be the janitor for the law office. He was eager to please the lawyers who were always willing to talk and spend time with
him. As a result, waste cans, windows, hallways and conference tables were always immaculate. Not only was it a great way for an industrious young West Texas boy to make a little spending money, but ironically, it was the first chapter in a life’s story that was to include page after page of a love affair with the practice of law and plain old hard work. Sweeping floors and cleaning windows wasn’t Young’s only job during his school years in Plainview. Like a lot of kids who grew-up in the middle of West Texas cotton country, he spent time in the middle of the preciously furrowed sun-scorched fields of Hale County. While working for the Baker-Castor Oil Company, Young and several other young men were required to crawl in the dirt down mile-long rows of castor bean plants. It may seem like an odd work requirement, but it was the only way to accurately identify, and then pluck, the male plants from the rows of female plants. Young’s speedy ability to slither down the long rows, quickly removing female plants from the rows of males and vice versa, was immediately recognized by management. “After I was told what we were supposed to do, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled down the first row. I was the first guy to finish. After completing three more rows, ahead of the other guys, I was made supervisor of the crew,” Young said. “I guess you could say that was my first experience with the rewards of hard work.” Young worked for the castor bean company through high school. Fortunately, not all those years were working in the fields on his hands and knees. He was able to sample several other jobs related to the agriculture industry. During that time he built memorable relationships with many West Texas farmers. He witnessed and appreciated how they lived their values of honesty, integrity and trust. Naturally these became his values, too. The farmers also exemplified a long-standing West Texas belief that hard work is honorable as well as rewarding. Most importantly, the region’s culture revered a simple, yet timeless philosophy Young remembers well and respects. “You didn’t necessarily have to write everything down on a piece of paper,” Young said. “You were trusted the first time out. If you violated that trust it was difficult, if not impossible, to get it back. It was understood that ‘your word was your bond’.” The same values Young observed in the cotton fields could also be found in the halls of his high school. He was blessed to be surrounded by what he called “professional teachers.” They took great pride in providing a first-class, broad-based education for all students. They were dedicated to preparing students for the next chapter of their lives, as well. In Young’s case, it was college and then hopefully law school. Several teachers took a special interest in Young and were aware of his academic goals. A counselor named Fanny Laas helped him attain scholarships to Texas Tech University. This was to be his first step toward Lubbock and Texas Tech even though he briefly contemplated attending other schools.
The University of Texas was somewhat appealing, but he felt its social scene was well above his means. At the time, Texas A&M was not co-ed. For obvious reasons it took only a few seconds for this red-blooded young man to eliminate A&M from the schools he might attend. It didn’t hurt that Lubbock and Texas Tech were a little less than an hour south from his hometown. It helped, too, that his uncle had taught math at Texas Tech and was always complimentary of its faculty and education. With all that in mind, it seemed as though the “Red and Black” were a sure bet. The final selling point, at least in Young’s mind – “Tech was far enough away from Plainview as he wanted it to be, yet near enough as he needed it to be.” In the fall of 1962, Neal and a high school buddy moved into Gaston Hall. At that time, it was a relatively new dorm in the heart of a growing Texas Tech campus. The energy and excitement of college life instantly enveloped this young, bright Red Raider. It also had a profound effect on his stomach, too. The reality of being able to go to the dorm cafeteria, almost anytime, and eat all the food he wanted, amazed Young and his dorm mates. His new-found college appetite extended beyond the walls of the dorm cafeteria, too. His hunger to excel academically pushed him to be a bit “overly ambitious.” “I came to Lubbock before school started and did testing. I CLEPed out of some math and science. I made a high enough grade in chemistry that I was put in a pre-med chemistry class as a freshman,” Young said. “I was taking mostly honor’s courses, too. I really liked them a lot. It was a very enriching experience.” The years at Texas Tech also afforded Young the opportunity to further his leadership skills that he began honing in high school. He considered it an honor and an invaluable learning experience to serve in leadership positions for his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, as well as other campus organizations, boards and entities. The results of his willingness to devote time to worthy activities outside the classroom are wonderful lifelong college friends who he treasures today. His memories of football games featuring Donnie Anderson and Tom Wilson are also remembered fondly. In the four years Young attended Texas Tech, it grew from 10,000 to 18,000 students. It was truly a place abuzz with activity and marked the beginning of its march toward the university it is today. With each story Young shared, his love for the years he spent at Texas Tech could not only be heard, but felt. The Red Raider social life was, of course, an important maturing experience, but the quality of the education he received prepared him well to pursue a career as an attorney. He credits the broad-based education he received at Texas Tech as one of the primary reasons for his high score on his LSAT which garnered him an automatic “admit” to the University of Texas School of Law. He and 10 other new Texas Tech alumni were accepted to UT. Most would have been happy to stay in Lubbock, but unfortunately the Texas Tech Law School opened one year after Young and Arts&Sciences
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learning is a lifelong endeavor. the others made their way to Austin, Texas. As with most freshman law students, the fear of failure was abundant. Young’s class of 600 hopeful un g future lawyers was no N e a l Yo exception. He remembers distinctly the voice of one law professor who asked each student to look at their fellow student to their right and then the one on their left. The professor then made the pronouncement that only one-in-three students would graduate from law school. “I remember that the student on my right was a Princeton grad. The guy on my left was from Washington and Lee University. I thought, oh Lord, what have I gotten myself into. Ultimately, I graduated in the top 12 percent of the class so again, I felt like Tech prepared me well,” Young said. In a matter of months after graduation, Young went to work for a Dallas law firm. He quickly earned the confidence of senior partners, and after only two years with the firm, he was going-it-alone in the courtroom. His professional career took a sharp, yet rewarding turn when he became general counsel for one of his clients. Young said, “I never even thought about going to work as general counsel, but the offer he made was one I could hardly turn down. What complicated the situation was I’d been asked to run for district judge in Dallas County. I decided to withdraw from the judge's race and took the general counsel position.” The decision to venture into the business world was a welcomed new chapter in Young’s life. It also marked the planting of an entrepreneurial seed that was to grow into a marvelously successful new career for the kid from Plainview, Texas. It was not long before an opportunity to start his own business seemed logical as well as exciting. In 1984, he and a few co-workers opened a technology company that invented an automated money order purchasing system for 7-11 and other convenience stores across the United States. In short order, more than 8,000 money order machines were shipped to 7-11s across the country. An opportunity to provide the United States Post Office with a similar money order system prompted Young and his partners to take the company public, and capital generated from the public offering allowed them to purchase several other companies. The companies doubled in size and value, and in 2002, Young and his partners sold them. Sure 6
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enough, what Young had learned in the cotton fields of West Texas regarding hard work paid off. Even though Young could have easily retired, his entrepreneurial seed had grown into a mighty oak he thoroughly enjoyed nurturing. His wife, Mary Jane, was a very successful realtor in Dallas resulting in an offer to open a Keller-Williams office in the Park Cities Community. They took the offer and grew it into one of the Top 10 Keller-Williams offices in the country. Next, investments in commercial property. In 2009, Young opened PlanIt Reprographics, in Palm Desert, Calif. The company offers digital printing services with a focus on the construction industry. Its proprietary software, called Plan Manager Pro, is helping revolutionize the way in which construction companies interface with sub-contractors and suppliers during the planning and bidding process. The quick success of the company dictated the addition of offices in Las Vegas, Nev., and Riverside, Calif. In 2010, he started a second company, Integrated Print Management, located in Dallas. It has an on-line system for large companies to order and manage, on an as-needed basis, all print and advertising collateral. Young’s new companies have taken him a long way from West Texas and Texas Tech, but the values of honesty, integrity and trust he learned as a kid in the cotton fields are always close by. The belief that hard work is honorable, which Young learned from his farmer friends, are a major factor in the reward he has attained professionally. Young is also quick to acknowledge that there is not a day that goes by that he doesn’t reach back and draw from the excellent, well-rounded education he received at his alma mater, Texas Tech University. “If I could offer advice to young Tech students it would be to find opportunities to broaden their horizons during their college years. Take full advantage of it. Get involved with activities outside the classroom. Don’t just think you’ll learn it all in text books. And take as broad a curriculum as your major will allow. Remember, learning is a lifelong endeavor,” Young said. Young’s love for his school and its students is graciously expressed in his financial commitment to the College of Arts and Sciences, too. His gift of $3 million to the university that provided him with, in his words, “an exceptional education,” will benefit many Red Raiders in the future. “I’m sure there are many that love Texas Tech as much, but not more than I,” Young said. “My hope is that I can give additional gifts in the future.”
