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Category: November 2018
Eric F. Hinton has been named director of SMU Dedman School of Law’s new Robert B. Rowling Center for Business Law and Leadership.
“We are delighted to welcome Eric Hinton as the leader of this important new center,” said Jennifer Collins, Judge James Noel Dean of SMU Dedman School of Law. “His extensive legal and business experience, combined with his professional network, will enable him to make the Rowling Center immediately impactful to our students and the business and legal community.”
Hinton has 20 years of experience as an executive in international business law. He has worked for two public Fortune 500 companies as well as two privately owned companies. Hinton began his career practicing international trade law in Washington, D.C., and has also worked in Illinois, Texas, and Brussels, Belgium. Hinton currently co-teaches a course called “Ethics and Compliance for the Global Enterprise” at Dedman Law.
Read more at SMU News.
The Maguire Ethics Center and the SMU Student Veterans will honor members of the campus and greater community who have served our country with a special tribute on Veterans Day, November 12.
The public is invited to attend the family-friendly event on the Dallas Hall lawn from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Enjoy games, lunch and fun. New, unwrapped toys for the Toys for Tots drive will be collected during the event. The highlight of the salute will be the presentation of SMU Veteran lapel pins, awarded to student, faculty and staff veterans.
Read more and register at the Maguire Center.
When 17-year-old Petya Kertikova competed in the European Youth Olympic Festival in Lignano, Italy, back in 2005, she had never heard of SMU. Then the powerhouse runner for the Bulgarian national track team placed fourth in the 3,000-meter competition. That one race, filled with top athletes from all over Europe, changed the course of her life. In the stadium that day was then-SMU Track and Field Head Coach David Wollman. He sprinted over to meet her, and within days Kertikova was offered a full sports scholarship to SMU.
“It was a tough decision,” says Kertikova, who never before had thought about leaving Bulgaria. “America was an unknown country to me back then. It was another continent, something I used to hear about only in the movies.”
But an old Bulgarian saying nudged her to consider the offer. “‘The bird lands on your shoulder only once in a lifetime,’” she says. She accepted the offer.
Her first two years in America were difficult. Her biggest hurdle: understanding English.
“I did study it in my high school, but it wasn’t enough for me and my studies at SMU,” she says. “When I went to Dallas I took more English courses. There were people at SMU’s Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center [ALEC] who helped me a great deal.”
While she was meeting new friends and running track, money was another barrier. “It was really tough for me to cope with all the stress, being in a new country when I knew only a few words, starting from scratch at a brand new and really different place, having very little money,” she recalls. “My parents gave me less than $100. I struggled when ordering food, or when shopping at the store, simple things that were hard to do back then. I cried a lot. I remember looking at my suitcases under the bed in my dorm room thinking about leaving America and coming back to Bulgaria.”
Instead, she stayed. An overachiever at heart, she doubled down on her studies.
“I learned every day. My first two years at SMU were simply a test for my will. Looking back now, going to the U.S. was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, even though it was really hard for me the first few years.”
Fast forward to today: After graduating from SMU in 2011 with a degree in journalism, Kertikova worked as a news anchor for BiT TV, a Bulgarian-content station located in Chicago. She then returned to Bulgaria in late 2016 and worked for BiT in its Bulgarian studio for a year and a half. Recently, she accepted a position as a news anchor at Bulgaria On Air, a national television network located in Sofia, the country’s capital.
Of the many stories she covers every week, one topic in particular is close to her heart: stories of Bulgarians who left the country for better education or employment, but then returned. She is on fire with that topic, having walked that path herself.
Read more at SMU Meadows.
Denver transplants Will Ammons ’16 and Schuyler Grey ’16 agree that there was one thing missing from their student experience. So they’ve teamed up with Tyler Kleinert ’14 to open a neighborhood ice cream shop. The Daily Campus shared the news about the new alumni venture on October 18, 2018.
EXCERPT:
By Catherine Neilson
The Daily Campus
When Schuyler Grey and Will Ammons moved from Denver to Dallas to attend Southern Methodist University, they noticed the neighborhood around campus was missing a go-to neighborhood ice cream shop. The friends grew up grabbing scoops from the ice cream parlor down the block.
When they graduated in 2016, they teamed up with their friend Tyler Kleinert to do something about it. Their new Scoop Shop Café, Baldo’s, opens soon on Hillcrest Avenue. What started as a popular Dallas food cart with the help of local artist and chef, Aldo Sandoval, is now turning into a brick-and-mortar store in the old Goff’s space. It’s a convenient location for SMU students wanting a treat on a hot Dallas afternoon.
“After graduation, we started a company called the Tritex Group, with the goal of starting new businesses,” Grey said. “Baldo’s is our first shot at starting a business under the umbrella of the Tritex Group.”
The friends struggled with an idea first and wanted Baldo’s to be more than just ice cream.
“The idea was originally a cookie dough shop, modeled after some of the popular cookie dough shops in New York City and LA,” Kleinert said. “It has since evolved into what we call a ‘scoop shop café’—a hybrid ice cream shop and coffee shop.”
The three friends took their seedling of an idea and borrowed the best parts of other restaurant concepts, including quality coffee, European style pastry displays, homemade teas, and, of course, cookie dough to create Baldo’s. All of the ice cream is made from scratch in-store by Aldo. That homemade quality is just one of the things that makes their shop unique.
After earning first-place rankings in four divisions at the Mendoza Debate Tournament in Houston, SMU Debate elevated its standing in the International Public Debate Association to No. 1 in the nation.
Over the course of more than 70 debate matches, SMU’s wins included first place in the professional, team varsity, junior varsity and novice divisions, and second place team overall in sweepstakes points behind Louisiana State University. SMU defeated opponents from Drury University, University of North Texas, Texas A&M International University, Stephen F. Austin, University of Arkansas, Abilene Christian University, Lee College, East Texas Baptist University and several other regional colleges and universities.
Read more at SMU Meadows.
The Meadows Museum hosted Dalí in the Dark after-hours events for alumni and students in conjunction with the Dalí: Poetics of the Small, 1929–1936 exhibit, which continues through December 9. More than 150 alumni enjoyed the paintings and Dalí-themed activities on October 24, while over 600 students participated in the interactive art experience on September 15.
A second exhibit, Dalí’s Aliyah: A Moment in Jewish History, features a rare, complete set of the lithographs created by the artist to celebrate 1968 as the 20th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. That exhibit continues through January 13, 2019.
Read more at the Meadows Museum.
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
Enjoy this roundup of stories and videos highlighting some of the people and events making news on the Hilltop.
- SMU flips the script on No. 17 Houston
- Men’s soccer wins regular-season conference title
- Brian McLaren, Sandra Van Opstal at JustWorship, November 12–13
- Nazi hunters, Holocaust educators to be honored November 15
- Marathoners dance past children’s health research goal
- Loyd in the Lane illuminates ‘essence of a changing world’
- Simmons professor reflects on public school integration
- Learning to adult at the library