Condoleezza Rice

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will deliver the address at SMU’s 97th Commencement ceremony Saturday, May 12, at 9:30 a.m. in Moody Coliseum on campus.

SMU expects to award approximately 2,100 undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees in the University-wide ceremony. Rice will receive one of two honorary degrees to be conferred in the ceremony.

Rice has achieved prominence in both government service and higher education. She currently holds three positions at Stanford University: professor of political economy in the Graduate School of Business, Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, and professor of political science.

“Dr. Rice has led a distinguished career as a scholar, academic administrator and public official,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “As a public official, she served our country during a time of unique challenges. As a teacher-scholar, she is devoted to the education of talented young people. She is well suited to provide compelling and wide-ranging perspectives as SMU’s Commencement speaker.”

For more information, visit smu.edu/commencement.

• Video: Watch the SMU Year in Review 2011-12 from SMU News.

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SMU’s 2012 Literary Festival will feature readings by prize-winning authors including Dean Bakopoulos and Amina Gautier, as well as receptions, student conferences and book signings.

Sponsored by the Department of English in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, the annual event celebrating good writing opens March 21 and continues through March 24. All events are free and open to the public.

“We are beyond pleased at the level of talent in our lineup this year,” said David Haynes, head of the SMU creative writing department. “This is an incredible opportunity for our students and the extended SMU community.”

Read about this year’s featured writers from SMU News.

Students launching SMU Fashion Week include (from left) Meg Jones, Julia Eggleston, Alexandria Harvel, Rebecca Marin, Grace Davis, Kelsey Reynolds, Shelby Foster and Lizzie Ranshaw.

A year ago, Grace Davis, a senior chemistry major and psychology and fashion media minor, was looking at online photos of Fashion Week at the University of Pennsylvania, where her brother is a first-year student. Penn’s Wharton Retail Club has sponsored a fashion week for several years running, and the event looked fantastic. Why, she wondered, can’t we do this at SMU?

Read more about the first SMU Fashion Week from SMU News.

One year and lots of hard work later, Davis has her answer: We can. This spring marks a new event on campus. In conjunction with the new fashion media minor in Meadows School of the Arts, fashion-minded SMU students will celebrate style with a week dedicated to fashion and the fashion industry: SMU Fashion Week: March 26-30.

“I thought it could be an event that could be very successfully replicated on the SMU campus, especially with the induction of the fashion media minor program,” says Davis, Fashion Week executive director.

In August 2011, Davis made a phone call to Camille Kraeplin, director of the fashion media program and associate professor of journalism, who liked the idea and agreed to act as faculty adviser for the student-led project. Kraeplin says she is amazed by what Davis and her team have accomplished.

The week of events promises plentiful opportunities to learn about the fashion industry. Most events will be on the SMU campus, with the exception of the Monday launch party, which will be at Tootsies, 8300 Preston Road.

From Tuesday through Thursday, panels will focus on professions and opportunities within the fashion world. ”The event will bring great speakers to campus, speakers who will expose students to all aspects of the fashion industry,” Kraeplin says.

On Friday, the annual Retail Club Fashion Show will feature models strolling down the runway outside the Meadows School.

SMU Alternatives Breaks organized Christmas parties at a Brownsville, Texas, community center during winter break.

In 1988, students participating in SMU’s first alternative spring break trips traveled to a Brownsville, Texas, refugee camp and a New Orleans soup kitchen. The program had taken shape the year before, offering students the opportunity to use their time off to perform community service.

Read a poem about Alternative Breaks written by sophomore Paul Curry. 

This year, SMU Alternative Breaks is celebrating the 25^th anniversary of its founding and its 100^th trip, which the student organization marked by returning to Brownsville. Alternative Breaks now offers 14 trips during fall, winter, spring and summer breaks and has more than 150 student, faculty and staff participants – an all-time high.

“Every trip makes a difference not only in the communities we visit, but also in the lives of the people who take part,” says senior Matthew Gayer, the organization’s director since 2010. “The trips take us away from Dallas and out of our comfort zones, allowing us to really focus on social issues such as hunger and health.”

Alternative Breaks is housed in SMU’s Community Engagement & Leadership Center, which supports initiatives including service-learning and leadership training. Carol Clyde, the center’s director, says students increasingly are demonstrating an interest in community service activities. “Forty-two percent of incoming students say they’re likely to participate, up from 31 percent just eight years ago,” Clyde says. “When students realize the positive impact they can make in a community, they realize their responsibilities as global citizens.”