Dr. Paul Bjerk, assistant professor in the Department of History, teaches students to understand the analysis and use of oral history and its interaction with scholarship on myth and memory. A scholar of African history, Bjerk traveled to Uganda this summer in hope of preserving the past for future generations. His goal was to interview political and governmental dignitaries for a set of DVDs that can be archived at Makerere, the national university of Uganda. Additionally, Bjerk hopes these videos can be used in that country to produce historical documentaries along the lines of the PBS series “American Experience.” In the United States, he says, the impact of popular histories are taken for granted as are the way they create a sense of national identity that helps transcend past conflicts.
History
A CaMERa ON a cONFLIcTED E dite d by da n ette b a ke r
Professor’s research journal chronicles his travels to find those who can
preserve Africa’s history
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It could be worse, thought the Minnesotan in me. At least I have a driver to navigate the madcap mass of motorcycles and automobiles swirling slowly in the potholed streets of Kampala. With an impressive mental MapQuest, Christopher Kato steers us through the twisty streets that snake through Kampala’s seven hills. It is stressful just watching him. This has been life for the last month. Each day we start with a few phone calls, sometimes just a name and a
neighborhood, and then we creep through traffic under the equatorial sun looking for former government ministers, opposition politicians or an army general. Sometimes they receive us. Sometimes they put us off indefinitely. Sometimes, they simply refuse to see us. Shouting into a mobile phone as loud lorries full of plantains rumble by, I try to explain my project to one of these wazee (pronounced ‘wazay,’ meaning respected elders), who are justifiably
History here fades very rapidly into rumors of past atrocities and injustices that often serve only to justify new crimes and resentments — not so different from many American political conversations. Having an actual account from people who witnessed these events presents something more subtle and, more importantly, empathetic. Despite its bitter conflicts, Uganda’s political history is filled with thoughtful men and women who often express exasperation with the misunderstandings that created the conflicts. This is not to say that they all agree, but their disagreements are perhaps less bitter than what younger generations might think. With a population that has quadrupled since independence in 1962, the society is filled with young people with elementary educations seeking a profitable living, and oftentimes not finding it. In such conditions, the possibilities for political rabble rousing are immense. Uganda occasionally veers towards violent explosion, but somehow backs away from the brink. In recent incidents, at least, cool heads have prevailed. But suicide bombings by Somali militants at two popular Kampala nightclubs during the World Cup finals present a frightening new external threat in addition to internal tensions.
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flustered by some faceless American researcher who is practically incomprehensible and possibly a bit nuts. So we soldier on, usually finding our best results with cold calls, which at least offer the opportunity for a face-to-face explanation of what I’m trying to do. I want to videotape interviews with everyone I can find who was active in politics or the government in the 1960s.
On this particular day, we were to meet Cuthbert Obwangor, a widely respected member of the independence parliament. Known as an eloquent and principled man, he was polite and very hospitable on the phone, inviting us to come see him at his place in Kampala. Knowing he was in Kampala we didn’t look for him in his hometown, Soroti, a few hours north when we interviewed Frances Akello, one of the first women in the independence parliament. So upon our return, we drove out to Obwangor’s Kampala neighborhood and were met by a lovely young mother who directed us to his house. Upon arrival, we found an old man living in a bare cement room with no running water. He was evidently now a hard-living drunk, but sober enough that morning. Before long he had cleaned up, and we went to chat with him at his favorite bar. It took some time before we realized this was not Obwangor. The man we met was too young and had a completely different career. This was Osiinde Wangor, who also was an eloquent and interesting fellow. He had been involved in the political youth movement, worked as a lawyer in exile, and had attended the conference to plan a new government after the fall of the brutal dictator Idi Amin. We had a very informative interview with him a few days later. But that still left us looking for Obwangor. On a return trip to Soroti, we tracked down the octogenarian Obwangor who gamely shared his fading memories of a more peaceful time.
our travels took us to the southern town of Mbarara, where we hoped to visit more members of the independence party that had briefly united people from many different social classes. There we found Kam Karegesa and ‘Major’ Edward Rurangaranga. Karegesa is an elderly member of the cattle-owning nobles of the southern hills, while Rurangaranga came from the peasant class who had long resented the nobles who controlled the land. Both narrowly escaped with their lives when Amin took over in 1971. Their humble hilltop estates offered a safe refuge from political turmoil. Our rooms that night at the Baguma Hotel in Mbarara had no water, so the sharp young night manager, named Peace, moved us into downstairs rooms where the water worked, but the endlessly noisy traffic from buses and overloaded semis grinding their gears right outside the window kept us up all night.
Just another day on the road in Uganda. The next evening, Peace expressed some interest in the book I was reading, Henry Kyemba’s “State of Blood,” a memoir of his time as a Minister of Health in the early years of Amin’s brutal regime. In her politicized high school history course, Peace had learned a little about Amin and almost nothing about Obwangor and his counterparts in the first independent government. As the scale of his atrocities fades, Amin, with his bigoted bluster, enjoys a certain vogue in the memory of a new generation who never experienced the terror of his regime. To paraphrase Kyemba’s comment about Amin-this would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. Amidst Uganda’s jerry-rigged daily grind, even someone as inquisitive and industrious as Peace has very little idea about her own country’s recent history.
In the 2006 Hollywood film, “The Last King of Scotland,” starring Forest Whitaker as Amin, a young British doctor finds himself sucked into Amin’s malevolent good graces and escapes by the skin of his teeth, with the help of a courageous Ugandan doctor who tells him, “Go tell the world what is happening here. You’re white; maybe they’ll believe you.” That is the Hollywood version. During my interview with Kyemba, I asked what he thought about the movie. He said it was a nice historical portrayal. “But you have to understand, we were in a very difficult situation under Amin and to represent it as just so many romantic escapades trivializes the tragedy.” In the real version, the young Kyemba stuck around for a few years while he and his colleagues hoped the boastful colonel
could be cajoled into putting the country back on the path of middle-of-the-road democracy. In 1976, Kyemba realized he could do nothing to soften his country’s tragic slide into chaos besides facilitating a few lonely escapes into exile. He made careful arrangements to spirit his family out of the country while he defected during a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva. The following year, his searing expose of Amin’s crimes, written in the even tone of an ever-hopeful bureaucrat, was a best-seller in several languages, showing Amin to be not just a buffoon, but a killer. A year after Kyemba's book was published, Tanzanian troops liberated Kampala. Amin fled into exile, to die a forgotten man in Saudi Arabia in 2004. Sometimes history is more powerful than fiction.
