As a newly minted SMU graduate with three degrees, Kovan Barzani not only has exceeded his Kurdish-American parents’ expectations, but also reinforced their decision to flee Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime for “peace and peace of mind” in the U.S.
While weighing three college scholarships during his last year at Liberty High School in Frisco, Kovan recalls his mother’s singular request, delivered with a smile: “Be sure to get at least two degrees – one for you and one for me.”
As it happens, Kovan chose SMU precisely because it could offer not two but the three degrees he sought – in economics, public policy and management – while helping him cultivate the three virtues most valued by his family: “empathy, adaptability and persistence.” Also a plus: His Plano-based family would be nearby as he navigated the next four years.
Read more at SMU News.
Category: July 2017
A new chapter in the storied history of SMU’s men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs will begin this fall with the completion of the new $30 million Robson & Lindley Aquatics Center and Barr-McMillion Natatorium.
The 42,000-square-foot “Nat,” located on the University’s growing East Campus, will house modern amenities and increased space to enhance training, give student-athletes greater flexibility to balance practice and academic schedules and improve recruiting. The facility’s enhanced quality also will make SMU an ideal future site for competitions such as American Athletic Conference and NCAA championship meets, as well as events hosted by community groups.
“The facilities at the new Robson & Lindley Aquatics Center and Barr-McMillion Natatorium will help student-athletes continue the Mustang swimming legacy and enable fans to enjoy the highest levels of competition at a premier venue,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. The new facility will include an Olympic-size 50-meter, 8-lane indoor pool; a 10-meter diving tower with four springboards; a moveable bulkhead to maximize programming; men’s and women’s varsity team locker rooms; seating for 800 spectators; and a spacious lobby.
While construction is underway, fundraising to complete the project is a University priority, and naming opportunities remain. For more information about opportunities and to support the project, visit https://giving.smu.edu/aquatics-center/.
SMU statistics Ph.D. student Yu Lan received the Dr. Thomas Chalmers Award May 9 in Liverpool, England, for a paper he wrote on a new, money-saving method for predicting clinical trial outcomes.
Lan, a student of SMU biostatistics program director Professor Daniel Heitjan, took a fresh look at data from the International Chronic Granulomatous Disease Study to develop his method of predicting clinical trial outcomes on the fly.
In clinical trials, it is common to conduct one or more interim analyses of the accumulating data, typically upon occurrence of pre-specified numbers of events such as heart attacks, strokes, hospitalizations or deaths. Traditionally researchers predict the timing of these events before launching their clinical trials and then hope for the best. When predictions are inaccurate – perhaps a trial is running its course faster or slower than expected – this can lead to a waste of resources.
Lan’s method allows companies to periodically update their predictions of when a trial has run its course and adjust their budgets and expectations accordingly.
Read more at SMU News.
SMU Dedman School of Law’s Professionalism Initiative has been named one of two national recipients of this year’s E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award, bestowed annually by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professionalism.The award – established in 1991 to honor former ABA and American Bar Foundation President E. Smythe Gambrell – honors excellence and innovation in professionalism programs led by law schools, bar associations, professionalism commissions and other legal organizations. The award will be presented at the ABA’s annual meeting on August 11 in New York City.
SMU Dedman School of Law’s flagship professionalism initiative is aimed at developing practice-ready, competent and thoughtful lawyers.
Read more at SMU News.
Two Meadows alumni won 2017 Tony Awards at the ceremony held June 11 in New York’s Radio City Music Hall, and two other alums are featured in winning and nominated musicals. In addition, Dallas Theater Center (DTC) won the Tony for Best Regional Theatre. Meadows has a long-standing partnership with the center, which includes alumni and faculty in its resident acting company.
Michael Aronov, who earned a B.F.A. in theatre at Meadows in 1998, won his first Tony Award as Best Actor in a Featured Role for Oslo. The play, about the secret negotiations in the early 1990s leading to the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was also named Best Play. Aronov won for his performance as Israeli cabinet member Uri Savir, director-general of the foreign ministry. Oslo is Aronov’s second Broadway show, following his appearance in 2012’s Golden Boy. For this year’s Tony, Aronov was competing against veteran performers including Danny DeVito (for The Price), Nathan Lane (for The Front Page), Richard Thomas (for The Little Foxes) and John Douglas Thompson (for Jitney).
