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CIRES news release
Many photographs of the Southeast’s Smoky Mountains show layers of tall hills, shading to purples and grays in the distance. Tiny particles in the atmosphere help create the effect, which makes for stunning pictures. But human-caused enhancements of those fine particles also contribute to poor air quality in the Southeastern U.S., and may help explain why the region has not warmed like the rest of the nation.
So this summer, scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder, NOAA and colleagues from dozens of other institutions are taking the most detailed look ever at the natural and manmade emissions that affect air quality in the Southeast, and their movement and chemical transformations within the atmosphere. The mission, called Southeast Nexus or SENEX, should help scientists determine the origin of the fine particles and how they contribute to the haziness in the region and affect regional air quality and temperature trends.
Both the natural environment and human activities contribute to haziness in the Southeast. Plants and trees give off gases called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can react with manmade emissions in the atmosphere to create pollutants such as ozone and the tiny particles known as aerosols—the building blocks of haze. Power plants, refineries and other industrial sources also give off gases that lead to haze formation.
The fine particles, known as aerosols, don’t simply diminish air quality and create visibility problems—they also affect the regional climate. Many aerosols reflect light coming directly from the sun and contribute to the formation of clouds that in turn reflect sunlight. In the Southeast, is the result a cooling influence, which has partially offset the warming effect of greenhouse gases?
“The Southeast has the highest natural emissions in the nation, and also has high manmade emissions, humidity and cloudiness,” said CIRES atmospheric scientist Joost de Gouw. “The question is how all these ingredients combine and react to form a summertime haze that impacts air quality and may cool the climate.” De Gouw works at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
To investigate the complex processes in the atmosphere in the Southeast, CIRES, NOAA and other scientists are using a battalion of state-of-the art instruments that measure critical variables such as the types and concentrations of chemicals and aerosols, and the wind, temperature and moisture. One of NOAA’s WP-3D Orion research airplanes has been outfitted as a flying chemical laboratory for the mission and the aircraft and scientists will fly throughout the southeastern skies sampling air chemistry from Texas to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Ohio River Valley to the Gulf of Mexico.
“This mission may help crack key mysteries that have stumped air quality experts and climate scientists for decades. It’s an impressive effort happening in the sky and on the ground that will bring valuable information to policymakers, scientists, and the public alike,” said Steve Fine, Ph.D., deputy assistant administrator for NOAA Research.
The NOAA WP-3D is the main instrument platform for the SENEX study, which focuses on the interactions between natural and human-caused emissions at the nexus of climate change and air quality. SENEX, based out of Smyrna, Tenn., is conducted in close collaboration with colleagues from other agencies and academia under the umbrella of the Southeast Atmosphere Study (SAS). SAS is a six-week scientific investigation of the Southeast’s atmosphere, involving NOAA, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, Electric Power Research Institute, and dozens of other domestic and international institutions. Taken together, the projects comprise the most detailed look ever at the natural and manmade emissions that affect air quality in the Southeast.
As part of the SAS study, three other aircraft—the NSF/NCAR C-130, the Purdue University Duchess and the Stonybrook University Long-EZ—will also be measuring the vital statistics of the atmosphere. SAS also includes key ground-based experiments, at Brent, Ala.; Birmingham, Ala., Look Rock, Tenn.; and Research Triangle Park, N.C. The instrumentation tower at Brent provides measurements of nearly 100 chemical species and aerosols from near the surface up to 20 meters above the ground.
“The last time an atmospheric study of this size took place in the Southeast was in the late 90s,” de Gouw said. “Since then, power plants and motor vehicles have become much cleaner, and it will be important to document how the atmosphere has responded to these changes.”
Media Contacts
Jane Palmer, CIRES, Jane.Palmer@colorado.edu, 303-883-4398
Katy Human, CIRES, Kathleen.Human@colorado.edu, 303-735-0196
John Ewald, NOAA, john.ewald@noaa.gov, 240-429-6127
Scientist Contacts
Joost de Gouw, CIRES, Joost.deGouw@noaa.gov
Jessica Gilman, CIRES, Jessica.Gilman@noaa.gov
Eric Williams, Eric.J.Williams@noaa.gov
CU-Boulder’s Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building this week received recognition for its sustainability features.
The facility received the "Best Green Institutional Building" award in the 2013 Boulder Valley Green Building Awards, presented by the Colorado Green Building Guild and the Boulder County Business Report.
“This is an outstanding example of green design in a building type that is usually considered an ‘energy hog,’ ” the guild stated in the award description. “The building consolidates many high-energy-use campus laboratories into a single, energy-efficient building.”
The biotechnology building is one of the few lab buildings in the country that is Platinum, the highest possible rating within the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification system. The 336,800-square-foot facility opened in April 2012 on CU-Boulder’s east campus.
It is 30 percent more energy and water efficient than recently built buildings with a similar function. It features an array of ground-mounted solar panels; evaporative cooling; daylight harvesting, lighting controls and LED technology; energy-efficient freezer compressors and lab exhaust fume hoods; low-flow plumbing; and more.
The Colorado Green Building Guild awards were presented on June 12 at the Boulder Theater as part of the Boulder County Business Report’s annual BoulderEarth Conference. Spanning eight categories that include residential, commercial, remodels, new construction, and more, the awards honor “interesting, dynamic entries worthy of recognition for enlightenment, creativity and leadership.”
In 2012, CU-Boulder’s Williams Village North residence hall earned the distinction of “Best Green Multi-Residential Building.
For more information about the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building visit http://www.colorado.edu/news/series/place-tackling-critical-challenges-bioscience.
Biotech at CU: collaboration and innovation
Bioscience at CU-Boulder happens in a building designed for collaboration among many units including chemical and biological engineering, biochemistry, and the Biofrontiers Institute.
Ride along with CU-Boulder Facilities Management
Facilities Management plans for and provides a physical and operational environment that supports the University of Colorado Boulder's mission of education, research and outreach.
Its Facilities Operations division has earned the highest institutional honor bestowed by the APPA association for excellence in educational facilities leadership, strategic and operational planning, customer focus, information and analysis, development and management of human resources, process management and performance results.
With more than six active wildfires in the state of Colorado, CU-Boulder would like to share these health, safety and campus policy reminders.
Wildfire smoke
Smoke from multiple fires is affecting many communities in our area. Exercise appropriate caution to preserve your health if you live or work in an area with high levels of particulates in the air.
Wildfire smoke contains pollutants that can be harmful to health. Particles from smoke tend to be very small and can be inhaled into the deepest recesses of the lungs. Even in healthy people, this can cause pulmonary inflammation and temporary reductions in lung function. Particulate matter can also affect the body's immune system.
In general, if you can see or smell smoke, Colorado Department of Health officials recommend you avoid outdoor physical activities. If visibility is decreased to less than five miles, smoke has reached unhealthy levels.
When smoke levels are high, even healthy people may experience coughing, a scratchy throat, irritated sinuses, shortness of breath, chest pain, headaches, stinging eyes, and a runny nose.
Colorado air quality updates are available at Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Air Pollution Control Division website.
Monitoring ongoing wildfire information
There are a variety of information sources available to the university community. Most importantly, when a fire or other hazard affects Boulder County, local authorities update information on the Boulder Office of Emergency Management website at http://boulderoem.org. This website also contains information on how to sign up to receive alerts when an emergency may affect your home, child care provider or other place of interest within Boulder County.
Other sources for fire information include:
- Colorado Office of Emergency Management (COEM)
- Map of current fires by COEM
- USDA Forest Service Active Fire Mapping
Faculty, staff and students living in active fire areas are urged to pay attention to advisories concerning the changing conditions and possible evacuations and to follow instructions from city and law enforcement officials.
Campus response to wildfires
In a situation where a wildfire's impacts more directly affect the campus, CU officials will partner with city and county officials to closely monitor the situation.
The university will update campus-specific information as needed on the CU-Boulder home page at http://www.colorado.edu and the Emergency Information Line at 303-492-4636. CU faculty, staff and students should also monitor their campus e-mail and cell phones for possible emergency alerts, texts and updates.
If you live in an area affected by wildfire, flood or other local emergency, the campus has developed Disaster Leave Guidelines for pre-evacuees, evacuees and those who have suffered losses in these emergencies.
CU-Boulder encourages all members of our campus community to explore these resources and stay informed regarding emergencies that may affect them at home or at work.
As human population in the high-hazard ‘red zone’ skyrockets, researchers strive to understand when these homeowners perceive wildfire risk and act to mitigate it.
The fight against fires begins before the first spark—when homeowners in the wildland-urban interface choose whether to remove trees and bushes near their homes. What causes landowners to perceive risk and, further, to try to reduce the risk is not fully understood.
But Hannah Brenkert-Smith, a research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science, is working to change that. She and her colleagues are studying the beliefs and behavior of homeowners in the forested “red zone”—the so-called wildland-urban interface where wildfires can destroy homes and other private property.
Understanding when and why mountain residents work to make their homes “firewise” is increasingly important. A Colorado State University study predicts that the number of homes in the red zone will increase from 300,000 in 2000 to 720,000 by 2030. Also during that time, the number of acres in the red zone is projected to rise from 715,000 to 2.6 million.
Brenkert-Smith is collaborating with Nicholas Flores, CU-Boulder professor and chair of economics; and Patricia A. Champ, an economist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins.
Some things are becoming clear. The team has found that while there is a wide variety of information about wildfire available, information shared by experts and non-experts correlate with higher perceived risk. Residents whose neighbors’ vegetation looks dense perceive themselves to be at higher risk.
Importantly, WUI homeowners are not a cohesive group that can be expected to make the same kinds of decisions. For example, older-residents and women are more likely than others to undertake fire-mitigation work on their property.
As a doctoral student at CU-Boulder in 2003, Brenkert-Smith began interviewing and surveying red-zone residents after the devastating fire season of 2002.
In the decade since, researchers have focused more attention on wildfire’s social-science component, which has not been studied as extensively as that of natural hazards like earthquakes and floods. Prior to the early 2000s, the population at risk of major wildfire losses simply wasn’t as extensive as it is now.
Read the whole story at Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine >>
Join us this fall for a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to be a part of CU-Boulder’s mission to Mars!
CU-Boulder faculty and students are playing a key role in the $670 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN). MAVEN will explore the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind.To celebrate, the university will be sponsoring events nationwide, including three fun-filled days of festivities Nov. 16-18 in Cocoa Beach, Fla., culminating in MAVEN’s launch, pending weather and other circumstances.
Space is limited for the launch viewing, and NASA requires we submit a list of tentative guests months in advance. All attendees MUST be registered with us by June 30 to be on NASA’s guest list. We will be securing hotel blocks at a Cocoa Beach, Fla., hotel, so please stand by until we finalize details in June.
Please register here to save your spot. Registering does not obligate you to attend.
TIP SHEET
A CU-Boulder group is using satellite data to map the record-breaking flooding in Europe. The mapping is by the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu, headquartered at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and directed by Senior Research Scientist G. Robert Brakenridge. The center provides a digital map record of Earth’s changing surface water, including changes related to floods and droughts, and is the only comprehensive global archive of surface water change information that is available free to the public.
For more information contact Brakenridge at 303-735-5485 or robert.brakenridge@colorado.edu, or Jim Scott in CU-Boulder’s office of news services at 303-492-3114 or jim.scott@colorado.edu.
-CU-
The amount of dust being blown across the landscape has increased over the last 17 years in large swaths of the West, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The escalation in dust emissions — which may be due to the interplay of several factors, including increased windstorm frequency, drought cycles and changing land-use patterns — has implications both for the areas where the dust is first picked up by the winds and for the places where the dust is put back down.
“Dust storms cause a large-scale reorganization of nutrients on the surface of the Earth,” said Janice Brahney, who led the study as a CU-Boulder doctoral student. “And we don’t routinely monitor dust in most places, which means we don’t have a good handle on how the material is moving, when it’s moving and where it’s going.”
Based on anecdotal evidence, such as incidents of dust coating the snowpack in the southern Rockies and a seemingly greater number of dust storms noticed by Western residents, scientists have suspected that dust emissions were increasing. But because dust has not been routinely measured over long periods of time, it was difficult to say for sure.
“What we know is that there are a lot of dust storms, and if you ask people on the Western Slope of Colorado, or in Utah or Arizona, you’ll often hear them say, ‘Yeah, I grew up in this area, and I don’t remember it ever being like this before,’ ” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Associate Professor Jason Neff, Brahney’s adviser and a co-author of the paper. “So there is anecdotal evidence out there that things are changing, but no scientific data that can tell us whether or not that’s true, at least for the recent past.”
For the new study, recently published online in the journal Aeolian Research, the research team set out to determine if they could use calcium deposition as a proxy for dust measurements. Calcium can make its way into the atmosphere — before falling back to earth along with precipitation — through a number of avenues, including coal-fired power plants, forest fires, ocean spray and, key to this study, wind erosion of soils.
The amount of calcium dissolved in precipitation has long been measured by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, or NADP, which first began recording the chemicals dissolved in precipitation in the late 1970s to better understand the phenomena of acid rain.
Brahney and her colleagues reviewed calcium deposition data from 175 NADP sites across the United States between 1994 and 2010, and they found that calcium deposition had increased at 116 of them. The sites with the greatest increases were clustered in the Northwest, the Midwest and the Intermountain West, with Colorado, Wyoming and Utah seeing especially large increases.
Read the full news release.
The amount of dust being blown across the landscape has increased over the last 17 years in large swaths of the West, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The escalation in dust emissions — which may be due to the interplay of several factors, including increased windstorm frequency, drought cycles and changing land-use patterns — has implications both for the areas where the dust is first picked up by the winds and for the places where the dust is put back down.
“Dust storms cause a large-scale reorganization of nutrients on the surface of the Earth,” said Janice Brahney, who led the study as a CU-Boulder doctoral student. “And we don’t routinely monitor dust in most places, which means we don’t have a good handle on how the material is moving, when it’s moving and where it’s going.”
Based on anecdotal evidence, such as incidents of dust coating the snowpack in the southern Rockies and a seemingly greater number of dust storms noticed by Western residents, scientists have suspected that dust emissions were increasing. But because dust has not been routinely measured over long periods of time, it was difficult to say for sure.
“What we know is that there are a lot of dust storms, and if you ask people on the Western Slope of Colorado, or in Utah or Arizona, you’ll often hear them say, ‘Yeah, I grew up in this area, and I don’t remember it ever being like this before,’ ” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Associate Professor Jason Neff, Brahney’s adviser and a co-author of the paper. “So there is anecdotal evidence out there that things are changing, but no scientific data that can tell us whether or not that’s true, at least for the recent past.”
For the new study, recently published online in the journal Aeolian Research, the research team set out to determine if they could use calcium deposition as a proxy for dust measurements. Calcium can make its way into the atmosphere — before falling back to earth along with precipitation — through a number of avenues, including coal-fired power plants, forest fires, ocean spray and, key to this study, wind erosion of soils.
The amount of calcium dissolved in precipitation has long been measured by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, or NADP, which first began recording the chemicals dissolved in precipitation in the late 1970s to better understand the phenomena of acid rain.
Brahney and her colleagues reviewed calcium deposition data from 175 NADP sites across the United States between 1994 and 2010, and they found that calcium deposition had increased at 116 of them. The sites with the greatest increases were clustered in the Northwest, the Midwest and the Intermountain West, with Colorado, Wyoming and Utah seeing especially large increases.
The scientists were able to determine that the increase was linked to dust erosion because none of the other possible sources of atmospheric calcium — including industrial emissions, forest fires or ocean spray — had increased during the 17-year period studied.
It’s also likely that the calcium deposition record underrepresents the amount of dust that’s being blown around, said Brahney, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada. That’s because the NADP network only measures dust that has collided with water in the atmosphere before precipitating to earth — not dust that is simply moved by the wind. And not all dust contains the same amount of calcium.
The increase in dust erosion matters, the researchers said, because it can impoverish the soil in the areas where dust is being lost. Wind tends to pick up the finer particles in the soils, and those are the same particles that have the most nutrients and can hold onto the most soil moisture, Brahney said.
Increasing amounts of dust in the atmosphere also can cause people living in the rural West a variety of problems, including poor air quality and low visibility. In extreme cases, dust storms have shut down freeways, creating problems for travelers.
The areas where the dust travels to are also affected, though the impacts are more mixed. When dust is blown onto an existing snowpack, as is often the case in the Rockies, the dark particles better absorb the sun’s energy and cause the snowpack to melt more quickly. But the dust that’s blown in also brings nutrients to alpine areas, and the calcium in dust can buffer the effects of acid rain.
In the future, researchers working in Neff’s lab hope to get a more precise picture of dust movement by measuring the dust itself. In the last five years, large vacuum-like measuring instruments designed specifically to suck in dust emissions have been installed at sites between the canyon lands of Utah and the Front Range of the Rockies. Once scientists have enough data collected, they’ll be able to look for trends in dust emissions without relying on proxies.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Contact:
Janice Brahney, 250-807-8207
Janice.Brahney@ubc.ca
Jason Neff, 303-492-6187
Neffjc@colorado.edu
Laura Snider, CU media relations, 303-735-0528
Laura.Snider@colorado.edu
A dust storm blows into Mesa Verde National Park. Photo courtesy of Jason Neff
Emma Coburn finished her outstanding career at the University of Colorado with a bang when she won her second NCAA 3,000-meter steeplechase crown on Saturday, June 8, at the NCAA Championships. More>>
The 2012 Olympian was the overall favorite heading into the race as she has the best time by an American this year (9:28.26) and she did not disappoint, winning the race in 9:35.38. Her finishing time was the fifth best in NCAA history and coincidentally all five of those times belong to the Buffs.
Release courtesy: Linda Sprouse, Assistant SID
Georgia Tech News: Student News
RSS feed of news from the Georgia Insititute of Technology in Atlanta, GA
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Campus Events has started their Courtyard Music Series for its third year with positive student feedback.
The Courtyard Music Series, located on the Courtyard Stage in the Student Center, provides live entertainment for students while passing through the Student Center or dining in the food court.
The intimate showcase allows students to interact with the musicians, as well as relax or study in the lounge area of the food court. Ultimately, students seem to appreciate the live showcases of musicians and positively interact with feedback to the musicians.
“It’s cool to have something to listen to while eating here,” said sophomore Annisha Kellam.
The Courtyard Music series includes a weekly showcase of various musicians of different genres. The series provides new musical outlets— most performances are not the usual radio songs and artists. Singer Jake Ousley and pop acoustic musician Gareth Rogers kicked off the first two performances this year.
“The series is great,” said freshman Sharita Underwood. “My favorite artist was Jake Ousley. He was amazing.”
The ambiance it gives students between classes is also a selling point.
“It adds spice to the atmosphere in the food court.” said senior John Guzmun.
Live music also provides a different atmosphere for students on performance days than a typical day in the Student Center food court. The performances attract more students to the food court, which increases sales.
“It gives the food court and Student Center a better vibe,” said Underwood. “It makes the atmosphere more relaxing.”
Last week, Noah Hoehn received great response from students, faculty and staff as he headlined the Courtyard Music Series with a unique marimba pop performance using a live looping system. Noah Hoehn engaged the audience by interacting with them and explaining the process behind his music.
“It’s fun to get a chance to interact with the artists,” said freshman Chris Honeychurch.
“Every week there is a new face, and the music is always good.”
Campus Events have received upbeat student response to the music series and the performances this year. Although some students enjoy every performance, others say it varies upon genre preference.
“Some [musicians] are better than others,” said Guzmun. “It depends on the genre you prefer.”
Students do agree on one aspect-they anticipate more performances and diverse musicians in the future of the Courtyard Music Series.
“I look forward to more musicians and the series.” said Kellam.
In the beginning of October, Campus Events will be looking for musicians and performances for next semester’s continuation of the series. Interested musicians and performers can contact Campus Events for more information regarding the application to be featured in the Courtyard Music Series.
“Next semester, we want to have more student artists,” said Courtyard Director Julia Samoila. “We also want more up and coming artists and performers that really put on a show.”
Samoila also looks forward to more student feedback as the Courtyard Music Series continues in the upcoming months.
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Desire2Learn will be Georgia States newest system-wide learning management program. Georgia State will join other University of Georgia Schools in switching to the program in January 2013. Two town halls, (Sept. 25 and Oct. 12), and a demonstration of the program, (Oct, 1), will assist faculty and staff with this transition.
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Professor Paul J. Ferraro won The proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ Cozzarelli prize for their article, “Conditions associated with protected area success in conservation and poverty reduction.” Ferraro and his associates accepted the award during the National Academy of Sciences’ meeting in Washington, D.C.
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Nick Wilding of GSU’s Department of History recently discovered Galileo forgeries. Two copies of “Sidereus Nuncius,” one bought by a New York dealer and another sold at Sotheby’s New York were proven to be 1964 reproductions of the book, not original printings, by the Georgia State professor.
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Prevent Child Abuse Georgia has a new home in the Center for Healthy Development at Georgia State. The prevention program will allow researchers at Georgia State to contribute to child abuse prevention efforts. The program is now part of Georgia State’s Institute of Public Health.
- Graduate students in the Astronomy program have found gaseous planets orbiting around the solar system Praesepe. The research was funded by NASA’s Origins of Solar Systems. This is the first stellar research to find planets orbiting around a star similar to Earth’s Sun. The project was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The HOPE for Georgia and Georgia State Federalist Society event collaboration, the HOPE for Georgia Community Ambassador Training, received a below par attendance on Saturday, Sept. 15.
The training was organized to inform students about the changes of HOPE and the potential future of the scholarship; however, no students attended to receive this valuable information.
“Turnout was disappointing,” said HOPE for Georgia coordinator Janice Barrocas. “Especially given how much students have at stake.”
The disappointing attendance is a sign that students are not aware of the changes that affect every current HOPE recipient and the severity of HOPE’s future.
According to HOPE for Georgia, the scholarship covered approximately 87% of tuition in the 2011-2012 school year. In 2015, HOPE will only cover 50% of tuition.
“The HOPE Scholarship will cease to exist as we know it inside three years unless Governor Deal and the Georgia legislature take action,” said Barrocas. “Current and future HOPE recipients have the power to turn this situation around if we speak with a single voice. We must insist our legislators act before it's too late.”
Position: Outside Hitter
Height: 5’8”
Year: Senior
Major: Exercise science
This week, Freeman had a stellar performance both at the GSU Invitational as well as the Georgia Tech Classic.
With 18 kills and 15 digs against Mercer, the Decatur, Ala. native put up her second double-double of the season and led the team to a victory. They ended up losing the final against South Alabama.
Since her freshman year, Freeman has been solid with the team. In 2009, she was named to the All-CAA Rookie Team.
In 2010, she led the team in service aces with 32, third in digs with 311 and had three double-doubles.
Last year was her strongest as she had ten double-doubles, led the league with 47 aces and made the all-tournament team at the Wyoming Cowgirl Classic.
In high school, Freeman dominated both in volleyball and basketball.
University of South Alabama
University of South Alabama, like Georgia State, has an infant football program. They went undefeated in their first two years, but a 6-4 record last year cut their run. They outscored their opponents 730-141 those first two years. Now, they’re in the middle of a two-year transition period, and they are not eligible for either conference championships or bowl games, but they will gain valuable experience regardless. Probably the most dangerous team potentially in the Sun Belt, Georgia State, having created a program around the same time, will hear and deserve constant comparisons to University of South Alabama as they both grow.