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b a t t l i
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Epid written By Jennifer Ritz
Photo by M ich a e l Cothr a n
Tuberculosis. Many Americans believe the disease is like a dusty old history book: it resides in the past, in the long-closed sanatoriums of the mid-1920s where the afflicted were housed. Because of our superb health care system, Americans are rarely affected—approximately 11,540 cases were recorded last year, and many of those cases were discovered in immigrants who arrived from countries where the disease is common. However, in many parts of the world, tuberculosis runs rampant, infecting roughly eight million people worldwide and causing the deaths of as many as three million people annually. The disease is widespread and highly infectious. In many corners of the globe, health care practitioners are discovering certain strains of tuberculosis that are antibiotic-resistant. 10
e d g r a v i ss '79 microbiology
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emic A summer job led dr. Edward A. Graviss to pursue a degree in microbiology, which ultimately led to a life dedicated to studying and controlling one of humankind’s oldest bacterial diseases, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). “While in college, one of my summer jobs was working in San Antonio at Bexar County Hospital (now University Health System) in the operating room,” said Graviss, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the Center for Molecular and Translational Human Infectious Diseases Research at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston. “My job as a summer student was to clean the operating rooms after surgery. After my first couple of infectious disease cases, I became acutely aware of how important and interesting microbiology was and how important studying microorganisms is for infection control and public health.” Today, Graviss is a world-renowned epidemiologist who specializes in tuberculosis research. He oversees the tuberculosis research lab at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute and collaborates with international scientists in China, Vietnam and Iran. “I set up my lab in China, including spending time and resources on it and training seven lab personnel, that’s why I
call it my lab,” said Graviss, who has traveled six times to China and to Vietnam seven times, in the last five years. “Officially, it (the laboratory) belongs to the Shandong Provincial TB Control Center (in Jinan, Shandong, China).” Graviss notes that China, where one-third of the world’s population resides, is an important operating base for him because one-third of the world’s Mycobacterium tuberculosis cases are there, and is a “hot bed” for multidrug resistant tuberculosis. Setting up research labs in other countries is a complicated and time-consuming process. It further proves Graviss’ dedication to controlling tuberculosis. “You first have to get buy-in from the country’s governing bodies, including national, provincial and local governments,” he explains. “This is never easy and usually takes a lot of meet and greets. Then you work out training arrangements with the collaborators, and this takes a couple of years because the trainees cannot come
at the same time. I have basically allowed these trainees to copy and translate my lab protocols and learn the methods first-hand in my lab. Then I have to secure funding, either through the local government or the U.S. government. This is needed for sustainability of the lab, and it’s the hardest aspect of setting up a lab.” After Graviss graduated from Texas Tech, he returned to San Antonio and worked as a microbiology technologist at Southwest Texas Methodist Hospital from 1979 until 1989. During that time, he received a Master of Science degree in Biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1982, and in 1986 he earned a master’s degree in public health, concentrating in community health, from the San Antonio branch of the University of Texas-Houston Health Sciences Center. He moved to Houston in 1989 and in 1993 earned a doctoral degree in epidemiology from the University of Texas-Houston Health Sciences Center. Arts&Sciences
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The foreign clinics with which Graviss is involved are creating protocols for tuberculosis treatment, which include home visits by health care workers to ensure antibiotics are taken for the full six to nine months. In 1990, Graviss began working as a graduate assistant at the AIDS Education and Training Center in Houston, where he developed an interest in HIV/TB co-infection. Tuberculosis infection is common among individuals infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) because their T-Cells, also called “helper cells,” are suppressed. T-Cells are necessary to fight infectious diseases including tuberculosis, thus, someone with HIV who has a low T-Cell count cannot fight the infection. This co-infection is common in locales where there are high numbers of HIV-infected people. “Eighty percent of HIV and tuberculosis co-infections are occurring in Africa,” says Graviss. “Health care officials and epidemiologists are trying to gain better control on these HIV-TB co-infections.” Tuberculosis is treatable if caught
early. The trouble, as with any infection requiring oral antibiotics, is drug resistance. Drug resistance occurs when infected patients take only a portion of antibiotics required to eradicate a disease or infection. The bacteria that remain become stronger, mutate and ultimately become resistant to the antibiotic. Not following doctor’s orders is particularly common among patients with tuberculosis due to the extended course of treatment: six to nine months of oral antibiotics. Graviss says that in America, patients with tuberculosis are often followed closely by health officials, who make home visits to ensure the full course of antibiotics is utilized. However, in many foreign countries—China for instance— antibiotics used to treat tuberculosis are sold as over-the-counter medications. Therefore, patients are tasked with completing the full dose of medication,
and they often fail to do so. The result is drug-resistant tuberculosis. The foreign clinics with which Graviss is involved are creating protocols for tuberculosis treatment, which include home visits by health care workers to ensure antibiotics are taken for the full six to nine months. In the meantime, Graviss and his staff are working toward developing new tools to battle tuberculosis. “Right now we are trying to identify proteins that can identify a person with drug resistant tuberculosis,” he said. “Then we can move forward with developing drugs (to treat the mutated strains). There has not been a new drug developed in 50 years to treat tuberculosis.” Graviss acknowledges that the disease he studies every day isn’t likely to disappear any time soon: “TB was in the world prior to Aristotle and will be here long after I’m gone,” he notes.
About TB: Tuberculosis has affected humans for thousands of years. Known primarily as a lung infection, the disease is spread through the air via droplets from the coughs or sneezes of infected people. Not as well known is the fact that tuberculosis can settle in other parts of the body, such as organs and the spine, hence the antiquated term used in lieu of tuberculosis, “consumption.”
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Graviss and his staff are working toward developing new tools to battle tuberculosis.
Arts&Sciences
From 1994 until 2004, Graviss was funded by the National Institutes of Health, charting tuberculosis infections in Houston through population-based surveillance. The research was two-prong: one part microbial genetic testing, determined which specific strains that were circulating in Houston and attempted to identify where the strains originated. The second, which Graviss calls “gum shoe epidemiology,” had researchers queried infected individuals to find out where or from whom they might have contracted the disease. The approach helped pinpoint hot spots of tuberculosis spread. The genetic testing is now carried out by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and is used by public health officials to track the dissemination of tuberculosis in the United States.
k eeping an
e ye
ou t f or other s W ritte n By Da n ette B a ke r
His trip
to Haiti last January began like many other medical missions Dr. Gary Fish had been on, but it ended like no other: more than 200,000 dead, including his colleague and dear friend. The hours and then days following the epic earthquake, on Jan. 12, 2010, that rocked the region around Port-au-Prince were harrowing, to say the least, for Fish and 11 others who had traveled to Petit-Goave just days before to volunteer at the ophthalmologic clinic supported by Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. “ … Once all were out, and still alive, we sought medical help, but found that no medical care was available. All the hospital facilities had collapsed. We went to an open field next to our guest house and there spent the night,” said Fish.
When
Dr. Kenneth Foree and his wife, Lila, were trying to establish the clinic at Petit-Goave, anyone who knew him went to help the well-respected Dallas ophthalmologist, Fish said, and he was no different. Once you get to experience it, there is almost an insatiable desire to go back. “You go thinking you’ve got something to give others,” Fish said, “but I absolutely guarantee you get more from the experience than you give.” A West Texas native, Fish comes from a family of ophthalmologists, all Texas Tech graduates, which includes his father, two of his four brothers and a nephew; the latter having continued the legacy of Fish Ophthalmology Clinic in the family’s hometown of Big Spring, Texas. After graduating from Texas Tech, in 1968 with a bachelor's in zoology, Fish earned
Arts&Sciences
13
“ You go
14
thinking you’ve got something to give others, but I absolutely guarantee you get more from the experience than you give.” Arts&Sciences
his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Instead of moving back home to join the family business, Fish chose a subspecialty in the field as a viteoretinal specialist and the Metroplex as his home, joining Texas Retina Associates. He also earned a law degree from Texas Wesleyan School of Law in Fort Worth, a Master’s of Law in Health Law from the University of Houston, and an MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas-simply because he enjoys learning. There is not much need for Fish’s sub-specialty in third-world clinics, but there is a great demand for cataract surgeries and general eye exams. “We fit a lot of glasses in Haiti and Guatemala,” he said. “In Haiti, glaucoma is huge; but often times, just giving them drops to clear away dust and sooth the eyes is quite helpful.” At the very least, fitting the Haitians with reading glasses greatly improves their quality of life, as does the human interaction the volunteers give. “To have someone recognize that they deserve the care that those in other parts of the world have is a pretty powerful,” Fish says. Before the January trip, he had traveled many times with Foree and the group from Highland Park United Methodist Church on their annual pilgrimage to PetitGoave. This time, Fish was sharing the experience with Jean Arwine, his friend and a colleague at Texas Retina Associates for 20 years. Like those who had introduced him to medical missions, Fish believed she would enjoy the camaraderie and the experience of serving in an oppressed area.
It was about 5 p.m. on
January 12, and the team had just completed their second day of clinic and surgery; they had treated about 130 patients, fitting most of them with glasses and performing surgery on another 15, mostly for cataracts, when Fish said he felt the clinic floor tremble. Seconds later, he was under a mound of concrete, his torso folded in half like a taco. The region near Port-au-Prince had just experienced an epic earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. The multistory cinderblock building adjacent to the clinic had fallen onto it, collapsing the concrete roofed clinic building onto Fish and six of those who were still inside, including Arwine. His son, Joel, had been next to him in the clinic, but ended up against an outside wall, narrowly escaping entrapment. Eighty-four year old Dr. Foree was crushed against an exam chair, a large sheet of concrete pinning his hand. After wiggling and twisting, Fish freed himself and crawled out of the rubble. The sight was like a war zone, he said. “ … two of the nurses were crushed and buried but alive and communicating. We could only see one’s foot
and the other’s head (after digging down to her).” Amidst the chaos, multiple aftershocks, and several hours, a team of Haitian miners, lead by another American, had rescued the remaining team members. They all were safe, but hurting. “ … The next day, with the help of the U.N. soldiers, the three injured nurses and four of us as caretakers went to what was supposed to be a hospital in Leogane (the epicenter of the earthquake). It turned out to be three cots in a metal building. Fortunately, an American soldier, driving an ambulance, arrived looking for some U.N. workers who had been reported injured. We found none, so asked if he would take us to an evacuation compound near the airport in Port-au-Prince. He did, making two trips through very hostile terrain from Leogane and on through Port-au-Prince to the evacuation compound and rudimentary medical center. “Jean was not doing very well at the evacuation center, and we were having trouble with her perfusion. The other two more severely injured nurses and the other caretakers made it out on a flight to Miami the next morning. An evacuation Careflight from Miami was scheduled to come for Jean. Unfortunately, the airport was chaotic and that flight was not allowed to land and turned back. That evening, Jean and I took the first possible flight (a French plane) available for injured persons who could not sit up. Jean's heart stopped during the flight, and although we were able to resuscitate her, she was not conscious. The plane landed in Guadeloupe, emergently, and Jean was rushed to the hospital. Her heart stopped again, and she died. ” Two days later, Fish and his dear friend and colleague returned home on a private plane arranged by his wife and medical partners.
a year has passed,
and their physical injuries have all healed. Fish suffered a cracked sternum, and Foree a broken hand, vertebrae and sternum; one nurse suffered soft tissue damage and another nerve damage to her arm; others with the team had minor scrapes and bruises. Had the multistory building adjacent to the clinic not collapsed, Fish believes, the clinic would have remained upright, and they all would have walked away. He makes no fanfare about his mission work or about his role in caring for his dear friend and colleague during their evacuation. Those who work with him say that he’s not one to seek attention. Instead, Fish encourages others to go and serve when speaking about the experience. This summer he traveled once again to Guatemala, deterred not by his experience in Haiti because, he says, there are still people all over the world who need help.
