Alumni Marshals direct students around the SMU seal in Dallas Hall during Rotunda Passage, a symbolic rite of passage during SMU’s Opening Convocation.
As the strains of “Varsity” filled Dallas Hall, incoming SMU students streamed through the landmark building for Rotunda Passage, marching toward McFarlin Auditorium and SMU’s 102nd Opening Convocation.
Rotunda Passage and Opening Convocation hold a special place in the hearts of alumni parents, grandparents and other relatives as the next generation joins the Mustang fold. Many graduates volunteer to serve as Alumni Marshals during this milestone event. Donning ceremonial regalia, the alumni line the Convocation path, welcoming students as they take their initial steps toward intellectual and personal growth at SMU.
Among this year’s participants were Robert Hyer (Bob) Thomas ’53, ’57 and Gail Griffin Thomas ’58. Robert, a Dallas attorney, is the grandson of SMU’s first president, Robert S. Hyer (1911–1920). Gail is president and CEO of The Trinity Trust Foundation and co-founder of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. The two met as students at SMU.
Their granddaughter, Electra Gail Thomas, is a member of the Class of 2020. She extended an invitation to her grandparents to participate in this pivotal moment in her future on the Hilltop.
“She is so excited to be at SMU, and we’re so excited for her,” Gail said.
As Charles Salazar ’88 watched students prepare to enter the Rotunda, he marveled at the opportunities that await his first-year son, Matthew.
“I hope he will take advantage of all that SMU has to offer, from study abroad programs to internships,” he said.
Charles received his bachelor’s degree from another university before graduating from Dedman School of Law, and he’s “very pleased” that his son chose SMU as an undergraduate. Matthew plans to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering in the Lyle School of Engineering.
The campus is already familiar territory to first-year student Gatlin Shore, son Michael Shore ’86, ’90 and Judy Shore ’90, both graduates of Dedman School of Law. One of their favorite family photos shows four-year-old Gatlin decked out in spirit gear, ready for game day at Ford Stadium.
“We’ve always been active in the SMU community, so coming to SMU as a student is like coming home for him,” said Michael, managing partner at Shore Chan DePumpo LLP in Dallas. Cara Davila ’91 and JoeDavila ’92 were “surprised and excited” when their son, Jordan, decided to attend SMU as a journalism major in Meadows School of the Arts.
“We visited schools around the country – Wisconsin, North Carolina and California as well as Texas – so we weren’t sure where he would end up,” said Cara, who received a B.B.A. from the Cox School of Business. “He really liked SMU. It felt comfortable, and he wanted to be in Texas.”
Joe, who received a bachelor’s degree in management science from the Lyle School, is in mortgage finance, and Cara serves as the yearbook advisor for the International School of Luxembourg. The couple traveled from Luxembourg to help their son move in and stayed to participate in Opening Convocation. They were stationed at the front doors to Dallas Hall, providing Cara with a great vantage point for snapping a cell phone photo of Jordan as he processed by.
When the Class of 2020 graduates in four years, they’ll be joined on Commencement Weekend by alumni celebrating their 50th reunion. In recognition of that special Mustang bond, members of the Class of 1970 were invited to participate in the Rotunda Passage. Buddy Ozanne ’70 says that next to his own graduation – he earned a B.B.A. from SMU – his proudest moment on campus has been the graduation of his son, Tyler Ozanne, who received a B.B.A. in 2002. He’s looking forward to following the progress of SMU’s newest students as they experience time-honored traditions while creating a few of their own.
“It feels great to welcome a new class to SMU,” he said, “and be a part of this memorable time in their lives.”
2016 Opening Convocation Alumni Marshals
Fred Arnold ’57
Cara Davila ’91 and Joseph Davila ’92
Raymond Fernandez ’78, ’82
Stephen Griffith’86
Balie Griffith ’53
Alexandra Gulledge ’92
Robert Hatcher ’85
Carolyn Hoffmann ’83
Carrie Katigan ’89 and Steven Katigan ’89, ’94
Jennifer Madding ’15
Buddy Ozanne ’70
Randy Phillips ’70
Sheila Rogan ’92
Henry Rogan ’93
Charles Salazar ’88
Judy Shore ’90 and Michael Shore ’86, ’90
Geoffrey Small ’86
Carrie Teller ’02 and Andrew Teller ’86
Gail Thomas ’58 and Bob Thomas ’53, ’57
Mary Jo Vida-Fernandez ’82
Marti Voorheis ’92 and Paul Voorheis ’92
Maidie Yale ’85
Amy Lou Yeager ’93 and Stephen Yeager ’93
Coming on the heels of its 100th birthday celebration, the University announced on February 26 that SMU Unbridled: The Second Century Campaign has raised gifts totaling $1.15 billion, the largest amount ever raised by a private university in Texas. Donors provided 68 new or significantly enhanced academic programs and initiatives and 689 new student scholarships during the campaign.
The University’s Board of Trustees heard the final tabulation of gifts and pledges at its meeting February 26 on the SMU campus, following the official completion of the campaign December 31, 2015.
Teaching and learning at SMU are forever enhanced by the ambitious campaign: Donors provided 689 new student scholarships; raised the previous number of 62 endowed faculty positions to a new total of 116; and provided for 68 new or significantly enhanced academic programs and initiatives, including endowments for two schools. Twenty-four capital projects have been substantially funded, including new facilities for academic programs, student housing and athletics. Other gifts for campus enhancements support expanded career services and leadership programs.
The campaign succeeded against a backdrop of explosive North Texas population growth and the relocation of many Fortune 500 companies to the region. SMU President R. Gerald Turner said the unprecedented funding for scholarships, academic positions and programs, and facilities will benefit SMU’s home city and surrounding region in the form of innovative ideas, research and talented graduates.
“These gifts, in many ways, are gifts to the greater Dallas area,” Turner said. “All of the major metropolitan areas of the country have at least one nationally competitive university that not only helps educate the area’s workforce, but also serves as the educational and intellectual hub for many of the city’s needs and cultural assets,” he said. “SMU is proud to be that university for Dallas.”
SMU joins 34 private universities nationwide to have undertaken campaigns of $1 billion or more. The institutions include Columbia University, the University of Notre Dame, Emory and Vanderbilt universities.
“The future for SMU and Dallas is brighter because of the incredible generosity of donors to this campaign,” said SMU alumnus Gerald J. Ford, SMU trustee and convening co-chair of the campaign. “What their gifts will do for the next generation of leaders, researchers, innovators, artists and entrepreneurs is impossible to measure at this time, but the impact will be unprecedented.”
ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
Campaign resources enabled SMU to endow the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering and SMU’s newest and seventh degree-granting school – the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. The Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering is home to the W.W. Caruth, Jr. Institute for Engineering Education, the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security Hunter and the Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity.
A strong example of SMU’s response to the needs of its home community, the Simmons School was established at the request of area school officials, offering evidence-based approaches to teacher preparation, school leadership development and community partnerships, as well as research on physiology and human performance. Within the school, the SMU Budd Center: Involving Communities in Education is reaching into West Dallas in particular, partnering with 29 nonprofits; 16 public, private and charter schools; and the Dallas Independent School District. They aim to address the social, emotional and educational issues that cause many students to disengage from learning, drop out or graduate from high school unprepared for employment or further education.
Also endowed during the campaign was the Judge Elmo B. Hunter Legal Center for Victims of Crime Against Women at the Dedman School of Law, one of 10 specialized clinics and projects, where, under the supervision of faculty, students serve as advocates on behalf of clients in many areas of the law.
Mirroring the importance of the arts in a thriving community, the largest single gift to the campaign, and the largest in SMU history, was $45 million from The Meadows Foundation to support the Meadows Museum and the Meadows School of the Arts, which offer a range of nationally recognized academic programs and events that enhance the cultural offerings of the city and surrounding region.
“Dallas and SMU have grown up together, and both are experiencing an era of great promise and momentum,” said SMU alumnus Michael M. Boone, chair of the SMU Board of Trustees and a campaign co-chair. “Great global cities need great centers of learning that serve as incubators for creative ideas and innovative actions that change the world. I’m thrilled that this fundraising success helps ensure that SMU will continue to play a pivotal role in advancing the growth and entrepreneurial culture of Dallas for many years to come.”
Here is a partial list of academic programs receiving funding from The Second Century Campaign: COX SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
EnCap Investments & LCM Group Alternative Asset Management Center
Don Jackson Center for Financial Studies
Kitt Investing and Trading Center
DEDMAN COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND SCIENCES
Embrey Human Rights Program
Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences
Texas-Mexico Research Program in the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies
DEDMAN SCHOOL OF LAW
Judge Elmo B. Hunter Legal Center for Victims of Crime Against Women
Tsai Center for Law, Science and Innovation
BOBBY B. LYLE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
W.W. Caruth, Jr. Institute for Engineering Education
Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security
Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity
MEADOWS SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
Art History Ph.D. Program
Journalism Digital Studio
National Center for Arts Research
PERKINS SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
Center for Preaching Excellence
Center for Religious Leadership
Center for the Study of Latino/a Christianity and Religions
ANNETTE CALDWELL SIMMONS SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
The Budd Center: Involving Communities in Education
Institute for Leadership Impact
Research in Mathematics Education
GROWING SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMS
The 689 new endowed scholarships created include support for undergraduates and graduate students in all seven schools of the University. Among them are Cox School of Business MBA scholarships for veterans and active military students and additional scholarships for transfer students. New support also is being provided for SMU’s top two merit scholarship programs – the Nancy Ann and Ray L. Hunt Leadership Scholars and the SMU President’s Scholars.
Other newmerit-based scholarships include those offered by schools for students who express advanced interest in major programs – Cox BBA Scholars, Meadows Scholars, Dedman College Scholars, Lyle Scholars, Simmons Scholars and Dedman Law Scholars. Annual gifts for multiyear scholarships also provide essential support to these students.
FACULTY SUPPORT
The extraordinary quality of SMU’s faculty is a defining feature of the University. Support for The Second Century Campaign enabled SMU to add 54 endowed faculty positions, reaching a University total of 116, up from 62 in 2008. Endowments for new faculty positions enable SMU to broaden significantly the subjects researched and taught at the University, many of which are vital to the future of Dallas.
Among the notable examples of faculty endowment is Frederick Chang, the Bobby B. Lyle Centennial Distinguished Chair in Cyber Security and director of SMU’s Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security, who this year was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.
NEW FACILITIES
New campaign-funded facilities include buildings for the Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Perkins School of Theology and Lyle School of Engineering, as well as a new Mustang Band Hall, new tennis center and renovation and expansion of Moody Coliseum for athletics and academic ceremonies. Under construction are the Dr. Bob Smith Health Center and Fondren Library Center renovation; upcoming construction projects include the Gerald J. Ford Research Center and an aquatics center. At SMU-in-Taos, new facilities include a campus center, new and renovated housing and a chapel.
One of the most visible campaign projects, and one with significant impact on campus life, is the addition of five new residence halls and a dining center as part of SMU’s new Residential Commons system, including on-site classes and faculty in residence. Six other halls have been renovated as Commons, enabling all first- and second-year students to live on campus.
Overall construction funded by the campaign has been a major contributor to the Dallas economy. Since 2011 SMU has spent $390 million on renovation and construction projects, which have employed about 270 service providers, including architects, engineers, landscapers, contractors and suppliers.
“From the beginning, this campaign was about big ideas, innovative thinking and unbridled enthusiasm for SMU,” said Brad E. Cheves, vice president for Development and External Affairs. “Campaign co-chairs and SMU trustees set ambitious goals. Along the way, our longtime supporters and thousands of new donors joined in this effort. The momentum they’ve created is like nothing we’ve seen before. I’m excited to see where we go from here.”
BREAKING CAMPAIGN RECORDS
SMU Unbridled: The Second Century Campaign made fundraising history in several ways. The campaign:
Gained support from the largest number of donors – more than 65,000 from throughout the world, an increase of 58 percent from SMU’s previous campaign, which ran from 1997-2002.
Saw an increase of 135 percent in gifts from outside Texas, as compared to the last campaign.
Received the largest number of gifts of $1 million or more – 183.
Exceeded its goal to receive gifts from 50 percent of alumni over the course of the campaign, achieving 59 percent.
Surpassed its goal to achieve 25 percent of undergraduate alumni giving in a single year, reaching 26 percent for 2014–2015. (This measurement is used by some ranking organizations to gauge the level of alumni satisfaction with their alma mater.)
Concurrent with the campaign, starting in 2008, SMU improved in national U.S. News & World Report rankings from 68 to 61; undergraduate applications increased 57 percent to 12,992; and SAT scores rose to 1309.
VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP
The campaign has been served by more than 400 volunteers from throughout the world led by six co-chairs, all SMU trustees: convening co-chair Gerald J. Ford, Ruth Collins Sharp Altshuler, Michael M. Boone, Ray L. Hunt, Caren Prothro and Carl Sewell.
The Second Century Campaign was publicly launched in 2008 with a goal of $750 million. Rapid progress toward that goal and opportunities for further advancements led SMU leaders to increase the goal to $1 billion. The last four years of the campaign, 2011–2015, coincided with SMU’s centennial era, marking the 100th anniversary of the University’s founding in 1911 and opening in 1915.
SMU’s previous major gifts campaign, ending in 2002, was the University’s first successful campaign since its opening. “A Time to Lead: The Campaign for SMU” was launched in 1997 with an original goal of $300 million. Again, strong momentum led to an increased goal of $400 million. The final amount raised was $542 million.
Including both campaigns, in the last two decades SMU has raised over $1.7 billion for new scholarships, new academic positions, academic programs and capital projects.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at SMU on March 17, 1966.By Nancy Lowell George ’79 Past and present SMU student leaders honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 15. Photo by Nancy Lowell George ’79.In recognition of the upcoming 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 speech at SMU, the University presented a bound transcript of his words and a photograph of him taken at the event to the Dallas Civil Rights Museum at 4:30 p.m. Friday, January 15.
The presentation took place at the museum’s open house from 4 to 9 p.m. and celebration in honor of Dr. King’s birthday. He was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta and would have been 87 this year. A contingent of past and present SMU student leaders made the presentation. The transcript was presented to leaders of the Dallas Civil Rights Museum. The museum is located at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center at 2922 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Building A, in Dallas.
Student Body President Carlton Adams, Association of Black Students President D’Marquis Allen, former Student Senate Chair Charles Cox ’67, ’75, ’79, who introduced Dr. King before his speech at SMU on March 17, 1966, and Dr. Michael Waters ’02, ’06, ’12, chair of the museum board, were among members of the SMU community celebrating Dr. King’s birthday with the museum.
Read more about Dr. King’s speech at SMU and SMU Dream Week 2016 events honoring his life and legacy:
SMU President R. Gerald Turner receives a standing ovation as he announces that the University has achieved its $1 billion campaign goal during the centennial commemoration ceremony September 24.
Celebrating the centennial of SMU’s opening, President R. Gerald Turner recalls the vision of our founders, outlines campaign accomplishments and looks forward to the next 100 years.
[dropcaps]A[/dropcaps]s we celebrate the centennial of SMU’s opening, I invite you to think with me across the sweep of a century. Imagine the excitement, the anticipation, the sense of pride and purpose as a group of visionaries stood on this North Texas prairie 100 years ago to watch SMU’s very first group of students climb the steps into Dallas Hall. After almost five years of planning and building, the day was both the culmination of a dream and its launch. That remarkable inaugural day, September 24, 1915, was made possible by the twin pillars of leadership and partnership – pillars that continue to support the SMU of today.
One hundred years ago, leaders of what is now The United Methodist Church saw the need for an institution of higher education in the Southwest. And civic leaders in Dallas, recognizing the tremendous benefit a great university could bring to a growing city, worked hard to lure SMU here. Two permanent buildings stood on campus, built with funds given and land donated by our partners in Dallas and the Church: The Women’s Building, now Clements Hall, and Dallas Hall, named for our city, patterned after Thomas Jefferson’s rotunda at the University of Virginia. Its grandeur set the standard of excellence that would guide our first century and that still inspires us today. Whenever I want visitors to understand the grand vision of our founders, I always walk them into Dallas Hall and show them the beautiful dome and oculus of the rotunda. It never ceases to inspire.
MARKING MILESTONES
Over the five years of this centennial era (2011-2015), we have tried to channel the thoughts and excitement of those individuals who labored from April 17, 1911, when we were founded, to opening day. Each year, during this era, we have celebrated a major milestone in the creation of SMU. In 2011, we celebrated the charter establishing the corporation of Southern Methodist University with a new annual observance of Founders’ Day each April. In 2012, we celebrated the SMU Master Plan that founding President Robert S. Hyer unveiled in 1912. In 2013, we celebrated our libraries during The Year of the Library, as President Hyer named Dorothy Amann in 1913 as the first librarian of the University.
It was a wonderful coincidence to also celebrate in 2013 the magnificent opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. In 2014, we celebrated The Year of the Faculty, the 100th anniversary of the hiring of the first faculty. And this year, The Year of the Student, we are reliving the excitement of those first 456 students who entered Dallas Hall in 1915 to begin their collegiate studies. A critical component of Dallas’ emergence as a world-class city, the creation of its university, was now in place and ready to grow with the city.
Our founders envisioned a particular type of university, located in a thriving city and shaped by its entrepreneurial, “can-do” spirit. It would be dedicated to academic freedom and inquiry, non-sectarian in its teaching, yet grounded in both the spiritual and moral values of the Church and the professional and educational needs of the city. The result was to be a unique marriage of faith and intellect: to reunite, in the words of Charles Wesley, “those two so long divided, knowledge and vital piety.” We are the keepers of that grand vision. We hope that those who gather on campus 100 years from now will feel the pride and optimism with which we began the second century, whose conclusion they will be celebrating in 2115.
Either fortunately or unfortunately, none of us gets to choose the era in history in which we live. But having the opportunity to live in Dallas at this special time of connection to SMU by alumni and friends, we have a dual responsibility. First, we have to finish well by bringing SMU’s first century to its best possible conclusion. I could not be more proud and grateful for the way we collectively – our University, our alumni, and donors and partners across Dallas, North Texas and the world – have done just that. Our founders had the imagination to see farther than anyone thought possible. Yet, I suspect they might be astounded to see the SMU of today.
We’ve grown to 101 buildings on 234 acres at our main campus and expanded east across Central Expressway, plus added satellite campuses in Plano and Taos. We have a great diversity of students from all 50 states and 90 foreign countries. As testament to the increasing quality of the students we are attracting, those taking the ACT now average 29.5 while those taking the SAT average 1309, a 165-point increase in the last 20 years. We offer 104 bachelor’s, 113 master’s and 27 doctoral research degrees in seven degree-granting schools. Several faculty members have been elected to prestigious national academies. We have nearly doubled the number of endowed faculty to 111.
With great excitement and gratitude, we competed for and were selected to be the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, which has expanded our tradition of attracting world leaders to our campus. The beautiful Meadows Museum, celebrating its 50th birthday, is hosting world-class exhibitions never before seen in the United States to augment its incredible collection of Spanish art. Our student scholars are engaged in research projects designed to benefit not only Dallas, but also cities and communities across the globe.
As we complete our first century, our Cox School of Business ranks among the top business schools nationally and globally, and we are ranked by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as an institution with “high research activity.” The Dedman School of Law and the Perkins School of Theology also offer top programs among their competitors. In 2014, our undergraduate music program was ranked No. 1 in the nation among programs at comprehensive universities and dance was ranked No. 6. Dedman College, Simmons School of Education and Human Development, and Lyle School of Engineering also have unique, nationally renowned programs.
A NEW RESPONSIBILITY
By any measure, we indeed have met our first obligation to finish our first century well. However, being blessed to live during this historic time, we have a second responsibility: to launch SMU’s second century with the same optimism, devotion, persistence and unrelenting commitment to SMU’s success and excellence as were shown by our founders. It is our obligation to pour the foundation for our future just as solidly as we did for the many new buildings that now grace our campus. Therefore, ensuring a robust future is the primary purpose of our major gifts campaign during this centennial era. That is why we called it The Second Century Campaign, pointing forward, rather than naming it The Centennial Campaign, which tends to point to the past.
We started with what we thought was a stretch goal of $750 million. You will recall that we went public in September 2008 on the Thursday before Lehman Brothers fell the next Monday! Your support, even in the difficult days of that great recession, was sustained and generous.
[dropcaps]A[/dropcaps]s I said earlier, a university’s centennial is its time to triumphantly close one era while enthusiastically launching another. And you were absolutely committed to our meeting both obligations. Based upon your ongoing commitments, the co-chairs of the campaign and the Board of Trustees raised the original goal to an unprecedented $1 billion, knowing the huge impact such a milestone would have on our entire campus community. Because of your generosity and the hard work of thousands of individuals across the globe, I am pleased to make this historic announcement: Today, on the occasion of SMU’s centennial opening, The Second Century Campaign has received commitments of more than $1 billion dollars. That’s $1 billion, 70 million, and change.
Importantly, other goals have been achieved: Gifts from over 62,000 donors worldwide have helped us to exceed our yearly undergraduate alumni participation goal of 25 percent. And we’ve exceeded our overall alumni giving goal of 50 percent over the course of the entire campaign, reaching 56.9 percent.
Happily, a big part of my job today is to say thank you for helping us meet these historic milestones. Thank you to the campaign co-chairs: trustees Ruth Altshuler, Gerald Ford, Ray Hunt, Caren Prothro and Carl Sewell, who were joined in the past two years by Mike Boone, Board chair. They met quarterly with us and served as role models of giving, while also attending dozens of campaign-related events. (Ruth Altshuler attended nearly everything, mainly to be sure that Vice President Brad Cheves and I did exactly what she told us to do.)
JOINING ELITE COMPANY
In raising a billion dollars, SMU is joining a very elite club. Only 33 other private universities in the United States (and only Rice in Texas) have ever conducted campaigns of this size. Even more important is what those dollars will enable: more student scholarships to attract the best and brightest seekers and thinkers for the future, more endowed chairs and professorships to retain or recruit the very best to our faculty, and continuing facility and program improvements to enrich our campus experience, including our intercollegiate athletics programs. And we still have until December 31, when the campaign officially ends. So, it’s not too late to join those whose support we celebrate!
This year’s Commencement speaker, former President George W. Bush, said, “SMU is dynamic, diverse and destined for continued excellence.” We intend to fulfill that destiny by continuing to improve teaching, research, creative achievement and service as we rise in stature. How strong was Harvard in 1736 as it began its second century, or Princeton in 1846 at its centennial celebration? Compared with those years of existence, we are just getting started. But we have come a long way. This next century will be a time of crossing boundaries and borders as we continue to grow into our commitment that world changers are shaped here.
We will cross the boundaries of current knowledge with our research and advanced computing capability. For some of you, your time at SMU was defined by the smell of baking bread from the Mrs Baird’s plant across Mockingbird. The southern tip of that site is now home to our new Data Center. SMU recently moved into the top 25 in the country in our high-performance computing capacity. This allows us to analyze massive amounts of data, and through computer modeling, it facilitates innovative and interdisciplinary research – from the liberal arts and sciences to engineering and communications and fine arts.
Use of big data in an interdisciplinary environment is a major emphasis of the current draft of our new 10-year strategic plan, approved by the Board of Trustees at its December meeting. New faculty endowments will help us recruit and retain the talented faculty attracted to SMU by this new resource. Therefore, cross-disciplinary research and teaching, empowered by advanced computing approaches, will define our new scholarly productivity as we move into the first decade of our second century.
Reflecting the growing interest in interdisciplinary studies, our students are choosing double and triple majors and seeking global experiences. SMU’s latest Truman Scholar, Rahfin Faruk ’15, for example, majored in economics, political science, public policy and religious studies with a minor in mathematics.
We will cross the borders and boundaries of geography as we become even more global. One hundred years ago, we offered one educational site: here on the Hilltop. Ten years ago, we offered 18 education abroad programs in 12 countries; today our students choose from more than 150 programs in 50 countries, and that expansion will continue.
We are increasingly crossing boundaries between the campus and community. We are expanding engaged learning programs, sending faculty and students to conduct more than 200 community projects in places like West Dallas. In that community, our Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development is supporting the School Zone, helping give children the educational and societal tools to break the cycle of poverty. And we will continue to welcome citizens from the community to our campus for professional development and cultural opportunities.
OUR TIME AND CALLING
Although technology and communications will continue to revolutionize the way we live and work, some things will not – and should not – change. SMU will continue to be a bustling place of activity, but also a serene place of beauty, where students experience a personal, supportive campus community, captured so well in the words of Jimmy Dunne’s song, “SMU, In My Heart Forever.”
Our classes will continue to be small, allowing meaningful faculty and student interaction. We remain committed to a broad-based liberal arts education surrounded by outstanding professional schools. We will continue to affirm that a liberal arts foundation provides an irreplaceable window into understanding humanity and how to address complex problems, regardless of one’s professional pursuits.
We will continue to develop joint programming with the George W. Bush Presidential Center, which already has begun to be the incredible resource that it will become during our second century. There, world leaders will continue to work to resolve current and future challenges, often in partnership with SMU’s Center for Presidential History and the Tower Center for Political Studies in Dedman College.
Finally, we will continue to enrich our academic programs with a growing focus on ethics, knowing that leaders who are both well-educated and grounded in enduring values will become those who help society progress. We offer one of only seven human rights majors in the country. We have no higher calling than to shape ethical world changers of tomorrow.
So, in summary, we will:
Cross new interdisciplinary research barriers with advanced computing.
Provide more opportunities for students to combine academic majors.
Cross geographic borders by increasing the number of students who will study abroad.
Connect more closely the University with the city, strengthening the relationship of town and gown.
Expand the study of ethics in all we do.
We will remain attentive to emerging opportunities, knowing that as a private university we can adapt swiftly, ever mindful of our mission, but open to new ways of fulfilling it.
A university, like a city, is never finished. Universities evolve, and ours has evolved in a wonderful way. SMU’s first President, Robert Hyer, when asked when SMU would be completed, replied: “When the City of Dallas is completed.” Today, SMU and our host city are both more mature, more dynamic, more diverse and more international than our founders could have asked or imagined. Yet, Dallas and SMU are both far from complete – still evolving, still becoming ever more important to our country and beyond.
Our church founders would have wanted us to note that the Bible speaks of at least two great strategic locations: in the midst of the city and a city on a hill. The Psalmist says the Lord “is in the midst of the city … she shall not be moved.” And, as Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.”
So, from our Hilltop, in the midst of our city, it is our time and our calling to get the second century under way so strongly that the bicentennial will be even greater than this centennial! As we reach back across 100 years to join hands with those founders of SMU, we also reach forward for the hands of those who, in 100 years, will reach back for ours, in appreciation for what we have enabled. This extension forward and backward vividly shows that our work is truly designed for the betterment of humanity across the ages. As President Hyer said at our founding: “Universities do not grow old, but live from age to age in immortal youth.”
Thank you for committing so much of your time and resources to ensure that SMU can move with great confidence into its second century, with full assurance of our commitment: “World Changers shaped here!” View video of President Turner’s address
Adam Gannon ’15 (right) was among more than 100 undergraduate students participating in SMU’s Engaged Learning program in 2015. He is shown with Svetlana Radyuk, research associate professor of biological sciences in Dedman College. Gannon, a medical student at the University of Houston Medical Science Center, is continuing the Alzheimer’s disease research he started as an Engaged Learning project. SMU celebrated the Year of the Student in 2015, honoring students past and present who have shaped a 100-year tradition of excellence.
Snow transformed the SMU campus into a winter wonderland.
Fans filled Moody Coliseum to witness SMU Men’s Basketball beat Tulsa, 67-62, capturing the American Athletic Conference championship. It was SMU’s first conference title since 1993. The Mustangs beat Connecticut 62-54 on March 15, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. During the season SMU spent nine weeks in the AP and USA Today Top 25.
Fanfare and fireworks marked the 50th anniversary of the Meadows Museum during Founders’ Day Weekend, April 16-18. As part of the yearlong celebration, the museum hosted two blockbuster exhibits – “The Abelló Collection: A Modern Taste for European Masters”, April 18–August 2, and “Treasures from the House of Alba: 500 Years of Art and Collecting”, which continues through January 3, 2016.
Students enjoyed games, rides, activities and carnival-inspired food at Perunapalooza, celebrating the birthday of SMU mascot Peruna.
Scenes from SMU’s historic Commencement: Former President George W. Bush (left) with SMU President R. Gerald Turner. Bush delivered a speech laced with wit and wisdom before the University awarded more than 2,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama displays his famous sense of humor as he peeks through the curtain before taking the stage at Moody Coliseum with ABC News political correspondent Cokie Roberts, who moderated a wide-ranging discussion with the spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama spoke about the importance of compassion, forgiveness and finding common ground despite differences.
Courses offered at SMU-in-Taos Cultural Institute, July 16-19, took full advantage of the beauty and cultural richness of Northern New Mexico. During the weekend, SMU celebrated the opening of the Carolyn and David Miller Campus Center, a new campus/community hub.
At Camp Corral, part of the Mustang Corral experience, incoming students got to know each other as they enjoyed zip-lining and other activities. Members of SMU’s newest class of 1,374 students come from 800 high schools in 44 states.
SMU sociology major Jamil Wilkerson ’18 lends a hand at Uplift Luna School during the University’s annual fall day of service. A group of 100 SMU students helped 10 Dallas nonprofits with a wide variety of projects, from painting and cleaning to processing books and aiding teachers.
SMU alumnus Ryan Atwell ’98 lifts daughter Sydney, 4, as SMU capped off its centennial celebration with a post-game fireworks show at Ford Stadium. From the announcement that SMU had reached its $1 billion campaign goal to the spectacular finale, SMU’s Centennial Homecoming Weekend was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Mustangs.
The University’s centennial year ends with the dazzling Celebration of Lights. The community is invited to campus to see the holiday lights through January 3.
Vicki Sterquell ’78 was a special guest at the Centennial Celebration of Lights ceremony November 30.
When she came up with the idea to produce a holiday celebration on campus, Vicki Sterquell ’78 didn’t realize she was creating one of SMU’s most beloved traditions, Celebration of Lights. Sterquell, who resides in Houston, was a special guest at this year’s Centennial Celebration of Lights ceremony on November 30.
Here are some highlights from her account of that first magical event, called Festival of Lights at the time: Deck Dallas Hall with orange lights?
Sterquell, a member of the Student Foundation Board, pitched the idea for a Christmas lighting party as a thank-you to the community for its support. At the time, SMU did not have a campus Christmas tree or “even celebrate the holiday season,” she says. The board agreed it was a great idea and planning commenced.
“After asking the head of the maintenance department at SMU, Dick Arnett, and getting permission from President James H. Zumberge’s office, I ordered Christmas lights to decorate Dallas Hall and some trees along the main quad, at a cost of $5,000. Since it was so late in ordering, the only lights available from the company were orange.” Amarillo alumni to the rescue
Even though she had obtained permission through the proper channels, Sterquell learned in late October that no department had money budgeted for the lights. “I felt panic setting in,” she remembers. But that didn’t stop her. She persuaded all those who needed to sign off on the project to agree that she could proceed if she raised the $5,000.
When she told her parents about her plight, they suggested she contact Carolyn Newbold ’42, the society editor of her hometown newspaper, The Amarillo Globe News, and a fellow Mustang. “She offered to write a column about the event to help raise the funds needed. The next weekend I flew home to Amarillo,” where alumni donated the $5,000 she needed. Let there be white lights!
The idea of orange lights adorning Dallas Hall didn’t appeal to the maintenance department crew charged with stringing the lights, and the department ordered enough white lights for the entire display. The catch: All the orange bulbs had to be replaced. “The entire Student Foundation and friends spent many hours late into the night taking the orange light bulbs out and replacing them with the white bulbs.” A beloved tradition is born
“Our first event was called Festival of Lights and was held on the first Sunday in December [December 4, 1977],” she says. “The sidewalks were lined with luminarias, a large Christmas tree stood in front of the fountain, the University Choir sang Christmas songs and President Zumberge read the King James version of the Christmas story.”
When the lights were switched on, the crowd gasped and clapped, she says. “At the close of the ceremony, you could hear people singing carols as they walked back to their cars and dorms. It was truly an exciting event, especially for me, my committee and the entire Student Foundation.”
The next year, SMU’s signature holiday event was renamed Celebration of Lights.
Below is coverage of the first event from the 1978 Rotunda. These photos and videos of the 2015 Centennial Celebration of Lights capture the magic of this joyous Hilltop tradition.
Founders’ Day Weekend April 16-18 celebrated several University milestones – the 100th anniversary year of SMU’s opening, the Year of the Student and the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Meadows Museum.
“This year, 2015, is the Year of the Student because 100 years ago our first students climbed the steps of Dallas Hall to enter SMU, with all University operations centered in that single, grand building,” President R. Gerald Turner said at his annual briefing. “Appropriately, our students have been making history ever since.”
On Friday the SMU community commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Meadows Museum with a celebratory gathering that attracted international visitors (large photo above). Founded in 1965 by benefactor Algur H. Meadows, it houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain.
As part of the celebration, the Meadows Museum is presenting the first exhibition in the United States of paintings from the collection of Juan Abelló and his wife, Anna Gamazo, considered among the world’s top collectors. The Abelló Collection: A Modern Taste for European Masters features paintings and drawings spanning the 16th to the 21st centuries, including works by Spanish and other European masters.
On Saturday, the Meadows Museum welcomed visitors to travel to Spain without leaving Dallas with its “Passport to Spain” Community Day activities (small photos above). The family-friendly event included opera arias performed by Meadows School of the Arts student, painting demonstrations and dance performances.
Rounding out the weekend was a reunion of Golden Mustangs, for alumni from the classes of 1964 or earlier; Inside SMU Powered by TEDxSMU; President’s Associates reception honoring donors who make gifts totaling $1,000 or more in a single year; the President’s Briefing; and the Mustang Fan Fair at Ford Stadium, featuring the SMU football spring game.
More scenes from the Meadows Museum, Founders’ Day Weekend
Fireworks light up the night sky during a special celebration of the Meadows Museum 50th anniversary. The Meadows Museum opened to the public in 1965 and has been housed in its current building since it opened in 2001. The SMU community gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the Meadows Museum’s 50th year on Friday, April 17. Trumpeters’ flourishes signaled the beginning of the public celebration of the museum’s golden year. Daniel de Córdoba Bailes Españoles troupe performed Spanish classical, regional and flamenco dances and music. Meadows School of the Arts voice students performed a selection of operatic arias during Community Day on Saturday, April 18. Art appreciation, family style. A young artist creating her own work of art during Community Day.
> See more photos of Community Day at the Meadows Museum
In this SMU Magazine exclusive, Fred Chang discusses cyber issues with Kim Cobb, director of media relations in SMU’s Office of Public Affairs. The Dallas Morning News described Fred Chang as a “cyber warrior” when he joined SMU in September 2013. His roles at SMU reflect the breadth of his expertise, as well as his goals – Bobby B. Lyle Endowed Centennial Distinguished Chair in Cyber Security, computer science professor in the Lyle School of Engineering and senior fellow in the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies in Dedman College. Chang says he plans to tap as many SMU resources as possible to develop a multidisciplinary program aimed at tackling significant cyber challenges facing individuals, businesses and government. By November 2013, he was testifying before a congressional committee examining concerns about lack of privacy protection for people using healthcare.gov as it was being rolled out. And in January 2014, SMU announced the establishment of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security with Chang as its director. The past year has been marked by global cyber security problems. How are those issues shaping the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security?
The many cyber security incidents over the past year have underscored to the public just how widespread the problem is. Unfortunately, the headlines also have demonstrated that the cyber defenders continue to trail the cyber attackers. It has proven to be quite difficult for the defenders to get ahead of the problem.
From day one, a primary goal of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security has been to conduct high-quality research that will contribute to the creation of a science of cyber security. We are working with industry partners to move from being reactive to proactive, and the creation of a science of cyber security with these same partners is a critical step in the process. Creating a science with universal standards and methods of measurement will take some time, but we’ve got to start. We expect that the research we conduct at the Institute will make important contributions to this new science.
It’s also important that we take a multidisciplinary approach in addressing the problem. The focus of our programs ranges from hardware and software security concerns to economic and social sciences issues to consideration of policy and law factors. That’s why SMU is such a good home for this program – the University has expertise in so many disciplines. I have had the good fortune to collaborate with Josh Rovner, the John Goodwin Tower Distinguished Chair of International Politics and National Security, associate professor of political science, and director of studies at the Tower Center for Political Studies, as well as Amit Basu, chair of the Information, Technology and Operations Management Department in Cox School of Business. And within the Computer Science and Engineering Department in the Lyle School, I am working with a team of truly committed people, including, among others, Mitch Thornton, who specializes in hardware security Tyler Moore, whose research focuses on the economics of information security, and Suku Nair, department chair. You frequently say that cyberspace is getting to be a bad neighborhood. What keeps you awake at night as you think about strolling through “the neighborhood?”
Cyber attacks on the nation’s critical infrastructure are a constant worry. Attacks that would lead to a disruption of communications networks, health care, public safety, financial services, transportation and the like are unthinkable. Indeed, the federal government has made the protection of critical infrastructure from cyber attacks a major priority. And here’s another concern that I’ve had more recently: As security breaches and data exposures are becoming the new normal, I worry that we are all suffering from “security fatigue.”
We are constantly learning about some new data breach that may compromise our personal security and requires, for example, that we change our passwords as a defensive measure. I worry that people, upon hearing about the latest compromise, might think: “I just changed my password three weeks ago – I’m not going to do it again.” Are we going to become numb to the warnings? I’m certainly not advocating an overreaction to every new breach report, but I do worry that when a credible warning is issued, it may not be taken seriously. What is SMU doing about these problems? In the classroom, we want our students to have the right balance of technical implementation details, adversarial thinking and fundamental principles. On the one hand we want them to be “front-line qualified” when they graduate, but at the same time we want to ensure that they are well prepared for the future, because we know the specific attacks that they witness today will be very different two and five years from now. Undergraduate and graduate students gain valuable theoretical and practical skills that prepare them for additional formal training in cyber security or for positions in the job market.
We’ve been ramping up our research capabilities, focusing on world-class “problem-driven” research through the Deason Institute. We are working with research clients to produce tangible solutions – and by that I mean prototype software – to pressing, difficult problems within a shorter time frame. Another goal of the Institute is our interest in helping to solve the “skills gap.” Because there is a large shortage of highly skilled cyber security professionals, employers in the private and public sectors worldwide can’t find enough trained workers in the field to fill their openings. This problem will persist for a long time, but we are determined to help close the gap with well-trained, innovative graduates in cyber security from the Lyle School. And because our students have the opportunity to participate in industry-driven research through the Deason Institute, they graduate from the Lyle School with industry-focused skills. For most people, the question of cyber security comes down to personal security. Is there really anything that individuals can do to protect themselves from cyber thugs?
Just like when you drive your car, you can’t guarantee that you won’t get into an accident. But like buckling your seat belt and adjusting your mirrors, there are some things you can do to help defend yourself in cyberspace. Let me mention three approaches:
Update software – It’s a good idea to regularly and frequently update the software running on your machine. The software vendors are constantly providing updates that include improvements, including security patches that will close a security vulnerability that exists in the software.
Be vigilant – Be smart when you’re on the web and when processing email. It remains all too easy for your machine to inadvertently download malware – nasty software intended to damage or take control of computers.
Use difficult passwords – It continues to be the case that people use passwords like “password” or “123456.” It’s not necessarily convenient, but people are well served to use harder passwords.
You receive many requests for speaking engagements. What do people want to learn about cyber insecurity – especially in industry, where problems are occurring faster than many experts can form a response?
A lot of people find the cyber security problem both surprising and alarming – they realize the problem has become widespread, and they either know somebody who has been affected or they have been affected. There’s a saying that has been going around the business world as it relates to cyber security: There are two types of companies – those that have been hacked and know it, and those that have been hacked and don’t know it. So, that’s our challenge, and we are embracing it. We’re very excited about the research momentum we are building at SMU. We believe we are making a difference in the field of cyber security by helping to solve some challenging problems, and our positive outlook is being validated as an increasing number of research sponsors are approaching us for assistance. We’re off to a fast start and we don’t plan on slowing down. What does it mean for your work, overall, to hold a centennial endowed chair and lead a new institute dedicated to solving global cyber security issues?
It was very clear when I joined the University that SMU intended to provide significant resources to make a real impact in the field of cyber security. The beauty of a centennial chair is that the donor has had the foresight to provide several years of operational support until the endowment matures. And the opportunity to develop and direct an institute that reflects the priorities I have embraced through work in government, business and academia will provide important resources for important work.
SMU opened five new residential facilities, dining commons and parking garage this fall at the southeast corner of campus. The facilities were built to accommodate another 1,200 students to fulfill SMU’s new two-year living requirement on campus. The six existing residence halls have been renovated to form SMU’s 11 Residential Commons, all of which include faculty in residence. Crests were created for each Residential Commons to provide a unifying identity among the residents. >Read about life in the RC >See an interactive map Arnold Dining Commons: The Residential Commons’ crests are displayed on the balcony of the Arnold Dining Commons. Virignia-Snider Commons: Residents and Faculty in Residence Ann Batenburg (left) show off the Virginia-Snider Commons crest.
Mac’s Place: This grab-and-go dining option features outdoor seating at McElvaney Commons. Kathy Crow Commons: Students attend senior English lecturer Tom Stone’s class in the Kathy Crow Commons classroom.
Actor Brian Baumgartner ’95 with one of his former professors, Bill Lengfelder, during a conference hour Q-and-A at Meadows November 14. Prior to the Meadows session, he talked at a student event in Hughes-Trigg. Baumgartner was back on campus to lead the Homecoming parade November 15. Photo by Kevin Gaddis.
SMU alumnus Brian Baumgartner ’95 – a.k.a. Kevin Malone from the hit series “The Office” – brightened up the cool and cloudy afternoon during his stop at Meadows School of the Arts for a conference hour with students November 14. > Brian’s Back: Mustang Minute! Video
As expected, Baumgartner brought laughs to Margot Jones Theatre, where he spoke about his journey from SMU to Hollywood. His comedic genius permeated the question-and-answer session with students. They laughed uncontrollably, and even he couldn’t contain himself, cracking up at some of his own lines.
There also were touching moments. Upon seeing one of his former professors, Baumgartner leapt out of his seat with joy and gave Bill Lengfelder a heartfelt hug.
“You are a comedic genius,” Lengfelder said to the actor. “You came in brilliant, and you left brilliant.”
During the hour-long session, Baumgartner revealed that one of his favorite memories involves another famous Meadows alum.
When the Greer Garson Theatre first opened, Meadows invited accomplished alumni back to SMU to join in the celebration. Among those attending was award-winning actress Kathy Bates ’69. Baumgartner is a huge fan of Bates – “who doesn’t love Bates,” he interjected. His mother secretly contacted the actress, and for Christmas that year, he received an autographed book from Bates. Fifteen years later, when she made special appearances on “The Office,” Baumgartner was able to pull out that autographed book.
“I am getting a little emotional,” he said. “It was a special moment. And she’s Kathy Bates. She’s awesome.”
After graduating from SMU, Baumgartner went on to help found the Hidden Theatre in Minneapolis with fellow SMU graduates. He served as artistic director.
“I couldn’t visualize the path to move to New York, so that’s why I founded the company. Even though it’s horribly cold, Minneapolis was more livable,” he said.
While in business for about five years, the company experimented with putting on original plays and recreating works by comedians such as Steve Martin.
“It’s a lot of work getting a business going,” he said, “and we were relatively successful at what we were doing.”
Baumgartner later performed with several prestigious regional theatres in Minneapolis, including the Guthrie Theater, Children’s Theatre Company and Theatre de la Jeune Lune.
After taking a year off to try film and TV, he moved permanently to Los Angeles. Four months later, he landed a role on “The Office.”
“We knew we had something special from the second episode called ‘Diversity Day,’” he said.
But, in the beginning, the audience didn’t share the cast’s enthusiasm. At first, the ratings were terrible, he said. He recalls a moment in Steve Carell’s trailer. He was sitting opposite John Krasinski, and they were bummed about their ratings. “Well, we got to do 12 episodes. That’s pretty cool,” Carell said.
Shortly afterward, the show found its audience and became a hit, running from 2005 until May 2013. Over nine seasons, the show received 42 Emmy nominations and won five awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series.
“The reason for the success of that show was college students watching. There is no doubt in my mind. Young people embraced something new,” he said.
Baumgartner has spent 2014 trying to recreate his identity as an actor. He dabbled in a few TV and film drama roles, and “spent the last year saying ‘no’ to anything that resembles Kevin. You have to constantly reinvent yourself.”
Baumgartner wrapped up the Q-and-A with these words: “Everything is valuable. No path is better or worst. They say take advantage of SMU, and that is 100-percent right. Go out and experience other parts of the University. SMU teaches you there is more. What you are learning here is so important.” – Leah Johnson ‘15
SMU faculty send off thousands of students each year after graduation, hopeful that they have prepared them to become creative thinkers and citizens of the world. And professors appreciate being remembered by alumni. So to celebrate the Year of the Faculty in 2014, SMU is inviting alumni to share memories of a beloved or favorite professor. SMU Magazine is sharing some of those recollections. To read more memories – and add your stories – visit the Year of the Faculty site.
While I consider Schubert Ogden my mentor at Perkins School of Theology, when he retired, he suggested that I work with Billy Abrahamas my dissertation adviser. Although I never took any courses from Billy, we spent countless hours in deep discussion, bouncing ideas off each other. One of the things he showed me was that my own position [on theology] was not as solid as I thought it to be. He forced me to consider things I had never even thought of. He possessed an infectious enthusiasm and passion for his work, as well as a fierce dedication to his students. – Allen Pomeroy ’93
We all have teachers in our pasts who made a difference in how we viewed the world. For me there were two: Jeremy Adams, history, and Bonnie Wheeler, English. I accompanied them to Oxford one summer, during which I learned a great deal about medieval history, Arthurian legend, and how to power through lengthy bus rides and castle tours. I wouldn’t trade a moment of the glories we saw and the marvels we experienced. Professors Adams and Wheeler pushed us to study hard and challenged us to think for ourselves. I became a history teacher myself, and I hope I can bring the same enthusiasm and passion to my students. – Polly Granzow Viehman ’83, ’09
Franklin Balch, political science, was smart, entertaining and interested in his students’ intellectual progress and their well-being. Our freshman group seminar met in his home, where his gracious wife made incoming students from widely divergent backgrounds feel at home. Prof. Balch fanned our desire to be intellectually curious and to hone the critical thinking that should be the cornerstone of a liberal arts degree. – R. Bruce Moon ’81
Taking Bill Barnard’s Intro to Primal Religions opened my eyes to cultures that see the world in ways we can’t even imagine … I took every class I could with him, finishing with a minor in religious studies, which I never imagined pursuing. – Bryan Ellett ’02
Paul Boller’s History of American Ideas and Art Etzler in German stand out in my mind. Dr. Boller caused me to look at history with a critical mind. He inspired me to become a history teacher, and I used his notes as the bases for my own lectures. Not only was Dr. Etzler an outstanding professor, he was ever present on campus. From him I learned to appreciate every aspect of my university – the classroom, sporting events, cultural events, even bridge in the student center. – Mary Kay Overbeck Coleman ’59
When I was a first-year law student participating in a mock trial competition, Professor William Bridge patiently coached me and the other members of our team to give us a rudimentary understanding of the rules of evidence. He made the concepts interesting and clear. My practice, which involves criminal appellate litigation, requires familiarity with the rules of evidence, and I am always thankful that I received such a firm foundation from Professor Bridge. – Sarah Page Pritzlaff ’85
Dr. Alessandra Comini folded art history lessons so masterfully into a historical period story that every student could savor as the most spectacular explosion of heart and mind. Never before or since have I witnessed a lecturer captivate an audience so wholly as to elicit a standing ovation at the conclusion of every single session. – Mark Logan ’92
I enjoyed Virginia Currey’s political science classes so much that I took almost everything she taught. During the 1980s, the women’s movement was coming around to mainstream society. She discussed the ways in which women had made a difference in politics and had changed history. Dr. Currey encouraged all students to share their views without fear of intimidation. She taught me confidence. – Cindi Lambert ’85
Kenneth Hamilton ignited my interest in African-American history. His classes formed the foundation that I would use in writing articles on race and ethnicity. That foundation also proved helpful when I returned to graduate school and got my Master’s degree in history at the University of Nevada, Reno. – Geralda Miller ’98
I actually had two favorite faculty members: Dr. John Deschnerand Dr. Albert Outler, Perkins Theology. Both not only talked the talk, but they walked the walk as Christians. They were kind, true gentlemen, brilliant in terms of their subjects, but wholly present in mind and heart to their students. I will never forget the impact they made on my life. – Mary Ann Lee ’67
Dr. Edwin J . Foscue’s geography classes were always fun. We not only discussed the daily assignment but also current events and politics. The discussions were lively and everyone participated. I had enough hours in geography to change my major. – Walter Judge ’41
Bill Fox, who taught humanities, was my adviser, so we became friends. He was a wonderful teacher, both interesting to and interested in all of his students. He helped me navigate my first two years of college, leaving a lasting impression. I will always credit him for instilling in me a love of learning and an appreciation for the humanities. I went on to obtain a Master’s degree from the University of Dallas. – Susan Pollan ’73
One of the most important persons in my life of 82 years now was Professor Samuel Geiser, who was a zoologist at SMU. I now have been a university professor for 50 years at Ohio State, Rice and George Mason. I keep Dr. Geiser’s picture on my desk to remind me what a splendid teacher and scholar looks like. – David Schum, ’56, ’61
Dr. Mary Alice Gordon helped me discover an interest in the psychology of human/group interaction, leading me to a career in organizational development. She encouraged me to challenge myself with graduate courses while an undergraduate. My success at SMU is uniquely and distinctively entwined with her and significantly affected by having her as a mentor and a professor. – Sheryl (Sherry) Black ’80
This Ohio boy was struck by what good teachers he found as an English major and history minor at SMU – Ima Herron, Herbert Gambrell, Larry Perrine, John Lee Brooks and George Bond, who would hand over the creative writing baton to me. Looking back, I am moved by the interest taken in me and the encouragement given me as a student and young faculty member by these committed teachers. It was for this reason I stayed to take a Master’s degree and began to take my writing seriously as something I could do and think of teaching as a vocation. – Marshall Terry ’53, ’54
Jim Hopkins in history is an example of the exemplary dedication of faculty to undergraduate education – one of the many things that attracted us both to SMU. As a history major, one of us (Read) recalls fondly the atmosphere of intellectual engagement and curiosity that Jim fosters in every classroom discussion. But our warmest memories are of Jim and his wife, Patti LaSalle, from Alternative Spring Break in March 1999, when they joined our group of SMU students on a service trip to San Francisco, where we served the city’s homeless. Over meals, Jim regularly led riveting discussions. Alternative Spring Break became an extension of the applied learning laboratory that Jim and others create everyday on the SMU campus. – Read ’00 and Vanessa Rusk Pierce ’01
In summer 1958, I had two sessions of organic chemistry with Harold Jeskey. He was a wonderful man, a great teacher and influenced my life positively in many ways. Around 1975, I was in Dallas and went back to visit him at Fondren Science; he was coming down the hall toward his office. He called me by my full name and remembered everything about my time with him. I feel really blessed to have known him. – Eugene N. Robinson ’60
Dr. G. William Jones ’51, ’56 had a passion for the art of cinema that was obvious from my first class, when he transformed “Citizen Kane” from a movie to a masterpiece of writing, editing, camera angles and sound. I took every class that he taught. My SMU experience with Dr. Jones led me to work in local television for many years. – Mary “Mabs” Bonnick ’76
Dr. Richard Johnson taught me, and so many others, the value of education. His pragmatic approach opened our minds and his humor and genuine concern for his students won our hearts. We all benefited from our time with Dick Johnson. – Carl Sewell ’66
I once told Alice Kendrick, advertising, that I did not like, nor watch, much TV. She said I should think twice about majoring in advertising then. She was always blunt, but right. I became a publicist in New York City, where I lived for 12 years, and now have my own event production business in Los Angeles. – Nichole Wright ’98
I am forever grateful for the impact the late Professor Jeffery Kennington in engineering has had on my career. Not only he was a great teacher, but also one of the finest human beings you will ever meet. Professor Kennington was kind, thoughtful, and inspired his students to be the best they can be. – Bala Shetty ’85
I took six or seven classes from Don Jackson’63 in Cox School of Business. I used to sit in the back of his class and one day he asked me to come see him. He told me “it’s time to get off the back row and engage because you have great potential.” That was a turning point for me. – David Miller, ’72, ’73 (who later provided a lead gift to establish The Don Jackson Center for Financial Studies)
I took Barbara Kincaid’s law and taxation classes in the Cox School, and loved them! I actually took my first class with her at SMU-in-Taos, which was an interesting choice compared to most of the liberal arts and cultural courses offered in this environment. It was a challenging class, and I loved her passion for teaching. She is a role model to all business-minded and career-driven women. – Alexandra Dillard Lucie ’05
Dr. Lonnie Kliever really opened my eyes and mind with his religious studies classes. I was a pre-med student and took some very challenging and difficult classes. Dr. Kliever’s Philosophy of Religion was one of the toughest classes during my college tenure. I’m sure he never knew what a profound impact he had on my life, both then and now. – Joseph Newman ’83
Joe Kobylka in political science made Constitutional Law class so much fun. It cemented my desire to learn more about the law and attend law school after graduation. – Tracy Ware ’95
In Virginia Baker Long’s Office Management and Business Letter Writing classes, she included the importance of table etiquette when dining with upper management executives while being interviewed for a job. Poor table manners could make or break a job offer. All of these lessons have been helpful to me throughout life, in the business world as well as in my personal life. – Cora Sue Wootters Warren ’47
Sheri Kunovich, in her Sociology of Wealth and Consumption course, brought many things to our attention that most of us hardly ever think about. For instance, Americans are willing to work longer hours and spend less time with family just to have enough money to consume more, and buy things we don’t really need. Dr. Kunovich sheds light on how happy we could be if we all lived a little more simply. Her class was my last final before graduation, and in a way it was quite fitting, as I believe this class truly sent me off [well prepared] into the real world. – Gianna Marie Philichi ’13
I graduated 37 years ago and often think of what I learned in the journalism classes of David McHam and Darwin Payne ’68. I would not have succeeded in law school if I had not taken David McHam’s writing class. He taught me that every word has a particular meaning and should be used correctly and carefully. Darwin Payne used his experiences as a journalist to motivate his students to consider the ethical issues involved when covering a story. I remember the stories about his interaction with Abraham Zapruder (known for his home movie documenting the assassination of JFK) and the difficult ethical issues he faced when interviewing him. – Margaret Dawkins ’76
Dr. Ruth Morgan taught a course on the American Presidency. Every class was filled with memorable information. I was amazed at how prophetic she was and that so much of the information I learned is still pertinent. She made us aware of not believing everything we read but to do the research and think for ourselves. Dr. Morgan was professional in every way and I felt that her course was one of the most valuable courses I ever took. – Gerry Brewer Hudnall ’71
Luis Martin was by far the best professor one could ever have. From the first minute of his History of Mexico class he was absurdly engaging. His class made one think about the opportunities that were presented for the simple luck of having been born American. There are few other professors I can even name from my college years. – Linda Olson (Eidsvold) ’86
Jack Myers, creative writing/poetry, was rigorous. I learned enough from a few semesters with him to carry me successfully through an M.A. at Johns Hopkins and Ph.D. at University of Houston. – Leslie Richardson ’88
Dr. Lloyd Pfautsch, choral conducting professor, had wonderful people skills, was great at making a seemingly daunting task simpler, taught us to analyze and break down complex pieces into approachable components, then rehearse properly until the expected result happened every time. His work and caring for each of us in a way that encouraged rather than belittled us was not truly appreciated until years later. – Hal Easter ’77
My mentor and huge influence on my professional life was Dr.Paul Packman – Mechanical Engineering Department chair and my M.S. and Ph.D. adviser. Not only did he teach me all about fracture and fatigue of materials, he also introduced me to the world of litigation consulting and to the world outside of Dallas through food and stories of his travels around the world. – Angela Meyer ’83, ’85, ’87
I came to SMU to obtain my Bilingual/ESL certification in 1987. Dr. William Pulte encouraged me to apply for a scholarship to get a Master’s degree at SMU. What a great opportunity that was! One semester was so hard – I was working full time as a public school teacher and taking nine hours at SMU. He always encouraged me to stay with the program and finish. I received my degree and went on to become a lifelong learner, getting my principal’s certification and Master Reading Teacher Certification. Dr. Pulte has remained a valued mentor throughout the years. – Lisa Dupree ’89
One of the professors at Cox who made an impact on my career was Robert Rasberry. He reminded us that ethics was a critical part of business and encouraged my inquiry into ethical leadership and organizational behavior. I have been designing and delivering corporate training since 1998 and have worked with some of the largest companies in the world. When I stand in front of executives and discuss how the role of a leader is to create an environment where employees can make ethical decisions and behave in a way that promotes good communication and sustains healthy relationships, I try to honor Dr. Rasberry and all he taught me. – Martha Acosta ’96
When I was a Perkins Theology student, we had a project called the “West Dallas Work Project.” Dr. Joerg Rieger always taught that you must do theology with “dirt under your fingernails.” These were not merely words for him. On multiple Saturdays we headed to sites around West Dallas and did our best to make a difference. What a grand opportunity to work side by side with a professor, talk theology, and get our hands dirty together as we worked and lived out our calling! – Brian Minietta ’99
I came to SMU as a junior in 1947 with hundreds of other World War II veterans. The director of both the band and the orchestra was A. Clyde Roller, who also was a WWII vet. I had known Mr. Roller from pre-war days in the Oklahoma Symphony, where he was the first oboe player. We all had tremendous respect for his musicianship and the genuineness of his personality. He left a year after I arrived, and the person who followed him was my high school director from Oklahoma City, Oakley Pittman. Mr. Pittman was a great band director, and we remained friends after graduation. I became the commander and conductor of the U.S. Army Field Band with the rank of full colonel. Mr. Pittman felt that he had played a major role in my success. – Hal Gibson ’50
Dr. Bill Stallcup was a gifted teacher – and also such a kind person. He helped me with private tutoring in genetics and had endless patience with my mistakes! He was respected by faculty and students, and it was a blessing to learn from him. – Carol Hay (Caton) ’71
Without the help of Walter Steele, Herb Kendrick, Larry Lee, Harvey Wingo,Bill Flitte,Joe McKnight and several others in the Law School, this country lawyer might not have been able to practice 44+ years. – William McGowan II ’70
[I remember] the mentorship, leadership, friendship and professional career guidance provided by Dr. Jerrell Stracener’69, ’73, systems engineering program director. Without a doubt, this was the very best educational experience that has had a direct impact on my achieving a variety of career goals. – Keith Castleberry ’05
Marshall Terry’s creative writing classes were inspirational and downright fun! Marsh always encouraged us to find our own voices and to never give up. To this day, some of my best SMU memories are from his class. And one final icing on the cake was that he presented me my diploma at graduation. – Amy Cardin (Patterson) ’81
The professor of whom I have shared the most memories over the years is the great Lon Tinkle in comparative literature. His look recalled that of Mark Twain. He was an author, scholar and reviewer of the highest regard, but it was his spellbinding speaking that made him unforgettable. He would, in his marvelous one-of-a-kind, part Texas, part British accent, take us on 80-minute literary journeys. He would always start from a launching point premised on the book that we were reading, but soon the storytelling would lead onto apparently disconnected yet mesmerizing avenues, only to have him tie it all up a second or two before the bell rang. Had it been in a theatre, he would have received a standing ovation. – Chris Rentzel ’72
I took two or three semesters of Mary Vernon’s art history classes. Not only did I gain a deep appreciation for fine art, I also learned so much about design and color, and how artists hold the viewers’ eyes. This enlightenment fed my career in overseeing the production and design of several vertical market magazines and a newspaper. The insights I gained from Mary Vernon’s courses have permeated and enhanced my life culturally, also. – Suzanna Penn ’75
The late David Weber was a brilliant professor of history, and he had a way that made you want to learn. He wrote many books, and besides his knowledge of the Southwest, he truly loved the Southwest. He was kind, laid back and patient, and such a wonderful mentor to so many. He became my friend for life, and we kept in touch until he passed away. He had a profound impact on my SMU experience, and I will be forever grateful I was his student. – Katie Gordon ’86
After almost four years, I thought I was through, “done and dusted” as they say Down Under, where I live. Then Jerry White [Entrepreneurship, Cox School] challenged me by helping me understand that nothing else matters if there’s not enough cash flow to make payroll. It’s a lesson I still carry with me today as a CEO. I should have known that it was going to be good when in the first class he gave us a Roman history lesson that explained double-entry accounting. It is the only interesting thing about accounting I have ever heard. I almost failed his class, but it was the best education I ever had. – Craig Campbell ’93
I had some great teachers and, regrettably, two have passed away, including Dan Wingren, who was fabulous in his knowledge of art and art history, and Dr. Karl Kilinski, who was tops in his field of Greco-Roman art history. I was lucky to have taken one of his tours to Greece in 1976. Dr. Annemarie Carr was another facet to my education. But I owe a lot to Larry Scholder, who encouraged me to be a printmaker and guided me through the basics of etching. (I am still a printmaker, by the way.) It is very important to give positive as well as negative comments without stomping on a student’s ambitions. – Sandra Douglas ’83
My wife, Kathleen Brooks ’63, and I earned our B.B.A. degrees from SMU, and our favorite professor was Frank A. Young in the Insurance Department. He taught insurance from a scholarly point of view as well as a vocational one. None of us will ever forget Mr. Young’s foolproof grading system, which was designed to require each student to prepare daily and have a comprehensive understanding of the entire course material. Professor Young knew each student by name and kept up with all of us. To this day, 50 years later, the Insurance Department alumni still look forward to receiving our Frank Young Newsletter (via email) with great anticipation and fond memories. – James Verschoyle ’63
Share memories of your favorite SMU faculty members here.
Harlan and Katherine Raymond Crow ’94 of Dallas are the newest donors who are supporting SMU’s new Residential Commons complex, which was dedicated May 9. Their $5 million gift is funding the Kathy Crow Commons. Harlan and Kathy Crow ’94
They join five other donor families who are providing $5 million each to support the complex, comprised of five residence halls, a dining commons and a parking center. Designed to accommodate 1,250 students, the complex will enable all first-year students and sophomores to live on campus.
Opening in fall 2014, SMU’s new Residential Commons model of campus living includes 11 Commons created from new and existing residence halls. It will provide an integrated academic and residential student experience, with live-in faculty members who will have offices and teach classes in the Commons.
“Harlan and I have been highly impressed by the leadership of Gerald Turner and others at SMU, and the positive momentum and aspirations of the University are infectious,” says Kathy Crow. “Those factors, plus SMU’s decision to aim for $1 billion and my great pride in being an SMU Cox School alumna, inspired us to want to contribute to SMU’s goals in a meaningful and impactful way.”
Dallas civic leader Kathy Crow earned her M.B.A. from Cox School of Business. In addition to serving on the SMU Board of Trustees, she is a member of the executive boards of the Cox School of Business and the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. She also has served in the Women’s Economics and Finance Series at Cox. Harlan Crow earned his B.B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin and soon afterward joined The Trammell Crow Company. He has worked with Crow-affiliated entities for nearly 40 years and currently serves as chairman and CEO of Crow Family Holdings. He is a member of several boards of directors, including the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Monticello Foundation Board.
The Residential Commons and their namesake donors are: Armstrong Commons. Liz Martin Armstrong ’82 and Bill Armstrong ’82. They founded Armstrong Oil and Gas, Inc., based in Denver, Colorado, conducting business throughout the United States, and they established Epoch Estate Wines in Paso Robles, California. Bill Armstrong is a member of the SMU Board of Trustees, and Liz Armstrong serves on several SMU leadership boards. Crum Commons. Sylvie Crum and Gary Crum ’69. Before his retirement from private industry, Gary Crum was co-founder of AIM Management Group and served as director of AMVESCAP PLC. Both are the chief executive officers of the CFP Foundation, a Houston-based charitable organization. Gary Crum is an SMU trustee. Loyd Commons. Penny Loyd and Paul Loyd Jr. ’68. Paul Loyd is founder and principal of a private investment firm in Houston and is past chairman and CEO of R&B Falcon Corporation, the founder of Carrizo Oil and Gas Corporation and co-founder of JVL Advisors. Penny and Paul Loyd together head The Loyd Charitable Foundation. Paul Loyd is an SMU trustee. Ware Commons. Richard Ware ’68 and family, daughter Anne Clayton and triplet sons Patrick, William and Benjamin. Mr. Ware continued a family tradition by making his career in the banking industry. He is president of Amarillo National Bank, which has remained family owned and operated for five generations. He is the longest-serving non-Dallas member of the SMU Board of Trustees.
In addition to these alumni donors, Anita Ray and Truman Arnold, longtime philanthropists supporting education, are providing funds for the Arnold DiningCommons, open to all students on campus. He is founder and chair of the board of Truman Arnold Companies, one of the nation’s largest privately owned petroleum marketing firms. Both are co-partners in a family private equity firm, TA Capital, and also serve as trustees of the Truman and Anita Arnold Foundation.
To learn more about these donors and the Residential Commons complex through video interviews, visit smu.edu/residentialcommons. Kathy Crow Commons Harlan and Katherine Raymond Crow ’94 Armstrong Commons Liz Martin Armstrong ’82 and Bill Armstrong ’82 Crum Commons Sylvie Crum and Gary Crum ’69 Loyd Commons Penny Loyd and Paul Loyd, Jr. ’68 Ware Commons Richard Ware ’68 and Family Arnold Dining Commons Anita Ray Arnold and Truman Arnold
A gift of any size by large numbers of alumni can make a big difference to SMU’s progress and reputation. That’s the key message that alumni leaders want to convey as the Second Century Campaign seeks higher alumni participation.
“To be direct, we need 13,000 alumni donors by May 31. But even beyond that date, we need more alumni to give annually,” says Leslie Melson ’77, chair of the Alumni Board. “We need alumni to adopt the habit of giving each and every year. Even those who have made large gifts also become annual donors, recognizing the importance of continual alumni giving.”
“This is not just about money, it’s about reputation,” she adds. “The number of alumni donors who support the University annually is noted by ranking agencies such as U.S. News & World Report as an indication of alumni satisfaction with the education they received. And the stronger SMU’s showing in national rankings, the higher the value of our degrees as we compete in the marketplace, lead our professions and serve our communities.”
Yearly giving directly supports daily operations that shape the quality of the educational experience at SMU, such as library resources, technology, faculty salaries and financial aid. It also helps to keep tuition increases moderate, benefitting student recruitment.
“Prospective donors who read about multimillion-dollar gifts to SMU could feel that their smaller gifts might not be important, but that is far from true,” says Caren Prothro, chair of the SMU Board of Trustees. “We deeply appreciate gifts at all levels, which carry a great deal of weight beyond their monetary value. And for alumni who hope to send family members to SMU, support for the University today will bring dividends in the quality of education those children or grandchildren will enjoy tomorrow.” To make a gift, visit smu.edu/giving or mail to SMU Office of Development, P.O. Box 750402, Dallas, Texas 75275-0402.