Middle Tennessee State
Middle Tennessee State is the only team to win 10 games in a season in the Sun Belt conference; though they had a down year in 2011, they are 1-1 this year, and projected for many more wins. Middle Tennessee State has a slightly weaker recruiting base, (if only compared to Florida), but still strong. They are probably one of the better known Sun Belt teams. Playing them will open up more recruiting avenues for Georgia State.
Florida Atlantic
Florida Atlantic has a short, but rich history. They began as a football program in the early 2000’s, with Howard Schnellenberger as their coach. Schnellenberger is well known as the man who started the dominance that was the University of Miami in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Had he not left after his first national championship, the University of Miami might’ve done even greater things. At Florida Atlantic, he built a program from scratch, not unlike what he did at Miami. Florida Atlantic had some good and bad years, with Schnellenberger retiring last year after a 1-11 campaign, but make no mistake; when a team is recruiting from the fertile bed such as Florida, anything is possible.
Florida Atlantic is where Georgia State is now; building towards growth. If Georgia State can get past them, they’ll be on the right track. Plus, Florida - Georgia match ups tend to be popular.
Arkansas State
Arkansas State has one of the most innovative coaches in the game – Gus Malzahn. An integral part of Auburn’s national championship staff, he took over the Red Wolves after Hugh Freeze left to take the head coaching job at Ole Miss. They went 10-2 under Freeze, considered unbeatable offensively, and handed the reins to a man in that same mold. It’s not hard to forecast them as up-and-coming, and will be a stout obstacle in the path of Georgia State. They are probably the weakest recruiting bed out of all the potential rivals.
University of Louisiana Lafayette
University of Louisiana Lafayette went 9-4 in 2011, and is 2-0 in 2012, so they obviously are an impressive team. Potentially, they could, with their schedule, become only the second team to ever win ten games in a season in the Sun Belt. Nothing particular stands out about the Ragin’ Cajuns; they are just well-coached by the experienced Mark Hudspeth. Working within the confines of what they have, they do very well. Also, as a plus, one of the similarities they have with Georgia State is their campus, as they are in an urban area, giving them a strong recruiting arm.
After the first three weeks of competition, Georgia State’s cross country men’s and women’s teams started off their first season in the Sun Belt Conference on the right foot.
On Aug. 31, senior Katharine Showalter opened up the season placing first in the 5K women’s race against Clemson. Junior Valentin Poncelet finished third for the men’s team.
Cross country head coach Chris England thinks it might be too soon to say if the team’s preseason paid off, but the runners’ performances drives them to strive for more.
“It’s too early in the season to tell,” England said. “We have had some early successes in the first two meets of the season. This motivates the student-athletes to continue working.”
At the Georgia State Invitational on Sept. 8, the Panther men’s and women’s teams left with victories in every team and individual competition.
Once more, Showalter earned first place and was recognized as the Sun Belt women’s cross country Runner of the Week.
“Katharine Showalter has won both meets so far this season and earned a pair of Sun Belt accolades,” England said. “She continues to push her teammates.”
Showalter hasn’t been the only player to shine in the women’s team. England said that junior Jennifer Rubel showed improvement in comparison to last season.
“Her hard work is beginning to pay off,” Rubel said.
He’s also happy with sophomores Hannah Stefanoff and Niamh Kearney as they “resume their success started during a strong freshman year in 2011.”
Coach England said that his athletes don’t want the victories to make them lose focus.
“The two individual and two team victories at the GSU Invite only ensured a great day for Georgia State,” England said. “We celebrated briefly, but the runners are never satisfied and will continue to look forward to the rest of the season.”
So far, the team has been training hard for when the waning part of the season arrives.
“Early in the season, we train with high volume and high intensity. The runners are primarily engaged in running and weight lifting,” England said. “This tires the runners out and makes competing more difficult, but this prepares them for the long season so that they will be in peak physical condition when it counts.”
The current team’s preparation phase gives England high hopes for the future.
“We are hoping to bring home a victory at the Sun Belt championship in October and have a strong showing in the NCAA South Regional meet.”
On Saturday’s meet, the Panthers will visit Carrollton, Ga. to compete in the West Georgia Invitational.
Partying all night at a concert really does work up an appetite, especially when you are at the Music Midtown grooving to artists like the Foo Fighters and Ludacris. The problem is finding restaurants that stay open all night. Well, come along and pick out your flavor of eatery with this delicious 24-hour restaurant guide of Midtown.
If you are in the mood for upscale dinning, then visit Woodfire Grill, featuring American cuisine with a Southern flare. Local ingredients are used to fire-roast and grill their seasonally-influenced foods. Uniquely, Woodfire Grill features a three- and five-course tasting menu for those who like to explore with their taste buds.
Details:
(404) 347-9055,
1782 Cheshire
Bridge Road
www.woodfiregrill.com
If you are in the mood for a completely southern menu, check out South City Kitchen. This bungalow-housed restaurant features Southern favorites such as fried chicken, shrimp and grits and she-crab soup. Located near the Federal Reserve Bank and the Margaret Mitchell House, South City Kitchen gives customers a sophisticated view of an exhibition kitchen inside and a view of the Atlanta skyline on the patio.
Details:
(404) 873-7358,
1144 Crescent Ave.,
www.southcitykitchen.com
Want Italian? Take your taste buds across the Atlantic to Veni Vidi Vici. Their specialties include wood-grilled calamari, wood-burned, rotisserie-roasted chicken and hand-made pastas. If you are still not tired from the concert, come on Sundays for a jazz band trio.
Details:
(404) 875-8424,
41 14th St NW,
www.buckheadrestaurants.com/veni-vidi-vici
For those who have run out of funds and still want something yummy, find your way to Taco Cabana, an all-Mexican eatery. Whether you want burritos, enchiladas or quesadillas, Taco Cabana has a variety to offer.
Details:
(404) 874-6152,
1895 Piedmont Ave. NE,
www.tacocabana.com
Georgia State was defeated by the Roadrunners of The University of Texas at San Antonio Saturday night by a final score of 38-14.
The loss was the Panther’s third defeat in the season and leaves them still searching for their first victory.
“We have to start out playing well,” head coach Bill Curry said after the game. “We have to play well the whole time and we haven’t done that.”
The Panthers did start well as, as early into the first quarter, quarterback Ben McLane connected with wide receiver Albert Wilson down the left sideline for an 84-yard touchdown pass.
The scoring strike was the longest play from scrimmage in school history, besting Wilson’s 78-yard touchdown reception against South Alabama last season.
The touchdown gave Georgia State a 10-7 lead and brought the crowd of over 11,000, including Commissioner Karl Benson of the Sun Belt Conference, to their feet.
Georgia State’s joy wouldn’t last for long.
UTSA needed only four plays to find pay dirt. Following a Georgia State three and out, UTSA put together a nine play, 51-yard drive that was capped by another Roadrunner touchdown.
The Panthers would follow with one of their best drives of the evening, but would put zero points on the board after UTSA blocked a 43-yard field goal attempt by Georgia State’s Christian Benvenuto.
UTSA put together a long touchdown drive following the blocked kick. Their third touchdown of the half pushed the score to 24-7, were it would remain until halftime.
The Panthers would not pose a serious threat the entire second half.
The 38-14 final score marked the third time in as many games this season that Georgia State has given up at least 30 points. The 14 points scored was a season high for the Panthers.
One of the lone bright spots for the Panthers was junior Albert Wilson. The Port St. Lucie, Fla. Native finished the game with 150 yards receiving on six catches. He also hauled in two touchdown receptions for the fourth different game in his career.
Running back Donald Russell also had a solid night, rushing for 76 yards on only ten carries. But the Panthers were playing from so far behind on the second half that Russell barely got to touch the ball.
Reserve quarterback Ronnie Bell, filling in for Ben McLane who suffered a left wrist injury at the end of the second quarter, made several nice plays in the second half. He also threw a pair of interceptions.
“Guys that come off the bench and play great are people that are able to prepare themselves even if they are not promise that they are going to play,” Curry said. “And you don’t know if a guy can do that until it happens. And it turns out that he [Bell] can.”
Curry also said that Bell showed he had a commanding presence and that is something that this team seems to lack at times.
A change at quarterback will have to wait a few days at least as the severity of the McLane injury must be evaluated by the team’s medical staff.
Curry does not think that the team’s application is the problem for their poor performances so far.
“There was no lack of effort,” Curry said. “There was execution by the other team, which was very good.”
Hoping to improve, they will face Richmond next Saturday at the Georgia Dome.
Pearl Jam
“Vs.” (1993)
“Ten” may be the Seattle grunge band’s definitive album, but “Vs.” is the album that solidified their place in rock history. Classic anthems like “Animal” and “Daughter” moved the band from angst-ridden ranters to thoughtful social commentators, but the album’s powers lies within the players. Guitarist Stone Gossard singes every string through each song, particularly on tracks like “Dissendent” and “Go.” And frontman Eddie Vedder is in top form here, his roaring vocals and mesmerizing lyrics rages in every moment of this album. Millenials, take note: this is rock.
Foo Fighters
“Wasting Light” (2011)
Foo Fighters knocked another one out of the park with this rollicking disc that would have made Kurt Cobain proud. Like Syd Barrett was to Pink Floyd, the titular frontman of Nirvana hovers over Foo Fighters’ musical sensibilities, as evident in their Cobain tribute “In Your Honor.” This time, Dave Grohl’s incendiary guitar riffs and howling vocals tear through everything that was the band and goes deeper—much deeper. Standout tracks like “I Should Have Known” show the band at their most vulnerable, while “Miss the Misery” ties up the album’s theme.
Florence + the Machine
“Ceremonials” (2011)
The 24 year-old singer/songwriter flogged the airwaves with her debut album “Lungs,” but her sophomore effort found the artist confident in her footing. Haunting, ethereal and downright gorgeous, “Ceremonials” walks the thin line between rapturous love and shattering heartbreak. The album boasts replay value unlike any other record currently on the market, with each new listen revealing more layers, more truths and more surprises. In the words of Rolling Stone critic Jody Rosen, Florence is a machine.
Adam Ant
“Friend or Foe” (2009)
Adam Ant’s prime was in the 80s where his wave, post-punk, new romantic sound came to life on stage. His upcoming release’s title comes from his 2012 documentary, “The Blueblack Hussar” covering his UK tour. After Ant left the band Adam and the Ants in 1982, his solo debut album, “Friend or Foe,” was Ant’s greatest American chart success and included the hit single “Goody Two Shoes.” The song made it to number one in the UK and Australia, and number 12 in the U.S. Today Ant still has his fun-loving spirit, but he may be a disappointment to today’s generation who just may not get him.
Garbage
“Garbage” (1995)
In the band’s debut Shirley Manson’s edgy, but approachable lyrics set her apart from other grudge and post grunge era female vocalist of the day, like Courtney Love and Nina Gordon. Walking the line between dark and poppy allowed Garbage to claim a broader fan base. Garbage’s electronic feel was a warm welcome as the title wave of Seattle grunge rock was beginning to crest. The first single, “Vow,” embodied the band’s signature feel: the voice of a disgruntled woman tamed by catchy melodies and an electronic beat. For more on the band, see the exclusive interview on page 4B
Civil Twilight
“Holy Weather” (2012)
Instantly, their uniqueness is captivating. Once their first track, “The River,” pleasantly draws you in with it’s upbeat, catchy guitar melodies and background vocals, you’ll be excited to hear the next track. “Holy Weather” is different but sounds awesome with lead singer Steven McKellar’s perfectly pitched, smooth vocals. Alternative and indie rock describes this bands genre on their sophomore album. Their self titled debut album hit with a little more rock than “Holy Weather,” yet staying in the alternative arena. If you like Coldplay, you’ll love these guys.
T.I.
“No Mercy” (2010)
The title to his eighth studio album was partly inspired by Marvin Gaye’s 1972 song of the same name, he revealed on Billboard magazine. His previous album was his least selling album “No Mercy.” He recorded “No Mercy” after he learned that he was going back to jail which dampered his spirits, hence the poor studio performance. However, the album to listen to before checking him out this weekend is “Paper Trail.” These tracks are most compelling when T.I. is confessing his vulnerability in the ace of all that weighs on his heart. “Trouble Man” is set to release later this fall.
Van Hunt
“What Were You Hoping For?” (2011)
Listening to his latest release, Van Hunt transports you from an outdoor rock concert one moment, to a soulful blues nightclub the next. Compared to his previous albums, he transformed his sound from sensual R&'B to a more aggressive, rock, neo-soul, psychedelic mixture. Tracks “Moving Targets” has Maxwells melodic soul, and “Watching You Go Crazy Is Driving Me Insane” has Lenny Kravitz’s rock-and-roll heart. The distorted guitars and violent drums has developed since his earlier works. But he never leaves behind the mellow, gentle sounds as in “What Were You Hoping For.” Pleasantly and successfully executed.
Girl Talk
“All day” (2010)
Gregg Michael Gillis, the man also known by his stage name Girl Talk and mastermind behind this work, brings mutiple decades and genres of music together spontaneously. Surprisingly, a 2000s rapper rhyming over an 80s alternative rock guitar solo with a 1990s grunge rock beat actually works Even a 70s R&'B group doo-woping in the background while, again a vulgar hip-hop mcee raps has a unique appeal. “All Day” is Girl Talk’s fifth studio album, with each of mashups and digital sampling that screams schizophrenia.
Ludacris
The Red Light District (2004)
Luda is known for his party/club hits, usually with a raunchy, and to many, an appealing, sexual theme. By the sound of his new singles, he’s still going strong with his style. The album of note prior to the music fest is “The Red Light District.” Not only are more than a few of the beats hot, but he also has great artists featured throughout the tracklist including DMX, Nate Dogg, Bobby Valentino, Trick Daddy, Nas, Doug E. Fresh and Sum 41.
O’Brother
“Garden Window” (2011)
A combination of rock, experimental rock and ambient post-rock produces a very mysterious and even haunting sound. Influences include Deftones, Mogwai and Sigur Ros. Distorted guitars and voices with violent background effects gives this album an animalistic, wild vibe. Among thier three album releases, though it wasn’t a full length album, their 2006 LP, “In Comparison to Me,” is much more light and resembles alternative rock. If you’re looking for melodic tunes, this would be the album to listen to. Since they have gone through this genre evolution, expect their newer metal sound at Music Midtown.
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts
“Sinner” (2006)
This hard rock and punk rock band’s ninth studio album instantly lifts you out of your seat with intense electric guitar solos and a wild drum kit. Jett takes you on a personal journey with issues on politics, privacy and self-image. She also addresses sexual orientation on tracks such as “Naked” and “Five.” Joan’s powerful voice, on top of powerful lyrics and gritty sounding instruments, give each of her songs fierce passion—this is, after all, the band that made the anthem “I Love Rock and Roll” famous in 1981.
The Avett Brothers
“The Carpenter” (2012)
Partnering with famed producer Rick Rubin has served the bluegrass band well. Now in the mainstream spotlight after the success of their previous album “I and Love and You,” The Avett Brothers’ new disc “The Carpenter” arrives spit-shined and polished. Death hovers through much of the album, with a light sprinkle of longing and heartache, especially in tracks like “Winter in My Heart” and “I Never Knew You.” Lyrically, it’s the band’s most mature to date, and the rockabilly-ness of their musical style has become like a full-bodied wine.
Neon Trees
“Picture Show” (2012)
The Neon Trees embrace nostalgia. This sophomore album from the synth-heavy band brims with energy as bright as its name and drips with the Reagan era of feel-good optimism. From its pulsing dance-pop beats to its harmonious melodies, it’s an album that’s hard not to dance to. Pop-laden tracks like “Lessons in Love” and “Moving in the Dark” echo a little Bon Jovi, a little Duran Duran and a splash of 80s David Bowie. Great to listen on a bad day, a cloudy day or anytime you’re dodging cars in Atlanta traffic.
LP
“Into the Wild” (2012)
LP’s powerful and unique vocals give her that individuality that appeals to even listeners who may not even be fans of her rock/pop genre. This entire album has been recorded live as an LP with only six tracks. She’s an absolutely captivating performer with energy complimented by her versatile band behind her. Her previous album, “Surburban Sprawl &' Alcohol,” is another album you should listen to prior to the festival. She’s full of punk rock, sounding more grundgy. While her recent release showcases her phenomenal vocal range and ability, “Surburban Sprawl &' Alcohol” reveals a darker side that may just be her stripped, more vulnerable side.
Maybe they’ll perform these, maybe they won’t. But every fan who attends a concert hopes their favorite song will be performed.
Pearl Jam
Yellow Ledbetter-“Lost Dogs”
Black-“Ten”
Daughter-“Vs.”
Betterman-“Vitalogy”
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town-“Vs.”
Corduroy-“Vitalogy”
Alive-“Ten”
Foo Fighters
This Is A Call-“Foo Fighters”
Everlong-“The Colour and the Shape”
Monkey Wrench-“The Colour and the Shape”
The Pretender-“The Pretender”
Walk-“Wasting Light”
Best of You-“In Your Honor”
Florence + the Machine
The Dog Days Are Over-“Lungs”
Cosmic Love-“Lungs”
Shake It Out-“Ceremonials”
Spectrum-“Ceremonials”
No Light, No Light-“Ceremonials”
Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)-“Lungs”
Howl-“Lungs”
The Avett Brothers
Die, Die, Die-“Emotionalism”
Tales of Coming News-“Emotionalism”
I and Love and You-“I and Love and You”
If It’s The Beaches-“The Gleam”
The Traveling Song-“A Carolina Jubilee”
T.I.
Whatever You Like-“Paper Trail”
On Top of the World-“Paper Trail”
ASAP-“Urban Legend”
No Matter What-“Paper Trail”
Get Loose-“Urban Legend”
Bring Em Out-“Urban Legend”
Dead and Gone-“Paper Trail”
Ludacris
My Chick Bad-“Battle of the Sexes”
Get Back-“The Red Light District”
Money Maker-“Release Therapy”
Act A Fool-“2 Fast 2 Furious”
Move Bitch-“Word of Mouf”
Garbage
Only Happy When It Rains-“Garbage”
I Think I’m Paranoid-“Version 2.0”
The Trick Is To Keep Breathing-
“Version 2.0”
Vow-“Garbage”
Medication-“Version 2.0”
Adam Ant
Goody Two Shoes-“Friend or Foe”
Strip-“Strip”
Kings of the Wild Frontier-“Kings of the Wild Frontier”
Antmusic-“Kings of the Wild Frontier”
Puss’n Boots-“Strip”
Neon Trees
Everybody Talks-“Everybody Talks”
Animal-“Habits”
Lessons in Love-“Picture Show”
Calling My Name-“Animal”
Girls and Boys in School-“Habits”
Girl Talk
Oh No-“All Day”
Bounce That-“Night Ripper”
Smash Your Head-“Night Ripper”
No Pause-“Feed the Animals”
Get It Get It-“All Day”
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
I Hate Myself for Loving You-“Striptease”
I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll-“I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”
Love Stinks-“Mr. Wrong”
Rebel, Rebel –“Flashback”
Light of Day-“Flashback”
Civil Twilight
Letters From The Sky-“Civil Twilight”
Fire Escape-“Holy Weather”
Human-“Civil Twilight”
River-“Civil Twilight”
Next To Me-“Civil Twilight”
Van Hunt
Down Here In Hell (With You)-
“Van Hunt”
Dust “Van Hunt”
Daredevil, Baby “On the Jungle Floor”
Whatching You Go Crazy Is Driving Me Insane “What Were You Hoping For?”
Eyes Like Pearls “What Were You Hoping For?”
O'Brother
Malum- “Garden Window”
Machines, Pt. 2- “Garden Window”
Division of Man- “The Death of Day”
Two Perching Birds-
“In Comparison to Me”
I Saw You There- “In Comparison to Me”
LP
Into The Wild- “Into The Wild”
Toykyo Sunrise- “Into the Wild”
Cadillac Life-“Suburban Sprawl and Alcohol”
Wasted- “Suburban Sprawl and Alcohol”
Heart Shaped Scar “Heart Shaped Scar”
While the recent revival of Music Midtown has brought both economic success and culture to Atlanta, some raise concerns about the potential negative impact to Piedmont Park.
Chris Nelson, the vice president of operations at Piedmont Park, thinks that Music Midtown is good for Atlanta. People in a big city anticipate and expect to see these kinds of cultural festivities, according to Nelson.
“I think it produces a positive economic impact on the city,” Nelson said. “It employs people. It creates jobs.”
Generally, surrounding businesses and restaurants greatly profit from the hype of Music Midtown. Eric Kline, the owner of nearby Latin restaurant Loca Lupa loves the festival.
“It creates culture,” he said. “It creates a vibrance in our city.”
The festival also provides a boom in business for his tapas restaurant, which has live music and dancing every night.
Adam Gajadharsingh, the owner of The Nook, an American casual dining restaurant nearby, has been an enthusiastic attendee of Music Midtown since before his restaurant opened.
“Last year was, for us, amazing,” Gajadharsingh said. “The festival brought a lot of business to The Nook to have dinner and continue the party.”
Gajadharsingh said that most businesses are looking forward to getting a lot of overflow business from the festival.
Gajadharsingh finds an intriguing significance to having the festival in the park.
“It’s a cool, unique theme that Atlanta has,” he said. “Rather than being in an arena, the festival is held outside in a giant park. This is what makes the festival what it is.”
In the past 18 years, Music Midtown’s popularity remained high until its 2006 cancelation. Peter Conlon, Music Midtown’s founder, decided to change the festival’s 2005 summer dates from the first weekend in May to June 10-12.
Thinking that weather would be better, the plan backfired. It rained heavily, the venue had to be moved to a less popular location and the ticket prices skyrocketed. Ultimately, the support for the festival was low that year and cost Midtown over $3 million in profit.
Assuming that people had lost interest, Conlon decided not to have a Music Midtown Festival in 2006, which he announced that year.
When Music Midtown came back last year, it was a much different festival. It was held on Sat., Sept. 24 in Piedmont Park.
Piedmont Park’s overuse is only one one of the challenges that Music Midtown may present. They have very few park acres for a city of Atlanta’s size, so the parks they do have get a lot of use, according to Nelson.
“We have well over 3 million visitors a year, a lot of them coming from festivals,” Nelson said.
The biggest problem from the perspective of the land in the park is compaction from large amounts of people walking on the soil.
“Compaction can lead to a decline in the landscape,” Nelson said. “We’re pretty aggressive about addressing that.”
Over the years, in partnership with the city and conservancy, there has been a big improvement. Events, including the Music Midtown festival, are required to follow certain guidelines to help conserve the park, Nelson said.
As several outdoor events require, Music Midtown adheres to their Marketplace Exhibitor Information &' Application package where rules and regulations can be found. It states that, “Decorations may not be nailed, taped, tacked or otherwise fastened to park infrastructure, trees, or fixtures. The use or distribution of any of the following items is prohibited: adhesive backed decals, stickers, helium balloons, glitter, and confetti. Motorized vehicles of any type (forklifts, gas or electric carts, bicycles, scooters or similar equipment) may not be used inside the event venue.”