W r i t t e n b y e m i ly a r e l l a n o Photo by M ich a e l Cothr a n
From to the
FinalFrontier
Three Techsans’ Impact on Space Exploration NASA is a place that is widely portrayed in both the media and entertainment. You can probably conjure up an image right now of Mission Control or a shuttle lift-off. But what happens behind the scenes to make lift-off possible? The wide-open expanse of Lubbock is the perfect place for curiosity about space and our 16
Arts&Sciences
universe beyond Earth to grow. Texas Tech is home to many alumni who have gone on to play important roles in American space exploration through their work at NASA. Lucy Kranz, Ginger Kerrick, and Sally Davis, College of Arts and Sciences alumna and have spent their careers making lift-off possible.
Sally Davis
P h o t o b y a r t i e l i mm e r
Class of 1980, Math
Shuttle Systems Safety Manager Sally Davis grew up in Monahans, Texas. Texas Tech was a logical university choice for her: her older sister was also a student and it was close to home-still in the big city of Lubbock, but close enough for a quick visit back. Davis fondly remembers her time at Texas Tech. She was not a member of any student organizations, but participated in many of the typical student activities such as football and basketball games and the Carol of Lights. She also lived in the dorms near the music building, and she could hear the drum corp practicing their iconic post-halftime “drum circle” from the first day of dorm living to the last. She really enjoyed the size and beauty of the Texas Tech campus. “It was nice to be able to walk around campus – minus the days there was a dust storm! That is one thing I do not miss,” Davis said. As a math major, she definitely spent quite a bit of her time studying. During her senior year of college, she began looking for employment. One of her campus interviews through the University Career Services Center was with McDonnell Douglas, an aerospace corporation later acquired by Boeing, that did contract work for NASA. As a child, Davis watched the men in Mission Control during the Apollo moon landing and dreamed of working in the space program. She had not thought of a career in aviation in college because of the wane in human spaceflight visibility in the American psyche post-Apollo. But Davis ended up getting a job with McDonnell Douglas working in the new human spaceflight program, the space shuttle. Out of only 12 females to have served as flight directors, two of those, Davis and Ginger Kerrick, are graduates of TTU. In 1996, Davis became the second woman in NASA history to hold the title of flight director. She directed or was part of the flight director team for nine shuttle/International Space Station assembly missions during her tenure as a flight director and still holds the record for the most shifts worked – 750. Currently, she is a shuttle systems safety manager. Her job is more intensive leading up to a mission rather than during a mission, which has helped to broaden her perspective of the breadth of activities at NASA. She has had the opportunity in her current position to tour and learn about a number of facilities across the United States where the elements of the shuttle originate, to see first-hand all aspects of preparation for a shuttle flight – from the solid rocket boosters being built and refurbished in Utah, to the external tanks finalizing construction in New Orleans, as well as each orbiter, being skillfully pieced together over and over again in the amazing industrial launch complex at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “All of my experiences at NASA have built on each other, giving me the knowledge to do my current job,” Davis said. With each new job comes another piece that shows more and more how complicated it is to put people in space. The picture continues to get bigger and bigger. There is no such thing as a typical day in Davis’ job. Communication and sharing knowledge are crucial at NASA as the agency prepares to launch two, possibly three, shuttle missions in the next 12 months before the shuttle program will be permanently discontinued. Discovery is scheduled to launch in February 2011. Texas Tech contributed to Davis’ success in many ways. She made many important connections through her classes and professors. “The commitment it takes to stay in school carries over into the professional world and helps to contribute to success at work.” Davis did have words of wisdom for students who are interested in a similar career path. Students should know which classes to take that apply to their selected field and to be committed to studying and excelling in those classes. She also suggested utilizing a cooperative education or internship program. Making connections with individuals in your chosen field is very important. Above all, remember those that you work and study with; cooperation with others is something that you will do for the rest of your life. “Human space flight is all about teamwork,” Davis said, “Anyone’s personal success comes when lots and lots of people work together.”
Davis
fondly remembers her time at Texas Tech. She participated in many of the typical
student activities such as football and basketball games and the Carol of Lights. Arts&Sciences
17
p hoto co u rte s y o f n a s a
Ginger Kerrick Class of 1991 & 1993 Physics Bachelors and Master’s Flight Director
“I really enjoyed the
family atmosphere at Tech. With my professors, friends from school and friends from church, I always felt like I had a huge
support group.”
-Kerrick 18
Arts&Sciences
Ginger Kerrick is originally from El Paso, Texas with family roots in Owensboro, Ky. and Chihuahua, Mexico. She chose to attend Texas Tech because her father, grandfather and uncle are Red Raiders, and she wanted to continue the family tradition. Kerrick’s time at Texas Tech was spent in a variety of different ways. She was a member of the Society of Physics and participated in intramural sports. She worked in the physics department as an office assistant and tutor, taught an astronomy lecture and a few physics labs, ran the observatory and worked at the Science Spectrum. “I really enjoyed the family atmosphere at Tech,” Kerrick said, “With my professors, friends from school and friends from church, I always felt like I had a huge support group.” Kerrick always wanted to work at NASA, specifically the Johnson Space Center in Houston because it is the focal point for human spaceflight. She began as a summer intern in 1991 and transitioned into their co-op program. She was hired as a materials research engineer in 1994, and she worked with the International Space Station. During that time, she had the opportunity to work with NASA’s Russian counterparts to support the Expedition 1 crew. She was able to travel back and forth to Russia, learning the systems, the language and the culture. After four years supporting the Expedition 1 crew, she was appointed the first non-astronaut Capcom, which is short for capsule communicator, the person in NASA's Mission Control Center that talks to the crew. Ginger applied to become a flight director and earned the position in 2005. She has worked in Mission Control both for the shuttle and International Space Station missions. Kerrick's days (and nights) can consist of leading shifts in Mission Control or running a simulation to prepare for missions by dealing with different failure scenarios as they execute a timeline. She also spends her time leading discussions on new processes or investigating plans for future missions. One day is never the same as the last. “Texas Tech University not only provided me a well-rounded education, but the people I met there really helped build up my skills and truly supported me in my goal to work at NASA,” Kerrick said. She would not have succeeded at Texas Tech and at NASA had it not been for people like Dr. Walter Borst, Dr. David Lamp, and Dr. Charles Myles, who afforded her opportunities to take on special projects and provided great recommendations. Advice she has for students who want to follow in her footsteps is simple: “Do what it takes to get here. Excel in your studies; participate in extra-curricular, team-building activities. Make contacts in the industry, show people that you are interested, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
Ginger Kerrick was the featured speaker at the December 2010 commencement.
Lucy Kranz Class of 1981, Political Science Assistant Project Manager, Orion Project Lucy Kranz grew up in Dickinson, Texas which is about seven miles from the Johnson Space Center. She chose Texas Tech because it was far from home, but still in the state, a requirement of her father. She is the second of six kids, which made for a crowded house. She was ready for some distance. Kranz was a student first and foremost. She was paying half of her expenses, which motivated her to excel in her classes. She also served as a resident advisor and was a member of the Angel Flight service organization. She majored in political science because she enjoyed studying public policy and the challenge of applying policy for good outcomes. She earned her Masters in Public Administration at University of Texas San Antonio, and during her time there she accepted a job at Kelly Air Force Base in the procurement department. Kranz’s job with the Air Force showed that she could apply her knowledge and skills anywhere, including NASA. Her father, Gene Kranz, was a well-known NASA flight director, often recognized for his Mission Control Center efforts that helped save the Apollo 13 crew when he coined the phrase “failure is not an option.” Her father’s history as a pioneer in human space flight combined with her job with the Air Force gave her the desire to move to NASA. She was especially motivated by the idea that she could “participate in buying the space systems and hardware that put humans in space. From the smallest piece of engineering hardware to the largest contract for a space vehicle, it is all important to achieve the mission of flying humans to space.” She attributes her success at NASA to how she looks at her job, taking each assignment and looking at her contribution in relation to the whole picture. This effective approach is what gave her the opportunity to serve as a deputy space shuttle manager, even though she is a non-technical staff member. Kranz’s current job is to manage the mission support to the Orion Project. The Orion Project’s objective is to design, develop, test and deliver a human-rated crew transportation vehicle capable of exploration beyond low Earth orbit. The difficult part of this project is the human-rating aspect of a space vehicle because it will carry humans farther into space than any human has ever traveled. They have to work to the highest reliability and safety standards because this project involves humans, rather than a robotic or satellite mission. Kranz makes crucial decisions, implements contracts and disseminates technical data that moves NASA closer to the next generation of human spaceflight. On September 29, 2010, the House passed the Senate version (S-3729) of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. The bill had bipartisan support and is a good step to assuring NASA’s mission of human space exploration by continuing Orion vehicle development. President Obama signed the bill on October 11. Her time at Texas Tech was an important turning point for Kranz. She was able to prove she could be far away from home and succeed in her endeavors. “I use my education from Texas Tech every day that I come to work,” Kranz said. As a political scientist, she is seeing first-hand the policy negotiation that affects not only her job, but the future of human spaceflight. She likes to encourage prospective employees to “enjoy working on the mission support side. A person assures themselves a good career when they have curiosity and an intuition about the other side of the interface.”