By Patricia Ward
Tyrell Russell, a sophomore Hunt Leadership Scholar from Riviera Beach, Florida, planned on taking an organic chemistry course over the summer. Instead, he embarked on “the trip of a lifetime” with fellow SMU students Katie Bernet, Melanie Enriquez and Prithvi Rudrappa. In June they met up with a group of volunteers led by former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush ’68 for a weeklong renovation of a cervical cancer screening and treatment center in Livingstone, Zambia. A group of volunteers organized by the George W. Bush Institute helped renovate the cervical cancer screening and treatment center in Livingstone, Zambia, shown above. Among the volunteers were (left to right) Pam Jackson, SMU junior Prithvi Rudrappa, Carolyn Creekmore, Professor Eric G. Bing, SMU sophomores Tyrell Russell and Melanie Enriquez, and SMU junior Katie Bernet.
Immersed in a situation in which limited material resources and a patriarchal culture have blocked progress in the past, the students witnessed the power of a community’s boundless determination bolstered by its international partners’ resolve to improve medical care. As hands-on participants in the clinic overhaul, the students not only assisted with a lifesaving project, but they also found new purpose as they continue their educations at SMU.
“The experience gave me a new perspective,” says Russell, a double major in biology and philosophy in Dedman College. “It inspired me to explore the humanities side of medicine, including the cultural barriers that prevent people from seeking treatment.”
The students were recommended for the project by their respective schools or programs. After submitting applications, they were interviewed by Eric G. Bing, who traveled with them to Africa. Bing, professor of global health in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development and Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, serves as senior fellow and director for global health at the Bush Institute. The Bush Institute paid all expenses, except for students’ vaccinations and malaria pills.
In Africa, the students worked with local Zambians, U.S. Embassy officials and Bush Institute staff – including SMU alumna Hannah Abney ’02, director of communications for the Bush Institute – on the Mosi-Oa-Tunya Clinic. The clinic is part of Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, the George W. Bush Institute’s flagship global health program. The public-private partnership focuses on cervical cancer prevention, screening and treatment, as well as breast and cervical cancer education efforts, in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. SMU junior Prithvi Rudrappa takes five with a group of children on a soccer field in Simoonga, a village near Livingstone, Zambia. Photo by Katie Bernet.
Cervical cancer is a growing public health concern in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, Zambia has the highest cervical cancer mortality rate globally, with 38.6 deaths per 100,000 women.
When the students arrived June 21, major construction had already been completed on the clinic, so the students pitched in on the finishing details, including interior and exterior painting and floor installation. The Bush Institute’s humanitarian project not only improved a critical medical resource, but it also created a cross-cultural bridge, says Enriquez, a Hunt Leadership Scholar from Corpus Christi, Texas.
“Working alongside Zambians daily during the renovation and speaking with the women at an operating cervical cancer clinic were priceless experiences,” says Enriquez, a sophomore on the pre-medical track in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “Even though we have lived completely different lives on opposite sides of the world, in most cases, we shared the same core values of family, faith and education.”
The extraordinary opportunity “showed me that learning should not be limited to the classroom,” she says. “I will now seek more opportunities, such as a study abroad program, to enhance my academic experience.” SMU sophomore Melanie Enriquez says the volunteer experience in Zambia made her realize “learning should not be limited to the classroom.” Photo by Katie Bernet.
Rudrappa also has set his sights on a health-related career, which he is now considering in a global context. The son of a primary care physician in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Rudrappa began working at hospitals as a high school student. He spent summers in facilities as varied as a small clinic in rural Missouri and an urban medical center in Detroit.
Working in Zambia “made me realize what a powerful health-care tool education can be, which has inspired me to get involved in shaping global health policy,” says Rudrappa, a junior Dedman College Scholar studying biochemistry and finance in the Cox School of Business.
He is now assisting Bing with a project to determine the costs and efficiencies of scaling up cervical cancer screening and treatment in Tanzania, Botswana and Zambia, countries included in the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon initiative.
For Russell, a trip to a nearby village was a defining moment. “I was so impressed by the residents’ ingenuity and resourcefulness. They were able to find value in the smallest things,” he says. “It made me more appreciative of things that we often take for granted, like our health and family.”
The trip influenced Bernet, a junior advertising and photography major in Meadows School of the Arts, to visualize her future in broader terms. “I know that I want to do something that makes me feel the way I did during that trip,” she says, “like I’m a part of something that matters.”
Bernet, now a marketing and communications intern with the George W. Bush Presidential Center, used her photography talents for a project to highlight the women’s lives outside the medical setting.
“We distributed 19 disposable cameras and asked the women to take pictures of what they felt were the most important aspects of their lives,” she explains.
Most of the women photographed their children, families and homes, she says. “I have pictures of myself when I was young posing in the same way that a Zambian girl is posing in one of the photographs. We face vastly different circumstances, but underneath it all, we are very much the same.”
Hannah Abney recommends that students interested in global health and other Bush Institute focuses apply for internships.
“Because the Bush Center sits on the SMU campus, SMU students have a unique opportunity to volunteer and intern for projects that few other students have access to,” she says. “Whether it’s in global health or any of the other Bush Institute focus areas – including education, military service, women’s issues, human freedom and economic growth – one of the most exciting elements of the work is exposing SMU students to new and different ideas, and learning from them as well.” Read about other SMU students making a difference around the world on the SMU Adventures blog site.
Jennifer Robb calls Fondren Library Center her “second home.” Robb, a junior majoring in applied physiology and biology, studies in the library almost daily. On the Tuesday before spring finals started, she set up her laptop and checked out a movie to review for a class on Hispanic film.
“When I’m studying or working on a research paper, I never have to leave the library,” she says. “All the resources I need are right here.” As part of the Year of the Library celebration, SMU invites alumni to share library stories from their student days by emailing them to Paulette Mulry, director of development, Central University Libraries, at pmulry@smu.edu. Information also may be mailed to her at P.O. Box 750135, Dallas, TX 75275-0135. Be sure to include your graduation year and a phone number.
While it is doubtful that SMU’s founders imagined libraries abuzz with students like Robb using laptops, tablets and smartphones, or scholars around the globe gaining access to the University’s special collections via the Internet, they did have a clear vision for building a great University with a library as one of its cornerstones. Provision for the first library was made in 1913, well in advance of SMU’s opening to students
in 1915.
In 1940, Fondren Library, SMU’s first library building, opened with Charles C. Selecman, the University’s third president, speaking these words: “The library is the heart of the University.” That description, inscribed below Selecman Tower in Fondren Library Center, still rings true today.
Fast-forward to 2013 as the University community commemorates the Year of the Library, a 12-month celebration of the fundamental importance of the libraries to the intellectual life of SMU. Programs and exhibitions planned throughout the year provide opportunities to discover the rich resources and one-of-a-kind collections housed in the nine facilities that constitute the largest private academic library system in the Southwest. Planned improvements to Fondren Library Center will expand collaborative work spaces and upgrade technology to meet student needs today and in the future.
The Year of the Library quickly became the year of new milestones. On Founders’ Day, April 19, the SMU Board of Trustees commemorated the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center by presenting a rare volume to DeGolyer Library in honor of former President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush ’68. The journal of American explorer John Maley, recounting his 1810-12 travels through the trans-Mississippi West, including Texas, represents SMU libraries’ four millionth volume.
The preservation of Maley’s eyewitness account of exploration illustrates how the libraries have acclimated to the shifting needs of students and scholars over the past century. While honoring the tangible and tactile brilliance of works on paper, the libraries embrace new technology as a catalyst for learning and research. Maley’s original 188-page text will be archived for study today and by future scholars as part of DeGolyer’s already strong holdings on Western Americana. At the same time, the document will be available to researchers everywhere online. Central University Libraries’ Norwick Center for Digital Services team, using its new Hasselblad H4D-200MS – the highest-resolution camera on the market – captured each page of the book as a digital image.
Likewise, the realities of serving new generations of users in new ways require reconfiguring spaces. Renovations planned for Perkins School of Theology’s Bridwell Library and CUL’s Fondren Library Center take into account essential technology upgrades and changing learning styles to accommodate small group study and work on collaborative projects.
Hayden Hodges, a junior majoring in engineering management with a minor in math, likes what he has heard about the remodeling plans. He says there is no substitute for physically going to the library and studies at Fondren Library “about two to three times a week.”
“I like the idea of having more places where students can study together or even just hang out in a comfortable spot,” he says. “The better it is, the more I’ll come.” – Patricia Ward
Vivian Castleberry, a longtime features editor at The Dallas Times Herald,was recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the Dallas Peace Center at the 26th annual Peacemaker Awards Dinner last December 5. Working to promote nonviolence, she founded Peacemakers Inc., a nonprofit that sponsors international women’s peace conferences. The University of North Texas named its peace studies institute for her.
1949
Shirley Mays Pond, now retired from her 25-year career as executive administrative assistant to various members of the Texas State Legislature, enjoys traveling, gardening, reading, music and politics. She has three daughters and three grown grandchildren.
The Rev. Dr. William K. McElvaney(M.B.A. ’51, M.Div. ’57) received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Perkins School of Theology February 4 as part of Perkins’ Ministers Week. Following graduation from Perkins, he served for 15 years as pastor of several United Methodist congregations and for 12 years as president of the United Methodist-related Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, MO, where the William K. McElvaney Chair in Preaching was established in his honor in 1988. He received the SMU Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1980, and the William K. McElvaney Fund for the Advancement of Peace and Justice at SMU was started in 1993. 1952 Frank (Francis) Murray is promoting his 52nd book, Vitamin A and Beta-Carotene Are Miracle Workers (Gyan Books, New Delhi, India), especially geared to the developing countries, where millions succumb to skin problems, lung diseases, HIV/AIDS, measles, malaria, diarrhea and blindness each year. His 53rd book is Minimizing the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease (Algora Books, New York, 2013).
The Rev. Robert E. Young (Master of Theology) participated in the 60th anniversary of Richland Hills United Methodist Church. Rev. Young was the founding pastor and served the church from 1953 to 1962. Six charter members of the original 89 were in attendance and received special certificates. He shared in the worship service with other former pastors and baptized his great-grandson, Baker Jay Blankenship. His grandmother was baptized in Richland Hills United Methodist in 1956. 1955
The Rev. Dr. Roberto Escamillawas presented the 2013 Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Alumni/ae Council of SMU Perkins School of Theology as part of Perkins’ Ministers Week in February. He is minister of evangelism at First United Methodist Church in Ada, OK, an instructor in the Perkins School of Theology Course of Study School (COSS) and worship coordinator for COSS every summer. 1956 Richard L. Deats reports joining the King Scholars in the MLK Digital Project and speaking in Vienna and Salzburg, Austria, and at Boston University School of Theology.
Mike Engleman has published Finding Home, the first book in a series called Lawes’ Raiders, an alternative historical fiction of the Texas Rangers in South Texas in the mid-1800s. Finding Home and the second book, New Life, are available at Amazon.com, and the sixth book in the series is under way. John H. Massey assumed the presidency of The University of Texas Law School Foundation Board of Trustees Sept. 1, 2012. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from SMU’s Cox School of Business in 1993, the Presidential Citation Award from The University of Texas in 2011 and the Hall of Fame Award for high achievement in business from UT’s McCombs School of Business in 2012. He is active in agricultural and wildlife conservation in Colorado County and Matagorda County in Texas.
1965
Tim Smith (M.S.E. ’69) and his daughter, Tammy Smith Lahutsky ’89, are former Texas Instruments electrical engineers. His TI products include the logic chips that assisted the Apollo lunar modules to land safely on the moon and return to Earth and the chips used to develop the first Apple computer and IBM PC. After retiring from TI as a senior vice president, he started a medical devices company, Avazzia, in 2004, and Tammy joined him. Tim is CEO and principal designer of Avazzia’s FDA-approved medical devices used to manage pain, all developed, manufactured and distributed from the Dallas headquarters. Medical doctors prescribe Avazzia devices for drug-free pain management in patients; dentists use the products to relieve their own hand pain and back pain and for patients with pain/discomfort; athletic trainers manage pain in injured players without drugs; and diabetics use Avazzia products to manage pain connected with neuropathy. Its veterinary applications soothe muscles and stimulate healing in animals.
1968
REUNION CHAIRS: COOKIE KUYKENDALL FRAZAR and ALBON HEAD
Albon Head (J.D. ’71), an attorney in the Fort Worth office of Jackson Walker, was selected for inclusion in the 2013 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. He was a 2012 “Super Lawyer,” appearing in last October’s issue of Texas Monthly magazine, and was chosen a 2012 Fort Worth “Top Attorney” by Fort Worth, Texas magazine in the December issue.
Allen B. Clark, a disabled Vietnam War veteran, has authored Valor in Vietnam 1963-1977: Chronicles of Honor, Courage, and Sacrifice, stories from the war and all branches of the military. Signed copies of the book are available at www.valorinvietnam.com. David Hudnall retired at the end of 2012 after 38 years at Omnicom Group Inc. Advertising Agencies. For the last 16 years he has been president of Omnicom Management Services, providing financial, accounting, tax, HR and IT services to Omnicom-owned agencies in the Southwest.
1971
David S. Arthur (M.F.A. ’73) announces the second printing of The Kingdom of Keftiu, his historical mystery novel from Brighton Publishing LLC. It’s the first of a series of three novels, the second of which is in the editorial stage.
1972
Hugh R. (Buz) Craft has written Once Upon a TIME…IS TEMPERATURE! to “prove” that time is simply temperature. He covers various subjects in this printed piece he calls a bookazine. A list of publishers is available from Google. Gail Norfleet is a Dallas artist whose third exhibition of paintings, monotypes, photographs, collages and paintings on glass was held at the Valley House Gallery this past January 11 – February 9. She has had solo exhibitions in Dallas at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary and the former Delahunty and DW Galleries. An art professor at Cedar Valley College in Lancaster, TX, she also gives private instruction. Peggy Higgins Sewell was honored at the TACA Silver Cup Award Luncheon in Dallas February 22 as an extraordinary arts philanthropist and a champion of the performing arts community of North Texas.
Stephen Tobolowsky is a veteran character actor on television and in the movies. Among other roles, he was Needle Nose Ned in “Groundhog Day.” In an award ceremony March 7 at Austin Studios, he was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame. His new book, The Dangerous Animals Club, captures his storytelling flair.
1974
Gary Ingram,an attorney in the Fort Worth office of Jackson Walker, has been named in the 2013 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and selected as a 2012 Fort Worth “Top Attorney” by Fort Worth, Texas magazine in the December issue. Patrick “Pat” Yack has been named to PBS’ Digital Advisory Council, a national group of broadcasters that advises PBS on a variety of digital initiatives.
1975
John Samuel Tieman ’79, Ph. D., has published “Shame On You, Child: On Shaming, Educational Psychology And Teacher Education,” a chapter in the new book, The Uses of Psychoanalysis in Working with Children’s Emotional Lives, which is published by Jason Aronson, a division of Rowman and Littlefield. The book is designed to be used in, among other places, schools of education. Dr. Tieman also has an article in the spring issue of Schools: Studies In Education, which is published by the journals division of the University Of Chicago Press. The essay, “Miss Freud Returns To The Classroom: Toward Psychoanalytic Literacy Among Educators,” is a call for a more psychoanalytically informed approach to educational psychology and teacher formation, he says.
1976
John Holden, an attorney at Jackson Walker, was designated a 2013 “Lawyer of the Year” by Best Lawyers.Only one lawyer in each practice area in each community is so honored. Ladine Bennett Housholder announces her new book, The Well Women, the tale of the Samaritan woman at the well interwoven with stories of challenge and healing of nine contemporary women. With discussion questions in the back, the book is suitable for study and discussion groups as well as personal reflection.
1977
Tim Seibles has been an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia’s Old Dominion University since 1995. He was one of 20 finalists for the 2012 National Book Awards, nominated for the somewhat autobiographical Fast Animal, his seventh collection of poetry (Etruscan Press), in which he traces his life from a 16-year-old to a present-day middle-aged man. Collectively, Fast Animal tells a story of how life changes for all of us.
Wade Cooper is an attorney in the Austin office of Jackson Walker. In last October’s issue of Texas Monthly magazine, he was listed as a 2012 “Super Lawyer,” and he also was selected for inclusion in the 2013 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, regarded by many as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Laurie Hickman Cox had her first solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery in Dallas December 12, 2012 – January 7, 2013, displaying oil paintings, pastels and cut-outs. In 1984 she attended a summer residency at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and since then has spent two summer residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME, and one residency at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, CO. Rod MacIlvaine and Cindy Funkhouser MacIlvaine celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary and the arrival of their sixth grandchild this spring. Their children are spread out from Seattle to London, so it makes for exciting places to visit, according to the MacIlvaines. Rod continues to serve as senior pastor of Grace Community Church in Bartlesville, OK, and on the adjunct faculty of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. His recent article, “The Apologetic Value of Religion and Wellness Studies,” was published in the Christian Apologetics Journal. His next article will appear in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice journal later this year. Rod has recently enjoyed reconnecting with his fellow fraternity brothers, especially his freshman year roommate from Boaz Hall.
1979
Renee Pfrommer Castle (J.D. ’82)married Robert L. (Larry) Crawford Nov. 5, 2011, in Rosemary Beach, FL. She practices law with her brother in Memphis, and her two daughters, Sarah and Cristia, attend Birmingham-Southern College. Mary Collins received the Spirit Award last November from Women In Film.Dallas at the 2012 Topaz Award Gala, recognizing her outstanding contributions, dedication and trailblazing efforts within the film and television industry. She is founder, owner and president of The Mary Collins Agency in Dallas, which represents voiceover and on-camera performers. In 2012 she also was inducted into Worldwide Who’s Who of Executives, Professionals and Entrepreneurs.
Sharon S. Millians was honored March 5 by the Fort Worth Commission for Women as an Outstanding Woman in the Workplace. She is a partner in, and co-chair of, the real estate and finance section of law firm Kelly Hart & Hallman. She has been on the list of “The Best Lawyers in America” since 1992, recognized as a Super Lawyer by Texas Monthly since 2003 and identified as one of the “Top 50 Women Texas Super Lawyers” and “Top 100 Super Lawyers” in the Dallas/Fort Worth region. Regina Taylor moved to Chicago in 2010 andhas now been selected by Chicago Magazine as one of six Chicagoans of the Year for 2012. Playwright, director and Golden Globe-winning actress, she has rewritten and revived her 10-year-old musical Crowns, a celebration of African-American women and their hats. Lisa Benefield Thomas had her first classical label recording released last October 29 by Toccata Classics in London. It is solo piano music by American composer Arthur Farwell.
Dr. Melanie Moore Biggs is a licensed clinical psychologist at the V.A. North Texas Health Care Systems – Dallas V.A. Medical Center, where she works with Dallas veterans on the inpatient psychiatry service providing individual and group psychotherapy and psychological evaluations.
1984
Jeff Austin III was re-appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to the Texas Transportation Commission in March for a term that expires Feb. 1, 2019. The commission oversees the Texas Department of Transportation. John Gilchrist was named a Fellow in the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, one of 183 fundraising professionals to have earned this highest level of distinction. Megan Riegel was awarded South Carolina’s highest civilian honor — The Order of the Palmetto — for her work as president and CEO of the Peace Center for the Performing Arts. The award was given by S.C. Governor Nikki R. Haley on Tuesday, June 25, 2013 at the Peace Center in Greenville, S.C. Elizabeth Longino Waller of Birmingham, AL and James McBrayer Sellers, III ’83 of Lexington, MO were married on June 8, 2013, in New Orleans, LA. The ceremony took place in the original stables of the French Quarter’s historic Hermann House, now Broussard’s. The bride wore a circa 1905 gown that had belonged to the groom’s great-great-great aunt. Following their vows, the new couple, wedding party, and guests joined a Second Line Brass Band for a parade through the Quarter, returning to Broussard’s for a courtyard reception. The groom’s mother, Elizabeth Singleton Sellers ’56, a Kappa Alpha Theta sister of the bride, read I Corinthian 13. The guests included Elizabeth’s other Kappa Alpha Theta sisters Lucy Duffy Tankersley ’84 and Lisa Cave Andrews ’84.
1985
Larry Pierson, who earned an MS in engineering management from SMU, reports that he recently filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent Office for a Texas-sized internet data switch. At over 30,000 ports of 10-gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), it is much larger than any other telecom switch out there, he says. “One of the more interesting applications for it is to provide a fault-tolerant communications core for a supercomputer with over 10 million processing units. It can also be used to maximize (groom) the flow of data in long distance internet lines to help keep the costs of carrying internet services down.” Christine Karol Roberts is an attorney in California and author of the children’s books The JewelCollar, a tale of a Maltese dog and the lesson that sharing is the Christmas spirit and the spirit of true friendship, and Hannah the Hummingbird, a story of the adventures of Hannah and her baby hummingbirds. From last December through February 14, she donated 100 percent of all Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple iBook store sales from these books to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund in Newtown, CT. She was recognized among Los Angeles’ Women Leaders in the Law in March 2013 by American Lawyer Media and Martindale-Hubbell. Todd A. Smith, owner of The Todd Smith Law Firm, has been elected to membership in the Fellows of the Texas Bar Foundation, a mark of distinction and recognition of his contributions to the legal profession. Each year only one-third of one percent of State Bar members are invited to become Fellows.
1986
Margaret Love Tuschman DeVinney has transferred from her position in SMU Athletics as executive assistant for women’s basketball to administrative assistant for Athletic Forum and programs in SMU’s Program Services. Evangelia Costantakos Kingsley, a Meadows School of the Arts graduate, and Chip Prince return to the Metropolitan Room in New York September 22 and 30 to sing songs about dance by Cohen, Coward, Gershwin, Rorem, Waits and many more. The show is directed by Eliza Beckwith. Linda Yows Leitz was elected chair of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors last January 31 and will serve as chair-elect until her term begins Sept. 1, 2013. A financial professional since 1979, she founded and co-owns the financial planning firm It’s Not Just Money, Inc. in Colorado Springs. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in the personal financial planning program at Kansas State University.
The Honorable Brian McCall is chancellor of the Texas State University System, serving more than 77,000 students at eight institutions. In a ceremony in Waco Jan. 25, 2013, he was presented the Price Daniel Distinguished Public Service Award by the Baylor Alumni Association. He served two decades in the Texas House of Representatives and has authored The Power of the Texas Governor: Connally to Bush, based on his Ph.D. dissertation.
1987
Mark S. Bertrand has been appointed vice president for financial services for defense and space programs for Boeing Capital Corporation. Based in El Segundo, CA, and a resident of Long Beach, he leads a team supporting financial structuring and solutions for Boeing’s military and satellite systems customers. Steve Hickman has moved from Phoenix to Seattle where he continues in his fourth year as the IP strategist for Honeywell Aerospace. In the 1990s he worked as a consultant in Dallas, Kansas City and Minneapolis, developing sustainable software architecture helping clients in industries ranging from aerospace and oil/gas to manufacturing, pollution and telecom.
Margaret White Weinkauf has returned to SMU as assistant director of development for the Meadows School of the Arts. She has chaired fundraising efforts in the Dallas community with a broad network of arts and cultural supporters and has extensive experience as an attorney.
1989
Julianne M. Furman has been named president of Polydesign Systems, a subsidiary of Exco Technologies. Based in Tangier, Morocco, she manages divisions comprising almost 800 people in France and Morocco. Matthew Thompson has been recognized for legal excellence with his selection to the 2013 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. He practices immigration law in the Houston office of Jackson Walker.
David A. Dreyer (M.F.A. ’92) had a fourth solo exhibition of his paintings and sculpture, “Resonance of Place,” at Valley House Gallery in Dallas from February 16 to March 16. He has been honored with the Moss/Chumley Award from the Meadows Museum at SMU and has had solo exhibitions at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas and The Grace Museum in Abilene. Lee Mulcahy (Ph.D. ’00) is an artist in Aspen, CO. In January 2013 he exhibited at Germany’s Universitat der Kunst Berlin and the Carbondale Council for Arts and Humanities in Carbondale, CO. In March he was featured at Aspen’s Red Brick Center for the Arts. Nisha Shah returned to the Dedman School of Law at SMU last December as the assistant director of development. She has experience as a trial lawyer and has chaired fundraising efforts and worked closely with lawyers and constituents throughout the Dallas area.
1991
Elise A. Healy, a Dallas-based immigration lawyer, has been named 2013 Dallas Immigration Law “Lawyer of the Year” by Best Lawyers, reflecting the respect she has earned for her ability, professionalism and integrity.
1992
David Gunn and his wife, Kristen Smith Gunn ’94 recently relocated back to Texas after 14 years in Florida. They settled in the Katy area with their children, Preston, Peyton and Pierce. When they are not busy chasing the kids or reconnecting with friends and family, David works as vice president of Business Development and Strategy for SonarMed, a medical device company. William Jenkins is a civil litigation attorney at Jackson Walker. He was selected as a Fort Worth “Top Attorney” for 2012 by Fort Worth, Texas magazine in last December’s issue. Matthew Kadane has written The Watchful Clothier: The Life of an Eighteenth-Century Protestant Capitalist (Yale University Press, 2013). He is an associate professor of history at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Andrea Iken Tennison and her husband, John Tennison, M.D., welcomed twin sons, James Tyler and Joseph Thomas, Jan. 31, 2011. Andrea reports that their big brother, Jack Truman, has been helping the boys learn to make pony ears! Lisa K. Thompson has been promoted at Prairie View A&M University from assistant professor of educational leadership to associate professor with tenure and to coordinator of the Ph.D. program in educational leadership in the Whitlowe R. Green College of Education.
Jacqueline Bradley designed and implemented initiatives for fall 2009-fall 2012 that doubled success rates for under-prepared students in the writing program at El Centro College in downtown Dallas. She is chair of the Department of English and Developmental Writing. Dan Davenport co-founded RiseSmart in 2007, a leader in next-generation outplacement solutions, helping laid-off employees get back to work. With his leadership, 30 Fortune 1,000 companies have switched from traditional outplacement firms to RiseSmart, now the fastest growing outplacement solutions provider in the U.S. Logan Flatt is senior vice president of strategic planning at the integrated marketing agency Ansira, based in St. Louis and Dallas. As a Chartered Financial Analyst and member of CFA Institute, he is considered an expert on improving the impact of marketing on corporate financial performance. He lives in Dallas. Phyllis Durbin Grissom has been elected grand president for Delta Delta Delta social Greek organization for the 2012-2014 biennium, announced at the 55th biennial convention in Tucson last July. Victor G. Hill III married Jennifer Owens in Oklahoma City March 24, 2012. He is a senior network engineer with General Dynamics Information Technology – Air Force and Navy Solutions, and Jennifer is in her 18th year as an English teacher at Putnam City West High School. Sean Whitley is a producer of “Home Strange Home” on HGTV. Heather Wilson joined Ogilvy Public Relations as executive vice president and director of the corporate group, based in Chicago. Previously she was a senior vice president with Weber Shandwick and led its West Coast corporate issues and crisis management group in Los Angeles.
1994
John Dorsey reports that he and Andrew Stephan ’93 started their own production company – ten100 – three years ago. Their latest film, “Glory Hounds,” which took three years to make, premiered on “Animal Planet” in February to rave reviews. It documents the bond between military working dogs and their handlers on the front lines in Afghanistan. Last year they directed “The Marinovich Project” for ESPN, which was nominated for an Emmy for best sports documentary. And in 2010 they collaborated with Thaddeus Matula ’03 on “Pony Excess,” also for ESPN. Jeffrey Hoffman was recently accepted into Theatre Bay Area’s inaugural ATLAS (Advanced Training Leading Artists to Success) program for directors, which will help him identify his career goals and better understand where he fits into the Bay Area theatrical landscape. He has been cast as Chris Keller in “All My Sons” at the Douglas Morrisson Theatre in Hayward, CA. Daxton R. (Chip) Stewart is an associate professor at TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism with a law degree from The University of Texas and a Master of Laws and master’s and doctoral degrees in journalism from the University of Missouri. He combined his background in journalism and law as editor of Social Media and the Law: A Guidebook for Communication Students and Professionals (Routledge, 2012), which details the legal challenges that have arisen with social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube as they relate to journalism, advertising and public relations. Abby Sassenhagen Williams and her husband, Todd Williams, were honored at the National Philanthropy Day Awards Luncheon in Dallas last November 30. Nominated by Austin College in Sherman, TX, they were named Outstanding Philanthropists by the Greater Dallas Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals for their support of educational opportunities for underserved populations. They chair the regional advisory board for Teach for America in Dallas-Fort Worth and helped establish the Williams Preparatory School in Dallas. Abby serves on the board of the Dallas Women’s Foundation and the Campaign Steering Committee for Campus and Student Life for SMU’s Second Century Campaign.
1995
Tracy Ware Odetunmibi and her husband, Ayorinde Odetunmibi, welcomed their daughter, Atinuke Nia Odetunmibi, August 17, 2012. Hilary Russo (right) was honored in May with the “Excellence in Teaching” award from the National Society of Leadership and Success. Hilary is an adjunct professor at St. John’s University in New York City and teaches TV performance and production. She is also a TV host/lifestyle and design specialist and a guest host on QVC, the national shopping network.
1996
Melinda Jones has launched her own stationery line, Read Between the Lines, the first of several planned retail extensions from her company and blog, Super Much Love™. She honed her design skills remodeling premier Dallas properties and also had a successful career in advertising and marketing before pursuing her passion for fun paper products. Colette Kress (right), a 24-year veteran of the tech industry, has been named executive vice president and chief financial officer of Nvidia Corp., a graphics chip maker. She previously served as senior vice president and CFO for Cisco’s Business Technology and Operations Finance organization for three years. Prior to that, she spent 13 years with Microsoft, including four years as CFO of its Server and Tools division. In addition, she has held various financial positions with Texas Instruments. Nefeterius Akeli McPherson (J.D. ’08) was diagnosed with a rare bile duct and liver disease in her first year of law school at SMU. She received a lifesaving liver transplant Nov. 6, 2011, from a 12-year-old West Virginia girl who died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage. Now she has made a vow to keep her donor’s memory alive and spread awareness about the importance of organ donation through a public Facebook page: www.facebook.com/livertransplant. The Charleston (WV) Gazette ran a front-page story about Nefeterius and her donor last October 9 and a story about her efforts supporting organ donation February 8. Constantine (Taki) Scurtis has been named a managing partner with LYND, a national real estate investment, development and management firm, which he joined in 2009 as vice president of business development. He will manage a LYND office in Miami, which he recently opened, as well as sourcing new real estate opportunities in South Florida.
1997
Bill Crean (M.S. ’98) has accepted a position as director of product management at InterDigital Communications and has moved to Wayne, PA (in the Philadelphia area) with his wife Stephanie (B.S. ’98) and children Will and Allison. Shawna Ford Lavender is director of operations for SMU’s women’s basketball. An SMU player from 1993-97, she was head coach at Abilene Christian University for the last nine seasons. Jason McKenna (Ph.D. ’02) was the speaker at a January 24 lecture at SMU, Emerging R&D in Support of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, presented by SMU’s Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity. He spoke of how technology is being developed to meet the often neglected needs of people confronted by natural disasters, faced with limited resources, living in everyday poverty. He is lead technical director for geospatial research and engineering at the U.S. Army’s Engineer Research & Development Center, leading a research team that supports the U.S. military’s humanitarian assistance and disaster relief programs in the U.S. and internationally. In 2010 he received the Civilian Service Award, the highest given to civilian Department of Defense employees. Todd Martin recently joined Culhane Meadows PLLC as a partner in the Dallas office. Suzanne Campbell Wellen and her husband, Darrell, welcomed a son, John Jay, May 6, 2012. She is a business litigation attorney with Andrews Kurth LLP in Dallas.
Todd Martin, SMU Law class of 1997, recently joined Culhane Meadows PLLC as a partner in the Dallas office.
Alison Ream Griffin has been named to Delta Delta Delta international leadership as a member of the board of directors of this leader among social Greek organizations. Her position was announced at the 55th biennial convention last July in Tucson. Monique Roy published a new historical fiction novel, Across Great Divides, in July 2013. This is her second book. Her first book for children, Once Upon a Time in Venice, was published in 2007. You can find out more at www.monique-roy.com. Books are available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Jennifer Clark Tobin (J.D. ’01) and her husband, AaronTobin ’00, announce the birth of their first child, Anna Christine, in Dallas May 31, 2012.
Travis Justin Matthews Sr.received his Doctorate in Supervision, Curriculum and Instruction in Higher Education from Texas A&M Commerce in May. Ian McCann, after 12 years as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News,has joined the City of Richardson as information coordinator. Dennis Rogers is director of communications and digital media for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.
2001
Mary Elizabeth Ellis (right) is an actress living and working in Los Angeles, who has appeared in the television programs “New Girl,” “Up All Night,” “Happy Endings” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Bernard Jones has been appointed an Oklahoma County District Judge. Jones earned a law degree from Notre Dame Law School and was previously associate dean for admissions and external affairs at Oklahoma City University School of Law and an associate at law firms in Oklahoma City and Ohio. He is board chair for the Urban League of Greater Oklahoma City and serves on the boards for Sunbeam Family Services, the American Cancer Society, Oklahoma Lawyers for Children and the national board of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. Bernard lives in Edmond with his wife, Mautra, and son, Bernard. David B. Lacy is a litigation attorney recently elected a partner at Christian & Barton LLP, a civil law firm in Richmond, VA. Treasurer of the Richmond Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, he is a member of the CLE Committee for the Bar Association of the City of Richmond and the Lewis F. Powell Jr. American Inn of Court. Kristen Holland Shear and Mark F. Shear, OD, celebrated the birth of Benjamin Clay on September 23, 2013. Benjamin joins two older sisters, Savena and Cora. Frank White (J.D., M.B.A. ’06) and his wife, Stephanie ’06, are parents of three children: twins Henry and Clayton, age 3, and Wesley, born Sept. 14, 2012. Frank has created a new website, CollegeFrog, which helps employers recruit accounting majors and manage the hiring process in one simple, inexpensive Web application.
2002
Jodi Warmbrod Dishman, a trial and appeals lawyer formerly with the San Antonio office of Akin Gump, has joined Oklahoma’s largest law firm, McAfee & Taft, as Of Counsel. She and her husband, Brent, also an attorney, live in Edmond, OK.
Dodee Frost Crockett, Managing Director – Wealth Management at Merrill Lynch, placed 20th on the list of “America’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisors 2013” ranked by Barron’s. She focuses on building one-on-one relationships founded on trust and developing an understanding of her client’s needs and financial goals. Juan José de León won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Great Lakes Region finals, in January representing Pittsburgh, where he has been in the Pittsburgh Opera Young Artists program for the last two seasons. In 2013-14, he will make his debut with The Metropolitan Opera in Nico Muhly’s Two Boys and with the Atlanta Opera as Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. He is spending the summer with the Wolf Trap Opera Company where he will perform in The Journey to Reims, Falstaff and Carmina Burana. He was a winner of the Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition in 2010 and made his Dallas Opera debut in 2011. Cameron W. George was promoted to director of finance at Linn Energy (NASDAQ:LINE), a top-15 U.S. independent oil and gas company based in Houston. He joined Linn in August 2005 to help take the company public. Previously he was an energy investment banker with RBC Capital Markets. Eva Parks joined NBC 5 Investigates as an investigative producer in 2012. In their first year together, the investigative team has won two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for Best News Series and Continuing Coverage, and a national Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Investigative Report from the Society of Professional Journalists. D.J. Pierce is an actor primarily known as the drag character “Shangela.” Having once appeared on the reality series “Rupaul’s Drag Race,” he broke out to guest on “2 Broke Girls,” “The Mentalist,” “LA Hair,” “Glee” and the E! Network’s “The Soup.” Last September he debuted in the YouTube scripted series “Jenifer Lewis and Shangela” and has recently launched a stand-up comedy tour.
2004
Susannah Cullum McGown and her husband, Patrick McGown ’09, celebrated the birth of their first child, Jackson Paul, Jan. 19, 2013. José Leonardo Santos (Ph.D. ’08) was appointed social science assistant professor in anthropology at Metropolitan State University’s College of Arts and Sciences in Saint Paul, MN. He teaches 21 semester credits per year, advises students and frequently guests on Minnesota Public Radio. He has taught at SMU’s Taos and Dallas campuses.
2005
Matt and Melissa Rothschild Bragman (right) welcomed future Mustang Molly Elizabeth Bragman (Class of 2027) September 17. She was born just in time to watch the Battle for the Iron Skillet, says Matt. The Bragmans live in Long Beach, CA where Matt is an administrator for Green Dot Public Schools and Melissa is the entertainment events manager at the Queen Mary. Ashley Randt Kneisly and her mother, Margo Geddie, who attended SMU’s Cox School of Business, work side by side managing large investment and retirement portfolios at The Geddie Group at Morgan Stanley in Houston. Ashley earned a bachelor’s degree in corporate communications and public affairs from SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and says her mother has been a supportive mentor in her career in the financial services industry.
2006
Ruthie Leggett married Zachary Thicksten July 6, 2013, in Beaver Creek, CO. The newlyweds live in Little Rock, AR. Melissa Meeks runs TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art, an annual contemporary art auction in Dallas benefiting two organizations – the Dallas Museum of Art and amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research – and drawing prominent artists, art collectors and philanthropists from around the world. She was recently profiled in ELLE magazine as one of ELLE’s 2012 Fresh Makers, an art world power player. She is an active member of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium’s art council, with a hand in its founding. Allison Pfingstag graduated from Tarrant County College in 2012 with a degree in dental hygiene and is now a dental hygienist in the family and cosmetic dentistry practice of Dr. Ted Hume III.
2007
Natalie Bidnick has relocated to Austin to attend graduate school at St. Edward’s University, working toward a Master of Liberal Arts degree with an emphasis in creative writing. Tamara L. Joneshas completed an orthodontic residency and earned a Master of Science in Dentistry degree from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She is excited to be joining Willow Bend Orthodontics in Plano. Brent Turman (J.D. ’12) has been named an associate at the Dallas-based law firm SettlePou, where he concentrates on contract disputes, real estate litigation, consumer financial services litigation, negligence claims, Texas Deceptive Trade Practices claims and commercial disputes. Jay Wieser has been selected a 2012 Fort Worth “Top Attorney” by Fort Worth, Texas magazine in the December issue. He practices civil litigation in Jackson Walker’s Fort Worth office.
Katharine Brunson and Travis Clark were married in Dallas June 23, 2012, and live in Fort Worth. She is a paralegal with Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP, and Travis is a geologist with Dynamic Production Inc. Mary Pat Higgins, at the Hockaday School in Dallas since 1990, is a CPA and Hockaday’s longtime chief financial officer. On Jan. 1, 2013, she began new duties as president and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance, where she looks forward to possible construction of a new museum. Lindsay Scanio is the new assistant director of alumni engagement at SMU. Previously she was coordinator for SMU alumni relations and a program specialist for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, where she helped recruit and retain over 200 volunteers.
2009
Jamila Benkato received an M.A. in Global and International Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012, after completing internships at the Arab American Institute and Human Rights Watch, both in Washington, D.C. After serving for a year as Program Coordinator for West Michigan Refugee Education and Cultural Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she is returning to California to become a member of UC, Irvine School of Law’s Class of 2016. Brian M. Kwesiga was elected the 10th president and CEO of the Ugandan North American Association (UNAA) at its 25th annual convention held August 30-September 1 in Dallas. The organization promotes the “social, cultural and economic development of the Ugandan community in North America [which numbers more than 120,000] and beyond.” Brian chaired the organization’s 2013 Dallas Convention Organizing Committee (COC). 2010 Nikki Cloer married Sam McDonald Jan. 12, 2013, in Corinth, TX. The newlyweds live in Dallas. Ashley Howe (M.S. ’12) and James Justinic (M.S. ’12) were married at Perkins Chapel Nov. 3, 2012. They met in the Mustang Band. Andrew Nguyen was profiled as a “real hero” by Peter Calabrese on Huffington Post July 1, 2013. Nguyen founded Honor Courage Commitment, Inc. a nonprofit that provides free training, mentorship and education to develop vets into entrepreneurs. Nguyen, who holds a Master of Science in Entrepreneurship for SMU’s Cox School of Business, also launched WSI Search, a digital marketing and Web development firm, in 2008. He served in the Marines for four years all over the world, including Afghanistan, before returning to Dallas and attending SMU.
2011
Jordan Chlapecka and Jennifer Wagstaff were announced last October 3 as two of five national winners of The Big Ad Gig, an annual Advertising Week competition that invites aspiring copywriters and art directors to vie for a 30-day paid freelance position at one of the industry’s best agencies. Jordan won a spot at Deutsch, and Jenny, a position at Ogilvy & Mather. Olivia Anne Smith is an artist whose first show, “Site Reading,” was front and center last September 23 – October 20 in Brooklyn at an experimental gallery called A Slender Gamut. She describes her work: “I throw an inked ball into the walls of a small, unlit room. Word, image, and action are suddenly indistinguishable. A drawing is something to be done to a wall inside the site of display, platform for performance, and exclusive container of art.”
2012
Natalie Blankenship and Ryan Wolfe were married June 8 at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church here in Dallas. They met in high school in Austin. At SMU Ryan was the president of Delta Sigma Pi and Natalie is a member of Delta Gamma. Paul Boynton participated in the summer internship program of Sabre Holdings, a global technology company serving the world’s largest industry – travel and tourism – and now has accepted an offer to work for Sabre Travel Network as a marketing communications associate. Laura Brandt has joined the Dallas-based law firm SettlePou as an associate in the commercial litigation practice group and the insurance defense practice group. David de la Fuente has accepted a position as field representative/caseworker for Congressman Marc Veasey of Texas in the United States House of Representatives. Kyle Hobratschk recently won the Turner House art competition with a copper plate etching of the Turner House itself. His was the winning entry in the Oak Cliff Society of Fine Arts art contest, marking the 100th anniversary of the historic residence. Kyle pursues painting, printmaking, woodworking and furniture design. He is a resident of Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. J. Jody Walker is a new associate at SettlePou, a law firm based in Dallas, where he is a member of the business counsel services practice group. At Abilene Christian University, where he earned his undergraduate degree with a 4.0 GPA, he was a starting linebacker for the Wildcats.
2013
After two years with Merrill Lynch, Trenton B. Owens recently transitioned to the role of financial advisor as an associate partner with the team of Price, Diwlorth & Associates here in North Texas. Trent resides in Dallas.
Chris Petrucelli, head women’s soccer coach Two-time National Coach of the Year and 1995 NCAA Championship coach Chris Petrucelli has been named SMU’s head women’s soccer coach. In 22 years as a head coach, Petrucelli has compiled a 340-110-36 record. His career win total and winning percentage (.737) rank eighth among active Division I coaches.
The six-time conference coach of the year comes to the Hilltop after spending the past 13 seasons as head coach of the University of Texas women’s soccer program, where he compiled a 165-88-26 mark and signed some of the nation’s top recruiting classes. Under his guidance, Texas captured back-to-back Big 12 postseason titles (2006-07) and the program’s first Big 12 regular season title in 2001. He guided the Longhorns to 10 NCAA Tournament appearances (2001-08, 2010-11), and was lauded as the NSCAA Central Region Coach of the Year in 2002 and 2006.
Before joining UT, Petrucelli developed the Notre Dame women’s soccer program into one of the nation’s best from 1990-98. He was honored by the NSCAA as the National Coach of the Year in 1994 and 1995 en route to becoming the only collegiate coach to win the award in consecutive years. During his tenure with Notre Dame, he led the Irish to the 1995 NCAA National Championship, three National Championship title matches (1994-96) and six NCAA Tournament appearances.
By Susan White
When first-year student Caroline Olvera attended an orientation session during the summer, she experienced momentary anxiety. As a member of SMU’s class of 2016, Olvera was introduced to the new University Curriculum (UC), which provides the foundation and structure for undergraduate education. The pre-business/accounting major says that all the requirements to fulfill the University Curriculum “felt overwhelming; I thought I was going to have to take all these credits that wouldn’t apply to my major.”
On the other hand, first-year English/creative writing major Matthew Anderson thought the new UC “sounded unique and was different from other places that I applied,” says Anderson, a Dedman College Scholar and a Hunt Scholar. Also considering courses in film and music, he says the UC “lets you explore interests in more than one thing and still graduate on time.”
Fortunately for Olvera and Anderson, as well as the 1,430 other first-year students who enrolled in SMU this fall, academic advisers assured them that not only were the new University Curriculum’s requirements doable, but many of those courses more than likely would be counted toward their majors. Olvera learned that her courses in microeconomics and introduction to calculus meet three requirements under the UC as well as apply toward her accounting degree. Theatre major Parker Gray realized that his theatre history course would count toward a history requirement as well as toward his major.
SMU administrators emphasize the flexibility of the University’s latest version of the undergraduate curriculum that all students are required to take during their four years at SMU. The new University Curriculum replaces what was known as the General Education Curriculum (GEC) to classes entering SMU since 1997. Classes before that entered under the Common Educational Experience, and even earlier, University College starting in 1960.
Flexibility in the new University Curriculum allows students to put their own stamp on their education and makes it easier for them to pursue multiple majors and minors, while still graduating on time with 122 credit hours (more in some majors). That aspect appealed to Sasha Davis, a Meadows Scholar majoring in theatre with an interest in arts activism, who says she wants to “build my own degree by taking courses in human rights and anthropology.”
Preparing 21st-century innovators and creators
Every so often, universities take stock of their academic offerings, particularly those in the liberal arts. In 2008 President R. Gerald Turner asked SMU’s provost to review the General Education Curriculum to ensure that it was meeting the needs of 21st-century students entering a global marketplace. Provost Paul Ludden asked a committee of 17 faculty and staff members, “What will be the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences that characterize a person with an SMU education, regardless of major?”
The committee used SMU’s liberal arts core as a guide – preparing students to communicate effectively orally and in writing, increasing their critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills, and developing their ability to innovate and create. The goal was to come up with something new that remained true to SMU’s intellectual tradition, laid out in the 1963 Master Plan that states, “Professional studies must rise from the solid foundation of a basic liberal education.”
Part of the committee’s directive was to ensure that SMU meets the intellectual needs of students with higher SAT scores. In the past 16 years, entering students’ SAT scores have risen 134 points.
“Today’s students are more demanding, expect greater challenges from their education, and want more options and flexibility in designing their degree plans,” says committee co-chair Dennis Cordell, professor of history and Dedman College associate dean for General Education and the University Curriculum. “The new curriculum emphasizes interdisciplinary knowledge and research, introducing students to what is unique about higher education and offering faculty opportunities for collaborative teaching.”
In addition, the curriculum will accommodate more Engaged Learning opportunities that include international study, undergraduate research, service learning, internships, and creative and entrepreneurial activities.
‘Knowledge today is profoundly interdisciplinary’
The UC comprises courses in four components: Foundations, Pillars, Capstone, and Proficiencies and Experiences.
Foundations include Discernment and Discourse (previously Rhetoric), Quantitative Foundation, Ways of Knowing, and Personal Wellness and Responsibility. Although some of the components are similar to requirements under the General Education Curriculum, Ways of Knowing is new. The courses in this category, which students take as sophomores, will be team-taught by SMU faculty from various disciplines who will consider a common topic.
“Knowledge today is profoundly interdisciplinary,” says Vicki Hill, assistant dean for the University Curriculum. “Ways of Knowing will introduce students to the different ways in which university communities define and create knowledge. Such as, how do physicists think? What matters to a sociologist? What questions do accountants ask? But what happens when they are all in the same room looking at the same issue?”
The Pillars are five two-course sequences devoted to different ways of pursuing truth in Pure and Applied Sciences; Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures; Historical Contexts; Creativity and Aesthetics; and Philosophical and Religious Inquiry and Ethics.
The Capstone requirement, usually taken during senior year, allows students to use the skills, knowledge and methodologies learned throughout their undergraduate careers and apply them to a course, thesis, project or performance, or an internship, combined with a paper in which students reflect on the experience.
A paradigm shift for the entire University community
In addition, there are eight Proficiencies and Experiences that can be satisfied by coursework or out-of-class activities: writing, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, oral communication, community engagement, human diversity, global engagement and proficiency in a second language.
“The new curriculum encourages faculty to create courses that satisfy more than one requirement,” Hill says. “When courses can be double-counted, students have an easier time pursuing additional majors or minors. The more areas of inquiry with which a student is comfortable, the more equipped he or she will be to face a competitive job market.
“The UC represents a major paradigm shift for the entire University community – teachers and learners alike,” Hill adds. “This change will be accomplished in part through its focus on student learning outcomes (SLOs). The UC’s organizing principle is not where students fulfill the learning objectives, but rather what students have learned and how they demonstrate this knowledge.”
Other ways that the proficiencies can be satisfied include hands-on engagement or thoughtful reflection through a paper, says Hill. For example, “A student tour guide may be able to petition to have that work satisfy the expanded emphasis on oral communication. Or a student who spends spring break volunteering with Habitat for Humanity may be able to have that experience satisfy the emphasis on community engagement.”
In every case, she adds, faculty will review the student’s work to determine if the experience satisfies the requirement.
The “second language proficiency” gave many incoming students and their families pause, and was asked about most often during orientation, says academic adviser Tim Norris. The new UC requires students who enter SMU to improve their second language proficiency through college-level courses or by taking placement exams that show they have attained college-level proficiency. Both Parker Gray and Sasha Davis plan to take Italian because of their interest in the Commedia dell’arte style of theatre from that country. Olvera, who took French in high school, is taking a beginning French class this fall and intermediate French in the spring. All will fulfill the language requirement. Wes K. Waggoner, dean of undergraduate admission and executive director of enrollment services, is on the front line of recruiting students to SMU. He, as much as anyone, has seen a rise in expectations along with a rise in student quality.
“In sending their children to college, today’s families look for a return on their investment, expecting a university education to be relevant and to give their students skills that prepare them for work in a global marketplace,” he says. “We like to tell potential students and their parents that their degree not only will help them get their first job but also their first promotion; the University Curriculum is designed to make them valued employees by giving them the ability to learn new skills in a changing workforce, as well as adapt to and manage multiple careers.”
SMU senior Andrew Lin spent a week in Washington, D.C., with two “rock stars.” He applies that term reverently to James G. Mead, curator emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, and Charles W. Potter, manager of the museum’s marine mammal collection. Lin worked with the renowned whale experts in July while collecting data for his Engaged Learning project comparing the anatomy of a 17-million-year-old beaked whale specimen with the Smithsonian’s modern whale bones and fossil specimens. SMU senior Andrew Lin conducted research at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History last summer as part of his senior research project in geology, an Engaged Learning project.The experience was “very hard and even kind of intimidating – speaking with people who have spent their whole lives working on whales and are legends in the field,” says Lin, a President’s Scholar majoring in geology and biology with a minor in chemistry. “Ultimately it was very rewarding because I learned so much about working with collections, photographing specimens and imaging programs.”
SMU’s Engaged Learning program challenges students to reach beyond the classroom in shaping their educations. The campuswide initiative comprises research, service, internships, creative activities and courses with community components. Fanning out across the globe, 100 undergraduates tackled significant projects under the Engaged Learning umbrella over the summer.
Students can either identify pressing issues and plot their own paths toward solutions or put their stamp on existing projects. Such flexibility suits SMU’s entrepreneurial students, according to Susan Kress, director of the Office of Engaged Learning. Established last year, the office serves as a clearinghouse for information about student engagement, as well as a link to the more than 30 campus organizations and 150 local and global community partners that offer avenues for academic inquiry, career development and civic involvement.
“Through Engaged Learning students have the opportunity to transfer the knowledge and skills of the classroom to real-life situations, learn from their experiences, reflect on them and use them as a basis for further learning,” says Kress.
More than 40 student-driven studies, including Lin’s, were deemed capstone level by a review committee. At the capstone level, students connect their SMU education to goal-oriented projects in the field.
“The project spans two academic years, typically junior and senior years,” says Kress. “It begins with an idea and proposal in the first year and project performance, presentation and publication in the second.”
Close collaboration with a faculty or staff mentor is a key facet of these high-level explorations. Mentors can structure projects to meet criteria for academic credit. Undergraduate researchers Acacea Sherman (left), Christopher Roig (seated) and Isaac Guerra with their faculty adviser Bob Kehoe, associate professor of physics. Kehoe was named SMU’s first Director of Undergraduate Research in September.
A final paper, report or creative product will be archived online in the SMU Digital Repository’s Engaged Learning Collections. Students can earn University Curriculum credits for Oral Communication and Capstone.
In Lin’s case, Louis Jacobs, a professor in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, serves as his mentor. Lin’s Engaged Learning project qualifies as his senior research project in geology.
Leading the effort to identify common needs and increase research opportunities for students is SMU’s first Director of Undergraduate Research Bob Kehoe, an associate professor of physics and coordinator of the Undergraduate Research Assistantships (URA) program for the past two years.
Kehoe joined the University faculty in 2004 and is a member of the SMU team on the ATLAS Experiment, the largest detector in the Large Hadron Collider array at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. He contributed directly to the analysis published over the summer that observed a new particle consistent with the elusive Higgs boson “God particle.”
His own experience as an undergraduate researcher at Notre Dame informs his belief that a chance for hands-on discovery in a real-world environment “bridges the gap between the classroom and the external professional world and can be a very important stepping stone for students toward their careers.”
Michael McCarthy ’12 believes his Engaged Learning project launched his career on the right trajectory, calling it a “definite stepping stone” to a position as a business systems analyst for Epsilon, a marketing technology firm in Dallas.
“Now I’m expanding on the technical skill set I built at SMU, while learning how to manage client demands and building communication skills,” he explains.
For an Engaged Learning project, the senior major in statistics and mathematics analyzed data for Veterans Affairs in Dallas to evaluate home care support provided to veterans with spinal cord injuries.
“Through my project at the VA I learned how to devise a solution to a complex problem using data and how to manage a long-term multi-stage project,” he says. “Because of this experience, I entered into my role at Epsilon with a strong advantage, and it made the transition from college to industry much easier.”
– Patricia Ward
From the ruins of an old fort and 13th-century Indian pueblo, SMU grew a campus that provides a unique setting for teaching and research.
An act of serendipity enabled Fort Burgwin to enjoy a second life as a University campus. The property was owned by a Taos-area lumberman who had heard that a fort once existed on the land but was unable to locate it. He enlisted the help of Fred Wendorf, then anthropologist of New Mexico, who not only found the buried ruins of the log fort but also excavated and reconstructed it.
SMU-in-Taos Cultural Institute
The annual SMU-in-Taos Cultural Institute
takes advantage of the historical, cultural and recreational riches of Northern New Mexico for a weekend of learning and outdoor adventure. The 2013 Taos Cultural Institute will be held July 18-21. Online registration will begin on January 1 on the institute’s site at smu.edu/culturalinstitute. Seven courses covering history, political science, archaeology, art, cooking and other topics of interest are now being finalized. Last summer, participants got a bird’s-eye view of the Rio Grande River during a hot-air balloon tour. More information about the SMU-in-Taos Cultural Institute is available online or by e-mailing taosci@smu.edu or calling 214-768-8267.
When Wendorf joined the SMU faculty in 1964, he brought with him the idea of developing Fort Burgwin into a research center. The late Gov. William P. Clements, Jr. ’39 was chair of SMU’s Board of Governors at the time and helped the University begin the process of acquiring the property that became SMU-in-Taos.
Over the years support from donors such as trustee emeritus Bill Hutchison ’54, ’55 has helped SMU-in-Taos develop into a premier site for research and scholarship on the Southwest. Hutchison remembers coming upon the campus “accidentally, while driving to Taos” en route to his ranch one day in the 1970s. He had not known of SMU’s presence in New Mexico, but it immediately captured his imagination. He comments, “What could be more interesting to somebody who likes the history and the culture of New Mexico than the ruins of an old fort and an archaeological dig?”
Subsequently Hutchison chaired the SMU Board of Governors, was a member of the SMU Board of Trustees, and led the Fort Burgwin Executive Committee. He recalls that after touring the property with Clements to determine its needs and potential, “we engaged in a fundraising effort that resulted in the building of the art center/auditorium, faculty housing, repairs to the [student] casitas” and improvements to the fort itself.
SMU’s interest in further developing Fort Burgwin foundered, however, during the budget-challenged 1980s and early ’90s. Hutchison credits its survival to Biology Professor William B. Stallcup Jr. ’41, former interim president of SMU who became director of SMU-in-Taos after his retirement. “Bill brought the thing back to life.”
Any hesitation about the importance of SMU-in-Taos ended with the appointment of R. Gerald Turner as president in 1995, Hutchison says. “Dr. Turner got the entire administration behind the efforts to improve and emphasize SMU-in-Taos. Talking to students who have studied there, I think it’s a great environment for learning and a very unusual experience for University students.”
The University’s renewed focus on SMU-in-Taos has been supported by both longtime and more recent donors. Thanks to recent gifts and purchases, the campus now sprawls across 430 acres – almost twice the size of the 237-acre main campus in Dallas. And the land now includes new and refurbished structures to facilitate study, teaching and research. Patsy ’54 and Bill Hutchison ’54, ’55 are longtime supporters of SMU-in-Taos. One of the most well-known community events held on the campus, the Ima Leete Hutchison Concert Series, is made possible by an endowment they established in 1989 in honor of his mother.
A gift from the estate of Bill Clements of three houses and 123 acres adjoining the campus continues a decades-long legacy of support. The new gift includes art, furnishings and other household items. In addition to the 2,800-square-foot main house, there is a 2,000-square-foot dwelling and a 1,400-square-foot cottage. A committee is considering options for the houses, one of which is to use the facilities for a conference/retreat center available to the SMU community and outside groups.
Over the years the late governor and his wife, Rita, provided more than $7.5 million for facilities and programs at SMU-in-Taos, including $1 million for the construction of Wendorf Information Commons.
Among other recent acquisitions and improvements:
The purchase of the 2,000-square-foot home of Fred Wendorf, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at SMU, and five acres of land on the far eastern edge of the campus. Visiting scholars and SMU faculty will stay in the home.
The conversion of Faculty Casita Two into a true duplex containing a one-bedroom apartment and a separate two-bedroom apartment. The remodeled casita, now suitable for faculty with families, was funded by an anonymous gift. Two similar faculty casitas await the same transformation when funding is obtained.
The renovation of the three-bedroom officers’ quarters, supported by a gift from SMU-in-Taos Board Chair Roy Coffee, Jr. and his wife, Janis. The Coffees also helped fund improvements to student casitas.
In 2009 support for new and renovated student casitas, as well as technology upgrades and improvements to winterize facilities, transformed SMU-in-Taos. The changes made it possible to operate the campus from May through December, accommodating a new fall semester and a one-week Alternative Break volunteer program in March.
Casita Clements, a new student casita funded by Bill and Rita Clements, became the first commercial or institutional building in the Taos area to achieve Gold LEED certification for environmentally responsible construction. Other named residences and the donors supporting them include Casita Armstrong, funded by Bill Armstrong ’82 and Liz Martin Armstrong ’82 of Denver; Casita Harvey, funded by trustee Caren H. Prothro in honor of her mother, Juanita Legge Harvey; Casita Thetford, funded by Jo Ann Geurin Thetford ’69, ’70 of Graham, Texas; and Casita Ware, funded by trustee Richard Ware ’68 and William Ware ’01 of Amarillo, Texas.
Additional support for housing improvements has been provided by Dallas residents Maurine Dickey ’67, Richard T. Mullen ’61 and Jenny Mullen, and Stephen Sands ’70 and Marcy Sands ’69; and Irene Athos and the late William J. Athos of St. Petersburg, Florida.
Technology enhancements to provide cell phone and Internet connectivity also moved the campus into the 21st century. In partnership with Commnet, a wireless phone service provider, the campus has its own cell tower that offers full-bar signal strength. Wireless Internet access is available throughout SMU-in-Taos, and a recent broadband speed upgrade improved real-time video streaming. Other updates include new LCD projectors for classrooms, a large-format color printer for photography instruction and new flat-screen televisions for the dining hall.
The improvements and additions are part of a new master plan for SMU-in-Taos supported by the Executive Board and members of the Friends of SMU-in-Taos. Other components of the plan are being implemented as funding becomes available.
A ceramics class taught in an outdoor studio attracted sophomore Alexandra Jones to SMU-in-Taos for the August term. The chance to dive more deeply into an opportunity she calls “life-changing” cemented her decision to remain for the fall semester. Students now have the option to spend a fall semester at SMU-in-Taos, thanks to new and renovated casitas and upgrades to winterize facilities. The photo above was taken by Associate Professor Debora Hunter, who teaches a popular photography course. Among the students sitting on top of the wall are sophomores Alexandra Jones, fifth from the left, and Sam Clark, second from the right, quoted below.
Jones, a Provost’s Scholar and BBA Scholar, prizes the small class sizes, the intense focus of the academic courses and the “amazing Wellness opportunities – everything from white-water rafting to horseback riding.” But what makes the Taos experience like no other is the camaraderie that develops among students and with faculty, she says.
“The living-learning environment has allowed me to connect with my professors in new ways,” says Jones, an accounting major with minors in anthropology and Mandarin Chinese. “Students are valued and respected like colleagues because we’re all expected to contribute to the community, and we’re all working toward the common goal of getting the most out of our time here.”
Faculty and their families reside on campus, so students “see them as individuals with outside lives, and faculty interact with students both in and out of the classroom,” says Mike Adler, associate professor of anthropology and executive director of SMU-in-Taos since 2006.
New Field School Excavations
Archaeological excavations in Taos continue to yield new clues to lost chapters of Southwestern history. Over the summer new digs focused on the Fort Burgwin guardhouse on the SMU-in-Taos campus and at a pithouse site on private land nearby.
The guardhouse appears on early maps of the fort, which helped a team from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, locate the building’s foundation. The recovery of artifacts and documentation of the site will continue next summer.
The excavation is the most recent project of the Taos Collaborative Archaeological Program, an education and research partnership between SMU’s field school and the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute initiated in 2009.
New research by SMU students aims to shed light on the Pithouse period, which dates from approximately 900 A.D. to 1250 A.D. Lauren O’Brien, a doctoral candidate in Dedman College’s Department of Anthropology, started fieldwork with a team of three graduate students in early summer. In June and July she continued the project with five undergraduate students as the leader of SMU’s field school.
Little is known about the Pithouse period in the northern Taos Valley, she says. The ground dwellings pre-date New Mexico’s iconic pueblo structures. “We are the first group to begin research on and excavation of the site,” which is about 10 miles north of Taos in Arroyo Hondo, she says.
The pithouse measures approximately nine feet deep and 15 feet square. The semi-subterranean design provided natural climate control: The interior temperature hovered around 55 degrees, and with the addition of a fire, warmed to a cozy 76 degrees.
Among the finds so far are pottery, lithics (stone tools) and several worked turquoise pieces, which means the stones’ surfaces had been smoothed by humans using tools, says O’Brien. “We’re not really sure what the turquoise was used for; perhaps it was inlaid in pots.”
The objects, along with soil samples and other materials from the site, are now being studied on the Dallas campus.
“The lab is really where it all starts to come together,” explains O’Brien. “For example, soil sample testing will help us understand the environment: what was growing, what the pithouse inhabitants were eating and so forth.”
“There’s so much to learn about who they were,” she adds. “We’ll be looking for similarities and differences among materials collected from each pithouse and the surrounding activity areas.”
SMU-in-Taos opened for classes in 1974 on the site of Fort Burgwin, a pre-Civil War fort, as a unique center for teaching and research drawing from the cultural and natural resources of Northern New Mexico. The grounds include the site of a 13th-century Indian pueblo that has been the focus of SMU’s archaeology field school. Each year approximately 300 students take courses in the humanities; sciences; business; and performing, visual and communication arts.
Students enrolled in the fall semester take 12 to 18 hours of courses that meet core undergraduate requirements in a variety of disciplines, or they can focus on courses to earn a minor in business. The term is divided into four blocks, each of which lasts about three weeks.
Sophomore Sam Clark, an applied physiology major, believes “the block system makes it worthwhile to take the business minor route in Taos.” He took management, marketing, finance and personal finance, one course per block.
“I feel like I learned more because I got to focus on one subject at a time in a low-stress environment,” he says.
Breaks between sessions allow time for outdoor adventures. In September students visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado for sand sledding – sliding down dunes on sand boards or sleds – before beginning Block 2 of their classes.
An integral part of the curriculum is the “Taos Experience,” an anthropology class taught by Adler. “We take students off campus into this very diverse and complicated place we call Taos, which is very different from Dallas,” he explains. “Students get a better understanding of the many historical, ethnic and cultural differences that make up this place.”
Internships with local nonprofit organizations enable students like Jones to give back to their adopted community while developing practical skills. She works with Taos CPA, which provides accounting services for local nonprofits.
SMU also strengthens ties with Taos through cultural programs such as the Ima Leete Hutchison Concert Series, which showcases the musical talents of Meadows students each summer.
The Summer Colloquium Lecture Series brings members of the Taos community to campus on Tuesday evenings to hear SMU faculty and guest speakers discuss a broad range of topics. More than 1,000 people attended the free lectures last summer. And a fall series sponsored by SMU-in-Taos and the University of New Mexico-Taos offers free lectures in September and October.
Inspired by the strong service-learning link forged between SMU and Taos, Jones pledges to become more active when she returns to Dallas in January.
“It’s easy to sink into the shadows and let other people do the work,” she says. “At SMU-in-Taos I’ve developed a sense of responsibility to contribute to the community. Involvement has become a habit that I’ll take back with me.” – Patricia Ward
Maurice W. Acers*
Lindalyn Bennett Adams
Allison Allen Holland
Richard A. Arnett* William W. Aston* Sue Davis Baier
Fritz E. Barton, Jr.
Don R. Benton
Laura Lee S. Blanton* Floyd E. Bloom
Ina C. Brown* Juan Chacin
Donald D. Clayton
Charles M. Cole* Aylett R. Cox* Glenn A. Cox, Jr.
Robert H. Dennard
Charles O. Galvin* Arvel E. Haley* Charles M. Harmon, Jr.* Lawrence R. Herkimer
John A. Hill
Roy M. Huffington* Ray L. Hunt
Nancy Ann Hunter Hunt
George E. Hurt, Jr.* William L. Hutchison
F. Ben James, Jr.
Julia C. Jeffress*
Samuel R. Johnson
E. Gene Keiffer**Deceased
Frank H. Kidd, Jr.*
Sally Rhodus Lancaster
Jed Mace*
Virginia Holt McFarland
Don Meredith*
Carmen M. Michael
Ruth A. Montgomery
P. O’B. Montgomery, Jr.*
Stephen Halcuit Moore, Jr.*
Noreen Lewis Nicol*
William F. Nicol
Paul E. Page*
Cecil E. Peeples*
Charles H. Pistor, Jr.*
Lee G. Pondrom
Kenneth Prewitt, Jr.
Aaron Q. Sartain*
Carl Sewell
Mark Shepherd*
William T. Solomon
Susan Herring Stahl*
Ellen C. Terry
Robert Hyer Thomas
Paul J. Thomas*
Gail G. Thomas
Charles H. Trigg*
Kitty Trigg*
Charles H. Webb, Jr.
Temple W. Williams, Jr.
Evie Jo C. Wilson*
Dr. Jack Rudd is founder and full-time volunteer field director of Teethsavers International Inc. In Africa he teaches a six-year molar course, whose graduates, in teams of 10-15, travel by truck and use simple hand instruments to fill the teeth of children in villages and primary schools. In 2007 Dr. Rudd received the Award of Distinction for Continuing Education from the Academy of Dentistry International. His soon-to-be-released book, Grateful for the Pain, traces his early struggles followed by the privilege of serving some of the world’s poorest children.