“Talent, practice and persistence pay off,” said Associate Professor of Theatre Michael Connolly, who taught Aronov while he was a student. “No actor I know has worked with greater focus and zeal than Michael, and no actor I know deserves this recognition more.”
Read more at Meadows School of the Arts.
SMU’s Semi Ojeleye ’17 and Sterling Brown ’17 were selected in the 2017 NBA Draft on Thursday night. Ojeleye was selected 37th overall by the Boston Celtics and Brown was picked 46th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers. This is the fourth time the Mustangs have had multiple picks in the NBA Draft, but the first time with multiple selections in the first two rounds.
Ojeleye was named American Athletic Conference Player of the Year and Associated Press All-America Honorable Mention. He was also named AAC All-Tournament Most Outstanding Player, All-AAC First Team, USBWA All-District VII and NABC All-District 25 First Team.
Brown was named an NABC Division I College All-Star, All-American Athletic Conference Second Team and AAC All-Tournament this season. As a senior, he averaged 13.4 points (13th AAC), 6.5 rebounds (16th AAC), 3.0 assists (14th AAC) and 1.4 steals (7th AAC). He led The American in 3-point percentage for the second straight season (44.9) and was eighth in free throw percentage (79.1).
Read more at SMU Athletics.
SMU chemist Alex Lippert has received a prestigious National Science Foundation Career Award, expected to total $611,000 over five years, to fund his research into alternative internal imaging techniques.
NSF Career Awards are given to tenure-track faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research in American colleges and universities.
Lippert, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, is an organic chemist and adviser to four doctoral students and five undergraduates who assist in his research.
“We are developing chemiluminescent imaging agents, which basically amounts to a specialized type of glow-stick chemistry,” Lippert says. “We can use this method to image the insides of animals, kind of like an MRI, but much cheaper and easier to do.”
Read more at SMU Research.
For Josh Thomas, an engineer by training, every new version of an idea brings a chance to discover something new. And the gift he’ll leave with SMU – an interactive map of the University’s entrepreneurial ecosystem – encapsulates both his work as an Engaged Learning Fellow and his hopes for future students.
“I wanted to let the undergraduate population know how many resources are available here on campus,” says Thomas, who will graduate May 20, from SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. “At SMU, we pride ourselves on our startup spirit – but you don’t get a more entrepreneurial campus unless you create more entrepreneurs.”
Read more at SMU News.
As incoming SMU students prepare to settle into their on-campus homes, they will examine the life experiences of those who can’t afford to stay in theirs. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, is the 2017 SMU Reads selection and first reading assignment for the class of 2021.
Community members, alumni, book lovers and book clubs are encouraged to join students in reading the book, and come to campus to hear the author discuss it at a free public forum at 6 p.m. Thursday, August 24 at SMU’s McFarlin Auditorium. Register for the event at smu.edu/SMU Reads.
Author Desmond, an associate professor of social sciences at Harvard University, knows firsthand the trauma of eviction. The bank foreclosed on his family’s Arizona home while he was attending college on scholarship. Since then, he has devoted his research to the intersection of poverty, race and gender in American life.
Read more at SMU News.
No matter where you live, it’s possible to give back to SMU with the gift of your time.
Help shape the next generation of world changers by sharing your experiences and expertise through these upcoming interactive volunteer opportunities:
- SMU Admission Volunteer – Contact prospective, admitted students from your area and encourage them to choose SMU.
- SMU Career Volunteer – Provide career guidance to students and alumni by offering informational interviews or hosting a one-day job shadowing externship. Read about the experience of volunteer George Killebrew ’85, executive vice president with the Dallas Mavericks. He hosted a one-day externship for Connor Kolodziej ’19 over winter break that blossomed into a three-month summer internship with the Mavericks for the SMU student.
To be counted as an SMU Volunteer during the 2017–2018 academic year, please fill out the Volunteer Interest Form by July 31, and be sure to check out additional volunteer opportunities.
Any amount of time you give can have a lasting impact on the University’s legacy.
In case you missed it this month, please enjoy these quick links to cool stories and interesting videos!
- Go Mustangs! Go Rangers! SMU Day at the ballpark
- Follow the Mustangs in the NBA Summer League
- Two SMU alumnae made Inc.com’s list of the world’s Top 10 Servant-Leader CEOs
- New chief information officer to lead SMU’s high-performance computing initiative
- SMU names first associate provost for continuing education
- Perkins appoints new associate dean of enrollment management
- Scoring points for the Dallas Mayor’s Summer Reading Challenge