Kranz
makes crucial decisions, implements contracts and disseminates technical data that moves NASA closer to the
next generation of human spaceflight.
Psychology in Space
Dr. Patricia R. DeLucia serves on the NASA Johnson Space Center Human Research Program Space Human Factors and Engineering Standing Review Panel. The panel’s charge is to review and provide analysis on the status and progress of the Human Research Program Elements and Projects. The panel consists of scientists from academia and industry and is chaired by Dr. Anna Wichansky at Oracle Corporation. Other committee members are from the Battelle Memorial Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, SA Technologies, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Washington. In previous years, DeLucia worked with NASA Ames Research Center on a funded project to study information integration in judgments of time-to-collision. Human factors is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the application of what is known about people, their abilities, characteristics and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function and jobs they perform. The Human Factors Program at Texas Tech leads to the combined B.A./M.A., terminal M.A., and Ph.D. and is fully accredited by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. DeLucia is a professor in the psychology department, adjunct professor in the TTUHSC School of Nursing, and coordinator of the Human Factors Program. She has been at Texas Tech since 1991. She completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University and a National Research Council post-doctoral associateship at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. She is a fellow and president-elect of American Psychological Association’s Division 21 (Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology), and a fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She serves as an associate editor of "Human Factors" and on the editorial board of "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance." DeLucia’s research focuses on theoretical and applied issues in visual perception and human factors issues in transportation and health care.
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B r i n g i n g
Greatness to
Chemistry a t
Several years ago, Texas Tech University
branded itself by saying From Here, It’s Possible to raise awareness of its excellent academic programs and reflect its ambition to be recognized as a great university. A major difference between a good university and a great university is the quality, determination, and creativity of the faculty who have developed a national and international reputation of research and teaching excellence. Students discover that thanks to world-class professors like Dr. William "Bill" L. Hase, the possibility for Red Raiders to experience learning and participate in research in ways that are the envy of great universities worldwide, is now happening all over campus.
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Arts&Sciences
T e x a s
T e c h
Dr. Bill Hase grew up in a small town in Missouri, and he attended the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry. His next stop was New Mexico State University where he received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Soon after, extraordinary possibilities to further his education and expand his experiences in the world of science seemed to be endless. He completed his postdoctoral work at the University of California, Irvine and then in 1973 he joined the faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit. While at Wayne State, Hase was a program officer of Theoretical Chemical Physics at the National Science Foundation and a researcher at the Ford Scientific Research Lab in Dearborn,
Mich. As a young faculty member at Wayne State, he immersed himself in computational science; serving as the director of the school’s Institute for Scientific Computing. Then, in 2004, Texas Tech offered Hase the Robert A. Welch Endowed Professorship in Chemistry and lured him away from Wayne State. Not to be confused with computer science, scientific computing engages the minds of both scientists and engineers in the development of highly sophisticated computer programs and application software that creates model systems for study and analysis of complex chemical and biological processes. The complexity of the calculations requires the use of supercomputers,
and fortunately, having a supercomputer positions Texas Tech as one of the world’s elite academic institutions when it comes to computing power. It is one of the reasons Dr. Hase chose to leave Michigan and come to West Texas. Hase’s research involves simulations at the atomic-level of molecules, materials and chemical processes. His research group is engaged in a broad range of projects, which include determining the amino acid sequence of peptide ions, how organic reactions occur at the atomic level, heat transfer across interfaces, and the feasibility of binding chemical warfare agents to metal oxide surfaces to reduce exposure to people.
scientific computing engages the m i n d s of both s c i e n t i s t s & e n g i n e e r s
in the development of highly sophisticated
computer programs + application software that creates m o d e l s y s t e m s for study + analysis of c o m p l e x chemical + biological p r o c e s s e s .
researchers and American and European professors. “At the end of the eight weeks, of the more well-known universities in the the students were required to present their world and gives lectures on his research research findings. It was a true ‘think tank’ efforts at Texas Tech. He is well-known environment,” Hase said. for being a gifted scientist, as well as a The best and the brightest students, phenomenal teacher. He is seldom idle from Europe and America, spent their and is constantly working to provide his day performing computational chemistry students with opportunities that are sure calculations. They tapped into the power of to enrich their lives forever. the supercomputer at Texas Tech. Slowly Texas Tech undergraduates and but surely they developed, and then applied graduate students were rewarded with mathematical algorithms and software an experience of international study this code that allowed them to complete their past summer. Hase and students from projects related to how the dynamics of Texas Tech, Iowa State and Yale traveled to atoms in organic molecules influence their Spain and studied with other students and electronic properties. “One of the wonderfaculty members from three European ful things about the experience is there are schools, The Universities of Pisa, Vienna Students who participated in the program no egos. Everyone enjoys working together in summer 2010. (standing, left to right) and Santiago de Compestela. Matthew Siebert, Post-doc from Lodi, ca, Daniel Ferguson, Junior math major, chemistry This academic adventure is part of the minor from lubbock, tx (Seated) Kyoyeon Park, and is willing to share the credit. It’s good for everyone,” Hase said. Partnership in International Research Graduate student from Seoul, korea The end result of the research project is and Education Program, which is a summer the students will never forget. Their experiences were funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. possible because of Dr. Hase’s ability to bring students into major “These grants are not easy to get. The NSF received research endeavors with high success and to help them discover approximately 500 grant pre-proposals,” Hase said. “Next, their potential to succeed. 70 schools are asked to submit full proposals. Only 15 As Texas Tech continues to support accomplished faculty schools received grants, and we were one of them.” members like William L. Hase From Here, It’s Possible is a promise The University of Santiago De Compestela’s campus was that Texas Tech will work tireless to help students to discover that the center of activity for this year’s research. From 8:00 a.m. learning and research is an adventure of a lifetime made possible to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday for eight weeks, by the universities great faculty. undergraduates worked side-by-side with post-doctoral
Hase often travels to some
Arts&Sciences
21
n o rt h e r n i r e l a n d Chemistry & Biochemistry
Texas Tech Researchers Collaborate with Chemists in Northern Ireland, Italy to Find Ionic Liquids are Measurably Non-Uniform at the Nanoscale Dr. Edward Quitevis and colleagues in the department, working with researchers at Queen’s University in Belfast, the University of Rome, and the National Research Council in Italy, showed that ionic liquids at the nanoscopic level are not uniform by using X-rays and lasers. Some domains of the liquid may have more or less density or viscosity compared to other domains. They were able to show that varying the structures of the ions changes the sizes of the domains. Their results were published in the “ Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. ”The article was selected for inclusion in the “ Institute of Physics (IOP) Select,” which is a special collection of journal articles chosen by IOP editors showcasing significant breakthroughs or
advancements, high degree of novelty and significant impact on future research. Ionic liquids are a new frontier of research for chemists. An ionic liquid is a salt with a melting point at or below room temperature. Originally invented to replace volatile and toxic solvents such as benzene, ionic liquids are now being used in high-efficiency solar cells as cheaper, more environmentally friendly rocket fuel additives and to more effectively dissolve plant materials into biofuels. Quitevis’ work on ionic liquids is funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund.