1961
Wynona Wieting Lipsett (M.M.Ed. ’83) is the proud grandmother of Andrew Taylor Lipsett (see Class of 2009).
1966
The Rev. Dr. Roy H. Ryan has a new e-book, Hot Button Issues for Religion and Politics, available from Amazon-Kindle and Barnes & Noble-Nook.
1967
Pam Lontos sold her public relations firm PR/PR and opened Pam Lontos Consulting in Orlando, FL.
1968
Bryan Robbins was inducted into the Texas Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame April 13, 2012. He was a three-time All-American diver at SMU and coached the 1976 and 1980 Olympic diving teams. For 39 years he taught physical education and wellness at SMU, retiring in 2008, and now teaches yoga to faculty, staff and students.
1969
Charles R. (Rocky) Saxbe, an attorney at Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, was named in the 2012 edition of Chambers USA as a “Leader in Their Field” in litigation: general commercial.
Barbara Petersen Scott was elected to the board of directors of the Bank of Charles Town (WV) and its holding company, Potomac Bancshares Inc., at the annual shareholders meeting May 15, 2012. She is president of Summit Point Raceway Associates Inc. and BSR Inc., the operating entities for the 785-acre Summit Point Motorsports Park. She lives on a farm in Middleburg, VA.
1971
David Arthur (M.F.A. ’73) has published a second novel, The Kingdom of Keftiu (Brighton Publishing), an archaeological mystery set in 1935-36, which takes the reader from the ruins of an Egyptian cave to an island in the Aegean Sea, all somehow involving the fabled lost civilization of Atlantis. Steve Browne was recognized by the Foundation Fighting Blindness with its Volunteer of the Year Award for the Southwest Region, acknowledging his service supporting the Foundation’s mission to save and restore sight lost to retinal diseases. The award was presented before an audience of 500 at the VISIONS 2012 national conference last June 30 in Minneapolis. Earlier this year he was instrumental in the success of the 4th Annual San Antonio/Austin 5K VisionWalk. Over the last four years his “Sight for Sore Eyes” team has raised $270,000 for vision-saving research, and he co-chairs a walk that has generated more than $660,000 since 2009. He is an attorney with the San Antonio-based firm Langley & Banack. Rev. Howard (Rusty) Hedges has been appointed senior pastor of Holy Covenant United Methodist Church in Carrollton, TX. He is married to the former Betsy Pharr.
1974
Jan M. Carroll,a business litigation attorney at Barnes & Thornburg LLP’s Indianapolis office, is a Super Lawyer in the March 2012 issue of Indiana Super Lawyers magazine, and she’s on the list of the top 25 female Super Lawyers. Elizabeth Becker (Beth) Henley is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Crimes of the Heart,” performed last summer at the Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. Dan M. Linn announces his retirement from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts effective July 31, 2012. What started as a two-year learning experience evolved into a 40-year career. For the past 10 years he has been the manager for evaluation, development and succession planning, helping to ensure that the state tax audit function is ready for the challenges of the future.
1975
Sol Villasana has been named Of Counsel at White & Wiggins LLP in Dallas, the largest and fastest growing full-service, minority-owned law firm in Texas. Pat Wheeler is an editor with Texas LinksMagazines,host of a weekly radio show about golf, “Texas Links on the Air,” and now an author. His first book, When Golf Was Fun (Tales from the Late, Great Beer and Barbecue Circuit), was recently published.
1976
Betty Francine Carraro, Ph.D.,started September 1 as director of the Wichita Falls (TX) Museum of Art at Midwestern State University. She has been executive director at three museums across the country; has held teaching positions at Texas State University, The University of Texas and SMU; and has completed a special teaching assignment at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England.
1977
Louis M. Mathis has written TheTear of Ra, The Second Coming of 9/11 (January 2012), available at Barnes & Noble and in paperback and e-book format.
1978
David Cassidy is an attorney at Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson in Baton Rouge, LA, listed among the leading lawyers in the 2012 edition of Chambers USA. In addition, he was selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2013. Rod MacIlvaine and his wife, the former Cindy Funkhouser, enjoy their work at Grace Community Church in Bartlesville, OK, where Rod is senior pastor. Last March they traveled to Santa Marta, Colombia, to co-lead a marriage conference for pastors and spouses. For 41 years Rod and his father have sailed large yachts recreationally. The book Successful Bareboat Chartering: The Essential Guide for Captain and Crew (Intermediate Publishers, May 2012) grew from their list of things they do when they sail. Their story was featured in the June 2012 issue of SAIL magazinein the article “A Father-Son Tradition: Forty-One Years of Bareboat Chartering in the Caribbean.” Gary Sloan had a book reading and signing at theatreWashington (DC) last April 27 for In Rehearsal: In the World, In the Room, and on Your Own (Routledge Publishing, London 2011, New York 2012), his “how-to approach to the rehearsal process” based on 30 years of professional acting experience.
1979
Idalene (Idie) Kesner has been named interim dean effective October 1 of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, where she is associate dean of faculty and research and the Frank P. Popoff Chair of Strategic Management. Her latest teaching award came from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, which has a joint M.B.A. program with the Kelley School.
Paul Carney received the 2012 Educator of the Year Award from the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System. An instructor in English nationally recognized for his work on college readiness for writing, he is the developer and coordinator of Ready or Not Writing, an online program allowing high school students to submit their writing to college English instructors for feedback and support, and the creator of Roadside Poetry, a public arts project celebrating the “personal pulse of poetry in the rural landscape.” He lives on an eight-acre hobby farm in Underwood, MN. Timothy R. R. Gordon has been named to the board of directors of Middlesex Genealogical Society in Darien, CT. Denise Marrs is the general manager for American Airlines in San Francisco, where her group has won three customer service awards. Working for American for 30 years, she has traveled extensively and worked in places such as London and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Her home is in Pacifica, CA. Vernon Scarborough, Ph.D., is a professor of anthropology at the University of Cincinnati. He was part of a multiuniversity team to visit Tikal, a prominent urban city of the ancient Maya. Their findings on the Maya water and land-use systems appeared in an article that Dr. Scarborough co-authored: “Water and Sustainable Land Use at the Ancient Tropical City of Tikal, Guatemala,” which appeared last July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and received prominent coverage in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
1981
Deborah Ballard (M.F.A. ’90) is a Dallas artist whose sculpture was presented last May-June in an exhibition at the Valley House Gallery and throughout its sculpture garden. Seeing Egyptian antiquities on a recent trip influenced her sense of scale as revealed in her “Memories of Egypt” series. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Meadows Museum at SMU, the San Angelo Museum of Art and the Museum of Art of Monterrey, Mexico. Denise Gerneth, writing as Denise Weeks, has published a mystery novel, Nice Work (Oak Tree Press, 2012), winner of the Oak Tree Press First Mystery Novel contest in 2011. The first book in a series, it’s available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or any bookstore. She used a pseudonym writing young adult fantasy novels and has done ghostwriting, but Nice Work is her first novel using her married name.
1982
Robert (Bob) Cheek plans to attend his 30th SMU class reunion. He has been disabled since 1993.
1983
Randy Krone is a writer-editor for the Dallas Mavericks official Wikipedia page, featuring the history of the Mavericks basketball franchise from 1980 through present day. Sheron C. Patterson (M.Div. ’89, D.Min. ’96) is a well-known Dallas pastor, author and breast cancer awareness advocate. On May 13 she launched a fundraiser, “A Year of Living and Giving,” celebrating her five-year mark in surviving breast cancer by raising $200,000 to provide free mammograms for low income women in Dallas. She will partner with the Methodist Health System for screenings in areas with high cancer rates and low screening services.
1984
Joe Drape, author of the bestsellers Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen, The Race for the Triple Crown and Black Maestro, is an award-winning sports reporter for The New York Times. His Aug. 1, 2012, Times article on Forrest Gregg, “Coach Who Revived SMU Looks Back With Pride,” recounts his visit with the legendary coach who restored integrity to the SMU football program in the late 1980s. Now, after spending the past year with the football team at West Point, Joe has written Soldiers First: Duty, Honor, Country, and Football at West Point (Times Books, September 2012), an inside story of the 2011 Army football season. Joe lives with his wife and son in New York City. Jennie Fish Firth (M.L.A. ’90) married Jeff Johnson July 13, 2012, in Austin, TX. John Gilchrist passed the examinations for advancement to Fellow in the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy, one of only 180 healthcare development professionals in North America to have earned this distinction.
1985
Linda Beheler (B.F.A. ’86, M.B.A. ’99) has joined the SMU Meadows School of the Arts Communications Studies Advisory Board. She works for Celanese Corporation, a Fortune 500 chemical and specialty materials company based in Dallas, with responsibility for global internal and external communications. Laurie A. Farnan received the 2011 Great Lakes Region of Music Therapy Scholarly Activity Award and the national American Music Therapy Association 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award. She has influenced professional music therapy practice for three decades, having served as the coordinator of music therapy services at Central Wisconsin Center for the Developmentally Disabled for 36 years, training 121 interns. She developed a partnership with the Madison Symphony Orchestra as a consultant for the “HeartStrings” community engagement project, and she has been involved in Very Special Arts. Rick Mase was promoted to vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where he has worked for 26 years. He has responsibility for the cash services function. James T. (Jim) Moorhead is founder/publisher of Renew, a magazine and website he started in 2010 to stress the positive aspects of living in recovery (www.RenewEveryDay.com). There is much in every magazine to inspire and inform recovering alcoholics and addicts. Subscribers include treatment centers, sober living homes, therapists and individuals across the country. He lives in Chicago. Cynthia Colbert Riley was appointed vice president for institutional advancement for the University of St. Thomas in Houston and will lead the University’s fundraising efforts in the “Faith in our Future” capital campaign. Most recently she served as the interim executive director and vice president for development at The Methodist Hospital Foundation in Houston. Linda A. Wilkins has established Wilkins Finston Law Group LLP, practicing in employee benefits and executive compensation. She is listed in Best Lawyers in America in employee benefits law.
1988
Chris Hymer and Debbie Suchy reconnected after 25 years during last fall’s SMU v. UTEP tailgate and were married March 23, 2012. He is an executive chef for Lone Tree USA based in Utah, and Debbie owns Eclectic Galleries in Snider Plaza near SMU, specializing in American fine craft.
1989
Gregory W. Kugle has been appointed to the board of directors for Meritas, a global alliance of 175 independent business law firms in 75 countries. He is a director of the Honolulu-based law firm Damon Key Leong Kupchak Hastert.
Sharon Humble is managing partner of law firm Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson LLP. She was honored by Philadelphia SmartCEO magazine as one of this year’s Brava winners July 18 at the 2012 Brava! Awards ceremony, where the achievements of 25 of Greater Philadelphia’s women business leaders were celebrated. She also was mentioned in the Philadelphia Business Journal August 9 as a recipient of the Minority Business Leader Advocate Award, which recognizes minority and nonminority executives who support minority businesses.
Artist Lee Mulcahy (Ph.D. ’00) of Aspen, CO, exhibited at the Red Brick Center for the Arts Biennale in Aspen and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin in May 2012.
1991
Marc Chehlaoui relocated to Lafayette, CA, with his wife, Christina, son Blake, 7, and daughter Grace, 5. Marc is a managing director in the institutional equity sales division of Needham & Company in San Francisco. Jonathan G. Polak (J.D. ’94) of law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP was named a “Leader in Their Field” in litigation: general commercial in the 2012 edition of Chambers USA.
1992
Ken Ichiro Aiso is a violinist and former student of SMU Professor Alessandra Comini. Having performed as warm-up at some of her lectures around the country, he has obtained an invitation for them to do a dual performance on Richard Strauss in Tokyo December 1. He is currently on tour in Europe. David Gunn is the new vice president of business development and strategy at SonarMed, a medical device manufacturer in Indianapolis, where he builds relationships with healthcare systems and creates partnerships with strategic industry participants. He works in the Houston office. Andy Wolber writes a column for TechRepublic.com’s Google in the Enterprise blog. The column helps organizations understand and leverage the power of Google apps.
1993
Macy Jaggers (J.D. ’02) founded the criminal defense law firm Macy Jaggers, Defense Attorney PLLC. She lives in Dallas with her husband, Michael, and two children: Jenna, 16, and Max, 10. Berna Rhodes-Ford was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Southern Nevada chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners at the 14th Annual Women of Distinction Awards. She is managing shareholder of Rhodes-Ford & Associates, a law firm specializing in corporate, employment and healthcare law. She is a past president of the National Association of Women Business Owners in Southern Nevada and a Leader Under 40 in Nevada Business Magazine.
1994
James Isleib and Jennifer Cook Isleib, married 15 years ago at SMU’s Perkins Chapel, celebrated their anniversary with a trip to Italy. He is CFO for ghg, grey healthcare group, and she is vice president of accounting operations for Russell Stover Candies. They live in Leawood, KS, with their two dogs, Cosmo and Camden.
1995
A. Shonn Evans Brown (J.D. ’98) is a Dallas trial attorney and new partner at Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail Shank LLP. She is secretary-treasurer of the Dallas Bar Association and has served as co-chair of the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers’ committee to support diversity and education. She is a director of both the Dallas Black Theater and Bryan’s House and has held leadership positions with the Dallas Museum of Art’s Junior Associates Circle and the Junior League of Dallas. She has been recognized five times in the Texas Rising Stars listing and was named in 2006 by D magazine as one of Dallas’ top lawyers under the age of 40. She was honored in the statewide “Multicultural Power 100” list published in 2010 by the Texas Diversity Council. Shonn serves on the SMU Alumni Board. Melinda Morrison Gulick is Arizona’s first Cox Conserves Hero as announced by Cox Communications and The Trust for Public Land, an honor based on her longstanding commitment to and passion for Arizona’s open space. She also volunteers for the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, the City of Scottsdale Preserve Commission and the Desert Discovery Center Task Force. Colleen Smith McTaggart and her husband, Lawrence, welcomed their third child, Patrick James, Jan. 11, 2012. Their older son John is 5, and daughter Claire is 2. Unrhea Session announces the birth of her daughter, Teagan Elizabeth, Dec. 19, 2011.
1996
Michael Brown has been named Head of School at The Outdoor Academy in Pisgah Forest, NC, where he lives with his wife, Susan Daily, and their children, Noah and Wren. The academy is for high school sophomores and emphasizes intellectual achievement, environmental awareness and character development. Anthony P. de Bruyn received his 10-year Employee Service Award from The University of Texas System, where he is assistant vice chancellor for public affairs and the chief spokesperson for the UT System Board of Regents, UT System chancellor and the executive leadership team. He lives in Austin and enjoys visiting the 15 University of Texas institutions across the state. Jeremy Kulisheck (Ph.D. ’05) was named forest archaeologist for the Cibola National Forest in Albuquerque, where he oversees the archaeologic and historic preservation programs for the national forest lands in central New Mexico and the national grasslands in northeastern New Mexico, the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma.
1997
Andrew Graham is an attorney in the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP selected as a 2012 “Rising Star” in the April 2012 issue of Texas Monthly magazine.
1998
Mark Rainey Allen and his wife, Lauren, and daughter Rainey announce the birth of Sydney Wheeler Feb. 13, 2012. Mark owns Case Advances LLC, which provides litigation funding to clients of attorneys.
1999
Amy Albritton Eaker joined the staff of SMU’s Planned and Endowment Giving May 29 as director, encouraging larger gifts to the University through planned giving opportunities. Previously she was in private law practice focusing on estate planning and probate. Since 2004 she worked in the nonprofit and charitable trust administration division of JPMorgan. Timothy Janus was crowned world burping champion by the World Burping Federation last June 8 in New York City. Jason Shanks was listed in the April 2012 issue of Texas Monthly magazine as a “Rising Star” for 2012. He is an attorney in the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP.
Quinton Crenshaw has joined Carlson Restaurants Worldwide as director of communications, overseeing employee and executive communications and public relations for the U.S. division of T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants. Previously he was senior manager of global communications for Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Tré Douglas received a Master of Science degree in health care administration from the University of Maryland, University College May 12, 2012. He completed an internship at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital with the Internal Audit Department. Tammy Nguyen Lee was a recipient of the 2012 National Association of Asian American Professionals Leaders of Excellence Award. She was honored in 2010 with SMU’s Emerging Leader Award. She and husband George Lee, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, are founders of ATG Against The Grain Productions, a nonprofit organization that produces films, media, programs and events that promote awareness and unity of Asian- American culture, artistry and identity.
2001
Kenyon Adams is a vocalist, songwriter and actor in plays and the movie “Lucky Life.” He performs original music in New York City and recently released an EP. In 2011 he joined American Restless, a Brooklyn-based blues-rock band in which he sings, writes and plays harmonica. He works as arts ministries coordinator at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Hear Kenyon at www.reverbnation.com/kenyonadams. Michael Arthur Harper (M.S. ’03, Ph.D. ’09) received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award from the Secretary of the Navy, honoring his service from June 2009 to June 2012 as the Office of Naval Research Science Advisor for Commander, Naval Forces Central Command and Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet. His efforts supported Partnership-Strength Presence; Maritime Security Operations; the Struggle Against Violent Extremism; and Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom and New Dawn. He was selected recently to serve as associate director for Irregular and Expeditionary Warfare with the Office of Naval Research.
2002
Jonathan Adamson has been named a partner in the Dallas office of Hall Capital Partners to lead the company’s presence in Texas. His experience managing private equity funds in the distribution, manufacturing, energy and real estate sectors will benefit Hall’s growth in Texas. Misty Morley Broome (J.D. ’08) is a partner in the recently formed Dallas law firm Johnson Broome Cantu PC. Jonathan Childers, an attorney with Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail Shank LLP in Dallas, was named to the 2012 Texas “Rising Stars” list published in the April 2012 Texas Monthly magazine. Holly F. Smith owns Holly Smith Reps in Dallas, representing local commercial photographers and a video production company.
The Rev. Michael W. Waters (M.Div. ’06) and his wife, Yulise Reaves Waters (J.D. ’08) announce the birth of their third child, daughter Liberty Grace, Feb. 1, 2012. He is founding pastor of Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church in Dallas, and she is an assistant city attorney for the City of Dallas. Michael has been interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corporation and National Public Radio for recent writings. Last May he was awarded a $10,000 fellowship from the Beatitudes Society, one of only eight emerging faith leaders from across the United States to be so recognized. The yearlong fellowship will equip him with the resources and relationships to create new models for church and the pursuit of social justice. He is completing a Doctor of Ministry degree at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology.
2003
Dodee Frost Crockett was recognized on Barron’s magazine’s list of “America’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisors” published June 4, 2012. She lives in Dallas and has been at the Merrill Lynch Wealth Management office for 32 years. Ashley Hamilton has returned from working abroad with Disney Cruise Lines and recently took a position with Anthony Travel Inc. as an event manager. Eddie Healy began playing guitar at age 13. Now he is a classical guitarist, composer and performer in Dallas-Fort Worth and music instructor at several area colleges. “Direction” is his new album of guitar music he composed. Listen to the entire CD at http://www.reverbnation.com/eddiehealy. Jerrika Hinton wrote, produced and directed a short film, “The Strangely Normal,” which is now on the festival circuit. Bill LaRossa has become a partner with HelioPro LLC, a manufacturer of customized magnetic bracelets. His entrepreneurial endeavors include LaRossa Shoe Inc., a past recipient of the SBANE New England Innovation Award. He is a principal of W.L. Trading LLC, the exclusive distributor of the Primigi brand of children’s clothing and shoes from Italy, and a board member of the McDonough Foundation and the Catholic Charities Leadership Council. He lives in Hingham, MA, with his wife, Gina (’84), and daughter, Olivia. James McClurdy is a Marine staff sergeant and member of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. He recently met with WWII veterans at their memorial in Washington, DC, and played “Taps” for their fallen comrades. Eva Parks joined NBC 5 Investigates as an investigative producer in 2012. In their first year together, the investigative team has won two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, for Best News Series and Continuing Coverage, and nationaly, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Investigative Report. John Rosenbaum announces the birth of Grayson and Weston, his second set of twins in two years.
2004
Jennifer Bronstein partnered with Allison Darby Gorjian and Betsy Dalton Roth to found a new theater company in Los Angeles: Little Candle Productions. Their mission is to bring large-scale theatrical events to the stage for a single, affordable performance. The first production was Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale”at a 1,400-seat theater. Jennifer writes that Little Candle Productions is a fiscally sponsored arts organization, so all donations are 100 percent fully tax deductible (www.littlecandleproductions.com). Virginia Kull is a theater actress in New York City. Performing in “Rapture, Blister, Burn” at Playwright Horizons, she was reviewed in the New York City Stage June 8, 2012, as stealing the show, definitely someone to watch out for on the New York City stage. The New York Times has described her as “lovely, convincing, and so good.” Blake C. Norvell, a 2007 graduate of UCLA Law, was published in law journals at Yale, USC and Temple, one of the highest honors a practicing attorney or law professor can receive. The full text of each article is available on WestLaw and LexisNexis, databases used by attorneys and judges for legal research. He has lectured on the articles and has been invited to New York City to give four lectures to attorneys.
2005
Ashley Arendale (M.S.A. ’06)married Elvin Lewis Baum II on August 25, 2013, in Littleton, Colorado. The newlyweds reside in Denver and Colorado Springs, where Elvin serves at Fort Carson as a member of the United States Army. She is an investment accounting director at Archstone, a luxury apartment owner, developer and operator. Emily Jordan Cox and her husband, Grant, welcomed their first son, George Steven, May 1, 2012. She is director of policy for Governor Mike Beebe of Arkansas. Carl Dorvil (M.B.A. ’08) is president and CEO of Group Excellence, listed in Inc. Magazine as one of the country’s 500 fastest-growing private companies for 2011, the only tutoring or K-12 education-related company on the list. He founded Group Excellence in 2004 while an undergraduate at SMU. Now the Dallas-based company has divisions in San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Fort Worth. Using college students and young professionals as mentors and role models, Group Excellence provides tutoring programs to school districts and community organizations throughout Texas. Carl recently announced a branding campaign, including a new logo and website. Emily Robards married Jay Minner last May 12 at Eden Gardens State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, FL. They live in Atlanta, where she is on SMU’s Atlanta Alumni Board and volunteers for the SMU Centennial Campaign. Craig B. Smith is a community advocate and financial analyst for the City of Dallas, very involved with the Trinity River corridor project. The corridor is an area of urban open space and forest spanning 20 miles through the center of the city. He also works in business development with the country of Chile.
2006
Melissa G. Iyer has been named a shareholder of Burch & Cracchiolo in the Phoenix office. Since joining the firm in 2006, she played a key role in a landmark case before the Supreme Court of the United States. Brent Loewen is founder and CEO of Cube Billing, a Cloud-based cost allocation and chargeback system. Joshua L. (Josh) Peugh went to Seoul, Korea, after graduation to perform ballet and stayed on as a freelance modern dance artist, co-founding Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, an award-winning international group with performances in Korea, China and Japan. He also is associate choreographer and performer with the Bruce Wood Dance Project. Returning to Dallas in early 2012, he put together a “Slump-in-Korea” campaign that raised over $10,000 to pay airfare and accommodations for himself and his cast of six dancers to perform “Slump,” a wild, aggressive dance about courtship and the instinctual rituals of mating, at its international premiere in Seoul September 26-28. Christopher J. (Joe) Theriot was recently elected by the Texas Bar Foundation to membership in the Fellows of the Texas Bar Foundation. He is an attorney at Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr PC.
2007
Christopher Haug conquered the second of the Seven Summits – the highest mountain on each continent – last New Year’s Day by successfully scaling Argentina’s 22,841-foot-high Cerro Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside the Himalayas.
2008
Luca Cacioli has relocated to Cleveland as the new director of operations for CEIA USA, a worldwide leader in induction heating systems and metal detection for security, industrial and ground search applications. He is responsible for operations of the North America office. Ken Morris announces his latest projects in creating art with a direct benefit to the community. His coloring book series, Paul and Friends, is available on Amazon. The earnings from volume two, Paul and Friends: Again, will be donated to The USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute. Future releases of the coloring book series will benefit other organizations, hence the theme “coloring for the cause.” Senthil Velayudham was elected vice president of finance and operations for high performance analog at Texas Instruments Inc., where he has worked since 1998.
2009
William J. (Bill) Chinn has started a new business, Amy Kate Miniature Gardens. He writes that such gardens can be created in terrariums, planter bowls, old wooden drawers or added into an existing potted plant. The good news is that there is no right or wrong in personalized mini gardening with its tiny little plants and dollhouse-sized accessories. Thomas R. Hegi (right)has been elected a partner of the firm Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP. Hegi’s law practice includes corporate and partnership tax, executive/employee compensation, income tax, state and local taxation, aviation law and corporate transactions including hedge funds, partnerships and joint venture transactions, and private equity. A graduate of SMU’s Dedman School of Law, he joined the firm as an associate in 2006. Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP is a limited liability partnership with more than 139 resident attorneys in its offices in Fort Worth and Austin. John C. Huddleston is a Navy seaman who recently completed eight weeks of U.S. Navy basic training at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, IL, which included classroom study, naval customs, first aid, firefighting, water safety and survival, shipboard and aircraft safety, physical fitness and the capstone event: battle stations, an exercise to give recruits the skills and confidence they need to succeed in the fleet. Andrew Taylor Lipsett was named Team USA’s Player of the Game at the 2012 International Paralympic Committee Sledge Hockey World Championship competition in Hamar, Norway, in March, when he scored three goals and added an assist to help the U.S. National Sledge Hockey Team to a 5-1 victory over Korea in the gold-medal game. Excelling at his sport, he is an inspirational motivational speaker throughout the country. He works for Bank of America in Dallas and is studying for a master’s degree in finance and banking. He and his wife, Antonina Kathleen Mathews, live in Plano, TX. Rachel C. Stuart will marry Joshua M. Duke ’10 in June. They will relocate to Tallahassee, FL, where she has accepted a Ph.D. offer with Florida State University’s English department. Rachel has been awarded FSU’s Elliott Butt Loyless Doctoral Fellowship. Josh will continue to pursue business ventures in web design and digital marketing.
2010
Dee Donasco was selected to be an apprentice artist at the prestigious Chautauqua Opera Festival in summer 2012, one of only eight chosen from 600 auditions by the opera institute. In July she received a rave review from a Young Artist concert in Chautauqua, NY.
2011
J. Stirling Barrett was a successful photographer at age 17 but wanted to continue to develop as an artist. He moved back to New Orleans after his SMU graduation, inspired by the landscape and vitality of the city and its people. This year he showed his art at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival; he had one exhibition in June and will have another in December 2012 at Scott Edwards Gallery. With his photographic collage style, his photography captures the New Orleans state of mind and the pulse of the city. Above all, he wants to create art that everyone can appreciate and afford.
A host of events – from record-setting athletic competitions to unforgettable rock concerts – have taken place over the years at storied Moody Coliseum. Following are a few questions to test your Mustang-Moody quotient (answers below). 1. Who were the first and last NBA MVPs to compete against SMU with their collegiate squads at Moody? 2. Which SMU player scored the first basket at Moody Coliseum? 3. This player is second on the SMU men’s basketball team’s career scoring list and played two seasons with the Dallas Chaparrals. 4. Which SMU men’s basketball player holds the record for the most points scored by a Mustang at Moody Coliseum? 5. Which SMU women’s basketball player holds the record for the most points scored by a Mustang at Moody Coliseum? 6. Which Southeastern Conference school did the SMU volleyball team play in its first home game at Moody on Sept. 12, 1996? 7. Who are some of the famous bands that performed at Moody? 8. How many U.S. presidents have spoken at Moody? 9. Who appeared in the most champion-ship matches in the nine years (1971-79) that the World Championship Tennis finals were held at Moody? 10. When was May Commencement Weekend 2012? Answers: 1. Wilt Chamberlin (University of Kansas, 1957) and Derrick Rose (University of Memphis, 2008) 2. Bobby Mills ’57 3. Gene Phillips ’71 4. Gene Phillips scored 39 points twice in his four-year career (1968-71) to claim the record. (Jim Krebs ’57 scored 50 points against University of Texas at Perkins Gym in 1956, the year before Moody opened.) 5. Jeannia Nix ’89 scored 43 points against the University of Texas in 1989. 6. Auburn University 7. Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Three Dog Night, Queen, U2 and Pearl Jam 8. Four – Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush 9. Bjorn Borg – 4 10. May 11-12, 2012
– Chris Dell ’11 Gerry York ’58, curator of SMU Heritage Hall, and former SMU tennis player Roman Kupchynsky ’80 served as resources for the article.
This electronic billboard in New York City's Times Square welcomes SMU to the Big East. SMU’s membership in the Big East Conference will fulfill the University’s goal to join a Bowl Championship Series Automatic Qualifier (BCS-AQ) conference, a standard of excellence in college athletics today.
As of press time, the Big East continued to admit new members to fill vacancies that will be created by the exit of Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2014 and West Virginia to the Big 12 Conference, at a date to be determined. And though the league may continue to change its membership makeup, one thing is certain: SMU will become a part of the largest conference, which will span coast-to-coast, on July 1, 2013. Traditional rivalries will take on new meanings for the Mustangs.
In 2012, the Big East football membership will consist of Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple (newest addition) and the University of South Florida (USF). In 2013, Boise State, University of Central Florida (UCF), Houston, Memphis, San Diego State and SMU will be added, and in 2015, the U.S. Naval Academy will join the league.
In 2014, the Big East basketball membership will include Cincinnati, Connecticut, DePaul, Georgetown, Houston, Louisville, Marquette, Memphis, Notre Dame, Providence, Rutgers, St. John’s, Seton Hall, SMU, Temple, UCF, USF and Villanova.
“Over the past 32 years, the Big East Conference has constantly evolved along with the landscape of college athletics,” says Big East Commissioner John Marinatto. “The inclusion of these great universities, which bring a unique blend of premier academics, top markets, strong athletics brands and outstanding competitive quality, marks the beginning of a new chapter in that evolution.
“Much like the conference as a whole, the Big East name – though derived 32 years ago based on the geography of our founding members – has evolved into a highly respected brand that transcends borders, boundaries or regions. It’s national. Our membership makeup is now reflective of that.” Big East’s Big Footprint Click on map for PDF
With the addition of the new schools, the Big East will have the largest footprint of any college football conference in the nation, with a coast-to-coast presence spanning nine states in five regions of the country.
And that is good news for SMU alumni living in the Midwest or on the East Coast, who now will be able to see the Mustangs play in their own back yards. Pony fan Lisa Utasi ’84 of New York City cannot wait. “It’s exciting to have the prospect of playing top-level competitors in the new Western division of the Big East, as well as indescribable to think we will have an opportunity to potentially see SMU play basketball in Madison Square Garden in the Big East Tournament,” she says. “I can only imagine driving to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to watch SMU take on the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights at the ‘birthplace of college football,’ too.”
James White ’82 of Chicago believes that joining the Big East “enables SMU to gain greater visibility in different regions and cities throughout the country. “We now will be able to see SMU play in the Chicago area against Notre Dame, Marquette and DePaul,” he says. “Academically, we should be able to attract more kids from other regions with our additional exposure. The quality of the SMU student has continued to improve, and now more people will get to know SMU and the many great qualities that drew all of us to the University.”
By joining the Big East Conference, SMU continues its push toward becoming a top-25 athletics program. On the field of play, SMU has been ranked as the top school in its conference for 11 of the past 14 years in the Director’s Cup overall athletic rankings. Building And Improving SMU football players celebrate their 28-6 victory over current Big East member Pittsburgh at the BBVA Compass Bowl January 7.
From an infrastructure standpoint, SMU has embarked on an $80-million plan to build new facilities and improve existing ones. The $13-million, 43,000-square-foot Crum Basketball Center, a basketball-only practice facility adjacent to Moody Coliseum, opened in February 2008, and Turpin Tennis Stadium opened that April. (To make way for construction on the new residential halls and corresponding parking garage, a new indoor-outdoor tennis complex will be built on the site of the former Mrs. Baird’s bakery on Mockingbird Lane.) Phase I of the SMU Payne Stewart Golf Learning Center at the Dallas Athletic Club was completed in 2010 and updates have been made to the Loyd Center, which houses coaches’ offices, athletic administration, sports medicine, strength and conditioning and academic support services.
In addition, a new integrated video and audio system was installed at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in 2010, and a renovated football locker room and team meeting rooms, along with new stadium turf, were completed before the 2011 season. Renovations to Moody Coliseum, which began in 2008 with the installation of a new $900,000 video board and redesigned court, will ramp up in the coming year as SMU has announced a $40-million-plus plan for a complete facility renovation and expansion expected to be completed in time for SMU’s first season in the Big East.
Academically, SMU’s new conference features six schools ranked among the top 82 universities in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 ranking of Best National Universities. At No. 62, SMU ranks fourth among all Big East schools in the category.
In adding SMU and the Dallas-Fort Worth television market, the nation’s fifth-largest, the Big East Conference further strengthens its media presence. Big East markets already contain almost one-fourth of all television households in the United States – more than twice as many households as any other conference. Big East institutions will now reside in six of the nation’s top-eight media markets, and 12 of the top 35. Cities like Dallas, Houston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., all fall in the Big East footprint.
“Our move to the Big East is good for SMU, for Dallas and for this region of the country and reflects the re-emergence of our successful football program under the leadership of June Jones,” says SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “Coupled with our steady rise academically and athletically, we are in a good position to continue our rise among national universities. On top of that, a grassroots effort of our alumni, elected officials and steadfast supporters coast-to-coast gave us the momentum we needed. We look forward to this new era of competition.” Excitement Goes ‘Through The Roof!’ SMU President R. Gerald Turner (right) and Student Body President Austin W. Prentice (left) are joined by Big East Commissioner John Marinatto in announcing SMU's membership in the Big East Conference.
Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, the Big East Conference was formed in 1979. The league has won 31 national championships in six sports with 133 student-athletes capturing individual national titles. Specifically for football, the Big East is an automatic qualifier (AQ) to the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), meaning the league champion is assured a berth in one of the five BCS bowl games on an annual basis. Those bowls include the Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl and the BCS National Championship game.
In men’s and women’s basketball, Big East teams have excelled at the highest levels, winning 14 national championships. In 2004, Connecticut’s men’s and women’s teams both won NCAA titles in the same season.
Since the conference announcement, excitement for upcoming football and basketball seasons has been “through the roof,” says Student Body President Austin W. Prentice ’12. “SMU’s acceptance into the Big East Conference has provided a tremendous jolt of energy among the student body. Whether die-hard college sports fans or not, the conference changer will be an added benefit to SMU’s already nationally recognized name.”
By Patricia Ward
As a high school student in Cedar Hill, Texas, Alexandra Thibeaux met one of the most important people in her life: Adela Just, her English teacher.
“She recognized something in me that I didn’t know was there,” says Thibeaux, a junior in the University Honors Program majoring in history with a minor in political science. “She really encouraged my writing and academic performance, which had a profound influence on me. As a result, I know I want to have that kind of impact on students’ lives.” SMU junior Alexandra Thibeaux reads with Emmitt Williams, a third-grade student at Sidney Lanier Expressive Arts Vanguard elementary school in Dallas.
Thibeaux’s SMU work-study assignment at Sidney Lanier Expressive Arts Vanguard, a public elementary school in West Dallas, galvanized her interest in pursuing a career linked to education. Now, three days each week, Thibeaux helps children in teacher Chandra Hanks’ third-grade class with math and reading.
Lanier Principal Alyssa Peraza connected with SMU’s work-study program several years ago through the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition (DFCC), a nonprofit organization committed to the transformation of West Dallas through education. The coalition became part of the new Center on Communities and Education at SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development late last year.
The new center serves as the backbone organization for The School Zone, a collaboration among 10 public schools and 20 nonprofit agencies. The School Zone provides a range of resources – from parent training to after-school homework assistance – focused on closing “the education gap in West Dallas,” says Regina Nippert, former executive director of the DFCC who now heads the Center on Communities and Education (CCE) at SMU.
The CCE operates in an area of the city where only 33 percent of residents over age 18 have high school diplomas.
“We will contribute to the education mission of the coalition by assessing what works, measuring outcomes and developing programs that are meaningful to West Dallas,” emphasizes David Chard, Leon Simmons Endowed Dean of the Simmons School.
While the neighborhood west of downtown Dallas provides the initial context, communities everywhere will benefit from research that results in a practical and sustainable model for effective instruction, Chard says. Game-Changing Partnerships The CCE is among the most recent University-community partnerships to build on a century of tradition. While launching SMU’s centennial celebration in 2011, President R. Gerald Turner traced the roots of the Simmons School to the mutually beneficial SMU-Dallas relationship: “We established a new school of education focused on applied research in response to the needs we were hearing from our area superintendents and others in the schools.”
Although education and teacher certification programs had long been a part of the SMU curriculum, the University expanded its commitment to the field by creating the School of Education and Human Development in 2005.
A $20 million gift from Harold C. and Annette Caldwell Simmons in 2007 provided an endowment for the school and its new headquarters, the Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall. During festivities marking its first anniversary in September, the dean called SMU’s hub for education research a “game-changer.” The state-of-the-art facility accommodates many of the faculty, staff and students who once were housed at 12 sites on campus.
“The ability to gather together in one place changes the whole dynamic of the faculty,” contributing to a research environment where they can collaborate productively with each other and their students, explains Chard, who became dean in 2007. Discover, Document, Deliver Leanne Ketterlin Geller (center), director of SMU’s Research in Mathematics Education unit, works with consultant Nicole McGilvray (left) and Simmons doctoral student Lindsey Perry during a recent workshop to develop test questions for the Middle School Students in Texas: Algebra Ready (MSTAR) Diagnostic Assessment, designed to help teachers support students who need extra help with pre-algebra skills.
Rigorous academic inquiry steers the national conversation about education reform “away from the realm of human interest and into an evidence-based context,” says Chard, a nationally known expert on the role of instruction in literacy and the development of numeracy skills.
His “prove it” philosophy comes after almost 10 years on the frontline as a high school teacher, followed by more than a decade of scholarship aimed at helping children with learning disabilities or at risk for school failure. Over the course of his career, Chard’s research and development projects have been awarded more than $11 million in federal, state and private grants.
Chard’s leadership in education research has received recognition from President Barack Obama, who appointed him to the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences. The board advises the president and sets priorities for the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Chard was sworn in as a member of the board June 20.
The Simmons research portfolio encompasses explorations in vital areas of education and human development, including foundational literacy and numeracy skills; the challenges presented by language barriers, learning difficulties and intellectual disabilities; the special needs of gifted youth; teacher and leadership training; the mechanics of movement; and human physiology.
Faculty research has garnered significant funding from federal, state and private sources. From 2009 through 2011, the school received more than $10 million in grants, with almost $4 million obtained in 2011.
Last year, a $201,000 grant from The Meadows Foundation provided start-up funding for the school’s new Research in Mathematics Education (RME) program. The research and outreach unit’s mission is to provide the instructional resources, assessment tools and training that K-12 educators need to improve student achievement in math.
“Most schools are swimming in data,” says RME Director Leanne Ketterlin Geller, an expert in measuring and assessing mathematics skills. “We have to think carefully about which data we collect and how we collect it. We have to gather information that will guide instruction for struggling students.”
Investigating Human Development
In the Simmons School’s Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness, faculty and students examine the biological basis of health and fitness.
During one of the department’s recent Research on Exercise and Wellness Colloquiums, Peter Weyand shared with the SMU community insights from his groundbreaking analyses of the mechanics of running. Weyand, an associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics, directs the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory. Read more …
The Simmons School’s investigative interests align with two landmark education initiatives of the George W. Bush Institute. Chard and Ketterlin Geller are among the nation’s top researchers participating in Middle School Matters, the most comprehensive research-based program ever applied to middle schools. The program’s goal is to use proven practices to prepare middle-school students for academic success in high school.
The Bush Institute’s Alliance to Reform Education Leadership (AREL) is a national program to transform the way school districts identify, recruit, prepare, empower and evaluate their leaders. Simmons’ new ED-Entrepreneur Center (EEC) is an AREL operating program and will be sharing its research data with the Bush Institute.
The EEC coalesces efforts of the Simmons School and Teaching Trust, a nonprofit organization established by Rosemary Perlmeter, founder of Uplift Education charter schools and a former business executive, and Ellen Wood, a financial and social investment consultant.
“We’re proud and appreciative of the great support we receive from Dean Chard and the faculty and staff engaged in our Middle School Matters program, as well as the involvement of the Ed-Entrepreneur Center in our Alliance to Reform Education Leadership, an emerging leader in the work of developing excellent school principals,” says Kerri L. Briggs, the Bush Institute’s director of education reform. Visionary Leaders, Better Schools
The education equation is completed by teachers and principals equipped with the research-based knowledge they need to boost schools out of mediocrity and into excellence.
“In the Simmons School, we consistently monitor our students’ progress and evaluate our programs, changing coursework as needed to address the latest issues,” explains Lee Alvoid, clinical associate professor and chair of the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at SMU. “Right now, with K-12 school budgets being downsized, we need to help our students be more efficient in resource allocation, as well as become more creative in seeking funding opportunities outside the schools.”
The department’s newest program, the Master’s in Education Leadership with an Urban School Specialization, borrows elements from national models for competency-based principal preparation, as well as the corporate executive training playbook, to prepare school leaders for the challenges of the inner-city learning environment. First-year coursework includes classes taught by SMU’s Cox School of Business faculty.
“The best research on leadership models, change management, coaching and conflict resolution comes from combining effective new programs in education with select aspects of the business discipline,” Alvoid explains.
The first group of 20 students started the two-year program last June. The 45-hour, part-time program was developed in concert with SMU’s ED-Entrepreneur Center.
“It’s very ambitious because only a few programs in the country are stepping back and relying heavily on experiential learning built around a competency-based framework,” says Perlmeter, senior director of leadership programs for EEC. “We continuously measure our students’ application of skills over the two years of the program.”
Lyndin Kish, a fifth-grade teacher at Summit Preparatory, an Uplift Education charter school, and a student in the urban specialization track, says her most important take-away so far is “a refined lens through which I view my school leaders. Not only have I gained a much clearer vision of what excellent school leadership can and should look like, but I have a much better understanding of the discrete actions school leaders can take to get there.”
In the Simmons School’s Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness, faculty and students examine the biological basis of health and fitness.
During one of the department’s recent Research on Exercise and Wellness Colloquiums, Peter Weyand shared with the SMU community insights from his groundbreaking analyses of the mechanics of running. Weyand, an associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics, directs the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory.
The most important factor driving performance is how hard runners hit the ground in relation to their body weight, he says. “Runners are a lot like bouncing balls. The vertical force propels them upward and momentum carries them forward.”
Weyand believes “research shouldn’t stop at the lab door. It’s important to make sure the public understands our scientific findings and how we translate them into practice.”
Last month Weyand received a three-year grant totaling $892,058 from the U.S. Army to focus on “quantifying the effect of loads on physiological stressors – such as metabolic rate and locomotor performance – over relatively short distances.”
“The overburdened foot soldier is a major issue for the army, and it needs guidance to evaluate the trade-offs involved in adding gear and technology that results in loading down the soldier. Pack weights can be 120 pounds or more,” he explains.
Other scientific investigations explore the function and dysfunction of human biological systems. In the department’s new Applied Physiology Laboratory, researchers use state-of-the-art equipment to study the autonomic nervous system in healthy and clinical populations. The autonomic nervous system controls heart rate, respiration, digestion, perspiration and other functions.
Assistant Professor Scott L. Davis directs the lab. In research funded by National Multiple Sclerosis Society grants, Davis examines autonomic dysfunction specifically related to thermoregulation and blood pressure control in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is a chronic disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system and afflicts an estimated 2.1 million people worldwide.
First-year student Mayisha Nakib had been at SMU only a week last fall when she achieved one of her goals: to participate in research as an undergraduate. Upon learning of Nakib’s interest, Assistant Professor of PhysicsJodi Cooley suggested that she apply for a Hamilton Scholars Undergraduate Research grant. Nakib, a Dedman College Scholar, received the grant and now works with Cooley on dark matter research in the cleanroom laboratory in Fondren Science Building. Jodi Cooley (left) and Mayisha Nakib
Nakib is one of nearly 130 undergraduates who are conducting research with faculty across the University, from anthropology to engineering to statistics. Many are supported by SMU’s Undergraduate Research Assistantship program, created in 2005 to provide funds to encourage undergraduate research.
Other students receive funding from the Hamilton Scholars Program or Richter Fellowships, awarded to Honors Program students to conduct research either in the United States or internationally. Still other undergraduates who have impressed their teachers by excelling in their classes are asked to work on research projects.
“There are many benefits for undergraduate students who engage in research projects,” says James E. Quick, associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies. “One broadens the scope of study beyond what can be obtained strictly in the classroom. And the opportunity to pursue a topic or idea in an independent way with faculty involvement or supervision provides an important path to intellectual growth.”
Working closely with a faculty mentor on research and discovery is a key component of SMU’s recently created Engaged Learning program, which provides undergraduates the opportunity to complement their classroom education through engagement in research, service, internships or other activities with the Dallas-Fort Worth community and beyond. Monnie McGee (left) and Michael McCarthyAssociate Professor of Statistical ScienceMonnie McGee has mentored senior Michael McCarthy, one of the first recipients of an Engaged Learning grant. McCarthy, a double major in statistics and mathematics, is analyzing data that evaluates home care support provided to veterans with spinal cord injuries for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Dallas. The home care program for veterans attempts to reduce the need for veterans’ visits for medical appointments and emergencies to the medical center.
McCarthy, who had taken three classes from McGee, asked her to mentor his project. The two meet weekly to go over assignments and to review the data that McCarthy is gathering from patients. “Understanding how data are gathered and entered is very important to any research,” McGee says. “When you ask questions about the quality of life of the participants, you realize you have to be particular and methodical to obtain reliable information. I think Michael is beginning to grasp concepts that he may not have understood before taking on this project. He is a really good student and has made it easy for me to be a mentor,” she adds.
Pursuing an undergraduate research project not only “reinforces material gleaned from coursework, it can provide valuable feedback on the kind of career a student chooses,” Quick says. Following are examples of research that undergraduates are conducting under the guidance of SMU faculty. And while each relationship is different, depending on the academic level of the student and the nature of the research, one thing is the same: the shared passion of student and faculty for exploring the unknown together.
Physicist Jodi Cooley leads SMU students as part of a global team searching for elusive dark matter – the “glue” that represents 85 percent of the matter in our universe, but which has never been observed. Cooley is a member of the scientific consortium called SuperCryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS), which operates a particle detector located deep in an underground abandoned mine in Minnesota. The detector is focused on detecting WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which some physicists theorize comprise dark matter. WIMPS are particles of such low mass that they rarely interact with ordinary matter, making them extremely difficult to detect.
To assess background interference that could affect their research, Cooley and her team rely on the high-tech XIA Alpha Particle Counter, housed in a cleanroom operated by the Department of Physics. SMU is one of only five institutions in the world to house the XIA. As part of the team, student Mayisha Nakib is investigating the history of various detectors to calculate their exposure to radon or radioactivity, which can produce background interference. Less background interference improves the chances of observing WIMPS.
Nakib, who is majoring in biological sciences and physics, says she already has learned new computer skills and how to operate the particle counter. “The faster I get involved with research, the easier it will be to pick it up.”
Cooley adds that the Physics Department has more students who are eager to conduct research than it has faculty who can mentor them. Larry Ruben (right) and Nick Burns
For 30 years, Biological SciencesProfessor Larry Ruben has worked on decoding the genetic traits of a parasite that causes the lethal disease commonly known as sleeping sickness, infecting humans and livestock and potentially more than 60 million people in 36 countries. His most recent work focuses on proteins required for late stages of cell division and on the pathways that regulate cell division and cell death. He is searching for unique processes in the trypanosome parasite that can be used to design new therapies that may prevent infected cells from successfully dividing and reproducing.
“Better understanding of these proteins could lead to development of new drugs to treat sleeping sickness,” Ruben says.
In his lab, Ruben oversees senior and President’s Scholar Nick Burns, who is majoring in biological sciences and French with a chemistry minor and also received a Hamilton Scholars Undergraduate Research grant. For the past year, Burns has been working on his own project, which “doesn’t often happen with undergraduates in the lab,” Ruben says.
Burns is looking at how suppression of a signal or production of an inappropriate signal in cell division can be lethal to the trypanosome organisms. Specifically, he is investigating a gene that tells the trypanosome where to place some of its specialized structures, like its flagellum (tail), nucleus and skeletal components. If the structures do not align properly, then cell division may be inhibited; this could be further explored as a new target for therapies against sleeping sickness, he says.
Through his research experience, Burns says he has gained a “passion” for the study of molecular parasitology, which he hopes to continue in medical school, as well as “an appreciation for science itself. You learn a lot of analytical skills and realize what a time-consuming experience and intellectual game the whole process is. It takes patience and a lot more patience.” Maria Minniti (left) and Kalinda Dinoffer
The ongoing economic crisis has underlined the importance of female entrepreneurship, which historically has been a significant defense against economic distress for many families. First-year B.B.A. Scholar Kalindi Dinoffer is searching through historical records and data to learn what conditions best promote this activity in both good and bad economic times, and eventually may search as far back as the Colonial era. The information will support research conducted by Maria Minniti, Bobby B. Lyle Chair of Entrepreneurship at Cox School of Business, who plans to expand her study of female entrepreneurship into a book. Minniti says she recognized resourceful and detail-oriented qualities in Dinoffer, who took a business decision-making class from her last fall, which would make for a reliable research assistant.
The two meet weekly to go over the data that Dinoffer has found. “Learning more about female entrepreneurship and its historical evolution will teach us a lot about how individuals (both men and women) respond to incentives, to uncertainty, and how employment choices are made,” Minniti says. “We also will learn what policies and institutional systems are more conducive to women’s participation in the labor force and how the legal and regulatory systems molded the socioeconomic dynamics of the U.S. labor market.”
Dinoffer, who is also considering studies in the social sciences and economics, thought she would conduct the research for a semester, but “now I’ve gotten invested in this and can’t just hand off the data to someone else! And I’ve learned that interacting with faculty is what you make of it, that they respond if you show you’re interested. Dr. Minniti has gone above and beyond in making herself accessible to her students.”
A Meadows Exploration Grant enabled senior and President’s Scholar Charlton Roberts to undertake a project last fall that combined computer programming and live theatre. The theatre and computer science major wanted to explore how computation could be a part of a theatrical performance, not just facilitate it, and enlisted the aid of student actors and engineers to help create the project. Ira Greenberg (left) and Charlton Roberts
“My idea was to use computation as a fundamental facet of the storytelling on stage – a form versus content approach,” Roberts says. During the performance, audience members sat in chairs on the stage of the Hope Theatre with the curtain closed. Six actors and a dancer, who received their lines and direction from a computer program, improvised their scenes in front of a giant white sheet with video projectors placed in the front and back. The Meadows grant provided funding for the connections, Apple TVs, cords, cables and hardware needed to create the production.
Roberts worked on the project through the Center of Creative Computation, a new area of study in Meadows School of the Arts that also requires coursework in the Lyle School of Engineering. At the philosophical core of the major is the integration of creative and analytical study and practice – championing a “whole brain” approach, says Associate Professor and center director Ira Greenberg, who teaches in both schools. Although Greenberg did not work with Roberts on the project in the fall, he has worked with him on an independent study this spring.
“We’re asking students to become proficient computer programmers who must deal with math and computer science, but we also expect them to be good artists, and that’s what Charlton did,” Greenberg says.
Roberts adds that the project “far exceeded my expectations to the point that I have completely changed my mind about being an actor. I get more creative fulfillment out of projects like this than acting now. And this would not have been possible without the creative environment SMU provides.”
Joseph W. Geary (J.D. ’48) enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in November 1942, flying more than 50 European combat missions as a navigator and serving in the liberation of France in WWII. After 70 years, France honored him last October in Houston with its highest military decoration: Knight of the Legion of Honor. When his plane was damaged and co-pilot severely injured in October 1944, he helped guide the pilot toward the safety of an Allied airfield in Yugoslavia. For his accomplishments he was given the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal. After earning his law degree at SMU, he helped to found the North Dallas firm of Geary, Porter and Donovan and also served as a Dallas County assistant district attorney and City Council member. He downplays his WWII exploits and subsequent awards: “I’d like to say I did a lot more than I did. But sometimes you’re just there.”
1949
The Rev. John Michael Patison Sr. edited the first published history of the Central Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. He is conference historian and chair of its Commission on Archives and History. His children are SMU graduates: Pamela Patison Signori ’82, ’86 and John Michael Patison Jr. ’85.
Martha Tannery Jones had her fifth children’s historical fiction book published. RED CALICO Traded for Young Girl (Hendrick-Long Publishing Co.) is based on the life of her great-great-grandmother, who lived with the Choctaw Indians her first 13 years.
1956
Richard Deats has written Active Nonviolence Around the World and Stories of Courage, Hope, and Compassion, along with books on Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Muriel Lester and Hildegard Goss-Mayr. Ginger Hamel Metcalfe married Glenn Flournoy in May 2011 after each was widowed following 50 years of marriage. They enjoy traveling and are involved in the arts in Shreveport.
1958
Joan Mulcahy married John Carl Thompson Feb. 14, 2011.
Sara Carson has published British & Irish Landscape Portraits with commentary by SMU Professor Jeremy Adams.
1961
Paul L. Hain is emeritus dean of arts and humanities and emeritus professor of political science at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. Following service in the U.S. Air Force, he earned a Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University and taught at the University of New Mexico for 18 years. He and his wife, Sue, married 45 years, have two children and three granddaughters. The Hains are retired in Conroe, TX.
1963
James Hoggard has published his 20th book, the novel The Mayor’s Daughter. He is a fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters.
1964
Dennis McCuistion (M.L.A. ’85) is clinical professor of corporate governance, executive director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at The University of Texas at Dallas and a faculty member of the Board Advisory Services of the National Association of Corporate Directors in Washington, D.C. He is in his 23rd year as host of “McCuistion” on KERA, Channel 13 in Dallas.
1967
Reunion Chairs: Pat Cecil Edwards and Robert Haley
1969
Albon Head (J.D. ’71) has been chosen by his peers as a 2011 “Top Attorney” in Tarrant County in Fort Worth, Texas magazine and is listed in the Best Lawyers in America 2012. He is with Jackson Walker LLP in the Fort Worth office. Charles R. Saxbe has been included in the Best Lawyers in America 2012, the oldest, most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession. He is an attorney at Chester Willcox & Saxbe LLP in Columbus, OH.
Reunion Chairs: Gary and Beverly Kuck Hammond, Jack and Dana Hargrove Harkey and
Mary Ann Portman Schwab Deborah A. Ackerman has joined the Dallas office of law firm Strasburger & Price LLP in corporate and securities practice. Previously she was vice president-general counsel of Southwest Airlines, spending 19 years there. She graduated first in her class from St. Mary’s University School of Law.
Dr. Dan P. McCauley was nominated for the Texas Dentist of the Year Award for 2011 by the 1st District Dental Society for the Texas Academy of General Dentistry and was honored at a gala last September 16. Practicing in Mt. Pleasant, he has been recognized by Texas Monthly magazine as a Texas Super Dentist and by the Research Council of America as one of the Best Dentists in America. He has been a trustee for Northeast Texas Community College, serving as president of the college foundation and now as chair of the board of trustees. Sheryl Rogers Palmer is vice president and trustee of The Robert M. Rogers Foundation, supporting the arts and numerous charities in East Texas and Idaho.
1973
Dr. George C. Baker (M.B.A. ’98), a renowned organist, performed the closing number on a recent broadcast of “Pipedreams” on public radio. Phillip H. Virden spent a year in the Mississippi Delta with Teach for America. Last January he traveled to Kenya to teach at the Kyandili Primary School and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise funds for the Makindu Children’s Program. On completing his work, he will be at home in Lake City, CO, with his wife, the former Carolyn Armstrong ’74, and daughters Lily and Dasha. He is owner of the Mountaineer Movie Theatre.
1974
Gary Ingram is an attorney in the Fort Worth office of Jackson Walker LLP, selected as a 2011 “Top Attorney” in Tarrant County in Fort Worth, Texas magazine and voted by his peers across the nation as a “Best Lawyer in America” for 2012.
Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley became a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dec. 31, 2011, when President Obama signed legislation to add his position, chief of the National Guard Bureau, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
1975
David Bates is a nationally acclaimed artist. In 2010-11 a solo exhibition of his Katrina paintings originated at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO, and traveled to the Knoxville (TN) Museum of Art. Last fall his paintings, sculpture and collage were presented in New York City, and this spring he has a solo exhibition in New Orleans at Arthur Roger Gallery. He will be home in Dallas in October with a one-man show at the Talley Dunn Gallery. Sherry Hayslip is president and principal designer at Hayslip Design Associates Inc., an award-winning Dallas interior design firm. She also owns an antiques business, an art and antiques specialty moving company and with her husband, architect Cole Smith, owns Whitesmith & Company, an architectural and decorative hardware studio. She supports the fine and performing arts and is a patron of The Dallas Opera, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Dallas Museum of Art. Sol Villasana was a guest presenter at Dallas’ Sixth International Book Fair last October 29. He also signed copies of Dallas’s Little Mexico, his 2011 book.
1976
Kathy Biehl made her film debut as a voice-over actor in “Walk Away Renee,” a Critic’s Pick at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. John B. Holden was voted a “Best Lawyer in America” for 2012 in the annual nationwide peer review. He is an attorney in the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP.
1977
Reunion Chairs: Craig L. Massey and Susie McLamore McCormack Melinda (Mindy) Baxter leads customer, sales and marketing teams as vice president of business development at Hamilton Exhibits. An experienced market strategist, she has worked with high-level, global brands in New York and Europe. James T. (Jim) Kelly (M.A., M.B.A.’84) owns James Kelly Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM. Last fall the gallery exhibited photographs by SMU-in-Taos faculty member Debora Hunter. Susan Mead was voted by her peers in the legal profession as one of the “Best Lawyers in America” for 2012. She is with the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP.
1978
David R. Cassidy has been named to the 2012 edition of Louisiana Super Lawyers. He serves people and companies throughout Louisiana as a tax attorney at Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson LLP. Valerie Pohl Ertz was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
1979
Clayton L. (Clay) Harrington left his Memphis private practice in counseling and last August joined Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville as minister for senior adults. Mary Emma Karam is a former partner at Jackson Walker LLP in Dallas, elected to rejoin the firm’s partner category in February 2012. She has practiced law at Jackson Walker for more than 32 years, during which time she and her husband had six children. She was appointed by the Texas Attorney General during 2000-2001 to serve as counsel in health care/managed care matters for the state.
Karen Elliott was appointed chief executive officer of the Florida-based Rafiki Foundation, where she has worked for 10 years. Rafiki is a Christian charity and mission agency helping Africans to know God and improve their standard of living through Bible study, childcare, classical education and economic opportunities for widows. She previously served 10 years as a missionary in Nigeria after 10 years in banking. Linda Newman has joined Sammons Enterprises as vice president, general counsel and secretary, handling governance issues, providing legal advice to Sammons’ business units and supporting the board of directors. She gained 17 years of commercial lending, management and merger and acquisition experience with Bank of America’s legal department. Gordon M. Shapiro practices law at Jackson Walker LLP in Dallas. Recently he was named a “Best Lawyer in America” for 2012 in a vote by legal peers across the country.
1981
Tony Jack Howard (M.L.A. ’98) was consecrated bishop of Texas Sept. 24, 2011, for the Universal Catholic Church, an independent church within the Liberal Catholic Movement. He is pastor at St. Clement of Alexandria Cathedral in Allen, TX. He and his wife, Victoria, celebrated the birth of son Gabriel May 9, 2011. William Joyce is well-known as an author, illustrator and now filmmaker. At February’s Academy Awards presentation, he received an Oscar for the best animated short film of 2011, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” which he co-directed. This was the first project for Moonbot Studios, which he co-founded in Shreveport. Barry Sellers was honored this spring with an exhibit at the Hartford (CT) Stage, where he has been a draper for 30 years, helping create more than 1,000 costumes for almost 200 theatrical productions. He makes designers’ sketches three-dimensional and wearable by first developing patterns from which he creates the costumes. Regina Taylor, author of “Crowns,” is a playwright in residence at the newly expanded Signature Theatre in New York City. As such, she is guaranteed three productions over a five-year period and receives a $50,000 cash award and health insurance.
1982
Reunion Chairs: Richard Neely and Ann Swisher Mark T. Josephs is an attorney at Jackson Walker LLP in Dallas. He was recently voted by his peers as a “Best Lawyer in America” for 2012 in the new edition of that publication. Kathleen M. LaValle was named in the peer-selected Best Lawyers in America 2012. She practices in the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP.
1984
Debra Ann Engelke married Phillip J. Olsson Sept. 18, 2010. Her daughter, Alicia Votaw, graduated from Simpson College in 2011, and her son, Paul Votaw, attends Bradley University. Lance McIlhenny has joined the Dallas office of CresaPartners, focusing on local and national business development. Previously he was senior marketing director at CASE Commercial Real Estate and senior vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle, formerly The Staubach Company, where he was named a “Top Achiever” for 16 years.
1985
Cynthia Colbert Riley ’85 has been appointed the vice president for institutional advancement by the University of St. Thomas (UST) in Houston. Riley will lead the University’s fundraising efforts, which includes funding for a new performing arts center. Riley, who earned a Bachelor’s degree in communications from SMU, has more than 24 years of experience in institutional leadership in healthcare, higher education and public broadcasting. Most recently she served as the interim executive director and vice president for development at The Methodist Hospital Foundation in Houston. Riley is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. She earned a Master of Liberal Arts degree from UST in 1995.
1986
Kazem BuAbbas earned a Ph.D. degree in international law from the University of Edinburgh (UK) in 2004. He is a deputy head in the Department of Legal Advice & Legislation, State of Kuwait, as well as chief editor of the department’s legal journal and contributor of legal, social and political articles for local newspapers James R. (Jim) Griffin was named a “Leadership Dallas Alumni Hero” by the Dallas Regional Chambers’ Leadership Dallas program for the class of 2003 and received his award Dec. 6, 2011, at the 35th Annual Leadership Luncheon. An attorney at Jackson Walker LLP, he was selected as a “Best Lawyer in America” for 2012 by that peer-review publication. James Houghton founded New York’s Signature Theatre as an Off Broadway nonprofit in 1991 and remains artistic director as well as director of the drama division at the Juilliard School. Following a capital campaign of $70 million, he opened Signature Theatre’s new home last January, the 70,000-square-foot Pershing Square Signature Center with three theaters and café and bookstore open to the public. The glass marquee lights a stretch of New York’s West 42nd Street near 10th Avenue. John Michael Kennedy has been promoted to vice president at the New York-based public relations firm Goodman Media International, which he joined in 2008 to manage projects in the entertainment, travel, media and other creative industries. He has more than 25 years of experience in media relations, crisis communications and legislative affairs.
1987
Reunion Chairs: James Outland and Karen Lynch Parkhill
Dr. Eileen Baland (M.L.A. ’97) is a student of poetry in the M.F.A. writing program at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. Michael (Mike) McKay is manager of the southwest regional office of the Peace Corps and was a guest speaker Jan. 31, 2012, at SMU’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Corps. James (Jamie) Moreland and his wife, Francesca, announce the birth of their first child, Jack William, Nov. 15, 2011. They live in Shreveport, where Jamie has been in the commercial real estate business for more than 20 years.
1989
Craig R. Taylor has been appointed to the Midwest BankCentre South County Regional Board. He is president and chief executive officer of U-Gas convenience stores and Dirt Cheap retail storefronts, overseeing operations, strategic planning, new store development and programming for all 30 locations of his companies. He is on the operating committee and incoming 2013 president of the Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. His home is Wildwood, MO. Matthew (Matt) Thompson is a new partner at law firm Jackson Walker LLP, specializing in U.S. immigration and nationality law and global business immigration. He was recognized in The Best Lawyers in America under Immigration Law (2010-2012) and also was named a “Rising Star” by Thomson Reuters in 2005.
Clifton Forbis stars as Tristan in The Dallas Opera’s production of “Tristan and Isolde.” He is the new chair of voice in the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU. Theodore (Ted) Kolman specializes in property tax as a director in Grant Thornton’s state and local tax practice in Schaumburg, IL. Ted, his wife, Clair, and children Caroline and Whit recently moved from Dallas to South Elgin, IL. Jay Hunter Morris was praised last October by The New York Times for his performance in the title role of the Metropolitan Opera production of Wagner’s “Siegfried.” David Pagan recently joined the Washington, D.C., international security and intelligence consulting firm Command Consulting Group as director of business advisory services. Previously he served at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of International Affairs and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
1991
Jennifer Grant is a mother with a sense of humor. Her second book, MOMumental: Adventures in the Messy Art of Raising a Family (Worthy Publishing, May 2012), tells a humorous tale of balancing family life. Her first book was 2011’s Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter. Jennifer freelances for the Chicago Tribune and blogs for Christianity Today.
1992
Reunion Chairs: David and Shannon Scott Brown and Chris Williams William Jenkins is an attorney at Jackson Walker LLP, named a 2011 Fort Worth “Top Attorney” in Fort Worth, Texas magazine.
1993
Gretchen Hoag Foster and her husband, Charlie, announce the birth of son Harry Dungan, Sept. 8, 2011, in Walnut Creek, CA. Daughter Kathleen is age 4 Jeff S. Matsler was promoted to Chaplain (Major) at Womack Army Medical Facility, Fort Bragg, NC, in a ceremony Feb. 5, 2012, attended by his wife, Michelle, daughter Mary Elizabeth, 12, and son Charles Taylor, 10. He is the clinician chaplain for in-patient psychiatric, surgical and critical care units. In Egypt, Kuwait and Afghanistan, he ministered to U.S. combat troops, and after being medically retired, was pronounced rehabilitated in 2007 and re-entered the chaplaincy. While at Womack he is studying war’s effect on society as a graduate student at Duke University. He is an elder in the Northwest Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. Berna (Rhodes) Rhodes-Ford opened Rhodes-Ford & Associates in June 2011 in Henderson, NV, focusing on corporate, employment and health care law.
1995
Ellen Blue has a new book, St. Mark’s and the Social Gospel: Methodist Women and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1895-1965 (The University of Tennessee Press), about Methodist deaconesses who confronted social issues in New Orleans during the rise of the social gospel movement and into the modern civil rights era. Dr. Blue is the Mouzon Biggs Jr. Associate Professor of the History of Christianity and United Methodist Studies at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, OK. She teaches and writes about women’s issues and the post-Katrina church in New Orleans. Jennifer Sallee Chang announces the birth of her son, Mason Alexander, July 21, 2011. Jenifer Rogness McCormick joined Weber Shandwick’s health care practice as an account group manager and will play a lead role on health care accounts and new business efforts. She has 16 years of experience in public affairs, public relations and journalism and previously was communications director for the Transportation Trades Department with the AFL-CIO, communications director for U.S. Congressman Martin Sabo and an account supervisor at Dallas agency Richards/Gravelle.
