Category: August 2018

The beginning of the new school year is just around the corner, and faculty, staff and returning students are preparing to welcome the Class of 2022 to the Hilltop.
Here are some important dates to remember in the coming weeks:

• Wednesday, August 15
  Move-in Day kicks off Mustang Corral 2018.
• Sunday, August 19
  The University’s 104th Opening Convocation welcomes all new first-year and transfer students. Watch this beloved SMU tradition live, beginning at 5 p.m.
• Monday, August 20
  First day of classes.
• Friday, September 7
  SMU’s first home game, when the Mustangs take on TCU in Ford Stadium in the Battle for the Iron Skillet.
• Friday, September 28 – Saturday, September 29
  The SMU Student Foundation presents Family Weekend 2018, “A Roarin’ Good Time”

SMU’s Meadows Museum will present its first-ever gala, “The Color of Dreams,” on Saturday, October 13, to raise funds to endow a director of education position. The theme is inspired by the art of Salvador Dalí, whose paintings will be on view in Dalí: Poetics of the Small, 1929-1936, opening at the museum on September 9.The gala will be chaired by Pilar Henry, with Peggy ’72 and Carl Sewell ’66 serving as honorary chairs. With decor by Fleurt by Margaret Ryder, the black-tie event will kick off with a cocktail reception on the plaza featuring dance performances by SMU students and an exclusive musical performance, followed by a seated dinner in the Museum’s galleries catered by Cassandra Fine Catering. After dinner, the evening will continue with live music by Cuvee and dancing.
Mark Roglán, the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum, said the new endowment will “ensure strong leadership of the museum’s education and outreach efforts in perpetuity, establishing a healthy financial base from which to recruit and retain the highest-quality staff and allowing the museum to direct more resources toward its exceptional programming endeavors.”
The Meadows Museum’s education director plays a significant role in the life of the museum, he said, interpreting the art to make it understood by audiences that range from scholars to children to adults. In addition, they generate all the tours, programming, lectures and educational infrastructure, and are knowledgeable about the permanent collections as well as visiting exhibitions. They also work with departments throughout the University and collaborate with institutions throughout the world.
The museum annually hosts thousands of visitors, teachers, and K-12 and SMU students through symposia, lectures, workshops, gallery talks and guided tours. “For many school students who come through the museum, it’s the first time they’ve stepped on a campus or visited a fine arts museum,” Roglán says. Additionally, it has received recognition for its accessible programming and resources that welcome audiences of all abilities, with a particular focus on adults with early stage dementia and their care partners, and visitors who are blind or have low vision.
“Endowment of the director of education position, currently held by Scott Winterrowd, will liberate funds used now to cover his salary to enable us to expand and better focus our offerings for our SMU audiences,” he says. “With the allocation of resources toward campus partnerships, we can ensure that large portions of SMU students are engaging in learning at the museum and can create new initiatives that forward the mission of the museum and University.”
Find more information about the gala, including sponsorship opportunities, at the Meadows Museum.

The Dallas Regional Chamber, Accenture, SMU and United Way of Metropolitan Dallas released the results of the DFW Regional Innovation Study, which provides a strategy roadmap to accelerate the growth of North Texas’ innovation economy and bolster its reputation as a hub for innovation excellence.
The study – a six-month-long research project that included stakeholder interviews and analysis of the DFW economy and other global cities — found that the region’s thriving innovation economy results from the diversity of its industries, a skilled and growing workforce, a collection of accelerators and co-working spaces, investment capital, robust academic institutions, and top-ranked arts and culture scenes. The results also suggest that there is additional opportunity to bolster the region’s reputation as a magnet for innovation into the future.
However, it notes that staying ahead of the curve in today’s digital era — with the rapid pace of change and fierce competition — requires that a successful innovation economy combine several key ingredients: growing and flooding the ecosystem with the right talent; creating areas of density for that talent to “collide” to generate creative and innovative ideas; and providing access to funding and resources to allow those ideas to flourish and scale.
Read more at United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

In a breakthrough development, SMU’s Stephen Sekula and his group of researchers in the SMU Department of Physics were part of the ATLAS Experiment team to first observe the direct interaction between the Higgs boson and the bottom quark. This major milestone is an important step toward understanding the origins of mass.
The discovery of the latest piece of the cosmic puzzle was helped along by Sekula’s recent work involving an abundance of data from the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
“At this point, taking more data wasn’t the primary issue,” explains Sekula. “This is a measurement that’s challenged by the fact that you can’t see clearly what is in the data. For the past year, we have been focused on improving the lens for this process so we really know where to look for the Higgs boson-bottom quark interaction.”
This is where SMU’s supercomputer, ManeFrame II, came into play. “In the last year, Maneframe II has been immensely helpful,” says Sekula. “It made it possible to enhance our simulation in ways that were more targeted.”
Read more at Dedman College.

A new pilot study by SMU scientists indicates that simple cognitive tasks performed as early as four days after a brain injury activate the region that improves memory function and may guard against developing depression or anxiety.
Currently, guidelines recommend that traumatic brain injury patients get plenty of rest and avoid physical and cognitive activity until symptoms subside.
But a new SMU study looking at athletes with concussions suggests total inactivity may not be the best way to recover after all.
“Right now, if you have a concussion the directive is to have complete physical and cognitive rest, no activities, no social interaction, to let your brain rest and recover from the energy crisis as a result of the injury,” said SMU physiologist Sushmita Purkayastha, who led the research, which was funded by the Texas Institute for Brain Injury and Repair at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.
“But what we saw, the student athletes came in on approximately the third day of their concussion and the test was not stressful for them. None of the patients complained about any symptom aggravation as a result of the task. Their parasympathetic nervous system — which regulates automatic responses such as heart rate when the body is at rest — was activated, which is a good sign,” said Purkayastha, an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness.
Read more at SMU Research.

Senior football player Jordan Wyatt ’19 was selected as a nominee for the 2018 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team.
The student-athletes nominated for the honor were announced by the Allstate Insurance Company and the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA).
To qualify, nominees not only demonstrate a unique dedication to community service and desire to make a positive impact on the lives around them, but they also show tremendous perseverance as well as the ability to overcome personal struggles and come out victorious against all odds.
Wyatt has participated in various community service activities at SMU, including visits to youth clinics and participation in Habitat for Humanity projects.
The 22 finalists will be named in September. Afterward, fans will be able to vote for the Good Works Team Captain.
Read more at SMU Athletics.