During spring break 2012, March 10-18, Alternative Breaks is traveling to:

• Atlanta, to work at organizations serving veterans and the homeless;
• Boston, to volunteer with the city’s homeless services bureau;
• Crawfordville, Florida, to perform environmental restoration;
• Denver, to serve with Habitat for Humanity;
• Los Angeles, to volunteer with AIDS Project of Los Angeles, which serves people of all ages with HIV and AIDS;
• New York, to serve at a food bank and deliver food across the city;
• Taos, New Mexico, to tutor children and work on a farm at a rural charter school;
• Window Rock, Arizona, to work on community development and education issues with Native Americans;
• Quito, Ecuador, to teach children and support community development.

Gayer is a President’s Scholar majoring in public policy and political science, with minors in economics, biology and human rights, in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. As of spring break 2012, he will have participated in 10 Alternative Break trips since his first year at SMU, including to Arkansas to rebuild after destructive tornadoes and to Ecuador to tutor children.

“These trips go beyond just one week of service,” says Gayer, who was awarded a prestigious Truman Scholarship in 2011. “For the participants, we offer education before and after the trips about incorporating service into their lives. We’re also returning to these communities year after year to build long-term relationships with SMU.”

Jillian Frederick, a sophomore anthropology major in Dedman College, participated in the 100^th anniversary trip to Brownsville during winter break.  She and seven other SMU students worked at the Good Neighbor Settlement House, where they planned several Christmas parties for families in need.

“We wrapped 500 presents that had been donated by the community, and we filled an auditorium with decorations,” says Frederick, who is leading the spring break trip to Boston. “We had as much fun as the families. It was amazing to think that 25 years ago, SMU students had traveled to Brownsville with the same goals and excitement to serve.”

Learn more at smu.edu/ab.

Click the link below to read a poem about Alternative Breaks by SMU sophomore Paul Curry.

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The Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS) is urging all Texas spring breakers to avoid traveling to Mexico.

The U.S. State Department website lists several travel alerts related to violence in Mexico. Travelers should always check that website for the most up-to-date information related to security issues in Mexico.

SMU News has posted the official notice from TxDPS, which was e-mailed to all SMU faculty, staff and students on Tuesday, March 6. Read the full alert.

Latvia and Lithuania aren’t typically discussed in context of the Holocaust. But there, like Poland to the west, 90 percent of each country’s Jewish population was killed by Germany’s Nazi regime and its collaborators. “And Latvia and Lithuania were among the earliest places where the full effects of the ‘Final Solution’ were put into terrifying practice,” says SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program Director Rick Halperin. For example, “In 1941, Latvia was the first country to be declared ‘Jew-free’,” he says.

In remembrance of the 580,000 Jews and others who were murdered in both countries, Halperin is leading a group of 11 students and community members to Latvia and Lithuania during spring break, March 9-17. This is the second trip Halperin has led to the region.

• Read student blogs about the Human Rights program’s first trip to the Baltics.

Though Poland has numerous fixed memorial sites that used to be death camps, where people were worked to death or obliterated upon arrival, for the most part such sites don’t exist in Latvia and Lithuania. “In most of its cities, the ‘Final Solution’ was heavily enacted against defenseless people who were victims of mass murder in forests and on beaches,” Halperin says.

The group will visit Latvian sites including the Bikernieki Memorial, where 40,000 Jews were killed; the Rumbula Forest, where some 28,000 people were shot and buried in mass graves; and the dunes of Skede, where after a mass roundup, an estimated 2,800 Jews, mainly women and children, were killed by three German and Latvian firing squads. In Lithuania, visits will include seeing the Ninth Fort, where thousands of Jews were killed, and the Ponary Forest, where the mass murder of 100,000 took place.

“This trip is designed in large part to help those who are going to stop saying, ‘I didn’t know,’ ” Halperin says.

Bob Mong, editor of The Dallas Morning News, congratulated the 27 new members of the SMU Hyer Society at its annual recognition event Sunday, Feb. 26.

“You bring great distinction to yourselves, your families and SMU,” Mong told the students.

Mong also recognized four new Hyer Society members for the quality and depth of essays written in response to this question: “What story are America’s journalists failing to tell that should be top of mind for every citizen?” Read the entirety of Mong’s comments.

Named for the founding president of SMU, the Hyer Society recognizes the University’s most intellectually gifted undergraduates who have distinguished themselves through high academic achievement. Only a fraction of SMU students, roughly the top 4 percent of the student body, are nominated each year for membership.

The society’s selection committee includes one faculty member from each of SMU’s undergraduate schools and the Hyer Society chair. In November, eligible students are asked to submit an essay on a topic chosen by the committee, a résumé and recommendation letters from faculty members. The new inductees are selected in January.