The festival will also only allow brochures and flyers to be in confined spaces of the festival, in order to keep the park from being flooded with them. The exhibitors are also responsible for keeping their areas clean, and disposing of their own trash.
Lastly, animals are not permitted on the grounds for the festival unless they are seeing-eye dogs.
However, even with these guidelines, weather and parking is always a big issue, according to Nelson.
Though Nelson doesn’t think that the challenge of Atlanta parking is unique to the city, Piedmont Park, unlike other parks, is situated in an area where there are surrounding single residential homes and neighborhoods. There aren’t a lot of public parking decks in the area, so many people park in the street, Nelson said. Oftentimes, festivalgoers are disrespectful of people’s homes, and will block their driveways, he said.
Nelson expects about 50,000 people per day for Music Midtown.
“We heavily promote the use of public transportation for these events,” Nelson said.
In the past, people have taken MARTA, which cut down a lot of the traffic congestion.
Nelson hopes for everything to go smoothly for Music Midtown 2012. If protocol is followed and there is no bad weather, there should only be a minimal amount of problems, he said.
The event is anticipated to gain momentum, as it did in its earlier years.
In its premiere year, 1994, there were three stages and the festival spanned over two days. As years went on, the event gained popularity, and the festival grew a great deal. It was changed to be a three-day event instead of two and have more than three stages. Because of the increase in stages, the festival expected more bands, and, therefore, more money. By 2003, the event had over 300,000 festivalgoers.
In 2011, after the event’s five-year hiatus, Conlon thought the event was getting too large. People were having issues figuring out what to go see and what not to because there were so many acts and stages.
It seems that the festival will ultimately move in the same direction as it did in the beginning, drawing a bigger crowd and more popular artists. This year’s Music Midtown is again stretched over two days, being held on Sept. 21-22, featuring Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters, as well as T.I. and Ludacris.
The Signal: What is it like playing at a big event like Music Midtown; is it a good experience for you as a band, or would you rather play in a smaller venue?
Steve Marker: You know, the wonderful thing about where we are right now is that I don’t have to answer that question because we have a whole spectrum of shows this year, ranging from 300,000 people in Russia—which was a massive crowd—which was so exciting and cool and we couldn’t believe it, and tonight were playing a much smaller club here in Richmond, VA, and that’s gonna be great too, because its all hardcore fans who have waited a long time to come to this show, and it’s a very intimate venue and that’s going to be great, too. We’ve learned to adapt to any situation and we enjoy it all.
TS: Your most recent album Not Your Kind of People is the first album you have put out in 7 years. How do you feel like Garbage has evolved as a band since your first album?
SM: I think we are a lot more confident, and maybe that’s not saying much, but as songwriters we are more confident and, definitely, as performers. We’ve played live a lot, and that makes a big difference when we made the first record; we didn’t even expect to do any shows—it was just a studio thing. And then it kind of took off and we realized we needed to go out and play, and that was really intimidating at first, but now it’s more fun. It’s more a like a celebration that we look forward to every night and I think Shirley is so much more wonderfully confident than she was back then. Especially as a performer, which you will see in Atlanta.
TS: Do you think Garbage has been able to stick to their original sound, or do you think that the band has had to adapt its sound to contemporary music?
SM: You know, to be honest, I don’t think we’ve adapted or changed anything that we do—really, I don’t think, that we are able to. I think it would sound really stupid if we went out and tried to sound like Skrillex or whatever the most current thing on Pitchfork is, this week, or whatever most current on the radio charts. I think we decided a long time ago to sound like Garbage and that’s all we can really do, and I think that works.
TS: Is it true that you got the name “Garbage” from your original studio work, mixing and mashing things up?
SM: It was just a joke. I guess the story is that it was a Nine Inch Nails remix that we were working on—something like that—and then it was just like this huge mess of fuzz-boxes and echoes and flangers and other distortion, and it was sounding like an unbelievable mess, and then, somebody commented that it sounded like garbage. So we said “that’s a pretty good name for a band,” and we’ve regretted that ever since, but there you go.
TS: You recorded your first four albums in Smart Studios, your own studio. What was it like recording your most recent album outside of Smart Studios?
SM: You know, I think it was good in a way to go somewhere else. It’s not like we went to some glamorous place in Hawaii; we basically went to this basement in LA where Butch and Shirley live now, and Billy, our engineer, has this room that’s basically like a little mix room, but its about 10x14 feet—it’s really small. It was good for us to have a change of scenery, because I think we had gotten a little used to [Smart Studios]. We’d spent 10 years in Smart, and you just sort of fall into patterns. You know, that was a bigger building and people could sort of wander off if they weren’t totally into what was going on at the time, and I think that maybe diffused what was our focus a little bit. It was good to be in this little room with basically a computer with two speakers and basically a bunch of guitars and keyboards, there wasn’t any other place to go in this little room that we worked in so everybody had to sit on the couch and be totally present for what was happening and I think that made for better music because you had to kind of react to what was going on right away. You couldn’t say “Oh so-and-so is going to do this for a while, so I’m going to go to the bar for four hours and come back.” It was much more focused, and it made for quicker, faster recording, and, therefore, a better result.
TS: Garbage has been touring off and on, and this is your fourth run through the United States on this tour, correct? Is this one of your longer tours?
SM: Something like that. Not yet, but we’re going to keep going. It might end up being it. When our album “Version 2.0” came out, I think we ended up touring for almost two years, 18 months at least. That was long—that was too long, and I don’t think we can do that anymore. We’re trying to do things a little more sensibly where we get a little bit more time off in between. Bits and pieces of touring this time, and we want to keep doing it, we’re having a fantastic time on the road; we’ve finally learned how to enjoy ourselves and not beat ourselves up so badly touring with everybody being sick and pissed off, and we’re working really hard to avoid that, and, so far, it’s been really fun. It’s amazing, we realize how lucky we are to have people that want to come out and see us, after all this time, and they’re so excited for the shows that we cant help but be excited for the shows, we’re lucky to have that core audience that will still come out and support us—and we really appreciate that.
TS: Garbage has been described as “grunge” or “post-grunge.” Do you think you deserve to fit into that category, or is that term a product of the times for you guys?
SM: To me, that never really fit us. To me, that means more like Mudhoney and The Melvins and Soundgarden, and more sort of a specific Seattle take on metal. We still don’t know what we are, because we’re sort of a pop band, but we’re not really. We’ve got loud guitars but also electronics going on. Who knows? I don’t know but I don’t think its fair to call us grunge.
TS: What was it like getting to work on the James Bond theme for The World Is Not Enough?
MS: It was really interesting. First of all, there’s only a few bands or musicians who have ever gotten to do that; it’s sort of an iconic thing, so to have that once-in-a-lifetime chance is amazing, and even people who are our relations, like my father-in-law, never really understood what we did. “You go play music somewhere? Hmmm, that doesn’t sound very respectable.” But now we can say, “yeah, but we did the James Bond theme.” That’s pretty cool. It was also pretty instructive about how movies work and how many people are involved with every decision; and you don’t really get to do what you want to do, you sort of get to do what you want to do and there’s a lot of compromising and it’s such a bigger industry than what we usually deal with, so it was pretty eye opening. We’re glad we got to do it; we didn’t write the song, but we got to work with a giant orchestra, which was pretty fun.
TS: Is it true that you were the one to first discover Shirley Manson and bring her into the band Garbage?
SM: Yeah, that’s true. We were looking for a voice for a singer, and we didn’t really know what was going to happen, what would fit in with what we were trying to do at the time, and we thought about using some other people and we were kind of lost, and she had this band for a brief time called Angelfish and they made one video, I think, and they showed it once on MTV on 120 minutes, which was on at midnight on a Sunday—for an hour they would play good videos and the rest was terrible. They would play good music and they played that video once and I happened to see it and I loved her voice right away because it wasn’t a high, chirpy, pop chick voice—it was kind of dark and sultry, like a Patty Smith or a Chrissie Hynde-type voice, that immediately I thought “that’s what we need,” and I tracked down the video, I got someone to mail me the VHS tape of the video, and I played it for the guys and it worked out from there. It was a lucky event for us for sure.
TS: You are quoted in an early interview after the release of your first album saying that you wanted to “take pop music and make it as horrible sounding as you could.” What is your take on contemporary pop music now?
SM: Well, first of all, that’s a really dumb quote on my part. I’ve regretted it ever since. I don’t know about pop, though. Years ago, if you said that I’d know exactly what you meant, like the top 10 on the billboard charts, but I don’t even know what that means anymore. There are so many different avenues of what people are hearing, and it isn’t just one thing anymore. It’s not just the top 40 hits on the radio, you’ve got stuff on blogs, and whatever’s popular on Pitchfork, and there’s so many ways that people are getting music. I think its kind of cool; people can seek out what thrills them rather than being told what’s good. There’s some good pop, as always, but there’s a lot of shit too.
TS: Besides being on tour, given your history of producing, are you working with any other artists in the studio at the moment?
SM: Right now it’s just full on with Garbage. We don’t know how long it’s going to be. We’re already trying to book more shows; next year we’re going to Australia in February, and we want to go back to Europe in the summer and keep going. Also, we’re probably going to start working on a new album pretty soon, maybe as soon as January. Right now it’s all Garbage, and there’s not a lot of time to do anything else. If was going to do another project, I’d need a certain block of time to focus on it, and it doesn’t look like there is that kind of time in the near future, so I guess not.
TS: Where are you most excited about visiting on your tour (besides Atlanta, obviously)?
SM: Well, Atlanta is number one, we haven’t been to South America ever, and people have always said it’s amazing and the crowds are awesome and out of control. Were going down there in October and I’m really looking forward to that. We just played in Mexico two nights ago and that was incredible; the fans are very passionate, I’ll say that. It’s really exciting; we love going there. If it was a bad place we wouldn’t go there, so every place I’m looking forward to. We’re going back to Russia in November and playing some places I’ve never even heard of in Russia, which is kind of cool, because 20 years ago I wouldn’t have even been allowed to go there, and now we’re going there to play a rock show. It’s a pretty wild experience, but Atlanta’s number one for sure.
Certainly, it’s worth letting students know whenever the university is offering cool promotional offers like free food, glow-in-the-dark T-shirts or light-up shades, especially since we probably paid for it somewhere down the line.
So while the reasoning motivating the video is understandable, namely to promote what has up-until-now been a largely lackluster student presence for Georgia State’s first late-night game, the video’s poor production and execution caused it to flounder miserably.
For starters, its lip-sync looks like something out of a entry-level freshman video course, appearing rushed, poorly produced and nowhere even close to last year’s successful homecoming lip dub video set to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!”
More than a couple of those featured in the video – from random students to a pair of university police officers – almost seem forced into participating, often singing off time and even to an entirely different set of words than you might expect, which isn’t even their fault, really.
While wearing your “Sunglasses at Night” may have been cool 30 years ago, the decision to use that song in this context reflects poor decision making by Georgia State Athletics considering the demographics of its student body.
After all, more than half of the student body is under the age of 24, according to university statistics, putting music like by Corey Hart in the same category, if not worse, as music by Phil Collins and Lionel Richie.
Hardly the kind of thing to identify with, let alone get fired up to for the school’s first Saturday night game.
Nope, the video’s poor production values really just end up leaving its “pumped-up” message falling terribly flat, not to mention coming off as incredibly tacky, especially whenever head coach Bill Curry starts singing.
Of course, all of this wouldn’t be so bad if the video wasn’t blasted out via email to literally every student considering going to the game. But it was, twice.
After all, can you imagine any other serious collegiate football coach in Georgia doing something similar just for some cheap promotional laughs? What’s next? Is coach Curry going to have to dance the Macarena?
And for that, making such a storied coach, not to mention two-time Super Bowl winner, into a cheesy “viral” promotional item, Athletics should be ashamed.
No, there are better ways to publicize events, and they should know that.
Atlanta is coming up in the world of art and culture. As more nonprofits geared towards art develop public programs and as festivals consume our calendars, more people have more opportunities to participate in and appreciate public art.
With Music Midtown just around the corner, it’s obvious how excited people have gotten to see their favorite bands. The less-mainstream Counterpoint Music Festival in the outskirts of Atlanta has people talking, too. Sure, these festivals are bringing music to the people – but more importantly, they’re creating an entire community fueled by music.
These festivals are also doing something notable: dedicating specific areas to art. Music Midtown will have an artist market, and Counterpoint will have street artist Greg Mike and ten others painting installations during the festival.
These festivals aren’t the only organizations bringing art to the people: Living Walls, the City Speaks brings in artists from all over the world to paint on our dilapidated Atlanta walls, and they’ve made once seemingly abandoned Edgewood Avenue a vibrant street full of character. A single wall moved a whole community towards discussion about the merits of public art. Flux Projects puts on a huge art party in the streets every year, this year even making buses accessible to nearby Georgia State students who want to attend. And Glo ATL organizes public dance performances and holds free public dance classes for literally anyone who is interested.
Not to forget the quintessential Atlanta tradition: Dogwood Festival, which has been around for over 70 years, which provides a market for all sorts of artists and performers. The 15th annual East Atlanta Strut this past Saturday brought live music, performers, comedians, and – of course – art to East Atlanta Village, even making a point to engage children with its “Kid’s Village.” But it’s coming to the point where every year, a new event is happening. More people are getting involved.
So I think it’s fair to say that the people of Atlanta are doing their fair share to make this a better place to live in. Gradually, people are noticing the world around them as they contemplate murals and get excited about dancing and being out and about in the name of art. People, in short, are starting to care.
When I first started school at Georgia State, I didn’t find a whole lot to be enthusiastic about in Atlanta.
Now, I can honestly say that love this city. And it’s because of what we’re doing with it – we’re taking it in the direction of becoming a visually intriguing, cultured city filled with discussion.
There’s no question that the city overflows with a passion for art, culture, and community engagement and it will continue to grow from here on out. These organizations and festivals don’t just bring something pretty to look at to our neighborhoods, they bring an important message: be inspired, create, get out and participate. Live life with awareness and passion, question everything, and enjoy your surroundings.
Men’s soccer faced two local rivals last weekend – Georgia Southern and Mercer. On Friday, the Panthers defeated Georgia Southern for 3-0 with two goals from William Mellors-Blair and one from Peter Vania. Against Mercer on Sunday, the Panthers fell 2-0, with the two goals received in the second half.
The softball team opened up the season on Sunday, playing two games against Georgia Perimeter College. The Panthers took both games 13-1 and 11-4.This weekend; they will visit UGA in Athens.
At the Georgia Tech Classic, the volleyball team lost every set they disputed, tallying a loss against Clemson and Georgia Tech 3-0. Their overall record is now 2-10. On Friday, they will begin their CAA competition, as they visit George Mason in Fairfax, Va.
The women’s tennis team hosted Emory, North Florida and he University of Alabama at Birmingham for the Atlanta Classic. In singles, the Panthers dominated as they won every matchup. Now, they get ready to receive Georgia Tech, North Carolina State and South Florida for the Southern Shootout from Sep. 21 to Sep. 23.
Friend Finder
Trying to find friends at concerts can be a real pain. This app is designed to make it easier. It comes equipped with photos of common concert setups so users can show their friends where they are in a crowd of people. You can put an “I am here” sticker on any of those photos or a photo you take yourself, and then send it to your friends. Friends don’t need to have the app to receive the pictures. You can even download the seating chart of the venue ahead of time.
Crowdstream
CrowdStream is for people who want a more interactive concert experience- it directly connects fans to artists who are performing live events. You can find events, purchase tickets, post your own photos of the event and share your photos and comments with other concertgoers in real time. You can also check in virtually for shows you can’t make.
Music Midtown 2012
If you’re attending Music Midtown, this app can be your electronic guide. You can organize your plans by creating schedules, reading about the bands and learning how to find your way around the venue with an event map. You can also stay in the loop by checking Music Midtown’s latest Facebook and twitter posts. You can even win prizes if you participate in the Music Midtown Scavenger Hunt!
Concerts!
Concerts! will help you find concerts to attend in your area. The app will show all concerts in your area at first and then you can narrow the list based on the songs on your iPhone. Users can search concerts by artist or by location.
The Georgia State Athletic Department has found a new, fast medium to carry their advertisements for the 2012 football season – MARTA.
“This is going to get us in front of a more hip crowd that uses social media and technology as their major method of news and communication,” said Matt Newhouse, the Assistant Athletic Director of Marketing. “We utilized video football commercial spots on the digital rail network and QR codes on all of our MARTA signage in cars and at terminals to drive traffic for our mobile apps and website.”
The advertisements are the department’s first attempt at getting the attention of commuters while they are riding MARTA. Multiple radio spots and outdoor advertisements are also being used in an effort to grab the attention of those traveling in and out of Atlanta.
Marketing the infant football program in a city whose citizens already have so many entertainment opportunities has proven to be a challenge for Georgia State.
Organizations like the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta Braves have more resources and reach than Newhouse and his staff. This means that Georgia State has to do the old-fashioned “more with less” routine.
“We have to be very smart with how we spend our money,” Newhouse said.
One of the ways the department spends their money wisely is by working with other organizations, such as SGA, student housing, and Spotlight, to help promote Georgia State Athletics.
There have been some early returns on this particular marketing strategy. More tickets were sold and more revenue was generated by the home opener this season than last season according to Newhouse.
Despite the perceived emptiness of the Georgia Dome on opening night versus South Carolina State University, the paid attendance was 18,921. That gate number was the seventh highest among all FCS schools in the nation during the opening weekend of college football.
The number was higher than all but one of the teams in the Sun Belt Conference, which Georgia State will join next season.
There is still work to be done if Georgia State wants to compete in attendance with the likes of Georgia Tech and University of Georgia.
But the home opener does show that progress is being made.
“I think from a marketing stand point it [attendance of home opener] means we are moving in the right direction,” Newhouse said.
To repeat an acceptable level of attendance, Georgia State also planned other advertising techniques for the game against the University of Texas at San Antonio.
At the Dome, they gave out 3,000 pairs of flashing sunglasses, glow-in-the-dark t-shirts and free food at the Orange Lot before the game.
On Thursday, Athletics organized Panther Nation at Atlantic Station, a pep rally for students. Athletics said that the event will also occur on Oct. 17, before the Panthers’ homecoming game against Villanova and on Nov. 1, before receiving Old Dominion at the Dome.
“We are doing a better job at valuing and protecting our brand and spending less to make more,” Newhouse said. “This will allow us to further enhance and grow other areas within our athletics department so that our athletics program as a whole will be stronger.”
This year Music Midtown will be taking place in the 10th Street Meadow in Piedmont Park.
While some parking will be available close to the park it is expected to be extremely limited because all residential streets around the park will be closed to non-residents. The festival’s promoters strongly encourage concertgoers to ride MARTA, walk, bicycle, or carpool with others to conserve the small number of available parking. No ticket holders are allowed to park on 10th Street or in the Grady High School parking lot.
There will be three gates to get into the festival, the main gate being on the corner of 10th Street and Charles Allen Drive. Will Call will be located across the street from the main gate. Other entrances to the festival are the Lakeside Gate, which is accessible from 12th &' 14th Streets, and the Park Drive Gate, which is accessible from Monroe and Park Drive.
The nearest MARTA Station is Arts Center which does have very limited parking available but will most likely not be open to the public. The SAGE Parking Facility will reportedly have parking available and charge a $15 daily maximum. This is located at 1345 Piedmont Avenue Northeast Atlanta, GA 30309.
Any concert goers with further questions can e-mail questions on their website (http://musicmidtown.com/connect/contact-us/) or Tweet them @musicmidtown. The festival is can also be found on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/musicmidtown.
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit I know nothing about politics. I know I should be ashamed about this, but unfortunately, I am not. It’s not that I don’t care about what’s going on in the world, because I do. I care about who runs this country and I understand that the decisions they make could impact not only this country, but the entire world. Trust me, I get it. The reason I don’t particularly get into politics is the reason I think most people should shut up about it: I don’t know what I’m talking about, and, typically, neither do they.
When I registered to vote for the first time, I did not know what political party I belonged to. I asked some of my more politically-minded friends why they belonged to the parties they belonged to, and really no one could give me a true answer. Mostly people just told me why the other candidate sucked. This is not the way to make a decision, people.
To make a political decision effectively you need to understand, the power behind the individuals position they’re running for, and what it means for the party as a whole if that individual is elected. So many people don’t know what powers are even reserved for the president. If I had a dollar for every time someone has mentioned to me that all my rights as a woman will be stripped away if Mitt Romney were elected, I could retire. I know for a fact that I don’t understand how certain aspects of the government work, and that leads me to shy away from making political decisions and judgments because I know they would be biased. I have vowed to brush up on my knowledge of the Constitution so that I can understand exactly what powers the different branches of government have, but, unfortunately, many people don’t care to do this.
Most people would rather pick a party based off what they have heard and what they think they know. They send around memes and Facebook posts and think if they talk enough about the healthcare bill, people will think they are politically savvy. Don’t be surprised when the president you elected does something you didn’t think he would do, or thought he would stop. My bit of advice when it comes to politics: educate yourself about the political process then realize the government is corrupt. Don’t worry though, 12.12.12 is around the corner.
ASU News - ASU Athletics
A total of 16 matches will be televised on the Pac-12 Network this fall.
Former ASU player and assistant football coach Dick Mansperger passed away Wednesday, June 12.
The NCAA's annual Academic Progress Rate report has been announced and ASU posted 980, its highest average APR score to date for all sports.
Student-athlete Cory Hahn, who was paralyzed from the chest down sliding into second base his first weekend at Arizona State in 2011, has been honored for his efforts and determination.
Cory Hahn has been presented with the Wilma Rudolph Student Athlete Achievement Award, which is given annually to student athletes who have overcome great odds to achieve academic success.
Track and field senior Chelsea Cassulo is ASU's first-ever NCAA champion in the women's hammer throw.
The Arizona State women's tennis and baseball teams have been recognized by the NCAA for recording an Academic Progress Rate in the top 10 percent nationally.
Freeman is a 2013 All-American and the Pac-12 Player of the Year.
National championships will be on the line in Eugene this weekend as the Sun Devil track and field team wraps up the 2012-2013 ASU competition calendar.
Jimenez is head coach Melissa Luellen's 19th overall All-American honoree since she began coaching in 2002-03.
ASU News - Research
Assessing people's beliefs about sexual orientation is the focus of newly published research led by Patrick Grzanka, honors faculty fellow at Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University.
Susanne Neuer is a marine biologist at ASU who studies the microscopic organisms that make it possible for oceans to absorb excess atmospheric CO2.
John Chaput and his colleagues at ASU's Biodesign Institute have produced the first genome-wide investigation of cap-independent translation.
The Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) magazine interviewed ASU's Flexible Electronics and Display Center director Nick Colaneri for a piece that explored the future of flexible displays in their June 2012 edition of Communications of the ACM.
Joe Graham is working on a project to create a full model of the human brain in 10 years.
An ASU computer scientist develops technology to enable people with visual impairment to "see" faces by touch.
According to ASU researcher Garrick Wallstrom, how we study an illness can also depend on a feature of the disease itself – one known as heterogeneity.