1996
Robynn Mocek Allveri left her faculty position at San Diego State University to join the faculty at Koç University Law School in Turkey. She and her family moved to Istanbul in August 2011. Brian Linder spent 12 years in digital marketing as a creative director/principal for national ad agency The Richards Group. Now he is a designer and founder of Opposite Inc. He created the You Rule Chores app for iPhone and iTouch, which turns household tasks into motivating and fun-to-complete activities, inspiring kids to be productive. Elliott Weir has been in practice as a certified financial planner since 2004. He recently launched III Financial in Austin to help families ensure they don’t run out of money when they need it most.
1997
Reunion Chairs: Chris Boyd and Kristina Wren Monica Hill Clift and her husband, David, welcomed a daughter, Marin Sloan, July 22, 2011. Leticia Garcia married Joe A. Yanez last March 5. She served as a director for the HRSouthwest Conference, the nation’s largest regional human resources gathering. Warford B. (Trace) Johnson III is a partner in the Springfield, MO, law firm Baird, Lightner, Millsap & Harpool PC. He has been selected for the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association board of directors for 2012-2014. He was a Missouri and Kansas Super Lawyers Rising Star in 2010 and 2011, was recognized by Missouri Lawyers Weekly in 2010 as an Up & Coming Attorney and was chosen by the Springfield Business Journal as one of their 40 Under 40. Stewart Mayer is the inventor of the camBLOCK robotic camera system, used in the Academy Award-winning best animated short film for 2011, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.” The system allows cameras to move in ways that can’t be done manually, providing fluidity and accuracy. Melissa McCullough Ulrich and her husband, Spencer, announce the birth of their second child, Reed Wilson, in Austin Dec. 25, 2011.
1998
Angela G. Harse has been named a partner in the Kansas City office of law firm Husch Blackwell effective Jan. 1, 2012. She joined the firm in 2003 and concentrates her practice in white collar criminal defense; business litigation; and government compliance, investigations and litigation. Tim W. Jackson reports that his debut novel, Mangrove Underground (The Chenault Publishing Group, December 2010), was named by USA Book News a “Best Books 2011” award finalist for literary fiction. Gabe Reed promoted the March 2012 North American tour of opera legend José Carreras. Chad Wolf completed the 2011 Ford Ironman Arizona race in Tempe last November. He is vice president and senior director with Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates in Washington, DC. He and his wife, Hope Solomon Wolf, live in Alexandria, VA, with sons Tucker and Preston.
1999
Jason Hess was the camBLOCK operator on the 2011 Oscar-winning best animated short feature “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” filming the 1/12th scale miniature environments at Moonbot Studios in Shreveport. Nicola (Hobeiche) Hobeiche-Hewes (J.D. ’02) and her husband, Todd, welcomed Alexandra Colette (Coco) Sept. 6, 2011. Their older daughter is Gabrielle. Catherine Rodgers and David Hamling live in Bettendorf, IA, following their marriage in Iowa Oct. 9, 2010.
Belinda Briones (M.Ed. ’05) married Michael James Moran Nov. 27, 2009, at the Empire State Building in New York City. They live in Dallas, where both teach in the Dallas Independent School District. Their son, Benjamin Enzo, was born Sept. 6, 2011. Quynh Dang Lu and her husband, Henry Lu, welcomed daughter Emma Sophie Oct. 20, 2011, in San José, CA. C. Jerry Nelson retired after a 35-year career in international safety, security and loss prevention/claims. As a volunteer with Seniors vs. Crime, a project of the Florida Attorney General’s Office and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to recover money for senior citizens engaged in civil disputes, he conducted research that uncovered an investments fraud scheme, ultimately totaling more than $1 billion in 23 states. As a result of his work, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s Meritorious Award Review Board honored him in a ceremony Nov. 17, 2011, with a “Certificate of Appreciation” for outstanding service to his community.
2001
David Bennett is executive director of Gotham Chamber Opera, intent on ensuring financial stability for the company poised to grow into the role held by New York City Opera. Keren Elias is the winner of a Texas Medical Association scholarship award, given annually to one incoming medical student from each of nine Texas schools. She is the recipient from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Susan McIntyre has returned to Dallas as major gifts officer for The Dallas Opera. Tiffanie Roberson Spencer announces the birth of daughter Nicolette Ciara July 11, 2011.
2002
Reunion Chairs: Julie Carney and Christopher L. Dodson Debra J. DeWitte is an art historian specializing in nineteenth-century French art. She teaches at The University of Texas at Arlington and has developed an online art appreciation course that won a platinum award in 2008 from the United States Distance Learning Association. She co-authored the textbook Gateways to Art: An Introduction to the Visual Arts (W.W. Norton & Company Inc.). Jodi Warmbrod Dishman and her husband, Brent, welcomed their second son, Rook Keeter, Dec. 29, 2011. Their older son, Cash Davis, is 16 months. Jodi is counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. The Dishmans live at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, TX, where he is senior defense counsel for U.S.A.F. bases in West Texas and eastern New Mexico. Trey Ditto has been appointed vice president at Emanate PR, an award-winning agency dedicated to integrated communications, consumer marketing and health and reputation management. Previously he was deputy communications director for the Republican Party of Texas, communications director for a U.S. congressman and deputy press secretary at the U.S. Department of Education during the Bush Administration. Nicole Locke Finn and her husband, Michael, welcomed their first child, son Parker Locke, Dec. 26, 2011, in Orange County, CA. Theresa Eva Remek (M.L.A. ’07) was promoted November 1, 2011, to manager of administrative services in Development and External Affairs at SMU. She has more than 10 years of experience in nonprofit organizations and has formed and maintained important relationships across the SMU campus.
2003
Brett Charhon was promoted Jan. 1, 2012, to principal in the Dallas office of law firm McKool Smith. He handles litigation for clients in state and federal courts. Dodee Frost Crockett is a Merrill Lynch financial advisor named one of the “Top 50 Wirehouse Women in 2011” in the January 2012 edition of Registered Rep. magazine. This follows her recognition on Barron’s list of “Top 100 Women Financial Advisors 2011.”
2004
Cece Cox, executive director and CEO of Resource Center Dallas, will serve on the board of directors of CenterLink, the national association of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community centers, where she will oversee strategic direction while guiding the organization as it advocates empowerment, self-reliance, inclusion and diversity among the community centers in the coalition. She has more than 25 years of experience in executive management and leadership in the nonprofit and private sectors. Allison Hannel, a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras from 2005 to 2007, spoke Jan. 31, 2012, at the SMU celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. She is senior brand marketing manager at AT&T. Scott Harrison joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in October 2010 and Sept. 26, 2011, became senior director of patron engagement and loyalty programs and executive producer of digital media. Previously he was associate director of marketing with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and spent several years managing community programs for the New Jersey Symphony. Lindsay M. Higgins married Derek J. Schelldorf Oct. 15, 2011, in Fort Worth. They live in McKinney, TX. Susanne Mayon began work Jan. 23, 2011, as advancement associate in National Major Giving at SMU. She recently moved back to Dallas from San Francisco, where she worked for Sterling Brands, a marketing and strategy firm. Blake C. Norvell, a 2007 graduate of UCLA Law, has been published in the prestigious law journals of Yale University, USC and Temple University. Each scholarly article is circulated nationally to law schools and judges. The articles are available on WestLaw and LexisNexis, two databases widely used for legal research. In addition, he has given lectures based on the articles, including a series of four lectures for attorneys in New York City as part of a continuing legal education program. Nathan T. Smithson was elected a partner last February in law firm Jackson Walker LLP in Dallas, focusing on federal income tax planning for domestic and international operations of corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies.
2005
Christy Isaacs and Charles Halladay were married in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, Oct. 8, 2011. After honeymooning in southeast Asia, they are at home in Corona del Mar, CA. E. Adrienne Jackson (J.D. ’08) has joined Bell Nunnally & Martin LLP’s labor, employment and benefits practice as an associate. She is experienced in defending against allegations of discrimination based on gender, natural origin, pregnancy and religion. Akers Moore and Caitlin Rhodes (M.A., M.B.A. ’04) were married Oct. 8, 2011, in the Cox Chapel at Highland Park United Methodist Church. They live in Dallas. Barbara R. Vance was presented an Indie Book Award and Moonbeam Silver Medal for her children’s poetry book, Suzie Bitner Was Afraid of the Drain. For each book sold on her website, www.suziebitner.com, she gives a book to a U.S. soldier, who is recorded reading it, and the USO sends the DVD and book to his/her children.
2006
Rachel Sam is a new associate in real estate practice in the Collin County (TX) office of law firm Strasburger & Price LLP. She has worked for a global law firm, dealing in real estate acquisitions, dispositions, financing transactions and negotiated leases.
2007
Reunion Chairs: Liz Healy and Taylor D. Russ Nic Arras and his wife, Beth, announce the birth of daughter Zoë Rose, Aug. 15, 2011. He recently was promoted to controller, logistics and distribution, at Gates Corporation in Denver. Garrett Haake works for NBC News covering the 2012 presidential election. As reporter, cameraman, producer, editor and blogger, he focuses on the Romney campaign and other political stories. He was nominated for two Emmy awards in 2010 and two in 2011 for helping produce NBC News specials, such as the funeral of Ted Kennedy, the earthquake in Haiti and climate change and conflict. John T. Holiday Jr. is a countertenor, who in 2011 placed first in The Dallas Opera Guild competition, received The Sullivan Foundation Award and was recognized by the Santa Fe Opera with the Anna Case MacKay Award for his work last summer in the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program. He signed with Columbia Artists Management Inc., one of the premier artists’ agencies in the world, and made his company debut with Portland Opera this March-April. He will debut at Carnegie Hall with the Atlanta Symphony.
2008
Jeff Broadway and his friend, Robert G. (Rob) Bralver, co-founded the film production company Gatling Pictures in 2009 while Jeff was pursuing post-graduate studies from the London School of Economics and the University of Southern California. Their first film was the documentary “Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story” about the life and music of the front man of the 90’s band Morphine. The film had an international screening in 2011, winning awards in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Their next film, a documentary on Taiwan, will hit the film festival circuit later this year. Annie Lau is an associate in the Dallas office of national labor and employment law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP. Previously she was an associate at a firm in Houston and an intern for the EEOC. Lindsay Miller married Daniel Scanio ’02 Oct. 15, 2011, at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. She works at SMU in Alumni Giving and Relations, and he is an environment artist at id Software, a video game developer. Allison Morrow Venuto started Ducks in a Row Personal Organizing in 2011, helping people find more time to spend on their interests.
2009
Erica Clemmensen and her mother, Lexia Allen ’77, announce the one-year anniversary of their Dallas store, Muzzie’s Dressy Dresses, featuring accessories and prom, pageant, after-five, party, homecoming, work and other special occasion dresses.
2011
Tate Hemingson has returned to Strasburger & Price LLP as a member of the litigation practice unit after participating in the firm’s 2010 summer associate program. In addition to his law degree, he holds a master of arts in classics and a doctor of philosophy.
Kimberly Hodgman joined Strasburger & Price LLP in October 2011 in governmental and specialty litigation practice. In summer 2010 she was in the firm’s associate program, and she has interned with several trial law firms, an international snack food company and the United States Department of Justice. Allison Reddoch is a new associate in the specialty litigation group at law firm Strasburger & Price LLP in the Collin County (TX) office. She was in Strasburger’s 2010 summer associate program and an intern for a Dallas-based insurance law firm and the Collin County District Attorney’s office. R. Haynes Strader Jr. began a two-year commitment with Teach for America after graduation and spent seven weeks training at Rice University in Houston. During the 2011-12 school year, he is teaching English and Language Arts to 100 sixth-graders at Summit International Preparatory in Arlington, TX, and encouraging them to stay on the path toward a college education.
A university with strong executive education programs is a key advantage for any city trying to attract and retain major businesses, according to Henry S. Bienen, president emeritus of Northwestern University, speaking at the SMU Centennial Academic Symposium.
Cox School of Business offers numerous career development opportunities that provide individuals and organizations with a competitive edge through new knowledge and skills, as well as networking and collaboration.
Among them are two Master’s programs ranked in the upper tier by Bloomberg Businessweek in November. The Executive MBA (EMBA) for senior-level professionals was named No. 7 in the world, and the Professional MBA (PMBA), which offers part-time classes for working professionals, was listed as No. 7 in the United States. A combined total of more than 500 students are currently enrolled in both programs.
For people who want to expand their skills and enhance their professional credentials, Cox offers graduate certificates in three concentrations: business intelligence, finance and marketing. Approximately 50 students are currently enrolled in each certification program.
Executive education also covers special courses tailored to the particular needs of individuals or companies. In 2010-11, more than 1,500 executives, managers and working professionals took part in more than 50 such programs, taught either on campus or at companies’ offices.
SMU has always played a leading role in Dallas’ vibrant arts milieu, beginning with the Arden Club, the longtime student drama organization, and expanding in scope and scale as the University and the city matured.
Among the trove of SMU’s rich cultural resources is the Meadows School of the Arts. In 2010, the school welcomed an estimated 9,500 audience members to 104 ticketed events that included dance, theatre, opera, symphony, wind symphony and faculty performances.
The Meadows Museum is one of the city’s cultural landmarks, attracting about 60,000 visitors each year. Entrepreneur Algur H. Meadows, whose prized assemblage of Spanish art serves as the museum’s core collection, envisioned a “Prado on the Prairie.” That vision became further realized with the announcement of a three-year partnership between the museum and the Prado Museum in Madrid last year. The first of three major paintings to be loaned from the Prado was the focus of “The Prado at the Meadows: El Greco’s Pentecost in a New Context,” drawing 20,446 visitors.
In addition, the University’s nine libraries house the largest private collection of research materials in the Southwest, valued by scholars from across the globe. The holdings include more than 3 million print volumes, as well as over 9,000 digitized items from the University’s special collections.
Counted among SMU’s one-of-a-kind collections is the archive of Academy Award-winning playwright Horton Foote. When North Texas arts organizations honored Foote with a two-month festival in the spring, Dallas theatre companies found their muse atDeGoyler Library.
“Hallie [Foote, the writer’s actress daughter and frequent artistic collaborator] recalled that a recording of music used in the third act of the production directed by Horton Foote was in the archive. It was located, and we were able to use the original music. That was an amazing resource that we didn’t even know existed,” says Kimberly Richard, director of publications and communications for Theatre Three, which staged Foote’s “The Roads to Home.” Defining The Future …next page
While large cities like Dallas boast innumerable advantages, they also face complex problems that often endure for generations. Interdisciplinary student teams involved in SMU’s Big iDeas program investigate some of those massive challenges, dissect them into smaller issues and design viable projects based on their research.
The Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs launched Big iDeas in 2008 and awards grants of up to $5,000 to put students’ plans into action. Eight teams received Big iDeas grants in April, and student researchers reported their findings at a symposium November 4.
Big iDeas provided a conduit to the community for senior Amrita Vir. She and fellow finance major Sean Zech ’11 produced “Mustang Microfinance,” a proposal to provide loans to fledgling entrepreneurs in underserved neighborhoods. Their group, which includes seniors Trigg Burrage, Seth Dennis and Christina Sanders and junior Weston Richter, has grown to 20 participants.
“Education has always been a passion, but I’m not a teacher. I wanted something empowering and uplifting that I could do as a finance major,” says Vir, the 2011-12 Carl and Peggy Sewell President’s Scholar and a 2010-11 Richter Research Fellow. “The more I learned about microfinance, the more I believed it could work here in Dallas.”
While researching how to proceed, Vir and the team met Jeremy Gregg ’01, executive director of The PLAN Fund, a Dallas-based nonprofit microfinance institution. Gregg discovered an affinity for the nonprofit sphere while he was an SMU student serving as a White House intern in 1999.
“The opportunity exposed me to how the third sector can have a transformational impact on society, especially among populations that are underserved and often forgotten,” says Gregg, who obtained his first post-graduation job, with Camp Fire USA, through the Hegi Center.
As a mentor Gregg guided the students through the candidate interview process and arranged for The PLAN Fund to provide infrastructure, including a direct-deposit system for the loans.
Working with candidates referred by CitySquare, a faith-based nonprofit in Dallas, the Mustang Microfinance team has approved six loans, ranging from $200 to $1,000. Students set up a loan repayment schedule with the recipients and are offering monthly finance classes to borrowers, as well as others who would like to attend.
Kris Sweckard, managing director of Dallas’ Office of Environmental Quality, serves on the Big iDeas review committee. He sees the University’s emphasis on student engagement in the community as a long-term investment that enriches the entire city.
“It’s not just about the impact they have right now as students, it’s about their future as the city’s business leaders and philanthropists,” says Sweckard. “The lessons they’re learning now will have an impact on Dallas for the next 30, 40 and more years, perhaps forever.”
For more than six decades, SMU’s Dedman School of Law Clinical Program has remained true to its core intent of public service by providing legal representation to low-income clients while providing skills training to legal students through seven clinics and projects:
CIVIL CLINIC
Represents low-income clients in civil matters such as housing disputes, elder advocacy and civil-rights litigation. CRIMINAL DEFENSE CLINIC
Partners with the Dallas Public Defender’s Office to provide students with felony trial experience. FEDERAL TAXPAYERS CLINIC
Represents low-income taxpayers with tax issues. This clinic is the first tax clinic in the country with the authority to represent clients before the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Tax Court. SMALL BUSINESS CLINIC
Represents small start-up companies and individuals developing private nonprofit entities. W. W. CARUTH, JR. CHILD ADVOCACY CLINIC
Is appointed by juvenile district court judges to serve as guardian/attorney ad litem to represent children who have been abused and neglected in Dallas County. Interdisciplinary lectures given by psychologists, forensic detectives, child development specialists and social workers are a significant component of this clinic. CONSUMER ADVOCACY PROJECT
Assists the local Hispanic community with consumer complaints and focuses on informal advocacy, negotiation and mediation strategies, and community education. DEATH PENALTY PROJECT
Gives students practical experience on death penalty cases. Dedman School of Law and Embrey Human Rights Program were awarded 2011 “Angel of Freedom” awards by the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) of North Texas in November. Since 1997, SMU Dedman School of Law students have assisted HRI attorneys in their representation of clients through public service as well as paid summer internships and academic externships, currently overseen by law professor Jeffrey Kahn.
At a symposium hosted by Meadows School of the Arts this spring, participants across the creative spectrum were challenged to rewrite the relationship between artists and activists in the city.
This fall, first-year Meadows Scholars put their talents to work on the Dallas Mexican American Historical League’s ongoing oral history and photo archive project as part of the course “Artspace: Mapping Sites of Social Change.” Janis Bergman-Carton, art history chair, led the team of art, art history, dance and theatre faculty teaching the class. The course is the first curricular piece produced by Creative Time, a New York-based public arts organization and a winner of the inaugural Meadows Prize arts residency in 2009.
The scholars assisted the DMAHL with its mission of documenting the history and contributions of Mexican Americans in Dallas. Students also delved into the impact of the Trinity River Corridor Project, specifically the construction of the Santiago Calatrava-designed bridge, and the Mexican-American community of West Dallas. Group projects allowed the Meadows Scholars to express their findings in artistic ways.
The culmination was “Las huellas: footsteps in West Dallas,” a student art installation and mapping (dance) performance at the Bataan Center in West Dallas November 28 and at the Meadows School’s Doolin Gallery December 1.
“Students became stakeholders and participants in the next phase of the Meadows initiative to define its own model of urban engagement and creativity in 21st-century Dallas,” says Bergman-Carton.
The new Center on Communities and Education (CCE) will bring research, documentation and evaluation capabilities to a West Dallas redevelopment strategy that focuses on school transformation as its core.
A partnership between the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development and the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition (DFCC) created the CCE in October. The CCE assumes leadership of the education component of the University-wide commitment to provide intellectual resources and volunteer involvement that will have a positive impact on West Dallas.
Professor Reid Lyon, associate dean of the Simmons School, serves as CCE’s faculty director. He will supervise research and faculty engagement. Regina Nippert is the executive director and will oversee operations and programs, including all nonfaculty staff.
“The center is focused on communities and how their systems interact,” says Nippert. “One of its most important responsibilities is to support The School Zone, a community partnership that is committed to a healthy West Dallas educational ecosystem.”
CCE will function as the backbone organization for The School Zone, a collaboration between 10 Dallas Independent School District campuses, three charter schools and 20 nonprofit agencies.
While the center’s programs are still in development and details have not been finalized, its initial research partnerships are likely to focus on the effects of early intervention on children, schools and families, and interventions that support improved academic, social and language outcomes for English language learners and children in poverty, according to Nippert.
The Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity in the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering examines the complexities of poverty in an effort to create scalable, feasible solutions that can be applied in greater Dallas and around the globe.
In January a new Master of Arts in Sustainability and Development will be offered by the Lyle School and supported by the Hunt Institute. Like the Institute, the Master’s program will focus on research, seminars, site-based internships and service learning opportunities in the local area. Coursework will concentrate on sustainability, environmental resources and urban development.
The Master’s program contributes another dimension to the Hunt Institute’s mission to identify and create innovative and affordable technology that, in combination with market forces, will help accelerate improvements for the poor everywhere. The Institute’s efforts center on access to clean water; creating affordable shelter, including design justice for the marginalized; hygiene education and promotion; access to energy; and meeting basic infrastructure needs.
“To make basic technology available at a price the poorest of the poor can afford requires a radical rethinking of centuries of engineering practice,” says Geoffrey Orsak, dean of the Lyle School.
The harshness of life for the billions of people who exist without these building blocks was brought home by the Hunt Institute during SMU’s Engineering & Humanity Week in April. In the “Living Village” constructed on campus that week, participants cooked their meals, spent time and slept in temporary shelters designed to house those living in extreme poverty or displaced by war and natural disasters.
Jonathan L. Barger ’11 was among the students who shared their thoughts on a blog devoted to the living-learning experience: “Like others, I jolted awake several times and only achieved light sleep – imagine having to spend the night like this for several months, surrounded by thousands of other people. Quite sobering.”
Dallas becomes a living laboratory for students in Dedman College courses like “Latino/Latina Religions,” which blends classroom instruction with service in the community.
“I think students learn better when they can apply theories and historical frameworks that we discuss and read about in class to real-world situations,” says Jill DeTemple, assistant professor of religious studies, who teaches the course. “They take a sense of ownership of course materials, and because they are working for a community organization, they are working for more than the grade.”
In fall 2010 students spent hours sifting through the archives of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Cathedral in East Dallas. Their mission was to document the rich past and explore the evolving present of the multiethnic congregation. Students uncovered some surprises – Jack Benage, a senior accounting major, unearthed the academic record of former first lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, a graduate of St. Mary’s College for Women, which was housed at the site until 1930. They also examined how a surge in Latino parishioners is changing the congregation.
At the end of the semester, the students presented a 57-page history of the cathedral and its programs to the congregation in English and Spanish.
“Students didn’t just read about a subject, they produced knowledge based on their experiences with archival materials and interviews,” DeTemple explains. “This gives them a window into how academic materials are produced, and why they are useful for the wider community.”
Senior Lindsay Sockwell, one of the first Engaged Learning grant recipients, experienced her own “journey of discovery” this past summer while working with orphans in Zambia. She used her skills as a dance performance major with a psychology minor to inspire the children, most of whom lost their parents to the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
“I had spent time in Africa last year and saw how the children’s facial expressions changed in the presence of music and dance,” Sockwell says, “and I became interested in how that could be therapeutic for orphaned kids in Zambia.”
Sockwell divided her time in Zambia’s capital of Lusaka between a summer camp and an orphanage, both operated by Family Legacy Missions International of Irving. She worked with a group of boys ages 4-16 for two weeks and helped lead dance sessions within large-group gatherings for another two weeks. Sockwell and other counselors taught the children songs through repetition and taught dance movements that used symbolic gesture because most of the children don’t speak English. The youngsters reciprocated by teaching the Americans a few songs in their tribal language.
Sockwell advises other SMU students who develop an engagement project: “Prepare for your life to be changed. My experience has put hundreds of faces and names to the staggering statistics about life in Africa. This kind of knowledge changes things.”
James Quick, SMU’s associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, whose office oversees Engaged Learning, observes that students often ask, “‘Why are we learning this information in the classroom?’ Through involvement in a community project, they find that what they’ve learned is useful. Engaged Learning programming will help students build on their classroom education and develop a significant and sophisticated understanding of how the world community intersects with knowledge gained in their academic disciplines.” Engaged Learning: Michael McCarthy … next page
Senior and grant recipient Michael McCarthy, a double major in statistics and mathematics, is using his knowledge to analyze data for Veterans Affairs in Dallas while covering school expenses. Receiving the Engaged Learning grant enabled him to participate in the program by replacing the salary he otherwise would earn working part time, which he needs to do to cover school expenses. McCarthy is conducting database analysis that evaluates home care support the VA Spinal Cord Injury Center provides to injured veterans.
“My experience at the VA already has begun to shape my post-graduation and career plans,” McCarthy says. “I’m now considering an applied statistics Master’s program to further my ability to assist with these types of statistical projects and use data analysis techniques to answer important questions. I’ve also become interested in biostatistics and health care data analysis.”
The Engaged Learning program resulted from work by the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Committee, created in 2009 to develop a plan to help SMU enhance its educational mission and qualify for reaccreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). The Quality Enhancement Plan is a new requirement by SACS that presented a “great opportunity for SMU to coalesce around a strategic plan for improving student learning,” says committee chair Margaret Dunham, professor of computer science and engineering in the Lyle School of Engineering. QEP Committee members represented a cross section of the SMU community, from faculty and administrators to students and staff. “Engaged Learning was a concept the group embraced from the outset, with a goal of inspiring students to develop a lifelong desire to help others and their community,” Dunham adds. Engaged Learning: Matt Gayer … next page
The new program will build on elements of the new University Curriculum, which will debut in fall 2012. Starting then, students will be required to engage with local and global communities around issues of civic responsibility and cultural understanding either through coursework, volunteer opportunities, or study abroad. The Engaged Learning program takes students a step further: They can enhance their experiences through independently designed projects that require more depth and serious commitments of both time and effort. A major component of Engaged Learning requires the students to write reports about their projects, reflecting on their experiences. All students’ reports will be published in an online journal organized by Central University Libraries.
As SMU’s first director of Engaged Learning, Susan Kress serves as a facilitator who will build on experiential learning programs that already exist at SMU under a variety of names. She previously served
as SMU’s director of Education Abroad in the International Center.
“I’m eager to help the University broaden opportunities for engaged learning and to get students excited about trying out what they are learning in the classroom through real-life work,” Kress says. “Engaged learners explore who they want to be, not just what they want to do.”
Senior Matt Gayer, who served on the QEP Committee, is a prime example of a student who has channeled his academic interests into community engagement. Majoring in public policy and political science with minors in economics, human rights and biology and a certificate in leadership, he has become an advocate of health literacy, which seeks to help local residents understand health issues and to improve communication between health professionals and patients. He first saw the need after helping with a health literacy campaign in Jefferson County, Missouri, as a teenager. When he came to SMU, Gayer realized that Texas lacked health literacy leadership.
“Everyone, regardless of cultural or educational background, deserves an opportunity to understand their own health and to take steps to ensure a basic quality of life for themselves and their families,” Gayer says. A grant from SMU’s Big iDeas program, sponsored by the Provost’s office, enabled him to create the nonprofit organization, Health Literacy Dallas, in 2009.
Awarded a national Truman Scholarship, Gayer plans to earn a Master’s degree in public administration with a focus on health policy and work in the field of social justice. “One thing I have learned during leadership experiences inside and outside of SMU is to focus on individuals who need my help, rather than becoming lost in impersonal administrative issues,” he says.
“Today’s student population hungers for engagement inside and outside the classroom,” says Patricia Alvey, director of the Temerlin Advertising Institute in Meadows School of the Arts and chair of the search committee for a director of Engaged Learning. Universities across the nation are increasing opportunities for students to become involved with their communities, Alvey says. “SMU is not the first to emphasize this popular educational concept, and it won’t be the last, but the University hopes its program will grow into one of the best examples,” she adds. Engaged Learning: Colby Kruger …next page
Grant recipient and sophomore Jaywin Malhi also praises the Engaged Learning program. Malhi is a political science and business management major who plans to attend law school and
is considering a career in public service. Because he wants to learn firsthand how government works, he proposed and received a Congressional internship for summer 2012. “Engaged Learning is so broad that you’ll be surprised by what projects might be deemed applicable,” Malhi says. “Pursue your interests, and, most likely, the program will be able to help you.”
The stories of Meera, Lindsay, Michael, Matt, Colby and Jaywin are early examples of the enthusiasm that SMU administrators hope will grow in years to come.
“Engaged learning is not a gimmick but an important concept that requires nurturing and focus,” Ludden says. “After students learn to observe and listen to the needs of the world, they come up with strategies for making improvements. And if thousands of students from each class experience the power of engagement, SMU is convinced that each student can leave a positive mark on society.”
Senior Colby Kruger wanted to expand her previous volunteer services for Girls Incorporated of Metropolitan Dallas. With her Engaged Learning grant, she is teaching photography to teens from low-income neighborhoods while encouraging them to develop a realistic understanding of beauty. The business marketing major, who has a double minor in photography and art history, is working through a partnership with Girls Inc.
“I’ve had this idea for a workshop for about a year,” says Kruger. But what she lacked was equipment. The SMU grant enabled her to buy 18 cameras to teach the girls photographic skills. “I was so excited
to make this dream into a reality.” Engaged Learning: Jaywin Malhhi … next page
Perkins School of Theology programs put faith into practice in the community through experiences that integrate classroom learning with hands-on ministry. One example – available to students taking “Theory and Practice of Evangelism” – is a four-week immersion opportunity with New Day, a network of missional micro-communities.
Developed in large measure by Elaine A. Heath, McCreless Associate Professor of Evangelism, New Day communities bring people together across racial, ethnic, educational and economic divides. They are located in the Vickery Meadow and West Dallas neighborhoods as well as in Garland.
About a dozen students participate each semester. As part of the program, they attend a weekly community meal and worship gathering, as well as monthly outreach activities that usually include a cookout, soccer, music and games. Students also assist with English for speakers of other languages classes and activities for newly arrived immigrants and refugees.
“This assignment is valuable because it introduces students to an alternative form of church, one that is grounded in at-risk neighborhoods and that uses a team leadership approach in all aspects of church life,” says Heath, who introduced the community-based experience in her evangelism class two years ago. “The New Day model is becoming widely known throughout The United Methodist Church, and judicatory leaders across the nation are taking an interest in the model as a way forward for the church to become more missional here in the United States.”
Over the past century, the “town” and “gown” have flourished together. With more than 40,000 alumni now living and working in the area, the University’s DNA runs through the economic, civic and cultural networks of greater Dallas.
“Universities bring intellectual capital to their regions. They bring young, talented students. They create new knowledge through faculty research, resulting in new corporations and business opportunities. They elevate civic dialogue and contribute to cultural vibrancy. They serve as a city’s conscience, and they set the standard for civic discourse and free expression,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said at SMU’s Centennial Academic Symposium.
“SMU has done all of this for Dallas. … Dallas would not be the intellectual, business, cultural and philanthropic powerhouse that it is, were SMU not to have been founded 100 years ago.” Forbes magazine ranked Dallas a top-10 city for businesses and entrepreneurs in June, calling it “one of the most resilient economies during the recession” and forecasting the city “could add 190,000 jobs in the next three years.”
In cultivating human capital through more than 100 majors and 75 minors, SMU helps drive that growth. The worldwide reach of ExxonMobil, Texas Instruments and other leading employers based in the Metroplex demands educated problem-solvers with global perspectives.
“Upon graduation SMU students are well prepared to contribute in a meaningful way to the world of work and possess the initiative to become the leaders of the future global economy,” says Darin Ford, director of SMU’s Hegi Family Career Development Center. The center assists approximately 7,000 students and alumni each year through a campus recruiting and job-referral program, as well as career plan development and counseling.
From the beginning, SMU’s core mission has been to prepare graduates for successful futures as citizens and professionals, and in fulfilling that duty, SMU has remained nimble, helping to predict emerging needs and being ready to adapt to the shifting economic landscape.
STEM knowledge – science, technology, engineering and math – is critical, according to symposium panelist William A. Blase Jr., senior executive vice president, human resources, AT&T. Today’s students “are much more demanding,” he said. “They want the University to get them prepared.”
The most successful job candidates, however, must have an education balanced with coursework and experiences that develop a range of nontechnical “life skills,” said symposium keynote speaker Duy-Loan Le, senior fellow, Texas Instruments, and board of directors, National Instruments. The ideal employee, she said, has the ability to handle complex problems and think creatively; write and listen effectively; collaborate and work with people with different viewpoints, backgrounds and cultures; and possess a strong sense of ethics and integrity.
If two candidates have equally solid technical skills, but one has stronger life skills, “guess which one I would choose,” she said. Life-skills knowledge requires years of development, and the candidate with those qualities is more valuable, she explained. Priceless Intellectual Capital …next page
SMU’s sacred music program emphasizes musical training as much as theological education – potential students must audition to be accepted into the Meadows School, in addition to being admitted into the Perkins School. Meadows provides a major portion of the music education aspect of the Perkins degree, including applied instruction in organ and voice, as well as conducting, techniques courses, music history, and performance opportunities, says Pamela Elrod, associate professor of music and director of choral activities in Meadows.
“The partnership is a natural one to begin with, since music is so integral to the worship process. The church was, for centuries, the most important arts patron in the world. So a huge portion of the greatest choral music ever composed is essentially church music – and thankfully, that legacy is still present in many churches today,” Elrod adds.
Several M.S.M. alumni were recognized recently for their artistic success in the secular realm of music performance. Keith Weber ’88 and Matthew Dirst ’85 received a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording for Johann Adolf Hasse’s MarcoAntonio e Cleopatra,produced by Weber with Dirst conducting the Ars Lyrica Houston, a group of musicians who perform Baroque music using period instruments.
Perkins Associate Professor of Sacred Music Christopher Anderson ’91 earned both the M.S.M. and Master of music degrees from SMU. He recognizes that many of his students are attracted to the interdisciplinary nature of the M.S.M. program, interested in developing their musical artistry as much as their theological skills.
“The challenge is finding the right balance between the theological and musical sides of the curriculum, and defining exactly how these relate to each other,” he says. “Church musicians have to be artists, but they also must be able to perceive and manipulate the theological potential of their material, the music-historical context in which it sits, its place in effective worship. The challenge lies in the synthesis of these varied disciplines, which always ends up being a very personal solution for the student.”
The Rev. Marti Soper ’98, pastor at Greenland Hills UMC, says that she and her minister of music Stern have developed a collaborative relationship, sharing a common vision for their “eclectic congregation, so our music has to honor that. Our people are concerned about transforming the world, so our music has to inspire them to embrace their role in that transformation by singing global faith music. Additionally, our people do not respond well to hierarchical authority, so a strong congregational song component undergirds their sense of being drawn into using their own gifts to promote the reign of God.
“Chelsea is always taking into account the whole picture, as well as the particular needs of musicians and choir,” Soper adds. “When Chelsea began to really understand the context, it was easy to give her the freedom to use musical resources that are not in the hymnal or supplement, but draw from a variety of sources. In the end, we try to let every piece of music further the message or vision.”
Dallas alumni, friends and family made hundreds of sandwiches for the homeless.
Black Alumni of SMU launched the project with a bread drive and were joined by other Mustangs at eXcuses eXtreme Café in Deep Ellum to make sandwiches. The food was distributed to the homeless through Random Acts of Kindness’ SoupMobile. SMU alumna Nikki Brewster '01 SMU alumni, from left, Lauren Driskell '06, Zach Dobbs '09 and wife Razieh Dobbs '11, and Fredrika Johnson '08 were among those preparing food for those in need during National Community Service Day.
Volunteering was a family project for alumna Aliya Khatri '04 and her husband, Mushtak Khatri, and their children Zayd, 8, and Saira, 6.
In Houston alumni distributed books donated by Half Price Books and discussed the importance of reading with youngsters involved in the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) at Sharpstown College Prep School. Kipp Sharpstown’s goal is to help students become lifelong learners capable of excelling in college by fostering self-reliance, honor, achievement, responsibility to others and persistence.
Volunteers worked with Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, which provides food to those in need in Middle and West Tennessee. Alumni helped stock refrigerators, boxed food and sorted canned goods.
Alumni volunteered with City Meals on Wheels at the Stanley Isaacs Senior Center. The program’s mission is to ensure that homebound elderly New Yorkers never go a day without food or human company. Volunteers followed a walking route to deliver meals to the elderly.
Alumni helped spruce up Onward Neighborhood House, which offers educational, recreational and social services programs. Afterward, the Mustangs gathered for an SMU-Tulsa watch party. Pictured from left are Tom Cooper ’02, Jesica Cooper ’02, John Gaines ’04, Tim Moen ’74, Steve Swanson ’74 and John Simon ’10.
Alumni aided SOME (So Others May Eat). SOME is an interfaith, community-based organization that exists to help the poor and homeless of our nation’s capital. The organization meets the immediate daily needs of the people it serves with food, clothing and health care. SOME helps break the cycle of homelessness by offering services, such as affordable housing, job training, addiction treatment and counseling, to the poor, the elderly and individuals with mental illness.
Alumni in St. Louis volunteered at City Academy, a K-6 school that strives to admit promising children from committed families in the urban community; offer an exceptional and affordable education; foster a culture of academic rigor, integrity and citizenship; and cultivate an appreciation of lifelong learning that inspires future success.
SMU alumni assisted the United Methodist Children’s Home (UMCH) with landscaping. The mission of UMCH is to provide redemptive, healing services that bring meaningful change to children and families. The Children’s Home has been a safe haven for abused children and youth since 1871. Services are aimed at preventing the breakup of families, restoring and healing separated families, and teaching teens and young adults how to create successful lives for their future families.
Max M. Morrison lives in El Paso, TX, and in January 2010 celebrated his 95th birthday, reports his daughter, Monica Morrison ’98. He had a TV repair business following graduation from SMU and worked for 20 years as an engineer for Western Electric.
Margaret Elizabeth RodgersPospichal is a retired teacher in the Fort Worth school district. For 47 years she was married to Lt. Col. Arnold B. Pospichal. She has two daughters and a son, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Celebrating her 92nd birthday Sept. 12, 2011, she enjoys driving and riding her stationary bike.
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Bennie H. Furlong was a teacher for 41 years and city council member for 20 years in Jacksonville Beach, FL, where the Bennie Furlong Senior Center is named in her honor. She celebrated her 90th birthday Sept. 30, 2011.
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Claude W. Ferebee Jr. owned a grocery store in Pecos, TX, an oilfield service in Midland, TX, and an oilfield storage and transportation company in Harvey, LA. He earned a law degree from Loyola University in 1971 and practiced in Louisiana and Texas until 1988. Now retired, he lives in Fort Worth. Georgia Schenewerk Pitts stays busy with volunteering and an interest in politics. She has 11 grandchildren.
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Earle Labor (M.A. ’52), considered a leading authority on Jack London, was honored as “Jack London Man of the Year 2011” by the Jack London Foundation in Sonoma, CA. He has published eight books on the author, and his newest, Jack London: An American Life in Letters (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is set for a 2012 release.
J. Webster Feild participated in a remembrance of the invasion of Iwo Jima 66 years ago. E.L. Gibson, a retired aircraft designer, worked 33 years at General Dynamics in Fort Worth. Dorothy Marion Arterburn McKinsey has seen most of the world and retired twice. Now a broken leg has slowed her down. Elizabeth Cady Pousson went back to college and became a hospital dietitian. She has four children and six grandchildren.
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Jerome M. (Jerry) Fullinwider received a 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Highland Park High School Alumni Association. In December 2010 the Jerome M. Fullinwider Endowed Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom at SMU’s Cox School of Business was named in his honor.
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Murray T. Bass (M.A. ’54) was recognized as a “Living Legend” by the Solano County (CA) Senior Coalition. He is founder and president of Tools of Learning for Children, helping preschoolers learn to read, and the Tools Citizenship Program, teaching students about American government. His “Plan to Live” column has appeared in the Fairfield Daily Republic newspaper for more than 25 years. Carolyn Saunders Jones began her sixth term last June as mayor of Winnsboro, TX. She volunteers as president of the Winnsboro Community Foundation, vice president of Enough Is Enough Drug Task Force and board member of Winnsboro Community Resource Center Food Bank.
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William A. Riedel recently traveled to Asia and toured South America and the Mediterranean with his wife, Bobbie.
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Julia Sanford Burgen, an environmental advocate, received the Shield Award from National Delta Gamma Fraternity in spring 2011. Her keystone accomplishment was the establishment in 2004 of Julia Burgen Park on the Johnson Creek Greenway, 70 acres of floodplain in the heart of Arlington, TX. Donald D. Clayton, 1993 SMU Distinguished Alumnus, was invited by the Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Innovation to deliver a public lecture in March at the Melbourne Museum. He presented “Astronomy with Radioactivity – What Is That!” and enjoyed two weeks in the Melbourne area with his wife, Nancy.
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Ann Weaver McDonald was the designated spotlight artist for the 2011 Lubbock Arts Festival, the first photographer so honored. Harry Donald Nicholson introduces his new wife: Linda.
Adelfa Botello Callejo was honored by Hispanic 100, an organization of Hispanic professional women, at its 2011 Latina Living Legend Awards September 14. As an attorney and civil rights activist, she has worked to break down racial barriers for Dallas Hispanic residents and improve equality in education. Robert W. Cooper (M.L.A. ’74) teaches at Eastfield College near Dallas. He has been a professor of English for 20 years. William B. (Bill) Moorer and his wife, Helen, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last August. When he was a student at Perkins School of Theology, she was secretary to SMU President Willis M. Tate. Dr. Moorer served 41 years as a minister in the Oklahoma Conference, retiring in 2000. He and Helen live in Muskogee, where he is a part-time V.A. chaplain.
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Dr. Linda Hawkins Kay was inducted into the Jacksboro High School Alumni Hall of Fame in Texas. The spring/summer 2011 Class Notes mistakenly located the high school in Mississippi. SMU Magazine apologizes for the error. Robert M. (Bob) Richardson retired Jan. 1, 2011, after 25 years as chief judge of the State Court of Houston County in Georgia. He will serve as a senior judge in retirement and also continue his hobby of scuba diving for fossils.
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Mike Boone is the recipient of the 2011 Law Firm Distinguished Leader Award by The American Lawyer for his positive contributions to law and society. He is in the Junior Achievement Dallas Business Hall of Fame, and the Dallas Lawyers Auxiliary honored his long-standing dedication to volunteerism with the Justinian Award for Public Service. The Michael Mauldin Boone Leadership Scholarship, initiated by his friends, is awarded annually to a Highland Park High School senior who exemplifies Boone’s commitment to community service and ethical leadership. He is co-founder and partner of Haynes and Boone law firm in Dallas. F.R. (Buck) Files Jr. (M.L.A. ’74) was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association June 10, and on June 23 was sworn in as president-elect of the State Bar of Texas. Paul Petersen retired in 2006 from full-time teaching at Cleveland State University’s Fenn College of Engineering. He lives in Bath, NC, where he enjoys fishing, sailing, teaching part-time at a community college and spoiling his grandson. Brad Tibbitts was honored at a reception April 28 on his retirement from Weatherford (TX) College after 38 years. Though serving in several capacities, he is most remembered as an instructor of American history.
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Gayle Outlan (M.A. ’67) works part-time as a speech pathologist for Southwestern Medical Home Health and Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas Home Health.
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Clark Hendley left retirement to return to academic administration as vice president for academic affairs at Hastings College in Nebraska. Bill Lively was appointed vice chancellor of strategic partnerships for the three campuses of the University of North Texas System effective Sept. 7, 2011. He will work with campus presidents in fundraising and strategic planning.
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King Bourland is a partner at the Dallas certified public accounting and consulting firm CF & Co. LLP. He was interviewed in the June 3-9 edition of Dallas Business Journal.
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Jack Moffatt is serving a two-year term as president of the Tularosa Basin – Don Root Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America.
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Kathy Bates plays Gertrude Stein in the Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris.” Eugene Taylor has won the 2011 Abraham Maslow Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Farther Reaches of the Human Spirit, conferred by the Society for Humanistic Psychology in the American Psychological Association. J. Richard (Dick) White serves on the SMU Presidential Commission on Substance Abuse Prevention, 2010-2012.
Kyle T. Demler is a 33-year emergency department physician. Bob Emrichis is co-founder of Tranzpal Inc., a company that develops speech-to-speech software for Apple, Android and Blackberry cell phones. With an initial application in the oil and gas industry and construction, it provides automatic translation of common phrases to increase safety and reduce injuries in the field. David L. Nelson has co-authored the book David & Lee Roy, A Vietnam Story (Texas Tech University Press, 2011), as a tribute to the life of his Lubbock, TX, childhood friend, Lee Roy Herron, killed in action in 1969. After law school and a stint in the JAG office and Okinawa, Nelson lost track of Herron. At a benefit in 1997, he heard a retired Marine colonel mention Lt. Lee Herron and his heroic actions on the front lines. After uncovering the story of his death, Nelson set out on a 13-year mission to honor his friend. Along with writing the book, he spearheaded a scholarship in Herron’s name at Texas Tech University. Nelson retired in 2005 from Houston Endowment, a private foundation, after 14 years as vice president and grant director.
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Valerie Brenner is working part-time. She has a daughter, Kristen Belle, and a granddaughter, Annabelle Louise, age 7. Elizabeth (Betty) Underwood has been appointed to the Alumni Advisory Council for Meadows School of the Arts at SMU.
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Molly Engelhardt has written her first book, Dancing Out of Line (Ohio University Press, 2009), and has published works on Jane Austen, the romantic ballerina Marie Taglioni, American cheerleaders and the 1970s popular press. She is a tenured professor of English at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, where she lives with her husband, Gary Goodwin. Asher W. McDaniel retired from the Missouri Annual Conference and moved to Lake of the Ozarks.
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Gregory S. (Greg) Davis (J.D. ’77) is deputy first assistant district attorney in McLennan County, TX. Kenneth Labowitz was named a “Super Lawyer” in elder law for Virginia and Washington, D.C., and was chosen one of Washington’s best lawyers in Washingtonian magazine. Brian Lusk, recently named corporate historian for Southwest Airlines, helped design a permanent exhibit at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas that includes the first Boeing 737-300 to enter commercial service.
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Garrett W. Epp and his wife, Teresa Pruett-Epp, announce the birth of Oliver Dietrich Oct. 9, 2010, in Olathe, KS. Michael H. Norman (M.B.A. ’76) practices law in Houston and around the state. Wilma Norris Sonntag taught public school for 49 years and will soon celebrate her 92nd birthday. Sol Villasana was the guest at a book signing and reception hosted by Preservation Dallas last August for Dallas’s Little Mexico (Arcadia Publishing, 2011), which chronicles the neighborhood’s growth, zenith, demise and renaissance.
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Todd Meier was elected mayor of Addison, TX, May 14, 2011. Jon Mitovich is president and CEO of Volcano Industries Inc., recently named by Inc. magazine as one of America’s fastest growing privately held businesses. Dianne Pingree (M.L.A. ’89) is a corporate etiquette and international protocol consultant, trained and certified by the Protocol School of Washington. She received a Ph.D. in sociology from Texas Woman’s University, where she taught in the Department of Sociology and Social Work. The Dallas native has lived in Austin since 1995.
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Frank Byrne has won several awards, including American Federation of Northeast Pennsylvania, Gold Winner, Business to Consumer website; ScrantonVocations.com, Gold Winner, Business to Consumer Poster Series; ScrantonVocations.com, A Different Kind of White Collar Worker Poster Series, Gold Winner, Business to Consumer Campaign; and ScrantonVocations.com, A Different Kind of White Collar Worker Advertising Campaign. Madeline Dunklin has left a 30-year career in advertising and public relations to work for Clarkson Davis, a Dallas-based consulting firm that looks to refocus and reinvent nonprofit organizations’ strategies due to current economic challenges. The mother of two is involved in Highland Park United Methodist Church and the Dallas Opera Women’s Board. Paul N. Gold has been honored by the College of the State Bar with the 2010 Jim D. Bowmer Award for professional contributions to the Bar. He also received the 2010 Texas Bar Foundation Dan Rugeley Price Memorial Award for professionalism, the 2009 Texas Trial Lawyers Association John Howie Award for mentorship and the 2007 State Bar of Texas Gene Cavin Award for contributions to continuing legal edu-cation in Texas. He is a partner in the Houston trial firm of Aversano & Gold. Jerome M. Sampson has moved to Gainesville, FL.
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Susan Garbett Kendrick and her husband, Dick, welcomed two grandsons, Cole Evans Estrada in December 2010 and Brody Spencer Stark in January 2011. Susan retired after 30 years on staff at First Baptist Church of Dallas, and Dick works for IBM Corporation. They live in Frisco. EllenBoling Zemke and her husband, Douglas, moved to Cincinnati after he retired as president of Millikin University in Decatur, IL. She retired from Deloitte & Touche in 2004.
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Greg Carr is managing partner of Carr LLP, a Dallas-based intellectual property law firm named a Technology Advocate finalist by the Metroplex Technology Business Council at the 11th annual Tech Titans Awards gala Aug. 26, 2011. The firm actively supports emerging technology in the private and public sector. John A. Cofield re-entered active duty in the U.S. Army to serve with his two sons. Starting in August 2011, he is stationed in Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division. Beverly B. Godbey, a partner in the Dallas office of Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, was elected chair of the board of directors of the State Bar of Texas. She began her one-year term during the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting June 23-24, 2011, in San Antonio and will serve until June 2012. She is married to the Hon. David Godbey of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Kim DeWitt Quirk is president of the Richardson Independent School District board of trustees.
Neil L. Abramson was promoted to director of customer service at F4W Inc. in Lake Mary, FL, in January 2011.
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Joe Coomer’s 1992 novel, The Loop, is now a feature film. “A Bird of the Air” premiered in Dallas in October. John D. Duncan is vice president of development for The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce. He and the former Melanie Swanson ’84 have been married 25 years and have two daughters. Paul Koning announces the opening of Koning Rubarts LLP and his concentration in professional liability defense and complex commercial litigation. He was with Hughes & Luce/K&L Gates for 29 years.
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Caralyn Wehlitz Bushey is an ESL instructor and student services coordinator at the Maryland English Institute at the University of Maryland.
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J. Alan Davis is a theatre producer in London’s West End and last summer co-produced “Being Shakespeare.” Louis Murad is the owner of Murad Auction Group in Richardson and a full-time professional, licensed auctioneer. He helps nonprofit organizations raise money by holding live and silent auctions and educates development directors and auction chairs on how to have a successful event. He and his wife, Claire, own a subsidiary company, Auction & Event Solutions, providing turnkey solutions for auctions.
Col. Mike Schwamm retired from the U.S. Air Force after serving 26 years. Now a pilot for Southwest Airlines, he lives in Las Vegas.
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Tyrone Gordon is senior pastor of the 6,000-member St. Luke Community United Methodist Church, one of the oldest of Dallas’ mega-churches. Paulara Hawkins has a new ebook available on Amazon, Talk That Talk, under the name P.R. Hawkins.
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Anthony Helm became head of digital media and library technologies at the Dartmouth College Library in March 2011. ArLena Richardson gave the graduate commencement address to the Class of 2011 at Western International University in Phoenix. Elena Rohweder is on the board of the Dallas International Association of Business Communicators and co-chairs the Quill Awards. Patty Sullivan joined MoneyGram International in January 2011 as senior vice president of communications. Rick Whittlesey runs a nonprofit organization, Go Nigeria, that provides food, care and education to orphans, widows and others in need in Nigeria. As reported by Carrie Slaughter-Whittlesey ’98, the organization held a fundraiser in Dallas last June to build a school for Nigerian orphans.
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Todd Boulanger is back in the U.S. after managing Alta Planning & Design’s pedestrian safety action plan for the Abu Dhabi Department of Transportation. Now he works with small cities in Oregon on their streets and transportation plans and continues his longtime work as a board director of Bikestation, which provides and designs bicycle parking hubs throughout the U.S. He is celebrating his 23rd year without owning a car. Dorree Remont Colson and her husband, Michael, have two sons: Walker Rheed, born May 12, 2009, and Daniel, 7. The Colsons live in Houston. Michael Hudak is a private wealth advisor for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management in Phoenix, listed on “America’s Top 1,000 Advisors” in the Feb. 21, 2011, issue of Barron’s magazine. He ranked fourth among the 25 advisors in Barron’s Arizona Top Advisor list. This is the third consecutive year he has been so recognized. Amy Martin is founder and creative director of Winter SolstiCelebration, a fusion of seasonal service, performing arts and musical theater. In her online newsletter Moonlady News, she reports on nonmainstream spirituality; environment; holistic, metaphysic mind-body movement; personal growth; and progressive causes in North Texas. Jeffrey L. Weinstein of Athens, TX, is a new member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, trial lawyers who have won million- and multimillion-dollar verdicts, awards and settlements. He represents victims of drunk driving, distracted driving and texting and cell phone usage.
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Brant Bernet is co-founder and managing director of Lincoln Rackhouse. On June 14, 2011, he posted a blog at realpoints.dmagazine.com on the maturation of the data center business. Brad D’Amico practices securities and oil and gas law at the Fort Worth and Dallas law firm Cantey Hanger LLP. Kimberly Nelson-Olszewski is a partner and branch manager of RPM Mortgage Inc. in Santa Monica, CA.
The Rev. Rita Sims conducted her first service June 12, 2011, as pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Rockdale, TX. She is enrolled in the doctoral program at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
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Rod Pipinich (D.Eng. ’92) and his wife, Missy, celebrated the birth of a third daughter, Alexandra.
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The Rev. Elaine Bussey has been appointed pastor of Friendship United Methodist Church in Sherman, TX. She has two daughters and five grandchildren. D’Ann Delp Mateer, writing under the name Anne Mateer, has written a fifth novel, Wings of a Dream (Bethany House Publishers, 2011), and is working on a second historical novel. She and her husband, Jeff Mateer ’90, have three children and live in Rockwall, TX.
Texas State Representative Rafael Anchia received a 2011 Ohtli recognition award at a ceremony in San Antonio last June, the highest acknowledgement conferred by the Mexican government to honor members of the Mexican, Mexican-American and Latin communities abroad. He is a partner in the law firm Haynes and Boone LLP in Dallas. Laura Claycomb, an international opera star based in Italy, returned to Dallas in April 2011 to make her Dallas Opera debut as Gilda in “Rigoletto.” Conducting was Pietro Rizzo ’96, ’97. David Metzler has been named managing shareholder of Cowles & Thompson law firm in Dallas.
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Jeffrey Scott Brewer is president, director and CEO of New York-based nonprofit Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International Inc. Previously he was executive chair of Kickstart International, a nonprofit that helps poverty-stricken populations, mainly in Africa, become self-sufficient. In 1995 he co-founded City-Search, the online city guide providing information about businesses in U.S. cities, and in 1998 co-founded GoTo.com, a successful “pay-per-click” and “pay-for-placement” search advertising system. Jennifer Grant is a journalist and mother of three whose book, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter (Thomas Nelson, August 2011), tells of her family’s decision to adopt, the strenuous search for their daughter, Mia, and adjustments to life as a multicultural family. Included are resources and tips for prospective adoptive parents. Harrison Long received the 2010-11 Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of the Arts at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University, where he is associate professor of theatre and performance studies and coordinates the acting concentration. The National Endowment for the Arts accepted a grant proposal he co-authored to support the 2011-12 KSU production “Splittin’ the Raft,” a retelling of the Huck Finn story. Stephanie M. Murdock has been promoted to lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. A public affairs officer with 12 years of military service, she is assigned to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
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Amy Chang has been an executive assistant for five years at Travelport, a travel technology company based in Parsippany, NJ. She lives in Bloomfield. Lisa Gentry Decker is celebrating 20 years with the executive search firm Lucas Group, where she is executive senior partner, placing accounting and finance professionals in Denver. She has been married 12 years to Ray Decker and has two children, ages 10 and 7. Mindy Tucker Fletcher announces the birth of Caleb Cash April 29, 2011, in San Diego. Lisa Schilling Henry (M.A. ’96, Ph.D. ’99) is chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of North Texas in Denton. She has been teaching at UNT since 2001, along with her husband, Doug Henry ’96 (Ph.D. ’00). They have two children: Riley, 5, and Will, 3.
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Capt. David A. Alpar (M.M. ’96) has conducted the U.S. Air Force Band of Liberty to the 2010 Air Force Media Award for Outstanding Recording of a Single Work, “Gardens of Stone,” and Outstanding Recording of an Original Work, “Symphony #1.”
Country music star Jack Ingram was last June’s guest artist at the St. David’s Round Rock Express Summer Concert Series presented by Dell. Christy LeMire enjoys national attention as co-host of the PBS series “Ebert Presents At the Movies.” She is the film critic for The Associated Press based in Los Angeles and was listed among the 100 Most Beautiful Faces of 2008 on the Annual Independent Critics List. Leif Wennerstrom, an SMU swimming star, is in remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma but still fights cancer. Using his swimming talent to raise money for cancer research, he was among 200 participants June 11, 2011, in the first Swim Across America event, held in Dallas at Lake Ray Hubbard to benefit the Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center. He and others formed Team Mustang to swim in honor of all SMU alumni who have battled cancer.
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Michael C. Sanders is one of the founding partners of Borrego Sanders Willyard LLP, a Houston law firm specializing in oil and gas litigation and transactions.
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Kate Haulman is assistant professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C. Her new book is The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Rob Johnson was senior political adviser to Newt Gingrich as the former House Speaker explored whether to run for president. Rob managed Rick Perry’s 2010 re-election campaign for Texas governor. Amy Swanson married Peter Sillan in December 2010 in Connecticut, where they live. She is vice president of marketing strategy for Time Warner Global Media Group in New York City. Ellen Sharp Tuthill (M.A., M.B.A. ’98) traveled with her husband to Ethiopia in March 2011 to serve orphans and HIV widows. Gregory Dean Watts has written a short comedy script, “Momfia,” accepted into the 2011 Beverly Hills Film Festival. The script also won the short comedy category in the 2010 Woods Hole Film Festival and the 2010 Indie Gathering Film Festival in Cleveland.
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Carol Apelt joined CRAFT | Media/Digital last March, a multichannel communications consulting firm in Washington, D.C., as director of operations and business development. She also serves the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as administrative officer for the D.C. Disaster Medical Assistance Team, part of the nation’s National Disaster Medical System. Josh Gregory captained the SMU men’s golf team in 1996-97. Now he has returned to SMU as men’s golf coach after leading Augusta State University to two straight NCAA men’s golf titles. Elizabeth Tomek Hernandez and her husband, Ruben, announce the birth of Zachary Allen, May 18, 2011; big brother is Aaron. Elizabeth is director of the Texas office of The Pivot Group, a political communications company. Cooper Smith Koch was named a top 40 Under Forty by Dallas Business Journal in June. As principal of the Cooper Smith Agency, he has led his company from its 2002 beginning to today’s prominence in product placement, managing his clients’ relationship with production companies for “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” DIY Network and HGTV series and programs on the Food Network, A&E, TLC and PBS. His agency also works with national showcase homes, including Idea House in Southern Living and Esquire magazine’s Ultimate Bachelor Pad.
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Tim W. Jackson established the Coral Reef Preservation Fund in April 2011 from his home in the Cayman Islands. He reports that we risk losing not only the reefs’ beauty but also the food, jobs, medicines and other resources healthy reefs provide. He is donating to the fund a portion of the proceeds of all copies of his literary novel Mangrove Underground (The Chenault Publishing Group, December 2010) purchased through www.timwjackson.com. Gabe Reed was the master promoter of the Mötley Crüe South American tour in May 2011, part of the 30th anniversary world tour, with shows in Santiago, Chile; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Czarina Reyes (M.L.A. ’01) announces the birth of daughter Sophia Czarina June 14, 2011.
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John Keehler is a Dallas Business Journal 40 Under Forty honoree in the June 24-30, 2011, edition. At Click Here, where he is principal, digital strategy, he leads a team setting the direction for their clients’ brands in the digital space. They design websites, social media, online advertising and mobile experiences.
Dr. Maria Luby Prodanovic-Nutis and her husband, Dr. Mario Nutis, welcomed son Nicolas in December 2010. They live in El Paso, where she practices pediatrics and volunteers with the Junior League. Catherine Coates Walts and her husband, Cameron, announce the birth of their first child, William Jack, Aug. 21, 2011, in Atlanta, GA.
Lindsay Abbate Ballotta and her husband, Ray, announce a son, William Davis, born Dec. 17, 2010. Their daughter, Caroline Leigh, is 3. The Ballottas live in Dallas. Nichole Briscoe Bentley owns Bentley Business Consulting in Coppell, TX. After submitting a video to Verizon demonstrating the balance she strikes between caring for four sons, ages 9 to 15, and running her business, she was named “Hardest Working Small Biz Mom.” She received $5,000 and cleaning service for a year. Glen Webb was unanimously elected to a one-year term as president of the Texas Wildlife Association at the 2011 convention in San Antonio last July 8. He is a rancher as well as owner of Glen Webb PC, a law firm in Abilene, TX. Jason White married Kiley Crabb at Perkins Chapel Aug. 13, 2011. He is director of player personnel for the 2011 NBA champion Dallas Mavericks. Attending groomsmen were Brad Bader, Mike Furr, Brian Kriete and Joe Zuercher. Lukas K. Womack with business partner Nadeem Lakhani ’98 has started a company online at www.FEELZY.net, which focuses on user privacy and anonymity. The technology captures how people feel about various web content and stores their opinions. Users can view any piece of FEELZY content, share their “feelz” and see how the rest of the world “feelz.”
01
Myesa Nichole Knox Mahoney received a Ph.D. in criminology, law and society from the University of California, Irvine, in March 2011. She is an associate lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, where she and her husband live. David Malcolm married Gina Lisa Andrews April 9, 2011, in Butler Chapel on the campus of Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC, where he is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree. He serves as an Army chaplain at Fort Bragg, NC. David Ninh is bookings editor at Seventeen magazine in New York. William J. Saunders pursued his Master’s degree in directing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts Film Division. In 2009 he and five others formed Anywhere Films and made “Sweet Little Lies,” which he directed; Josh Ayers ’01 was executive producer. Saunders won an Emmy award for his sports documentary “Big Charlie’s” on the NFL network. His short film “Dash Cunning” won the Audience Choice Award at the Columbia University Film Festival and received the 20th Century Fox/Farrelly Brothers Award for outstanding achievement in comedy. Kristen Holland Shear earned a Master of Arts degree in emerging media and communications at The University of Texas at Dallas. Jessica Shapard Thuston and Dixon Thuston ’02 welcomed a daughter, Eve Amelia, Nov. 19, 2010. Their son, Tripp, is 3. Jessica is executive editor of Southern Livingmagazine, and Dixon is engineering manager at Cash Acme. The Thustons live in Birmingham, AL.
02
Sonya Cole-Hamilton and her husband, Gerald, announce the birth of their second daughter, London Corie, April 14, 2011. Charles R. (Chuck) Constant was named executive vice president of business development at the Dallas firm Capital Plan Inc., a business that enables advisers and clients to restore capitalism to insurance ownership. He was an officer and fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and his service and deployment to Kuwait and Afghanistan in 1999 and 2004 earned him five combat medals. Now a major in the U.S.A.F. Reserve, he works with Congress and the Air Force Academy as a Deputy Liaison Officer Director. Gitanjali (Mishty) Deb and Raney LaSusa ’01 opened LaSusa & Deb PLLC, a general practice law firm in Carrollton. Erin Hendricks joined Parker McDonald PC, where she works on cases ranging from eminent domain to personal injury. Previously she was chief of the sexual assaults crimes section of the Dallas County Criminal District Attorney, trying more than 120 jury trials. Ludwig Otto is an entrepreneur, educator and evangelist who speaks to organizations and groups. He is chair and CEO of Franklin Education & Development, a worldwide nonprofit corporation. Amber Aronson Parkerwrites and publishes children’s books through Reimann Books in North Carolina. After obtaining a second Master’s degree in 2010, she works as a human resources director in local government. Robert Sine married Ashley Walton March 19, 2011. Peruna was at the reception.
The Rev. Michael W. Waters (M.Div. ’06) was invited to become a blogger for The Huffington Post. A recent posted article referenced Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church’s partnership in fall 2010 with the SMU Office of Leadership and Community Involvement. Rev. Waters is the founder and senior pastor of Joy Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dallas and a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry degree from Perkins School of Theology.
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Whitney C. Aronoff is a recruiter for LivingSocial, a digital media/daily deal company based in Washington, D.C. Dana Dieckman Cassell and her husband, Dan, announce daughter Caroline Jo’s birth May 3, 2011. Dodee Crockett was recognized for a second year on “America’s Top 1,000 Advisors: State-by-State” list in the Feb. 21, 2011, issue of Barron’s magazine. She is a managing director-investments and wealth management advisor and has been with Merrill Lynch for 29 years. Ashley Hamilton is youth activities manager with Disney Cruise Lines. Rogers Healy owner/broker of Dallas-based Rogers Healy and Associates Real Estate, was recognized by the Dallas Business Journal in their 40 Under Forty list in the June 24-30, 2011, edition. He began his career while at SMU, helping students find off-campus housing. His latest endeavor is DingmanHealy.com, a residential relocation company focusing on the real estate needs of high-profile clients. Nolan Joseph Laborde, D.D.S., graduated in May 2011 from Harvard School of Dental Medicine with a post-doctoral in periodontics. He and his wife, Elizabeth Leddy Laborde, D.D.S., live in Dallas, where he is establishing his dental practice. John Ley has opened Two Corks and a Bottle, a Dallas winery/wine bar in Uptown. He previously worked in Development and External Affairs at SMU. Chrissy Crawford Malone has launched a tech/art venture in New York City called LittleCollector.com to create high-quality, limited edition prints of contemporary art for children. Since graduation she has worked for the Aspen Art Museum, received a Master’s degree in international art business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, run her own art advisory company in New York and launched ArtStar.com and LittleCollector.com. Katie Krenz Reedy has pursued a career in the pharmaceutical industry since 2003. She and her husband welcomed their first child, Bryce, in September 2010 Harry Joseph Smith III and his wife, Stephanie, became parents to Harry Joseph Smith IV March 9, 2011. They celebrated five years of marriage June 3, 2011.
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Elizabeth Nabholtz Allen is vice president of The Weitzman Group, offering a full range of commercial real estate services. She was recognized by the Dallas Business Journal in their 40 Under Forty list in the June 24-30, 2011, edition. Phil Carlson married Christy Noel Osborne ’09 at Trinity Church, Dallas, June 4, 2011. Both serve the SMU undergraduate population as campus ministers through the student organization and Christian campus ministry called PULSE, also known as Victory Campus Ministries. Emily Johnson has accepted a position as a graduate assistant hall director at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX. Keats Ellen Ryan Moeller and her husband, Darren, celebrated the birth of their first child, Reagan Elizabeth, June 5, 2011. Karthik Rangarajan has been appointed vice president of marketing for the Irving-based EF Johnson Technologies Inc., a developer and manufacturer of communications technology for emergency responders. He has 15 years of experience in mobile technology. Whitney Phelps-Brown Zolna and her husband, Aaron Zolna ’01, are moving to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where Aaron will fly the B2 stealth bomber for the U.S. Air Force.