NORTHERN IRELAND
RUSSIA
S PA I N
greece
ROMANIA
I TA LY
GREECE
C l assica l & M o de r n La n g ua g es & Li t e r at u r es
Within imagination, archaeology conjures images of practitioners toiling away among the remains of past societies through excavation. But there are many other modes of engaging the material past that fall under the rubric of archaeology. For Dr. Christopher Witmore, there is a basic archaeological fascination concerning relations with remains of the past. This fascination is exemplified in the storied regions of the Corinthia and Argolid in Greece, where Witmore has conducted research during the last eight years. “Pause and consider,” Witmore asks, “for a shepherd and his droves walking along a Bronze Age road, this path is no less past than the paved surface of the nearby roadway. Both are simultaneous in terms of what they do—provide a surface that facilitates movement in 2011. From the angle of walking along a surface, the lapse of time makes no difference whatsoever.” For Witmore, time is paradoxical. And each point of contact between the material pasts of various eras provides the basis for a very different regional account a kind of topology. Following these points of contact between the diverse times and spaces that constitute these regions is precisely what Witmore’s current research in Greece is doing; research that 19 Texas Tech students had the opportunity to participate in this past summer as part of the City, Country, Borders study abroad program.
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Arts&Sciences
i t a ly s o ci o l o g y, a n t h r o p o l o g y & s o cia l w o r k
Dr. Cristina Bradatan focuses her research on migration in comparative contexts. Currently she is researching skilled immigrants in the United States and African and Eastern European migration in Spain; and comparing immigration in the two areas. Her work on skilled immigrants in the United States focuses on the effect of human capital in the lives of U.S. immigrants and explores the policy related questions: are skilled immigrants likely to achieve a more favorable outcome than the low skilled immigrants in the U.S. job market? Is the idea of the U.S. job market’s need for immigrants to perform jobs U.S. citizens will not perform a myth or a reality? Bradatan has been working on African and Eastern European migration to Spain since 2008, when she became part of an international group studying labor force outcomes of Moroccan and Romanian immigrants in Spain. Her research on migration in a comparative perspective aims at integrating research done on immigration in Spain, Italy and the United States. The goal is to assess how immigration policies affect the number and characteristics of immigrants and how government policies respond to the pressure of immigration. Bradatan hopes this research generates new perspectives on various immigration aspects by adopting a comparative point of view.
romania C l assica l & M o de r n La n g ua g es & Li t e r at u r es
We are all familiar with the prototypical image of the vampire from western literature and film. Pale with dark hair, red lips and fangs, this vampire is an aristocrat from Eastern Europe. His dress reflects his aristocratic background and his cape recalls his ability to change into a bat. This fictional vampire survives on the blood of the living, particularly the blood of beautiful women. The source of this image is not Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” but the film of the same name released in 1937 and starring the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. Since then the vampire has evolved, and it is experiencing an upsurge in popularity due to the “Twilight saga” and the series “True Blood.” Dr. Erin Collopy’s class, The Vampire in Eastern European and Western Culture, is more in demand than ever. Students are surprised how their idea of what a vampire is significantly differs from its origins in Slavic folklore. Instead of pale, aristocratic, and sexy, the Slavic folkloric vampire is ruddy and bloated, very ordinary, and more zombie-like than like the attractive and powerful Edward Cullen.
russia c o mmu n icat i o n s t udies
Dr. Bolanle A. Olaniran studies the role of culture in the use of communication technologies. He recently gave invited lectures on Knowledge Learning, Information & Technology in Taiwan and Global Crisis Management in Russia. In his latest international presentation he emphasized the idea that as economic globalization is becoming the norm in today’s society, information communication technologies play a significant role in the realization of organizational goals that have consequences on societies at large. Olaniran is investigating how technologies are deployed for global and virtual collaboration. Creators of new technology design products based on their own cultural experience and their visions of reality, and designers are in essence cultural change agents who transfer technologies that require users to comply or adapt to certain cultural beliefs and structures that somtimes contradicts users' value systems.
spain P s ych o l o g y
Dr. Kenneth DeMarree collaborates with Dr. Pablo Briñol, of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain to study metacognitive influences on human judgment and behavior. Metacognition refers to a person’s thoughts about their own thoughts. Their projects examine factors that influence whether a person views their thoughts as valid and useful guides for judgment. For example, a recent paper published with Richard Petty of Ohio State University and Dr. Ismael Gallardo of Universidad de Talca, Chile, showed that by reflecting on personally important values, a procedure known as self-affirmation, a person is more likely to feel confident and to rely on their current thoughts. In a persuasion setting, if a person reads an advertisement that produces positive reactions, they are more likely to have a positive attitude towards the product if they had been self-affirmed than if they have not. Thus, it is not merely the type of thought (positive or negative) that matters, but also whether or not a person views their thoughts as valid that determines if a person will be persuaded. Self-affirmation is only one factor that makes it more likely that a person will view their thoughts as a valid basis for judgment. Current projects examine how different personality traits (e.g., narcissism), social contexts (e.g., having power over another person), and bodily states (e.g., head nodding) can influence whether or not a person relies on their thoughts.
Arts&Sciences
23
canada
Americas
C A N A DA
e n g l ish
Dr. Thomas Barker spent the 2008-2009 year in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada doing research in public health communication for emergent disease threats. The focus of the research was on pandemic flu, a clearly recognized disease threat for which Canada and other nations have made extensive preparations. Alberta Health Services provided an excellent model of an integrated health system, serving more than 1.6 million health service consumers. The research was supported by the Alberta Health Services Office of Emergency Preparedness and the University of Alberta School of Public Health. The goal of this research is to build a model of communication that includes agencies and the public in the same communication system. Important findings of this work include the realization that, while health agencies have well-designed communication programs, the general public is far less prepared than agencies perceive. In fact, many of the communication plans that agencies expect message recipients to have prepared are simply non-existent. These preliminary results indicate that an ongoing communication effort by public health agencies involving outreach, research and educational initiatives may lead to a more integrated model of communication than previous models.
gulf coast
LUBBOCK G U L F COAST MEXICO
E n vi r o n me n ta l T ox ic o l o g y
Texas Tech’s Fibertect Absorbent Can Clean Gulf Oil Spill’s Crude, Hold Toxic Oil As workers battle the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a Texas Tech researcher’s product, Fibertect®, is ready to handle the dirty job. Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar said the nonwoven cotton carbon absorbent wipe can clean up crude oil and absorb vapors reportedly sickening oil spill clean-up crew members. “Fibertect® has been approved for use as a sorbent by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” Ramkumar said. “It definitely has applications for cleaning up the oil spill. Our wipe material is unique in that it easily absorbs liquids, and it has vapor-holding capacity. No product to my knowledge has the capacity to do both.” Originally developed to protect the U.S. military from chemical and biological warfare agents, Fibertect® contains a fibrous activated carbon center that is sandwiched between layers. The top and bottom layers, made from raw cotton, can absorb oil while the center layer holds volatile compounds such as the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
PERU
peru C l assica l & M o de r n La n g ua g es & Li t e r at u r es
Dr. Sara Guengerich’s book project, “Indigenous Andean Women in Colonial Textual Discourses,” argues for a revised understanding of Andean women’s agency in the discursive arena of colonial Peru. Through an analysis of colonial narratives and archival documents, she reconsiders the role of victims that has been ascribed to indigenous women from the beginning of colonial relations. Indigenous women in 16th and 17th century Peru learned to use not only the Spanish legal system but also European preconceptions about gender and politics to their advantage. Colonial records show that Indian women progressively expanded their economic activities in urban centers such as Lima and Cuzco and surrounding pueblos for they faced fewer 24
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gender-specific constraints on commercial or legal activities. Her research suggests that Indian women were not passive victims of a patriarchal colonial society but rather actors with voices and agency, who contested power and authority in the midst of decentralized colonial control. The archival material reveals that the persuasive discourses of both elite and non-elite indigenous women convinced the royal authorities to grant them a variety of benefits. Furthermore, their own version of the historical events of the Spanish conquest and colonization provide more details about their experiences and thought processes than the information about them in colonial narratives.
mexico E c o n o mics
Dr. Andres J. Vargas, a labor economist, has been working on research related to migration and time use issues. Together with Dr. Dakshina G. De Silva, Dr. Robert P. McComb, and Dr. Young-Kyu Moh from the Department of Economics, and Dr. Anita R. Schiller from the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center, he studies the effect of migration on workers’ earnings. In particular, they used the evacuation generated by Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of in-migration on workers’ earnings in the Houston metropolitan area. They found evidence that the average wages of firms in low-skill industries in Houston decreased by a factor between 0.7 and 3.1 relative to firms in high-skill industries. This work was presented at several venues including the 2010 American Economic Association annual meetings and it is published in the American Economic Review’s May 2010 Papers and Proceedings issue. Vargas also researches how Mexican immigrants’ patterns of time use compare to United States natives and analyzes how the amount of time immigrants devote to various activities changes over time in the U.S. In doing this study, he takes into account changes within the first generation of immigrants as well as changes across generations of immigrants. His goal is to understand the patterns of time use of this large segment of the U.S. population and how these patterns relate to the immigrant’s labor market assimilation, division of power within the household, health status, human capital formation, and intergenerational mobility.
lu b b o c k C o mpa r at ive Li t e r at u r e
Since Dr. Yuan Shu assumed the directorship of the Comparative Literature Program in spring 2006, he has redefined the program’s mission as facilitating intellectual exchanges across disciplines, cultivating a community of scholars with diverse interests and backgrounds, as well as advocating for cultural interaction across national boundaries. With interdisciplinary interests and global visions, the program has organized its annual symposia around the important subjects of transpacific studies, border studies, Vietnam War studies, and globalization studies. After four years of developing a model inderdisciplinary program, Dr. Shu passed the reigns to Dr. John Beusterien, associate professor of Spanish, in June of 2010.