Katherine Miller has spent portions of the past nine years among ancient Maya bones and burials at Copan, Honduras.
ASU's David Schaefer has earned the Freeman Award from the International Network for Social Network Analysis for his research on defining the dynamics that govern how and why individuals choose their network associates.
An isotope analysis shows that human ancestors living 3.5 million years ago were the first hominins to show evidence of expanded preferences in their plant diet.
Kansas Jayhawks News -- www.kuathletics.com
Latest Kansas news from http://www.kuathletics.com
Utah State Today
Utah State University News: Utah State Today
Alyssa Chambliss, a student in agricultural education at Utah State University, recently accepted a six-month internship in Indianapolis, Ind., working for National FFA.
“My official title will be career development events intern,” Chambliss said. “I’ll oversee the delivery of materials for all career development events (CDEs) at the National FFA Convention in Louisville, Ky.”
CDEs were developed by National FFA to help students think critically and communicate effectively in the current job market. High school students across the nation compete as individuals or teams in events that range from communications to veterinary medicine.
Chambliss heard about the internship through an announcement on Canvas, an academic Internet program used by the university. After submitting her resume through the FFA website, Chambliss was interviewed twice before being selected for the position.
“The opportunity for Alyssa to work with National FFA will provide her with experience that she cannot get in the classroom,” said Brian Warnick, a professor in the School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education at USU. “Alyssa’s organizational and interpersonal skills, along with her drive and work ethic, make her ideal for the position.”
The internship will give Chambliss a variety of opportunities and responsibilities.
“I will manage and inventory all the materials needed for the contests as well as arrange travel for judges and communicate with state staff from all over the country,” Chambliss said. “I will be developing and managing a Twitter account and possibly a Facebook page to give updates on CDEs and the National FFA convention.”
As part of her internship, Chambliss will work with the National FFA staff and the national adviser Steve Brown before traveling to the National FFA convention in October.
Chambliss believes her involvement with the School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education was instrumental in receiving the internship.
“Every class I have taken within the ASTE Department has prepared me to be a valuable employee while in Indiana,” Chambliss said. “There is no way I would have been considered for this job without having had all the opportunities I have taken advantage of within our department.”
Although she won't graduate until spring 2015, Chambliss is already looking for ways her future students can benefit from her internship.
“The time I spend at the National FFA center will give me a much deeper knowledge and understanding of how career development events are planned and all the finer details that will one day benefit my students as they prepare for national contests,” she said.
Related links:
- USU School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education
- USU College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences
- National FFA
Contact: Taylor Adams, 435-797-7091, taylor.adams@usu.edu
With 2,085 lakes in Utah and more than 89,000 miles of streams and rivers, water is an essential natural resource in the state that must be preserved and protected.
The Utah Water Watch program was created to promote stewardship over Utah’s aquatic resources through monitoring the condition of water quality so this precious resource can be managed and Utahns can continue enjoying the benefits of healthy drinking water, irrigation water and water used for recreation.
According to Brian Greene, Utah State University Water Quality Extension program coordinator, Utah Water Watch (UWW) is a partnership between USU Extension and the Utah Division of Water Quality that uses assistance from the public to monitor Utah’s lakes and streams.
UWW builds on past volunteer monitoring efforts in Utah. For more than 10 years, volunteers have monitored water quality through programs such as Utah Lake Watch, Utah Stream Team and Stream Side Science.
“The new UWW program seeks to increase the public’s awareness of water quality and its importance through education and outreach and to collect credible data that can be used in making decisions regarding water health,” Greene said. “Our program now has two tiers. Tier one is for beginners who will collect entry-level data on a fairly broad level. Tier two is for volunteers who feel comfortable doing more advanced monitoring with more involved equipment.”
Greene said both groups are asked to monitor a specific location at least once a month for a minimum of seven months out of the year, with the hope that they can continue doing it for years to come. He told of one volunteer, Scott Tolentino, who has been monitoring Bear Lake for 10 years and the benefit of his long-term efforts.
“Sometimes people make comments that the water used to be more clear, but this person’s monitoring made it possible for us to know that in 2012, the water was as clear as it has ever been in the last 10 years,” Greene said. “His continuous volunteer work over the years gives us the ability to see the changes that occur in nature, and if you don’t monitor, you don’t know.”
Greene said volunteers are invaluable to the program and are what makes it all happen, and the program is always in need of more participants.
“Our youngest volunteer is 9 and our oldest is 85,” he said. “They come from all walks of life. We have farmers, police, interested citizens, teachers and whole families participating. No experience is necessary, and we provide all the equipment and training. Volunteers can monitor the lake or stream of their choice, and hopefully it will be a location that has meaning to them. The program is flexible, and participants can choose a day and time that works best for their schedule. Each monitoring event takes about 30 minutes.”
The project is aligned with the Utah Core Curriculum, and there are many teachers who involve their students.
“This is real science where students can see real results from their work,” Greene said. “There is no better STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) opportunity as they learn about water quality while hopefully having fun too.”
Training is offered for volunteers, and a session will be held Saturday, June 15, at the USU Botanical Center Wetlands Discovery Point in Kaysville, and Saturday, June 29, at USU in Logan with additional trainings upcoming.
Those interested in volunteering can do so at the website and learn about the program and watch instructional videos or, they can contact Greene at brian.greene@usu.edu or 435-797-2580.
Related links:
Utah State University Extension
Contact: Brian Greene, 435-797-2580, brian.greene@usu.edu
Writer: Julene Reese, 435-797-0810, julene.reese@usu.edu
Utah State's [University] men’s basketball coach Stew Morrill will conduct a “Position and Shooting Camp” June 18-20, and walk-ups for the camp will be welcome on the first day.
The Position and Shooting Camp will help players who want to improve their individual playing position. Post players will work on their shooting, footwork, post moves and rebounding, while perimeter players will work on shooting, footwork, ball handling and passing. Other camp activities include free throw contests, lectures, three-on-three, one-on-one and team championships. Anyone who signs up for the camp has the option of staying on campus or commuting.
Registration will take place Tuesday, June 18, from noon to 1:15 p.m. on the south concourse of the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum on the USU Logan campus. Cost for the Position and Shooting Camp is $265 for commuters and $299 for those campers wishing to stay on campus overnight. There is an additional $10 fee for those campers who register on a walk-up basis.
The camp begins at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and runs until 9 p.m. On Wednesday, camp runs from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and concludes Thursday after running 8:30 a.m. to noon.
Campers for the Position and Shooting Camp must be between the fifth and 12th grade.
For more information, contact the Utah State University Basketball Office at (435) 797-2060, or register online.
Fans can follow the Aggie men's basketball program on Twitter. USU fans can also follow the Utah State athletic program on Twitter or on Facebook at Utah State University Athletics.
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
The week of June 14 is designated annually as “National Flag Week” in the United States, and the country’s president issues a proclamation urging citizens and residents to fly the American flag during the week.
A website for the National Flag Day Foundation marks the history of the observance and provides background for National Flag day. According to the foundation, the June 14 date commemorates the 1777 adoption, by the United States Congress, of the Stars and Stripes as the flag of the United States of America.
Following tradition, below is the Presidential Proclamation released by U.S. President Barack Obama in recognition of National Flag Day.
Presidential Proclamation — Flag Day and National Flag Week, 2013
FLAG DAY AND NATIONAL FLAG WEEK, 2013
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Each June, our Nation lifts its sights to the flag that has watched over us since the days of our founding. In those broad stripes and bright stars, we see the arc of the American story — from a handful of colonies to 50 States, united and free.
When proud patriots took up the fight for independence, they came together under a standard that showed their common cause. When the wounds of civil war were still fresh and our country walked the long road to reconstruction, our people found hope in a banner that testified to the strength of our Union. Wherever our American journey has taken us, whether on that unending path to the mountaintop or high above into the reaches of space, Old Glory has followed, reminding us of the rights and responsibilities we share as citizens.
This week, we celebrate that legacy, and we honor the brave men and women who have secured it through centuries of service at home and abroad. Let us raise our flags high, from small-town storefronts to duty stations stretched around the globe, and let us look to them once more as we press on in the march toward a more perfect Union.
To commemorate the adoption of our flag, the Congress, by joint resolution approved August 3, 1949, as amended (63 Stat. 492), designated June 14 of each year as "Flag Day" and requested that the President issue an annual proclamation calling for its observance and for the display of the flag of the United States on all Federal Government buildings. The Congress also requested, by joint resolution approved June 9, 1966, as amended (80 Stat. 194), that the President annually issue a proclamation designating the week in which June 14 occurs as "National Flag Week" and call upon citizens of the United States to display the flag during that week.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim June 14, 2013, as Flag Day and the week beginning June 9, 2013, as National Flag Week. I direct the appropriate officials to display the flag on all Federal Government buildings during that week, and I urge all Americans to observe Flag Day and National Flag Week by displaying the flag. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe with pride and all due ceremony those days from Flag Day through Independence Day, also set aside by the Congress (89 Stat. 211), as a time to honor America, to celebrate our heritage in public gatherings and activities, and to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.
BARACK OBAMA
Utah State University’s own Utah Public Radio is celebrating 60 years of broadcasting with an online auction. Utah Public Radio — or UPR as it is generally known — was the first public broadcasting affiliate in Utah.
As part of the 60-year celebration, an online auction is taking place with proceeds benefitting local programming and UPR’s student internship program for aspiring reporters. UPR boasts award-winning regional news and national programming, including Performance Today and NPR’s Morning Edition and the weekend’s popular Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me.
“We have found that the auction is a popular way for listeners to support UPR,” said Bryan Earl, UPR’s development director. “It’s also a way to spotlight the region’s talented artists. Most of the auction items and services are donated and we appreciate this support.”
Auction items from both Utah and national sources include ceramics, artwork, vacation stays, consumer electronics, restaurant gift certificates, personal services, recreational opportunities, event tickets, jewelry and books from authors featured on UPR interviews.
Earl invites everyone to peruse what’s available at the auction list or to add their own item or services. Items can been seen via the station’s website.
UPR’s 60th Anniversary Auction continues through the evening of Tuesday, June 18.
Contact: Bryan Earl, (435) 797-3107, bryan.earl@usu.edu
Utah State University student Dallin Wengert was in a serious car accident recently and had to be life-flighted to Ogden. Wengert, a pre-veterinarian student in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, suffered severe head trauma and has been fighting for his life.
The family has set up a donation page to help with medical expenses and long-term recovery costs, and friends created a T-shirt design being sold to help raise money. He is being cared for night and day by his wife of one year, Amy, who is currently pregnant with their first child.
Anyone interested in helping, please visit the links below:
Utah State University Vice President and Director of Athletics Scott Barnes announced a gift of $1.3 million from Blake Kirby, Chairman of the Board of Inovar, Inc., for the naming of Kirby Court inside USU’s new Wayne Estes Center as well as an additional $200,000 to help support the Merlin Olsen Fund for Football Competitive Excellence. The announcement was made June 7.
Kirby, who is a 1991 Utah State University alumnus, is a member of the National Advisory Board for Aggie Athletics as well as USU’s Foundation Board. Kirby founded Inovar, Inc. and was its chief executive officer from 1999 to 2012. Inovar is the largest electronics manufacturing company in the Rocky Mountain Region, providing design and manufacturing services to aerospace, medical, communications and industrial markets.
“I am fortunate to have a family with deep roots at Utah State University and have been an avid Aggie fan as long as I can remember,” said Kirby. “We appreciate the vision and hard work of the administrative leadership, coaches and student-athletes at USU, and are grateful to participate in providing resources that enable them to compete at the highest level in the Mountain West Conference.”
The Wayne Estes Center is a $9.5 million, 32,000 square-foot state-of-the-art basketball practice facility and volleyball competition venue that was anchored by a $5.25 million lead gift from Jim and Carol Laub. It is expected to open in April of 2014.
All funding for the Wayne Estes Center came from private donations.
“We are very grateful for Blake’s generous gift,” said Barnes. “Blake has been entrenched in supporting Aggie Athletics for most of his life as a fan, volunteer and donor. It would be hard to find anyone more passionate. His commitment is critical in further assisting fund raising efforts for the Wayne Estes Center and continuing the success of the Merlin Olsen Fund. Both are important priorities as we transition into the Mountain West Conference.”
The Wayne Estes Center will be located just to the west of the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum where the current Harris Athletics Center sits. The facility will contain a regulation size competition court with chair back seating for 1,400 fans, along with a training room and in-season strength and conditioning area. Office space for both men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball will also be included in the new facility, as well as a locker room and film room for volleyball. Ticketing and concession services will also be available on game days.
Located inside the foyer of the Wayne Estes Center will be a visual tribute of the building’s namesake.
The project is the latest in a series of recent athletic facility improvements at Utah State. In 2008, construction was completed on the 69,000 square foot Jim and Carol Laub Athletics-Academics Complex. In 2009, USU opened the Steve Mothersell Athletics Hall of Honor as well as its new off-court basketball facilities, which include the Nate and Heather Wickizer men’s basketball and MerLynn Pitcher women’s basketball locker rooms. In 2010, USU opened the Dr. Randall and Julianne Stockham Student-Athlete Academic Hall of Honor. In 2011, a new synthetic turf was installed in the Stan Laub Indoor Training Center, while new AstroTurf was installed on Merlin Olsen Field inside Romney Stadium in 2012. And in 2013, USU will complete construction on its new 26,000 square foot strength and conditioning center and install south end zone seating at Romney Stadium.
For more information on the Wayne Estes Center or to pledge a gift, contact the USU Athletics Department at (435) 797-1850.
What Select Utah State Coaches Are Saying About the new Wayne Estes Center
Stew Morrill, Utah State Head Men’s Basketball Coach
“This facility is very important for multiple sports at Utah State. For men’s basketball, it is a much-needed facility to accommodate our program going forward in the Mountain West Conference. It gives us greater flexibility in developing our players thru both regular practice as well as individual workouts. In addition, we will be adding office space that we have desperately needed. Both from a playing a recruiting standpoint, this is a great upgrade for Utah State Basketball.”
Jerry Finkbeiner, Utah State Head Women’s Basketball Coach
“I am very excited about the basketball practice facility/volleyball competition site for what it brings to our recruiting and for what it brings to our logistical challenges with practices times. Upon accepting the job last year, one of the keys that I saw in the growth of women's basketball at Utah State is the facility growth and what it means in all areas of building a program.”
Grayson DuBose, Utah State Head Women’s Volleyball Coach
“We are very excited for our program to have this amazing facility and it will definitely help with the growth of our volleyball team. Recruits want to see that you are moving forward as a program and this will go a long way to show them and their families that Utah State is committed to having a first- class athletics program.”
Contact: Contact: Doug Hoffman, (435) 797-3714
EUGENE, Ore. — Utah State [University] sprinter Will Henry concluded his collegiate career by finishing 16th in the semifinals of the 100m at the NCAA Finals held here at Hayward Field Wednesday night [June 5, 2013]. With his top 16 finish, Henry garnered second-team All-America honors.
Henry, a senior from Richmond, Calif., (Sacramento CC) entered the NCAA finals as the 24th and final qualifier, but finished 16th after recording a school-record time of 10.25. Henry’s previous personal best in the 100m was 10.41 set twice toward the end of the 2013 season, including at the first round of the NCAA Championships two weeks ago in Austin, Texas. The previous school record in the 100m was 10.28 set by DJ Smith in 2007.
Henry is Utah State’s first-ever All-American in the 100m and first All-American in any event since 2011 when Clint Silcock earned second-team All-America honors in the indoor high jump and Sonia Grabowska earned honorable mention All-America honors in the indoor pole vault. Overall, Henry is Utah State’s 34th track and cross country athlete to earn All-America honors for the 69th time.
Utah State sophomore high jumper and heptathlete Chari Hawkins will also be competing for Utah State at the NCAA finals and begins competition in the heptathlon Thursday, June 6, at 2 p.m. (MT) and concludes Friday, June 7. Hawkins will also compete in the high jump finals Saturday, June 8, at 1:45 p.m. (MT). Hawkins enters the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Finals ranked tied for 13th in the high jump and 20th in the heptathlon.
Live results are available by clicking on the “Live Results” link at www.UtahStateAggies.com.
Fans can follow Aggie Athletics, including Utah State track & field on Twitter or on Facebook.
More information on the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field National Championships can be found online.
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Utah State [University] senior center Tyler Larsen has been named a fourth-team preseason All-American by Phil Steele it was announced Wednesday [June 5, 2013]. He is one of just four centers at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level to be honored.
Larsen is one of three Mountain West players named to Phil Steele's preseason All-American list along with Fresno State wide receiver Davante Adams and Boise State defensive end Demarcus Lawrence, who were also named to the fourth-team.
Along with being named a preseason All-American by Phil Steele, Larsen is also one of 44 players on the 2013 Rimington Trophy Watch List, which is given annually to the nation's most outstanding center in college football.
Larsen, a 6-4, 312-pounder from Salt Lake City, Utah, (Jordan HS) enters his senior season having started 38 consecutive games, which is the longest active streak on the team. Larsen is a two-time first-team all-Western Athletic Conference honoree and the first USU offensive lineman to accomplish that feat since 1997.
During the 2012 season, Larsen tied for the team lead along with Schultz with an 86 percent overall performance grade, including 78 percent in technique and 83 percent in effort. He carried out the right assignment 97 percent of the time, including four games where he graded out at a perfect 100 percent. He also graded out above 90 percent two times in total performance and above 80 percent 12 times in effort and seven times in technique. Overall, he posted 65.5 knockdowns on the season.
Utah State returns 49 lettermen (offense-23, defense-22, specialists-4) and 18 starters (offense-8, defense-7, specialists-3) from its most successful team in school history as USU ended the 2012 season with a school-best 11-2 record as it set school records for wins (11) and home wins (6), while recording just its second bowl win in school history with a 41-15 victory against Toledo in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. USU also won its first outright conference championship since 1936, as it went 6-0 in the Western Athletic Conference, and just its third in school history joining the 1921 and 1936 teams that both won Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference titles.
Utah State ended the 2012 season nationally ranked for just the third time in school history as it finished the year ranked 16th in the Associated Press poll, 17th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ poll and 22nd in the Bowl Championship Series standings. USU also finished the 2012 season winning its final seven games, which is tied for the fourth-longest active winning streak in the nation and tied for the third-longest winning streak in school history.
Utah State will open the 2013 season Thursday, Aug. 29, at Utah and play its first Mountain West game the following weekend at Air Force Saturday, Sept. 7. USU’s first home game of the 2013 campaign is Saturday, Sept. 14, against Weber State, while its first home Mountain West game is Saturday, Oct. 12, against Boise State.
Fans can follow the Aggie football program on Twitter. Aggie fans can also follow the Utah State athletic program on Twitter or on Facebook at Utah State University Athletics.
Phil Steele's All-American Team
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Earlier in May 2013, Dr. Karl White was named the Emma Eccles Jones Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Education at Utah State University. He fills USU’s ninth endowed chair, and the fourth established within the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services.
The occasion is one more milestone on a long road of hard work.
Dr. White has been a driving force behind early identification of children with hearing loss, and his work has intersected with millions of lives all over the world.
Following research he headed up at USU and elsewhere, the testing of infants’ hearing became standard in the state of Utah in the 1990s. While the practice spread slowly, 98 percent of infants in the United States are now screened for hearing loss. Building on the work done at USU, newborn hearing screening has also been implemented in many other countries around the world.
He serves on many national and international advisory groups, including the United States Department of Health and Human Services, March of Dimes, the American College of Medical Genetics and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Dr. White currently is the founding director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University. NCHAM is the national resource center for implementing and improving early hearing detection and intervention.
Meanwhile, the Emma Eccles Jones Foundation endowed five chairs within the College of Education and Human Services. These gifts recognize leaders in their fields, support research and help train quality graduate students. They attract and retain world-class talent and carry on Emma's dream of extending quality education to all young children.
Dr White was appointed to the second of the five chairs. The distinction will support the continued work for children with hearing loss by providing a little extra clout and credibility, he said. It will also provide some funds to support research.
“You couldn’t find anyone better qualified than Karl to be named an endowed chair,” said Beth Foley, dean of the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services.
The early identification of hearing loss helps children live to their full potential, White said.
“It’s about establishing a sound foundation for children who are deaf that enables them to achieve and succeed every bit as well as children with normal hearing,” he said.
He acknowledges that language development is a huge part of their success — and that the need can be satisfied through learning American Sign Language or technology. Whatever route parents choose for their children, it needs to be supported.
Dr. White has been involved in offering options to families who want their children to learn to listen and speak. While glasses may instantly correct vision, using a hearing aid or cochlear implant is more complex. The brain needs to learn how to understand and interpret the input the technology brings — and if parents choose listening and spoken language as an option, that language development will need extra support.
Dr. White and the National Center for the Hearing Assessment and Management teamed up with Foley, who at the time headed up the Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education Department at Utah State. As a result, the Sound Beginnings program was founded for children with hearing loss from birth to age 5.
It is one of two programs in the country that combine deaf education, speech/language pathology and audiology.
“Our hope is that by demonstrating what’s really possible, other schools will pick up and start doing the same thing,” he said.
Sound Beginnings’ founders deliberately chose a public school model to ensure that tuition would not be an obstacle for potential students.
Projects currently underway at NCHAM are focused on developing more effective hearing screening and intervention programs, including teleintervention (using technology to reach people in rural areas).
Related links:
USU Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services
Contact: Karl White, karl.white@usu.edu
Writer: JoLynne Lyon, Jolynne.lyon@usu.edu
A 25-foot leviathan was right under the scientists’ noses but it took several decades for them to realize that it wasn’t what they thought it was.
The aha! moment belongs to Kenneth Carpenter, director and curator of paleontology at Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum, and two of his colleagues, Bruce A. Schumacher and Michael J. Everhart.
For nearly five decades it was a case of mistaken identity for what scientists thought was a Brachauchenius lucasi. But thanks to some skull sleuthing by Carpenter and his colleagues, what they discovered was a whole new genus and species of marine reptile, the Megacephalosaurus eulerti, meaning “Eulert’s great-headed reptile.”
Their find is particularly compelling because it challenges the assertion that only one top predator can exist at a time within an ecosystem. For example, new findings suggest that today’s killer whales, or orcas, may be more than one species. The plausibility of top modern predators coexisting now has some impressive historical precedence.
Carpenter’s ancient monster was the orca of its time that thrived about 91 million years ago. And oh what a noggin!
“It is a huge skull — almost five feet long with big, bone-crushing teeth,” Carpenter said. “There are parts of a second specimen that indicate a skull almost six feet long, so that individual would have been roughly 30 feet.”
That’s twice as big as the formerly mighty B. lucasi — despite both being short-necked plesiosaurs.
Carpenter is coauthor on a new article in the prestigious Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describing the discovery of this giant, extinct marine reptile from the age of dinosaurs. And though separated by millions of years, having his name now included in the newly named genus, makes it profoundly personal.
“The significance of the article is that for almost 50 years the specimen had the wrong name,” Carpenter said. “That was partly my fault because in 1996 I used the name assigned to it when I described the specimen for the first time in the published part of my dissertation.”
At that time, only the top side of the skull of the marine reptile was visible in its plaster of Paris encasement.