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Carl Dorvil started Group Excellence, a tutoring and mentoring company, which provides academic services to schools and community organizations. The model uses college students and young professionals as mentors who bond with students in at-risk environments. He was recognized by the Dallas Business Journal in their 40 Under Forty list in the June 24-30, 2011, edition. Sarah Robinson Evans has started her own business in laser engraving called Sima Design in Grand Prairie, TX. Previously she was an electrical engineer at Lockheed Martin. Margot Allen Goss is a vice president at Union Bank, N.A., after serving as assistant vice president at Amegy Bank, N.A. Jacky Niederstadt received her M.D., graduating from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She is completing her residency in pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver. Barbara R. Vance has written and illustrated Suzie Bitner Was Afraid of the Drain, a book of children’s poetry, which won the Next Generation Indie Book Finalist Award, presented to her in New York City. The poems center on a wide range of things children have to deal with.
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Desiree Dawn Brown was promoted in April 2011 to business analysis manager at Fannie Mae in Dallas. She had been a project lead since 2008. Courtney L. Geiger is a dentist at the newly opened Hillcrest Dental Associates in Dallas, which offers general dentistry, orofacial pain management and clinical oral and maxillofacial pathology. Kirby Stuart is a film and television producer who most recently worked on the VH1 reality show “Football Wives.” She took a break to chair the spring 2011 fundraiser sale, Rummage Roundup, for the Junior League of Dallas.
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Nick Aronoff works for Let’s Powwow, a location-based social media company in Beijing, China, where he lives. Jason Coosner received the Choreography Recognition Award in March 2011 from Regional Dance America, placing him on the National Choreography Plan for his neoclassical ballet “Composition VII.” John Holiday Jr. was an apprentice artist with Santa Fe Opera last summer, working with respected conductors, directors and singers from the classical world. He placed fifth in the 42nd Annual Palm Beach Opera competition and was a semifinalist for the 2011 Dallas Opera Guild vocal competition. John Hunninghake and his wife, Talia, welcomed daughter Jane Catherine June 17, 2011. Eduardo Manzur and Amanda Cochran ’08 were married in Los Angeles last July. Michael Tarwater married Julia Brewer in May 2011 in Charlotte, NC, where he is in his third year at Charlotte School of Law.
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Sydney Anne Bridges received her M.S.N. degree from Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in August 2010. She is an acute care nurse practitioner at the Debakey Heart & Vascular Center of The Methodist Hospital in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. Breanna Gribble is a project manager/geologist at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation, while pursuing a career as a modern dancer and choreographer. She is the associate artistic director of Mari Meade Dance Collective and choreographs for festivals in NYC.
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Erica Clemmensen and her mother, Lexia Allen ’77, opened Muzzie’s Dressy Dresses, a store in Dallas featuring accessories and prom, pageant, after-five, party, homecoming, work and other special occasion dresses. Sadia Cooper and Keith Turner ’08 were married in Houston June 25, 2011, honeymooned in Maui and returned to Houston. She works for KPMG in their advisory practice, and he is employed by Halliburton. Emily Dawson is a research analyst for Texas Capital Bank. But she also stays busy with a new Texas nonprofit corporation, Giverosity Inc., which she and a friend started to provide a quick, easy way to donate toys to underprivileged children during the busy holiday season. Shayna Rebecca Luza works for the Dallas Caruth Police Institute and is a volunteer for the Dallas Suicide Crisis Hotline. She married Devon Vincent Oct. 29, 2011. Bryan Melton is a mechanical engineer with Raytheon of Richardson. Ebonii Nelson completed her Master of Education degree in college student affairs administration at the University of Georgia and now works in the Center for Student Development at Texas Woman’s University in Denton. Andrés Ruzo, one of the recent “Faces of SMU” on the SMU website, reports from Peru that National Geographic will support his Ph.D. thesis, “The Geothermal Map of Peru,” with a $5,000 grant for field work. Because of the project’s economic and scientific significance for multiple industries, including oil and gas, mining, business and renewable energy sectors, he has been able to raise $85,500 for his study. Gary Suderman works in Seattle as a cameraman/editor for “Penny Arcade: The Series,” a documentary-style comedy revolving around Penny Arcade, one of the most popular and longest running webcomics online. He also produces short films and writes screenplays for feature productions. Doug Wintermute left his job as public information spokesman at Kilgore (TX) College several years ago to begin the journey toward becoming a preacher. He became an ordained minister in The United Methodist Church in spring 2011.
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Elisabeth Brubaker moved to New York City and joined the “Piers Morgan Tonight” team at CNN. Jacqueline Conley and Brandon Allen were married June 11, 2011, at Highland Park (TX) United Methodist Church. She is an attorney at Hayes, Berry, White & Vanzant LLP, and he is a financial analyst at Transwestern Commercial Services Bavand Karim has been a producer for Mother Earth News Radio, a nationally syndicated radio program, and an associate producer of Dig in DFW, an organic lifestyle program for television. In July 2011 he was hired by Northern Kentucky University as a lecturer of electronic media and broadcasting in the College of Informatics. His keystone film, “Nation of Exiles,” has been screened at more than a dozen festivals in four countries, and he plans to expand the film to encompass social movements throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Lauryn E. May started law school last August at Columbia University. Jonathan P. Miller was an honor graduate from basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Linh Nguyen moved from her position at Perkins School of Theology in public affairs and academic services to assistant director of direct marketing communications in SMU’s division of Development and External Affairs. She also will help manage the alumni website content and social media sites to promote events. Robert Nitsche is the new CEO at Insurance Network of Texas, one of the largest independent insurance agencies in the state. He grew up in the company, moving from the mailroom to COO and CFO to CEO. Frank Sciuto and Bailey McGuire ’07 started Trinity West Ventures and opened their first franchise restaurant, MOOYAH, in June 2010 in Burleson, TX, near Fort Worth. Running MOOYAH together is what prompted the brothers-in-law to reunite their families in Texas.
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Taylor Holden is working for ESPN in New York City.
As a student in 1991, Chris Lake ’92, ’95 began tutoring a 9-year-old boy living in the crime-riddled East Dallas neighborhood where he rented a house. Despite Lake’s best efforts, his student usually dozed off during their sessions. Unable to sleep one night as he puzzled over the problem, the tutor took a 2 a.m. walk through the neighborhood and found an answer: He spotted the youngster helping his mother clean the local Laundromat. SMU students volunteer with approximately 70 nonprofit organizations in the Dallas area.
“He told me, ‘I could not have known the issues that my student faced had I not lived in the neighborhood.’ It revolutionized his understanding, gave him a holistic sense of the lives of the young people he was coming into contact with that would not have been possible unless there was some kind of continuing connection, some kind of understanding of what their lives were like,” explains James K. Hopkins, professor of history in Dedman College and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor.
With like-minded students and faculty, Lake, now a Dallas attorney, laid the foundation for the 20-year-old Academic-Community Engagement (ACE) program and its ACE house in the low-income East Garrett Park neighborhood. Under the program, students enroll in urban studies courses, tutor and mentor the neighborhood children, and work with nonprofits serving the area. Some students live full-time in the ACE house to become neighbors as well as volunteers.
The ACE program heralded a renewed emphasis on learning opportunities that reach beyond campus boundaries. Academic courses with a community service aspect are now incorporated into the curriculum of all seven of SMU’s degree-granting schools. In addition, the University’s new Quality Enhancement Plan, Engaged Learning, provides opportunities for SMU undergraduates to build on their classroom knowledge by participating in at least one extensive experiential learning activity before graduation.
The role of strong university-city alliances in addressing community challenges was explored in “The University and the City: Higher Education and the Common Good,” SMU’s inaugural Centennial Academic Symposium November 10-11. Panel discussions with national, local and SMU experts centered on topics such as educating tomorrow’s workforce, the impact of growing diversity, technology’s role in shaping the future and student perspectives on community engagement.
The symposium was a forerunner of an in-depth analysis and report on SMU’s economic and community impact that will be released in January. Following, SMU Magazine cites some of the University’s benefits to greater Dallas and offers a snapshot of SMU’s human and intellectual capital that will be enumerated in the study. Work In Progress … next page
THE BUMPY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SEASON WILL ONLY BECOME MORE TURBULENT AS THE NOVEMBER 6, 2012, ELECTION DRAWS CLOSER. THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, USA TODAY, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR AND THE WASHINGTON POST ARE AMONG THE MEDIA OUTLETS THAT RECENTLY HAVE CALLED ON SMU EXPERTS TO HELP UNRAVEL THE RHETORIC. BELOW, SMU MAGAZINE QUOTES FROM THE SCHOLARS WHO ARE DROWNING OUT THE POLITICAL NOISE AND AMPLIFYING THE SALIENT ISSUES:
Uncertainty and high anxiety
Tom Fomby
What would an economist’s plan for the economy include, and what role does partisan politics play in voters’ apprehension about the future? Tom Fomby, professor of economics in Dedman College, offers these insights:
“One of the biggest inhibitors of economic growth is uncertainty in the minds of consumers concerning their jobs, taxes and retirement. There are several ways we can reduce that degree of uncertainty: Reform the Social Security system so as to make it actuarially sound for the next 50 years, invest in our country’s infrastructure as proposed in the bipartisan Kerry Hutchison Infrastructure Bank plan, and simplify the U.S. tax code to close special interest group tax loopholes.
“One of the greatest growth stimulators would be for Congress to move toward moderation and compromise in political views and away from purely ideological political stances.” Fomby, a research associate with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is an expert on the Texas economy and its role in national and global economies. He also serves as a research associate in the surgery and epidemiology departments at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he has applied time series and data mining techniques to medical research.
‘Slumped shoulders and heavy hearts’
Cal Jillson
Political Science Professor Cal Jillson in Dedman College describes the mood of the American electorate this way:
“Most voters seem unenthused with their 2012 choices. As the economy continues to labor, voters must choose between Republican candidates and policies that many believe led to the economic collapse and Democratic candidates and policies that all see have not been able to resolve the difficulties. Voters will shuffle toward the polls with slumped shoulders and heavy hearts.” Jillson is an author and frequent commentator on domestic and international politics. His next book, Lone Star Tarnished, which will be published early next year, is an analysis of the shortcomings of Texas public policy.
‘Personal, retail politics at its best’
Rita Kirk
The growing importance of social media and the impact of “ideological voters” have set the stage for a tempestuous election year, says communications expert Rita Kirk:
“Many people forget that the Obama campaign hired Chris Hughes, one of the Facebook founders, to create his 2008 social media campaign. It revolutionized modern campaigning because the voters were more engaged in the process; it was personal, retail politics at its best. The candidates in the 2012 primaries have not shown a similar interest in grassroots campaigning, but the Republican Party will have to assemble a top-notch team to compete.
“This has been a fascinating early campaign season. Ideological voters such as those who identify themselves with the Tea Party are much more aggressive in asserting their influence early in the campaign season as compared to similar groups in past elections. The result is that they have been able to set the agenda for the Republican debates.” Kirk is director of SMU’s Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor of Communication Studies in Meadows School of the Arts. Kirk and Dan Schill, assistant professor conducted dial-testing focus groups for CNN.
Sin and ‘spinmeisters’
William B. Lawrence
In a recent Huffington Post column, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president, Union of Reform Judaism, wrote that Americans “fear the language of sin.” Would it be better if “sin” were part of the political vocabulary? Reporter Wayne Slater recently posed that question to theologian William B. Lawrence. Here is an excerpt from Lawrence’s answer, which was posted on The Dallas Morning News’ Texas Faith blog on October 25:
“I am opposed to adding the word ‘sin’ to the political vocabulary. … My opposition stems from my desire to prevent yet another theologically defined word from falling captive to the political classes and spinmeisters. We have already seen the word ‘evangelical’ become useless in its original theological context, because it has been so corrupted by political commentators and schemers that one can no longer utter it unless one intends to be understood as making a point about conservative political perspectives. Even the word ‘religion’ has lost its value in public discourse. …” Lawrence is dean and professor of American church history at Perkins School of Theology. His newest book, Ordained Ministry in The United Methodist Church, was published this fall.
Surveying the polls
Lynne Stokes
Polling has become an important strategic tool in politics, but Lynne Stokes, professor of statistical science in Dedman College, warns consumers to look at the polling organizations as closely as they look at the candidates:
“New communication technologies have made data collection so much faster now that public opinion can be monitored nearly in real time. News organizations love this, because they are always looking for a story, preferably for a competitive edge. Advances in survey methods have also improved polling accuracy.
“The organization that conducts the poll is an important indicator of its validity. The best-performing pollsters are usually non-partisan survey research companies or university research centers. Organizations
that publish their methods, including sample sizes, margins of error and statements about how they limit nonresponse error, are usually more reliable.” Stokes is an expert in surveys, polls and sampling, as well as in non-sampling survey errors, such as errors by interviewers and respondents. Her recent research for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has focused on the improvement of data collection and estimation of fish harvests.
Fueling the economy
Bernard L. “Bud” Weinstein
Independent voters will be drawn to a sound, economic recovery plan, according to economist Bernard L. Weinstein:
“Since we’re not likely to see much net job creation between now and election day, the dominant issue on the campaign trail will be the economy. The candidate who can put forward the most credible and affordable program for reviving the moribund economy should be able to attract the growing ranks of independent voters.
“A sound, domestically-focused energy strategy can also be a job creation plan. Though proposals to increase oil and gas production in the U.S. will appeal to voters in most Southern and Western states, energy development is not likely to resonate with voters in the northeast and California.”
Weinstein is associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute and an adjunct professor of business economics in the Cox School of Business.
Politics and religion
Matt Wilson
The presidential campaign may be as much about religion as it is about the economy, says political scientist Matt Wilson:
“Religion inevitably will be a major theme of the 2012 campaign, even if the economy is supposedly the central issue. As it has been for the past several electoral cycles, the partisan gap between regular church attenders and the nonreligious will be greater than that between rich and poor, men and women, the employed and the unemployed. Religious and secular Americans have simply come to see the world in very different ways and that has translated into their political preferences.
“If the Republican candidate is Mitt Romney, then we can expect a bevy of stories on Mormonism. We can also, unfortunately, expect a range of subtle and not-so-subtle anti-Mormon attacks, both in the primaries and the general election. … We’ll have to see if America is ready to once again expand its definition of what constitutes an ‘acceptable’ president.” Wilson, associate professor of political science in Dedman College, specializes in religion and politics, as well as public opinion, elections and political psychology.
In spring 2011, Greenland Hills United Methodist Church in Dallas celebrated the opening and consecration of a new fellowship hall. Under the guidance of Greenland Hills’ minister of music Chelsea Stern ’10, children proceeded into the sanctuary singing a Rwandan song of praise: Munezero! Munezero kwa Jesu. Munezero Hallelujah! (“Sing out gladly! Sing out gladly to Jesus. Sing out gladly Hallelujah!”). Though Stern had planned to ask the congregation to stand after the children finished singing, the people spontaneously leapt to their feet, clapping and singing along. Minister of Music Chelsea Stern ’10 (left) and the Rev. Marti Soper ’98, pastor, have created a harmonious partnership at Greenland Hills United Methodist Church.
Stern recalls that the experience exceeded her expectations. “I’m always hopeful that a song will take on meaning beyond my vision. We went immediately into ‘O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing’ – a great Wesley hymn. In those ‘holy’ moments, I am reminded that God is at work beyond our understanding or imagination.”
Stern’s ‘holy moment’ experience with her church community is what she trained for in SMU’s Master of Sacred Music program. The M.S.M., which recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the entering class of sacred music students in 1960, is one of SMU’s longest-running joint programs – between Perkins School of Theology and the Division of Music in Meadows School of the Arts. To honor its 50th anniversary in 2010, the M.S.M. program set a goal to raise $1 million by 2015 for an M.S.M. Alumni Scholarship Endowment.
The M.S.M. is one of the few graduate sacred music programs jointly accredited by The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and the National Association of Schools of Music. Students specialize in either choral conducting or organ performance and also take theology courses. The program has produced more than 350 alumni, among them church musicians in most major Christian denominations, university professors, composers, performers, hymnal editors and authors.
M.S.M. Alumni Scholarship Endowment
To honor its 50th anniversary in 2010, the Master of Sacred Music program set a goal to raise $1 million by 2015 for an M.S.M. Alumni Scholarship Endowment.
The program has produced more than 350 alumni, among them church musicians in most major Christian denominations, university professors, composers, performers, hymnal editors and authors.
To make a contribution or for more information about the M.S.M. Alumni Scholarship Endowment, contact Todd Rasberry, 214-768-2026.
Michael Hawn, University Distinguished Professor of Church Music and director of the M.S.M. program, attributes part of the program’s success to location. “The influence of church music in the United States has shifted from the Northeast to the South, and the two largest buckles on that Bible Belt are Atlanta and Dallas, where vital, diverse church communities exist,” Hawn says. “Innovation in church music is happening in Dallas – there is a lot of productivity and composition of sacred music works. We give equal attention in our teaching to the congregational song as well as choir song; it’s part of the heritage of Perkins School and The United Methodist Church.”
The Dallas area also provides numerous internship opportunities for sacred music students at churches and other agencies, where students hone their ministering skills as well as learn how to lead a congregation or choir. The Rev. Ashley Hood ’99, minister of spiritual life at Presbyterian Village North in Dallas, sings the praises of the first sacred music student who interned at the retirement community last year. Jordan Stewart directed the residents’ choir and oversaw other sacred music activities. She also helped organize Camp PVN, which brought together older adults with older elementary youth for fellowship and service during a week of day camp at the retirement community.
“This program has far exceeded our dreams, mainly because of Jordan’s experiences in music, theology and ministry and her love for being with the people in this community. They loved her because she was genuine and gifted, faithful, theological and playful,” Hood recalls. Musical training and theological education … next page
By Kara Kunkel
Teaching mentally handicapped children in India this past summer, SMU sophomore Meera Nair used her ingenuity to handle situations that challenged her understanding of “classroom norms.” In doing so, she achieved success in small steps.
In one class, Nair taught 8-year-old students with cerebral palsy, who, because of a lack muscle control, found it difficult to copy simple words like “cat” and “dog.” Instead of relying on the written word to teach language skills, she structured two-minute conversations in English for them. “It was rewarding to know that for those three hours I worked with them, they were actively learning and applying their knowledge,” she says. A public service internship from SMU’s Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility enabled Nair to spend her summer volunteering. She requested and received a teaching position at Swasraya, a school for mentally handicapped children near her grandparents’ home in Kerala, India, where she spent summers as a girl and would play with the children during break time at the school. “The teachers knew me and the students became my friends,” says Nair, who is majoring in computer science in the Lyle School of Engineering.
Nair’s internship is a prime example of a learning experience that SMU increasingly seeks to offer its undergraduates out of the classroom. The University has initiated a new program, Engaged Learning, which encourages undergraduates to apply their knowledge in one of four categories – research, the arts, the community and the professions – to real-life situations in the Dallas community and the world.
“We ask the students, ‘What do you care about?’” says Provost Paul Ludden, whose office piloted the program and last spring provided $2,000 each to four undergraduates to support their projects. One goal of working on such projects is for students to gain an understanding of how the academic and real-world communities work together, he says. Other goals aim for students to design their experiences and to be directly involved in meeting needs in the community.
“I call these experiences journeys of discovery,” Ludden adds. Engaged Learning: Lindsay Sockwell … next page
William Tsutsui has been dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences since July 2010 but already he has made news. Tsutsui was blogging about his experiences with the Japanese American Leadership Delegation that was visiting Tokyo when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan March 11. His interviews and SMU Adventures blog provided media outlets (from The New York Times and NBC Nightly News to CNN and The Dallas Morning News) with an eyewitness account of the natural disaster’s impact on Japan. In fact, Tsutsui’s quote comparing the movement of downtown skyscrapers to “trees swaying in the breeze” was the Times’ quote of the day March 12. He also has spoken to numerous student groups on the subject. Tsutsui, a specialist in modern Japanese business and economic history, joined SMU from the University of Kansas, where he served as associate dean for international studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, professor of history and director of the Kansas Consortium for Teaching About Asia. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Princeton University, a Master of Letters in modern Japanese history from Oxford University’s Corpus Christi College and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies. As dean of the largest of SMU’s seven schools, Tsutsui has been promoting the benefits of a liberal arts education to numerous alumni and SMU constituents and developing a strategic plan to position Dedman College for further progress. He also is helping Dedman College prepare for its major role in implementing the new undergraduate University Curriculum, which goes into effect for the entering class in fall 2012. And on occasion, he will eagerly share his passion about the Japanese film icon, Godzilla, the subject of one of his books. Action figures of the mutant monster line the shelves in his office in Dallas Hall. In the following interview Tsutsui shares his optimism about the future of Dedman College.
You have said that Dedman College and SMU provide the perfect formula for the model of success in higher education. What do you mean by that?
"SMU and Dedman College are the perfect mingling of the two great traditions of teaching and research," says Dean William Tsutsui.
We’re at a difficult point in higher education in the United States. It’s not just the economic issues facing a lot of universities now, but also an existential crisis – what are we doing, what value are we giving to students? I spent 17 years at the prototypical flatland state university being asked by taxpayers in the state of Kansas to train their kids to do anything and everything and to do it for nothing. Big public institutions like Kansas and Berkeley and Ohio State are wonderful examples of the modern American research university that have contributed to life, well-being and knowledge in countless ways. The problem is that the model of a gigantic state university funded largely by federal research grants and touching every aspect of society looks increasingly like a brontosaurus, and we’re undergoing climate change in higher education. In particular, state universities have lost touch with a fundamental part of their mission – the education of undergraduate students. That’s something that liberal arts colleges like Amherst and Williams have long focused on and continue to do extremely well. But liberal arts colleges also fall short in serving students and society because they don’t have the commitment to creating knowledge that a research university does. SMU and Dedman College are the perfect mingling of these two great traditions of teaching and research. We have high-powered, cutting-edge research, scholars winning highly competitive national research grants and creating knowledge that could change millions of lives. At the same time, every faculty member in the College is dedicated to teaching undergraduate students. A rich undergraduate experience, based on individual relationships between faculty and students inside and beyond the classroom, must continue to be the hallmark of Dedman College and SMU.
How do you make the case that the liberal arts continue to play a vital role and make significant contributions to society?
We are undeniably in a moment of renewed worries about the state of the liberal arts and increased scrutiny of the place of liberal education in American colleges and universities. The discontinuation of departments and degrees, especially in the humanities, at many institutions has been chilling. And students seem to be voting with their feet, walking in the same direction for a couple of generations: away from the liberal arts and toward professional schools. We’re all familiar with the arguments for why a liberal education is the best possible preparation for life and career in America today: look at any corporate board of directors or the leadership of any top government agency and you are likely to find a slew of liberal arts graduates; the liberal arts prepare you not just for one job (as more narrow professional or vocational training might) but for a wide range of jobs that need readily transferable skills like reading, writing, research, analysis and creativity; the liberal arts prepare individuals to lead full, open-minded, civically engaged and reflective lives; today, nations like China and India are trying to emulate the liberal arts from America to stir creativity and breadth in their undergraduates. But we also need to emphasize the role of the liberal arts in combating the fear that seems so prevalent today in American families and throughout our society, a pervasive sense of anxiety growing from economic uncertainty, international concerns, and political divisions. It is precisely at this moment, I believe, that the liberal arts are the most valuable. The constant questioning, critical thinking and healthy skepticism that characterize the humanities and sciences are a potent antidote to uncertainty and anxiety. A liberal education teaches us that “not knowing” is the normal state of being and that by thoughtful, self-reflective and collaborative investigation, experimentation, discussion and debate, new options can be discovered, new truths revealed and a new comfort found amid insecurity and doubt. The liberal arts help us master and direct our fears and approach the future not with apprehension and unease, but with the confidence that no challenge is too great to be studied, contemplated and eventually surmounted.
You’ve been working on a strategic plan for Dedman College. One of the main initiatives is support for undergraduate education. What does that entail?
Students conduct research in the lab with Eva Oberdorster (right), senior lecturer in biological sciences.
As part of a university with several high-caliber professional schools that offer attractive undergraduate programs, Dedman College must provide the kind of curricula and educational experiences that can draw the best students to the liberal arts. To get those top students requires an institution to not only offer excellent academic programs but also top scholarship support. Dedman College has been a little behind the times in that regard. Happily, with the Dedman College Scholars program we’ve begun to compete for exceptional students at the highest level. We must work harder to build the financial base of endowed scholarship funds that are necessary to increase the academic quality of our undergraduates. We need to take advantage of our real strengths at SMU and one of those is our size – this is still a very intimate campus, where students can have extraordinary experiences and take on unique roles. One of the ways they can do that is through undergraduate research. At large state universities focused on attracting huge research grants, faculty often don’t have the time to mentor undergraduates, to give them an enhanced educational experience. At SMU we can do that in our labs, libraries and classrooms. Dedman College also needs to create more degree programs that capture the interests of students, such as we have achieved through the Embrey Human Rights Program. Students today (and especially those we have at SMU) are incredibly idealistic – they grew up doing community service projects and participating in volunteer programs. The Human Rights Program offers them an opportunity to explore how they can make a difference at a personal level in the world. We need to develop similar major and minor programs that build on faculty strengths and engage our undergraduates: I hope we can expand our existing environmental studies program and consider degrees related to important issues like migration, where Dedman College has interdisciplinary expertise in anthropology, sociology, literary studies and political science. We also need to provide more opportunities for international exposure, both inside the classroom and through education abroad, and for service learning. New and enhanced options in experiential learning and building global awareness will contribute to the undergraduate experience.
How does the strategic plan address graduate education?
That is a tough one, because many people still think of SMU as primarily an undergraduate institution. Nevertheless, the research projects that we’re engaged in and the high-level scholarship that takes place in the College are not sustainable without vibrant graduate programs. Strong graduate programs also feed collaborations across disciplines, build bridges to the community through research and service, and enhance the productivity of faculty. Graduate students also can play an important role in mentoring undergraduates and facilitating undergraduate research projects. Many graduate programs in Dedman College have long histories and records of educating and placing their students. Unfortunately, graduate education is probably the least well-funded part of the College now. We need to find ways to build support for our doctoral programs, to offer students financial packages (including health benefits) that are competitive with other top universities around the country, and to increase the number of graduate students within our departments.
In a time of budget cutting and faculty reduction at universities nationwide, you are proposing an increase in Dedman College faculty. Why?
Despite the overall growth at SMU, the development of new programs and the ever-increasing demands on scholars and educators, the total number of faculty in Dedman College has not changed in 25 years. Recruiting and retaining a faculty of excellence is an ongoing challenge, especially in today’s competitive climate. For Dedman College, however, the size of the faculty may well be our most pressing concern. Almost all College departments have fewer tenure-track faculty than their equivalents in SMU’s comparative peer institutions, and some are not even staffed to the levels found in small liberal arts colleges. This situation means that Dedman College departments generally do not have the number of faculty necessary to provide the breadth of teaching and research generally expected in leading American universities. We need to work through the Second Century Campaign to build the number of endowed chairs, which have a rapid and substantial impact on the reputation of the University. We can hire well in Dedman College, we just need the financial resources to do it.
Why are interdisciplinary programs a major aspect of the College’s strategic plan?
Maria Richards (right), coordinator of SMU's Geothermal Laboratory, and graduate students study a map that denotes geothermal resources.
The budgetary zero-sum game that has affected Dedman College for the past 25 years has made it very difficult for faculty to collaborate across disciplines – they’ve pulled back into their departments, reluctant to support interdisciplinary endeavors. But the problems of the world today are too big for any one discipline or department to solve. Look at any of the big issues – cancer, health care, climate change, democratic transformations – all of these require scholars with a variety of training and expertise coming together to explore possible solutions. I am proposing the creation of a new organization in the College to stimulate the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration that feeds an active intellectual climate. Dedman College is rare among universities at our level in that it doesn’t have a humanities center. I envision a high-profile institute that will spark interdisciplinary connections across departments and schools, throughout the humanities and sciences, spanning research and teaching. It also would welcome undergraduate and graduate students in addition to faculty. I can easily imagine it contributing to the development of new courses and new degree programs, as well as enhancing our ability to compete for large research grants. Dedman College is fortunate in having a number of established units that support interdisciplinary research: the Tower Center for Political Studies and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies have international profiles, the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man is a long-term contributor to research in the natural sciences, and the new Center for Scientific Computational Science has great potential. These centers and institutes can and should provide leadership in stimulating dialogue across campus, but the new institute will play a critical role in creating a vibrant culture of interdisciplinarity in the College and at SMU. What are your priorities for research in Dedman College?
Historically, the majority of externally funded research at SMU has been conducted in Dedman College. We have the potential to do even more, but we need to provide better support for undergraduate and graduate research and further assist junior faculty members in competing for the top national grants. We also need bridge funding to help senior faculty start new projects or launch new areas of investigation. In addition, we must ensure that the natural and social sciences have adequate laboratories and collaborative spaces, and that they have the latest technology to support the work of scholars and students. Dedman College faculty members have long been enthusiastic participants in the process of discovery, and a lot of people locally recognize the value of that research – the benefit it brings not just to the world but to Dallas in particular – because it generates new economic opportunities and addresses a wide variety of social, political and cultural challenges. People want to invest in people. That’s why it is so important to get our faculty out into the community as part of The Second Century Campaign. When alumni see the passion that our biologists, economists, psychologists and other faculty bring to their research, they understand that what can seem like a faceless institutional gift actually has a very human imprint. To help stimulate research activity, the College, working with our Campaign Steering Committee co-chairs Kelly Hoglund Compton ’79 and Fred Hegi ’66, has created the Dean’s Research Council, a donor organization that provides resources for promising new scholarly projects. We’ve already received a $100,000 leadership gift from Pierce Allman ’54 and have selected some impressive young, tenure-track faculty members – Amy Pinkham in psychology, Yunkai Zhou in mathematics and Lisa Siraganian in English – who will receive seed funding as a springboard to compete for large federal grants. Why is it important to raise Dedman College’s profile?
Dedman College serves Dallas in countless ways, but we seldom get the recognition we deserve because few people are aware of all that we do. The College’s outreach spans from members of our Economics Department consulting with the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Dallas to our faculty in the sciences collaborating with researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center to undergraduate students in sociology, world languages and religious studies working on tutoring, bilingual education or local history programs with low-income communities in East Dallas. Connecting Dedman College more deeply with Dallas will enrich faculty scholarship and the student experience, provide new opportunities for applied research and funding, and contribute to our region’s economic vitality and the quality of life.
What will Dedman College’s role be in implementing the new University Curriculum (formerly General Education Curriculum), effective fall 2012?
Dedman College is where all SMU students begin their collegiate journey, no matter what majors or minors they ultimately choose. The University Curriculum provides the common knowledge, skills and experiences every student must accrue before he or she graduates. The new curriculum makes it easier to pursue multiple majors and minors. It also accommodates more opportunities for honors programming, international study, undergraduate research, internship experiences and service learning. Students must demonstrate second-language proficiency equal to four semesters of college study. What I particularly like is that the new curriculum engages students more actively in the process of their own education, forcing them to do more than just sit in a classroom and take notes from PowerPoint slides. It will require students to think about how they learn and what they’re going to learn, asking them to be more active and intentional, for example, in identifying a community service experience or gaining global perspectives. SMU will be in the forefront of having an up-to-date student-focused curriculum. Of course, this new curriculum also will pose a few challenges for Dedman College. The foreign language requirement will have a huge impact on our World Languages and Literatures Department. We also have to work to develop our interdisciplinary offerings. There is sure be a lot of juggling in introducing this curriculum, but it’s a valuable opportunity for faculty and the institution to evaluate and sharpen the undergraduate experience – this challenges us to reflect on what we are doing in the classroom and what we can be doing better.
What are you saying to alumni who may be concerned that the SMU “as they know it” is going to change?
I’ve spent a lot of time talking to alumni about their strongest memories of SMU. Some will mention athletics, for others it was their sorority and fraternity experiences. But I’m often pleasantly surprised by the number of alumni who can remember the first classes they took. I was talking recently to a successful graduate in the automobile industry who transferred to SMU; he remembers even today that one of his first classes was in philosophy, and that he called his parents right afterward and said, “This is the place I was meant to be.” That’s exactly the experience I want our students to have when they take classes in Dedman College. I don’t want them to think, “This is high school, year five.” They need to be exposed to a broad range of perspectives (and challenges) by their instructors. As long as we keep engaging students and firing their curiosity, that fundamental experience of an SMU education will remain consistent over the decades. That’s the genius of the liberal arts – you never know what will capture a student’s passion. There is so much to learn out there in the world, and it’s unlikely we’re ever going to learn exactly all that we need to know. Take for example the events unfolding today in Libya. You probably can count on one hand the people in America who’ve had courses on Libyan politics. It’s not a good investment of resources at most universities to have specialists in only that field. Nevertheless, as informed citizens we need broad exposure to political movements, to Islam, to technology and its power, and to civil-military relations that allow us to understand an unpredictable and rapidly changing situation like we’re seeing in Libya and all over the Middle East. And that’s what the liberal arts can offer us. Even if you haven’t been trained to deal with a specific issue or series of events, a broad liberal education equips you with a toolkit of analytical skills for making informed, intelligent decisions about a rapidly changing world.
What are your final thoughts on Dedman College?
The time is now for Dedman College; we have all the ingredients to really fly – a wonderful faculty, a strong student base, and a supportive administration and Board of Trustees. Now is the time for us to define our vision, to ask where we want to go and how investment will make a difference, and then to take off. There is no more optimistic campus in America than SMU, and there is no part of this University better positioned for growth and success than Dedman College.
To support Dedman College’s faculty, students, research and programs, visit www.smu.edu/Dedman/Giving or call Courtney Corwin ’89 at 214-768-2691.
Four years ago in volatile southern Baghdad, Captain Troy Vaughn ’11 was in charge of a 32-member scout platoon for the Army, leading more than 250 high-risk counter-insurgency and reconnaissance missions over 15 months. In addition to ensuring the success of the missions and the safety of his troops while dodging snipers’ bullets and searching for Al-Qaeda, Vaughn found that “everyday reality” also commanded his attention.
“Real life doesn’t stop for the soldiers, who can be dealing with all kinds of issues – from family to financial to emotional,” Vaughn says. “My challenge was to take care of the soldiers – ensure they were grounded emotionally and spiritually and had all the support they needed to do their jobs effectively.”
For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star and rated top platoon leader by his battalion commander.
Today Vaughn, 28, is earning an M.B.A. at the Cox School of Business, where he has studied operations management and honed his leadership skills. Vaughn is one of the nearly 150 undergraduate and graduate students attending SMU on the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which provides education benefits to military veterans and their dependents. The bill is a 2008 update to the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, which awarded scholarships to World War II veterans to colleges of their choice.
However, beginning in August 2011, changes to the Post-9/11 GI Bill create a nationwide cap of $17,500 a year for tuition and fees reimbursement for private universities. SMU’s Division of Enrollment Services and the schools are working on financial arrangements, which include participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program, an addendum to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, to enable currently enrolled veterans to continue their education at SMU, says Veronica Decena, manager, SMU Registrar’s Office.
“We estimate that at least $200,000 will be needed to cover tuition and fees next academic year where the current GI benefit leaves off,” she adds. “We don’t know if the cap will be supplemented for all students by the Yellow Ribbon Program,” which currently covers only graduate and professional students.
Following, six veterans reflect on their experiences as students at SMU.
Something Bigger Than Yourself
The leadership skills that served Vaughn well while in the military continue to do so at Cox. He has been a member of the M.B.A. Energy Club and was president and a founding member of Veterans in Business, which helps student veterans in their transition from the military to a career in business. Troy Vaughn
“We’ve grown from five members to nearly 30,” he says. “We’ve built strong connections among ourselves, and we also have connected our members with networking and job opportunities. These students demonstrate discipline and leadership, even in the most challenging situations.”
Holding an internship and part-time position with an energy exploration company while completing his studies, Vaughn has accepted a project manager position with Sharyland Utilities after graduation this May.
A 2004 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Vaughn served in the military for more than five years, most recently as commander of a Texas National Guard infantry company. He was reared in Bulverde, Texas, in a family that takes pride in its patriotism, he says. “In the military, you get a sense of service, of doing something bigger than yourself,” he says. “I’m hoping to achieve that in business.”
Preparing To Deploy
In summer 2011 Sarah Wiita, 24, will deploy for a year as a health care specialist with the U.S. Army Reserves 490th Civil Affairs Battalion. The five members of her civil affairs unit expect to be stationed in the Horn of Africa. They will serve as military liaisons with local authorities and nongovernmental organizations while assessing how best to provide aid and services to residents in need.
“We have been training at least one weekend a month at the Army Reserve Center in Grand Prairie, and more often as we’re preparing to leave,” says Wiita, a junior psychology major and human rights minor in Dedman College. Sarah Wiita
As the unit’s lone health care specialist, Wiita is headed to Fort Sam Houston for medic training before deployment. She has been studying current events in Africa with her unit and says her courses in SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program also have helped her understand different cultures and histories. “People may think human rights and the Army don’t go together, but the Army does a lot of noncombat operations and tries to make a difference with civilian populations. That’s how I try to represent the military.”
Wiita joined the Reserves in 2008 while earning an Associate’s degree in applied science at Collin County Community College and training as a paramedic and emergency medical technician on an ambulance. “I told the Army recruiter I wanted to be a combat medic,” she says. “I enjoyed my medical work and knew I wanted to continue to do something challenging, something I could dedicate myself to.”
When considering where to continue her college education in 2009, she applied only to SMU because of the strength of its reputation, she says. “I love the campus, and I didn’t want to go to a big state school.”
The Army’s emphasis on discipline has helped her transition to college life and balance coursework with her training and part-time jobs, she says. “I realized I have different perspectives on politics and other topics in my classes, probably because I’ve been working for so long,” she says. Rick Halperin, director of the Embrey Human Rights Program, describes Wiita as a credit to SMU and the country. “Sarah has embraced an understanding of all people’s rights and can use them to the benefit of all in her military operations,” he says.
After serving a year in Africa, Wiita intends to return to SMU to finish her coursework and attend graduate school in psychology. She wants to work with women and children who are victims of trafficking.
“In war zones around the world, the men do the fighting, while the women and kids are left behind and suffer the consequences,” she says. “When I joined the military, I thought about serving our country, and now I’m looking forward to the opportunity to serve people around the world.”
Discovering A Passion
When Kashima Jones served in the Navy from 2004 to 2008, she was stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. She won numerous awards working as a dental technician, providing care to Marines as they deployed to and returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I am so grateful to people who are willing to go to war and make huge sacrifices for all of us back home,” says Jones, 25, who today is a junior biology major in Dedman College and a member of the Navy Reserve. “It was hard to see some not make the trip back.” Jones’ husband, Necorian, 26, a Navy veteran and active Reservist, is a junior mathematics major in Dedman College. The couple continues to serve one weekend each month as dental technicians at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.
“Working with dentists helps with my biology classes because they’ve all been down the same road before me,” says Kashima, who is from Miami. She and her husband moved to his hometown of Dallas in 2008 and began their college studies at Mountain View College before transferring to SMU. Necorian and Kashima Jones
Necorian also is earning a minor in education from the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, and both Joneses say they hope to teach: Necorian would like to be a high school math teacher and football coach, while Kashima wants to teach high school biology and eventually serve as a principal. She discovered her passion for the field this year while working with the Dallas college-readiness program, Education Is Freedom.
“I’ve been helping students at a Dallas high school fill out financial aid forms and college applications and get in the mind-set for college,” she says. “I am a first-generation college student, and I remember thinking I didn’t have the tools to go to college. It feels great to help others get there.”
Kashima also is working to form a student organization for SMU’s military members. “It would offer camaraderie and support,” she says. “It could bring together all of us who can relate to life in the military – veterans, reservists, active-duty students, family members – and also anyone who’s interested in learning more about the military.”
Furthering The Mission
Former Petty Officer 2nd Class James Noel, 28, served aboard warships around the world during his six years in the U.S. Navy and two in the Navy Reserve. His first time at sea was at the start of the Iraq war in 2003 on the USS John S. McCain, where he worked as a sonar technician, watching for underwater threats and minefields.
“We had been in the Arabian Gulf for about a week when we heard President Bush’s address to the nation over the ship’s intercom about the start of military operations,” says Noel, a sophomore accounting major in Cox School of Business, with a minor in economics in Dedman College. “It was two or three in the morning, and the war became very real then. We were all determined to focus on our orders and meet our objectives.” James Noel
After Baghdad was taken by U.S. forces – and 98 straight days on the water – Noel and his shipmates sailed back to their home port in Japan.
“In the military, you’re there for a purpose – not to earn a paycheck, but to serve your country,” he says.
“But all students at SMU, who are working toward their degrees and careers, also are working to further the mission of this country. They’re learning to be the leaders of tomorrow in every field – business, government, medicine, the arts.”
Noel, a Chicago native who always enjoyed visiting family in Texas, transferred to SMU in fall 2010 from Richland College in Dallas, where he discovered his passion for accounting. “I’m enjoying my business classes at Cox and the interaction with professors,” he says. “And I love the atmosphere at SMU, the school spirit, game days and Boulevarding. Even though I’m not a traditional college student, I feel like one here. Everyone – the professors, staff and students – has been very welcoming.”
Noel serves as secretary of the National Association of Black Accountants at Cox, which hosts experts and offers professional development and leadership training. He hopes to start an online retail business after earning his degree.
His military experience taught him to be prepared for anything, Noel adds. “If anything, the Navy was a stepping-stone. Students who haven’t been in the military probably can’t relate, but if you’re just on time, you’re late, and if you’re early, you’re on time,” he says. “I make sure I’m early to class and ready to get to work.
“I do take class seriously. After visiting underdeveloped countries and seeing what people have to do to make a living, I’m grateful for everything I have.”
Finding The Right Fit At A Distance
First Lieutenant Michael D. Gifford II, 29, works with lasers, high-power microwave systems and radiological safety at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gifford, who earned his Bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and worked as an engineer in Houston for several years, decided to follow his dream of joining the Air Force in 2008. Michael D. Gifford II
He was based in Wichita, Kansas, for his first two years in the Air Force. “People in my field are experts in chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents. We’re responders in emergencies – not first responders – but we go in and assess signs and symptoms.” Now at Kirtland, he works primarily on Air Force policy issues.
So earning a Master’s degree in environmental engineering through the distance-learning program at the Lyle School of Engineering was a natural fit. “The coursework goes hand in hand with my work as a bioenvironmental engineer,” Gifford says. “The courses deal with contaminates, the environment and regulations. Environmental engineering gets you out on site, doing assessments and making things better.”
Gifford also appreciates how receptive the Lyle School is to military students. “I did a lot of searching to find the right program that was fully accredited online and flexible. SMU was at the top of the list because it offered half-price tuition. I was assigned temporary duty in Florida and was able to get my coursework and submit it online.”
The Lyle School Distance Education Program began over 40 years ago with the Tager Satellite Network. Approximately 25 percent of applicants for the fall 2011 term are classified as military students, including active-duty, veterans and Department of Defense civilians. “Our faculty often are impressed with the caliber of experience that military students bring to the learning environment,” says Abigail Smith, assistant director for graduate military, distance and part-time on-campus education.
Military veterans and their families, as well as active-duty military, have long been important members of the SMU community, says Provost Paul Ludden. “They bring unique, global perspectives to the classroom and campus. We are proud that after serving our country, many are choosing to continue their education at SMU.”
Throughout red-and-blue SMU, green practices have become a way of life as the University community rallies to cut waste and conserve precious resources.
In Cockrell-McIntosh Hall, Pamela Varela’s small refrigerator used to be stocked with single-use plastic water bottles. Now Varela, a resident assistant, relies on reusable bottles.
“I used to think that throwing all those plastic water bottles into the recycling bin was enough, until I realized that it’s best not to have a bottle to recycle in the first place,” says Varela, a sophomore environmental engineering major. She also is a member of the SMU Environmental Society and the campus co-chair of RecycleMania, a national intercollegiate recycling competition.
Not far from Varela’s South Quad living quarters, a crew completes the installation of a new chiller for Barr Pool. The high-efficiency system captures energy that would otherwise evaporate into the atmosphere and converts it into heat. As a result, the University will save about $80,000 a year in heating costs for the outdoor swimming pool.
On the west side of Bishop Boulevard, students gather for lunch at the campus’ main dining hall, the Real Food on Campus (RFoC) in Umphrey Lee, where trays have been removed. That action has yielded substantial decreases not only in water consumption but also in the amount of food thrown away, according to Michael Marr, SMU director of dining services and resident district manager for Aramark, which provides dining services.
“When people use trays, they tend to pile up their plates with much more food than they’ll eat,” he says. “Without the trays, food waste has been reduced by 4 to 6 ounces per meal a day, and we serve an average of 3,000 meals each day.”
Many Shades Of Green
At Barr Pool, a new, high-efficiency chiller system saves the University about $80,000 annually in heating costs.
The widely accepted definition of “sustainability” – eco-conscious behavior that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” – was established as a national goal when the Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970. That year, the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22.
The SMU Sustainability Committee generates the kind of awareness that Earth Day evokes and supports it throughout the year. Established in 2009, the committee focuses efforts by students, faculty and staff on a sweeping plan to recycle, reduce waste and reuse. The long-term strategy encompasses resource management programs, student initiatives and green-building construction as well as degree programs, course offerings and research.Sophomore Elizabeth Peterson serves as an Environmental Representative, or E-Rep, a student staff position assigned to a residence hall to promote recycling and other green efforts.
Steps to shrink SMU’s environmental footprint are taken around the clock, says Michael Paul, executive director of Facilities Management and Sustainability (FM&S) and a member of the SMU Sustainability Committee.
“There’s not one big thing we do that’s the sustainability panacea; it’s the thousand little things that really add up and make a difference,” Paul says.
FM&S takes the lead in rethinking business as usual by identifying new recycling and waste management opportunities as well as finding products and techniques that are eco-friendly and cost-effective.
“Before we adopt a new method or system, it not only has to meet certain environmental criteria but it also has to make economic sense,” Paul says.
As an example, he points to the replacement of incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs in all exit signs. On average an LED bulb uses about a 10th of the energy and lasts about 80 years, compared to the three-month lifespan of an incandescent bulb. “In one year the program paid for itself,” he says.
Forward Thinking
SMU’s long-term commitment to sustainability includes academic tracks to educate students who can meet the needs of a changing world and develop energy-conservation tactics that will play out over decades.
Environmental degree programs – Environmental Studies and Environmental Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering in Lyle School of Engineering – prepare students now to develop solutions to mounting global sustainability issues. Mackenzie Keck, a first-year advertising student, shines in a design by Diana Mansour, a first-year business student. They participated in the inaugural eco-fashion show hosted by SMU’s Environmental Representatives March 25.“I’m interested in research and work being done around the world to reduce carbon emissions by switching to renewable resources for fuel,” says Sarah Karimi, a sophomore environmental sciences and chemistry double major from Karachi, Pakistan. “My academic background helps me understand the environment from a scientific perspective, and I hope to pursue research that will contribute to sustainable energy solutions.”
Researchers like David Blackwell, Hamilton Professor of Geothermal Studies and one of the country’s foremost authorities on geothermal energy, and SMU Geothermal Laboratory Coordinator Maria Richards explore the alternative energy frontier. Their breakthrough mapping of the nation’s geothermal resources shows the vast potential for geothermal energy, which harnesses heat from the Earth’s core. Geothermal energy is reliable – and with the right technology can be generated virtually everywhere.
“That’s really the holy grail of geothermal: that you can go anywhere and extract the Earth’s heat,” Blackwell told National Geographic News in December.
SMU’s Sustainability Committee also is looking at energy through a long-range lens. A Carbon Action Plan with a 30-year goal of attaining carbon neutrality is in development, according to Michael Paul. The plan will outline specific projects to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by using fiscally sound technologies.
“If we’re not good stewards of the environment today, then we’re not setting up generations to come for success,” he says. “Sustainability is as much about the future as it is about today. ”
Visit SMU’s real-time water and electricity usage on the Building Dashboard.
A thread of entrepreneurship weaves through the history of SMU from the beginning. In asking “What is our duty to all the coming generations of Texans until the end of time? … ,” members of the Commission of Education, Methodist Episcopal Church, South of Texas demonstrated game-changing foresight in 1911. They spotted an opportunity in a growing city and joined forces with like-minded civic leaders to bring the University to life. Jerry White, director of the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship in the Cox School of BusinessFast forward six decades: When the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship opened in August 1970, “we could identify only a handful of universities that even taught a course in entrepreneurship,” says Jerry White, director of the institute in the Cox School of Business. “Today, if you don’t have a substantial entrepreneurship education program, then you won’t have a business school.”
The institute was established with the support of W.W. Caruth Jr., son of W.W. Caruth Sr., who donated land to SMU in 1911. “W.W. Caruth Jr. felt that universities were training students to be employees of large organizations, and that’s not what he chose to be,” White says. “He was ahead of the curve in recognizing that business schools needed to address entrepreneurship education.”
While White says there’s no hard and fast definition of “entrepreneurship,” he boils it down to “building a business where none existed before and pursuing the opportunity without regard to resources you currently control.”
“Innovation is not entrepreneurship,” he adds. “Entrepreneurs take innovation and do something with it.”
Do You Fit The Profile?
Growing up in Carthage, Miss., Jerry White says he was “one of those kids who always had a business.” Among his most successful ventures was a snow cone stand. Within weeks of opening, his operation was doing such brisk business that his adult-run competition folded.
White seemed to know instinctively that by offering a superior product at the right price, he would thrive in the marketplace. So, are some people born entrepreneurs? While an actual gene linked to entrepreneurship has not been identified, people who bring their ideas to life do seem to share some attitudinal DNA, according to White. Read more …
The Caruth Institute offers four undergraduate and 20 graduate courses – from venture financing to financial transactions law – to provide students with a solid foundation for launching and managing successful ventures. Through the institute students can pursue a Master of Science in Entrepreneurship, as well as a noncredit Starting A Business certificate.
Also within Cox, the Executive M.B.A. program was ranked by Financial Timesas No. 6 in the world for entrepreneurship last fall.
Andy Nguyen ’11 says the Master of Entrepreneurship program provided him with a solid handle on the mechanics of business ownership. Nguyen owns WSI Search, a North Dallas marketing firm that specializes in web development and Internet marketing strategies, and calls himself a “serial entrepreneur with a laundry list of ideas.” The nine-year Marine veteran, who has served in Afghanistan and Asia, is now mapping out “a nonprofit organization to help veterans transition into entrepreneurship.”
“The MSE program has given me the tools and resources to build, run and exit a business in the most effective and efficient manner,” says Nguyen.
‘Be Ready To Jump’
Engineer Bobby B. Lyle ’67 proves that inventive go-getters populate all disciplines. He served as a professor and administrator at the University before making his mark in the petroleum and natural gas industry. Lyle, an SMU trustee for more than 20 years, provided gifts that established the Bobby B. Lyle Chair in Entrepreneurship in Cox – held by Professor Maria Minniti – and laid the foundation for leadership and entrepreneurship education in the Lyle School of Engineering, which was named for him in 2008.
The school offers a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with an Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship Specialization. In addition courses such as “Technical Entrepreneurship” encapsulate the challenges of technology start-ups through “on-the-job learning,” says Professor Stephen A. Szygenda. Brian Tannous (left) and Amir Ghadiry, creators of the SeekDroid smartphone app
Divided into company teams, students have to decide on a hypothetical venture and develop a five-year strategy. As the semester unfolds, Szygenda bombards the groups “with different situations, like an unanticipated natural disaster. They have to come up with solutions and document how they’ve redirected the company to successfully deal
with the issue.”
The course’s emphasis on team dynamics and innovative problem-solving complements initiatives of the Hart Center for Engineering Leadership, which was funded by a
gift from Linda ’65 and Mitch Hart and opened in October 2010.
In the lightning-fast technology sector, “there’s a very small window for success, so when it opens, you have to be ready to jump,” Szygenda says.
New engineering graduates Amir Ghadiry ’11 and Brian Tannous ’11 took a leap into the marketplace with SeekDroid, an application (“app”) for smartphones that run the Android mobile operating system. The multifunction app serves as a locator – through a secure website, a user can pinpoint the device’s location – as well as a security system.
“If your phone is stolen, you can lock and wipe it [erase data] remotely,” Ghadiry explains.
After five months on the market, the application has been downloaded more than 16,000 times from SeekDroid.com at a price of 99 cents per download.
They began tinkering with apps in an electrical engineering special topics course taught by Joseph Camp, the J. Lindsay Embrey Trustee Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. “For students with an entrepreneurial flair, the mobile phone applications market is an emerging avenue,” Camp says.
It’s Not Business As Usual
Some new SMU programs borrow from the B-school toolkit for courses tailored to a challenging climate.
In June the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development will launch a Master’s program with a specialization in urban school leadership. The 45-hour program was developed by theDepartment of Educational Leadership and Policy in concert with the school’s new Education Entrepreneur Center (EEC).
The EEC coalesces efforts of the Simmons School and the Teaching Trust, a nonprofit organization established by entrepreneurs Rosemary Perlmeter, founder of Uplift Education charter schools, and Ellen Wood, a financial and social investment consultant, to offer high-quality professional preparation for emerging school leaders as well as development opportunities for seasoned principals. Lee Alvoid, clinical associate professor and department chair, believes some of the business approaches used to turn around ailing companies can be modified and applied to low-performing urban schools.
“Entrepreneurial educators can find and deploy resources in a creative and nontraditional manner,” she explains. “They are able to create an organizational culture focused on the students and have the ability to develop policies that support change that’s important in urban schools with low performance.” Zannie Voss, chair of Meadows' Division of Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship
Much like the Simmons program aims to prepare school leaders to achieve under difficult conditions, a new Meadows School of the Arts initiative merges a business perspective with classical training as an intellectual gyroscope for a shifting arts landscape.
“Our students are incredibly proficient and expert with their talent as performers and artists. We don’t want them to wait for the phone to ring; we want them to take a proactive role in sculpting their post-SMU futures now,” says Zannie Voss, chair of the Division of Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship in Meadows and professor with a dual appointment in Meadows and Cox.
Beginning in the fall, Meadows will offer an undergraduate minor in arts entrepreneurship open to students from any major on campus who want to develop their ideas for new arts – or entertainment-related ventures. The six-course minor focuses on such skills as arts budgeting and financial management, attracting capital (donors, investors and public funds) and generating an arts venture plan.
As they home in on how to monetize their ideas, students may redefine success in terms of personal fulfillment rather than fame. And even those who have their sights set on stardom need to be able to interpret a financial statement.
“The reality is that it’s in our students’ best interests to not only create their own art and films but also to understand how to sustain themselves,” Voss says. “This initiative emphasizes Meadows’ encouragement of students to ‘start a movement.’”
– Patricia Ward
Julene Fleurmond, Young Dreamer Enterprises
When Oprah Winfrey took her show on the road in December, journalism graduate Julene Fleurmond ’09 was among the “Ultimate Viewers” treated to a trip to Australia.
When producers were searching for people inspired by Winfrey for the audience of the show’s final-season premiere, Fleurmond caught their attention. Her organization, Young Dreamer Enterprises, and website advance creativity and entrepreneurship in young people through online activities, inspirational posts and videos.
“Seeing Oprah in person was a surreal experience and reinforced my belief that by pursuing your passion and purpose, your dreams can come true,” says Fleurmond, who is now working toward a Master’s in public health at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
While an SMU undergraduate, Fleurmond received a Big iDeas grant for her website. Sponsored by SMU’s Office of the Provost, the Big iDeas program funds selected undergraduate research proposals aimed at addressing issues that confront major metropolitan areas like Dallas.
“Having recognition and support from a program like Big iDeas encourages you to make your idea bigger,” she says.
Alison Bailey Verchruysse (left) and Erin McCormick
Alison Bailey Vercruysse’s head for numbers earned her success in banking – including a stint at the Federal Reserve in Chicago – but her heart wasn’t in it. She needed a creative outlet. After trying everything from art to yoga, she started playing with her food – tweaking homemade granola recipes until she got it right.
In 2008 Vercruysse ’92 started 18 Rabbits, “simple, authentic granola and bars.” Her company’s unusual moniker comes from a prolific childhood pet named Blackjack. “We’re hoping to continue to grow and expand – like rabbits,” she quips.
Today her products, all of which are certified organic, are sold at Whole Foods, Central Market and many other outlets around the country.
By harnessing “pony power,” Vercruysse moved into an important national market and found a key employee.
“At my mother’s (Kay Hunter ’93) urging, I introduced myself to David Cush at an alumni function in 2008,” recalls the San Francisco-based entrepreneur. Cush ’82, ’83 is president and CEO of Virgin America Airlines; he serves as a Second Century Celebration Steering Committee co-chair. “He was very gracious, gave me his card and suggested I send him a box of samples.”
She did, and 18 Rabbits Gracious Granola is now on the airline’s breakfast rotation for a second time.
Two years later, the tables were turned when Erin McCormick ’09 approached Vercruysse. McCormick, a dance major, was searching for a new opportunity after living in New York for a year. “It just wasn’t for me,” says the California native. “When I decided to move, I contacted everyone in the SMU alumni online database who lived in the San Francisco area. The alums were very encouraging and really wanted to help.”
Coincidentally, Vercruysse, who majored in accounting and finance at SMU, was hunting for a marketing intern and arranged an interview. The two hit it off, and McCormick now serves as field marketing manager for the company.
“I never thought of working in the food industry – and I love it,” McCormick says. “Even if you think you know what you want to do with your career, don’t close yourself off to unexpected opportunities.”
High-energy thin-film polarizers are among Precision Photonics' products.
Chris Myatt ’91 had the perfect ingredients for a startup – a good idea, a spare room and a lawyer-partner – wife Sally Hatcher ’91. The couple founded Precision Photonics, which specializes in precision optical components, in Boulder, Colorado, in 2000. The telecommunications boom was at its peak, so the timing seemed right.
“We started as a telecom business. When the bubble burst in 2001, 70 percent of our customers went out of business and those remaining weren’t spending money,” says Hatcher, who earned undergraduate degrees in philosophy and history from SMU and a J.D. from the University of Colorado. “It took ‘enduring perseverance’ to keep going.”
The little company that could gradually morphed into a successful “specialty optics shop,” Hatcher explains. “We improve the performance of lasers used in almost any industry: the medical field, in aerospace and even large industrial lasers that precision-cut materials in factories.”
While retooling the company’s focus, Myatt, who holds undergraduate degrees in math and physics from SMU and a Ph.D. in atomic physics from the University of Colorado, became interested in medical testing equipment. His “little side science project” has grown into a separate business: MBio Diagnostics.
Myatt developed a portable, affordable device for blood tests that is ideally suited for use in emerging nations where small clinics rarely have diagnostic equipment. Next month field trials of the device will begin Kenya.
“Getting results in minutes for a battery of tests, rather than waiting days or even weeks, can make a huge difference in outcomes,” Hatcher says.
TOMS Shoes isn’t just another footwear company and founder Blake Mycoskie isn’t a cookie-cutter executive. His title synthesizes an unusual corporate philosophy: He doesn’t call himself “chief executive officer.” Rather, he’s the self-proclaimed “chief shoe giver.” Blake Mycoskie celebrates TOMS' success.
TOMS – the name is derived from Shoes For Tomorrow – operates on a one-for-one giving model: For each pair of TOMS shoes sold, one pair is given away. As of 2010, more than 1 million pairs of shoes had been donated to needy children in over 20 countries, including the United States.
Mycoskie started the enterprise in 2006 after a trip to Argentina, where he was moved by a group of youngsters with no shoes to protect their feet. When he returned to the U.S., he decided that writing a check wasn’t enough and developed the idea for TOMS. Today, a range of designs for men, women and children bears the distinctive TOMS logo.
Over a decade ago, Mycoskie started his first company, a laundry service, while an SMU student. He later created and sold a billboard company and worked in TV development and entertainment marketing before finding the perfect fit.
What’s his next step? Mycoskie recently announced his newest one-for-one venture, TOMS Eyewear. Each pair of TOMS sunglasses sold will support eye care for an individual, including medical treatment, sight-saving surgery and prescription eyeglasses. The program will start in Nepal, Cambodia and Tibet.
Taylor Brown (left) and Emily Dawson '09, co-founders of GiverosityLike many young professionals, Emily Dawson ’09 and Taylor Brown wanted to give back to the community in some way but could never find the time, especially during the busy holiday season.
“We’re both analysts who sit in front of computer screens for large parts of our day,” says Dawson, a financial analyst for Texas Capital Bank. “Our goal was to come up with a streamlined holiday donation process that people could do in a few minutes – when it’s most convenient for them.”
Late last year she and Brown founded Giverosity, a non-profit corporation that blends the ease of online shopping with the enjoyment of creating a memorable Christmas for Dallas-area children in need. They partnered with Toys Unique!, a Dallas specialty store, to offer a selection of age-appropriate items on the Giverosity.com website. All toys purchased were donated to the Interfaith Housing Coalition, which provides transitional housing and support services to homeless families.
“The idea came to us just two months before Christmas, so preparations were fast and furious. Due to the time crunch, our marketing efforts were focused primarily on social media,” says Dawson, who majored in marketing at SMU. “Our amazing friends and a local news station also helped us reach additional charitable donors.”
In just three weeks, donors gave more than $6,000 in toys. Over 400 toys were donated to Interfaith Housing, which organized a “Christmas store” where parents could select gifts for their children.
Plans for Christmas 2011 are in full force, says Dawson. “The primary toy drive will be September through December. We were encouraged by many donors to provide clothing as well, and we are currently searching for a clothing retailer with which to partner.”
In addition to augmenting the gift selections to include apparel, winter coats and athletic shoes, the partners plan to expand Giverosity to Austin and Houston next year. “We hope to grow quickly and help as many children feel special as we can,” Dawson says.
Wesley N. Schulze was a United Methodist minister for 43 years and recently retired as chaplain general of the Sons of the Republic of Texas, which honored him as a Knight of San Jacinto. He celebrated his 90th birthday May 15, 2010, and his 67th wedding anniversary with his wife, Ann, last September 1.
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Mary Cecelia Whitehead Ackerschott, as a member of the national American Needlepoint Guild, entered one of her creations and won first place, judges’ favorite and best in show. She donated a collection of original art pieces to SMU’s Taos Cultural Institute.
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Charles Roberson retired in the mid-1980s from an accounting career. Now a resident at the C.C. Young retirement community, he is visited daily by LaVelle, his wife of 60 years.
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Maurice D. Bratt recalls working his way through SMU holding down a six-day-a-week job at the original Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas. Blanche Webster Coker moved from Pittsburg, TX, to Dallas in 2008 after the death of her husband, Bill Coker ’49. Earle Labor has been honored as “Jack London Man of the Year 2011” by the Jack London Foundation in Sonoma, California.He has published eight books and over 100 shorter works on the famous author. As a visiting professor at Utah State University in 1966, he taught the first Jack London course ever offered in the United States. Labor also presented the first Jack London seminar in Western Europe as a Fulbright professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in 1974. Kenneth R. (Ken) Steele (M.B.A. ’62) fondly remembers his Pi Kappa Alpha and dorm “X” friends at SMU.
Caroleen Turner has been married to Homer L. Thornton Jr. for 58 years, and they enjoy life in Paris, TX. She has 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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Howard A. (Tony) Bridge Jr. owns and operates six AM/FM radio stations in Longview and Marshall (TX) and Shreveport. He was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame Nov. 14, 2010.
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Hugh Higgins (J.D. ’67) was named to the Ex-Students Association Wall of Fame at Cleburne (TX) High School, where he taught and coached. After completing law school, he was county attorney and then opened a private practice, from which he is retired. Lowell (Stretch) Smith Jr. was honored last fall by the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth as a 2010 inductee into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He raises cattle and is the fourth family member to operate the Smith Ranch, founded in 1887 by his great-grandfather. He also is a well-known banker and served as president of the First State Bank in Rio Vista. His “Cow Pasture Bank” was the largest bank in the area when it was bought by Wells Fargo in 1999.
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H.A. (Pat) Baker Jr. visited Egypt last November, where he saw the pyramids in Giza and the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens and enjoyed a cruise on the Nile River.
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Roger William Blackmar Jr. is in his 54th year as a financial advisor and is one of five remaining active brokers licensed in 1957 by the New York Stock Exchange. He and his wife, Joan, have been married 53 years. Julia Sanford Burgen received the Shield Award from the National Delta Gamma Fraternity in the spring 2011 for services to the community in Arlington, North Texas, and the State of Texas. Burgen has received local and state-wide awards for her environmental advocacy. She also served six years on the Arlington City Council.
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Luca Cacioli was promoted to worldwide marketing manager for audio and imaging products for Texas Instruments.
The Rev. Dr. John Thomas (Tom) Graves was ordained in 1956 and is now retired after 55 years of ministry. He has authored five books, winning awards with several, and is writing a sixth. He is a sailor and chaplain of the sailing fleet at Lake Texoma. Recently he was awarded Texas United Methodism’s highest honor, the Medallion of Merit, by the Texas Methodist Foundation. He lives in Lamar County, TX.
Kathy Vernon Clark was surrounded by SMU graduates in her family – father, a minister and journalist; mother, a teacher; and brother, an attorney. Their example of service inspired her to earn a Ph.D. and become a special education teacher and professor. Ivor Noreen (Nicki) Huber has retired after a long career that included becoming the first female consultant hired by Booz Allen & Hamilton NYC and running her family business, Nicol Scales, for 23 years. She and her husband, Paul, live in Naples, FL. They have three grandchildren, two of whom live in Seoul, South Korea. Nicki serves on the SMU Libraries Executive Board.
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Rondal G. Crawford worked in structural design at NASA, 1960-1984; marketing at Ford Aerospace, 1984-1990; and marketing at SAIC, 1990-2000, when he retired. He has four children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Dr. Linda Hawkins Kay was inducted into the Jacksboro (MS) High School Alumni Hall of Fame last October, recognized for her work on educational, political and environmental issues in Georgia, Mississippi and the nation. Geri Sue Hudson Morgan is doing well nine years after a kidney transplant.
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The Rev. Karl Brown has joined the faculty of The Wisdom School at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in San Marcos, TX. He was director of the Campus Christian Community at Texas State University for more than 30 years. Sandra Hartman Wilkinson ’71 and husband Ronald L. Wilkinson ’64, ’66 live in Waxahachie, TX. Sandra serves as chair of their neighborhood association. Ronald was mayor of Waxahachie for two terms and maintains an active law practice. Their son, Robert, is an SMU law student and his wife, Melinda, is working toward a Master’s degree at Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
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Michael M. Boone (J.D. ’67) was named by the Texas Lawyer newspaper one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter-century. He was honored for his outstanding contributions at a luncheon at the Belo Mansion and Pavilion in Dallas last October 1.
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Reunion Chairs: Lou Fouts, Norma Friou Fouts, Jack C. Myers, Carol Paris Seay
The Rev. Dr. James E. Dunlap was honorably retired by the Chicago Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. after serving 14 years as coordinator of spiritual services at Saint Francis Hospital, Evanston, IL. He is a board certified chaplain of the Association of Professional Chaplains. E. Stanly Godbold Jr. has published a book, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924-1974 (Oxford University Press). His stepdaughter, Heidi Gluesing, is a 1998 SMU graduate.
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Jerry L. Griffin retired in January as managing partner of Sewell Lexus in Dallas after 40 years with the organization – eight with Lexus and 32 with Sewell Cadillac. His boss throughout has been Carl Sewell ’66, chair of the Sewell Automotive Companies and former chair of the SMU Board of Trustees.
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Henry V. Heuser Jr. was elected chair of the Board of Overseers at the University of Louisville (KY) and president of the Louisville Rotary Club.