Other awards presented include the University Achievement Award given to at least one junior to recognize outstanding academic accomplishment, and the University Award for outstanding scholar, that recognizes up to three seniors for enthusiastic pursuit of knowledge and commitment to excellence.

See the list of 2011-2012 list of scholars.

SMU will celebrate its second annual Founders’ Day Weekend April 20-21, 2012, with a variety of events for parents, alumni and friends.

Founders’ Day recognizes the University’s founding in 1911. Held each year on the third Friday in April, this commemoration is an important part of SMU’s centennial. Join us as we celebrate the University’s achievements and future.

The weekend begins Friday, April 20, with a historic, midday groundbreaking of the new Residential Commons complex, a series of five buildings and a new dining hall. This complex is the cornerstone of a new phase of development along the south side of campus near Mockingbird Lane.

Beginning at 2 p.m., Inside SMU offers stimulating classes by professors for parents, alumni and friends. That evening, President R. Gerald Turner will present the President’s Briefing, his annual report on the major events and achievements of the previous year and announcement of plans for future progress. Stay tuned for more details.

You can take part in SMU’s Second Century Celebration:

• Order SMU: Unbridled Vision: A stunning new picture book showcases the beauty of campus.
• Leave your mark: Honor your student’s time on the Hilltop in the new SMU Centennial Promenade. With a $100 gift your student or family will be recognized with an etched paver on the Centennial Promenade, to be constructed for the 100th anniversary of SMU’s opening in 2015.
• Visit Centennial Hall: The interactive exhibition is in Hughes-Trigg Student Center.

SMU’s 52-year-old Memorial Health Center is set to receive a major upgrade, and it will be renamed in honor of the distinguished Dallas pediatrician and University alumnus whose foundation is making it possible.

The Dr. Bob and Jean Smith Foundation has given $5 million toward the Dr. Bob Smith Health Center. Planning for the Center’s renovation will begin this year.

The Memorial Health Center opened in 1960 as a 30-bed infirmary. At the time, the University’s enrollment was around 8,000. Today the Health Center serves as an outpatient facility for approximately 11,000 students, about 2,400 of whom live on campus.

Upon its completion in 2014, the Dr. Bob Smith Health Center will serve an estimated 3,650 students living on campus, including those who will live in the new Residential Commons complex to begin construction this spring. The complex, accommodating 1,250 students, in addition to SMU’s current residential halls, will enable the University to implement a two-year residency requirement for all first-year and sophomore students.

“Bob and Jean Smith have a long history of generous support for SMU priorities and have always kept the welfare of students uppermost in their minds,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “This new gift will dramatically improve campus health care resources and provide support services that enable students to do their best academic work and fully enjoy the campus experience. We are deeply grateful for this gift, which will transform an important but outmoded facility into an up-to-date campus resource.”

SMU’s Health Center currently provides medical services for diagnosis and treatment of illness and injury, along with counseling and psychiatric services. The Center is staffed by full-time physicians, mental health counselors, registered nurses, pharmacists and laboratory and X-ray technologists. It also houses SMU’s Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention.

“It is an honor to align the Dr. Bob and Jean Smith Foundation with SMU in combining superior academic facilities with excellent student life resources,” said Sally Smith Mashburn, Foundation president and treasurer and daughter of Dr. Bob and Jean Smith. “After all, one of SMU’s greatest responsibilities is to nurture the well-being of students.”

Improvements for the Dr. Bob Smith Health Center include updated floor plans that will increase the number of patient procedure rooms, counseling offices and private waiting rooms and will better serve the needs of students with disabilities. The renovation also includes upgrades to medical equipment and technology and enhancement of pharmacy and laboratory spaces. The expansion will provide group meeting spaces to promote collaboration among health care staff members.

“The renovations and upgraded equipment will greatly augment our ability to serve the SMU student community, complementing the high-quality staff members and specialists already in place,” said Patrick Hite, SMU Health Center executive director.

“This will be a lasting tribute to a physician and leader whose main concern was the health and welfare of others,” said Lori White, vice president for student affairs. “Now our students will be the beneficiaries not only of his generosity but also his foresight in understanding their needs and fostering a caring community.”

The Smith Foundation’s new $5 million gift counts toward the $750 million goal of SMU Unbridled: The Second Century Campaign, which as of December 2011 has raised more than $574 million to support student quality, faculty and academic excellence and the campus experience.

> Read more from SMU News
> Visit the SMU Memorial Health Center online