“Originally the entire skull was cleaned and displayed but to make it look pretty, the top of the skull was left exposed and then embedded in plaster to make it look like it was still in the rock,” Carpenter said. “So it was done strictly for esthetic reasons.”
Restoring it to its original state, however, laid the groundwork for an even more beautiful find.
The specimen, which was housed at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Kansas, was transported to Carpenter’s lab in Denver five years ago where he completely removed it from its plaster entombment. Once the skull was fully exposed, he and his colleagues were able, for the first time, to clearly peer into the roof of the monster’s mouth. From the depths of the plaster emerged the true breadth of their find: they knew they had stumbled upon something quite different from what they supposed.
For some time they had kicked around the idea of freeing the beast’s massive skull from its plaster prison to allow them a closer look at its other side. What finally convinced them was a photo Everhart found of the skull before it was encased in plaster. To their surprise, instead of seeing a battered underside that is typical of bones when they are excavated, they found the skull to be in pristine condition. It was assurance that their endeavor would be worth the effort.
And it was. Carpenter said the underside of the skull revealed so much new information that he became convinced early on that they were dealing with a new species of reptile altogether. What sealed the deal was a thorough analysis of another B. lucasi skull housed at the Smithsonian that was on loan to them. Careful comparisons revealed that while the tops of both skulls looked similar, the underside of the Smithsonian skull turned out to be significantly different — substantial enough to know they had a new genus on their hands.
The fact that this skull was already well known among scientific circles made it imperative that they stood on solid ground before declaring it a new genus. They knew they were raising the old argument of what constitutes a genus versus a species in the fossil record, Carpenter said.
This find also challenges the line of reasoning that to be king of the hill requires being the only one on top of the hill. History curiously appears to be repeating itself with today’s killer whales, or orcas. DNA work done on these modern day sea hulks reveals that they may be more than one species, yet they are living at the same time — just as B. lucasi and M. eulerti did in ancient times.
“We have shown that you can have more than one top predator at a time; they just specialize in eating different types of foods,” Carpenter said. “In the case of these ancient marine reptiles, the big-headed guy probably ate whatever he wanted and was probably more of a general feeder than the smaller one.”
Exactly where they were feeding now weighs on Carpenter’s mind. His hunch is that he won’t have to look too far. That’s because the waters in which they swam comprised the great Western Interior Seaway. It was a huge inland sea that split through the middle of America, including a large swath of eastern Utah, in its span from the Artic to the Gulf. What is especially exciting to Carpenter is that the smaller related species, B. lucasi, has already been discovered in the Grand Staircase region, “so there is the possibility of finding this bigger guy between Green River and Price,” he said.
Preliminary searches in 2012 failed to yield the monster but on the way other giants were found in the form of four- and five-foot clams wedged between ancient Mancos Shale sea bottom sediments east of Price.
No doubt this dogged paleontologist has picked up a scent that will hopefully yield some startling future finds.
Related links:
- Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum
- Utah State University Eastern
- “USU paleontologist helps discover ancient reptile,” Utah Public Radio
Contact: Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, 435-613-5752; ken.carpenter@usu.edu
Writer: John DeVilbiss, 435-797-1358; john.devilbiss@usu.edu
Rising from the remote highlands of northeastern Scotland, the River Feshie flows eastward, then turns sharply northwest dropping streams like strands of an undulating tassel into the larger River Spey.
Cited as one of Britain’s most important study sites for active channel and landform change, the river has long been an area of research focus for Utah State University geomorphologist Joe Wheaton. The scientist has studied the river since his days as a graduate student at the United Kingdom’s University of Southampton, where he completed a doctoral degree in 2008.
“For more than three decades, scientists have attempted to construct computer models to explain how rivers change through time, but these models keep falling short,” says Wheaton, assistant professor in USU’s Department of Watershed Sciences and USU Ecology Center. “Using data from the River Feshie and other study sites, our team is developing a simpler, more straightforward method of morphodynamic modeling.”
With USU doctoral student Alan Kasprak and collaborators James Brasington of Queen Mary University of London, David Sear and Steve Darby of the University of Southampton and Damiá Vericat of Spain’s University of Lleida, Wheaton published novel research on so-called braided rivers — highly dynamic, multi-channeled waterways like the River Feshie — in the May 22, 2013, issue of the AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. The National Science Foundation-funded research was selected as an AGU “Journal Highlight” and is profiled in the June 6, 2013, issue of Eos, the AGU’s member newspaper.
“What makes our research a breakthrough is it’s the first high resolution field test of the causal mechanisms for maintaining braided rivers,” Wheaton says.
Braided rivers feature continuously changing, intertwined channels with high rates of sediment production that support a diverse ecology. Such rivers, often indicative of glacial runoff, dominate the geographical record prior to the development of plants.
Previous flume-based research revealed classic mechanisms that twist river channels into a web of shifting braided streams, but Wheaton’s team identified secondary mechanisms, including alternative sediment exchange processes such as bank and bed erosion, that also drive river changes.
“We used high resolution repeat topographic survey analysis to link the mechanisms creating braiding to sediment stored and lost within the river channel,” Wheaton says. “We determined bank erosion is as important as, or more important, than previously identified mechanisms in the evolution of braided rivers.”
The team’s findings also demonstrate the importance of water flow in maintaining braided river patterns.
“These findings have important implications, as we consider the effects of human-made diversions such as dams and hydropower plants on braided rivers, as well as effects resulting from climate and land use changes,” Wheaton says.
Related links:
- USU Department of Watershed Sciences
- Intermountain Center for River Rehabilitation and Restoration
- USU Ecology Center
- USU Quinney College of Natural Resources
Contact: Joseph Wheaton, 435-554-1247, joe.m.wheaton@gmail.com
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
Utah State University soccer student athlete Shay Haddow has been invited to participate in the NCAA’s Career Sports Forum, June 8-11 in Indianapolis, Ind.
She is the second Aggie soccer player to take part in the forum since Marissa Sanchez was invited in 2011. In 2012, volleyball player Alyssa Everett was the Utah State representative at the NCAA Forum.
“I am very excited that Shay has been chosen for this opportunity, as she has expressed a desire to go into college athletics administration,” said Heather Cairns, USU head coach. “This will be a fantastic learning opportunity for her as she transitions from being a student athlete to becoming a professional. The opportunity to network and to learn about all the different administrative roles that support the student athletes will be invaluable.”
Haddow, a senior midfielder, from South Jordan, Utah, is majoring in exercise science. She played in 19 of the Aggies’ 22 matches as Utah State captured its second-straight Western Athletic Conference tournament title.
She is the only student athlete from the Mountain West attending the forum, as well as one of three student athletes from the state of Utah, joining two from Utah.
This is the eighth-straight year that Utah State will be represented by at least one student athlete and the second time in three years that the soccer team has been represented. USU was represented by Everett in 2012, Sanchez in 2011, volleyball players Whitney Mendivil and Shantell Durrant in 2010, football player Peter Caldwell in 2009, gymnast Heather Heinrich in 2008, football player Nnamdi Gwacham in 2007 and men’s golfer Preston Otte in 2006.
Haddow is one of 300 student-athletes to be a part of the prestigious forum, focusing on assisting student athletes with making a successful transition from competition to their future professions in intercollegiate athletics.
The Career in Sports Forum brings career leaders together to discuss their professional career paths and to enlighten student athletes on career choices and future decisions. Session topics include discussion on skills sets needed to perform at the highest level; nontraditional careers in athletics; best practices in athletics administration; personal and professional branding; resources for applying to graduate school and human resource hiring processes.
There are also team sessions where the student athletes meet in smaller groups to discuss key issues and take leadership roles amongst their peers. The student athletes will also engage in dialogue with senior administrators from the NCAA national office and will have a formal networking dinner with NCAA administrators.
Following the 2012 season, the Utah State soccer team earned the National Soccer Coaches of America (NSCAA) Team Academic Award after posting a 3.42 grade point average. This is the 10th-straight year that USU has been honored with the NSCAA award.
Contact: Contact: Kara Fisher, (435) 797-1361
Thanks to support from the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, Utah State University graduate student Lisa Green travels south of the border this summer to study the effects of climate change on semi-subsistence farming communities of southern Mexico.
“This area of research is new to me and it’s my first visit to Mexico, but I’m very excited to jump in and get started,” says Green, a geography master’s student in USU’s Department of Environment and Society.
Green is a recipient of CLAG’s prestigious Oscar H. Horst Field Study Award, a competitive $1,000 grant offered to graduate students to support costs of field work. Green, who is mentored by faculty member Claudia Radel, will spend the summer conducting field work in rural communities bordering the Yucatán Peninsula’s Calakmul Biosphere reserve.
“My research focuses on defining vulnerability to climate change and what that means for different members of these communities,” says Green, a recipient of USU’s Office of Research and Graduate Studies Master’s Fellowship. “Some livelihoods, such as farming, are not as well suited to deal with climate change as others.”
The Alaska native will conduct in-depth interviews with household breadwinners, many of whom are women whose husbands have migrated to find work elsewhere.
Radel, an associate professor of international development, political ecology and feminist geography, has long studied labor migration across international borders and its effect on gender roles and the environment. The recipient of a 2011 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant, she’s conducting a five-year study examining household decision-making in communities in Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
A goal of the study, Radel says, is to understand how gender, agriculture and labor migration intersect with impacts on women's well-being.
“We’re seeking answers to many questions,” she says. “Among those are ‘How do men and women change their livelihood strategies in response to changes in their environment — both the biophysical environment and the political-economic environment? How do gender ideologies and practices shape those responses?’”
According to CLAG’s website, the Horst award honors the memory of geographer Oscar Heinz Horst, a professor at Western Michigan University from 1956 to 1987, who specialized in physical geography and conducted extensive research throughout Latin America.
Related links:
- “Lisa Green: Service Programs a Wise Investment,” Op-Ed in The Salt Lake Tribune
- USU Department of Environment and Society
- USU Quinney College of Natural Resources
Contact: Claudia Radel, 435-797-0516, claudia.radel@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
Utah State University’s Student Local Section of the American Industrial Hygiene Association was named 2012-13 “Student Local Section of the Year” at the association’s annual conference and exposition held May 18-23, 2013, in Montréal, Canada.
The USU section received a plaque and $1,000 cash award.
“Our students really deserve this honor,” said David Wallace, principal lecturer in USU Department of Biology’s Industrial Hygiene program and faculty mentor for the section. “They worked hard all year. The award is a great testament to the high quality of our students and our industrial hygiene program.”
Wallace accompanied USU 2012-13 section officers Kyle Naylor and Morgan Freestone, both 2013 graduates of Utah State, to the conference, where the students accepted the award on behalf of the student section’s 45 members.
“I think USU’s Industrial Hygiene program is one of the university’s best kept campus secrets,” says Naylor, who was recently hired by Rio Tinto after serving a student internship with the multinational mining company. “But a lot of employers and industrial hygiene professionals around the nation know about Utah State.”
USU’s industrial hygiene program, part of the biology department’s public health program, is one of only four undergraduate programs in the nation accredited by the Applied Science Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology. Industrial hygiene is a component of workplace safety that deals specifically with protecting workers from health hazards.
“Most of the AIHA student local sections represent graduate programs,” says Freestone, who starts a position with Chevron in Houston this month. “So, as a section and as individuals, we’re usually competing with graduate students in AIHA academic competitions. But we still excel.”
Over the past year, USU’s AIHA section hosted speakers from such companies as Chevron, Freeport McMoRan, Autoliv, Barrick Gold and made field trips to regional industries. In addition, the Aggies pursued community outreach activities, including helping with a science fair at Smithfield, Utah’s, Sunrise Elementary School and presenting at USU’s Diversity Days event for multicultural middle school students.
The section also participated in fundraising and professional development activities, including conducting contaminant sampling at TTM Technologies and Icon Health and Fitness, as well as dust sampling at Pepperidge Farm’s Richmond, Utah, plant, respirator fit testing at Logan, Utah’s, Harris Research and noise mapping at Tremonton, Utah’s, Malt-O-Meal manufacturing facility.
Freestone and Naylor credit strong faculty mentorship as a key component of USU’s excellence.
“Dave Wallace is very well respected in the industrial hygiene field and brings a lot of enthusiasm to the program,” Naylor says. “Faculty member John Flores works so hard to get students lined up with industry internships. Most of the students in this program have job offers right out of school.”
More than 25 students in USU’s industrial hygiene program were placed in 2013 summer industry internships. Twelve of the program’s 2013 graduating seniors accepted professional career offers.
Wallace was also recognized at the 2013 conference, as a newly inducted AIHA Fellow [http://www.usu.edu/ust/index.cfm?article=52172].
USU student Clark Evans, 2012-13 section treasurer, was one of 25 students nationally to receive a 2013 American Industrial Hygiene Foundation Scholarship.
During the conference, USU’s delegation received word student Gilbert Nelson, past secretary and president-elect of Utah State’s section, was awarded another industry accolade: Nelson is the recipient of a $3,500 scholarship from the American Society of Safety Engineers. He is currently serving a summer health and safety internship with Boeing in Everett, Wash.
“There are so many opportunities in public health,” Naylor says. “Industrial Hygiene is a great field of study for someone who’s interested in biology, chemistry, health and applied science. This field can take you lots of places.”
Related links:
Contact: John Flores, 435-797-8194, john.flores@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
The next Saturdays at the Museum activity at Utah State University explores the scientific theories surrounding the question of how human beings came to the new world. Activities take place at USU’s Museum of Anthropology Saturday, June 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
An illustrated lecture is presented at 1 p.m. that showcases the archeological research on the subject. Museum docents will be on hand to give specialized tours of the museum’s Peopling of the New World exhibit throughout the day.
“The question of how the first humans came to the new world has puzzled anthropologists for many years” said Reigan Ware, a museum assistant. “Our exhibit about various theories on how people came here is a great way to gain insight into this fascinating subject.”
In addition to the Saturdays at the Museum activity series with its 10 a.m.-4 p.m. hours, community members and USU students alike can visit the museum during its standard operating hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Funding for Saturday events is provided by a grant from the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services. More information about the IMLS is available online.
The USU Museum of Anthropology can be found on the USU campus in the south turret of the historic Old Main building, Room 252. Admission is free. For Saturday activities, free parking is available in the adjacent lot, south of the building.
For more information about museum events, call museum staff at (435) 797-7545 or visit the museum website.
The Museum of Anthropology is part of the Anthropology Program at USU in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Related links:
- USU Anthropology Program
- USU Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology
- USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Source: Museum of Anthropology
Contact: USU Museum of Anthropology, (435) 797-7545, anthro.museum@usu.edu
The Old Lyric Repertory Company at Utah State University presents The Odd Couple as part of the 2013 season at the Caine Lyric Theatre in historic downtown Logan.
“Written by Neil Simon, one of the greatest comedic writers of all time, this play is a classic American comedy,” said Richie Call, director of the show and assistant professor in the Caine College of the Arts at USU.
Thanks to the popular television series, based on the successful stage play, the setup for the story of The Odd Couple is well known — When neurotic clean freak Felix Ungar is thrown out by his wife, he is forced to move in with his friend, Oscar Madison, the slob. Sparks fly as the two opposites learn to live in the same apartment.
“This show is about friendship and helping each other through the good times and the bad, with plenty of laughs along the way,” said Lego Louis, who plays Oscar Madison in the show. “With some of the best written comedy by an American playwright, the audience is sure to have a good time.”
Louis, a longtime OLRC favorite is back again this summer after appearing last year as Jim in the popular production of Big River. He was also an audience favorite in Lend Me a Tenor.
Sharing the stage with Louis is William Warren, another OLRC veteran, in the role of Felix Unger.
Opening June 13, The Odd Couple will run on selected dates through Aug. 10.
This year’s OLRC season also includes Nunsense, The Drowsy Chaperone, James and the Giant Peach and The Woman in Black. A special 100-year celebration performance will be held July 29 to commemorate the Caine Lyric Theatre’s 100-year history. A complete summer schedule is online.
For tickets or more information on the 2013 Lyric season, visit the Caine College of the Arts Box Office located in room 139-B of the Chase Fine Arts Center on USU’s Logan campus, call 435-797-8022 or see the college’s Production Services website. The box office is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased at the Caine Lyric Theatre, located at 28 W. Center Street, Monday through Friday 1-4 p.m. and one hour prior to curtain on performance dates.
Related links:
- USU’s Old Lyric Repertory Company
- Caine College of the Arts Production Services
- USU Caine College of the Arts
Writer: Kara Rindlisbacher, 435-797-9203, kara.rindlisbacher@usu.edu
Contact: Denise Albiston, 435-797-1500, denise.albiston@usu.edu
Utah State University’s Museum of Anthropology and the Saturdays at the Museum series continues June 8 with a look at puppetry.
Special guest that day is Susan Neidert, director of the World of Puppetry Museum in Brigham City. Neidert will offer a presentation at 1 p.m. on the history and traditions of puppetry from around the globe. She will bring a number of examples from the museum.
Throughout the day, the Museum of Anthropology will present puppet shows, and children can make a puppet — then show it off in the show.
“People have used puppets around the world and throughout time to entertain one another” said Kevin Price, a museum assistant. “It is, and was, a way to both entertain people and present political and social issues.”
In addition to the Saturdays at the Museum activity series with its 10 a.m.-4 p.m. hours, community members and USU students alike can visit the museum during its standard operating hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Funding for Saturday events is provided by a grant from the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services. More information about the IMLS is available online.
The USU Museum of Anthropology can be found on the USU campus in the south turret of the historic Old Main building, Room 252. Admission is free. For Saturday activities, free parking is available in the adjacent lot, south of the building.
For more information about museum events, call museum staff at (435) 797-7545 or visit the museum website.
The Museum of Anthropology is part of the Anthropology Program at USU in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Related links:
- USU Anthropology Program
- USU Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology
- USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Source: Museum of Anthropology
Contact: USU Museum of Anthropology, (435) 797-7545, anthro.museum@usu.edu
As technology and life converge, Utah State University is launching its new Flexible Learning Experience (FLEX), providing students with greater flexibility in how and when courses are taken.
“This initiative opens the door to giving our students real options while pursuing their degrees,” said Robert Wagner, vice provost for USU’s Regional Campuses and Distance Education — the department charged with creating the new program in partnership with the Provost’s Office and academic departments. “Students can now start and complete selected courses when it makes the most sense for them and the changing landscape of their lives.”
According to Wagner, FLEX offers students two types of courses: 1) Open Entry/Open Exit — courses allow students to enroll at any time during the calendar year and complete the course at their own pace. These courses must be completed within a limited time period, but can be completed more quickly if a student accelerates his or her studies; 2) Condensed Term — courses with intensive studies that are completed within a 4- or 7-week term.
“As always, we want to ensure students get the quality courses and education they deserve from the university,” Wagner said. “Each course offered goes through a rigorous set-up and review process to achieve the optimum learning experience.”
FLEX is ideal for students who want to take courses outside traditional semester start and end dates, those trying to accelerate their degree completion and those balancing a complex life-work-school schedule. Another benefit of the program is that it will alleviate enrollment bottle-necks in general education and popular courses with large numbers of students.
While a few 4-week courses are being offered in May 2013 during the summer semester, the Online Flexible Learning Program fully launches fall semester 2013 with 31 courses offered. An overview of courses can be found online.
Writer/Contact: Jay Wright, 435-797-2080, jay.wright@usu.edu
For the 12th year in a row, outdoor enthusiasts of all ages are invited to participate in the annual Bear River Celebration and Free Fishing Day Saturday, June 8, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Logan’s Willow Park West, 500 W. 700 South.
Hosted by Utah State University Water Quality Extension, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and the City of Logan Environmental Department, the gathering celebrates Utah’s free fishing day and features a variety of learning activities about water conservation, water quality, wildlife, recycling, energy and the Bear River Watershed.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for families to enjoy the outdoors together and, in the process, learn about the Bear River Watershed,” says Tiffany Kinder, an educational outreach specialist with USU Water Quality Extension and 2012 graduate of USU’s master’s program in watershed science.
Participants of all ages can enjoy free fishing at the park pond. Fishing equipment and instruction are available for first-time anglers.
Interactive exhibits, geared to all ages, feature a live raptor demonstration, fly tying, face painting, a display by USU’s Intermountain Herbarium, learning about aquatic bugs, nature crafts, historical reenactments, a demonstration of how rivers and streams are formed, an explanation of fish life cycles and learning about the importance of water quality.
The first 200 kids to complete all exhibit activities receive a free T-shirt.
For information, contact USU Water Quality Extension at 435-797-2580 or see the Bear River Celebration website.
Related links:
- “No Child Left Inside: USU Set for Annual Natural Resource Field Days,” Utah State Today
- USU Water Quality Extension
- USU Department of Watershed Sciences
- USU Quinney College of Natural Resources
Contact: Tiffany Kinder, 435-797-2580, tiffany.kinder@aggiemail.usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
The purpose of national parks is to preserve scenic, natural areas for the benefit and enjoyment of the public. Straightforward enough yet not so simple, as people are complex creatures with interpretations of “benefit” and “enjoyment” as varied as spring wild flowers in a mountain meadow.
“Not every human-caused change is bad, but finding a balance that maximizes visitor access and experience, while maintaining natural areas, is a challenge,” says Utah State University ecologist Christopher Monz.
Monz, who has conducted extensive research about human impacts in parks and protected areas, is a 2013 recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Program grant to pursue a collaborative project with colleagues at the University of Tromsø in northern Norway. The scientists will focus on Varanger Peninsula National Park, an Arctic tundra preserve bordering the Barents Sea, about 500 miles northeast of Tromsø.
An associate professor in USU’s Department of Environment and Society and the USU Ecology Center, Monz leaves for the six-month project in January 2014.
“This will be a wonderful interdisciplinary applied research project,” he says. “We’ll assess visitor impacts in the park and develop long-term ecosystem management modules for park managers.”
Tourism provides a significant portion of Norway’s gross domestic product and arctic tourism, in particular, is gaining in popularity.
“Areas like the Varanger Peninsula are considered the ‘wilderness of Europe,’” Monz says. “People want to experience the continent’s last pristine areas and witness the effects of climate change. Yet, little research has been done in these areas regarding visitor impacts.”
Monz has studied visitor impacts at parks and other natural areas in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Chile.
“Each place has unique needs and challenges but many of the concerns are the same,” he says. “We want people to visit and enjoy the parks but we also want them to care about the parks.”
Initial human use of pristine areas results in the majority of resource change.
“For people to access parks, they need roads and trails,” Monz says. “But once you’ve established access the impacts, if you can get people to stay on already established roads and trails, can be minimized.”
Education is key. Programs such as “Leave No Trace,” to which Monz is a long-time contributor, teaches people to enjoy the outdoors responsibly.
“We don’t want park managers to be in the position of telling visitors ‘you can’t do that,’” he says. “Rather, we want visitors to become partners and advocates for the parks. If they understand the effects of their actions, we can create a culture of preservation.”
People visit parks to commune with nature, to see something unexpected and to experience solitude.
“We want people to have those experiences, but we also want to ensure similar opportunities for future generations,” Monz says.