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Charles R. (Rocky) Saxbe was selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2011. He is managing partner at Chester Willcox & Saxbe LLP, where he represents clients in all aspects of civil litigation in state and federal courts.
Suzanne Goodrich Greene was named 2010 Texas Art Education Association Educator of the Year. She lives in Houston and teaches middle school art in the Spring Branch School District. Susan Johnson Parks has worked for 23 years as an educational specialist for the Maine Department of Education. She founded The Poets’ Group, which recently published its second poetry chapbook, Pondtown Poetry II. Martha Bible Smith, a book reviewer, has published two books of poetry: Yet in 2008 and So in 2010. She is retired after 31 years as a teacher and 15 years as an entrepreneur. Janita Monghan Thomas and her husband, D. Lee Thomas ’74, vacationed in Kauai last August with Dr. Carole Terry ’71 and her husband, Dr. Alan Fine, both couples celebrating their anniversaries. Janita and Carole, four-year roommates at SMU, have remained friends for 40 years despite thousands of miles between them.
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Paul Alfassa operates the general law practice of his late father and serves as docent at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie. Ray Thomas Johnston is an adjunct faculty member in the graduate school of social work at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX, and operates a full-time private counseling practice.
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Linda Kretzmeier Parker (M.M. ’75) received the John Batchellor Award for excellence in music education in the state of New Mexico, where she teaches, as well as an outstanding teacher award from BP Oil.
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Joe Pouncy (M.L.A. ’82) was named Educator of the Year for 2010 by Christ Community Connection Organization of Carrollton and Farmers Branch, TX. He is principal of Carrollton’s Newman Smith High School.
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Cynthia Day Grimes has joined law firm Strasburger & Price LLP in the San Antonio office, representing commercial entities in medical products, medical litigation and personal injury. She was previously at Ball & Weed LLP, where she was a founding partner. Deborah Nadler Straubinger recently earned her Master’s degree in marketing from Webster University in Orlando, FL. Sol Villasana has a new book, Dallas’s Little Mexico (Arcadia Publishing, April 2011), a photographic history of that neighborhood.
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Reunion Chairs: Roy W. Bailey, Betsy Lane Morton
Arden Bennett serves as chief executive officer and director general of CIMA Hospital in San José, Costa Rica, part of the International Hospital Corp., which also operates hospitals in Mexico and Brazil. Mary A. Bonnick volunteered at the NFL Experience at the Dallas Convention Center during Super Bowl week in February helping participants test their football-throwing skills in the “let it fly” game. David (Dave) Dillon is chair and chief executive of Kroger, known for a management style that involves an up-close-and-personal study of Kroger stores and their consumers and employees. Barbara D. Nunneley heads the Nunneley Family Law Center in Hurst, TX, limiting her practice to divorce, property division and custody disputes. Gerald S. Reamey (LL.M. ’82), professor of law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, was awarded the Culture Medal of Honor from the City of Innsbruck (Austria) at a dinner last summer hosted by the City of Innsbruck and the State of Tyrol. He and a colleague founded the St. Mary’s University School of Law’s Institute on World Legal Problems, an annual five-week summer session in Austria attended by up to 130 students from law schools around the nation. The program had a successful end to its 25th year. Andrew Weberhas joined law firm Kelly Hart & Hallman as a partner in the Austin office, heading the public law practice group. Prior to his new position, he was first assistant attorney general at the Texas Attorney General’s office.
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Madeline Dunkin joined Clarkson Davis, a Dallas-based boutique consulting firm that provides services for nonprofits in North Texas. Her two children attend Texas A&M and she is involved at Highland Park United Methodist Church as well as the Dallas Opera Women’s Board. Scott Inman is a senior program manager for military display systems at Planar Systems Inc. in Beaverton, OR. His daughter, Rochelle, is a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. Randy Nickell has published online the Civil War journal of his great-great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Nickell.
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Dick Kendrick and Susan Garbett Kendrick announce the arrival of their grandsons, Cole Evans Estrada in December 2010 and Brody Spencer Stark in January 2011. Susan retired after more than 30 years at First Baptist Church of Dallas, and Dick works for IBM. The couple lives in Frisco, Texas.
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Jennifer Bishop Jenkins of Northfield, IL, was selected for the Illinois Women???s Institute for Leadership in 2010. Alyce Tidball completed a one-year assignment to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and now serves as director for the Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem.
Timothy R. Gordon is a 2010 graduate of the New Canaan (CT) Police Civilian Academy. John C. Hollar is president of the 100,000-item Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, which opened in January 2011. Hollar estimates that the museum has raised $90 million from 65 private donors, including a $15 million lead gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is married to the former Melinda Williams ’82. Sandra J. Jones works for the U.S. government in microbiology labs.
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Reunion Chairs: Chip Cavanaugh, Ann Frances Paris Jury, Allen Smith, Jane Cornish Smith
Msgr. Tony Jack Howard (M.L.A. ’98) recently published A Month of Sundays: Occasional Sermons of a Liberal Catholic Priest (St. Alban Press). He and his wife, Victoria, are expecting their second child in May.
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Lisa Johnson co-directed/produced His Name is Bob (www.hisnameisbob.com), a documentary screened at film festivals in Texas, New Jersey, Utah and California. Distribution is being sought for the film. Laura Ochoa Morales appeared on the cover of the Houston Chronicle’s business section January 2 as a top motivational speaker. Lillie Young chaired the “Soup’s On” luncheon for the Stewpot Alliance at Dallas’ Union Station Jan. 25, 2011. She is senior vice president of investments with Allie Beth Allman & Associates and is a consistent multi-million-dollar producer for the real estate firm.
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Ray Washburne is co-owner, general partner and president of Highland Park Village near SMU.
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Linda Beheler has responsibility for global corporate communications at Celanese. Susan Dean Hammock owns The College Application Coach, a service that helps students and their families navigate the path to college acceptances. She lives in Orlando, FL., with her three children: Phillip, 20; Kelsey, 18; and Bennett, 16. John Klintworth married Birgit von Wuerzen in Toronto, Canada, Oct. 30, 2010. Richard Rizk is the Far West Ski Association’s 2010 Safety Person of the Year for developing a winter safety speaker awareness series on winter driving, terrain park safety, ski patrol advice and ski risks and the law. He was vice president of the Northwest Ski Council in 2009-2010. He enjoys downhill, backcountry and cross-country skiing on and around Mount Hood in Oregon. Tara Elias Schuchts recently attended the reunion of the SMU Class of ’85. Salvatore Vitale is working to develop and enlarge his law firm, Vitale & Partners, which has several offices in Europe and the United States. He and his wife, Liana, are parents of Giulia, 2, and Diana, born Jan. 27, 2011. Trish Neal Wilson is a photo stylist and works with photographers at four- and five-star hotels and resorts. She also is an independent executive for Zrii/HMG, selling all-natural liquid nutritionals.
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Reunion Chairs: Elizabeth Baier Emerson, Bill Koch
Dorree Remont Colson and husband Michael Colson announced the birth of their son, Walker Rheed, on Mary 12, 2009. They live in Houston, Texas, and have another son Daniel. Michael Hudak, private wealth advisor for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management in Phoenix, was recognized on “America’s Top 1000 Advisors: State-by-State” list in a February issue of Barron’s magazine. Hudak ranked fourth among the 25 listed for Arizona. He currently lives in Scottsdale with his wife and four children. Sharon Killion has moved back to Dallas after living in South Africa for six years. She had a successful career in real estate there, selling more than 55 condos on the Indian Ocean in less than 10 months after arriving. Amy Martin is the founder and creative director of Winter SolsiCelebration, the second largest winter solstice festival in the nation. The event is a unique fusion of seasonal service, performing arts, and musical theater. Martin also authors an online newsletter, Moonlady News, which has over 3200 subscribers. The newsletter consists non-mainstream spirituality, environment, holistic, mind-body movement, and progressive causes in North Texas. Donna J. Smiedt is a family law specialist in the Donna J. Smiedt Law Office in Arlington, TX. In 2000 she was sworn in by Chief Justice Rehnquist to practice before the United States Supreme Court. Patrick D. West heads the Patrick D. West Law Firm PC in Fort Worth.
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David Poynter is senior manager of current programming at TNT cable network in Burbank, CA. He oversees several original television series, including The Closer, Men of a Certain Age and Falling Skies. He is married to Laura Mulrenan, who has a Pilates studio in Hollywood. Their daughter, Anabelle, was born in 2006. Ray Starmann has co-written a new web TV series, The Gumshoe.
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Amy Bishop has been named deputy director of the Texas County & District Retirement System. More than 600 county and district employers participate in the system, which provides benefits to 215,000 Texans. Michael E. Kirst is vice president for strategy and external affairs at Westinghouse Nuclear for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He lives in Brussels, Belgium, with his wife and two daughters. Tim J. Smith has published Pricing Strategy: Setting Price Levels, Managing Price Discounts, & Establishing Price Structures, a text on corporate strategy. Leigh Anne Williams Van Doren received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Fredericksburg (VA) Chamber of Commerce for creating the Fredericksburg Parent and Family Magazine. She and her husband, Tom, have two daughters: Tabitha, 13, and Jamie Nelle, 9.
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Mary Lynn Huckleberry Carver is senior vice president of communications and public affairs at the University of Maryland Medical Center and its parent organization, the 12-hospital University of Maryland Medical System. She relocated with her family to Baltimore from Memphis, where she was senior vice president of public relations and communications for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Angél Wonycott Kytle has headed Saint Paul’s School in Clearwater, FL, for the last three years and has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Florida Council of Independent Schools. Previously she was a division director at Trinity School in Atlanta. Her sons are Blake, 8, and Dustin, 3. N. Mark Rauls has been a professor of philosophy at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas since 1997. In 2010 he was appointed the college’s first ombudsperson. Thomas B. Walsh IV is a Dallas intellectual property and commercial litigation attorney at the law firm Fish & Richardson. In 2010 he earned a fourth consecutive selection to the Texas Super Lawyers list featured in the October 2010 Texas Monthly and Texas Super Lawyers magazines. He has been named a Best Lawyer in D magazine for three consecutive years and twice a Texas Super Lawyers “Rising Star.”
David A. Dreyer (M.F.A. ’92) has had solo exhibitions at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas and The Grace Museum in Abilene. He is currently adjunct instructor, technical supervisor and safety coordinator for the Division of Art at SMU. His third solo exhibition at the Valley House Gallery, “Transitional Planes,” ran February 12 through March 12.
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Pamela Ann Marshall, Ph.D., was recently tenured and promoted to associate professor in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. She was named an exemplar, a faculty member who exemplifies the best of the teacher-scholar model of academia.
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Lisa Gentry will be celebrating her 20th year with Lucas Group, a premier executive search firm. She is an executive senior partner and focuses on placing accounting and finance professionals in Denver. Gentry is married to Ray Decker and has two children. Alison Bailey Vercruysse is the founder of San Francisco’s 18 Rabbits, an organic granola company. Before finding her passion in baked goods, she worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She has hosted eight cooking segments of ABC’s View from the Bay and is profiled in the 2010 book Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks and Food Activists by Katherine Leiner. Monica Mullens Warren and her husband, Chris, announce the birth of twins Charlotte Janice and John Patrick in San Francisco Oct. 7, 2010.
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Jamie Hensley Arnold earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology from The University of Texas at Austin and has accepted a tenure-track position at Temple College. Her husband, Doug, is a judge. They live in Georgetown with their two children, Drew and Dan. Kay Longacre Bernzweig is a Master’s degree candidate in the instructional technology program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Jennifer (JJ) Jones (M.L.A. ’99) is the executive director for student development and programs in the Division of Student Affairs at SMU. She accepted an invitation to visit the White House last December Jin Kim is a senior manager and general counsel of the legal team at Korea National Oil Corporation. He joined the company in 2005 and has been the lead in-house counsel in multi-billion-dollar acquisitions.
Father Anthony Frederick (Tony) Lackland is the chaplain to approximately 2,500 Catholic students at SMU, offering them educational programs, ministry opportunities and spiritual support. Brian Waddle and his partner, Kevin Hamby, held a commitment ceremony in Houston Nov. 27, 2010, followed by a trip to Hawaii. Among those in attendance were Wade McAlister ’89, Christy Albano ’93, Mark Dempsey ’94, Kellie Prinz Johnson ’95 and Tricia Letton Clark ’95, ’04. Brian is public relations director for Houston Community College John B. Coleman, M.D. College for Health Sciences in the Texas Medical Center. Sean Whitley wrote The Spawn of the Sasquatch for Viper Comics’ upcoming Cryptophobia anthology.
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George Edward Seay III was co-chair with his wife, Sarah, of the Council for Life’s 2010 Celebrating Life Luncheon Nov. 9, 2010, at Dallas’ Hilton Anatole Hotel.
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Missy Morrison Gulick and John A. Gulick III ’81 live in Scottsdale, AZ, where she is a vice president for DMB Associates Inc. She received the Sandra Day O’ Connor Community Leadership Award from the Junior League of Phoenix and the Frank Hodges Alumni Achievement Award from Scottsdale Leadership. She is on the board of the Arizona Humane Society and the Phoenix Women’s Board of the Steele Children’s Research Center at the University of Arizona. Mike (Mohammed) Jamjoom is a correspondent for CNN in the Middle East. He has covered stories in Iraq, Yemen, and Turkey. Jamjoom was recently dispatched to Kabul, Afghanistan, to cover the reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Melinda Marie Maxfield has been named principal of Williams & Jensen PLLC in Washington, DC. She joined the lobbying firm as an associate in 2007 and has focused on a public policy portfolio. Nita Patel, P.E., was honored February 17 as the 2011 New Hampshire Engineer of the Year by the NH Joint Engineering Societies and selected a candidate for 2012 IEEE-USA president elect. She is an engineering manager at L-3 Insight Technology and lives in Bedford, NH. Michael P. Sanders is one of the founding partners of Borrego Sanders Willyard LLP. The law firm specializes in oil and gas litigation and transactions. Sanders is Board Certified in Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
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Reunion Chairs: John Anderson, Susan Porter Glassmoyer
Iva Linda Baird is a bilingual diagnostician for the Dallas Independent School District. Jason David Blakey has started his own business, LifestyleONE Agency, to provide lifestyle management services to individual and corporate clients. Christopher Dupuy was elected a county court judge in Galveston County, TX. Suzy Rossol Matheson received the Exceptional Service Award from the American Dance Therapy Association. President of the Texas chapter since 2006, she was given an Arts Respond Grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts to fund and manage adaptive dance programs based on her revitalization of the chapter. Natalie Rule married Matthew Burns in her home state of Oklahoma last August. They reside in St. Paul, MN. Michael F. Trusnovec is a member of the acclaimed Paul Taylor Dance Company and has received rave reviews in The New York Times and elsewhere. He was among the group that danced at the White House Sept. 7, 2010, in an event hosted by Michelle Obama.
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Emily Watkins Freudigman’s recording with Camerata San Antonio, “Salón Buenos Aires: Music by Miguel del Aguila,” was nominated for two Latin Grammys: best classical album and best classical contemporary composition. In 2003 she and her husband, Ken, founded Camerata San Antonio, a chamber ensemble presenting imaginative music in South Texas. Amanda Holland Janicek and her husband, Matt, welcomed a son, Hayden Holland, July 31, 2010. Heather McCowen defended her dissertation – Mentorship in Higher Education Music Study: Are Good Teachers Mentors? – and earned a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of North Texas in August 2010. She is assistant dean of enrollment for the performing arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Melinda (Mindy) Sutton married John Lund Dec. 31, 2010, in Austin, where they live. She is deputy to the dean of students at The University of Texas at Austin and is pursuing a Ph.D. in higher education administration. Melissa McCullough Ulrich announces the birth of her son, Mason Curtis, Nov. 25, 2009. Suzanne Campbell Wellen is a 10-year business litigation attorney in the Dallas office of Andrews Kurth LLP and a 2010 Texas –Rising Star– in the April issue of Texas Monthly magazine; she also received this honor in 2007 and 2009. She married Darrell Wellen in August 2009 in Indianapolis. Todd Martin serves as vice president and associate general counsel for CoreLogic, Inc.
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Mark R. Allen and his wife, Lauren, welcomed daughter Rainey Elizabeth last New Year’s Eve. Stella Mulberry Antic successfully defended her doctoral dissertation to complete her Ph.D. in higher education at the University of North Texas in April 2010. In November she married Daniel Antic at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Plano, TX. Carlos Carpizo joined Link America, one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the Dallas area and 2010 Dallas 100 Awards’ winner, as president of its international division. Michael J. Cihock has been promoted to partner at the law firm McLean & Howard LLP in Austin. In 2010 he was recognized as a “Rising Star” in real estate law by Texas Monthly magazine. Tim W. Jackson has published Mangrove Underground, his debut literary novel set in the Florida backcountry (The Chenault Publishing Group, December 2010). He is a former staff photographer with the Citrus County Chronicle and Tampa Tribune, which ran his nonfiction travel writing about the Florida wilderness. He is finishing a second novel, set in the Caribbean, and a collection of island-based short stories. He lives in the Cayman Islands, where he is a boat captain and scuba instructor. Regan Stewart Schiestel and husband Adam announce the birth of their twin daughters, Luca and Larkin, in August 2010. John Stone is a U.S. Army major serving in Baghdad, Iraq. He and his wife, Mandi, have three daughters, 7, 5 and 4; a son, 2; and a baby son born in January. They are stationed in Germany.
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Dr. Patricia (Pat) Pefley works for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Department of Defense in Washington, DC.
Hon. Gena Slaughter is presiding judge of the 191st Civil District Court in Dallas. Jennifer Smith married Aaron Lill at Prestonwood Baptist Church January 22. They live in Plano, TX.
Ashley Lehman Cook formed the law firm Ashley L. Cook PC. Josh Helland conceived and executed the first “bed drop” in Los Angeles Dec. 7, 2010, the kickoff project for the AGNS Foundation (A Good Night Sleep), as he and volunteers delivered 79 beds and bedding sets to the Downtown Women’s Center. In addition, the AGNS team took six double mattresses to Door of Hope in Pasadena, CA, and 25 double mattresses to People Assisting the Homeless in Los Angeles, both groups working with individuals and families transitioning out of homelessness into permanent housing. He has projects lined up for 2011 in San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, New York City, Jacksonville and New Orleans. Tammy Nguyen Lee and husband George celebrated the birth of their first child, Gabriella Young An Lee, Nov. 23, 2010. Tammy, the recipient of SMU’s 2010 Emerging Leader award, is the director of development for original programming at AMS Pictures (Ma’s Roadhouse, Girl Meets Gown) and president/founder of the nonprofit ATG Against The Grain Productions. Patricia McGregor graduated from the directing program at the Yale School of Drama where she was artistic director of the Yale Cabaret. She has worked at venues including Broadway, BAM, Second Stage, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theater, The Kitchen, the O’Neill National Playwriting Conference, Lincoln Center Institute and Exit Art. Last November she was back on the SMU campus holding auditions for the play Yerma, which she directed. C.J. Nelson is researching cases for Seniors vs Crime, a special project of the Florida attorney general. He is a member of the Jacksonville Sheriff&rsqo;s Advisory Council. Cecilia Dubon Slesnick and her husband, Don Slesnick III, announce the birth of their daughter, Cecilia Anne, Nov. 6, 2010. Kevin L. Weiss is senior vice president of human resources in the integrated systems group at L-3 Communications, a defense aerospace business. Crystal Willars married Matthew Vastine ’05 in a ceremony on Maroma Beach, Mexico, Sept. 16, 2010. She is a senior marketing manager for AT&T, and he is a flight test engineer at Lockheed Martin and a Smoothie King franchisee in Fort Worth. Together they own and operate Fort Worth Foodie, a quarterly magazine dedicated to food culture in Fort Worth.
01
Reunion Chairs: Monica Netherland Hopkins, Newton N. Hopkins,
Sara Love Swaney
José Galarza was hired by Yestermorrow Design/Build School as the first director of semester programs. He is an architectural designer, builder and educator with experience in planning, project management, information technology and construction. As Yestermorrow’s community outreach coordinator, he handled class building projects with such clients as the Vermont Foodbank’s Kingsbury Farm. Currently he runs José Galarza Building Workshop, an architectural design studio based in central Vermont. Jonathan Giles and Rebecca Waghorn Giles ’03 announce the birth of twins Knox Carter and Tatum Aubrey, February 16. Bernard M. Jones was elected to the American Cancer Society board of directors. He is the associate dean of admissions and external affairs at Oklahoma City University School of Law. Laran Carman O’Neill (M.L.A. ’08) has been promoted to director of development for the Cox School of Business at SMU, having served as assistant director since August 2007.
02
Jon Alexis is president of TJ’s Seafood in Dallas, specializing in fresh seafood and the personalized service of a family business. Beau Brown was asked to direct Late Night Entertainment at the 2011 National Puppetry Festival in Atlanta. He currently produces a late-night puppet slam in Atlanta called The Puckin’ Fuppet Show and is the artistic director and a puppeteer for the web series The Sci-Fi Janitors. Charles R. Constant works as the executive vice president of business development at Capital Plan in Dallas, Texas. Christopher Epp and Mairin Flynn ’04 were married Oct. 16, 2010, in Dallas. They reside in Austin.
The Rev. Michael W. Waters (M.Div. ’06) has been the primary religion writer for more than a year for the online publication Dallas South News. His most recent article focused on Junie Collins Williams, age 16 when a bomb ripped through the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church of Birmingham Sept. 15, 1963. The blast killed four young girls, one of whom was her sister. Rev. Waters is the founder and senior pastor of Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church in Dallas. Lisa Renee Wilson married David Benjamin McCaul in Seattle, July 31, 2010.
03
Lisa Blank married Brent Matthew Wynn Aug. 28, 2010. They live in Portland, OR. Martin Coe is a systems engineer and founder of Intelligent PD, an engineering consulting and contracting firm assisting clients in product development of complex medical devices. Shannon Winslow De Leon and husband Ben welcomed their second daughter, Winslow Grace, March 12, 2010. Her sister, Anna Lee, was born in October 2007. Christopher Frederick, aka Brotha Fred, has joined KISS-FM 103.7 in Chicago as host of the morning show, syndicated in several markets. Ryan Long earned a Master’s degree in engineering management and information systems from SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering in December 2010. Chrissy Crawford Malone has launched a new tech/art venture in New York called LittleCollector.com, which offers limited-edition contemporary art for children by Shepard Fairey, David Levinthal, Cynthia Rowley and others. Crawford was an art history major at SMU. Amy Sims became part of the SMU athletic staff Sept. 10, 2010, as assistant director of athletics giving. Previously she was community development director at the Arthritis Foundation and Leukemia Texas, both in Dallas. Harry Joseph Smith III and wife Stephanie Smith welcomed their son, Harry Joseph Smith IV into their family on March 9, 2011. The couple also celebrated their five-year wedding anniversary on June 3, 2011.
04
Margaret (Peggy) Covert Branch was married in December 2009 and had a son in 2010. Lindsay Goodner has been named a 2010 Texas “Rising Star” by Texas Monthly magazine. She is an associate attorney in Dallas at Chamblee, Ryan, Kershaw and Anderson PC. Mikhail Orlov launched webyshops.com, a web-based sporting goods retailer that sells major-brand products. Quia Querisma is managing editor of SoulTrain.com, which has run interviews with such performers as Arrested Development, Joonie and Rhian Benson.
05
Andrew Dees is a staf sergeant in the U.S. Marines. In October 2010 he joined “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band as a clarinetist and performs regularly at the White House and across the nation. Elaine Ferguson married Christopher Coleman ’10 in Marietta, OK. They celebrated their elopement with family in October 2010 at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, where they live. Murtaza Madraswala joined the Nike Inc. headquarters in Beaverton, OR, married in 2008 and welcomed a daughter in 2010. Courtney Reilly will graduate with an M.B.A. degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2011 and will work in the investment banking division of Credit Suisse. Jordan Reisenweber and Aubrey Knappenberger ’04 were married Aug. 21, 2010, in Laguna Beach and now live in Santa Monica. He has been with MOG Music Network for two years and recently was promoted to digital account executive on the West Coast. She is a digital account executive at comedycentral.com for MTV Networks. José Leonardo Santos (Ph.D. ’08) was appointed social science assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, MN. He was once an adjunct lecturer and research assistant at SMU, focusing his work on urban immigrants. Courtney Underwood has worked for eight years to get a SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) program in Dallas. Last November she was among the celebrants hailing a $2 million grant to support a SANE program and treatment center at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. SANE is a service that helps sexual assault victims in the traumatic aftermath of attacks and assists law enforcement in prosecuting the attackers. Hunter Woodlee has his own gaming company in Dallas, Controlled Chaos, working with iPhone apps, video games and the like.
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Reunion Chairs: Chip Hiemenz, Katie Horgan
Katie Knapp Littlefield has lived and worked in Japan and now China since her SMU graduation. In 2008 she and a business partner founded an international online retail company called Hazel and Marie Pearls, profiled in the February 2011 issue of Shanghai Talk. They are carrying on the accessorizing legacy of their grandmothers (Hazel and Marie) by offering heirloom-quality pearls online. Anne Reilly Rasmussen is a December 2010 graduate of SMU’s Master of Liberal Studies program.
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Anna Alvarado practices law with Tanner and Associates PC in Fort Worth. Olivia Bender and A.J. Undorfer ’08 were married at Perkins Chapel Oct. 16, 2010. Olivia is the daughter of Betsy Hall Bender ’77. Bailey McGuire and Frank Sciuto (MBA ’11)have signed on to open a MOOYAH Burgers, Fries, and Shakes location near Fort Worth. The brothers-in-law have been franchise owners of MOOYAH locations for over four years. Temitope (Temi) Oladiran married Demetrio Moroni at Perkins Chapel Oct. 28, 2008, and welcomed twin daughters, Ashley and Alisha, Nov. 15, 2010. Angela Pena and Ben Ulrich ’08 were married at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Dallas Sept. 4, 2010. They first met during Week of Welcome at SMU. Angela works in marketing and Ben is a financial analyst. Jennifer Gadd Snow and her husband, Andrew F. Snow, are the parents of Harrison Taylor Benjamin, born in Dallas Sept. 10, 2010. Andrew is director of alumni relations in the SMU Office of Development.
08
Eric Camp is an attorney in the oil and gas practice group at Whitaker Chalk Swindle & Sawyer LLP in Fort Worth.
The Rev. D. Anthony Everett has been appointed to the Lexington-Fayette (KY) Urban County Human Rights Commission. He is the associate director for African American Ministries with the Kentucky Conference of The United Methodist Church. Emily George Grubbs, curatorial assistant in the Bywaters Special Collections in the Hamon Arts Library, published an article in Legacies, A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas. The article, “Texas Regionalism and the Little Theatre of Dallas,” discusses the collaboration between local artists and the Little Theatre of Dallas in areas such as program cover design, stage sets and publicity posters. Early in their careers architect O’Neil Ford and artists Jerry Bywaters, Alexandre Hogue and Perry Nichols were among those who collaborated with the Little Theatre. Lindsay Miller joined the SMU alumni relations team in December 2010 as alumni programs coordinator. Previously she was a program specialist at Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a pacesetter campaign associate for United Way. Keith Turner married Sadia Cooper ’09 on June 25, 2011, in Houston, Texas. Turner is employed by Halliburton, and Cooper works for K.P.M.G. in their advisory practice. Following a honeymoon in Maui, the couple will reside in Houston. Tatiana Vertiz won her age group at the Hawaii Ironman last October and is the official women’s world champion triathlete for ages 18-24. She has been competing for only a few years, discovering her love for the sport while a student at SMU.
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Katye Dunn is the associate youth minister at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock. Erin McCormick works in San Francisco for 18 Rabbits, an organic granola company which sells its products in Dallas at Whole Foods and Central Market. Megan L. Rosser is the lead kindergarten teacher at Truth Campus charter school Shekinah Radiance Academy, responsible for all curriculum design, instruction and supervision. Shelley Smith spent six months volunteering in South Africa teaching and working in journalism and videography. Now she lives in Los Angeles and works in digital ad sales for Turner Broadcasting Company.
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Elisabeth Brubaker moved to New York City in spring 2011 and is a part of the Piers Morgan Tonight team at CNN. Juan José de León won the Metropolitan Opera National Council’s southwest regional auditions Jan. 23, 2011, and in February made his Dallas Opera debut in Romeo and Juliet. Eric Peng, Ph.D., joined the Dallas office of the national law firm Fish & Richardson PC as a technical advisor in the patent group, supporting patent prosecution in technologies including wireless communications, semiconductors and software. He is a member of the technical professional association IEEE and the Leadership Institute. Alan H. Rose has launched handsondallas.com, a multimedia news site that covers sports, entertainment, food and news in Dallas and the surrounding area. He is pursuing a Master’s degree in emerging media and communication and also works for the Texas Rangers baseball organization.
BUSINESS EDUCATION The Cox School of Business Office of Diversity, led by director Steve Denson, works with English as a Second Language programs in Dallas schools to provide mentoring and advice about college in English and Spanish to prospective first-generation college students. LAW CLINICSDedman School of Law’s Clinical Program comprises six specialized community clinics, where students learn public service and professional responsibility while developing their skills under the guidance of faculty and staff. The W.W. Caruth, Jr. Child Advocacy Clinic provides legal assistance for abused and neglected children. The Civil Clinic represents low-income clients in matters ranging from elder advocacy to civil rights litigation. In addition, the clinical program includes the Small Business Clinic, the Tax Clinic, the Consumer Advocacy Project and Criminal Prosecution and Defense Clinics. COMMUNITY GARDEN Proposed by Elaine Heath, McCreless Associate Professor of Evangelism in Perkins School of Theology, the new campus garden gives students, faculty and staff the opportunity to learn to garden organically using sustainable irrigation methods. Produce is shared with a local food bank and the campus community. COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT COUNCIL Through this new effort, representatives of SMU’s seven schools identify opportunities to work with community groups on humanitarian and civic issues. The council helped establish a campuswide partnership with Dallas Faith Communities Coalition in a multiagency effort aimed at improvements in West Dallas, with a focus on K-12 schools.
World War II photographer Melvin C. Shaffer arrived in Naples, Italy, in 1944, to document medical care at the 8th Evacuation Hospital and on hospital ships docked in the Port of Naples. His work was interrupted March 18 when Mount Vesuvius erupted, beginning 14 days of lava flow that destroyed four villages.
Shaffer’s 19 photographs of ash clouds and village streets filled to the rooftops with smoking black lava are among the most popular images in SMU libraries’ 30 digital collections.
Lava flow engulfing a village to the west of Vesuvius, Melvin C. Shaffer, 1944
More than 5,000 images ranging from ancient Babylonian stone tablets to medieval manuscripts to Civil War photographs to Texas artists’ sketchbooks can be viewed on the SMU libraries’ digital collections website. The images represent items in special collections at Bridwell Library, DeGolyer Library, Hamon Arts Library and Underwood Law Library.
Special collections have long been a destination for scholars seeking primary materials for research. But the value and fragile condition of items such as historic Texas currency or ancient Egyptian papyrus fragments require limited access. These items can be studied only by appointment and under library staff supervision.
For the past 10 years, however, SMU libraries have been scanning and cataloging special collections to be placed online, making them available to anyone through the library website.
“Electronic collections have revolutionized scholarship and teaching,” says Patricia Van Zandt, Central University Libraries’ director of scholarly resources and research services. “Students can use primary resources they may never have had an opportunity to see before. Professors can study items online that once required a trip to the British Museum in London.”
Students in “The Greater Dallas Experience” course are using a digitized collection to study the role of media in Dallas history. Longtime Dallas journalist Lee Cullum ’74 spoke to the class, but students also reviewed her work and personal papers online, part of Archives of Women of the Southwest at DeGolyer Library.
Visits to SMU digital collections nearly doubled from 2009 to 2010, partly because of the libraries’ invitation to join The Commons on Flickr, the popular image-hosting website. Flickr launched The Commons in 2008 to provide easy access to publicly held photography collections. The Library of Congress and the National Archives UK are among the 44 institutions included in the consortium.
The Lyle School “Cheerios” These engineering Mustangs challenge stereotypes – and sometimes gravity – as SMU cheerleaders. The students, all members of the Red Squad, and their majors are, from left, first-year student Alana Collinsworth, mechanical engineering; senior Kelby Herzog, mechanical engineering and math with a minor in business; graduate student Ambrel Mitchell ’10, computer science and math; senior Lindsay Neese, electrical engineering (biomedical); senior Sam Kenney, engineering management, information and systems, and economics with a minor in business; first-year student Ashley McNeil, mechanical engineering (biomedical); and senior Brooke Wright, chemistry with minors in environmental engineering and business.
Engineering isn’t just for engineers anymore. The Lyle School’s campuswide Innovation Competition, now in its second year, nurtures scholarly cross-pollination by encouraging students in other SMU schools to enter.
Of the three teams selected as finalists in the first contest, “a good half of those students didn’t have any relationship with engineering other than they had an idea worth testing,“ Orsak says.
Like the IDEs, the Innovation Competition allows students to transform their inspirations into tangibles, Huntoon says. “We can partner students with no technical experience with people who can help them bring their ideas to life,” he says. “What matters is an interesting idea, and we want to hear it with no filter applied.”
Junior Raven Sanders, an electrical and audio engineering major, led the winning project for an audio-mixing system. “Traditional soundboards are
complicated and require considerable training to learn,” Sanders explains. She came up with a spherical design that operates more intuitively, allowing sound designers to control audio tracks by touch.
The team, which included computer science majors Austin Click, senior, and Travis Maloney, junior, and senior mechanical engineering major Jason Stegal, cleared a number of real-world hurdles to reach the top, Sanders says. The cost of developing the sphere was prohibitive, and a software company they’d hoped to partner with didn’t respond to their queries.
So the team did exactly what the competition promotes: They regrouped and devised an innovative workaround by creating a flat-screen device, writing their own program and pulling an all-nighter to complete the project successfully on time.
The project was featured in the December issue of Design News magazine, an engineering publication that focuses on the design of consumer and industry-specific products and systems.
“I will be putting a patent together and a team to build a spherical device as my senior project,” Sanders says.
That “innovate-then-patent” exercise is exactly what Greg Carr ’79 envisioned for the competition, which received generous support from his firm, Carr LLP. Carr, who holds an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from SMU, now practices intellectual property law in Dallas.
“On average, the issuance of a patent creates from three to 10 jobs,” he says. “You can’t underestimate the importance of innovation to the future economic health of our country.”
The Human Touch
From day one, Lyle School students are encouraged and empowered to make a difference in the world.
For hands-on opportunities, the Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity was established in December 2009. Hunt Institute projects focus on finding innovative, affordable solutions to such poverty-related issues as safe and affordable housing, clean water and sanitation, and functional roads and transportation systems.
Programs of the recently established Linda and Mitch Hart Center for Engineering Leadership also play a pivotal role in developing tomorrow’s well-rounded engineers, according to Dean Orsak. The leadership training builds on current co-op and internship programs, adding personal and team experiences that allow students to hone essential leadership skills – including the abilities to develop and implement strategy, communicate clearly and function effectively in a group.
The Hart Center will work with faculty across campus. For example, students who need to polish their presentation skills may be steered toward a theatre class in Meadows School of the Arts. A competition offered in collaboration with Cox School of Business will introduce participants to the mechanics of a business plan.
Approximately 750 Lyle School undergraduates are participating in Hart Center programs this semester.
“Leadership requires students to be fully engaged in the world, to recognize the staggering problems facing us today and feel empowered to contribute solutions,” Orsak says.
“Engineering is a contact sport,” the dean adds. “It’s hard work, but at the same time, the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing something meaningful can be deeply moving.”
Bonnie Jacobs, associate professor and chair of the Environmental Science program in Dedman College, pieces together the Earth’s past, one fossil plant at a time.
Over the summer she traveled to Africa, a continent she has been exploring since 1980, to continue fieldwork in Ethiopia. “We’re looking at the form and structure of fossil plants from two time slices – 28 million years and 22 million years – to better understand the global climate change that some records show happened between those times,” she explains.
In August, she became the first paleobotanist to join a Japanese research team in the Nakali region of Kenya’s Rift Valley, a site famous for the fossil ape, Nakalipithecus nakayamai. The Nakalipithecus may be the last common ancestor to gorillas, chimpanzees and humans.
Using fossil plants, Jacobs will paint a more complete picture of the Kenyan landscape – 10 million years ago. “I’m trying to determine what the apes’ environment was like,” she says. “Vertebrate fossils and plant fossils provide independent records; we’ll compare them to see if they send the same signals.”
Jacobs, a widely published researcher, recently co-authored “A Review of the Cenozoic Vegetation History of Africa,” a chapter in Cenozoic Mammals of Africa (University of California Press, 2010).
She is contributing to The New York Times’ Scientist at Work blog from Ethiopia over winter break.
Psychology professors Ernest Jouriles and Renee McDonald
Psychology professors Ernest Jouriles and Renee McDonald make mental health a family affair – they are husband and wife as well as co-founders and co-directors of the Family Research Center in Dedman College. Their research focuses on family violence, children’s responses to marital conflict, developing interventions and assisting victims of violence.
Their newest study finds that mothers who live in poverty and have abused their children can stop if they are taught parenting skills and given emotional support. According to Jouriles and McDonald, there were large improvements when visiting therapists worked intensively with families.
“Although there are many types of services for addressing child maltreatment, there is very little scientific data about whether the services work,” McDonald says. “This study adds to our scientific knowledge and shows that this type of service can actually work.”
The parenting training is part of Project Support, a program developed at the Family Research Center. Project Support has been included in a study evaluating 15 “promising practices” for helping children in violent families.
“Child maltreatment is such an important and costly problem in our society that it seems imperative to make sure that our efforts – and the tax dollars that pay for them – are solving the problem,” Jouriles says.
As millions of immigrants continue to come to the United States each year, public debate rages on about who belongs in America. For nearly 40 years, anthropologist Caroline Brettell has studied the movement of populations and its impact on the adopted countries.
Current research, conducted with SMU departmental colleague Faith Nibbs, focuses on the tensions between some suburbanites and foreign-born newcomers to their communities.
“For many whites, American identity is wrapped up with being suburban and middle class, and when they see immigrants changing their communities and potentially threatening their class status, they react with anti-immigrant legislation,” says Brettell, the Dedman Family Distinguished Professor of Anthropology.
Because of that, Brettell and Nibbs argue for greater attention to class and culture in the study of contemporary immigration into the United States. The anthropologists base their conclusion on a close analysis of Farmers Branch, Texas, which made news in 2006 as the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring apartment managers to document tenants as legal residents. The research has been accepted for publication in the journal International Migration.
Considered a leading cultural anthropologist on immigration issues, Brettell provided expertise about “birthright citizenship” for an article in The New York Times’ Upfront magazine in September.
A Canadian by birth, she was naturalized in 1993 to enjoy the full rights of U.S. citizenship. She joined the Department of Anthropology in Dedman College in 1988 and served as interim dean of the College in 2006-08.
As a scholar of American politics, Calvin C. Jillson shares his knowledge about the mechanics of government, in particular the development of American institutions and ideas and how they continue to shape national debates. Both The Dallas Morning News and the San Antonio Express-News have profiled the professor of political science in Dedman College as one of Texas’ top political experts.
In addition to his classic book, Pursuing the American Dream: Opportunity and Exclusion Over Four Centuries, Jillson is the author of two widely used government texts and several other books on American politics.
Jillson’s current book project, Lone Star Tarnished, is a critical analysis of Texas’ public policy.
“The book will try to answer this question: If Texas is doing so great [economically], why is median family income below the national average and why does the state lag so badly in education, access to health care and so many other areas? I expect some hate mail.”
Professor Delores Etter, left, helps Jean Ross, right, a CIA case officer, as she demonstrates the art of disguise to girls attending forensics camp.
Wearing a short, black wig and oversized eyeglasses, the cute middle-school girl was transformed into a young woman few would give a second glance.
Mission accomplished.
“You want to become nondescript, you want to blend into the crowd,” explains Jean Ross, a CIA case officer who dramatically demonstrated her specialty in the art of disguise on the audience volunteer.
The session was part of the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education’s CSI-Girls Forensic Evidence and Biometrics Summer Camp. The weeklong pilot program – held on campus in July &ndash offered interactive opportunities for 80 girls entering sixth through eighth grades to study hand geometry, fingerprinting, polygraphs, DNA identification and other topics.
Institute Director Delores Etter, an expert in biometrics, particularly iris recognition, believes this nation’s future depends on the technical agility of the next generation. A key to staying a step ahead is to engage youngsters, especially girls, before they’ve shied away from math and science, she says.
During the camp, female law enforcement officers and forensic experts introduced their occupations to students through discussions and hands-on activities.
Emily Christopher, 11, says the experience was an eye-opener. “It was really interesting to learn about so many different jobs that I didn’t know existed. I want to come back next year!”
Youngsters in the Seattle-Tacoma region, Washington, D.C., and Albuquerque, N.M., will use the camp curriculum via a Web portal – kidsahead.com – developed by the Caruth Institute.
The institute plans to build on the camp’s math- and science-infused subject matter with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) content, which also will be shared through the portal.
Technology to provide military and
other amputees with realistic robotic limbs – hands, arms and legs that not only move like the real thing but also can “feel” – took a leap forward with the creation of a multimillion-dollar Neurophotonics Research Center led
by Lyle School engineers. Marc Christensen, electrical engineering chair in the Lyle School of Engineering, directs the new center, where two-way fiber-optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves is being developed. Volkan Otugen, mechanical engineering chair, is SMU site director for the center.
Applications for a successful link between living tissue and advanced digital technologies extend to a number of complex medical issues, Christensen says.
“Providing this kind of port to the nervous system will enable not only realistic prosthetic limbs but also can be applied to treat spinal cord injuries and an array of neurological disorders.”
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding the $5.6 million center with industry partners as part of its Centers in Integrated Photonics Engineering Research (CIPhER) project.
Two SMU undergraduate research assistants, five graduate students and two postdoctoral students are assisting in the research. “Involving students in broad, multidisciplinary projects like this helps them understand how their knowledge and their work in the lab connect to a bigger picture,” Otugen says.
“We view hands-on implementation as a critical piece of the education of our students,” Christensen says. “It deepens their understanding and provides them with real-world experience that can accelerate their learning and careers.”
The center brings SMU researchers together with colleagues from Vanderbilt University, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas. The center’s industrial partners include Lockheed Martin (Aculight), Plexon, Texas Instruments, National Instruments and MRRA.
“Team members have been developing the individual pieces of the solution over the past few years,” Christensen says, “but with this new federal funding we are able to push the technology forward into an integrated system that works at the cellular level.”
Theatre Professor Bill Lengfelder teaches the art of movement.
Theatre Professor Bill Lengfelder is guiding 12 students positioned in pairs in the art of swordplay. At his commands, they thrust, parry, advance or retreat with the swords in a Meadows School of the Artsdance studio. “Bravo children!” he exults after they successfully execute the moves.
A self-described “movement nerd,” Lengfelder combines a variety of techniques – tai chi, mime, swords and daggers, and quarterstaffs (long poles), among others – to help young actors develop “sense mechanics” for the stage. He teaches them how to use the body as an acting tool, to rely on movement as innately as they do on words in a scene. And he has never tired of the subject during the 19 years he has taught at SMU.
“I’ve never not been in some way fascinated by how humanity moves,” says Lengfelder, recipient of the 2009 Meadows Faculty Excellence Award. “I see myself as a supplement to acting and voice and all the other disciplines of theatre. And I get excited when I see the same awakening and understanding about the subject in my students.”
When SMU faculty talk about why they teach, more often than not they point to their students. They are invested with the responsibility to challenge, enlighten, motivate and mentor their students through their teaching, but they also will say in turn that they often are energized and inspired by their students.
Faculty talk about teaching … click below to read more
Lab lessons: from left, undergraduate teaching assistant Kristin Harrington, Professor Christine Buchanan, and students Charles Matthew Harrell and Jane Jung Kim.
“Teaching a laboratory course is a very different experience from a lecture course. It is incredibly labor intensive, but it can and should be the most important part of a science student’s education. For the benefit of those who are not scientists, I like to describe it in terms of a dinner party. Imagine having to hold a dinner party for 20 very important guests once a week for 13 weeks in a row. Imagine the preparation and organization that must precede such a party. Imagine the cleanup afterward.
“A successful dinner party or an educational lab session hinges on advance preparation. I have found it best to write the lab exercises myself, and I try to coordinate the lab lessons with my lectures. Students must identify unknown organisms and complete a series of tests that require them to come into lab outside of the regularly scheduled time. Scientific discovery does not fit neatly into a three-hour time slot.” Christine Buchanan, professor of biological sciences in Dedman College, joined SMU in 1977. Buchanan, who teaches upper-level courses in microbiology and biochemistry, was named an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2004. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have supported her research on antibiotic resistance and penicillin-binding proteins in bacteria.
Professor Crista DeLuzio, right, with former student Andrea Kline ’08.
“The most fundamental goal of my teaching is to enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of the history of the United States. In addition to providing students with information about what happened in the past, my lectures, discussions, and reading and writing assignments are geared toward cultivating in them the skills of the historian: the ability to search for evidence, to interpret it carefully, to weigh it judiciously and to use it to make original, educated and convincing arguments about the historical question or problem at hand.
“My classes aim to prepare students for the range of roles they will assume in their adult lives, not only as workers, but also as citizens in a democracy. At the end of the semester, I hope to leave my students more capable of reflecting on the ways they are shaped by the world around them and poised to discover some new possibilities for their shaping it in return.” Crista DeLuzio, associate professor, Clements Department of History, Dedman College, joined SMU in 2000. DeLuzio is a 2009 Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor and 2004 Rotunda Outstanding Professor; she received the 2002 Deschner Teaching Award from the Women’s Studies Program.
Faye Bunch Field joined the First United Methodist Church of Longview (TX) 64 years ago. She was honored for her service at a church reception April 18, 2010.
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Charles O. Galvin is designated tax attorney for the year by the tax section of the State Bar of Texas Dr. Arvel Edwin Haley and Charlotte Ware dated at SMU in the 1930s and on August 21, 2010, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. Their four sons graduated from SMU and like their dad, UT Southwestern Medical School. They are Dr. John Marshall Haley ’64, Dr. Robert Ware Haley ’67, Dr. Steven A. Haley ’69 and Dr. Charles Edwin Haley ’71.
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Vivian Anderson Castleberry was honored last summer by Women’s eNews as one of 21 leaders for the 21st century dedicated to improving women’s lives. While at the Dallas Times Herald from 1956 to 1984, she mentored female journalists and after retiring was inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. She launched the nonprofit Peacemakers Incorporated in 1987, which sponsors international women’s conferences on peace, and co-founded the Family Place, the first women’s shelter in Dallas. The Press Club of Dallas honored her with its Buck Marryat Award for a lifetime of outstanding contributions.
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Kenneth E. Kouri enjoys reading about SMU sports and progress.
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Francine Burris Blackwell is retired in Naples, FL, and enjoys playing golf.
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Joanne Martin McClaskey is active in a retirement community. Dr. A. Rodney (Rod) Nurse (M.A. ’50) is the 2009-10 president of the American Board of Couple and Family Psychology, responsible for board certification examinations. He is a life fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Personality Assessment. His book, Family Assessment (Wiley, 1999), is being translated into the Persian language Farsi. He lives and practices in Orinda, CA. Kathryn Coke Rienhoff spent seven weeks in Africa for the ninth time last winter and in October 2010 visited Saudi Arabia.
Boyd V. Baker (M.Th. ’61) retired in 1992 as a United Methodist minister. He is pastor emeritus for care and prayer at Grace Fellowship United Methodist Church in Katy, TX.
Dr. Nelson A. Lloyd (M.S. ’51) is retired after 20 years as Alabama state geochemist. He and his wife, Ruth, traveled by RV through 49 states and nine Canadian provinces. As a scoutmaster for 20 years, he guided more than 60 scouts to Eagle rank. Bernedette Whitehead Montuori wrote and published One Whitehead Family, the Whitehead family history and genealogy.
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Robert Hyer Thomas (J.D. ’57) was named to The Best Lawyers in America for 2011. He is a partner in litigation in the Dallas office of Strasburger & Price LLP.
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Robert Scoggin was honored with a 10-year service award as a volunteer at the Rochester (MN) Mayo Clinic, and he received the mayor’s Medal of Honor for artistic and cultural achievement in Rochester for 47 years.
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Bruce Baldwin Mohs, known as “The Amazing Mr. Mohs,” is an inventor, entrepreneur, patents owner, pilot, adventurer and motor vehicle manufacturer. At age 78 he has a current U.S. patent pending and has completed the draft for his fifth book about humorous events in his aviation career. His third book is The Amazing Mr. Mohs: An AUTO-Auto Biography Encapsulating a 50-Year Career in American Free Enterprise (Mohs Seaplane Corporation, 1984). In July 2009 he was installed as a life member of the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame. He no longer manufactures motor vehicles in his three factory buildings but restores antique vehicles. He has never missed an SMU reunion and looks forward to his 55th.
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Dr. Haley Kent Beasley (B.A. ’58) has been named clinical professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas. He teaches clinical cardiology to engineering students in the field of cardiovascular engineering and continues his private practice of clinical cardiology and internal medicine in Austin.
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Joan C. Mulcahy has started a lecture series at her senior apartment complex with speakers such as a local television reporter and an international FBI agent. She tutors, does research and enjoys bluegrass.
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Donna Dean Clark Hutcherson was presented the Woodrow Seals Laity Award last March by The United Methodist Church. David Wilemon (M.B.A. ’60) retired from the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University Jan. 15, 2010, where he was the Snyder Professor of Innovation Management and co-founder of the Innovation Management Program and the Entrepreneurship & Emerging Enterprises Program. He lives on a farm with his wife, the former Jane Clement ’61.
Stanley Abramson introduced Swallowaid through his company, National Consumer Products Inc. It became available last November without prescription to ease the swallowing of oral medications.
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Elizabeth Drake Watson and John M. Watson celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last July. She is the daughter of Jean Drake ’53, ’69 and the late Jerry Drake, former chair of the Marketing Department at SMU. The Watsons’ grandson is Ryan Case ’10.
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D’Ann Dublin Riemer retired from Bank of America as a senior vice president in human relations after a 48-year career. She works on the women’s leadership team at her church, coaches fitness walking and mentors mothers of preschoolers. She and her husband of 37 years live in Dallas and have three children and one granddaughter.
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James Martin Hoggard was a finalist for a 2009 literary award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His submission for the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Poetry was Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems (Wings Press). Ralph Shanks received a national award for the 2009-10 school year at last summer’s biennial convention of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity in Phoenix. He took first place honors for service to an undergraduate chapter other than as a chapter advisor.
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Larry Faulkner was president of The University of Texas at Austin from April 1998 through January 2006. The University’s nanoscience building has been named the Larry R. Faulkner Nano Science and Technology Building by the UT System board of regents in recognition of his leadership in bringing the university’s nanotechnology program to national prominence. Carl Sewell was honored at the May 2010 meeting of the SMU Board of Trustees with a resolution recognizing his leadership of University advancements during his four-year term as board chair. He remains a board member, co-chairing the trusteeship committee and serving on committees for academic policies and planning, athletics and executive/personnel/compensation. He is chair of Sewell Automotive Companies and a national leader in the automotive industry.
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Sam Burford accepted the 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award from Highland Park (TX) High School Alumni Association at a dinner April 30. He is of counsel at the law firm Thompson and Knight. Jack M. Kinnebrew (LL.M. ’73) was named to The Best Lawyers in America for 2011. He is of counsel at Strasburger & Price LLP. Marc H. Richman (J.D. ’70) hooded his daughter, Alisa Richman ’10, on her graduation from SMU Dedman School of Law May 15, 2010. His father, Victor William Richman ’47, hooded him on his graduation in 1970.
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James A. (Jim) Mounger received the 2010 Guardian Angel Award last June from Project Lazarus, the residential facility in New Orleans for people living with HIV and AIDS, for giving his time, talents, financial resources and leadership on behalf of those in the HIV and AIDS community. He is a real estate attorney and native of Rayville, LA. William W. (Bill) Reynolds retired in March 2010 as executive vice president of R.W. Beck Inc. He lives in Sarasota, FL. Byron Stuckey joined the full-time faculty at Dallas Baptist University as nonprofit M.B.A. specialist and assistant professor of business. In November 2007 he retired as executive director and chief executive officer of Bill Glass Champions for Life Ministry, where he was named Outstanding Business Adjunct in 2006.
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Frank L. Branson (LL.M. ’74) accepted the Outstanding Trial Lawyer of the Year award Oct. 14, 2010, from the Dallas Bar Association. Mary M. Brinegar has been president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Arboretum since 1996. Jack R. Dugan was named to The Best Lawyers in America for 2011. He is of counsel at the Dallas office of Strasburger & Price LLP. Albon Head (J.D. ’71) received the 2010 Law “Good Scout” Award from the Longhorn Council of Boy Scouts of America in Fort Worth, where he is a partner in the Jackson Walker law firm.
Tim Horan is a Houston real estate attorney and recipient of the NFL Community Quarterback Award by the Houston Texans and the United Way of Greater Houston for leadership, dedication and commitment to improving his community. Ben Shepperd (B.B.A. ’75) has published a novel, Wild Goose Moon – A Story of Love, Death, God, Sex and 1968, the story of events in the life of a sophomore at a conservative university in Dallas against the backdrop of the volatile year in America and the world.
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Marianne Brems co-authored English for Child Care: Language Skills for Parents and Providers (Sunburst Media, 2010) for adults who care for children.
Dr. Carlos Davis is a psychologist in private practice in Dallas, director of a psychiatric research foundation and published author of Never Learn to Milk a Cow. He and his wife, Jane, are parents of Christin Sawyer and Carlos Eugene. Lynn Massingill has retired to Sulphur Springs, TX, after a 30-year career as production stage manager/lighting and scenic designer for the professional theatre and manager of over 2,000 performances in summer stock, dinner theatre and Broadway.
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Kelly Newton was elected to the International Board of the American Gem Society at the annual meeting in Boston last April. The Society promotes consumer protection, gemological education and ethical business practices in the jewelry industry. Chuck Paul started a business in 1994, A Closer Look Inc., for mystery shoppers.
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Phillip Virden was invited to join Teach for America and in summer 2010 began teaching high school English in the Mississippi Delta.
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Stephen B. Kinslow is president/chief executive officer of the Austin Community College District. He announced last June that he will retire in June 2011 after six years as president and 34 years of service to ACC. He was previously with the Dallas County Community College District and a public school teacher in Big Spring, TX.
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Bill Bowers is a partner in the tax practice group at Fulbright & Jaworski LLP in Dallas. He was recently elected to the American College of Tax Counsel based on reputation and demonstrated achievement in lecturing, writing, teaching and bar activities in the tax field. Ginger Henry Geyer (M.F.A. ’78) was deputy director of the Dallas Museum of Art before moving to Austin to start a career in porcelain art. Last spring she had two simultaneous art exhibits in Dallas at The MAC/McKinney Avenue Contemporary and Valley House Gallery. Her sister is the Rev. Wendy Henry Fenn ’03, and her brother-in-law is Douglas S. (Doug) Fenn ’73. Diane Irwin Harris has moved back to Dallas and hopes to reconnect with SMU friends. Angelina B. Treviño recently retired from Austin ISD as an elementary school principal.
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Duncan L. Clore is a partner at Strasburger & Price LLP in Dallas named to the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. Tracy Daugherty was a finalist for a 2009 literary award from the Texas Institute of Letters. For the Carr P. Collins Award for Nonfiction he submitted Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme (St. Martin’s Press) about his former teacher – short story author and novelist Barthelme.
Dr. Frances Levine (Ph.D. ’80) became director of New Mexico’s Palace of the Governors in 2002. She guided its expansion into the largest and most modern museum in the state, the New Mexico History Museum, which opened in May 2009 and serves as the anchor of a campus that encompasses the Palace of the Governors. In recognition of Dr. Levine’s accomplishments, the Institute of Museum and Library Services gave the museum funds to produce history videos, and she was awarded a spot in the Getty Museum Leadership Institute’s summer program. Geary Reamey (LL.M. ’82) received the Culture Medal of Honor last summer from the city of Innsbruck, Austria, for his role as co-founder and director of St. Mary’s Institute on World Legal Problems, an annual summer study program in international law conducted by St. Mary’s University School of Law with the University of Innsbruck. Elizabeth (Libby) Pedrick Sartain is on the board of directors of Manpower Inc. and Peet’s Coffee and Tea. She and her husband, David, live on a ranch near Bastrop, TX.
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Chris Abood is manager of employee and community partnerships for Cleveland Clinic. Brian Cobble spent five years creating the pastel landscapes for his fifth exhibition at Dallas’ Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden May 21-July 3, 2010. Dirk W. Johnston was recognized by the Texas Association of Broadcasters as Associate of the Year at their annual convention in Austin last August. Pamela J. Brown Wright has owned a visual design firm for the last 25 years. Recipient of multiple design awards, she was recognized in Who’s Who in American Self-Employed Women in Business.
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T.A. Taylor appeared in Cymbeline at Shakespeare Dallas last summer.
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Susan Williams Avant was one of 55 from Central Texas selected for Leadership Austin’ 2010 Essential Class. She is involved with numerous nonprofits and is in her 20th year of selling real estate in Austin.
Martin W. Burrell has served as assistant vice president of minority business for Dallas Area Rapid Transit Systems, developing and implementing the Disadvantaged Minority and Women Business Enterprises program, and as vice president of minority affairs for the American Airlines Center in Dallas, where he initiated a comprehensive Minority and Women Businesses program.
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Rene Moreno (M.F.A. ’01) is an artistic associate for Shakespeare Dallas and director of last summer’s production of Cymbeline. J. Allen Smith is a Dallas attorney elected to the board of directors of the Texas Historical Foundation, which funds preservation and education projects and helps promote the cultural legacy of Texas. He is president of SettlePou and chair of the firm’s commercial litigation practice. Sally-Page Stuck had a role in last summer’s Shakespeare Dallas production Cymbeline.
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Candice Burgess Nancel went to Paris in 1988 on behalf of the Dallas Market Center. On May 25, 2010, at the American Embassy in Paris, she was decorated by the French government with the Légion d’Honneur to recognize her years of work and activity in the area of Franco-American relations. Especially noteworthy is her submersion in the nine-year restoration of the Hôtel de Talleyrand, the U.S. Embassy annex that houses the permanent exhibit of the Marshall Plan, the American plan for Europe’s post-WWII reconstruction. She is now cultural heritage manager responsible for the State Department’s collection of art, antiques and historic decorations located in the embassy buildings in France.
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Kyle Bagwell received the Dedman College Distinguished Graduate Award. He is the Donald L. Lucas Professor of Economics at Stanford University, a fellow of the Econometric Society, co-author of The Economics of the World Trading System, a senior fellow of the Stanford Center for International Development, a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a reporter for the American Law Institute project on principles of trade law. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford in 1986. Richard Heard is a lyric tenor who received the silver medal in the 2009 American Traditions Vocal Competition in Savannah, GA. He is professor of music at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.
The Rev. Dr. Sheron Covington Patterson (M.Div. ’89, D.Min. ’96) was named director of communications for the North Texas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church effective July 1, 2010, to oversee internal and external operations of the 310 United Methodist congregations in the northern Texas region. Hector Reyes is technical director and chief technologist for Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems in Richardson, TX. He was honored at the 2009 national conference of Great Minds in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) with the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has devoted his career to helping U.S. soldiers “see” farther, clearer and with a wider field of view using electro optics.
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Joe Drape is a reporter for The New York Times who has published a third book, Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen (St. Martin’s Griffin Press), described as “an inspiring story about how a coach and a community are building young men with the simple values of love, patience and hard work.” Doyle Glass is the author of Lions of Medina: The Marines of Charlie Company and Their Brotherhood of Valor (Coleche Press, 2007 and Penguin, 2008), a true story of a Marine company in 1967 Vietnam told from their viewpoint. He is working on a book about the Marines of Kilo 3/5 in Fallujah.
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Linda Beheler is one of 79 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to earn the designation of Accreditation in Public Relations. David Swanson launched a national media ministry, The Well, broadcast Sundays on church television and released his first book, Vital Signs: Discovering Abundant Life in Christ.
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Bruce Connelly was promoted to vice president of sport performance footwear at Nike Inc., where he is in his 23rd year. Todd W. Gautier was appointed president of New York-based L-3 Communications’ precision engagement sector, which provides products and services including unmanned, global positioning and inertial navigation systems. He has more than 20 years of defense and aerospace leadership and program management experience. He was a strike/fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy and later flew for United Airlines. Michael Hudak joined Merrill Lynch in 2002. He is a private wealth advisor in the Phoenix office recently named to Barron’s list of America’s Top 1,000 Advisors: State-by-State. He lives in Scottsdale with his wife and four children. Kevin Jackson left management consulting for a career as an entertainer, using satire and humor to discuss American politics. He is author of The BIG Black Lie, writer of a political blog, host of a radio show and a nationally known speaker.
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Jennifer Conrad was named director of healthcare business development at Corgan, a U.S.-based architectural and interior design firm. She lives in Dallas. Christina DeLaGarza-Perron and her pastor husband, Mike, are planning a church in Addison, TX. Summit Life Church will be all about adventures. Kurt Kroese won the 2010 Arizona State Masters Criterium Championship. He is a member of GST Racing based in Tucson, AZ, where he practices law at Biaggi & Kroese PLLC. Keith Todd is dean of admission at Reed College in Portland, OR. The previous three years he was director of admission at Rice University in Houston. Edward F. Valdespino is a real estate law attorney at the San Antonio office of Strasburger & Price LLP named in The Best Lawyers in America for 2011.
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Darlene Doxey Ellison garnered the top
prize for autobiography in the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for The Predator Next Door. She is a national keynote speaker/trainer on child abuse/family violence prevention, overcoming obstacles and empowering professional women. She lives in Dallas with her husband, Scott, and two teenage children. Elizabeth (Liz) Lawless recently published her third book, Western Legends: Yesterday & Today – African Americans 1798 to 2009, stories about black frontiersmen, pioneer women, buffalo soldiers, cowboys, cowgirls, horse trainers, lawmen and more. Wild West Diversity is a brand of Liz Lawless Creations Inc. Zeenat Kassam Mitha is founder and president of Sweetwater Specialty Consulting LLC and an adjunct professor at the University of Houston. John O’Reilly was a candidate for city treasurer in Carlsbad, CA. Denys Slater has launched 18 Web sites over the past 11 years.
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Jeffrey Bean is in his 15th season as an Alley Company artist and has appeared in 100 Alley productions since 1989. Last July he played Detective Sergeant Trotter in the Houston Alley Theatre production The Mousetrap. Daniel L. Butcher is a partner at the Dallas office of Strasburger & Price LLP named to the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. Sonia Ytuarte Nasser was appointed chief operating officer of Ceres Associates Gulf in the United Arab Emirates. She is a technical expert in solid waste strategic planning and engineering for municipalities in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. She lives with her husband, Mohamad, and daughters Sara and Samar in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE. Edward (Scott) Vokoun is a U.S. Navy commander with 20 years of active service in Afghanistan as an anesthesiologist with a trauma surgery team. His wife, Kelly, gave birth to their third child, Jack, in August. They live in North Carolina.
Susanna Hickman Bartee is the co-author with her father of the political novel Average Joe: The Story of an Unlikely Candidate (Tate, 2010). Tania Cordobés (M.M.T. ’96) released her third CD, a Latin fusion of original contemporary Spanish and English songs. Melissa Stephens Gaha owns a PR firm in Australia and is currently working with the United Nations on small country development. She is married and has two children: Caleb, 9, and Tessa, 7. Eddie Hale is a partner with Chad Costas ’93, ’99, John McFarland ’96 and Brett Dougall ’98 in the three-year-old Black Lab Creative, a Dallas-based full service, award-winning marketing and advertising agency, which helps its clients build brand awareness and drive business through strategically based, unique creative solutions. Gary H. Jacobs is an international business manager for Bell Helicopter, specializing in business in Asia. He and his wife, Ann, live in Lewisville, TX, with their two dachshunds. Frank A. McGrew IV joined investment bank Morgan Keegan as head of industrial investment banking on a global basis. He will remain in Nashville with his wife and two daughters, ages 5 and 7. Jeffrey E. Shokler received a 2010 Norman Bassett Award for Outstanding Achievement in Student Services from the Student Personnel Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is associate director of the College of Letters and Sciences Honors Program. Leah Stech married Greg Eknoyan in 1993. They live in Houston with their children, Sarah, 9, and Will, 7. She volunteers at her children’s elementary school and St. Martin’s Episcopal Church.
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Kimberly Grigsby was music supervisor for the production It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman at the Wyly Theatre in Dallas June 18-July 25, 2010. Chris Hury had a lead role in the play Cymbeline at last summer’s Shakespeare Dallas. Ted Richards has a new book, Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game (Open Court Publishing), a collection of 31 essays by an international group of authors about the game they love. He teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee.
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E. F. (Mano) DeAyala is a new partner in the Houston-based law firm Buck Keenan LLP, focusing on business and commercial litigation and arbitration. Lawrence Grimm has a practice, Premier Sports Chiropractic, in Dallas. Jeffrey D. (Jeff) Smith has been promoted to president and chief executive officer of the Lancaster, PA-based High Industries Inc. effective April 1, 2010. He will provide leadership and direction to High Steel Structures Inc., High Concrete Group LLC and High Steel Service Center LLC.
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Hilaree Casada (J.D. ’00) joined Dallas-based Cowles & Thompson as a senior attorney in the appellate practice group. She has been recognized as a Texas Rising Star in Texas Monthly magazine each year since 2005 and was recently named in D magazine as one of the Best Women Lawyers in Dallas for 2010. Chad Costas (M.B.A. ’99) is a founding partner of Black Lab Creative, a marketing and advertising agency awarded a bronze ADDY by the Dallas Ad League for the design and development of the 2009-10 Baylor Health Care System Foundation Annual Fund campaign. Other partners are Eddie Hale ’90, John McFarland ’96 and Brett Dougall ’98. Bryan Daley lives in Lexington, KY, with his wife, Shari Beth, and daughter Sophie, 1. He is in private practice as a personal injury attorney with Bryan Begley Daley PLLC and serves at Quest Community Church in his free time. Randy Flores is an attorney in Corpus Christi, TX. He has two children: Mia, 5, and Zachary, 6. Michael A. Greenberg earned a Ph.D. in political science from The University of Texas at Dallas in May 2010. He is project management director at RealPage and lives in Dallas with his wife, Katie, and daughter Isabelle.
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Tiffany Dessert married Edward (Skip) Austin Guthrie III in Houston March 13, 2010. After honeymooning in Spain and Italy, they returned to Houston, where she is a senior project manager at Plains All American Pipeline LP. Dr. Ronald D. (Ron) Henderson is in his fourth year as senior pastor at Custer Road United Methodist Church in Plano, TX. The city’s mayor proclaimed June 27, 2010, Dr. Ronald D. Henderson Day in recognition of the positive impact the church has had on the community under Dr. Henderson’s vision and guidance. Jerry Ward and his wife, Sandra Beltran, are owners of the Ikal 1150 winery in Argentina. The first vintage of the Ikal 1150 Malbec 2007 took a silver medal last April in the prestigious Dallas Morning News wine competition from among 3,000 entries, and their Ikal 1150 Torrontes 2008 won bronze. Last spring they showcased their wine at California restaurants, wine bars and upscale venues, scheduling wine dinners and tastings from Los Angeles to San Diego. The couple and their daughter live in Houston.
