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2022 Alumni February 2022 News

Making a big splash for swimming and diving

This spring, SMU will break ground on the Holt Hickman Outdoor Pool, the newest addition to the Robson & Lindley Aquatics Center made possible by lead gifts from the Robson, Hickman and Lindley families. Once completed, the project will establish the Robson & Lindley Aquatics Center as the only U.S. university facility with both indoor and outdoor Olympic pools.
The Holt Hickman Outdoor Pool will include an eight-lane, 50-meter-by-25-yard outdoor pool, 1- and 3-meter diving boards and a 20-by-40-foot instructional pool for lessons and rehab/therapy. Other amenities feature a locker room facility – accessible from both the indoor and outdoor pools – including an indoor dryland training area, which will specifically benefit the SMU diving program. Exterior showers and a decorative overhang to provide shade will complete the project.
This outdoor pool addition will be a hub of community engagement and help SMU attract local and national swimming and water polo events to SMU and the city of Dallas.
Read more.

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2022 Alumni February 2022 News

Preserving the histories of our communities of color

So far, 124 Mustangs who lived it have been interviewed for Black History at SMU, part of the Voices of SMU oral history project. Voices of SMU is among hundreds of projects, causes and organizations you can support on SMU Giving Day March 22.
Voices of SMU is a collaboration between students, alumni and entities across campus to diversify the SMU Archives’ holdings. With Voices of SMU, undergraduate research assistants conduct oral history interviews with SMU alumni from underrepresented groups. The oral histories are made available online in the SMU Libraries Digital Collections.
The interviews document not only the history of the University, but Texas as well, including the desegregation of higher education, the experiences of African American and Latinx University students, and Black and Brown student activism in Texas. They speak to growing up in Dallas’ Little Mexico; post-World War II African American community-building in places such as Hamilton Park, Dallas; studying as an undocumented student; organizing as minority seminarians and student activists; and shaping Texas’s churches, social ministries, and business communities upon graduation.
Read more.

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Alumni February 2022 News

From dino drawings to STEM ambassador

Her dinosaur drawings earned Myria Perez ’18 a volunteer position at the Houston Museum of Natural Science when she was just 12. Flash-forward to high school, and her passion for dinosaurs again made a big impression – this time on renowned vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs, now professor emeritus of Earth Sciences and president of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at SMU.
Jacobs became her mentor while she earned bachelor’s degrees in geology and anthropology from SMU. Along the way, she helped prepare fossils that Jacobs and his team had uncovered in Angola. They were exhibited in Sea Monsters Unearthed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she now works in the Deep Time FossilLab as a fossil preparator.
Perez aims to inspire more young women to enter STEM fields as one of 125 AAAS IF/THEN Ambassadors.
Read more.

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2022 Alumni February 2022 News

Serial entrepreneur’s winning ways

Neha Husein ’19 launched the Just Drive app as an SMU student. Recently she captured the top prize in the WEDallas inaugural pitch competition for ZStash, an innovative platform promoting sustainability by helping wholesalers and boutique owners destash inventory.

Husein’s latest venture, ZStash, is a free website and mobile app designed for wholesalers and boutique owners to buy, sell and destash inventory on an all-in-one, secure platform. Prior to creating Zstash, Husein founded Just Drive, an app that rewards undistracted driving that she created after she was rear-ended by a driver who was texting.

For her triumph, Husein was awarded a $1,500 microgrant from Capital One.

WEDallas is a partnership between the DEC Network and Capital One.

Read more.

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2022 Alumni February 2022 News

Mustang support makes dreams come true

Sienna Dugan ’20 came to SMU wanting to make an impact in global health care. Through Engaged Learning and other projects supported each year by Mustangs on SMU Giving Day, she gained experience that helped her dream come true. Today she helps run a free medical and dental clinic in Honduras. Join with thousands of other Mustangs to support the projects, causes and organizations you care about on SMU Giving Day March 22.
More details about our 24-hour giving challenge will be coming soon.
In the meantime, learn more about SMU Engaged Learning.

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2022 February 2022 News

Black/Africana Church Studies program prepares tomorrow’s leaders

The new Black/Africana Church Studies program in the Perkins School of Theology aims to prepare students for innovative and impactful leadership in the Black church, the academy and the world while providing opportunities for the entire SMU community to learn about the origins, development and diversity of the Black church tradition.
“The program will critically explore Black theology, Black Biblical studies and interpretation, history, pastoral theology, preaching, worship, religious education, ethics, and other practices in conjunction with African American, African and other African diasporic churches, nonprofit organizations and social justice ministries,” says Tamara Lewis, assistant professor of the history of Christianity and program director.
An overall goal of the program is to improve campus quality of life for members of the SMU Black community, starting with a biennial survey of the campus climate as seen through the eyes of students, faculty and staff.
The  Black/Africana Church Studies program will offer a range of opportunities and activities designed to enrich the educational, cultural and communal experiences of Black students at Perkins School and the Graduate Program in Religious Studies as well as the broader SMU community.
Read more at Perkins School.

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2022 February 2022 News

Largest single-year research award for SMU

The U.S. Department of Education’s FY 2021 Education Innovation and Research Competition awarded Professor Leanne Ketterlin Geller an $8 million grant to enhance instructional practices to meet the high needs of students experiencing math difficulties in grades 4-8.
Read more at Simmons School.

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2022 February 2022 News

A camera that sees around corners

Researchers at SMU and Northwestern University are using new technology that enables cameras to record high-resolution images and holograms of objects that are hidden around corners, obscured from view and/or beyond the line of sight.
Called Synthetic Wavelength Holography, the technology computationally transforms real-word surfaces such as walls into illumination and imaging portals, which serve to indirectly illuminate the hidden objects and intercept the tiny fraction of light scattered by the hidden objects.
Capturing images through fog, face identification around corners and imaging through barriers like the human skull are potential applications for the technology, detailed in a study published in Nature Communications.
The technology has defense, hazard identification and medical applications.
Read more at SMU Research.

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2022 Alumni February 2022 News

ICYMI: In Case You Missed It

Enjoy these quick links to some of the great stories, photos and more featuring the people, programs and events making news on the Hilltop.