H ea lt h , E x e r cise , a n d S p o r t S cie n ces
Individuals with chronic diseases who participate in different forms of behavioral therapy report that they feel better and are more able to cope with their illness, but we do not know if there are real changes in the ability of their bodies to resist or prevent the recurrence of disease. The goal of Dr. Jacalyn McComb’s research project is to determine whether physiological responses to stress, such as circulating stress hormone levels and molecules involved in the immune response, can be altered by behavioral therapy. McComb uses an established behavioral therapy program, Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction, as an intervention in a population of healthy women, uncomplicated by disease, to investigate this question. This women’s health project is unique because it emphasizes exercise as a behavioral strategy to help women become less vulnerable to the stressors in their lives. W o me n ’ s S t udies P r o g r am
The Women’s Studies Program continues to grow, with more than 70 affiliated faculty from across the campus. The program has inaugurated a new annual colloquium on gender issues to be held during the fall term and continues the tradition of hosting a major academic conference in the spring. Following the visit to Texas Tech in 2009 of Gloria Steinem, the program was pleased to welcome Native American environmental activist Winona LaDuke as the keynote speaker for the 26th annual conference in March 2010. Arts&Sciences
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Africa
Middle East
pa k i s ta n
TURKEY
I R AQ
ph y sics
The Department of Science and Technology, Khyber Pakhtoonkhaw, Pakistan invited Dr. M.A.K. Lodhi as a distinguished guest scientist for consultation on establishing infrastructure for science and technology in the country. He met with the Governor of the Province, the Minister, the Secretary and the Director of Science and Technology primarily on the pressing issues of energy and the environment in Pakistan. He gave two lectures during his sojourn in the province’s capital city of Peshawar at Sarhad University and the University of Peshawar on “An overview of new and renewable energy sources and devices pertinent to the Pakistani situation” and “Impact of the millennium old science on today’s science and technology.”
rwa n d a e n g l ish
Apologies have the potential to heal victims and help end cycles of human rights violations. According to Dr. Emil Towner, a recent doctoral graduate, “Nowhere are those elements at work more than in Rwanda, where genocide perpetrators are required to apologize as part of the Gacaca court system.” Unfortunately, research on apologies in Rwanda has been limited to statements issued by nations and organizations outside of Rwanda. This results in a lack of research into the impact of apologies issued by actual perpetrators. Towner began by traveling to Kigali, Rwanda, to conduct interviews and focus groups, as well as to collect documents and transcripts of Gacaca trials. He then used multiple methods of rhetorical theory to analyze the accusations and apologies in those trials. The result was a broad analysis not only of the common characteristics of Gacaca trial apologies, but also how those apologies place the 1994 genocide on the public record and shape reconciliation, identity, and membership in post-genocide Rwanda. In the end, Towner argued that politics, cultural expectations, and even documentation shape apologetic exchanges—and that those exchanges can in turn reshape identity and membership in communities once torn apart by hatred, genocide and human rights violations.
k e n ya M at hemat ics
Mathematics Professor Volunteers in Kenya and Makes a Big Impact
Dr. Jerry Dwyer came to Texas Tech in 2003, and since then he has worked on several outreach projects that improve mathematics instruction and proficiency levels in the community. Dwyer has also taken his passion for mathematics beyond his own community. On four different occasions, most recently in the summer of 2010, Dwyer has traveled to Nairobi and Eldoret, Kenya to assist local schools in improveing mathematics instruction in the country. Dwyer’s work is voluntary, yet it has taken him to the highest levels of the Kenyan national government. He met the Minister of Education some years ago to offer advice on curriculum and instruction for K-12 students, and he has corresponded with government officials and school administrators since then to continue his work.
K E N YA
R WA N D A
turkey S o ci o l o g y a n d P hi l o s o ph y
In the summer of 2008, Dr. Paul Johnson (sociology) and Dr. Mark Webb (philosophy) travelled to southeastern Turkey to conduct research on the Gülen movement’s effect in undercutting terrorist activity in the area. Unlike western Turkey, which is modern and developed, southeastern Turkey is poor and underdeveloped. It is also home to most of the country’s Kurds, who were made second-class citizens by the 1980 constitution of Turkey. In response, there arose a militant terrorist organization, the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK). The Gülen movement is a loose affiliation of people inspired by the thought of Fethullah Gülen, a Sufi preacher and scholar with a vision of a world at peace. Gülen believes that one way to address people’s 26
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fear and hostility is through education, so many in the movement build schools in parts of the world where hope is in shortest supply. For the last 10 years, the movement has been concentrating its efforts in southeastern Turkey, and a sharp drop-off in PKK recruitment and activity in the area has occurred. Johnson and Webb went to see if there was any connection between the two: can building schools be an effective strategy for fighting terrorism? They spent 10 days interviewing children, teachers, parents, administrators, and sponsors of the schools, probing to find out how their activities are funded and coordinated and what differences it has made in their lives.
PA K I S TA N
iraq B i o l o g ica l S cie n ces
Iraq Nuclear Facilities Program Iraq converted a nuclear physics research program into a covert nuclear weapons project under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. The facilities that supported this program were badly damaged by bombing during the first Gulf War and the program was halted by the subsequent U.N. inspections in the 1990’s. The second Gulf War, in 2003, finished the job. Iraq was left without the scientific, technological or governmental regulatory capabilities to deal with, or even determine, environmental contamination or the safe dismantlement of its nuclear weapons facilities. In 2005, the Texas Tech Center for Environmental Radiation Studies conducted its first fieldwork at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad. Supported by the U. S. Army, the Iraqi government, and the U.S. State Department, the team created a multinational network that includes the International Radioecology Laboratory in Slavutych (near Chernobyl), Ukraine and the Royal Scientific Society in Jordan. Since 2007, the Texas Tech team (Drs. Ronald Chesser, Carleton J. Phillips, and Brenda Rodgers) has been supported by more than $2.4 million in funding from the U. S. Department of State and the UK government. Chesser, Phillips, and Rodgers have also served since
2006 as members of State Department delegations to meetings on Iraq by the International Atomic Energy Agency –the so-called ‘nuclear watchdog’ agency involved in inspecting nuclear facilities around the world, monitoring energy programs and promoting international standards. Texas Tech has been involved in Iraq, sometimes under very dangerous conditions, since Phillips served there as a William Foster Fellow at the State Department and Advisor on Nonproliferation of Biological, Chemical, and Nuclear Weapons (2003-2004). Collectively, the team has made more than 17 individual trips to Iraq and has hosted meetings and training events involving nearly 100 Iraqi scientists, technicians, and political representatives, including Cabinet Ministers. One of the team’s main objectives is to help develop Iraq’s scientific, technological and engineering capacity. Another objective is to create pathways by which Iraq can rejoin the international community and earn credibility through dismantlement of its damaged nuclear weapons facilities. Success along these lines is essential for Iraq’s development, because U.N. Security Council Resolutions are still in effect and will remain in effect until the new
government of Iraq demonstrates its intention to sign and then obey its obligations under international agreements. Academically, the program has interdisciplinary implications. It involves research on environmental contamination associated with former nuclear weapons facilities. But it also has natural linkages to political science, economics and law. The Texas Tech Iraq program serves our own national interests by contributing to the development of a stable, democratic Iraq. By making direct contributions to nation-building, democratization and higher education in science in Iraq, the team is putting into practice many of the ideals and classroom discussions that take place on our campus. This unchartered real-world experience, with its successes and failures, is where faculty scholarship, practical application, and student learning all intersect. The unique experience from the Iraq Program might have other applications. For example, the U.S. National Academies of Science have sent Phillips and Chesser to China, South Korea, Japan, and Washington to present their ideas on how the Iraq experience might one day be applied to the Yongbyon Nuclear Facility in North Korea.