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Julie Fort has been recognized among the Top 50 Women in Business by McKinney Living Magazine, and she was listed in D magazine’s Best Lawyers in Dallas in Land Use and Environment. She is a partner at Strasburger & Price LLP. Gavin Harris and his wife, Lisa, of Atlanta announce the birth of Graham Michael Jan. 14, 2010; their daughter is Claire. Joel M. Price is choral director at Westwood Junior High School and the 2005 Secondary Teacher of the Year for the Richardson (TX) Independent School District. He will conduct the 2011 Mississippi Junior High All-State Choir. Kristin Trahan Winford was a finalist in the M&A Advisor’s Top 40 Under 40 awards. She is a managing director at Mesirow Financial Consulting and will graduate in December with an M.B.A. from Arizona State University. She lives in Scottsdale with her husband, Craig, and their sons, Jackson, 8, and Dylan, 6.
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Shannon Dill Fischer and her husband, Cristian, celebrated their first wedding anniversary Aug. 15, 2010, and are expecting a son in December. Suzy Rossol Matheson accepted the Exceptional Service Award from the American Dance Therapy Association at the 45th annual conference in New York Sept. 24, 2010, for contributions to the profession of dance/movement therapy and to the association. John McFarland is one of four SMU alumni-partners in Dallas-based Black Lab Creative, a full service, award-winning marketing and advertising agency celebrating three years in business. Other partners are Eddie Hale ’90, Chad Costas ’93, ’99 and Brett Dougall ’98. Mike McInnis announces the birth of his third son, Nathan John, March 6, 2010. In May Mike closed his medical practice to become director of production at Doctors in Training, a medical education company based in Fort Worth. Nefeterius Akeli McPherson (J.D. ’08) is senior media affairs liaison/spokeswoman for U.S. Ambassador Ron Kirk in Washington, DC Julie Meyers Pron is owner/editor of Just-Precious.com, founded in October 2009. She is a freelance writer, former elementary school teacher, professional journalist and marketing and PR representative. She lives in the West Chester area of Pennsylvania with her husband and three children.
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Emily Hughes Armour and her husband, John Armour ’96, welcomed their first child, Rowan Elizabeth, April 22, 2010. Wendy Arthurs was elected precinct committeewoman in Gallatin County, MT, on the primary ballot. Josh Gregory coached the men’s golf team at Augusta State to the NCAA golf championship title, beating Oklahoma State. Jennifer Greene Kinser and Scot Kinser ’98 announce the birth of their second child, Megan Elaine, Nov. 28, 2009. Cooper Smith Koch and his partner, Todd Koch, adopted a son, Mason, and a daughter, Claire, both 1. Cooper is principal of the Dallas PR firm Cooper Smith Agency. Eve Hallock Rullo has two sons: Grayson, born June 29, 2009, and Luke. Christine Bittel Skiles announces the birth of Campbell Elizabeth March 15, 2010. Her sons are Michael Raymond and Matthew Kevyn. Kelley Beirne Stephens and her husband, Harry Earl (Steve) Stephens Jr. ’92, welcomed daughter Quincy Kathleen March 23, 2010.
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Erin Devins married Todd Pruetz in 2001. They live in San Antonio with their son, 7, and twin daughters, 4. Brett Dougall is a partner in Black Lab Creative, a Dallas marketing and advertising agency built by four SMU alumni. Other partners are Eddie Hale ’90, Chad Costas ’93, ’99 and John McFarland ’96. Benjamin Lavine is co-owner of Stone Acorn Builders LP in Houston, focusing on new construction in-fill projects in Bellaire, West University and urban Houston. In August 2009 Stone Acorn Builders was selected by Southern Living Magazine to be a part of the exclusive Southern Living Custom Builder Program. David Ovard, a business litigation attorney at Strasburger & Price LLP, is a 2010 Texas Rising Star in the April issue of Texas Monthly magazine. Gabe Reed hosted Lady Gaga and Motley Crüe’s Vince Neil at the KISS concert in Holmdel, NJ. He will promote South American tours for the Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb in December 2010 and Motley Crüe in 2011. Rhonda Nicole (Buni) Tankerson released her debut EP Nuda Veritas in early 2010. Jennifer Clark Tobin (J.D. ’01) received the 2009-10 Dallas Association of Young Lawyers Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award at the annual Law Day luncheon sponsored by the Dallas Bar Association. John Willding joined Strasburger & Price LLP as a partner in the corporate and securities practice group. He was previously with the firm Haynes and Boone LLP. Nancy Williams is assistant district attorney in Johnson County, TX. Nichole L. Wright is president of Bon Vivant Events LLC. After 10 years in New York City, she returned to Austin a year ago, where she planned the Fashion in Flight runway fashion show and charity benefit for Austin Pets Alive held Aug. 19, 2010.
99
Brian Corrigan opened a solo criminal law practice in Rockwall and Dallas last May after 10 years as a prosecutor. He and his wife, Sarah, live in Heath, TX, with their daughters, Campbell and Bailey. Niels G. Jensen and his wife, Katherine Bilowus Jensen ’00, announce the birth of their son, Erik Christian, June 15, 2010. They live in Nassau, The Bahamas, where Niels is director of The Clipper Group, an international shipping consortium. He recently celebrated 11 years with Clipper and has been named to the group’s board of directors. Robert Kehr married Christine Frye May 1, 2010, in Fresno, CA. He is director of product management at Gemini Mobile Technologies. Jadd Masso has been named a 2010 Texas Rising Star by Texas Monthly magazine. He is a business litigation attorney at Strasburger & Price LLP in Dallas. Aimee Williams Moore is a litigation attorney at Sayles Werbner named to The Best Women Lawyers in Dallas 2010. Previously she was recognized in D magazine’s Best Lawyers in Dallas and in Texas Monthly’s Texas Rising Stars.
Kenta Asakura received her Master of Social Work degree from Smith College in 2004. She practiced psychotherapy in
Seattle, specializing in LGBTQ youth and families, and started doctoral studies in social work at the University of Toronto in the fall. Emily Michelle Blue competed in the 2010 Texas Plus America pageant May 30, 2010, and received a special crowning as Texas Plus America Ambassador 2010. In July she competed in the Miss Plus America pageant in Monroe, LA, and currently promotes wellness and nutrition as spokesperson for the Texas Plus America pageant. Katy Bennett Little and her husband, Todd, celebrated the birth of their first child, Caden Claire, in April 2010. Allison Mooney joined the National Council on Aging in August as campaign manager of the Atlantic Philanthropies Elder Voices for Economic Security Advocacy Initiative.
01
Kevin F. Bruce is a government relations advisor at Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. in Dallas. Previously he was an attorney at Galloway, Johnson, Tompkins, Burr & Smith in New Orleans. Walter J. Buzzetta and his wife, Monica, welcomed their first child, Alexis Riley, May 16, 2010. Bernard M. Jones is dean of admission at Oklahoma City University School of Law. Last spring he was named chair of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network Leadership Committee for Oklahoma and in 2009 was recognized by the Journal Record as one of Oklahoma’s Achievers Under 40. David Malcolm was accepted into the Doctor of Ministry program at Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC. He currently serves as a U.S. Army chaplain at Ft. Bragg, NC. David Ninh is an account executive and publicist at PMK-BNC in New York, an entertainment and talent agency working with celebrity clientele and high profile brands. Teneese Kalesha Thomas married Damon A. Williams May 29, 2010, in Jacksonville, FL, where they live following a honeymoon to Grand Turk and the Bahamas.
02
Jessica Carroll played Amelia Ainsley in the world premiere of Auctioning the Ainsleys last summer at Theatreworks in Palo Alto, CA. She is engaged to Brandon Hemmig of San Jose. Sonya Cole-Hamilton earned a second Master’s degree, this one in education administration, May 15, 2010, from Lamar University. She passed the Texas state exam and received her principal’s certification. Erik Grohmann is a business litigation attorney at Strasburger & Price LLP recognized by Texas Monthly magazine as a 2010 Texas Rising Star. Joseph Medlin and his wife, Galyn, welcomed daughter Kayla Christine last February. He is manager of employee communication at Dart Entities in Los Angeles. Daria Neidre earned a Master of Arts degree in clinical exercise physiology from The University of Texas at Austin and is a doctoral candidate for December 2010 graduation. Her research focuses on autologous adult stem cells that are isolated from various tissues in the body and their use and applications clinically in the orthopaedic field, with a specialty in spinal fusions. Kimberly Pasca Nyhus is an event producer at High Noon Entertainment in Denver for the television show Food Network Challenge. She and her husband, Dustin, welcomed twin boys Liam and Landon March 4, 2010. Chris Weaver and his wife, Allison, announce the birth of their first child, Andrew Charles, May 2, 2010. Chris has won two Emmy awards as associate producer at NFL Films.
03
Dodee Frost Crockett is a Merrill Lynch financial advisor in Dallas recognized for the fourth consecutive time on Barron’s list of America’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisors in the June 7, 2010, issue. John Foley has joined Austin Industries in Dallas as vice president of human resources. He is a global human resources executive with more than 25 years of experience in the high tech and manufacturing industries. James M. Hays II graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude, from Brooklyn Law School and will clerk in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York before joining the New York office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett as corporate associate. Brandon Hicks and Heidi Hicks ’05, ’ 06 welcomed a daughter, Katherine Eleanor, July 14, 2010. Ed Igrisan was recently promoted to vice president of distribution for the western U.S. and Canada for Henry Schein Inc., the largest distributor of health care products and services to office-based practitioners. He joined the company in 2002. Korey Kent was a stage manager at Shakespeare Dallas 2010. Carl Pankratz (J.D. ’06) chairs Texas Ballet Theater’s 2010 Leadership Ballet Class. He is senior vice president/legal counsel of Capital Title of Texas LLC, serves on the city of Rowlett (TX) Board of Adjustment and is vice president of the board of directors for the Rockwall County Boys and Girls Club. Aaron Roberts appeared in last summer’s Shakespeare Dallas production Comedy of Errors. Evan Shaver and his wife, Courtney Fox Shaver ’04, announce the birth of Campbell Virginia July 3, 2010.
04
Jane K. Daniels Anabe and her husband welcomed a son, Isaac, Feb. 4, 2010. Raymon D. Fullerton completed his fourth year conducting a four-week writing workshop for GED students at the Community Enrichment Center in Fort Worth, and last June he and his wife, Lindy, sponsored a weeklong camp in New Mexico for high school students. He is exploring mediation opportunities and adjunct faculty options in New Orleans. Elizabeth Nabholtz married Justin G. Allen Feb. 8, 2010. Brian Normoyle played Sagot in a Los Angeles production of Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile and completed a Palm Springs run of The Little Dog Laughed. Carah Ronan earned an M.F.A. degree in science and natural history filmmaking in December 2007. Two of her documentaries have played nationally: Before There Were Parks and a film on Korean grandmothers, Forced into Comfort, Fighting for Apology.
05
H. Bentsen Falb received an M.B.A. in finance May 17, 2010, from Wake Forest Schools of Business, graduating with honors and academic distinction in the top nine in his class. In August he began work as a financial analyst at Exxon/Mobil in Houston. Robin Gray-Reed married Diane Gray in 2008. Robin teaches childbirth education classes and works as a labor support professional, lactation consultant and midwives’ assistant in Santa Barbara, CA. Ryan Lamb celebrated his first-year anniversary in San Francisco and the wine country. Melinda M. Lim moved to Houston two years ago to work in the oil and gas industry. Ric Lorilla works for Tenaris, an oil and gas company in Houston. Megan Masoner recently launched reFINE-style.com, an auction site for high-end fashion consignment with a national reach. She spent 10 years as an executive at EDS running global recruitment before starting her new business. Valerie Phillips joined the political consulting and corporate affairs firm Casteel, Erwin & Associates as account manager based in Austin. Kara Torvik appeared in Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare Dallas 2010. Catherine Bryan Tunks is director of social services and activities at C.C. Young Memorial Home, a Dallas retirement community. Courtney Underwood has developed two programs to assist rape victims: Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) and Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center (DARCC).
06
Brandon Blaise Brown started the Brangeta Design Group, a sole proprietorship in Dallas offering graphic, packaging, print, advertising and Web design. He has provided design services to SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering since January 2006. Rupal Dalal received a $10,000 scholarship from the Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation at a ceremony in San Antonio Nov. 8, 2010, to apply toward her M.B.A. degree from SMU. Chip Hiemenz left his SMU position last June working with young alumni to pursue his Master’s degree in business administration at Washington University’s Olin School of Business in St. Louis. Jean Grumbles Irving and Thomas Daniel Irving ’04 announce the birth of twins Emma Grace and Hannah Claire July 6, 2010. Raul Magdaleno is special assistant to the dean and assistant director of diversity and outreach engagement at Meadows School of the Arts at SMU. He began volunteering in his community at age 13, mentoring young children at the local learning center and helping women and children who were victims of domestic abuse, as his family had been. He worked with the Dallas police in a youth program and promoted education at elementary schools. In 2002 he received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian service award from Congress, for his efforts to help the victims of domestic violence. Michael O’Keefe exhibited his sculpture and drawings, Lady Classical, Mother Metamorphosis, and Other Holy Fables, at Valley House Gallery in Dallas last April 9-May 15. He also has exhibited at Gallery 718 in Brooklyn, NY, the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Haverford, PA, and The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas. A. Sunshine Prior won a Fulbright fellowship to New Zealand to study and conduct research at Victoria University of Wellington, where she works with the Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research. Her goal is to become a mental health counselor and advocate for the deaf.
07
Catalina Aguirre and Zac Simmonds ’05 were married June 26, 2010, at Perkins Chapel. She is an orchestra director for Frisco (TX) ISD, and Zac is a football coach at Trinity Christian Academy. They live in Dallas. Lauren Cook married Christopher Brooks in Perkins Chapel Dec. 19, 2009. She teaches Latin and coaches cheerleaders at a private school, and he is finishing his medical doctorate with Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. They live in San Antonio with their cat and two dogs. Pavielle Chriss was promoted to assistant director of student success programs at SMU, where she will coordinate academic support services and resources for students in the Mustang Scholars and Fall Academic Bridge Programs. She was previously senior admission counselor and coordinator of diversity initiatives. Jeff Hale is the assistant football coach at Highland Park (TX) High School. He lives in Dallas with his wife, Marsha, and daughters Casey and Kathryn. Michael Tarwater received his M.B.A. in sports marketing and management from The University of North Carolina-Charlotte in 2009 and is a second-year law student at The Charlotte School of Law.
08
Katie Dean was the media librarian, closed captioner and assistant editor of the television show Gator 911, which aired nationally on the CMT network last spring. Lanie DeLay had the inaugural exhibition last August at the Reading Room, a new project space in Dallas. Double Trouble featured finely drawn and laser-printed self portraits and portraits of friends. She is working toward an M.F.A. degree at the School of Visual Art in New York. Michelle Gonzales Pierce and Alan Randall Pierce announce the birth of daughter Isabella Marie Dec. 27, 2009. Christopher Smith is a new associate in the intellectual property litigation group at global law firm Fish & Richardson. Previously he was a global commodity quality manager at Dell and a development engineer.
09
Brian Badillo is a sales representative at Etheridge Printing Company in Dallas. He enjoys time with his wife, Kathy, and daughter, Olivia Kasia, and bowls competitively in league and tournaments. Meg Bell (a.k.a. Meg Frances) will have her first book published by Desperanto in spring 2011. FFing: Poetic Psychosexual Landscapes and Power Struggles is a poetry and prose collection based on her high school and college years. Ben Briscoe was named the 2009-10 “Best Reporter” by the Texas Associated Press Broadcasters. Elizabeth Carlock launched her own jewelry line, Elizabeth Carlock Designs. She recently traveled to Uganda, Africa, for five weeks, where she partnered with the organization The Akola Project to teach 12 Ugandan women to make jewelry; in turn, the women will teach 150 more Ugandan women so they can sustain themselves and their families and community. Elizabeth plans to visit Uganda twice a year to work on new designs and help the women strengthen their skills. Last summer she marketed the jewelry to U.S. stores with all proceeds going to the Ugandan women. Dan Carrillo Levy formed Creative Capital Funds, a company that funds, allocates and produces several films a year. He returned to Dallas last April to present Sin Ella, his first feature film, at the 2010 Dallas International Film Festival. He is currently executive producer of a short film and preparing to direct two films: an epic and a mockumentary. Ben Manthey was pictured on Princeton University’s Princeton-in-Asia Web site. He is a language student studying abroad in Beijing in his second year as an oral English teacher at China Foreign Affairs University. He also works with the Dandelion School, an institution that educates the children of migrant workers. Morgan Parmet works behind the scenes for NBC Network News in Washington, DC, and describes her work as a “heart-pounding, action-packed thrill.” Callan E. Patterson turned a paper she wrote for an SMU class into a 55-page children’s book, The Girl Who Learned Differently, an autobiographical story written from the perspective of a character who finds she is bright despite learning challenges. Callan has become an advocate for learning differences awareness. Marcus Stimac performed in last summer’s Shakespeare Dallas production Cymbeline. Martin Thornthwaite was named by Texas Monthly magazine a 2010 Texas Rising Star. He is a labor and employment attorney at Strasburger & Price LLP.
10
Juan José de León was chosen one of 38 singers from more than 600 applicants to participate in Glimmerglass Opera’s Young American Artists Program, an internationally recognized apprentice program. During the 2010 festival, he performed in Tosca, understudied two roles in The Marriage of Figaro and sang an individual recital for the public. Ryan Glenn had a role in Cymbeline at the Shakespeare Dallas last summer. Natalie Brown Stephens is in the mission field in the Philippines teaching English at an orphanage.
Professor Maria Dixon with student Patrick Fleming.
“One of the programs that I helped to establish at SMU is called Mustang Consulting, which enables our students to work with organizations for the greater good and to apply the communications theories, processes and methodologies that I teach in class. Probably the greatest joy that I’ve had so far is working with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. When the students and I first met with the dance company, it wasn’t sure if it would make it financially through the next year. My students interviewed donors, staff members and the founder to develop communication strategies and campaigns in an effort to create new audiences for the classical arts. We are so proud to say that the company just came off tour. Because my students were willing to do the hard work, Dance Theatre of Harlem was able to do what it needed to do.
“I’ve had students who challenge me, who force me to go back to my own books, to my colleagues across the country and say, ‘I have never thought about this problem in this way and one of my undergraduate students brought this to me.’ I’m always amazed by the level of intellectual curiosity that my students bring to me.” Maria Dixon, associate professor of corporate communications and public affairs in Meadows School of the Arts, joined SMU in 2004. She is a recipient of the 2007-08 Golden Mustang Outstanding Faculty Award and the 2009-10 Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award from the Rotunda yearbook.
Professor Randall Griffin with students Anna Membrino, left, and Anh-Thuy Nguyen.
“In the classroom, I try to involve the students by being an energetic lecturer, staying away from the podium and spurring discussion. Because experiential learning engages interest, I require them to see works of art at museums in the area.
A new undergraduate course that I teach, ‘Picturing the American West,’ examines paintings, photographs, novels and films – from the paintings of George Catlin to Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. It epitomizes my interest in getting students out of the classroom to see images of the American West at the DeGolyer Library and the Amon Carter Museum.
“I want the material to unsettle and challenge students’ world-views. Teaching is the most important thing I do at SMU. I hope that my classes will enrich students’ lives both aesthetically and intellectually long after they have graduated.” Randall Griffin, professor of art history, has taught in Meadows School of the Arts since 1992. He is a 2010 Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, the 2009-10 United Methodist Church University Scholar/Teacher of the Year and 2007 Meadows Foundation Distinguished Teaching Professor.
Professor Jeffery Kennington joins students after Commencement in May 2010.
“I enjoy reading books, solving problems, developing software, writing papers and learning new things. That’s why I’ve been in school for the past 50 years. However, not everybody aspires to be a scholar, and my strategy is to make my courses fun for the President’s Scholars as well as those with an aversion to education.
“Recently, I’ve been teaching management science to first-year undergraduate students and operations research to graduate students. These terms refer to a field that uses optimization theory and computer models to help solve certain types of managerial problems. The mathematics we apply is quite elegant, but not easily understood at the first presentation. I explain this complicated material in a simple and organized manner so that the students don’t shoulder the complete burden for mastering this information.
“In my undergraduate class with 18 students, the first 18 classes begin with a designated student giving a five-minute talk about his or her life. Generally they tell where they were born, where they grew up, their activities in high school, why they selected SMU, why they are in this course, and what they think a management scientist does. This has been a successful experiment, and I plan to continue this practice for small classes.” Jeffery Kennington, University Distinguished Professor of Engineering Management, Information and Systems, joined SMU in 1973. Kennington received the United Methodist Church University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 2003 and was named an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2004. He conducts research on telecommunication design, network flows and integer programming.
Professor Miguel Quiñones, right, talks with Paul Curry, a Hunt Leadership Scholar.
“There are two primary reasons why I teach. First, I like making a difference in our students’ lives. My hope is that the concepts and insights that I cover in class will help our students be more effective and successful in their work and home lives. The second reason is that I love to learn. I have never taught a class when I didn’t learn something new and interesting from the students and from preparing to teach the class.
“Life is full of teachable moments. Sometimes they come in the form of a student’s struggles with work-related issues or in current events they read about in the news.
It is very exciting when the students are engaged with a topic and use their experiences and understanding of the course materials to analyze and debate alternative points of view. I get charged up by lively class discussions.” Miguel A. Quiñones, the O. Paul Corley Distinguished Chair in Organizational Behavior, Cox School of Business, joined SMU in 2006. Quiñones received the M.B.A. Outstanding Teaching Award in 2009 and 2010 and the Distinguished University Citizen Award and the Carl Sewell Distinguished Service to the Community Award in 2010.
Professor Priyali Rajagopal’s marketing classes offer real-world applications for textbook concepts.
“I think a teacher should be a great communicator and a very good listener. One has to be able to assess the needs of different students and adapt accordingly. Teaching marketing entails not only textbook concepts and terminologies, but also the utilization or application of these concepts to real-life business problems.
“My goal is to get my students to go beyond course materials and practice critical thinking, to know which tools and concepts are applicable, and to be able to take positions on business problems and defend them.
“The past six years have been a great learning experience. I have grown as a researcher and marketing educator, and my classroom teaching reflects this progress. A key change is a greater use of technology. I now post class slides and announcements on Blackboard, show videos on YouTube and use slide-shows from publications such as BusinessWeek and Fortune. The different media make the classroom experience richer and more interesting for students.” Priyali Rajagopal, assistant professor of marketing, Cox School of Business, joined SMU in 2004. She has been recognized with the Outstanding Teaching Award in the B.B.A. program and as a 2006-07 HOPE Professor. She conducts research on best marketing practices for multifunctional hybrid products.
A tutoring session at the Academic Community Engagement (ACE) House.
A map of Dallas-Fort Worth nearly fills a wall in Geoff Whitcomb’s office. “It’s my reminder that up here on the Hilltop we are not operating in a vacuum,” says the assistant director of SMU’s Office of Leadership and Community Involvement. “We are interdependent with all of the communities surrounding us.”
Whitcomb helps connect the 2,500 students who volunteer each year through the office with more than 70 North Texas agencies. He also provides resources for the faculty members who teach service-learning courses, which supplement coursework with community service.
“Service teaches students to think critically and apply what they’re learning in the classroom to community issues,” Whitcomb says. “These experiences add a richness and depth to coursework.”
Service has been a critical component of SMU’s mission since its founding, and SMU faculty continue to apply their teaching and research to help solve issues in the community. Currently, faculty partner with nonprofit agencies, schools and government organizations to give students opportunities to serve and learn in North Texas. They also investigate complex challenges facing the region, often joining forces with community groups to find solutions. In addition, faculty make time to volunteer, advise student service organizations and mentor high school students on the path to college.
“With our intellectual resources, we can positively impact our city – our home base – while also providing real-world experiences for students,” says Provost Paul Ludden.
Experiences beyond the classroom lead to “engaged learning,” Ludden says. SMU’s new general education curriculum includes a “community engagement” requirement, which students can complete through a course or a learning activity in the community.
As part of its accreditation by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, SMU has proposed that all undergraduates be encouraged to participate in at least one extensive community learning activity before graduation.
“Engaged learning could comprise expanded and new community activities, from service-learning to research to practicums and internships, which would be coordinated by faculty and external mentors,” says Margaret Dunham, professor of computer science and engineering in the Lyle School of Engineering, who oversees the Universitywide implementation committee. “Students and faculty will see even more opportunities for service and learning in years to come.”
More Ways To Learn And Serve
CENTER FOR ACADEMIC-COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Directed by Bruce Levy, the ACE Center in Dedman College supports teaching, research and activities that cultivate an understanding of complex urban and social issues. Since the center’s founding in 1991, more than 2,500 students have taken ACE courses while also volunteering in the community. In addition, four students live and work at the ACE House, becoming neighbors as well as volunteers. EMBREY HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAM The interdisciplinary program, directed by Rick Halperin, now offers 70 courses. Approximately 150 students are in the pipeline to graduate with a human rights minor from Dedman College. While studying and investigating universally recognized human rights in Dallas and around the world, students, faculty and staff also have engaged in thousands of service hours since the program’s launch in 2007. CENTER FOR FAMILY COUNSELING The state-of-the-art center at SMU-in-Plano opened in 2008 and provides counseling services to the community on a sliding-fee scale. Graduate students in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development provide the counseling under the guidance and supervision of licensed faculty and staff. The center also provides mental health services in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas through a partnership with Resource Center of Dallas. Read more …
Applauding The Impact Of Music
Robert Krout has directed the music therapy program at Meadows School of the Arts since 2004. His students volunteer and participate in practicums throughout North Texas.
“Music is a way to reach underserved populations,” says Krout, a Meadows Distinguished Teaching Professor. “People with any disability and of any age – from premature infants to the very elderly – respond to music.”
A piano lesson with music therapy students.
Students also work at the Meadows School free music therapy clinic, where North Texas children and adults with special needs come to sing, dance and play instruments. Their weekly private and group sessions target specific objectives, such as speech and motor skills, social interaction and vocalization of emotions.
During her four years at SMU, senior Alison Etter has provided therapy to six adults with intellectually disabling conditions who have attended the clinic for 15 years.
“It was neat to hear from parents how much their children loved coming – that they would run up the stairs two at a time with smiles on their faces,” says Etter, who recently worked as an intern at San Antonio State Hospital and will earn her Bachelor’s degree in December. “I’ve been able to combine my love for music and teaching with my passion for caring for people.”
SMU offers the clinic as part of its partnership with the nonprofit organization Hugworks, based in Hurst, Texas, and founded in the 1980s by SMU alumni James Newton ’75 and Paul Hill ’72. Hugworks’ music therapists help mentor SMU students, who must complete 1,200 hours of supervised fieldwork before graduation and board exams.
J.W. Brown ’68, ’71 is president of the KidLinks Foundation, a Dallas nonprofit that supports Hugworks and its collaboration with SMU through golf tournaments and other fundraising events. “When you see the power of music to touch and heal, you can understand why there’s a huge need for music therapists across the country,” Brown says. “Robert Krout and the Meadows School are giving back to their community in a very unique way. We hope to expose more SMU students to this field and expand their education.”
The 20 students currently in the program take courses in psychology, anatomy and physiology in addition to music theory, history and performance, and they must be proficient in piano, voice and guitar.
“Our students don’t work for applause,” Krout says. “They’re focused on their clients’ progress. We’re teaching students not just about music therapy, but about being leaders in their fields and giving back to their communities.”
Learning Beyond The Classroom
Lynne Stokes, professor of statistical science in Dedman College, has made service a regular part of her courses for the past five years. Her students have created surveys and analyzed data for organizations including the Visiting Nurse Association of Texas and the City of Dallas.
The community garden outside Patterson Hall.
“So many nonprofits need help measuring their success, particularly for grant proposals, and that’s what we as statisticians do,” Stokes says. “At the same time, these experiences teach my students how to communicate with clients and translate real problems into statistics.”
Faculty members currently offer about 25 courses designated as service learning each year, including Latino/Latina Religions (Religious Studies), Social Action in Urban America (History), America’s Dilemma (Human Rights) and Literature of Minorities (English). The courses typically require students to perform community service with North Texas agencies and write papers about their experiences.
During spring 2010, the students in Stokes’ graduate-level Statistical Consulting course volunteered with the American Red Cross and Junior Achievement, which teaches the basics of business and finances at elementary schools.
In her work with the American Red Cross Southwest Blood Region-Texas, graduate student Peggy Zhai evaluated data on the value volunteers bring to the Dallas organization as drivers of blood supplies to hospitals, compared to using couriers and employees. “I was moved to see so many volunteers give their time and energy to the Red Cross,” she says. “I could show them the actual benefits they provide in terms of cost savings.”
Zhai also created a questionnaire about what motivates the volunteers to contribute and presented her findings to the organization’s leaders. “I learned I had to keep things simple and be able to explain difficult terms to people who aren’t statisticians.”
Suzanne Minc, who oversees volunteer recruitment and retention for the Southwest Blood Region, describes Stokes and her students as an asset to the organization. “Service learning gives students a unique perspective on the hard work it takes to meet the needs of patients who rely on blood donations,” she says. “The students become community advocates.”
Geoffrey Orsak loves it when students come over to Caruth Hall to play. As dean of the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, Orsak oversees SMU’s newest intellectual playground, which he calls a “sandbox for innovation.”
“At the heart and soul of this building is the joy of play, the joy of creation,” he says.
The serious intent behind this comment will reshape the engineering profession for the 21st century. “It’s a full-on rethinking of what engineering should be,” Orsak says. Gone is the stereotype of the back-office tinkerer who communicates strictly in technical jargon. A new breed of engineer has emerged – versatile young men and women who get their geek on when the job calls for it, but whose vision and talent stretch across disciplines and national borders.
“One thing that has limited the appeal of the discipline is students felt they may be boxed in, but the reality is that they go off and do amazing things across every spectrum of our economy,” he adds. “And they lead, too: More Fortune 500 CEOs have engineering degrees than any other undergraduate degree.”
Today’s engineers are asked to dream bigger dreams – on a shorter timeline and with a tighter budget – than ever before. The Lyle School’s reality-based curricula, focused institutes and centers, new research initiatives and real-world projects mean next-generation engineers leave SMU with the imagination to ask “what if” and the knowledge and skills to answer the question with remarkable solutions.
Infinity And Beyond
Bobby B. Lyle ’67, for whom the Engineering School was named in 2008, calls it “the little school that could.”
Established in 1925, the Lyle School is among the oldest engineering schools in the Southwest, with eight undergraduate and 29 graduate programs offered through five core academic departments.
The centerpiece of a building trifecta – the Jerry R. Junkins Building opened in August 2002 and the J. Lindsay Embrey Building was dedicated in September 2006 – Caruth Hall stands as a brick-and-mortar embodiment of can-do spirit. It’s the launching point for what Lyle calls “a transformational journey with the express intent of creating a new kind of engineering school, the best on the planet.”
Orsak started fueling that trajectory soon after joining SMU in 1997 as an
associate professor of electrical engineering. In 2002 he was named executive director of what is now the Caruth Institute. In that role he developed several award-winning programs that continue to grow:
The Infinity Project, a partnership with Texas Instruments that brings engineering curricula into the classrooms in over 40 states and six countries.
Visioneering, a playful and substantive learning event that gives middle school students the opportunity to be engineers for a day.
The Gender Parity Initiative, which aims to attract girls and young women to engineering. Women made up 37 percent of last year’s incoming SMU engineering class compared to the national average of approximately 19 percent.
Orsak, who was recently named to a national energy policy study committee by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, became dean in 2004.
In 2008 he recruited a longtime mentor, Delores M. Etter, as the first Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Engineering Education and Caruth Institute director. Etter came to SMU from the electrical engineering faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Her distinguished academic career is complemented by service in the U.S. Department of Defense as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition and as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Science and Technology.
While directing the Navy’s acquisitions program at the Pentagon, she realized that academia provides a powerful platform for service to country. “One of our most serious challenges was finding the right people with technical skills,” Etter says.
The Lockheed Martin Skunk Works™ Program at the Lyle School, a first-ever partnership with the renowned research center, is a key effort to prepare tomorrow’s engineering innovators. Housed in the Caruth Institute, the program borrows from its namesake’s playbook with Immersion Design Experiences (IDEs): Working in small teams under tight deadlines, engineering students and faculty find feasible solutions to real client projects.
“Innovation is hard to teach,” Etter says. “That’s why opportunities for students to work together, come up with a solution and test it are so important.”
In the first Skunk Works IDE in January, a team of students developed a prototype system that converts an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) now under development by Lockheed Martin and Karem Aircraft into an aerial firefighter. The system has water pumps, a tank and logic that enable it to hover over water, deploy a pump automatically, fill the tank and retract the pump.
During the project, a novel sensor that indicates when the UAV’s lowered pump is in the water was created.
“What makes this special is that commercial water sensors cost around $200. The students used free scraps to make their sensor,” explains Nathan Huntoon, director of the school’s new Innovation Gymnasium. Huntoon, who received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from SMU in 2009, develops IDE projects and supervises the student teams.
As oil gushed and accusations flew, the media called on SMU experts to pilot them through the details of deep-water drilling after the BP well blowout last April.
The Cox School of Business’ Maguire Energy Institute quickly became a go-to resource as Bruce Bullock ’81, director, and Bernard “Bud” Weinstein, associate director, provided expertise to the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and other news outlets around the country covering the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.
Bullock and Weinstein are two of SMU’s many recognized authorities helping print, broadcast and online news consumers understand the most complex questions of the day. National politics and the economy are other hot-button topics recently analyzed by faculty. These high-profile thinkers also share their wisdom on important issues with students in their classes.
Professor Dan Howard
An immeasurable amount of favorable public opinion for the University is generated when notable faculty are quoted in the news, says Cox’s Dan Howard, a marketing professor who studies consumer behavior.
“When students and parents are impressed by an intelligent quote from a faculty member, they develop a positive impression of SMU overall,” says Howard, who is frequently tapped by the media to explain everything from the effect of herd mentality on the stock market to the benefits of product placement in the movies. “That’s especially true when the information is delivered by a credible source in a context where they believe no one is trying to persuade them, like a newspaper story or TV news broadcast.”
Dean David Chard
At the root of many memorable sound bites is consequential research. Some of the University’s sharpest minds concentrate on challenges as diverse as treating dysfunctional families and understanding immigration issues. Their evidence-based solutions play significant roles in reshaping policies and programs to better serve communities everywhere.
“Implementing research is not as neat as it may seem. As a university, we have to produce the evidence to support our solutions, then we have to disseminate the knowledge of what works and why – that’s really the role that we as a faculty can play in outreach,” says David Chard, Leon Simmons Endowed Dean of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. Chard is a nationally recognized expert on best educational practices and teacher training.
“Research that lacks a response to the community can become irrelevant,” he adds.
NAVIGATING THE DETAILS
Bruce Bullock
In helping journalists sift through layers of oil spill particulars, Bullock provided more than pithy quotes and shrewd analyses; he also schooled them in the finer points of deep-water drilling.
“I provided journalists with lots of background information, helped them understand what’s involved in the technology, what kinds of questions to ask and what to believe and not believe,” he says.
A 24-year veteran of the energy industry, Bullock has held positions at Atlantic Richfield Company and FMC Technologies, a leading global supplier of technology for the energy industry. Through a network of insiders and analysts, Bullock stayed informed as events unfolded. “We kept in touch with e-mails and phone calls on a daily basis.”
Posting on the Houston Chronicle’s Barrels and BTUs blog, he explored the economic and political consequences as the cleanup efforts progressed. He predicts the spill will be a game-changer. “In an era of Twitter and other social media, this is going to rewrite the crisis management manual for many corporations, particularly in the energy industry.” Click on the links below to read more about some of the dozens of SMU faculty members offering commentary on international issues, based on research and analysis. Click here to visit the SMU Faculty Expert Search page. Caroline Brettell: Understanding Immigrants Bonnie Jacobs: Into Africa Cal Jillson: Politics In America Ernest Jourile and Renee McDonald: Creating Healthy Families
Like previous generations of SMU students, Jake Torres slips away to the isolated west stacks of Fondren Library Center when he needs to study. But today’s SMU libraries offer the busy student much more than a place to study without interruption.
Computer stations have replaced long wooden tables on the first floor of Fondren. And students now use the library’s soundproof group study rooms, video studios, podcasting booths and web-design stations to complete class assignments.
“The library has amazing research materials online and in print, and the personal study rooms are very convenient for group projects,” says Torres, student body president.
As a reminder of how much academic libraries have changed, a wooden card catalog with index-sized cards sits in the office suite of Dean and Director of Central University LibrariesGillian McCombs, though she never flips through those remnants of the past. “Students and faculty members access library information and resources in a different way than they did 10 or even five years ago,” McCombs says. “Even though libraries today are so much more than books, bricks and mortar, they still exist to put people in touch with information they need.”
Students and faculty now search SMU’s electronic library resources on a Google-like platform that, in one step, directs them to resources in books, journals, databases, media and newspaper articles.
TRUTH ONLINE
First-year students at SMU quickly learn that faculty members do not accept Wikipedia as a source, because volunteers, not necessarily experts, create the entries. Instead, students and faculty scholars rely on online materials available only through SMU libraries – approximately 20,000 magazine or journal subscriptions archived to the earliest editions available, 472 databases, 308,700 e-books and 8,330 digitized items from special collections, a number that’s growing monthly. Or they can always use the libraries’ more than 3 million books.
Studying in the stacks in Underwood Law Library.
“Libraries are the gateway to accurate information,” says Patricia Van Zandt, Central University Libraries director of scholarly resources and research services. “If students use sources they find in the library catalog and from the library webpage, they can be sure that those sources will be reliable.”
Junior English major and Student Senate secretary Katie Perkins uses the digital archive JSTOR for the 10-15 papers she writes each semester. “I’ve used many of the databases the library provides for research,” she says. “JSTOR is the most helpful.” JSTOR comprises more than 1,000 academic publications ranging from Africa Today to The Western Historical Quarterly. Created in 1995 as a resource for academic libraries, JSTOR offers the full-text back files of scholarly journals, the oldest dating to 1665.
Sifting through enormous amounts of data creates new challenges for students, says Alisa Rata Stutzbach ’99, director of Hamon Arts Library. Stutzbach served on the General Education Review Committee that designed SMU’s new general education curriculum that will start in fall 2012. The new curriculum will include a Nature of Scholarship course dedicated to research approaches to difficult questions.
“The hardest part is learning to evaluate information,” Stutzbach says. “Is it reliable? Timely? Applicable? The technology will change, but the core principles of research are skills that students will be able to apply everywhere.”
Digital collections:
worldwide accessibility
More than 5,000 images ranging from ancient Babylonian stone tablets to medieval manuscripts to Civil War photographs to Texas artists’ sketchbooks can be viewed on the SMU libraries’ digital collections website. The images represent items in special collections at Bridwell Library, DeGolyer Library, Hamon Arts Library and Underwood Law Library. Read more …
Faculty members also face new rewards and challenges with the data explosion created by new technology. “While technology has simplified the searching process, the generation of literature from the scientific community also is accelerating,” says John Buynak, professor of chemistry and chair of the Faculty Senate Subcommittee on Libraries. “Our workload has changed from flipping through relevant volumes to assimilating and organizing an enormous amount of data.”
Twenty years ago Buynak began a research project by spending at least a week in the library looking at hundreds of science indices and tracking down print copies of articles. “By contrast, I now can perform this same background search from my office computer and download nearly all of the articles in a matter of minutes.”
Although students and faculty can access SMU electronic resources from computers anywhere in the world, the number of visitors to SMU libraries increases each year. By student request, Fondren Library has been open 24 hours a day since 2006. “I’m a night owl,” says Torres, a senior English major. “Twenty-four-hour access is a huge resource for me and many other students. I’ve pulled countless all-nighters in Fondren preparing for exams or finishing papers.”
By student request, Fondren Library Center implemented a 24-hour schedule in 2006.
Students also count on SMU libraries for expert assistance and technical resources well beyond the software on their laptop computers. When a faculty member assigns a video, podcast or creation of a website, students head to the Norwick Center for Digital Services. The center features 12 iMac creation stations, two group project rooms with video editing software and two rooms with video projectors and cameras that allow students to practice and record classroom presentations. Staff is available for hands-on assistance.
Variations, new music software at Hamon Arts Library, enables students to listen to audio and view digital scores simultaneously. “In contrast, when I was a music performance major in the late ’90s, to do the same thing, I checked out an LP and a score, then read along as I played the LP on a turntable,” says Stutzbach. “After two hours I had to return the LP and score for other students.”
Music composition major Jason Ballmann also relies on Hamon for the Naxos Music Library, which provides streaming access to more than 50,000 CDs. “I have created advertisements using Photoshop, caught the tiniest error in my personal scores on the large-screen TVs and scanned a 60-page score in fewer than five minutes on the large-format scanner,” says Ballmann, a senior.
TAILORED FOR BUSINESS
At the Business Information Center in Cox School of Business, students can follow real-time financial and market data, pricing and trading on the Bloomberg financial wire; gather for group projects at one of 70 computer stations; or print résumés or business cards on designated computers. When Cox faculty member Amy Puelz assigns a class presentation in her Information Systems for Management class, students can videotape practice sessions in a library studio equipped with podium software that simulates a Cox classroom.
The number of annual reference inquiries to library staff at the center doubled from 2007 to 2009, from 659 to 1,220, says Sandal Miller, director of the Business Information Center. Nationally, academic librarians answer more than 72.8 million
reference questions a year, according to the American Library Association.
WHAT’S NEXT?
SMU libraries bear little resemblance to the first campus library that was located in a room in Dallas Hall. The University system now comprises more than 3 million total volumes and seven campus libraries – DeGolyer Library, Fondren Library Center, Hamon Arts Library, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Business Information Center, and the professional Dedman Law Library and Bridwell Library, as well as off-campus libraries at SMU-in-Taos and SMU-in-Plano.
But the libraries are just as central to SMU’s academic mission as when the first students set foot on campus in 1915, McCombs says. “A library was formerly judged on the size of its physical collections. But today a library must be measured in terms of the access it provides to materials located around the world as well as its unique on-site collections.”
SMU’s Second Century Campaign seeks funding for renovation of Fondren Library Center as well as for continued expansion of book collections and electronic resources.
“This is the brave new world of information access – our students want and expect to have it all at their fingertips,” McCombs adds. “Meeting their needs is more complex, more challenging and infinitely more exciting than ever.”
First-year student Roza Essaw jumped right into the political scene at SMU, serving on the Student Senate and competing as a member of the debate team.
Roza Essaw combines majors in corporate communications and public affairs and political science.
She felt that both activities would be vital in developing the skills to enter
public service and politics one day. Essaw is combining a major in corporate communications and public affairs in Meadows School of the Arts with a second
major in political science in Dedman College.
Matthew Rispoli, a sophomore with majors in electrical engineering, physics and math, serves as a research lab assistant in the Physics Department of Dedman College and is working on a project at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® Lab in the Lyle School of Engineering.
Both students exemplify the bright minds who pursue broad interests as recipients of SMU merit scholarships. Essaw attends SMU on a Hunt Leadership Scholarship, which provides tuition and fees, less the amount of resident tuition and fees at the leading public school of the student’s state of residency, along with other benefits such as education abroad.
Rispoli says his Lyle Engineering Fellows Scholarship “greatly leveled the financial playing field. This was a major selling point because it allowed me to then judge [competing] colleges on what they truly had to offer,” such as the opportunity to conduct undergraduate research.
Matthew Rispoli and his project at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® Lab in the Lyle School of Engineering.
They are among the more than 51 percent of SMU undergraduates who receive some form of merit scholarship aid, based on high school grades, SAT scores, leadership and other accomplishments.
SMU’s top merit package is the President’s Scholars Program, which provides full tuition and fees, room and board while in a residence hall, education abroad, mentoring, and special events such as a retreat at SMU-in-Taos and dinners with faculty.
Scholarship programs within the college and schools, such as Dedman Scholars, Cox B.B.A. Scholars, Meadows Scholars and Lyle Fellows, attract and reward undergraduates in specific fields.
Endowed scholarships support students with exceptional ability, at a time when more universities are offering competitive merit scholarships to a limited pool of high-achieving students. For this reason, increasing scholarship endowments is a major goal of SMU Unbridled: The Second Century Campaign. Other scholarships depend on consistent and generous annual giving.
“Increasing student quality isn’t only about test scores and rankings,” President R. Gerald Turner says. “Just as important, the quality of the student body supports the teaching and research conducted by faculty, as well as the interchange among students both in and out of the classroom. The right combination of students creates an academic environment that inspires excellence across campus.”
Rachel Kittrell entered SMU in fall 2008 and discovered a passion for the Land of Enchantment while exploring SMU-in-Taos with her camera.
Rachell Kittrell
“I love that campus and the way the light hits things in New Mexico,” says the Dallas sophomore, who attended SMU’s annual retreat for President’s Scholars in Taos. “We took a beautiful hike up a mountain near campus, and a few of us decided we had to try again at 5 the next morning to get a photo of the sunrise. Unfortunately it was covered by clouds.”
Then Kittrell, a recipient of the Gregg and Molly Engles President’s Scholar award, took an Introduction to Psychology course during her second term that changed her plans for the future.
“It hit me that this is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever studied,” she says. “I couldn’t stop telling my friends everything I had learned about brain structure and neuropsychology and the different fields that use psychology. The class came so naturally to me that I didn’t feel like I was even studying.”
She has since taken courses in developmental psychology and research methods. She is considering a minor in art or French, if her class schedule allows. “My main goal is to stay organized and focused on psychology,” says Kittrell, who began working for course credit during the spring term in the Psychology Department’s research program on stress, anxiety and chronic disease. She assists graduate students with administrative tasks and experiments.
“I’m getting to see an actual lab instead of just hearing about one in class, which has given me a firsthand view of what psychological research is like,” says Kittrell, who also works part time at a dry cleaning business.
“Rachel’s creativity and analytical skills will serve her well in any field,” says Associate Professor of Photography Debora Hunter, who taught Kittrell courses on beginning and documentary photography. “Scholarship students like Rachel raise the whole level of discourse in class.”
Kittrell says her scholarship has provided her with a built-in network. “Being part of the President’s Scholar community is like being part of a family,” she says. “I’ve bonded with other scholars in my residence hall and at get-togethers, and we support each other’s projects.”
Several President’s Scholars and other SMU students have supported a cause that is close to Kittrell’s heart: ovarian cancer awareness. Doctors caught her mother’s cancer just in time four years ago, she says, and the disease is now in remission.
At the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition’s Walk to Break the Silence in Grapevine, Texas, in September, Kittrell led a 5K team in honor of her mother’s friend, who died from ovarian cancer. “Relatives and friends, SMU students, my mom – we all got together for different reasons to support the same cause,” says Kittrell, who plans to lead a team again this fall. “At the end of the walk, the survivors gather to listen to a singer perform ‘Lean on Me.’ That’s what it’s all about.”
Kittrell hopes to spend a semester at SMU-in-Taos or in an SMU Abroad program, which would be financed by her scholarship. She also is considering graduate school at The Guildhall at SMU, where she could apply her psychology skills to the video game field of “level design,” which focuses on game structure and storytelling.
“My scholarship has given me opportunities that I haven’t had the chance to explore fully yet. I’m looking forward to exploring everything.” – Sarah Hanan
For Daniel Sanabria of Wylie, Texas, community college provided an affordable incubator for interests in sociology, political science and history. Those first two years of college-level study helped pave his way to SMU.
Sanabria received a Dallas-area Community College Scholarship from SMU in fall 2009. Each year the University awards 10 full-tuition scholarships to students from the Dallas, Tarrant or Collin County community college districts. To qualify, students must have 50 transferable credit hours and a minimum 3.7 GPA.
“Knowing that the University chose to invest in me has changed me in ways that I can’t even describe,” he says. “People have high expectations of me, and I want to exceed those expectations by making meaningful changes in the world.”
A desire to make a difference led him to anthropology. “The field is geared toward understanding a specific societal problem in its entirety to develop effective solutions,” says Sanabria, a junior. “I would like to focus on developing community leadership programs and a stronger, more effective system of education.”
The scholarship makes a well-rounded college experience possible, Sanabria
says. He’s president of the Dedman College Ambassadors, a new student organization with a goal of building a sense of community among professors, alumni and prospective students within the University’s largest school.
“SMU needs students like Daniel who are natural-born innovators,” says Mara Morhouse, Office of Recruitment and Scholarship in Dedman College. “By offering scholarships to these student leaders, we help alleviate the stress involved in paying for higher education, which makes the University a feasible option for our country’s best and brightest undergraduates.”
Scholarships generate immeasurable dividends, Sanabria says, and not only for the students who receive them. “A scholarship isn’t just for an individual; it’s an investment in every life the recipient touches.” – Patricia Ward
Alaa Al-Barghuthi’s greatest challenge as a student has been narrowing her focus.
“I want to do everything,” says Al-Barghuthi, a junior with a double major in business and French. “The wealth of opportunities – from meeting world leaders to serving in student government – is why I’m here.”
When Al-Barghuthi first visited the University as a Plano (Texas) Senior High School senior, “it was love at first sight,” she remembers. The oldest of four children in a close-knit family, she was editor of her school’s newspaper, vice president of faculty relations in the Student Congress and participated in several other organizations.
Receiving two scholarships – as a Mustang Scholar and Hunt Leadership Scholar – cemented her decision to attend SMU.
“The scholarships said to me: ‘We’re investing in you because we think you can create change and make an impact.’”
Mustang Scholarships provide partial stipends to support students who bring special talents and diverse perspectives to SMU.
Established in 1993 through a gift from Nancy Ann and Ray L. Hunt ’65, the Hunt Leadership Scholars Program selects approximately 20 to 25 entering students each year. Students must demonstrate leadership abilities and strong academic performance to qualify.
Al-Barghuthi labels the program “forward-thinking” for exposing students to visiting leaders and intellectuals through the Tate Lecture Series and other events.
Scholars are encouraged to take active roles in campus life. Al-Barghuthi served as development chair for the Student Foundation and speaker of the Student Senate. She is currently an SMU Student Ambassador – members represent the Student Foundation and the SMU student body at key University events – and vice president of Tri Delta sorority.
“I have learned so much about myself in these three years as a Hunt Scholar,” she says. “Most importantly, I’ve learned that leadership is not a string of titles on a résumé; leadership is moving people to be better than they thought they could be and creating some sort of good in this world.” – Patricia Ward
Coming off the bowl win and with Jones’ national profile, Mustangs fans are right to be optimistic about the chances for more national television coverage of SMU’s games in the 2010 season. “SMU is definitely back,“ says Rivals.com’s national recruiting editor Jeremy Crabtree.
And Jones says the quality of play will continue its upward trajectory.
“I think athletically we’re going to be much better this year,” he says, crediting SMU’s academic stature as a recruiting plus. “When these kids get a degree from SMU, holy smokes, that’s more valuable than anything. It changes their lives.”
Three-year starter Mitch Enright ’08, who competed in his final season as a Mustang while working on an M.B.A. in the Cox School of Business, points to another factor for the team’s success: its fans. “We were able to feed off of their energy and play inspired football,” he says. “Our fans even showed up huge for us on the road. I’ll never forget the large fan support we had when we played at Tulsa. That road win was ultimately the turning point of our season.”
MVP quarterback Kyle Padron
For Jones, who speaks openly of his spiritual faith, football at its highest level requires a devout belief in the Golden Rule. “There are millions of ways to win football games, but that isn’t what decides games. It’s all the things you can’t put your finger on. It’s the friendships and the caring for each other as teammates. Those are the things that you play for and why we do what we do. I think a lot of people never figure that out.”
In the crowd of about 750 alumni and student believers at the Hawaii Bowl were Fort Worth attorney Albon Head (’68, ’71 J.D.) and his wife, Debbie. Head played on SMU’s SWC Championship football team in 1966 and was co-captain of the 1968 Bluebonnet Bowl champions. A loyal follower of Mustang football through all the good times and its 25-year bowl drought, Head earned bragging rights with SMU’s bowl win.
“Living in Fort Worth, I have to listen to TCU folks and ’Horns and Aggies all the time about their teams. I remind them that SMU was one of only two teams from Texas that won a bowl game.” (The other was Texas Tech.)
Debbie Head calls it “the greatest football game I have ever witnessed. The crowd was hugging, screaming, crying, jumping up and down.”
Members of the band, spirit squads, and Peruna and his handlers also attended the game. For junior Michael Danser, drum major of the Mustang Band, getting the opportunity to “represent the University was a great experience for everyone in the band. It felt good to walk around Waikiki all week proudly wearing SMU gear. Seeing a good amount of SMU fans really got the band pumped up.”
Alumni and other fans gear up for the game.
Quarterback Kyle Padron was chosen the Hawaii Bowl’s Most Valuable Player after throwing for an SMU-record 460 yards. He says he didn’t fully appreciate what a bowl victory would mean until he saw the reaction of his teammates, “especially the seniors and what they had to go through to get to that point. As a freshman, I didn’t know a whole lot about the background and all the losing they went through. Their emotion at the end of the Hawaii Bowl was something I will always remember.”
That remarkable win in the Pacific, along with Jones’ far-flung network of high school coaching friends on the mainland, paid off on signing day when the Mustangs harvested a nationally recognized recruiting class. Jeremy Crabtree, the Rivals.com editor, called SMU’s class “one of the top surprises this season.”
So, after 25 years of wondering when they could focus on the future instead
of fretting over the past, the wait is over for Mustang fans. – Kent Best Photos by (from top right) Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News, Robert Bobo, Tim Leonard, Debbie Head; Kyle Padron by Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News; fans by Anthony Calleja.
Andrea Norris Kline ’08 vows she will never again complain about a jury summons – not after learning about Texas women’s hard-fought battle for the right to serve on a jury. As a student she conducted an independent research project for Crista DeLuzio, associate professor in the Clements Department of History. Kline’s research was used to establish a Texas historical marker in Dallas honoring the women who fought for the right to serve on a Texas jury.
Andrea Norris Kline (left) and Christa DeLuzio, associate professor in SMU’s Clements Department of History, with the Texas historical marker.
Although in 1920 the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote, it left to each state the decision to grant women the right to serve on juries. As a result, Texas women gained the right to jury service in 1954 – 34 years after receiving the right to vote.
“I have a newfound appreciation and sense of pride in participating in our local government,” says Kline, a history major and now an eighth-grade American history teacher in Lancaster, Texas.
Kline used U.S. census records, newspaper archives and Texas Legislature records to document the history of jury service in Dallas County.
After the 19th amendment was ratified in Texas, as well as in much of the South, women campaigned for educational opportunities, rights for married women and access to public positions, DeLuzio says. By the 1930s, the Dallas Business and Professional Women’s Club, The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas League of Women Voters made it their priority to gain the right for women to serve on a jury. The first resolution brought before the Texas Legislature was defeated in 1949. However, Texas voters approved an amendment placed on the November 1954 ballot to establish jury service rights for women.
“Most of us want to create our own place in history,” Kline says. “We make decisions that seem right for us and our community. Little do we know about our influence on future generations. These women made the decision to actively and proudly take their place in Dallas history.”
Kline and DeLuzio worked with the Dallas County Historical Commission to draft a proposal for a historical marker to be placed on the east side of the Old Red Courthouse, now a county historical museum in downtown Dallas. The marker was unveiled October 30.
Kline brings her enthusiasm for history to her classroom, dressing as a pioneer woman for her unit on westward expansion and wearing a tri-cornered hat during discussions about Colonial times. She also draws on her SMU experiences to make history come alive for her students.
“SMU opened opportunities for me, which I now share with my students, ” she says.
She attended SMU with the help of scholarships from the Mustang Band, Dedman College and her church. A History Department scholarship enabled her to spend a summer in England at SMU-in-Oxford.
“A lot of my students have never been past Lancaster,” she says. “When we talk about the English colonies, I show them my photos of Buckingham Palace, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. I like to give them something personal so they know they can go and see the world, too.”
Kline’s students gave her their approval when she told them about her role in the historical marker dedication – a standing ovation. – Nancy Lowell George ’79
Tameca Robertson ’99 never considered SMU as a possibility in her college plans. In fact, she tossed unsolicited letters from the University into her “No“ pile after she saw the words “Southern” and “Methodist” and “Dallas.”
Tameca Robertson ’99, a systems engineer with JCPenney.
An African-American high school senior living in Romulus, Michigan (near Detroit), Robertson says she was considering northern universities. But on a visit to a relative in Houston, she made a side trip to campus. A meeting with an assistant dean of engineering helped her appreciate SMU’s special qualities, and an offer of a President’s Scholarship helped cement her decision to attend SMU.
The electrical engineering major worked in the Lyle School of Engineering’s minority co-op program to help pay expenses not covered by her full-tuition President’s Scholarship. During her senior year she completed a yearlong internship with JCPenney before joining the company after college.
Robertson, now a systems engineer with the Directory Services team in JCPenney’s Information Technology Department, has “grown up” professionally with the retail giant. She recently completed her 14th year with the company. And though technologies and computer languages have changed multiple times over the course of her career, Robertson says, “I don’t get intimidated because the underlying analytical skills and ability to learn new languages and technologies were ingrained in me through my SMU education and my work experience.“
She also has used that adaptability in her second career as a minister (she was ordained in 2005), particularly on a group mission trip in 2007 to speak at a series of women’s conferences in Uganda. Although she had prepared lessons for Christian college students in Uganda, she found she had been assigned to work with youth starting at age 11.
“I had to wing it, and that is so uncomfortable for me because I always review the material and prepare bullet points when speaking before a group,” she says.
Robertson will return to Uganda this summer. “Who knows, this time I may
minister to a different age group once again. I have a heart for young people and women who need help and support.” – Susan White
Last year alone, alumnus Scott Krouse ’03 flew 250,000 miles and spent more than 300 nights at hotels. “Think Up in the Air, but with more interesting work, people and places,“ he says.
Scott Krouse lives in Dublin, Ireland.
As a senior associate with the Manufacturing, Transportation and Energy practice of the global consulting firm Oliver Wyman, Krouse has worked on three continents and visited more than 50 countries. He lives in Dublin, has offices in London and is working on a project in Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East. “Doha is a stepping stone to Europe, Asia and Africa,” he says.
Krouse, who majored in financial consulting and minored in Spanish and economics at SMU, has had to learn how to work with different clients from many cultures.
“No two projects are the same, and each one has its own challenges,” he says. “One minute you are working for a nonprofit to determine funding for a malaria vaccine in Seattle, the next minute you are estimating the financial impact of maintenance delays for a utility company in Mexico or determining a commercial strategy for a global airline in the Middle East.”
The son of a British mother and an American father, Krouse grew up in Garland, Texas. At first he hesitated to consider SMU because it was so close to home, and cost was an issue. However, the University’s offer of a Hunt Leadership Scholarship sealed the deal because it gave him the financial ability to attend SMU. “It also gave me something else that I desired – a chance to travel and experience the world,” he says.
Krouse attended SMU-in-Spain in Madrid. “The experience was as much about learning outside the classroom as learning in the classroom – the trips around Spain, living with a host family, day-to-day life.”
He continued to use his Spanish on a summer job with a Miami firm and while working one summer in Mexico City with his current employer.
Even though he lives and works more than 5,000 miles away, Krouse continues to maintain ties with his alma mater by serving on the National Outreach Committee of the Young Alumni Board. “SMU gave me experiences and friends for a lifetime and enabled me to improve my leadership skills and prepared me for a job,” he says. “Although I cannot be on campus very often given my location, it doesn’t mean that I cannot give back to the University.” – Susan White
Abha Singh Divine ’89 jokes about inheriting an electrical engineering gene – and maybe some Mustang DNA, too.
Abha, her parents, Shelley (Shailendra) ’71 and Indu Singh ’72, and her brother, Rahul ’97, all hold degrees in electrical engineering from SMU.
“My parents moved from India to pursue graduate degrees at the University when I was just 2,” she says. “We lived on campus, so I have a long history with SMU.”
As an undergraduate, she was a President’s Scholar with a double major in electrical engineering and applied mathematics. She also completed the University’s Honors Program, which she says provided a strong, complementary foundation in liberal arts that continues to influence her work today.
“Some of the most important friendships I established at SMU are with this close set of peers I had all through school,” she remembers. “We came from all disciplines, from all kinds of backgrounds, and had the opportunity to share some of the most interesting events – like the Tate Lectures – together.”
The most important friendship she made was with her husband: Abha met Jim Divine ’89 while both were SMU engineering students. Jim, who was an Engineering Scholar as a student, says he chose SMU “because of the opportunity to apply classroom learning in a real-world environment via the engineering co-op program.”
The couple, who earned M.B.A. degrees after leaving SMU, combined their engineering knowledge and entrepreneurial acumen to establish successful companies. As a founder and managing director of Techquity Capital Management, an intellectual property (IP) investment firm, Abha travels the world to find untapped IP assets. Jim
is chairman and CEO of Keterex, a semiconductor firm based in Austin.
The Divines have made a bequest in their wills that will endow a President’s Scholarship for students studying engineering at SMU. This is a gift for the future, a donor vote of confidence in SMU’s enduring commitment to attract the best young minds.
“Our hope is that this gift underscores not only the importance of academic achievement to the scholar recipients, but also the importance of sharing their talents and giving back to their communities,“ Jim adds.
Scholarships = Student Quality
A key priority of The Second Century Campaign is increasing scholarship resources through endowed and annual gifts. There’s a correlation between student quality and scholarships: Over the past decade, as support for scholarships has grown, the average SAT score for entering SMU students has risen 98 points.
Donors to annual scholarships also play a crucial role in the University’s ability to compete nationally for top students, President R. Gerald Turner says. “Donors understand that annually funded scholarships can provide an essential bridge for students who might not otherwise be able to attend SMU – especially at a time when the University’s endowment is providing fewer dollars because of the recession.”
Like the Divines, many donors can plan now to help ensure a solid future for SMU scholarships, says Linda Preece, director of endowment and scholarship giving.
“People often assume they don’t have the resources to provide an endowed scholarship. However, with some judicious planning and conversation now, a future gift can make a scholarship endowment possible,” she explains. “When donors consider all their personal assets, such as a vacation home, a business they plan to sell, a retirement fund or an IRA, or a simple bequest, then they begin to see the possibilities for making a difference in a student’s life.”
For example, Shirley and Ting Chu, retired engineering faculty members, used the IRA Charitable Rollover provision to move funds from an IRA to establish a scholarship endowment in December 2009. When the endowment reaches its maximum income potential, it will provide scholarships to junior- and senior-level engineering majors who have academic merit and demonstrated financial need, Preece says.
“The beauty of a planned gift is that numerous choices are available, depending on donor needs and goals. Some gifts may even provide income to a donor,” she says. “The Office of Planned and Endowment Giving provides the resource for donors and their advisers in beginning that conversation.”
A Lasting Contribution
For Scott Savarese ’02 and his family, the unexpected death of his father, Donald E. Savarese, prompted them to establish a new SMU scholarship.
“He was such a caring person, and one of the things for which I was so grateful to him was providing the opportunity to obtain a good education. He encouraged me to get my M.B.A,” recalls Scott, who earned the graduate degree from SMU’s Cox School of Business.
The Savarese family – which includes Scott’s mother, Lucille, and sister, Lindsay Savarese Penny – decided to “create a way to remember him that captured his personality,” Scott says. They found it in The Donald E. Savarese Endowed Memorial Scholarship at SMU.
“We were overwhelmed by the support of his business peers,” Scott says. “It’s a great testament to his character; the caring person we knew at home was the same person his colleagues remember and respect.”
Donald E. Savarese moved to Texas when JCPenney relocated from New York City in 1990. He had worked for the major retail firm for more than 30 years and was pension fund director at the time of his death.
Because an endowed scholarship takes several years to generate its maximum income, an annual award has been set up by the Savarese family to cover the first few years. The fund provides one or more undergraduate and/or graduate scholarships up to $5,000 annually and is open to JCPenney associates and their families.
“This is the best of both worlds,” Scott says. “We give back to the JCP community immediately and create a scholarship that will embody my father’s caring spirit in perpetuity.”
SMU Scholarship Fund:
Annual gifts of any amount may be designated for this fund, which provides need-based disbursements to scholarship students. Gifts can be made online at
smu.edu/giving or mailed to: SMU Scholarship Fund, Records and Gifts Administration, P.O. Box 750402, Dallas, Texas 75275.
Annual Scholarships:
A minimum four-year commitment can be designated to support a named annual scholarship.
Endowed Scholarships:
Commitments of $100,000 or more provide permanent funding for scholarships. At these levels donors will have the opportunity to name the endowment fund in perpetuity.
More information about scholarship giving is available from Linda Preece, director of Endowment and Scholarship Giving, Office of Planned and Endowment Giving, at 214-768-4745 or endowment@smu.edu. – Patricia Ward
Imagine rotating the world as a little robot with a gear for a hand, or building steam-powered fantasy machines out of sliding tiles.
Now imagine the video games that will let you do these things and more
Lecturer Chad Walker directs a student in the Motion Capture Studio.
These winning concepts were among 12 finalists (out of 250 entries from throughout the nation) in the inaugural Indie Game Challenge (IGC). GameStop, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, and The Guildhall at SMU created the competition to encourage and reward innovation in game development, without the strictures of commercial concerns. Two entries – Gear and Cogs – received $100,000 prizes in the IGC’s Non-Professional and Professional categories, respectively. The winners were announced at the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit in Las Vegas, where the finalists met with industry insiders.
Ever since SMU began its game development program in 2003, “we’ve believed that we should create this sort of opportunity,” says Peter Raad, Guildhall executive director and the Linda Wertheimer Hart Professor and Director of the Linda and Mitch Hart eCenter at SMU in Plano. “The University is a leader in teaching the next generation of game designers. It was time to start promoting creativity in game design.”
The omnipresence of interactive technology has allowed games to become “the first entertainment choice of people of all ages, both genders, and of every culture and language,” Raad says. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. households play computer or video games, 40 percent of players are women, and 25 percent are older than age 50, according to the Entertainment Software Association, a business and public affairs organization for game publishers.
SMU and The Guildhall are in a unique position to lead the Indie Game Challenge effort, Raad says. “People look to universities as a platform for people who are always improving themselves. As the first university to offer a graduate program for video game development, we have associated ourselves with the best in the industry.”
Since its founding, The Guildhall has graduated more than 350 students. Professional game designers teach its specializations in art creation, level design and software development. Guildhall alumni work at more than 80 U.S. studios, including Sony Online Entertainment, id Software, Buzz Monkey and Insomniac Games.
Lecturer Eric Walker (left) works with students in an art creation class.
Enrollment figures show that The Guildhall also is leading the charge for gender parity in the gaming industry. The January 2010 entering class is nearly 20 percent female, as compared to the industry’s current employment pool of 4 to 6 percent women.
Raad estimates that the visibility the Indie Game Challenge has brought has equaled that of a $3 million national media campaign. “It shows SMU and The Guildhall as leaders working hand in hand with the industry to ensure its future success.”
