Remembering James Elwood Brooks
Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: September 19, 2019 James E Brooks_Obituary
Students Seek SCOTUS Gold
Law.com Originally Posted: September 18, 2019 Welcome to Supreme Court Brief, our home for news and analysis about the US Supreme Court and the lawyers who practice there. Thanks for reading! By Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle Welcome to Supreme Court Brief. The justices are speaking regularly right now, just weeks before the start of the new term, and we’ve got a few lines from Justice Kagan about keeping her thoughts to herself—at least on some things. Plus: Catch up with a group of students who spent some time this year inspecting the papers of justices at the Library of Congress. Also: The House Judiciary Committee is taking another look at how to make federal courts more accessible. Thanks for reading, and your feedback is [...]
How we can use the art of listening to heal the divisions in our country.
Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: Septemeber 11, 2019 Jill DeTemple is associate professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University and a faculty associate at Essential Partners. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. It's not too late to start listening. Giving ear and respect to other perspectives builds trust and a sense of community we have lost and desperately hope to regain. There's an opportunity to do this in classrooms, living rooms and assembly rooms. It starts with setting the stage and ground rules to promote honest and safe dialogue. It continues with free-flowing exchanges after we take a chance and learn why others believe what they believe. "I used to joke that I was a passive anarchist waiting for civilization to [...]
Alumna wins Emmy for NASA Coverage
Congrats to Dr. Sue Smrekar who received her Ph.D. in Geophysics from the SMU Department of Earth Sciences in 1990. She represented NASA last night at the Emmy's where they won 'Outstanding Original Interactive Program' coverage of the NASA In Sight mission to study Mars. READ MORE
What Princes and Princesses are Teaching Our Kids
DFW Child Originally Posted: September 3, 2019 Martha Satz, Assistant Professor in the English Department was interviewed for this article. Skyla is absolutely over the moon about princesses. The North Texas 5-year-old not only dresses up like the characters and enjoys the movies, but she has also attended parties alongside her aunt, a professional party entertainer who appears at events as princess characters. But type “princess culture” into Google, and you’re sure to find a slew of articles declaring how bad princesses are for kids like Skyla: “Why Disney princesses and ‘princess culture’ are bad for girls.” “Can Disney fix its broken ‘princess culture’?” “Study finds Disney princess culture magnifies stereotypes in young girls.” So are there really so many negative effects resulting from our kids’ obsession with princesses? INNER BEAUTY? When we show [...]
National visibility: R. Gerald Turner
CEO Magazine Originally Posted: August 29, 2019 How do you build a university’s reputation? According to Southern Methodist University’s President, R. Gerald Turner, it doesn’t hurt to embody your city’s can-do philosophy. There’s probably no college president more dedicated to his university’s future than R. Gerald Turner. He’s a native of Texas and studied at three of the state’s universities, but Turner really cemented his place in Texas when he became the President of SMU – Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. When he joined in 1995, SMU was already recognized as one of the most beautiful places to study – students happily carry their books across vast lawns while tree-lined boulevards and neo-Georgian architecture give it an air of solid grandeur. But its academic reputation has [...]
A Conversation with Lupe Valdez
Event Date: Thursday September 19, 2019 Location: The Promenades, Hughes-Trigg Center Time:7:00-8:00 The Women's and Gender Studies Program invites you to join us for a conversation with Lupe Valdez. Come hear more about the life and projects of the first Latina sheriff and one of the first LGBTQ elected officials in the US.
How do we get so many different types of neurons in our brain?
SMU Research Originally Posted: September 5, 2019 New SMU study may provide insight on how our brains are able to produce so many different types of neurons, which control everything we do DALLAS (SMU) – SMU (Southern Methodist University) researchers have discovered another layer of complexity in gene expression, which could help explain how we’re able to have so many billions of neurons in our brain. Neurons are cells inside the brain and nervous system that are responsible for everything we do, think or feel. They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to send information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system, to tell our body what to do. Humans have approximately 86 billion neurons [...]
Mickey’s Wild Ride
SMU News Originally Posted: September 8, 2019 Mickey Dollens ’11 majored in English with a creative writing specialization and minored in psychology. If you look at the arc of Mickey Dollens’ life so far, you can almost feel the syncopated rhythm of the opportunities he embraced and the hard knocks he survived. His story starts with an unlikely football scholarship and his life-changing years at SMU. But just as Mickey’s chapter on the Hilltop was nearing an end, his brother’s suicide drove him to re-examine everything. Mickey tried out for the NFL – and failed. But his attempt managed to earn this Oklahoma flatlander a slot on the U.S. Bobsled team. The life adventure continued after bobsledding with boom (and bust) in the oil business [...]
In Memorium: Ke Wang
Ke Wang (1978 - 2019) was a native of mainland China. Ke received his Ph.D. in 2012 from the Department of Statistical Science at SMU under the direction of Profession Sherry Wang. His dissertation work, titled "Estimating Cumulative Distribution Functions from JPS Data with Empty Strata and Analyzing High-Throughput Data via Hierarchical Bayesian Spatial Modeling", led to a publication in Biometrics with Prof. Wang, exhibiting a high-level academic achievement and passion in Statistics. Ke is remembered by his SMU friends for his selfless and dedicated efforts on always helping his classmates succeed in their graduate studies. Ke was the husband of Fang Duan, and the proud father of their son. He was kind, athletic, full of energy, and lived his life with infectious passion. He [...]