According to its website, the Fulbright Scholar Program offers United State faculty, administrators and professionals grants to lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields. The Fulbright Program, the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
Related links:
- USU Department of Environment and Society
- USU Ecology Center
- USU Quinney College of Natural Resources
Contact: Christopher Monz, 435-797-2773, chris.monz@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
For the second year in a row, Utah State University Extension 4-H will continue to implement “Making the Future” programs for youth in Utah through a $25,000 grant from Cognizant, a global leader in business and technology services.
“Making the Future” is an educational initiative created to unleash the passion of young people in science, technology, engineering and math by creating fun, hands-on learning opportunities. The program was first introduced in Utah in 2012 as one of only 10 pilot programs in the country. According to Dave Francis, USU Extension 4-H youth development specialist, the program compliments 4-H principles very well.
“4-H has a long history of getting kids engaged in new ideas and we recognize that today’s inspiration is tomorrow’s innovation,” said Francis. “The idea of inspiring kids to learn through doing and to make things is a long-time practice of 4-H.”
The grant from Cognizant is intended to help young people develop 21st century skills, including creativity, innovation and collaboration. Cognizant supports the idea that “Making the Future” will create a brighter future for children and prepare them to be tomorrow’s leaders in a global economy. The program will be expanded from two pilot programs to five around the state and will be included in Iron, Utah, Washington and Wayne counties, as well as a statewide camp held at USU Eastern.
“Cognizant’s ‘Making the Future’ program will assist Utah 4-H in delivering on USU’s mission of public service through learning, discovery and engagement,” Francis said.
The program is part of a larger “maker movement” that is taking place in the country that emphasizes the making and doing aspects of life; thus, bringing back the creative skills that often get lost with large-scale production and manufacturing.
A group of USU Extension 4-Hers and advisors were invited to attend the Bay Area Maker Faire on May 18-19 in San Mateo, Calif., where they explored and completed hands-on activities in areas ranging from arts and crafts to engineering. They will bring the ideas and principles they learned at the Maker Faire back to Utah to implement in the “Making the Future” programs in the state.
Students who attended the faire include Kylee Ann Breeding of Plain City, Elissa Clark of Morgan, Reece Lane Elmer of Richfield, Exley and Wednesday Hackwell of Enoch, and Jory Peppelaar of Glenwood. They were accompanied by advisors Craig Dart, Dave Francis and Angela Hackwell.
Related links:
Utah State University Cooperative Extension
Contact: Dave Francis, (435) 760-4109, dave.francis@usu.edu
Writer: Casey Saxton, (465) 797-0810, casey.saxton@usu.edu
Utah State’s [University] season opening football game at Utah Thursday, Aug. 29, will be nationally televised on FOX Sports 1 and begin at 6 p.m. (MT) it was announced Wednesday [May 29]. With this latest announcement, USU now has eight nationally televised games during the 2013 campaign.
FOX Sports 1 is FOX’s new national, multi-sport network and will replace what is currently called the Speed Channel in the cable and satellite lineups in August. USU’s game against UU will be the first-ever college football broadcast on the new network.
Following its season-opener at Utah, Utah State’s first-ever Mountain West game at Air Force will be televised nationally on the CBS Sports Network on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 1:30 p.m. (MT).
Utah State’s home opener will be the following weekend against Weber State Saturday, Sept. 14, with kickoff at 6 p.m. (MT). This is not only Homecoming Weekend, but Hall of Fame Weekend as well.
Following its home game against Weber State, Utah State plays at USC Saturday, Sept. 21, in a game that does not yet have a kickoff time scheduled. USU then plays at San Jose State Friday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. (MT) on ESPN, followed by back-to-back home games against BYU Friday, Oct. 4, at 6 p.m. (MT) and Boise State Saturday, Oct. 12, at 5:30 p.m. (MT) as both contests will be televised on the CBS Sports Network.
Utah State’s game at New Mexico Saturday, Oct. 19, is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. (MT), while its home game against Hawai’i Saturday, Nov. 2, will begin at 2 p.m. (MT) and be televised on the CBS Sports Network. Following its game at UNM, USU will have its first of two bye weeks during the season.
Utah State’s final road game of the season will be at UNLV Saturday, Nov. 9, and will be televised on one of the ESPN Networks with a kick time to be determined at a later date. Following its second bye week, USU will host Colorado State Saturday, Nov. 23, at 1:30 p.m. (MT) in a game that will be televised nationally on the CBS Sports Network, and conclude the regular season at home against Wyoming Saturday, Nov. 30, at noon (MT).
Fans can follow the Aggie football program on Twitter. Aggie fans can also follow the Utah State athletic program on Twitter or on Facebook at Utah State University Athletics.
2013 UTAH STATE FOOTBALL SCHEDULE
|
Date |
Opponent |
Time |
|
Aug. 29 (Thur.) |
at Utah (FOX Sports 1) |
6 p.m. |
|
Sept. 7 |
at Air Force* (CBSS) |
1:30 p.m. |
|
Sept. 14 |
WEBER STATE |
6 p.m. |
|
Sept. 21 |
at USC |
TBA |
|
Sept. 27 (Fri.) |
at San Jose State* (ESPN) |
7 p.m. |
|
Oct. 4 (Fri.) |
BYU (CBSS) |
6 p.m. |
|
Oct. 12 |
BOISE STATE* (CBSS) |
5:30 p.m. |
|
Oct. 19 |
at New Mexico* |
4 p.m. |
|
Oct. 26 |
BYE |
|
|
Nov. 2 |
HAWAI’I* (CBSS) |
2 p.m. |
|
Nov. 9 |
at UNLV* (ESPNN) |
TBA |
|
Nov. 16 |
BYE |
|
|
Nov. 23 |
COLORADO STATE* (CBSS) |
1:30 p.m. |
|
Nov. 30 |
WYOMING* |
Noon |
|
Dec. 7 |
Mountain West Championship |
TBA |
Home Games in CAPS
All listed times are Mountain
*Mountain West game
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Contact: Doug Hoffman, (435) 797-3714
Utah State's [University] head men's basketball coach Stew Morrill announced Wednesday [May 28, 2013] the hiring of Jesse Parker as the program's director of basketball operations.
“Jesse has prepared himself for this opportunity and I am extremely comfortable that he can handle the position,” Morrill said. “He is an Aggie in every sense, and we are delighted to have him expand his role within our program.”
As the director of basketball operations, Parker is responsible for scheduling all team meetings, meals and travel, helping coordinate practices, disseminate information and act as the liaison between the coaching staff and support staff, coordinating recruiting visits, managing program’s equipment, supervising and coordinating student managers and assist with day-to-day activities of the coaching staff. Parker also coordinates the annual summer Stew Morrill Basketball Camps.
A native of Kamas, Utah, Parker has been the Aggies’ team manager for the past four seasons, handling practice set up, equipment and uniforms, as well as various other practice and game day responsibilities.
“I am humbled by the opportunity Coach Morrill has given me to take over as director of basketball operations,” Parker said. “I have great respect for Coach Morrill and the program he has built here at Utah State and I’m extremely honored to be a part of it. Aggie basketball has been a large part of my college experience here at Utah State, and I am excited to officially be joining the basketball staff and begin my duties as director of basketball operations.”
During Parker’s time with USU, the Aggies have won two Western Athletic Conference titles and made two trips to the NCAA Tournament.
Parker replaces Cody Fueger, who recently accepted a similar role at BYU.
Utah State finished the 2012-13 season with a 21-10 overall record and an 11-7 league ledger in its eighth and final season in the WAC, before joining the Mountain West for the 2013-14 season. USU is one of just five teams in the country to win at least 21 games in each of the past 14 seasons along with Duke, Gonzaga, Kansas, and Syracuse. Furthermore, it is the 23rd time in school history that USU has won 20 or more games in a season.
Fans can follow the Aggie men’s basketball program on Twitter. USU fans can also follow the Utah State athletic program on Twitter or on Facebook at Utah State University Athletics.
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Contact: Zach Fisher, (435) 797-2066
Utah State University’s Old Lyric Repertory Company opens the 2013 season with Dan Goggin’s musical comedy Nunsense at the Caine Lyric Theatre.
“Nunsense is the biggest hit of the company and for the anniversary season we wanted to revive an all-time audience favorite,” said Dennis Hassan, artistic director of the OLRC and associate professor in the Caine College of the Arts at USU.
The storyline of the show is simple — come support the sisters of Hoboken, whose cook, Sister Julia, child of God (bless her heart) has accidentally poisoned most of the convent. The surviving sisters are putting on a musical variety show to raise money to bury the last four frozen nuns of the 52 dead.
“The catchy tunes and quirky characters guarantee the audience an evening of frivolity and laughter,” said Lee Daily, a favorite OLRC performer and director of this year’s iteration of Nunsense.
Opening June 6, Nunsense runs on selected dates through Aug. 5.The 2013 season also includes The Odd Couple, The Drowsy Chaperone, James and the Giant Peach and The Woman in Black. This year marks a century at the historic Caine Lyric Theatre in downtown Logan. A special 100 year celebration performance July 29 will feature a vaudeville-like show with OLRC company members from the past and present. A complete summer schedule is online.
Tickets for the OLRC shows can be purchased at the Caine College of the Arts Box Office at USU in room 139-B of the Chase Fine Arts Center, by calling 435-797-8022 or at the college’s Production Services website. The Box Office is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. Tickets are also available at the historic Caine Lyric Theatre located at 28 W. Center Street, Logan, from noon- 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, and one hour prior to curtain on show nights.
Related links:
- USU’s Old Lyric Repertory Company
- Caine College of the Arts Production Services
- USU Caine College of the Arts
Writer: Kara Rindlisbacher, 435-797-9203, kara.rindlisbacher@usu.edu
Contact: Denise Albiston, 435-797-1500, denise.albiston@usu.edu
Utah State University’s Museum of Anthropology is gearing up for its summer sessions for the ongoing series Saturdays at the Museum.
“Utah Archaeology” is the theme of the June 1 offering that features activities for both children and adults.
An illustrated lecture is presented at 1 p.m. that will take museum visitors on a virtual tour of some of the most important archaeological sites in Utah. Patrons will have the opportunity to participate in guided docent tours of the museum’s Great Basin exhibits throughout the day and children will also be able to try their excavation skills in the museum’s dig boxes, or they can create split twig figurines and make Fremont pottery.
“From Danger Cave to Nine Mile Canyon, Utah boasts some of the most amazing archaeology in the world,” said Candice Cravins, a museum assistant and USU archaeology graduate student. “We hope to encourage people to explore the world around them and learn more about Utah’s impressive archaeological sites. Studying the cultures of those who made Utah their home and exploring what they left behind can help us gain a better sense of who we are today and realize the importance of preserving these sites for future learning and enjoyment.”
In addition to the Saturdays at the Museum activity series with its 10 a.m.-4 p.m. hours, community members and USU students alike can visit the museum during its standard operating hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Funding for Saturday events is provided by a grant from the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services. More information about the IMLS is available online.
The USU Museum of Anthropology can be found on the USU campus in the south turret of the historic Old Main building, Room 252. Admission is free. For Saturday activities, free parking is available in the adjacent lot, south of the building.
For more information about museum events, call museum staff at (435) 797-7545 or visit the museum website.
The Museum of Anthropology is part of the Anthropology Program at USU in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Related links:
- USU Anthropology Program
- USU Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology
- USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Source: Museum of Anthropology
Contact: USU Museum of Anthropology, (435) 797-7545, anthro.museum@usu.edu
Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert has authorized the lowering of the flags Saturday, June 1, in honor of Private First Class Cody J. Towse. All state and national flags will be flown at half-staff at all state facilities from sunrise to sunset June 1.
Pfc. Towse of Elk Ridge Utah, died May 14, 2003, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Funeral services are Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Salem Hills High School.
In honor of Memorial Day 2013, the flag of the United States of America and all state flags will be flown at half-staff.
As directed by federal legislation, all flags should be flown at half-staff from sunrise until noon. Additionally, in compliance with federal legislation that requests the president of the United States to release a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe Memorial Day as a day for prayer for permanent peace, President Barack Obama has released the following proclamation.
Presidential Proclamation -- Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 2013
PRAYER FOR PEACE, MEMORIAL DAY, 2013
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Since our Nation’s earliest days, America has been blessed with an unbroken chain of patriots who have served our country with honor and distinction. From Concord to the Korengal, generations of brave warriors have fought for freedom across sand and snow, over mud and mountains, into lonely deserts and through crowded streets. Today, we pay tribute to those patriots who never came back — who fought for a home to which they never returned, and died for a country whose gratitude they will always have.
Scripture teaches us that “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” On Memorial Day, we remember those we have lost not only for what they fought for, but who they were: proud Americans, often far too young, guided by deep and abiding love for their families, for each other, and for this country. Our debt to them is one we can never fully repay. But we can honor their sacrifice and strive to be a Nation equal to their example. On this and every day, we must meet our obligations to families of the fallen; we must uphold our sacred trust with our veterans, our service members, and their loved ones.
Above all, we can honor those we have lost by living up to the ideals they died defending. It is our charge to preserve liberty, to advance justice, and to sow the seeds of peace. With courage and devotion worthy of the heroes we remember today, let us rededicate ourselves to those unending tasks, and prove once more that America's best days are still ahead. Let us pray the souls of those who died in war rest in eternal peace, and let us keep them and their families close in our hearts, now and forever.
In honor of all of our fallen service members, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved May 11, 1950, as amended (36 U.S.C. 116), has requested the President issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe each Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace and designating a period on that day when the people of the United States might unite in prayer. The Congress, by Public Law 106-579, has also designated 3:00 p.m. local time on that day as a time for all Americans to observe, in their own way, the National Moment of Remembrance.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Memorial Day, May 27, 2013, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11:00 a.m. of that day as a time to unite in prayer. I also ask all Americans to observe the National Moment of Remembrance beginning at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day.
I request the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half-staff until noon on this Memorial Day on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels throughout the United States and in all areas under its jurisdiction and control. I also request the people of the United States to display the flag at half-staff from their homes for the customary forenoon period.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.
BARACK OBAMA
Beverley Taylor Sorenson, tireless advocate for arts and education and highly influential philanthropist, passed away Monday, May 27, at age 89.
Beverley is deeply respected for guiding the development of innovative arts education programs and other highly impactful philanthropic efforts. She was an avid supporter of Utah State University in many areas, in particular, those areas related to arts education.
The Sorenson Legacy Foundation was established by Beverley and her husband, James LeVoy Sorenson, to support cultural, educational, scientific and community-focused projects that improve the lives of people throughout the world. In this light, Beverley donated to USU in many ways, most notably with the establishment, in 2011, of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Endowed Chair for Elementary Arts Education housed in both the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services and in the Caine College of the Arts. In 2012, another Sorenson Foundation gift helped USU join the elite ranks of becoming an “All Steinway School” with the purchase of 44 new Steinway and Steinway-designed pianos, upgrading and replacing all pianos in its music department.
Beth Foley, dean of the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, said Beverly’s generosity and legacy will continue thanks to her tireless support of working to return arts education to Utah classroom.
Growing up during the Great Depression, Beverley learned early the value of hard work, love and sacrifice. After earning a bachelor’s in education from the University of Utah, Beverley moved east to teach kindergarten at a Quaker School in Brooklyn, New York. It was during this time Beverley met her husband, who would later become a prominent medical device inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
Beverley once said that children need the arts and that her foundation continued to give to Utah State University because of the major role it plays in providing arts education and interaction opportunities for young people. In this light, she developed a teaching model in Utah that integrated high-quality arts instruction into the core curriculum of math, language arts, social studies and science. In 2008, the Utah State legislature endorsed Beverley’s efforts by allocating state funding to implement the teaching model she championed in 57 elementary schools across the state. In the 2013-14 school year, the program will benefit tens of thousands of students at approximately 130 Utah elementary schools.
“We are saddened by the loss of Beverley Sorenson,” said USU President Stan L. Albrecht. “The university is indebted to the Sorenson Legacy Foundation and the many ways it has supported our arts programs throughout the years. We say thank you in Beverley’s memory and because of donors like her, Utah State University has a proud artistic heritage and a bright future.”
Beverley is survived by eight children, 49 grandchildren and 65 great-grandchildren. James Sorenson passed away in January 2008.
Following an extensive, nationwide search, Utah State University announced Wednesday, May 29, that it has named one of its own, longtime professor and department head Kenneth L. White, to a three-part position that will make him dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, vice president of Extension and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station.
White is well respected both for teaching and research excellence throughout his career at USU. He currently is department head of Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences and associate dean of USU’s new School of Veterinary Medicine.
“We are all honored that Dr. White has accepted this assignment,” said USU President Stan L. Albrecht. “These are three extremely critical positions at the university, and it is a rare individual who has the breadth of skills to accomplish all these tasks. We are lucky to have that exceptional individual already here on campus. Dr. White is a proven talent, and it gives me great pleasure to make this announcement.”
White said he looks forward to the opportunity this appointment presents, and he thanked the president, the search committee and other faculty and staff for having confidence in him.
“We have excellent programs already in place and tremendous opportunities to grow those and other programs,” White said. “I’m also excited to work with exceptional people — people I already know — both in the college itself and in the state. I recognize that I have huge shoes to fill, but the units are in extremely good health, and I look forward to the challenge.”
Search committee chair Mark McLellan, USU’s vice president for Research and dean of the School of Graduate Studies, said White was selected from among many of the top agriculturalists in the nation after the committee narrowed the list of finalists to three from among the more than 100 contacted. White stood out for his science and teaching skills, for his capacity to manage complex programs and for his ability to work with many different groups.
“Ken is a balanced leader with an exceptionally warm personality yet a drive for excellence that points to an exciting future for the college, the experiment station and the Extension system of the state,” McLellan said.
McLellan said the three-part job is a massive undertaking that requires skills to integrate the teaching, research and outreach missions of the university in a way that promotes the acquiring of new knowledge, the training of students and a full commitment to translating research to the benefit of the citizens of this state, the nation and the world. Intrinsic to the nature of the job is the need to work with very diverse clientele, faculty with many different focus areas and Extension specialists and agents with very wide-ranging mission areas.
“We on the committee are confident Dr. White has the background, skill sets and personality to hold this family together,” McLellan said.
White’s appointment begins July 1. He will replace Noelle Cockett, who steps down from the position to become USU’s executive vice president and provost July 1.
Cockett said White brings proven administrative skills to the new position, and she has no doubts that he will excel. He has shown exceptional abilities as a teacher, researcher and department head, and he has worked successfully with both internal and important external stakeholders in all three domains of the new appointment.
“And it’s not just that he ‘knows this place,’” Cockett said. “We are looking both at what’s right for USU right now and where we want to go next, and I have complete confidence that Ken can lead us forward through those next challenges.”
White came to USU in 1991 as an associate professor in the Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences Department. He received his bachelor of science in animal science at Brigham Young University in 1979. He earned a master of science in animal science at University of California, Davis in 1982 and a Ph.D. in physiology (with an immunology minor) at University of California, Davis in 1986.
While at USU, White has been associate director of research at the Center for Integrated BioSystems, director of the Center for Developmental and Molecular Biology, and is current interim director of the Center for Integrated BioSystems.
He has received numerous prestigious awards while at USU, including University Outstanding Graduate Mentor for 2011; LeGrande Shupe Achievement Award, College of Agriculture, 2011; Graduate Mentor of the Year for the College of Agriculture, 2010; nominated for the Governor’s Medal for Science, 2006, 2007, 2008; nominated for Graduate Mentor of the Year, 2004, 2008; Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year, College of Agriculture, Utah State University, 2007; and, Researcher of the Year, College of Agriculture, Utah State University, 2006.
He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and he also published six book chapters and 94 other scientific publications.
He received the first Utah Best of State Statue (BOSS) Award in agriculture in recognition for his leadership role in nuclear transfer research, which resulted in the first, live equine clone ever produced in the world. As an independent researcher, he generated more than $15 million in extramural funding in his career, nearly $11.5 million at USU. He has received or has pending five patents.
Related links:
- Utah State University College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences
- Utah State University Agricultural Experiment Station
- Utah State University Extension
Contact: Tim Vitale, 435-797-1356, tim.vitale@usu.edu
Utah State University is reorganizing its commercialization and advancement activities to increase efficiencies and strategic opportunities by leveraging leadership, talent and successful efforts already in place.
A new structure will be put in place that will combine USU’s offices of commercialization and university advancement. Rob Behunin, vice president for commercialization and regional development, will lead those efforts as the new vice president for university advancement and commercialization.
Bringing advancement and commercialization under one vice president will provide a host of new opportunities for both operations as USU continues to position itself strategically to meet the challenges of an ever-changing economic landscape, according to USU President Stan L. Albrecht.
“Exciting things continue to develop at Utah State,” Albrecht said. “Dr. Behunin’s instincts, innovative approaches and team-building skills have produced positive results in our commercialization and USTAR efforts over a short period of time, and we are asking him to apply those same efforts to our advancement activities.”
Behunin will continue to be responsible for commercialization, USTAR, regional development, and will add to that advancement and alumni relations. Marketing and public relations will continue to report to the president’s office.
USU completed its first comprehensive campaign in October 2012, resulting in more than $500 million.
“Behunin’s task will be to build on that and position the university for the next phase of its development efforts,” Albrecht said. “We need to keep moving forward and keep ahead of the curve.”
Behunin said he is no stranger to the world of university advancement and that he relishes the opportunity to dedicate a major portion of his time to advancement efforts.
“Advancement has always been close to my heart,” said Behunin. “Seven of my ten years at USU have been largely advancement and community development oriented, and I have built strong ties and relationships with many of our donors and friends of the university. I look forward to dedicating more time to cultivating those relationships in a broader fashion.”
This restructuring would not be possible without a solid commercialization team that will be taking on more responsibilities, Behunin said.
“This is the best team I have ever worked with, and we will continue moving commercialization forward at its current pace,” he said.
Behunin said his approach to the new structure will be a portfolio methodology, aligning a variety of stakeholders and assets to create a strong, cohesive unit. One innovative way to create new opportunities for advancement and commercialization, for example, is to match private enterprise with university know-how and then fold in alumni and donors.
Albrecht said that in an era when higher education is constantly challenged to be innovative in the way it approaches students and course delivery, it is equally important that a university is innovative in the way it strives to engage external stakeholders and generate new revenue streams.
“I appreciate President Albrecht’s vision and approach in combining the two units,” said Behunin. “I fully recognize that advancement and commercialization have very distinct roles, but I also know that there are extraordinary leveraging capabilities and new opportunities for success by aligning the two operations.”
Behunin went on to say that he is committed to preserving the traditions associated with university advancement — and maybe even creating some new ones.
Behunin, born in California and raised in Cedar City, completed his undergraduate work at Southern Utah University and obtained a doctorate in medieval and renaissance literature from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Before joining USU in 2003, Behunin taught English, humanities and Spanish at SUU for nine years, was a tenured faculty member and served as the executive director of Distance Education.
Now in his 10th year at Utah State, Behunin has been able to forge critical partnerships by aligning a variety of stakeholders and assets to move the university forward. While serving as special assistant to the USU president in the Uintah Basin, Behunin formed private, community and industry alliances in the Uintah Basin that led to nearly $100 million of combined investment in USU’s Uintah Basin Regional Campus.