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Asia, Australia New Zealand china e n g l ish
On any given day, Dr. Brent Newsom is likely to hear one or more of the following outside the third-story window of his rented apartment: the pounding of construction crews at work; old Chinese women shouting to neighbors to bring in their laundry before the rain begins; the staccato pop of firecrackers exploding. That is because Newsom, with his wife and 1-year-old son, currently lives in Hangzhou, China and is halfway through a 10-month grant from the U. S. State Department’s Fulbright program. Newsom, a Ph.D. candidate, applied for the prestigious grant after he began working on a novel during a fiction writing class. Tentatively titled “Saving Face,” the novel centers on Frank Gilman, a small-town English teacher who impulsively moves to China, trying to escape the shame of his failed marriage. Gilman finds, however, that leaving his problems behind is not so easy, and living in a foreign culture brings unanticipated challenges. While cultural conflicts play a major role in the book’s plot, Newsom is also interested in the power of narrative to bridge cultural divides. One of his hopes in writing “Saving Face” is that American readers who may never experience Chinese culture directly will get a taste of its distinctive qualities and complexities. The Fulbright grant and his affiliation with Zhejiang University have enabled Newsom to complete research for the book, both through firsthand cultural experiences and by conducting surveys and interviews, as well as visiting important locations. He knows his Fulbright experience in China is a valuable opportunity; one he hopes will culminate in the novel’s publication. That makes the din outside his window music to his ears. Ge o scie n ces
Dr. Hua-wei Zhou led several graduate students on a field study this summer in the Three Gorges area in central China in the summer of 2010. Funded by the Chinese National Science Foundation, the team investigated the crustal structure beneath a 400-mile-long, man-made reservoir that has induced hundreds of small earthquakes since 2004. Using data from the field and from catalogs of the region’s seismologic network, the team is constructing crustal models. Zhou and his students have presented their results at international conferences in Taiwan and China. Many, but not all, of the earthquakes in the Three Gorges reservoir area are reservoir-induced earthquakes (RIEs). One of the objectives of Tech's research team is to monitor the earthquakes and try to distinguish the RIEs from ‘normal’ earthquakes. The team hopes this research can be useful in future large reservoir construction projects.
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india Ge o scie n ces
Millions of years ago, asteroids and comets slammed into Earth propelling debris at 50 times the speed of sound, vaporizing tons of solid rock, and carving craters many kilometers across. Evidence suggests an asteroid struck Earth, created the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, and killed more than half of life on Earth, including dinosaurs, in a geological instant. The 180-kilometer-diameter Chicxulub crater on the northern margin of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, has been dubbed as the "smoking gun" for dinosaur extinction. A concurrent impact event, more lethal than Chicxulub, has been discovered in western India, near the Bombay High area. Since the basin is the largest hydrocarbon field in India, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) discovered and studied the basin in detail using geophysical and deep drill core data. Even though geologists with the ONGC identified the basin as a major geophysical anomaly, they did not realize that they were mining oil and gas from a 500km-wide crater, the largest crater on Earth. The Shiva impact would have instantly produced devastating shock waves, a searing global heat pulse, forest fires, catastrophic environmental effects such as extended darkness, a cooling, and acid rain, as well as earthquakes of magnitude 15 or more— which dwarf the magnitude 13 estimate for the Chicxulub— to generated gigantic mega-tsunami waves that propagated in all directions from the point of impact. Scientists, like Dr. Sankar Chatterjee in the Department of Geosciences, are still debating what killed the dinosaurs—asteroid impact or a volcanic eruption. Some researchers prefer a volcanic alternative and favor the idea that the dinosaur extinction was gradual over millions of years and resulted from the massive volcanic eruptions that produced the Deccan Traps of peninsular India. Deccan volcanism erupted in close proximity to the Shiva crater, nearly at the same time. The spatial and temporal coincidence of Deccan volcanism with the Shiva crater led to the suggestion that Shiva impact might have triggered the Deccan volcanic outbursts. Deccan lava became a torrent as is evident from the two-kilometerthick pile of lava, near the city Mumbai.
vietnam his t o r y CHINA
J A PA N
VIETNAM INDIA
Seldom in a student’s academic career are one afford an opportunity to study in developing countries, particularly those whose current population fought in wars against America. Led by Dr. Ron Milam, sponsored by the Vietnam Center and the history department, graduate and undergraduate students travel to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia each summer where they meet with students of nine universities and veterans of the military services that were at war against America from 1954 to 1975. Comments from the many students who have made this trip over the last several years state that it is a “life altering experience.” To witness the educational process in developing countries is very special. Also, the students are exposed to both positive and negative aspects of American military and diplomatic policy in that they visit My Lai, where American soldiers murdered 200 civilians in 1968, and the killing fields of Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge exterminated nearly three million of their fellow countrymen. These two days are very emotional experiences for the students. This year’s trip included a side trip to the French Base at Dien Bien Phu where the Viet Minh scored a victory that resulted in French expulsion from the country they had ruled for 100 years. The group also visited the largest Buddhist temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the battlefields of Khe Sanh and Ap Bac, and beautiful Ha Long Bay in Northern Vietnam.
japan p o l i t ica l scie n ce
In August of 2009, Dr. Dennis Patterson traveled to Tokyo and witnessed Japanese political history. The purpose of this trip was to observe and collect data on Japan’s 45th election to the lower house of its National Diet. Patterson has been studying Japanese elections for more than 20 years, and he has written numerous articles and a book on the topic. He is currently working on another book on postwar Japanese elections, and, while this research trip was taken to support that research, it turned out to be more interesting than originally thought. The opposition, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), thoroughly defeated the ruling Liberal Democratic Party which had been in power for nearly 40 years. Patterson’s research is focused on explaining why the DPJ victory was so lopsided, and his investigation thus far revealed that the Japanese people were
drawn to the DPJ’s Manifesto that spelled out what it would do if elected. The manifesto contains specific items the DPJ would address if it obtained a majority, but the specific action items were overshadowed by the party’s central theme of the campaign, best translated into English as a “Change in Government.”
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Events
G e o s c i e n c e s A l u m n i R e c e p t i o n , A p r i l 2 010 , H o u s t o n , T e x as
dr. Lawrence schovanec, imelda johnson, ken johnson, kristi white, Bob Rothengass, Matt williams, jim saye, Matt Miller and wendell Jeffreys
B i o l o g y A l u m n i R e c e p t i o n , M a y 2 010 , L u b b o c k , T e x as
Dr. Michael San Francisco, toni smith, Paula Loveless, Dr. Ron Smith, Dr. Kurt Loveless
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Dr. John Burns and Dr. Suzanne Beck
A lu m n i R e c e p t i o n h o s t e d by D r . G ay l e a n d S h a ro n M u l l a n a x a n d D r . K e n a n d S a n d r a T a l k i n g to n , S e p t e m b e r 2 010, F o rt W o rt h , T e x as
Sandra Talkington, Helen Broyles, Wendell Jeffreys, and Robert Broyles
Dr. Gayle and Sharon Mullanax, Dr. Ken and Sandra Talkington
E n g l i s h R e c e p t i o n , S e p t e m b e r 2 010 , L u b b o c k , T e x as
David Clark, lauri anderson, Dr. John Poch, Dr. Jill Patterson and Dr. Sam Dragga
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Acknowledgements The College of Arts and Sciences wishes to thank the Helen Jones Foundation for its generous support of graduate scholarships in history and English. Pictured left are graduate students (clockwise from left) Alyssa Tanhueco, Louis Maraj, Hannah Beavers, Justin Schumaker, Ashley Stovall, Justin Kirkland, Ryan Huff, William Hrusovsky.
Mr. Jim Brown and Dr. Jerry Dwyer administer the summer TexPREP program for junior high and high school students who excell in math, science and engineering. The program has been funded for more than 15 years by the Helen Jones Foundation and The CH Foundation. Without the generous support of these local foundations, the program could not have been provided at no cost to thousands of West Texas students.
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non profit org u.s. postage
paid lubbock, tx permit # 719
texas Tech University B ox 4 1 0 3 4 L ubb o c k , TX 7 9 4 0 9 -1 0 3 4 16A050B53000100
change service requested
In January 2011, Dr. Richard A.“Dick” Bartsch retired after 36 years at Texas Tech. Among his many honors, Bartsch, Paul Whitfield Horn Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been elected to the 2010 class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society. The program recognizes members for their
contributions to the chemical sciences and outstanding service to the American Chemical Society. Additionally, Bartsch has graduated more than 50 doctoral students in his career at Texas Tech. To honor Bartsch’s service to the university, the Richard A. Bartsch Endowment in Chemistry and Biochemistry has been created to benefit the department.
To donate in his honor, please call (806) 742-3833 or mail to College of Arts & Sciences, Box 41034, Lubbock, TX 79409-1034.