Since his appointment as vice president of commercialization in 2011, USU’s commercialization portfolio has grown significantly under his leadership. Behunin and his team are responsible for USU’s inductively-powered Aggie Bus, a clean coke technology project at USU Eastern, and STORM, USU’s severe weather sensor. External investment in these three projects alone now stands at over $150 million.
Though not teaching, Behunin is a tenured, full-professor of English at USU.
Behunin serves as a member of Governor Herbert’s Energy Task Force, is board member of the Governor’s Economic Development Council and is in his second term as a Judicial Conduct Commissioner.
Related links:
USU Commercialization and Regional Development
Contact: Tim Vitale, 435-797-1356, tim.vitale@usu.edu
The traditions and beliefs surrounding the treatment of the dead are topics at Utah State University’s Museum of Anthropology and its Saturdays at the Museum series May 25 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. During the day, museum visitors are invited to explore and learn about death and burial practices from around the world.
From cremations to burials at sea, every culture has its own traditions and beliefs surrounding the treatment of the dead, event organizers said.
Museum visitors are invited to an illustrated lecture at 1 p.m. at the museum. There will also be guided docent tours of the museum’s temporary exhibit on death and burial practices throughout the day. Young visitors can mummify an apple after learning about the mummification process and make skeleton crafts throughout the day.
“The ways in which people react to death are linked to their culture,” said Aurora Wallis Durfee, a museum worker. “We hope that through this Saturday’s activities visitors will be able to gain a greater appreciation for the many traditions that humans use to welcome the next life.”
In addition to the Saturdays at the Museum activity series with its 10 a.m.-4 p.m. hours, community members and USU students alike can visit the museum during its standard operating hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Funding for Saturday events is provided by a grant from the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services. More information about the IMLS is available online.
The USU Museum of Anthropology can be found on the USU campus in the south turret of the historic Old Main building, Room 252. Admission is free. For Saturday activities, free parking is available in the adjacent lot, south of the building.
For more information about museum events, call museum staff at (435) 797-7545 or visit the museum website.
The Museum of Anthropology is part of the Anthropology Program at USU in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Related links:
- USU Anthropology Program
- USU Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology
- USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Source: Museum of Anthropology
Contact: USU Museum of Anthropology, (435) 797-7545, anthro.museum@usu.edu
The first tropical cyclone to strike Myanmar and Bangladesh this year — cyclone Mahasen — destroyed thousands of huts and forced up to a million people to flee their homes last during the third week of May 2013. A Utah State University-led research project has found that tropical cyclones that threaten millions of people in countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal each year are likely to increase in number and intensity.
Mahasen killed 18 people, but the worst of the storm skipped Myanmar (Burma). Though the cyclone weakened as it made landfall, there was still severe wind damage and flooding, and it is only the beginning of this year’s tropical storm season in the region.
Research conducted on intensified cyclones was led by Simon Wang, assistant professor in USU’s Department of Plants, Soils and Climate and the Utah Climate Center, and was part of NASA’s Energy and Water Cycle Study. The researchers found that the number of spring cyclones over the Bay of Bengal has increased since the 1970s, and that more cyclones grew to hurricane force. The number of hurricane-force cyclones that have made landfall in Bangladesh or Myanmar during that period has doubled. Myanmar was hit by major cyclones three times in a four-year period, including Nargis in 2008 that caused destruction comparable to the tragic 2004 tsunami in South Asia.
The research team, which included scientists from Columbia University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), determined that the lowest portion of the Earth’s atmosphere, the troposphere, which contains nearly all the atmosphere’s water vapor and airborne particulates, has expanded and become warmer over the Bay of Bengal and caused the sea surface temperature to rise.
“We found that the troposphere over India and the Bay of Bengal has expanded, leading to a stronger monsoonal circulation that favors the growth of tropical cyclones and severe storms,” Wang said. “This trend may also have contributed to the deadly tornado that occurred in Bangladesh on March 22.”
The study, recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, found that this regional climate change can be explained by two manmade phenomena: increases in the amount of fine, airborne particulates from dust and burning carbon-based fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, and sea surface warming that is the result of increased greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
“The amount of greenhouse gases and small particles emitted by human beings by fossil fuel burning has been rapidly increasing over India and China in the recent years,” said atmospheric scientist Jin-Ho Yoon at PNNL. “We believe that the change in tropical cyclones is caused by continental-scale response to these increases.”
The researchers also found that the onset of the monsoon season in Myanmar has advanced by five to ten days since 1979. That information is significant for agricultural planning in a country that is highly vulnerable to extreme weather systems because it is just beginning to recover from decades of civil war and lacks many resources necessary to respond to disasters.
Related links:
- Utah Climate Center
- USU Department of Plants, Soils and Climate
- USU College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences
Contact: Simon Wang, 435-797-3121, Simon.Wang@usu.edu
Writer: Lynnette Harris, 435-797-2189, Lynnette.Harris@usu.edu
For the third-straight year, Utah State University offensive center Tyler Larsen has been named to the Dave Rimington Trophy Spring Watch List. The Rimington Trophy is given annually to the nation’s most outstanding center in college football. Larsen is one of 44 players on the 2013 Watch List and one of 17 returning players.
The winner will be honored at Rimington Trophy Presentation banquet at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln, Neb., January 11, 2014.
Larsen, a 6-4, 312-pounder from Salt Lake City, Utah, enters his senior season having started 38 consecutive games — the longest active streak on the team. Overall, Larsen is a two-time first-team all-Western Athletic Conference honoree and the first offensive lineman to accomplish that feat since Mauricio Jourdan earned back-to-back Big West Conference first-team honors in 1996 and 1997.
During the 2012 season, Larsen anchored an offensive line that helped USU established school records for total points, total offense, completions, completion percentage, total yards per game and total yards per attempt, while ranking second in points per game, total passing yards, first downs and touchdowns.
Larsen, who is the only player from the state of Utah to make the Rimington Trophy Spring Watch List, is one of six Mountain West players recognized, including Ben Clarke (Hawai’i), Dillon Farrell (New Mexico), Matt Galas (Nevada), Weston Richburg (Colorado State) and Robert Waterman (UNLV). The six players from the MW are the second-most of any Football Bowl Subdivision Conference, trailing only the Southeastern Conference which has nine players among the list.
Utah State, with Larsen, opens the 2013 season Thursday, Aug. 29, at Utah.
About the Rimington Trophy
The Rimington Trophy is presented annually to the Most Outstanding Center in NCAA Division I-A College Football. Since its inception, the Rimington Trophy has raised more than $2 million. The 14-year-old award is overseen by the Boomer Esiason Foundation, which is committed to finding a cure for cystic fibrosis and has raised more than $100 million for CF Research.
Dave Rimington, the award’s namesake, was a consensus first-team All-America center at the University of Nebraska in 1981 and 1982, during which time he became the John Outland Trophy’s only double winner as the nation’s finest college interior lineman. More on the Rimington Trophy and a list of past recipients can be found at its website.
About the NCFAA
The Rimington Trophy is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA). The NCFAA was founded in 1997 as a coalition of the major collegiate football awards to protect, preserve and enhance the integrity, influence and prestige of the game’s predominant awards. The NCFAA encourages professionalism and the highest standards for the administration of its member awards and the selection of their candidates and recipients. For more information, see the association’s official website.
Contact: Doug Hoffman, (435) 797-3714
The glamour and gold of the ‘70s are back for this year’s Independence Day celebration in Logan that features The Music of ABBA performed by Arrival from Sweden at Romney Stadium on July 3 at Utah State University. The act is a part of Freedom Fire, northern Utah’s annual holiday presentation.
ABBA was recently honored with the opening of ABBA the Museum in Stockholm. The museum displays band equipment, including many costumes worn by the band, a star-shaped guitar, gold records and the helicopter used on the cover of the album Arrival. Visitors are able to join the band in a computer simulation concert and interactive displays.
Formed in 1971, ABBA left behind a music legacy that gave birth to the award-winning Broadway hit Mamma Mia! The Musical which, in turn, led to the film starring Academy Award-winning actors Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. The band sold more than 370 million records and is one of the top-selling bands of all time.
“This is an exciting star-spangled event with The Music of ABBA performed by Arrival from Sweden,” said Russ Akina, parks and recreation director for Logan city.
USU’s Freedom Fire team is equally enthusiastic.
“Arrival from Sweden is the finest ABBA act in the world today and this Freedom Fire show will be so delightful it simply should not be missed,” said Michael Huff, Freedom Fire producer.
According to its promotional material, since 1995, Arrival from Sweden has toured more than 50 nations and appeared on TV and radio around the world. And, the group was given an unreleased song from ABBA to perform and has exclusive permission to copy the original costumes.
“The Music of ABBA is a high-energy, fun show for the entire family,” said James Bankhead, music department head in the Caine College of the Arts and producer of Freedom Fire. “Everyone will be singing along in the audience to the many well-known number one hits.”
Freedom Fire is a collaboration between the City of Logan and USU’s Caine College of the Arts.
The Caine College of the Arts seeks to make the arts more visible, innovative and integrated into the intellectual and cultural life of the communities served. By partnering with Logan City for the annual Independence Day celebration, the college hopes to showcase the quality and talent of its students, faculty and staff while entertaining local residents and visitors.
Tickets for Freedom Fire are on sale now and start at $10. Groups of six or more will receive 15 percent off their tickets if purchased together. Gates open July 3 at 6 p.m., the pre-show begins at 7 p.m. and The Music of ABBA is at 8 p.m. followed by fireworks. For more information or tickets visit the Caine College of the Arts Box Office, open Monday through Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., in room 139-B of the Chase Fine Arts Center, call 435-797-8022 or see the college’s Production Services website.
Related links:
Writer: Kara Rindlisbacher, 435-797-9203, kara.rindlisbacher@usu.edu
Contact: Denise Albiston, 435-797-1500, denise.albiston@usu.edu
The Old Lyric Repertory Company (OLRC) at Utah State University is celebrating the 100th birthday of its home, the Caine Lyric Theatre, with five shows and a special anniversary performance.
“This is the 100th year anniversary of the Caine Lyric Theatre and we have planned a season to honor the occasion,” said Dennis Hassan, artistic director of the OLRC and associate professor in the Caine College of the Arts at USU.
Opening this year’s season is Nunsense, the habit-forming musical comedy by Dan Goggin. The sisters of Hoboken have lost most of the convent to accidental food poisoning by their cook, sister Julia, child of God (bless her heart). The survivors are putting on a variety show to raise money to bury the last four frozen nuns of the 52 dead. Support the sisters June 6-8, 20, 22, July 6, 23, 30 and Aug. 5. Nunsense is rated intermediate for mild content.
Neil Simon’s comedy The Odd Couple opens June 13. Thrown out by his wife, neurotic clean freak Felix Ungar is forced to move in with his friend the slob. See the sparks fly between these two opposites June 13-15, 21, July 5, 13, 24, Aug. 2 and 9. The Odd Couple is rated intermediate for mild language, alcohol and smoking.
For the first time in Cache Valley, The Drowsy Chaperone is coming to the stage. A musical within a comedy, everything begins when a die-hard musical theater fan plays his favorite cast album and the musical bursts into life in his living room. From flappers to gangsters to divas and Latin lovers, experience the Roaring Twenties June 27-29, July 4, 20, 25, 26, 31 and Aug. 10. The Drowsy Chaperone is rated intermediate for mild language.
The fourth show of the season is James and the Giant Peach, based on the novel by Roald Dahl. James is a lonely young boy working like a slave for the most revolting aunts in all of England. One day he is given a bag of magic and when he accidentally spills it near the old peach tree, incredible things begin to happen. Follow James on his extraordinary adventure July 10-12, 22, Aug. 3 and 8. James and the Giant Peach is rated E for everyone.
One of the most exciting, gripping and successful theater events comes to the Lyric as the final show of the season, The Woman in Black. The power and intensity of live theater combine with a cinematic quality inspired by film noir to bring the story of Arthur Kipps and his experiences in a small town with a dark secret. Witness the terrifying intensity July 17-19, 27, Aug. 1 and 6. The Woman in Black is rated intermediate for intensity of content.
Owned and operated by the Thatcher family after the Thatcher Opera House fire, the Lyric Theatre opened in Logan in 1913. After World War II, the theater was closed and fell into disrepair. While under brief consideration for demolition, the theater was saved by W. Vosco Call and others at Utah State University who restored the building and it reopened as a new performance venue for the theater arts department at the university. Several years after its reopening, Call founded the Old Lyric Repertory Company and the theater has been the company’s summer home since. The theater was renamed the Caine Lyric Theatre in 2000 after a second renovation and expansion.
To celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the Caine Lyric Theatre, the OLRC will present a special performance July 29 featuring a vaudeville-like production with performers from companies past and present.
Founded in 1967 by Call, the OLRC is one of the only remaining regional theater companies producing shows in repertory June through August. The company is a professional theater group and provides educational opportunities to USU students. High school students receive training through its High School Apprentice and Intern program sponsored by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation.
Tickets for the 2013 season are on sale, featuring season tickets and a Punch Pass. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit the Caine College of the Arts Box Office in room 139-B of the Chase Fine Arts Center on USU’s Logan campus, call 435-797-8022 or see the college’s Production Services website.
Related links:
Writer: Kara Rindlisbacher, 435-797-9203, kara.rindlisbacher@usu.edu
Contact: Denise Albiston, 435-797-1500, denise.albiston@usu.edu
Under the direction of first-year head coach Matt Wells, Utah State's [University] football coaching staff will conduct two summer camps, including a youth camp and a high school camp.
The Youth Camp is Friday, June 14, for all kids from kindergarten thru eighth grade. The camp is an excellent opportunity for the young player to learn the basics of football from the USU football staff. The $40 cost includes camp instruction, lunch, camp T-shirt and photo with Coach Wells. Registration is from 8-9 a.m. Friday, June 14, in the Jim & Carol Laub Athletics-Academics Complex at the north end of Merlin Olsen Field at Romney Stadium. The camp runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Aggie coaches will also conduct a high school camp Monday, June 17, thru Wednesday, June 19, for incoming 9th to 12th graders, providing a quality experience for young men to learn and enjoy the game of football. The cost is $255 for overnight campers and $215 for commuter campers. A team rate of $230 per camper is available for teams with more than 40 players. Campers will have an opportunity to develop their skills and understanding throughout the camp through various means of teaching. There will be individual instruction, team instruction, as well as the popular Goal Line Challenge, Lineman Competitions and 7-on-7 Scrimmages. Anyone who signs up for the High School Camp has the option of staying on campus or commuting. A $50 deposit was due by May 23. Registration and dorm check-in for the high school camp is Monday, June 17, from 9:30 a.m. to noon in the Jim & Carol Laub Athletics-Academics Complex at the north end of Merlin Olsen Field at Romney Stadium.
For more information, contact USU assistant football coach Kevin Clune at (435) 797-1870 or at kevin.clune@usu.edu.
Registration forms can be found online.
For complete USU Athletics summer camp information, click on "camps" under the "Inside Athletics" tab at the Athletics website.
Utah State football season ticket renewals and new sales for the 2013 season are available. Renewals are available online 24 hours a day at www.UtahStateAggies.com and clicking on the "buy/renew tickets" under the "tickets" drop down menu. Fans interested in new sales should contact the USU Ticket Office at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum or by phone by calling 1-888-USTATE-1 or (435) 797-0305.
Fans can follow the Aggie football program on Twitter or on the USU football blog. Aggie fans can also follow the Utah State athletic program on Twitter or on Facebook at Utah State University Athletics.
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Contact: Doug Hoffman, (435) 797-3714
Select members from Utah State University’s athletics programs and teams are hitting the road this summer to travel to a variety of locations. Members of the public are invited to meet coaches and administrators.
Next up is a road trip to Preston, Idaho, Friday, May 24.
Activities will be held at the Preston Fairgrounds from 6-8 p.m. During the evening, those attending can join new USU head football coach Matt Wells and head soccer coach Heather Cairns. Everyone can enjoy an evening with the coaches and administrators while recapping the Aggies’ exciting 2012 campaign, then look ahead to 2013 and the future of Aggie Athletics.
The evening includes free Aggie Ice Cream to the first 100 fans. There will be information about season tickets and those attending can win prizes and buy Aggie gear.
The event is free and all are invited. Those with questions can call 435-797-2583.
The ‘Aggies Road Trip’ series began May 11 at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. Following the May 24 stop in Preston the series continues to the following cities:
Friday, June 7, 6-8 p.m.
Big Dee Sports Park
Ogden, Utah
Friday, June 21, 6-8 p.m.
USU Brigham City Campus
Brigham City, Utah
Friday, June 28, 6-8 p.m.
Lone Peak Park
Sandy, Utah
Saturday, July 13, 4-6 p.m.
Town Center Bowery
Garden City, Utah
Friday, August 9, 4-6 p.m.
Cache County Fairgrounds
Logan, Utah
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
DIRECTV Sports Networks and the Mountain West Conference have entered into a multi-year agreement, making DIRECTV Sports, and its ROOT SPORTS-branded regional sports network, the regional TV home of Mountain West football and men's basketball.
ROOT SPORTS™ Rocky Mountain will annually produce and televise approximately 10 football games featuring Mountain West teams, and a minimum of 25 MW intra-conference and non-conference men's basketball games, beginning with the 2013-14 season. All events will be produced and distributed in high definition.
"We are pleased to partner with the Mountain West Conference to bring these games to fans throughout the region," said Patrick Crumb, president of DIRECTV Sports Networks. "The Mountain West offers competitive, compelling match-ups, and we look forward to providing a platform to showcase the conference and its teams."
"Our entire ROOT SPORTS™ Rocky Mountain team is excited to be the regional home of the Mountain West Conference," said David Woodman, general manager of ROOT SPORTS Rocky Mountain. "With many member institutions located within our network's footprint, these games will be a great addition to our collegiate sports programming for years to come."
"This unique partnership will provide enhanced coverage and promotion for the entire MW membership," said Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson. "ROOT SPORTS Rocky Mountain is an important component in an innovative, multi-platform exposure plan for the future of the league."
About ROOT SPORTS™ Rocky Mountain Region
ROOT SPORTS™ is the home of the Colorado Rockies, Utah Jazz, Mountain West, Big Sky Conference and University of Denver. The network reaches 2.5 million households across nine states and delivers more than 350 live events each year — all of which are available in high definition.
ROOT SPORTS™ is owned and operated by DIRECTV Sports Networks LLC, which operates regional sports networks in the Northwest, Pittsburgh and Rocky Mountain regions. The three networks combined reach 8.9 million households across 18 states and own exclusive programming and distribution partnerships with more than 20 teams and conferences. DIRECTV Sports Networks is a controlled subsidiary of DIRECTV, the world's most popular television service.
About the Mountain West Conference
From its inception in 1999, the Mountain West has been committed to excellence in intercollegiate athletics, while promoting the academic missions of its member institutions. Progressive in its approach, the Mountain West continues to cultivate opportunities for student-athletes to compete at the highest level, while fostering academic achievement and sportsmanship. With the addition of San Jose State University and Utah State University on July 1, 2013, the MW will be comprised of 11 all-sport members and 12 football-playing institutions. Currently, the Mountain West membership includes: the United States Air Force Academy, Boise State University, Colorado State University, Fresno State, University of Hawai`i (football only), University of Nevada, University of New Mexico, San Diego State University, UNLV and University of Wyoming.
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Two teams from the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University recently placed first and second in an information systems competition in Bentonville, Ark., that pitted 82 teams from top universities around the world against each other, testing their IT skills and their ability to find innovative solutions.
The USU students took the top honors at the 2013 Walmart IT Summit and AIS Student Chapter Leadership Conference. The Association of Information Systems (AIS), the organization that hosted the competition, is a professional group for individuals and organizations that lead the research, teaching, practice and study of information systems worldwide. Teams from 17 universities entered the contest and just six teams in each of four categories made it to the finals.
A team of three Huntsman MIS students, which included Vishal Patel, Dannaea Ward and Eric Schnell, entered the “IT risk identification category” and took first place. They were asked to do a case study for a fictional health care company that was trying to decide if it should store private patient data in an online secure cloud storage system or on a more traditional protected system.
The team took first place on a regional level to qualify for nationals where it was further tested and asked to come up with a more detailed plan to mitigate the risks of its recommendation.
“In the IT risk identification competition we were up against students from Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Alabama and Temple University, all of which are ranked among the top 20 MIS programs in the United States,” Ward said. “By placing in both categories we competed in, we were able to gain great recognition for our MIS program. We as Huntsman students take great pride in the education we are receiving and this was the perfect opportunity to show off the skills we have learned.”
The other team of three Huntsman management information systems (MIS) students, which included Gina Baldazzi, Kristen Tenney and Kyle Bell, submitted a training video they created and took second place in the “interactive learning module” category. The video, which a former student, Marielle Sanchez, helped them create before she graduated in 2012, is aimed at helping people learn how to create an “entity relationship diagram,” which Baldazzi described as “the blue prints for a database.” She said they wanted to create something that was not too technical so that even those who are not MIS students could understand it.
David Olsen, who heads the Management Information Systems Department at USU, said it is impressive that the Huntsman students competed so well in this premiere international MIS competition.
“The hallmark of a great MIS student at USU is hard work, productivity and camaraderie,” Olsen said. “Our students were just so determined to bring home awards and I am so proud of them. To see them excel like this when competing against some of the brightest students in the country is gratifying.”
One competition broke students up into new teams made up of a mix of students from various schools. The team Baldazzi was on took second place in that competition.
The Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University seeks to inspire and equip students to become innovative, ethical leaders with refined analytical skills that will help them understand and succeed in the global marketplace. The Huntsman School of Business is one of eight colleges at USU, located in northern Utah. More information on the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business may be found at its website.
Contact and writer: Steve Eaton, 435-797-8640, steve.eaton@usu.edu
When planning a restaurant launch, proprietors probably focus primarily on a theme, menu choices and inviting décor. But the day-to-day operation of a successful business also depends on the bottom line as well as adherence to regulations. On top of that, who wants to think about garbage and recycling?
Local restaurant Herm’s Inn recently received welcome assistance from Utah State University students Rachelle Messner, Nikol Larsen and Jacoby Knight, who tackled the “dirty job” of waste management as a project for Department of Environment and Society faculty member Roslynn Brian’s Communicating Sustainability class.
“We partnered with Herm’s Inn co-owner and manager Ryan Bird, along with Logan City’s Environmental Department, to evaluate the restaurant’s current recycling program and determine how we could make it more sustainable,” says Messner, an undergraduate environmental studies major.
Bird and his partners have already demonstrated a strong commitment to sustainability, she says.
“Herm’s Inn is located in a recently renovated historic building and its management has a complete understanding of food miles and carbon footprint and makes an effort to use local and in-state food sources.”
But a limiting factor for the restaurant, which is located in a residential area, is space.
The students found the existing space for waste occupied by a dumpster receiving twice-weekly city garbage pick-ups, with little room for recycling. They enlisted help from Logan City Environmental Department employees Emily Malik, conservation coordinator, and Jeff Spatig, customer service manager, in conducting a waste audit for the popular eatery.
“Yes, I’m kind of like a ‘garbage detective,’” Spatig says. “When I do an audit, I literally go through an entire dumpster of garbage.”
What Spatig found was a “significant amount” of cardboard, plastics and tin cans the restaurant could recycle and thus reduce the cost and frequency of trash pick-ups and the space needed for garbage.
“We went through the results of the audit and found we could replace the existing dumpster with a smaller one and add recycle containers,” Larsen says. “As we tallied it up, we estimated these changes could save Herm’s Inn more than $200 a month or nearly $2,500 a year.”
In addition, the students determined that, in one year, Herm’s Inn could divert a whopping 16,224 cubic feet of garbage from landfills.
“We were really impressed with the results,” Bird says. “Being able to take these steps fits with our sustainable mission and is welcome news as we approach our first year anniversary.”
To help Herm’s Inn implement the upgraded recycling program, the students are preparing an employee training plan. In addition, the students have designed a custom recycling logo to grace the restaurant’s take-out containers and recycling bins.
“This is a way of showcasing Herm’s Inn’s commitment to sustainability throughout the community and to encourage its customers to pursue similar efforts,” Knight says.
The recycling project is just the beginning of Herm’s Inn’s partnership with USU. Student Chloe Bickmore, an intern for USU’s Student Organic Farm, is working with Bird on ideas to keep the restaurant supplied with local food.
The Herm’s Inn project was one of a number of projects conducted by students in Brain’s ENVS 4700 class. Other groups worked with campus entities, a local public school and a local religious congregation on varied sustainability projects.
The purpose of the course, Brain says, is to explore the use of educational and communication strategies to encourage the adoption of sustainable behaviors and to partner with the public in developing ongoing programs that encourage sustainability.
Related links:
- USU Department of Environment and Society
- USU Extension Sustainability
- USU Quinney College of Natural Resources
Contact: Roslynn Brain, 435-797-3313, roslynn.brain@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
Sound Beginnings at Utah State University is the proud recipient of Utah’s 2013 Best of State Award for Public Preschool Program.
The privately-sponsored Best of State Awards were created to recognize the excellence, creativity and contributions of individuals, organizations and businesses in Utah. The program officially recognized Sound Beginnings during an awards gala May 11 in Salt Lake City.
The Sound Beginnings Program provides integrated services that include audiological testing and treatment, speech-language therapy and preschool education. Services are delivered through home visits, center-based toddler groups and preschool class instruction.
The program was founded in 2007 when the Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education and the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University teamed up to establish a cutting edge birth to age 5 educational program. It serves the families of children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing who have chosen to communicate through listening and spoken language.
In addition to providing services to children with hearing loss and their families, Sound Beginnings serves as an integrated, interdisciplinary training site for graduate students in audiology, deaf education and speech-language pathology.
“Sound Beginnings’ strength is combining evidence-based educational practices with an interdisciplinary graduate training program,” said Kim Corbin-Lewis, the Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education department head. “It’s exciting for the faculty, the graduate students and the children and their families.”
Related links:
USU Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education
USU Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services
Contact: Kim Corbin-Lewis, department head, Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education, 435-797-1302, kim.corbin-lewis@usu.edu
Utah State University professor James P. “Jim” Evans is the 2013 recipient of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists FoundationProfessorial Award. Evans is the second recipient of the newly established honor that recognizes university professors for “excellence in the teaching of natural resources in the earth sciences.” The prize includes a $1,000 cash award from the AAPG Foundation.
“In surveys, our students consistently identify Jim as the most highly regarded advisor in our department,” says Dave Liddell, professor and head of USU’s Department of Geology. “He funds his students’ research projects but, more importantly, he provides them with encouragement and unlimited quantities of his time.”
Evans, who joined USU in 1987 and received USU’s 2010 Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, has mentored numerous graduate and undergraduate students. He teaches a variety of classes, including such introductory and Honors courses as Honors Planet Earth and Energy in the 21st Century, along with graduate offerings in subsurface analyses, petroleum systems, structural analyses of deformed geological materials and mechanics and processes in Earth sciences.
“I have had the great pleasure in teaching students at all levels about the earth and how it works,” Evans says. “I have benefited greatly from working with some of the best graduate students and colleagues a professor could wish for — both in terms of intellectual ability and curiosity about the earth and sciences, an in terms of being outstanding human beings.”
Beyond the classroom, Evans led two groups of students that excelled in the Imperial Barrel Award competition, which is a joint AAPG/AAPG Foundation program.
Evans has published numerous articles on topics ranging from fault mechanics to reservoir integrity and carbon dioxide sequestration. He served as chief editor of the Geological Society of America’s Journal of Structural Geology from 1997 to 2002, and currently serves as editor of the society’s Lithosphere journal.
Evans, who has been an AAPG member since 1998, was recommended for the honor by the AAPG Academic Liaison Committee and approved by the AAPG Foundation Trustees. The foundation was established in 1967 with the primary goal of providing a source of funding for educational, charitable and scientific objectives, which directly and indirectly benefit the geologic profession and the general public.
Related links:
- “USU Geology Students Regional Champs, Advance to International Finals,” Utah State Today
- “Drill, Baby, Drill: USU-led Geothermal Research Project Begins,” Utah State Today
- “Geologist Jim Evans Named 2010 Outstanding Graduate Mentor,” Utah State Today
- USU Department of Geology
- USU College of Science
Contact: James “Jim” Evans, 435-797-1267, james.evans@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
At Utah State University’s Sunrise Sessions, faculty and students share their research with alumni, community and business leaders from the Salt Lake area. Held quarterly in downtown Salt Lake City, these early-morning presentations detail how USU research is addressing pressing issues such as the obesity epidemic and hearing loss in children. Click here to view the entire library of USU Sunrise Sessions.
Utah State University USTAR researcher Randy Lewis was a featured speaker at USU’s Sunrise Session where he discussed the various ways spider silk can be used in various technologies. Spider silk has many potential uses including ligament and tendon repair, bulletproof skin, high-tech clothing, parachutes and airbags.
Lewis’ research focuses on the “ancient new” material of natural silks produced by spiders. In his presentation, Lewis gave an overview of his group’s work to reproduce those silks using a variety of different systems, including bacteria, goats, alfalfa and silkworms.
“We are working on ways to mass-produce innovative materials that are stronger than steel and stretchier than nylon,” Lewis said.
The innovative research has garnered press attention from around the world and commercial interest from numerous companies.
Upcoming Sunrise Sessions include College of Education and Human Services Researcher Maria Norton on Aug. 9, 2013 and Jon M. Huntsman School of Business researchers Cathy Hartman and Ed Stafford on Nov. 1, 2013.
Sunrise Sessions are sponsored by Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah and are free and open to the public.
Contact: USU Vice President for Research Office, 435-797-1180
What’s more ubiquitous in a Rocky Mountain high school than chewing gum and the latest teenage heartbreak rumor? That would be cell phones, of course, and often smartphones. With these mobile devices comes a perfect opportunity to learn basic scientific concepts.
Really? Absolutely! And organizers of Utah State University’s2013 Physics Day at Lagoon are making the most of their annual rite of spring to teach teens the fun of science is right at their fingertips — even after they leave the thrills and chills of northern Utah’s favorite amusement park.
“Smartphone applications allow users to collect data with electronic protractors, levels, stopwatches, acceleration sensors and more while flying through the air on a rollercoasters or tilt-a-whirl,” says USU graduate student Milo Maughan, organizer of 2013 USU Physics Day, which is Friday, May 17, at Lagoon. “But you can apply these applications to everyday activities, too. It’s a fun and exciting way to practice what you’ve learned in the classroom.”
For the 24th year, Davis County’s überplayground is opening its doors to more than 5,000 aspiring scientists from Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada to transform the park into a giant laboratory to explore such basic physics concepts as gravity, projectile motion, centrifugal forces and energy.
Physics Day participants will still zoom through roller coaster loops measuring G-forces with their carefully crafted wrist accelerometers as their predecessors have done for more than two decades. But USU students will also guide them in smart phone applications to try out on rides, along with a new application that allows users to take light filtered through a diffraction grating and display it on a color spectrum.
Along with high-tech gadget fun, Physics Day includes such perennially favorite competitions as bombing a giant bull’s eye with raw eggs in self-designed protective containers from the Sky Ride (nearly 1,000 eggs plunged to their doom last year), vying in robotics grudge matches and displaying ideas for thrilling rides of the future. For the fourth consecutive year, middle and high school teams will compete in an engineering challenge to design and build energy-generating windmills for a chance to advance to the national MESA USA Wind Energy Challenge this summer.
The day also includes the annual Physics Bowl competition, in which nearly 100 hopefuls in three-person teams will vie for more than $120,000 in scholarship awards. Six students in the top two teams will receive full, four-year scholarships to USU, along with two semesters of free textbooks.
USU Physics Day is one of Utah State’s largest and longest-running outreach and recruitment events. Since its inception in 1990, more than 125,000 teens have participated in the yearly gathering.
“What better laboratory to entice young people than an amusement park?” says J.R. Dennison, USU physics professor and a founder of the popular event.
2013 Physics Day sponsors include Idaho National Laboratory, ATK Space Systems, Boeing, Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, Hill Air Force Base, Lagoon, Micron, Portage Environment, Pasco Scientific, Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium, Space Dynamics Laboratory, U.S. Navy, the USU Campus Store (Bookstore), USU College of Science, USU Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Resources and the USU Admissions Office.
Related links
Contact: Milo Maughan, 435-797-2979, physicsdayusu@gmail.com
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
The Utah State University Aviation Technology Program, Mountain Ridge Helicopters and Leading Edge Aviation will offer flights and tours in celebration of International Learn to Fly Day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 18, at the Logan-Cache Airport.
International Learn to Fly Day was established by the Experimental Aircraft Association in 2009 to raise awareness of flying and to encourage current pilots to involve others in aviation.
“We are excited to team up with the other flight schools in Logan for this event,” said Sean Heiner, chief flight instructor at USU. “I encourage all members of the community to visit the airport and see what opportunities are available to become pilots.”
Due to road construction, the Logan-Cache Airport should be accessed by taking Main Street or 600 West to 2500 North. Drivers will be unable to access 2500 North from 1000 West.
The day’s sponsors:
Utah State University
USU Aviation will offer the opportunity to fly in one of USU’s Diamond DA40 Aircraft for 30 minutes with a certified flight instructor. The cost is $70 per aircraft. A portion of the proceeds will benefit USU’s National Intercollegiate Flying Association team. Funds raised will support the team’s travel to the Region I flight competition in October. The aircraft rate allows three individuals, depending on weight, to fly at one time. One person will be in the co-pilot seat for the duration of the flight.
Rollin’ West Barbeque and the USU Campus Store will attend the event and also donate a portion of their proceeds to NIFA.
Free, guided tours will also be available for those who want to learn about the professional pilot and maintenance management degree options at USU. Visitors will experience the USU facilities at the Logan-Cache airport, including the hangars, flight simulator lab and maintenance facilities. USU flights and tours will be offered from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. To schedule, call (435) 797-7091.
Mountain Ridge Helicopters
Mountain Ridge Helicopters will provide 15-minute introductory flights for $75 per person and tour flights for $125 per helicopter. Introductory flights allow one person maximum, and tour flights allow three individuals, depending on weight, to fly at one time. If weather permits, the flight school will host sky divers at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. To schedule an introductory or tour helicopter flight, call (435) 752-3828.
Free, guided tours will be available for those who are interested in helicopters and Mountain America Credit Union will be on-site to discuss financing options for flight training. Pilots from various sectors of the helicopter industry will be at the event to answer questions and discuss the opportunities for prospective pilots.
Leading Edge Aviation
Leading Edge Aviation will offer introductory flights from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The cost is $79 per aircraft. The flight school will also have students and flight instructors available to answer questions regarding flight training. To schedule a flight with Leading Edge Aviation, call (435) 752-5955.
Related links:
USU School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education
USU College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences
Contact: Taylor Adams, 435-797-7091, taylor.adams@usu.edu
Peace Officers Memorial Day, an annual observance in the United States, is marked May 15 in honor of federal, state and local officers killed or disabled in the line of duty and is held in conjunction with Police Week. In honor of the day, flags are flown at half-staff.
The holiday observance was created Oct. 1, 1961, when the U.S. Congress asked the president to designate May 15 to honor peace officers. The bill was signed into law by U.S. President John F. Kennedy Oct. 1, 1962. The legislation was amended in 1994 when U.S. President Bill Clinton directed that the flag of the United States be flown at half-staff on May 15.
Each year the president issues a proclamation in observance of the day. In compliance with that proclamation, Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert has authorized the lowering of the state of Utah’s flag in addition to the flag of the United States of America.
All flags will be flown at half-staff from sunrise to sunset May 15, 2013.
Utah State University Emergency Management will conduct an active-shooter training session Tuesday, May 14, at 2 p.m.
The training will be held at the Mountain View Tower residence hall on the Logan campus and will last approximately two hours. Several emergency vehicles will be in the area for the afternoon participating in the drill.
Emergency Management wants to remind those who may be in the area that it is just a drill and no further action needs to be taken.
For questions or more information, contact Judy Crockett by email at judy.crockett@usu.edu or by phone at (435) 797-0807.
Related link:
USU Emergency Management
Contact: Judy Crockett, Emergency Management, (435) 797-0807, judy.crockett@usu.edu
ARLINGTON, Texas — Utah State [University] women’s track and field sophomore heptathlete Chari Hawkins broke the school record in the women’s high jump with her winning height of 1.81m (5-11.25) on Wednesday [May 8, 2013] as she leads the heptathlon field with 3,515 points after day one of the 2013 Western Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships at Maverick Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Hawkins also won the 100m hurdles portion of the heptathlon with a personal-best time of 13.82, which now ranks her seventh in school history for the event. Hawkins continued her career day as she recorded personal-best marks in the 200m with a time of 24.84 and shot put with a toss of 11.34m (37-02.50) to place second and sixth, respectively.
Junior Aubriann Bosen also made the top-six in the heptathlon after the first day’s events with 3,017 points, highlighted by her fourth-place finish in the shot put with a throw of 11.67m (38-03.50). Bosen also placed sixth in the 100m hurdles with a personal-best time of 14.70, while sophomore Cree Phillips Taylor rounded out the top-six finishes for the Aggie women by placing fourth in the 100m hurdles with a time of 14.66.
Overall, Utah State combined for 17 personal-best marks during the multi-events on the first day of the league championships as the USU women began defense of their 2012 WAC Outdoor title. Joining Hawkins, Bosen and Taylor in the heptathlon was sophomore McKenzie Johnson, while seniors Sam Hawkins and Tanner Clark competed in the decathlon.
Action continues Thursday [May 9] with the remaining events in the heptathlon and decathlon, starting at 9 a.m. (MT). Fans can follow the action by clicking the "Live Results" link at www.UtahStateAggies.com or by visiting www.WACSports.com. A complete schedule of the meet is also available with times for all events Thursday through Saturday online (www.WACSports.com).
Fans can also Utah State Athletics, including USU track & field and cross country, on Twitter or on Facebook at Utah State University Athletics.
UTAH STATE RESULTS
WAC OUTDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
ARLINGTON, TEXAS
MAY 8, 2013
WOMEN:
Heptathlon (after four events) — 1. Chari Hawkins, 3,515 points; 6. Aubriann Bosen, 3,017 points; 9. Cree Phillips Taylor, 2,789 points; 12. McKenzie Johnson, 2,621 points
Hept. 100m Hurdles — 1. Chari Hawkins, 13.82; 4. Cree Phillips Taylor, 14.66; 6. Aubriann Bosen, 14.70; 12. McKenzie Johnson, 15.74
Hept. 200m — 2. Chari Hawkins, 24.84; 8. Cree Phillips Taylor, 25.86; 9. Aubriann Bosen, 26.03; 11. McKenzie Johnson, 26.16
Hept. High Jump — 1. Chari Hawkins, 1.81m (5-11.25)*; 7. Aubriann Bosen, 1.57m (5-01.75); T-11. Cree Phillips Taylor, 1.48m (4-10.25); 14. McKenzie Johnson, 1.45m (4-09.00)
Hept. Shot Put — 4. Aubriann Bosen, 11.67m (38-03.50); 6. Chari Hawkins, 11.34m (37-02.50); 7. McKenzie Johnson, 9.94m (32-07.50); 11. Cree Phillips Taylor, 9.46m (31-00.50
MEN:
Decathlon (after five events) — 9. Sam Hawkins, 3,163 points; 10. Tanner Clark, 2,741 points
Dec. 100m — 10. Sam Hawkins, 11.62; 11. Tanner Clark, 12.32
Dec. 400m — 3. Sam Hawkins, 52.10; 10. Tanner Clark, 56.35
Dec. High Jump — T-7. Sam Hawkins, 1.76m (5-09.25); 9. Tanner Clark, 1.70m (5-07.00)
Dec. Long Jump — 10. Sam Hawkins, 6.00m (19-08.25); 11. Tanner Clark, 5.73m (18-09.75)
Dec. Shot Put — 9. Sam Hawkins, 10.82m (35-06.00); 10. Tanner Clark, 10.76m (35-04.50)
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Two Utah State [University] softball players have garnered end of season honors from the Western Athletic Conference as senior infielder Christine Thomsen was named to the first-team, while sophomore outfielder Hailey Froton earned second-team honors as announced by conference officials Wednesday [May 8, 2013].
Thomsen finished the season batting .387 in conference action and .425 for the season as her overall batting average was the highest of any player in the WAC. This is her second-straight first-team all-WAC honor as she was named a member of the 2012 all-WAC first-team as well. Thomsen, who also earned second-team Easton All-American honors, is the first player in USU history to earn first-team all-conference honors twice in her career.
Froton received her first all-conference honors of her career, as the sophomore collected second-team all-WAC honors for this season’s performance. Froton finished with a .316 batting average in conference action as well as a .304 average overall. Froton also recorded five triples this season, which is tied for the most by any player in the WAC.
New Mexico State’s Staci Rodriguez was named WAC Player of the Year, while San Jose State’s Amanda Pridmore was named WAC Pitcher of the Year. WAC Freshman of the Year was awarded to Louisiana Tech’s Anna Cross, while SJSU’s Peter Turner earned Coach of the Year honors after guiding the Spartans to the regular season title as well as the No. 1 seed heading into this week’s WAC Tournament in Ruston, La.
New Mexico State led the way with six players on the All-WAC teams, followed by Texas State with five and San Jose State and Louisiana Tech with four each. The complete teams are listed below.
|
First Team |
School |
Ht. |
Yr. |
Pos. |
Hometown |
|
Darian Blake |
UTSA |
5-8 |
Jr. |
OF |
Katy, Texas |
|
Markesha Collins |
San Jose St. |
5-5 |
Sr. |
OF |
Citrus Heights, Calif. |
|
Michelle Cox |
San Jose St. |
5-6 |
So. |
OF |
Sydney, Australia |
|
Anna Cross |
La. Tech |
5-10 |
Fr. |
SS/P |
Cross Roads, Texas |
|
Isabella Geronimo |
Seattle U |
5-3 |
Fr. |
OF |
San Mateo, Calif. |
|
Amanda Krueger |
La. Tech |
5-4 |
Sr. |
2B |
Warren, Ore. |
|
Bubba Morrow |
Seattle U |
5-6 |
So. |
C |
Auburn, Wash. |
|
Alex Newman |
NMSU |
5-10 |
Sr. |
P |
Rio Linda, Calif. |
|
Amber Olive |
NMSU |
5-4 |
Sr. |
OF |
Simi Valley, Calif. |
|
Amanda Pridmore |
San Jose St. |
5-7 |
Sr. |
P |
Modesto, Calif. |
|
Staci Rodriguez |
NMSU |
5-9 |
So. |
OF |
Paramount, Calif. |
|
Christine Thomsen |
Utah State |
5-8 |
Sr. |
1B |
Fresno, Calif. |
|
Nina Villanueva |
UT Arlington |
5-8 |
So |
SS |
San Diego, Calif. |
|
Second Team |
School |
Ht. |
Yr. |
Pos. |
Hometown |
|
Emma Adams |
NMSU |
5-6 |
Fr. |
UT |
Corrales, N.M. |
|
Brooke Baker |
Texas State |
5-1 |
Sr. |
OF |
Houston, Texas |
|
Kelli Baker |
Texas State |
5-7 |
Fr. |
OF |
Atascocita, Texas |
|
Devin Caldwell |
San Jose St. |
5-3 |
Jr. |
IF |
Napa, Calif. |
|
Kristi Covarrubia |
NMSU |
5-2 |
Jr. |
IF |
Las Cruces, N.M. |
|
Hailey Froton |
Utah State |
5-6 |
So. |
OF |
Temecula, Calif. |
|
Melanie Goff |
La. Tech |
5-9 |
Sr. |
OF/P |
San Diego, Calif. |
|
Macie Hair |
Texas State |
5-9 |
Sr. |
C |
Leander, Texas |
|
Rayn House |
Texas State |
5-8 |
Jr. |
P |
Paris, Texas |
|
Erin Kipp |
La. Tech |
5-7 |
Sr. |
UT |
Bullard, Texas |
|
Haley Lemons |
Texas State |
5-6 |
Sr. |
1B |
Rockwall, Texas |
|
Teri Lyles |
UT Arlington |
5-4 |
Sr. |
P |
Keller, Texas |
|
Malena Padilla |
NMSU |
5-4 |
So. |
OF |
Oakley, Calif. |
2013 WAC Player of the Year: Staci Rodriguez, New Mexico State
2013 WAC Pitcher of the Year: Amanda Pridmore, San Jose State
2013 WAC Freshman of the Year: Anna Cross, Louisiana Tech
2013 WAC Coach of the Year: Peter Turner, San Jose State
Additional Aggie sports news is available at the Athletics website.
Contact: Couper Sorenson, 435-840-2007
UNL News Releases
News from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Clemson Newsroom
Newsroom Stories
Clemson University researchers today showed lawmakers on Capitol Hill an electronic voting system they say will help resolve current technological challenges at the polls and restore voter confidence.
Howard's Rock, the iconic fixture Clemson players rub prior to running down the hill during the football team's entrance into Memorial Stadium, was vandalized sometime June 2 or 3.
Two Clemson students have been awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering, and a third student has received an honorable mention.
“Expeditions with Patrick McMillan” host Patrick McMillan won the Emmy award for excellence as on-camera talent in competition by the Southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Clemson University’s Class of 1963 will celebrate its golden anniversary by presenting a $744,000 gift to the university for its Bridge to Clemson program at 9:30 a.m. Friday on the bridge in front of R.M. Cooper Library.
Clemson University and Greenville Health System (GHS) will establish a healthcare research powerhouse that will fuel growth in medical research and breakthroughs, create opportunities for faculty, physicians and students and accelerate the flow of research funding into the Upstate, boosting the region’s economy.
Anand Gramopadhye, Clemson University’s associate vice president for workforce development and chairman of the industrial engineering department, has been named dean of the College of Engineering and Science, effective July 1.
Two Clemson University graduate students in architecture had winning designs in the national AIAS/Kawneer Enlightening Libraries Competition.
Jeffrey Anker, assistant professor of analytical chemistry at Clemson University, received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his work on high-resolution spectrochemical imaging through tissue.
The National Science Foundation has awarded Clemson University a $5 million grant to launch the Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences.
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