The vision to make the IGC an annual competition ultimately involves establishing it in Dallas, Raad says. “Our dream is to have it associated with SMU the way the Sundance Festival is associated with Park City, Utah.” – Kathleen Tibbetts
SMU’s Sheraton Hawaii Bowl trophy sits in a corner of the Mustangs football office: clearly visible, but not the focal point. Intended or not, the trophy’s unobtrusive placement is a not-so-subtle reminder of how the mindset of SMU football has changed.
For as magnificent as SMU’s historic 45-10 win was over heavily favored Nevada, it’s now history, and SMU is facing forward. And perhaps no team in the nation has more reasons to look ahead as do the resurgent Mustangs, who return eight offensive and seven defensive starters from last year’s 8-5 team.
The Dec. 24 Hawaii Bowl, it seems, was the appetizer for what many believe will be feasts to come.
“I always believed we could turn it around quickly here,&rdquo head football coach June Jones says without a hint of boasting.
And despite winning only one game in his first season at SMU in 2008, Jones stuck to a simple formula: Teach players to play for each other, not for themselves, and the victories will come.
“Probably five of our eight wins were against teams that were better than us,” Jones says of the Mustangs’ breakthrough 2009 season. “But when you come together and learn to sacrifice for each other and believe in each other, you can do great things. I think this past year, probably more than anything, proved that.”
Certainly the Hawaii Bowl offered proof that SMU could compete on a national level, but it also served as a booster shot to Mustangs fans and the program’s recruiting efforts.
“I suspect most football fans in America watched at least some of our game on Christmas Eve, which provided great visibility for SMU,” says Paul Rogers, Dedman School of Law professor and SMU’s athletics representative to the NCAA. On the strength of its prime-time broadcast and widespread national print coverage, the bowl game generated more than $30 million in publicity value for SMU.
“Visibility begets more visibility,” Rogers adds. “Because the team played so well on such a large stage, we’ll probably have more television exposure next year. That will continue to help recruiting, fundraising and every aspect of the program.” Mustang fans are right to be optimistic … Continue reading.
The public’s approval of politics and U.S. governing institutions is at an all-time low – approaching only 8 percent for Congress. The American public has noticed the increasing lack of civility in discussions among public figures and elected officials, who in turn find themselves besieged by arguments that seem more designed to silence and impugn than to encourage a careful search for the truth. As a debate coach, people often ask me what can be done to improve public debate in America. These are my suggestions:
Attack The Argument And Not The Person
In the course of disagreement it is easy to merge the words we see or hear with the opponent’s identity and our own. In essence, the argument becomes personal. Our responses should focus upon the arguments and the policies offered by an advocate rather than the personal aspects. Of course, this is easier said than done and often will require ignoring personal attacks that others launch at us. I urge student debaters to begin sentences with words such as, “Your argument is wrong because…” rather than “You are wrong because… .” I specifically tell SMU debaters that when they cross-examine their opponents in debates to look at the judge rather than the opposing team because this reduces their tendency to get angry and impatient with their opponents and disciplines them to the calmer task of persuading the decision maker.
I point to the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 as a great example. Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln electrified the Midwest with their lengthy debates about American politics and the looming concerns over slavery. The passions of the debate easily could have made the men lifelong enemies, but this was not the case. After Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, many thought there would be great controversy at the inauguration. But Douglas was known to have remarked at the event: “I shall be there, and if any man attacks Lincoln, he attacks me, too.” Debate and argument on such a passionate issue as slavery that divided the nation did not diminish the friendship of these famous political rivals, who gave us many of our modern notions about political debate.
Teach And Model Argumentation And Debate
When we model appropriate argument, young people learn and appreciate these well-reasoned disagreements. Unfortunately, speech and debate classes are being taught less and less in high school and college. This past year, the college debate community saw two of its legendary coaches, Northwestern’s Scott Deatherage and Wake Forest’s Ross Smith, leave its ranks to teach high school. Both men had coached many national collegiate championships. Because of their successes, they decided to teach debate among underserved populations of high school students. Similarly, SMU serves the Urban Debate Alliance, which reaches high school students in the Dallas Independent School District who might not be able to receive debate instruction otherwise. Teaching and modeling appropriate argument for our young people demonstrates the proper means for resolving disagreements and also ignites the passion for learning.
This past year SMU took the unusual step of sending its debate squad to Marshall, Texas, to debate on the campus of Wiley College – home of the Hollywood-famous The Great Debaters, immortalized in the film created by Denzel Washington. Mere days after the inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president, two SMU debaters took the stage to argue the question of whether a leader believes “the pen is mightier than the sword.” SMU lost, defending the sword as greater than the pen, but won a mighty victory in bringing the first public debate in 80 years to Wiley and the first debate with a largely white university in the school’s history. The auditorium was filled with hundreds of African-American college students seeing their first college debate. I remarked to the press, “It’s the best debate we ever lost.”
Idealize The Idealist
Much of the decline in public argument is rooted in Americans’ unfortunate social addiction to cynicism – believing that all public arguments are inherently self-serving and not for the public good. Criticism for criticism’s sake has become too popular. The recent film Invictus shows Nelson Mandela offering a note of inspiration to the captain of the South African rugby team regarding this important problem. Mandela used a quotation from President Teddy Roosevelt – rather than English literature – that would serve the new advocates of our present time well:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; … if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.”
Roosevelt’s admonition about the critic is an important one in understanding how the American public sphere ultimately will be healed of its present incivility. It will be the hard work and sweat of idealists, such as SMU’s student debaters, who are willing to endure the slings and arrows of selfish critics. Each one of us can, however, live and act in accordance with the principles noted here and be a substantial cornerstone in building a better national culture that treasures argument rather than abuses it.
SMU reinstated its debate program in 2008 through its Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Program in Meadows School of the Arts. At present, 30 students from various academic majors have participated in 12 debate tournaments throughout the United States. They have won numerous individual speaking and team awards. Ben Voth is director of debate and chair and associate professor of corporate communications and public affairs. He can be reached at bvoth@smu.edu.
As a business journalist, I like to look for discrepancies. Show me two sets of facts or data that seem to clash, and chances are I’ll find a story. So here’s a discrepancy if ever there were one: In 2008, U.S. newspapers cut 15,984 jobs, according to Paper Cuts, a blog that keeps count. And yet, in the fall of that year, enrollment in undergraduate journalism and mass communications programs rose nearly 1 percent from a year earlier, the 15th straight year of increase. And SMU is no exception. In 2000, SMU’s Journalism Division had 93 majors; as of fall 2009, we have 150.
One conclusion you might draw from this is not to expect 19-year-old sophomores to make rational economic decisions. But I think something else is going on. I think aspiring young journalists still have the passion for finding and telling the truth that drew generations of their predecessors to the field. They also sense new opportunities that we longtime practitioners, with our heavy emotional and career investments in the old ways of doing things, are too depressed and distracted to see.
No question that the news media – the print news media in particular – are in the midst of cataclysmic change. You sometimes hear it said that journalism has a business-model problem, not an audience problem. I wish that were so. The truth is that although journalism does have a business-model problem – the advertising that supported it has vanished – the business problem is intimately tied to an audience problem. Newspaper readers, because they tend to be older, are literally dying off, and their replacements won’t be coming from Generation iPhone. With the closings of major dailies like the Christian Science Monitor and the Rocky Mountain News and cutbacks in almost every other newsroom, U.S. newspapers now spend $1.6 billion or 25 percent less on newsgathering than they did three years ago, by one rough estimate. So it’s not hard to convince yourself that this represents the end of the world as we know it.
One reason for concern is that newspapers, even in their diminished state, still report 85 percent of “real” news, in the estimate of Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. That means serious news – about issues like health care reform, the war in Afghanistan
and the local city council’s agenda, as opposed to lighter topics like sports scores, pecan pie recipes and stories about where Britney got that nasty rash. If you are among the dwindling band of daily newspaper readers, you know that most broadcast and online news, and nearly all blogs, feed off that morning’s paper (or its affiliated website). The pessimistic view is that, in a world with many fewer newspapers and vastly smaller newsrooms, there will be little real news – and an increasingly uninformed citizenry.
But I remain an optimist. The traditional news media have an audience problem, it’s true. But information has no audience problem. In fact, the audience for information is insatiable – that’s why 1.7 billion of the world’s inhabitants use the Internet. The trick will be to match up that audience with real news in a sustainable way. There are hundreds of experiments going on right now that seek ways to do just that. Which model or combination of models will be the answer? Will it be an iPhone app, Twitter, an e-reader, a tablet? Will it be things with strange names like micropayments, pay walls, citizen journalism, hyperlocal journalism, nonprofit journalism or consortium journalism? I don’t know, and nobody does. But all the experimentation is the reason that young journalists are so excited by the possibilities: They’re getting in at the early stages of something new, and they have a chance to shape the future instead of carrying on a hoary tradition. It’s also why we no longer teach our students to be print journalists, broadcast journalists or even Internet journalists.
Yes, we teach them to write, to shoot and edit video, to blog, to use flip-cams and to interact with readers on Facebook and Twitter. And yes, we have a new state-of-the-art convergence newsroom where much of our students’ work will ultimately flow for distribution on the Web. But the truth is that some of this new technology eventually will go the way of the eight-track tape. So it’s not really about the gear. What we’re teaching students, still, is how to do journalism, in the confidence that uncovering the truth and telling people about it will never become obsolete.
Mark Vamos, former editor-in-chief of the national business magazine Fast Company and a former senior editor of Newsweek and BusinessWeek, is the William J. O’Neil Chair
in Business Journalism and Journalist in Residence at Meadows School of the Arts.
He can be reached at mvamos@smu.edu.
With the mounting number of online information resources, it may be more important than ever to choose the most effective method of reaching a specific audience.
About seven years ago, SMU Business Services created a 16-member student advisory panel to provide input before implementing student-related projects, according to Ed Ritenour, Business Services marketing director. Divisions that function under the Business Services umbrella include Park ’N Pony, dining services, the bookstore and the campus police, among others.
“We’ve found that students don’t want more e-mails – they usually won’t read them,” Ritenour says, “but they will go to Facebook for information.”
First-year student Jordan McCurdy, a member of the student advisory panel, admits to automatically deleting e-mails. “When you’re getting six e-mails every half-hour, it’s overwhelming,’ says McCurdy, a double major in English and mathematics. “I think systems that allow you to opt in, like a Facebook group that’s concentrated on a specific topic of interest, are more effective.”
Ben Alexander in Public Affairs notes that most SMU schools have their own Facebook pages and Twitter feed that can be accessed by clicking on icons – usually an “f” button for Facebook and a “t” button for Twitter – on the school’s home page.
“Facebook and Twitter allow us to keep in contact with key audiences in a brief, up-to-the-minute way,” he says.
Twitter differs from Facebook in that it’s not so much for wordy back-and-forth exchanges as it is for transmitting ideas and information concisely. Tweets, or Twitter messages, are limited to 140 characters.
Yolette Garcia, assistant dean in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, teaches the class “Consuming News in the Digital Age: From Traditional Media to Citizen Journalism” in the school’s Master of Liberal Studies program.
In the class, students learn by doing. “Students are required to set up Twitter accounts and send Tweets as part of the class,” says Garcia, who administers the Simmons School’s Facebook page (facebook.com/smusimmons) and Twitter feed (twitter.com/smusimmons). “It’s not enough to just talk about it; they have to jump in and use it to really understand it.”
“Oh, no” was Trisha Mehis’ first reaction to Garcia’s Twitter requirement.
“I wasn’t a Twitter user, and I thought it was just another thing to have to check, in addition to e-mail and phone messages,” says Mehis, a senior project manager with SMU’s Office of Planning, Design and Construction, whose primary project is the new Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall.
After a few months of using Twitter, she’s a believer. “It came in handy during the snow day [the SMU campus was closed Feb. 11 after an 11-inch snowfall],” she says. “I didn’t have power at my house, but my cell phone had power and got the Tweet about the campus closing.”
What’s Next?
Morgan Stanley, a global financial services provider, released a 424-page report in December 2009 that predicts more people will access the Internet through their smart phones than their desktops by 2014. And that presents another opportunity for SMU to connect with the University community and external constituents.
“We’re increasing our efforts in the mobile Web arena,” Alexander says. “We’re working on ways to offer content for the broadest population of users. One example is iPhone applications, but we also want to be accessible and open to other devices as well.” – Patricia Ward
Mustang Ryan Rosenbaum’s phenomenal 95-yard goal is the soccer kick seen around the world – thanks to YouTube, the ubiquitous video-sharing website. The first-year player’s sensational move against the University of Tulsa Oct. 16 was a hit on the SMU Athletics’ YouTube channel . As of mid-March, the 27 seconds of Mustang soccer history had been viewed almost a half million times.
YouTube provides an easy and efficient distribution point to news outlets for SMU-related video, says Brad Sutton, assistant athletics director for public relations and broadcasting. “From a media relations standpoint, YouTube gives us the ability to cast a wide net.”
Sutton’s team posted the video and sent out an e-mail alert to media contacts. ESPN’s Sports Center and ABC World News are among the national programs that broadcast Rosenbaum’s powerful footwork as a result. After the clip aired, word spread quickly among soccer fans, and YouTube viewings skyrocketed.
YouTube is just one online window open to the world of SMU. While traditional websites like smu.edu are mainstays of news and information delivery on the Internet, blogs and social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter are gaining popularity with users of all ages.
Web-based communication “is about community and participation,” says Steve Edwards, professor with SMU’s Temerlin Advertising Institute in Meadows School of the Arts. He teaches social media marketing at the graduate and undergraduate levels. “You can’t just throw content out there and let it sit. You have to interact.”
Blogging The Latest News
“Blogs and Facebook are less about pushing out information than about engaging in a two-way conversation with key audiences,” says Ben Alexander, director of e-Marketing in the SMU Office of Public Affairs.
In addition to administering smu.edu, the Public Affairs team maintains SMU’s social networking channels: Facebook, which boasts more than 8,000 fans, and Twitter, with nearly 1,000 followers (figures as of mid-May).
Like YouTube, blogs such as SMU Research provide an efficient conduit for information about the University to media outlets around the world. SMU Research documents important findings by faculty in all academic disciplines, including earth and climate, energy and matter, and health and medicine. When information about the discovery of the “Rosetta Stone” of supervolcanoes in Italy by a team led by James E. Quick, associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies at SMU was posted on the SMU blog, MSNBC.com, ScienceDaily.com and geology.com were among the national media to pick up the story.
Blogs also provide an opportunity for the University to present a well-rounded picture of SMU student life. The SMU Student Adventures site features blogs written by students participating in SMU education abroad, service, leadership, internship and research programs. The site, which registers more than 4,000 visits per month, appears in “What’s New at SMU,” the Admission e-newsletter for prospective students, and on the accepted students website. Redefining Social Skills …Continue reading.
Howard Mitchell Epps is a World War II Navy veteran and retired manager of a chemical plant in Louisiana. He and his wife of 63 years have two children, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. George Olewnick, retired after 37 years with IBM, lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with
his wife of 60 years.
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Newton D. Gregg (M.S. ’64) has structural engineering experience in Dallas, at the Kennedy Space Center for NASA and at the University of Central Florida in Orlando as associate professor of engineering technology.
Don K. Bentz married Joan Dyar in April 1950. During his 23-year retirement from Mack Trucks, they have traveled to 125 islands and countries, 50 states, the Canadian provinces and most Mexico states. They have six children and 15 grandchildren. Samuel Bruce Clark moved to Rivermont Retirement Village in Norman, OK, in November 2009.
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Harlan Harper (J.D. ’57) is retired from the law firm of Fanning, Harper and Martinson in Garland, TX, where he was president and a founding partner. He volunteers on several committees at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. John Mood, Ph.D., has written a book on German language poet Rainer Maria Rilke: A New Reading of Rilke’s “Elegies”: Affirming the Unity of “life-AND-death” (Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 2009).
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William A. Martin is on the board of directors of a San Antonio transit company.
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Nancy Hopkins Reily lives in Lufkin, TX, where she developed a career as an outdoor portrait photographer. She wrote Classic Outdoor Color Portraits: A Guide for Photographers and co-authored Joseph Imhof, Artist of the Pueblos. Her two-volume biography, Georgia O’Keeffe, A Private Friendship (Sunstone Press), details the artist’s
creative and mysterious life.
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Donald D. Clayton chronicles his life on the frontier of scientific discovery in Catch a Falling Star (iUniverse, 2009). For 26 years he was Andrew Hays Buchanan Professor of Astrophysics at Rice University and one of the original four faculty for Rice’s Department of Space Physics and Astronomy. He was honored as an SMU Distinguished Alumnus in 1993. Richard Deats was named a distinguished alumnus of Boston University in October 2009. He is a member of the Rockland Civil Rights/Human Rights Hall of Fame.
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The Rev. Phillip Douglas Erwin, retired in 1997 from the Oklahoma Conference, serves First Presbyterian Church of Tonkawa, OK, as interim pastor. He married Evelyn Toland June 26, 2009.
David G. Stubbeman is retired from law practice and the U.S. Navy Reserves (JAG). He has been a member of the Texas House of Representatives, mayor of Abilene and a district governor for Rotary International. He and his wife, former SMU student Sue Swenson, live in Abilene.
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Judith Manning Clugston Foster (M.A. ’73) has hiked in England, Norway and Switzerland. At Springer, GA, April 13, 1996, she stepped onto the Appalachian Trail at the southern terminus. Thirteen years, 119 trips and 2,176 miles later on Sept. 6, 2009, she reached the northern terminus, five months after her 70th birthday. John M. (Jack) Jacobsen is retired as technical director from Amalie Oil Company. Anne Maples Schultz has returned to Graham, TX, to manage family business.
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Bill B. Hedges is an archivist in the South Central Jurisdiction Mission Council of The United Methodist Church and a member of the General Commission on Archives and History. Thomas E. Shugart announces the birth of his first grandchild, Skylar Elizabeth. Her grandmother is the late Susan Drury Shugart, former SMU student.
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Dr. William H. (Bill) Fox Jr. is senior vice president for external affairs emeritus at Atlanta’s Emory University. At SMU he served as dean of men; at the time, he was the youngest person in the United States to have a full dean title. He and his wife, Carol Lewis Fox (B.A. ’66, M.L.A. ’71), recently
celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary.
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Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Kay Fincher Hyland, Don S. Pearce, Jane Harrell Pierce
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Edmund H. Hecht recently returned from the Ukraine, where he served as a Fulbright Scholar, professor of management, at
Kremenchuk Mykhaylo Ostrogradskiy State Polytechnic University. He is president and principal consultant of EHco Services Inc. of Corpus Christi, recognized as an international volunteer for bringing business and engineering skills to developing and transitioning countries. Bobby B. Lyle serves on the board of trustees of the Communities Foundation of Texas, which has awarded over $1 billion in charitable grants since 1953. He is a prominent figure in the Dallas civic and philanthropic arena and chair, president and CEO of Lyco Holdings Inc. At SMU he is a member of the board of trustees, and the engineering school bears his name.
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Colleen McHugh was elected March 3 by the regents of The University of Texas System as the first woman to lead the board governing the 15 academic and health campuses of the UT System, with 200,000 students and 84,000 employees. She is an attorney and vice president for compliance, risk management and privacy with the Christus Spohn Health System in Corpus Christi.
Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Bobby Harrison, Julie Callan Harrison, Jan Gehring Peterson, Marc Peterson
Edward Vela Jr. was elected 2010 president of the Davy Crockett Chapter of the Sons of the Republic of Texas, whose members are documented descendants of people registered as living in the Republic of Texas, 1836-1845.
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Carolyn Johnson is president of Ninth District PTA, serving San Diego and Imperial counties, CA. She has a daughter, Amanda Epple, in college. Elizabeth (Betty) Underwood is a real estate agent for Tom Gilchrist Co. in Dallas.
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Ruth Anne McCoy Hammond presides over the board of directors of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), a Los Angeles-based non-profit dedicated to respectful care of infants and toddlers. She is the author of Respecting Babies: A New Look at Magda Gerber’s RIE Approach (Zero to Three Press, 2009). Asher McDaniel serves Knob Noster United Methodist Church in Missouri following his 2009 retirement.
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Dr. Nancy Jurik (M.A. ’75) was named a distinguished faculty member in October 2009 in the College of Liberal Arts at Arizona State University. Ron Ogan joined Georgia Tech Research Institute in Huntsville, AL, last July after leaving Raytheon, Forest, MS, where he worked five years as a lead systems engineer on the U.S. Navy APG-79 (an active electronically steered array radar system) for the USN F-18 aircraft.
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Dr. Betsy Vogel Boze (M.B.A. ’75) was appointed senior fellow at American Association of State Colleges and Universities in Washington, DC.
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Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs:Jane Bander Williams, Tony Boghetich
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Molly Beth Beene Malcolm was recently elected state treasurer of the Community College Association of Texas Trustees. She has served on the Texarkana College Board since 2006 and is board secretary and building committee chair. Susan Hubbard Moran has launched a new wedding design business, V & M Wedding Concepts LLC, in Harrisburg, PA.
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C. Wade Cooper was named managing partner of the law firm Jackson Walker Feb. 15, 2010. He will maintain a legal practice in the Austin office along with his management responsibilities. Jeanne Tower Cox is in the forefront of Dallas civic and philanthropic volunteers, dedicated for nearly 30 years to improving education and public policy and building experience in community giving and service. As a newly elected trustee on the board of the Communities Foundation of Texas, she continues to improve lives by awarding charitable grants – exceeding $84 million in 2009 – to local and national nonprofits. Stephen R. Pattison retired in April 2007 from the Foreign Service as consul general in Berlin and resumed law practice in London, where he is a partner with Magrath LLP and manages the firm’s U.S. immigration unit.
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Warren Zeller has joined Eclipse Marketing Services as director of strategic partnerships, where he will assist in the development of joint marketing campaigns involving cable operators, movie studios and programming networks. He spent 10 years at Starz Encore Group as vice president of marketing and was instrumental in the launch of 14 Starz Encore networks.
Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Roman J. Kupchynsky II, Ruth Irwin Kupchynsky, David W. Long, Terri Amis Long
Melva Davis-Smith retired from the U.S. Postal Service after 30 years and now works in the home health industry. Henry Ross is the CEO of Aegis Health Group, a company that fosters partnerships between hospitals and local employers for workplace wellness programs.
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The Rev. Dr. Jefferson S. Labala has two new publications: Through African Eyes: Biblical Parallel to African Religion and Culture and Its Implications for a New Theological Paradigm (Seaburn Books, 2008) and The Battle Over the Ten Commandments: Challenging the Witness of Christians in Society (Seaburn Books, 2009).
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Brian Bearden (M.L.A. ’85) recently attended the children’s chorus performance of his daughter, Madison, at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Alice (Tina) Sheffield Kuncaitis was voted Southeast representative for the National Concrete Masonry Association board of directors and appointed to the executive committee. She has a daughter, Alyssa, a high school senior. Cathy Boltz Margolin is owner/president of Pac Herbs in Los Angeles and a licensed acupuncturist in Beverly Hills. She specializes in Chinese herbal medicine. Sue Kelly McKone and Suzanne Johnson Snavely, members of Kappa Alpha Theta, visited the SMU campus early this year during sorority rush. Their daughters, Molly and Caroline, also are Thetas. Tim D. Monnich left Dallas for Austin in 2005 to attend a Master’s degree program in rehabilitation counseling at The University of Texas. Michael Solberg and his wife, Virginia, have expanded their Rolfing Structural Integration practices by founding the Solberg Center for Structural Integration in Plano, TX, with another location near SMU.
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Mark Blinn (J.D. ’87, M.B.A. ’98) is president and chief executive officer since Oct. 1, 2009, of Irving-based Flowserve Corporation, providing engineered and industrial pumps, seals, valves and related services to global infrastructure markets. He joined Flowserve in 2004 as chief financial officer, a position he previously held at Kinko’s.
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Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Stephanie Chantilis Bray, Anne Nash Killebrew, George W. Killebrew
Elena Rohweder Turner has been named manager of communications at Dallas Area Rapid Transit. Linda A. Wilkins has a new law practice in Dallas with a concentration in employee benefit matters and executive compensation. She is an adjunct professor at SMU’s Dedman School of Law and is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Texas Monthly magazine’s Super Lawyers.
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Dr. Mark Boyd (M.S. ’87, Ph.D. ’91) was honored Feb. 16, 2010, as Engineer of the Year by the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers. He is a partner and engineering manager with LCA Environmental Inc., a vice president with PerTect Detectors Inc., environmental chair for the Texas section of the American Society for Civil Engineers and an adjunct assistant professor of environmental and civil engineering in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering. Stephanie Heard Fairleigh is the 2009-10 president of the Junior League of Stamford-Norwalk, CT. Kelley Miller began service in January 2010 as a jet propulsion laboratory solar system ambassador volunteer in a program of the California Institute of Technology and a lead research and development center for NASA.
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Thomas McDavid is a Merrill Lynch financial advisor recognized among the Top 100 Wirehouse Advisors in the country in the Sept. 1, 2009, issue of Registered Rep magazine. He has oversight for more than $70 billion in client assets. He and his wife, Debra, live in Atlanta, where they support the Pediatric Cancer Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Troy Stovall was appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer Jan. 1, 2010, for Howard University in Washington, DC, to focus on business operations and enhancement of the PeopleSoft system. He was formerly senior vice president for finance and operations at Jackson State University. Graham Wadsworth is the public works director for the Town of Yountville, CA. He and his wife, Kate, and their three children live in Fairfield.
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Desmond Abban works in international securities. Andrea Dawne Bradley was recently selected executive director of human resources for Bank of America worldwide. She lives in New York.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton was presented the 2010 Perkins Distinguished Alumnus Award by Perkins School of Theology in an SMU campus ceremony February 2. In 1990 he was appointed to a start-up mission in Leawood, KS, and has overseen the growth of that congregation, the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, to more than 12,000.
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Michael Harden and his wife, Susan, announce the birth of their first child, Nathan Richmond, Feb. 5, 2009. Michael is chief operating officer for Atlas Specialty Products in Anaheim, CA.
Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Christy Edwards Hall, Kim Corson Purnell
Greg Brown (M.B.A. ’02) is program director at the Dallas Center for Architecture.
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Tina Parker is co-artistic director of Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas and director of Slasher, a play by Allison Moore ’94, which premiered at the theater last winter. Joey Slotnick portrayed Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding in the September 2009 production of Animal Crackers at Theatre Goodman. He is an ensemble member of Lookingglass Theatre Company with credits in film and the New York theatre. He has had roles on such television shows as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Family Guy, Entourage, Boston Legal, The Office, Ghost Whisperer and nip/tuck.
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Lisa K. Thompson, Ph.D., moved to Houston in fall 2008 as assistant professor of educational leadership at Prairie View A&M University. She is a recipient of the Texas A&M University System Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award for 2008-09.
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Michael Greenberg earned his doctorate in political science from The University of Texas at Dallas and will be hooded in May 2010. He is the director of Project Management Organization at RealPage Inc. Jennifer Banas West and her husband, Greg West, announce the birth of daughter Harley Reese May 13, 2009.
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Kandice Keene Bridges (J.D. ‘97, L.L.M. ‘99) was promoted to senior director in the executive compensation and employee benefits practice at Alvarez & Marsal LLC. She lives in Dallas with her husband, Stephen Bridges (‘95, M.S. ‘09), and their children, Matthew and Katie. Scott Mallonee and his wife, Lisa, have two children: daughter Layne, born May 26, 2009, and son Harper. Allison Moore returned to Dallas last November for the Southwest premiere of her newest play, Slasher, at the Kitchen Dog Theater.
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Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Brian Clark, Adam Stiles, Suzanne Gerum Stiles
Drs. Joy Lockwood Berry and Stuart Berry welcomed their second child, Morgan Elisabeth, Sept. 18, 2009. Matthew Steward was promoted to president and senior loan officer of the Fort Worth office of Worthington National Bank. He was a founding member of the bank seven years ago and former president of the Arlington, TX, location. He has more than 29 years of banking experience. Jim Worlein is enrolled in the Professional MBA program at SMU’s Cox School of Business.
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Shelley Richmond Arthur and her husband, Coors, announce the birth of their third son, Wright Michael, Nov. 6, 2009. The Arthurs live in Memphis. Aaron Howes is a 12-year veteran of the commercial real estate industry. A Houston broker, he works for Studley, a leading tenant representation firm. Tim S. Pfeiffer joined Oxford Commercial in Austin in 2007 and was recently promoted to chief operating officer. He enjoys running, biking and golfing.
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Jennifer Emilia Eells and her husband, Brent Loewen, welcomed daughter Gabriela Nohelia Loewen-Eells July 30, 2009. Stacy Stack-Rudolph and Blake Rudolph announce the birth of Tanner Reed Aug. 11, 2009. Meghan Milne Woltz and her husband, David, announce the arrival of Elizabeth Helen Nov. 16, 2009. They live in Appleton, WI.
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Geralda Miller received a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Nevada, Reno. Sharon K. Snowton is a bilingual teacher in the Dallas Independent School District and a part-time teacher trainer through Alliance/AFT Education Center.
Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Ryan McMonagle, Sarah Monning
Taylor Lothliam married Brett Ritter May 17, 2009, in Hanalei, Kauai. They work for Deloitte and live in Atlanta, GA. Laura Willmann Mason is a shareholder in the corporate and securities practice group of Oppenheimer, Blend, Harrison and Tate Inc. She is one of San Antonio’s Forty Under 40 for 2009, a Texas Rising Star for the seventh year in Law & Politics and Texas Monthly, recipient of the Outstanding Young Lawyer Award from the San Antonio Young Lawyers Association and the Belva Lockwood Outstanding Young Lawyer from the Bexar County Women’s Bar Foundation. Cara Lucia Rizza and her husband, Michael, welcomed their second child, Giovanni, Dec. 22, 2009.
01
Kelli Ahearn Hale and Nathan Hale ‘00 recently celebrated the first birthday of their daughter, Keaton. Kristen Holland Shear and her husband, Dr. Mark F. Shear, welcomed Cora Ann, Dec. 16, 2009. Daughter Savena was born in June 2007. Tiffanie Nicole Roberson Spencer is a high school English teacher in Dallas and a hip hop dance instructor in The Colony, TX. She was recently married.
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Karla Bucio Barron and her husband, Joel, announce the birth of daughter Ema Marie Nov. 3, 2009 Jules Brenner was elected a partner at Strasburger & Price LLP Jan. 1, 2010, representing small and mid-size private businesses in industries such as technology and oil and gas exploration and development. Adam Walterscheid and Jeff Henderson ‘03 are partners in Pony Xpress Printing in Dallas, begun in 2003 in a garage-size warehouse. With revenue of $2.5 million last year, the screen-printing company is big in sports T-shirts but mostly prints fashion apparel and corporate promotional goods.
The Rev. Michael W. Waters (M.Div. ‘06) and his wife, Yulise Reaves Waters (‘02, J.D. ‘08), announce the birth of their daughter, Hope Yulise, Oct. 15, 2009. She joins brother Michael Jeremiah, 3.
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Mariano Legaz was named vice president for strategic sourcing and purchase-to-pay systems at Verizon, overseeing U.S. purchasing and limited international sourcing activities at more than $35 billion annually. He lives with his wife and three children in New Jersey and enjoys marathon running. Gianna M. Ravenscroft was promoted Jan. 1, 2010, from associate to counsel at the international law firm WilmerHale, which she joined in 2005. She is in the firm’s regulatory and government affairs department in the Washington, D.C., office.
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Nathan Brinkley announces the birth of his son, Nolan LaFate, Sept. 8, 2009. Chelsea Cannell was selected to host the daily That Morning Show on E! Entertainment. Although the show ended in November, she looks forward to her next opportunity. Cecile (CeCe) Villere Colhoun married Trevor Lindsay Colhoun in April 2008, and they welcomed a son, Trevor Lindsay Jr., in March 2010. J. Brandon Hancock launched Texas-based GreenShoots Real Estate in October 2009. As president he oversees the company’s development, acquisition and consulting activities focused on urban renewal, using new technologies to reduce consumption of resources. Aubrey Knappenberger works at Comedy Central in California as a sales planner for the digital advertising team. Leanne Lindgren (M.T.S. ‘09) and Jarrod Johnston ‘08 were married July 4, 2009. They live in Slidell, LA. Adriana Jaen Millares married fellow Miami native Javier Millares in 2009. She works as registrar at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida. Blake C. Norvell has published three scholarly articles: “The Constitution and the NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Program” (2009) in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, “The Modern First Amendment and Copyright Law” (2009) in the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal and “Business Regulatory Lessons Learned from Amusement Park Safety Concerns” (2008) in the Temple Journal of Science, Technology, and Environmental Law. He received his J.D. degree in 2007 from the UCLA School of Law. Robert Richardson Jr. attended driving school at the Texas Motor Speedway and graduated to the Daytona International Speedway and the Daytona 500 Feb. 14, 2010. He was one of 43 drivers who qualified for what is billed as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ biggest, richest and most prestigious event.
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Reunion: October 23, 2010
Chairs: Andrew J. Baker, Leslie A. Parks
Lindsay Daye Barbee (J.D. ‘08) joined the Dallas office of family law firm McCurley Orsinger McCurley Nelson & Downing LLP as associate, focusing her practice on custody and complex property cases. Kim DeBlance married Eric Davidson May 9, 2009, in Houston. She will receive an M.B.A. degree from Emory University in May 2010. They live in Atlanta, and both work for AT&T.
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Justin D. Webb was recently commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy after completing Officer Candidate School at Newport, RI. For 13 weeks he received extensive instruction in leadership, navigation, ship handling, engineering, naval warfare and management and completed a demanding daily physical fitness program.
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Pavielle Chriss has been promoted to the position of assistant director of Student Success Programs at SMU. In her new role, she works with Assistant Provost Tony Tillman in providing support for two new initiatives of the Office of the Provost: the Mustang Scholars and the Fall Academic Bridge Program. Chriss will assist in coordinating academic support services and resources for students in these programs. Since 2007 she has worked in SMU’ Office of Undergraduate Admission, and most recently, was senior admission counselor and coordinator of diversity initiatives. Jonathan E. Hawks is employed by Warner Brothers International Home Entertainment in Burbank, CA.
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Richard Carrere has begun a career in the automotive business, working for Carl Sewell ‘66 as a sales associate at Sewell Village Cadillac in Dallas. Lee Helms is company manager for the off-Broadway Theatre for a New Audience.
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Scott Gleeson is an artist and curator in Dallas selected for the year-long Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship presented by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. He will have the opportunity for mentorship with art world luminaries. Kristin Schutz works at Dallas-based Soap Hope, a company owned and founded by former SMU students Salah Boukadoum and Craig Tiritilli (B.B.A. ‘89, M.B.A. ‘94), which sells all-natural boutique body care brands and invests 100 percent of profits in lending funds to support women entrepreneurs locally and globally.
SMU career counselors emphasize internship opportunities and career development starting with first-year students – exploring who they are and what they want to do, says Ford at the Hegi Career Center. “We challenge them to learn
through their courses, campus involvement, community service and internships,” he says.
The early work pays off during students’ junior and senior years, Ford says, when the process intensifies with applications for second or even third internships, along with résumé building, career fairs, and job or graduate school applications.
The Hegi Career Center and Cox Career Services also offer students numerous online resources and campus workshops on job skills, including a new “Careers In …” series featuring employers and alumni in specific fields. “Students make those crucial contacts at these events and learn to think more broadly about what they can do with their majors,” Kerr says.
Kyle Snyder ’07, a strategy analyst for American Airlines, has represented the Fort Worth, Texas, company at the Hegi Career Center’s fall and spring career fairs, which have attracted up to 700 students and 90 employers. He also participated in this fall’s career fair prep day, where he advised students on speed networking.
“Students have only one or two minutes to make a good impression with company representatives at a career fair,” says Snyder, who earned a B.B.A. degree in finance from the Cox School. During his junior and senior years at SMU, he obtained two internships with American Airlines through the Hegi Career Center’s online postings.
new opportunities
In an initiative to expand internship opportunities, this year the Hegi Career Center joined the University Career Action Network, an internship exchange among more than 20 universities and colleges across the country, including Harvard, Duke and the University of Chicago. The shared database gives SMU students access to more than 1,500 internships nationwide and supplements Hegi’s MustangTrak, an online database featuring hundreds of internships and jobs open to SMU students and alumni. Counselors evaluate postings on MustangTrak, more than 90 percent of which are paid.
“We do not want our students to be “go-fors,’” Ford says. “These internships are about real work related to academic pursuits.”
Jack London, a senior from Birmingham, Alabama, found his summer internship through a MustangTrak posting about a company information session on campus. The marketing major in Cox was among dozens of students who attended the meeting and left a résumé with Coca-Cola Enterprises for one of a few spots in the company’s new University Talent Program.
After a challenging interview and an invitation to the final round, London turned to Cox Career Services for guidance. “They walked me through everything – my résumé, questions to ask, the thank-you note,” he says. “This was really competitive, and I wanted to get it right.”
London landed a sales associate internship. He and about 50 interns and new graduates from across the country started their summer at corporate headquarters in Atlanta, where they met Coca-Cola Enterprises’ CEO and leadership team. Then he headed to the Austin office to learn what goes into selling the global bottling company’s products – from territory development to computer programs to distribution and delivery.
“Before this internship, I wasn’t clear where my career path would take me,” says London, who has been accepted to the company’s two-year training program for next year. “Now I’m incredibly focused. It was an amazing summer of working and learning and meeting people.”
Those are the right experiences to take from an internship, says Kerr at Cox Career Services. “Interns who make the most of their opportunity do two things: They are willing to work really hard, and they begin to build long-standing relationships,” she says. “In any economy, it’s about what you’ve done and who you know.” – Sarah Hanan
A passport isn’t always required to open up a new world of understanding about complicated cultural issues. For example, Caroline Brettell, Dedman Family Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, led a spring break trip to New York’ Ellis Island and other historic sites as part of the Honors Cultural Formations course, “The Immigrant Experience.” SMU’s Richter Fellowship Program funded the class trip.
Other challenges, like the Lyle School of Engineering’s Immersive Design Experience (IDE), provide students with a taste of life after graduation. IDE will be an integral component of the Skunk Works® Innovation Gymnasium, part of the SMU/Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® Program, housed in the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education. TI Distinguished Chair for Engineering Education Delores Etter directs the Institute and the SMU program.
IDEs, which will be scheduled during semester breaks, will challenge small student teams to solve real-world problems on a compressed timeline. Students will work full time to design and build a prototype, and at the conclusion, will present their solutions to a panel of faculty and industry representatives.
The colorful parade of flags at the 2009 World Model United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Accountability to an important client – SMU – injects a healthy dose of reality into immersion projects at the Cox School of Business. In Practicum in Portfolio Management, two yearlong courses geared toward senior finance majors and second-year M.B.A.s, students manage part of the University’s endowment.
“We’re functioning like any other money manager, making real-time decisions for over $5 million of funds in the endowment,” says Brian Bruce, director of the ENCAP Investments & LCM Group Alternative Asset Management Center, who teaches the classes.
Students are assigned an economic sector to analyze and then make buy-and-sell recommendations to the class. The course culminates in a presentation to the SMU Board of Trustees Investment Committee.
“I believe that investing real money and seeing the consequences of our decisions was a great benefit,” says David Luttrell ’09, now a research analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Particularly during the bear market times we experienced, I think we all learned a lot about the market, investor behavior, stock picking and lastly, humility.”
All immersion experiences push students to take what they’ve gleaned from books, lectures and research and use it in demanding situations.
Last spring’s World Model UN (World MUN), for example, was a head-first plunge into international diplomacy for the 10 SMU participants.
Senior political science major Nicola Muchnikoff, a member of SMU’s delegation at the 2009 conference in The Hague, “got so much from the experience that I couldn’t get any other way: public speaking skills, negotiation practice and dealing with language barriers.”
“Although the World MUN is a simulation, with students from 38 countries participating, the cultural and language issues are real,” says Chelsea Brown, a Tower Center for Political Studies postdoctoral fellow, who teaches an upper-division political science class that prepares students for the conference. An SMU group will attend the 2010 event in Taipei next spring.
Muchnikoff, the 2009-10 president of the World Model UN’s International Relations Council, adds, “It gave me the opportunity to apply things I’ve learned in many classes, especially those in human rights and political science.” &ndash Patricia Ward
(Photo above) Lindsey Perkins ’09 (left) and Sommer Saadi ’08 in Romania. (Photo below) Children in a Romanian orphanage. Lindsey took both photos.
With support from a Meadows Exploration Award and the SMU Chaplain’s Office, Sommer Saadi ’08, who graduated with a double major in journalism and history, and Lindsey Perkins ’09, a marketing major with a minor in advertising, traveled to Romania in the summer to research the conditions of orphanages. Perkins is now director of media relations and marketing for the Allen Americans professional hockey team. Saadi, now a journalism graduate student at Columbia University, offers this reflection on their journey: It’s 1:07 a.m., July 1, 2009, six days into our two-week stay in Romania. We’re sitting on our beds in a hotel room in Targu Mures, a small city in the mountains about six hours north of Bucharest, where we’ve spent time with Livada Orphan Care. I am typing notes while Lindsey uploads the photos she took at the baby hospital we visited yesterday. Romanian law allows parents to drop off their children at the hospital – with no questions asked – so they can receive health care. The problem is that children are not always picked up; that’s when Livada steps in.
While staring at our beds covered in papers, pens, maps and blank DVDs, it hits us: We’ve taken on a task greater than we ever anticipated.
“We’re 22 years old,” Lindsey says. “Neither of us has ever worked for a major news agency. We have mentors [SMU journalism professors Mark Vamos and Robert Hart] but no editor to sit us down and tell us, ‘This is what you need to do.’&rdquo
Now that our journey has ended, Lindsey and I realize how much we learned on the trip: the importance of building relationships with our subjects and keeping an open mind; to never stop taking pictures or stop writing; and to put everything into context. We also discovered our potential, our strengths, our weaknesses and ourselves.
We are trying to launch our journalism careers. So we assigned ourselves a challenge.
Our journey started in fall 2008 when we applied for a Meadows Exploration Grant with a proposal to report on the condition of Romanian orphanages, nearly 20 years after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s régime. I had visited the country in 2006 as a volunteer with Humanity United in Giving, which aids two orphanages, so we had contacts through that organization.
Our project progressed as a compelling “then and now” feature package. We interviewed a range of sources on their experiences before, during and after the revolution. In developing the story, we integrated online technology. We built a website featuring a blog that chronicles our trip through video, photos and stories from abroad. As a result, we were able to add a whole new set of skills to our résumés that could help strengthen our freelance prospects.
We’re currently piecing together our research, writing stories and creating photo audio slideshows. We hope to catch the attention of media outlets interested in publishing our work.
Now that our journey has ended, Lindsey and I realize how much we learned on the trip: the importance of building relationships with our subjects and keeping an open mind; to never stop taking pictures or stop writing; and to put everything into context.
We also discovered our potential, our strengths, our weaknesses and ourselves. We reaffirmed our passion for storytelling through pictures and words. And we recognized that, in some ways, we were crazy for taking on such a big task, but Lindsey and I have never considered a little craziness to be a bad thing.
A month-long exploration of sustainable architecture confirmed Jackie Wilcher’s decision to become a double major in environmental engineering and business.
Wilcher studied architect Michael Reynold’s “Earthship Biotecture” homes in Taos, New Mexico, as a member of the first group of students to receive Taos Richter fellowships to pursue research in June at SMU-in-Taos. Reynolds is a pioneer in the use of recycled materials and passive solar power to create self-sufficient homes.
“This project ties in directly with my major, as it has a lot to do with the entire going green effort,” she says.
Students must be part of the University Honors Program to apply for Richter Research Fellowships, which have funded independent research by SMU students in the U.S. and abroad since 1999.
“Each student works with a faculty adviser both to craft the initial proposal and write a scholarly work after completing the research,” says David D. Doyle Jr., assistant dean of Dedman College and director of the University Honors Program.
Samantha Colletti, a member of the inaugural group of Hamilton Undergraduate Research Scholars in Dedman College, ended a four-month project with new respect for communications technology – and for academic research.
Through the new program, which was launched in academic year 2008-09, Dedman faculty members apply for funding that engages undergraduates with their research. Jack Hamilton, a member of the Dedman College Executive Board, and his wife, Jane, created the program at the suggestion of anthropology professor and program director Caroline Brettell, when she served as interim dean of the college. Nine students received stipends during the academic year and two students obtained support during the summer.
Last spring, as a senior with a double major in economics and finance, Colletti assisted economics Professor Isaac Mbiti in a study of the impact of cell phones in the African countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and several others.
“My job was to analyze 30 telecom reports, each of which ranged from 80 to 100 pages of all kinds of charts and data, including details about regulations,” she explains.
“Cell phones have literally revolutionized industries,” she says, by linking far-flung tradesmen to markets that pay the best prices.
Colletti ’09, now working toward a Master’s in accounting in Cox School of Business, says the experience cemented “a greater appreciation for the research that professors do. There’s so much research, analyses, follow-up and writing involved. The end product is something to be proud of.” – Patricia Ward ROMANIA REVISITED …Read more
Undergraduate research is the key to educating adequate numbers of American scientists and engineers, James E. Quick says.
In 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the independent government agency responsible for promoting science and engineering through research programs and education projects, allocated $33 million for its Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.
Engineering undergraduates from across the country vie for summer NSF Research Experience positions in SMU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. A $269,958 NSF grant awarded to David Willis and Paul Krueger, associate professors of mechanical engineering, has supported undergraduate research over the past three years.
“Research is a great way of engaging students in their degree program, because it gives them the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom,” says Willis, an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor. “I think for some students it’s a wake-up call. They have the opportunity to learn what graduate school will be like on a firsthand basis, and whether it’s for them.”
Each of the 10 undergraduates accepted this year were matched with a lab according to their interests. Senior Dan Salta focused on an improved set-up for holding materials in place during electron beam welding with a plasma window. The process has applications in automotive, medical, semiconductor and other industries.
With an eye toward research and development, Salta added the design component to his engineering repertoire. His experience also tipped the scale in favor of pursuing a Master’s degree.
“Going through the program showed me some things to expect, and as of now, I’m planning to go to grad school.” IDEAS AND ISSUES … Read more
Competitive awards granted by individual schools, as well as the University Honors Program, support student research that delves into subjects as diverse as the “green chemistry” of fuel-cell reactions and e-commerce in Madrid. Students submit applications that outline their research, goals and budgets. Stipends range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.
“Funding is intended to encourage students to explore and expand their creative and research skills beyond the classroom,” says Associate Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Paul Hofeditz, Meadows School of the Arts. The school’s Meadows Exploration Awards granted a total of $23,400 to 35 undergraduates in 2008-09.
Meadows students Rob Thomson, Brandon Sterrett and Jason Ballman describe their interdisciplinary collaborative film project, Lightbulb, as a series of “lightbulb moments.“
They each received an Exploration Award for a total of $2,250.
The movie, which mixes computer-generated imagery and live-action footage, is based on an original graphic novel by Thomson’s cousin. Now in postproduction, the project pushed them to try things they hadn’t before. For Ballman, a senior music composition major with a concentration in piano and a minor in history, learning new software needed to score the film was the toughest challenge. For senior theatre major Sterrett, the movie tested his ability to act in front of a camera. And for Thomson, a junior cinema-TV major, “the experience was about learning how to make a movie – from start to finish – and how not to make a movie. Sometimes you learn more from the mistakes.”
SMU’s Big iDeas program, launched in spring 2008 by the Office of the Provost, encourages collaboration among undergraduates to find possible solutions to issues that affect the wider community. Big iDeas supports 10 undergraduate interdisciplinary teams annually with up to $5,000 each in funding.
Elizabeth Corey, a junior environmental engineering and pre-law major, teamed up with Andrés Ruzo ’09, now an SMU geophysics graduate student, for the “SMU Geothermal Project” funded by Big iDeas in 2009.
“I was a little apprehensive about geothermal energy at first,” she confesses. “However, as I researched it more, I was surprised that it’s not more commonly used.”
Corey and Ruzo investigated geothermal resources located under the campus. The plan is to harness the power of subterranean heat to produce energy. They presented results at the Geothermal Resource Council’s international meeting this fall in Nevada. If all goes as planned, “the fruits of this project could make SMU the world’s first geothermal-powered university,” their report states.
And it could “move the industry from talking about a paradigm shift into the actuality of mass production,” according to Maria Richards, SMU Geothermal Lab coordinator and an adviser on the project. A WAKE-UP CALL …Read more
Pauline Newton, a lecturer in English who teaches “Critical Thinking and Argument: An Introduction to College Writing” to first-year students, encourages students to bring their laptops to class and take notes.
“They were born with fingers on the keyboard,” she says. “They are so used to computers, and they’ll be using them in the real world. I don’t fight technology; I embrace it.”
She finds that teaching students to write and communicate well really hasn’t changed much through the years.
In some ways, technology has made it easier, she says. For example, while helping students craft thesis statements, Newton shares the process with the entire group using the real-time collaboration capabilities of Google Docs, a free Web-based application offered by Google.
Students generally monitor their own use of technology in the classroom, she says. “They know that if I see them using their phone or Facebook during class,
I’ll consider that when factoring class participation in their grades.” Laurie Campbell, director of Undergraduate Programs, Department of Teaching and Learning in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, exposes her students to “as much technology as possible so that when they go into the K-12 environment, they’ll be able to take advantage of all the technical tools available to them.”
Students in all of her classes also keep their computer use in check. In fact, they sign a contract that governs how they can use it and what the ramifications are for breaking the rules.
Boeke, who teaches a media and technology course, believes part of the modern university’s mission is to engage students in the latest technology so they’ll be competitive in the marketplace, he says.
“Even in my classroom, it’s annoying when everyone is on Facebook, looking at email and surfing,” Boeke says. “But those same students are often the first to find some new, useful information online.” – Patricia Ward
Meadows School of the Arts Dean José Bowen grabbed headlines over the summer when he encouraged professors to “teach naked.”
Bowen wasn’t egging on colleagues to doff their duds; rather, he wants them to break out of the structured, computer-dependent lecture format and use time with students for more personal interaction and intellectual exchange.
In an interview with <emThe Chronicle of Higher Education last July, Bowen suggested that faculty members use class time more creatively to spark questions and discussions. He specifically rebuked the uninspired use of PowerPoint, a slide presentation program commonly used by educators, and proposed that lectures be posted online, either in a PowerPoint format or as podcasts or videos. Students would be responsible for auditing the materials on their own time.
“I’m not anti-technology in any way,” says Bowen. “I use podcasts and give online exams before every class. I just think the best place for most technology is outside of the classroom.”
The “teaching naked” philosophy struck a chord that reverberated around the world in a matter of weeks. To use an Internet term, “teaching naked” went viral. The Australian, International Business Times, NPR Weekend Edition, Newsweek, Time Magazine (international edition), The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report and other local, national and international media carried reports about Bowen. The topic also burned through the blogosphere, with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Washington State University and The Math Forum at Drexel University among the scores of blogs posting Bowen’s theory.
“I think it touched on a big question being asked in higher education: How is technology going to change what we do?” he says.
Like Bowen, educators across academic fields are trying to find ways to use technology to enhance the University experience while preventing it from becoming a distraction.
Millennials, the demographic cohort to which most current SMU undergraduates belong, “present a unique challenge to the University,” because their laptops are almost an extra appendage, says Brad Boeke, director of SMU’s Academic Technology Services.
A low-tech approach may seem counterintuitive when so many students regard laptops and cell phones as basic necessities. A study released in March by IBM and the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., showed that 93 percent of 1,600 college students queried nationwide owned a laptop.
“It’s difficult to teach when students seem to be paying more attention to their laptops,” Boeke says. “But the question is: Are they distracted or are they multitasking?” “BORN WITH FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD …”Read more
When mild tremors rocked North Texas over the summer, junior Ashley Howe moved to the frontline of seismology research that could shape the future of urban oil and gas drilling.
The earth sciences major worked as an undergraduate research assistant for Professor Brian Stump, the Claude C. Albritton Jr. Chair in Geological Sciences in Dedman College. She helped Stump and Chris Hayward, geophysics projects research director, deploy portable seismographs in affected Dallas-area and Cleburne, Texas, locations.
Howe, who is now helping Stump’s team write two papers for submission to scientific journals, views the experience as a “launching pad for graduate research,” she says.
“Ashley’s making primary observations that still will be referred to in 10 years,” Hayward says. “She’s making a lasting contribution as an undergraduate.”
Creative Spirit
“Research is central to SMU’s academic mission and contributes directly to its stature among universities,” says James E. Quick, associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies and a professor in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College. “We should attempt to solve major societal problems, such as energy sustainability, and address questions that capture the public imagination, such as the origin of the cosmos. In these efforts, it is essential that we engage our undergraduates, to capture their creative spirit and draw them into the excitement of discovery through direct participation in research.”
The University’s Undergraduate Research Assistant (URA) program, which extends to all disciplines, allows faculty to connect students to ongoing research. The University Financial Aid office covers 50 percent of each salary, with the other half paid by the participating academic department. Students in the program earned a total of $127,526 in academic year 2008-09 (including summer).
The hiring process continues through the fall semester, according to Meredith Dawson, student employment coordinator. As of mid-October, 20 URAs were on the job. In 2008-09, 61 undergraduate research assistants worked in 11 departments, including 16 in chemistry, 10 in anthropology, nine in physics, and six in environmental and civil engineering. COLLABORATE TO INNOVATE …Read more
Senior Laura Ratliff prepared for an on-the-ground study of the effects of the genocide in Rwanda with voluminous research. But it was impossible to anticipate the raw emotions that surfaced during the journey through the killing fields. Those feelings, she says, can’t be conjured in the classroom.
“You can watch all the films and read anything and everything, but nothing compares with walking through a concentration camp in Germany on a 20-degree day or seeing thousands of skulls in Rwanda’s mass graves,” Ratliff explains. “Those experiences live with me every day.
“The trip [to Rwanda] definitely made me more interested in exploring human rights volunteer opportunities before graduate school, whether they be through the Peace Corps or another organization,” she says. “In addition, a few other students and I are planning a ‘commission’ of sorts to increase awareness of SMU’s human rights program throughout the student body and the community.”
The August expedition to the East African country was her second human rights education tour with Rick Halperin, director of SMU&rsuqo;s Human Rights Education Program in Dedman College. As part of an independent study in history, the journalism major joined Halperin’s 2008 spring break pilgrimage to Eastern Europe, which included visits to Nazi death camps.
“One of the main missions of this university is to graduate people who are true global citizens. I see these trips as working to complement that aim, namely to have our students bear witness to terrible events of the past, to remember that these issues live on today, and to be able to speak and write critically and analytically about them,” says Halperin, who is leading groups to Poland, the Baltic states and Japan in 2009-10.
“Immersion experiences,” as these intensive, beyond-the-classroom learning opportunities are known, take many forms across disciplines.
“Students thrive in an environment in which they are encouraged to apply their learning in creative ways,” says Associate Provost Thomas Tunks. “Immersion experiences allow them to explore deeply subjects for which they have significant interest and passion, cultivating not only knowledge but also understanding and a unique perspective.
“By expanding learning opportunities beyond the classroom, or perhaps by expanding the classroom itself to include the world, SMU encourages students not only to broaden their academic goals but also to consider how to live meaningful lives,” Tunks adds.
Students can draw from University curriculum or, as in Ratliff’s case, follow self-plotted paths to discovery.
“I went to Rwanda purely out of personal interest,” she says.
Two very different views of Rwanda: Senior Laura Ratliff took these photos during the human rights pilgrimage last summer. At a memorial site in Nyamata, the skulls of genocide victims are stacked in mass graves as a reminder of the atrocities. Her other photo depicts the future of Rwanda – its children.
To reach the site of his internship last summer, senior Jason Stegall boarded a helicopter in Houma, Louisiana, and flew 150 miles south to an oilrig in the Gulf of Mexico. He worked 12 hours a day for two-week stretches on the massive BP platform, analyzing equipment that pumps natural gas and oil to land.
“I was one of BP’s first two interns to work offshore,” says the mechanical engineering and math major from Amarillo, Texas. “I saw pumps running and taken apart. I developed a tool that tracks performance as the pumping compressor degrades over time. There was always something happening on the platform, and I learned I like to do hands-on research.”
Stegall, an Embrey Scholar in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, previously interned at an infrared technology company through the school’s longtime co-op program, designed to give students work experience while earning a degree. He also has worked since his first year in the school’s Laser Micromachining Laboratory, conducting research with David Willis, associate professor of mechanical engineering.
When he applied online for the BP internship, Stegall says, his strong work record and campus activities – including leadership roles in Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, SMU Ballroom Club and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers – set him apart from the competition.
Competition In Hard Times
Particularly during this challenging economic climate, employers want to see relevant work experiences on students’ résumés, SMU career counselors say.
“Strong résumés start with a solid GPA, but internships can be the key to landing an interview,” says Darin Ford, director of the Hegi Family Career Development Center.
A student with multiple internships has gained practical knowledge and professional “soft skills,” such as communication and teamwork, he says. “That experience stands out to an employer whose hiring has been limited during the recession.”
The economic downturn also has meant more competition for internships, says Roycee Kerr, director of Cox BBA Career Services, which collaborates with the Hegi Career Center and focuses on Cox School of Business students. With rising unemployment, new graduates are competing with experienced job seekers for the same entry-level positions, she says.
According to spring surveys by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the number of new graduates nationwide with jobs declined 6 percent from 2008, and employers expected to cut internship hiring more than 20 percent this year. Even with the drop in the number of positions offered, however, more than 92 percent of employers planned to hire at least some college interns.
At SMU, postings for internships rose a surprising 10 percent this spring, Kerr says, except in hard-hit financial fields.
“We found companies saying that they still need to build their workforces. They are committed to their campus presence.”
Global telecommunications provider Ericsson filled a range of positions, from engineering to sales to supply chain management, with about 120 interns from SMU and other universities. “They work on real projects that affect real bottom lines,” says John Kovelan, university relations program manager at the Plano, Texas, company. “Their skill sets are definitely put to use.”
Some students enter Ericsson’s co-op program as juniors and stay through graduate school and beyond, he says, an optimal way for companies and students to learn about what each has to offer.
With the current emphasis on cost savings, Ericsson and other companies also have shifted to shorter, project-based internships. “It is an employer’s market, and students must do everything they can to make themselves marketable,” Kovelan says. “Internships are more essential than ever.” NEW OPPORTUNITIES …Read more
Warren Seay is not waiting for graduation to start work in his chosen field: public service. At age 20, the DeSoto, Texas, native and SMU political science major won election in 2008 as the youngest member of his hometown’s school board.
Warren Seay
Now he is balancing those duties with his studies as a 2009 Truman Scholar – an award recognizing college juniors with exceptional leadership potential who are committed to careers in government or public service.
Seay has joined several SMU students who recently have distinguished themselves with national scholastic awards. Esmeralda Duran, who graduated in December 2008 with degrees in English and French, received a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarship to continue her studies at Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. The Cooke Foundation scholarship, one of the nation’s most competitive awards, will provide her with up to $50,000 for graduate study.
“This has been a wonderful year for SMU,” says Kathleen Hugley-Cook, director of SMU’s Office of National Fellowships and Awards, who guided both students through the application process. The office, established in 2007 to help students and faculty prepare their candidacies for national scholarships, fellowships, grants and awards, has reaped results.
Kylie Quave
Over the past two years, student applications for national awards have tripled and successful applications have quintupled. More than 70 students applied for national fellowships and grants in 2008-09; nearly one-third resulted in awards.
Hugley-Cook also helped archaeology graduate student Kylie Quave and studio art major Amy Revier ’09 win Fulbright Scholarships in Peru and Iceland, respectively. With her assistance, senior political science major Cody Meador won a 2009-10 Presidential Fellowship at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington, D.C.
Daniel Salta
Science and engineering students also benefit from Hugley-Cook’s efforts. Seniors Daniel Salta, mechanical engineering and mathematics, and Amy Hand, physics and mathematics, spent last summer working in their fields as participants in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates.
Hugley-Cook encourages students to plan early. She presents information sessions each semester on how they can pursue national grants and fellowships. Generally, students begin to apply for national awards in their sophomore year
“Many of the best opportunities require an application a year in advance,” she says. “If you don’t know those deadlines, you could miss out.”
She also helps students find the fellowships and grants best suited to their areas of interest. “The most important aspect of any candidacy is what students are planning to do with their careers,” Hugley-Cook says. “As they begin to focus their interests, we can help them develop a long-range plan and make them aware of possibilities they might miss otherwise.”
The office began serving faculty members in fall 2008, doubling both candidacies and successful applications. During the past academic year, SMU faculty members received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award; a Fulbright award to teach in Vietnam; seven Sam Taylor Fellowships from the Division of Higher Education, United Methodist General Board of Higher Education and Ministry; and a Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Professorship that honors superior teaching at Texas universities, among others.
The pool of future student candidates is encouraging, Hugley-Cook says. “We’ve had excellent results this year, but knowing that this incoming class is such a strong one, we look forward to seeing where they go as their academic careers progress.” – Kathleen Tibbetts
Now we have done it. On September 11, 2009, Perkins School of Theology dedicated a new building (Prothro Hall), two renovated buildings (Kirby and Selecman Halls), and a stone labyrinth in the open and accessible space between Prothro and Selecman.
This labyrinth is a new thing for us. But its history can be traced for thousands of years. And, in some ways, it is a labyrinthine history.
Maze-like patterns have been found that are 15,000 years old. They are known from pre-Christian history in Scandinavia, Tibet, Russia, Greece, India, Egypt and Israel. After persisting through the millennia, they were adopted by Christians for spiritual purposes. One has been found in the floor of a church in Algeria that dates from 324 A.D. By the High Middle Ages (A.D. 1000-1300), labyrinths had nearly become standard features in the floors of great churches and abbeys across Europe, most notably in the cathedral at Chartres, where one was placed in 1215.
For Christians, labyrinths had specific spiritual purposes. They served as a way to make a sacred pilgrimage even if one could not undertake an actual journey to a holy place (the shrine of a saint) or to the holy land. They engaged the body, the soul and the mind in a focusing upon movement along a defined path. And they fostered a sacred promise that if one followed the one way of life, it would lead to peace.
That is how a labyrinth differs from a maze. Typically a maze is a puzzle through which one moves toward a goal while encountering a number of paths that reach a dead end. A labyrinth, on the other hand, is one single, coiled pathway leading toward a center and then back to the world again. Follow the way of faith in a labyrinth, and one will find peace and be able to return to the world.
By the 16th century, this approach to Christian theology was seriously challenged. In the 18th century, efforts were made to destroy labyrinths and the theology that accompanied them. Instead of taking the mysterious and winding path, Christians were told they should walk the straight and narrow path.
In the 20th century the merits of the labyrinth as a way of engaging in meditation, contemplation and spiritual transformation began to be rediscovered. A few hundred are now publicly available in the United States. The one at Perkins School of Theology, given in honor of SMU Professor of World Religions and Spirituality Ruben Habito, will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to anyone who seeks to walk the path toward peace.
Sources consulted include these publications: Jacques Attali, The Labyrinth in Culture and Society [Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1999]; Patrick Conty, The Genesis and Geometry of the Labyrinth [Rochester VT: Inner Traditions International, 2002]; and Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001]
Martha Kate Newman Gray followed her great-grandchildren to Fayetteville, AR, where she now lives.
Edgar Huffstutler and his wife, Dorothy, celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary June 6, 2009, at home in Palo Alto, CA.
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Charles Richard Glanville received an award in June for his service to the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts. A 50-year honorary member, he played a major role in the organization, development and growth of the Society, with more than 2,700 members in 60 countries worldwide.
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Barbara Gilpin Lanser lives in St. Augustine, FL.
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Fred C. Hannahs is a retired attorney in Albuquerque, NM.
Joe A. Irvin was honored at a recent ceremony in Pine Bluff, AR, where he belatedly received the Bronze Star and seven other medals for his service in World War II.
Nancy Howell McRae announces the birth of her great-grandson, Nolan Hines Nelson, in June 2009.
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Zane Bruce Hall (M.A. ’53, M.Th. ’55) and Mary Nell Gray Hall ’52 married Aug. 27, 1949, and celebrated their 60th anniversary in Livingston, MT, where they spend summers. They live in Austin.
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Robert H. Dennard (M.S.E. ’56) received the IEEE Medal
of Honor June 25, 2009, at a ceremony in Los Angeles. IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology. He is an IEEE Life Fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Philosophical Society. Dennard is an IBM Fellow at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.
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Art Barnes received the 2009 Highland Park High School Distinguished Alumnus Award April 30. He married Sue McFarland in 1955, and they have two sons and a daughter. Today his sons are in business with him at Barnes Investments.
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Roger W. Blackmar Jr. accepted the 2009 Highlander Award from Highland Park High School last April. He and his wife, Joan, have been married 51 years and have three children and four grandchildren.
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Bert Wallace was elected to a third two-year term as a trustee for the St. Paul-based American Academy of Neurology Foundation, which supports education and research in neurology. He was president and CEO of the LSU Health Sciences Center Foundation in New Orleans from 1991 to 2005.
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Robert Short is an ordained Presbyterian minister and Little Rock author who presents programs on Christian values found in popular culture, literature and art. His books include The Gospel According to Peanuts (1965), The Parables of Peanuts (1969) and The Gospel According to Dogs (2007). His latest is The Parables of Dr. Seuss (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).
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Donna Dean Clark Hutcherson taught elementary school music for 30 years before retiring in 1997. Every summer since 1992, she has worked on a Navajo reservation, and she continues to chaperone the high school band. She has five children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Somanahalli Mallah Krishna, a member of the upper house of India’s parliament, the Rajya Sabha, was appointed the country’s minister for external affairs.
Marjorie McNeil played a piano recital at Chicago’s Symphony Hall after winning the Society of American Musicians-Allied Arts piano contest.
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James Hoggard has two new books: Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems (Wings Press, 2009) and Ashes in Love: Translations of Poems by Oscar Hahn (Host Publications, 2009). W. Kelvin Wyrick Sr. was appointed by the Arkansas governor to serve as circuit judge from May 2009 to Dec. 31, 2010. A trial attorney with 46 years of law experience, he has been tapped five times to serve as a special justice to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
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Reunion: November 2010
Elizabeth Gamble Miller was named a Distinguished Alumnus for 2009 by Highland Park High School last April. She is internationally known for her translations of Spanish literature and poetry into English and for humanitarian work in Honduras. She taught for 40 years at SMU, serving as chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. She and husband Fred Miller have three children. Steven C. Salch (J.D. ’68) was recognized as an Outstanding Texas Tax Lawyer by the Taxation Section of the State Bar of Texas.
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Eugenia Wiesley Francis, children’s math book author and owner of TeaCHildMath, was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal’s “Profiles in Later Life” series. Her innovative workbook, Teach Your Child the Multiplication Tables, available in both English and Spanish, is based on pattern recognition. Her method has been endorsed by top learning specialists. Previously, Francis was an English instructor at the University of California Irvine. James M. Griffin wrote A Smart Energy Policy: An Economist’s Rx for Balancing Cheap, Clean, and Secure Energy (Yale University Press, July 2009), an examination of the three critical goals of energy policy and recommendations for our future energy needs and environmental problems. He teaches economics at Texas A&M University.
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Ruth Yvonne Lewis Dower owns and operates Prudential Texas Properties. O. Albon Head Jr. (J.D. ’71) was voted to Best Lawyers in America 2010. He is managing partner of the Fort Worth office of Jackson Walker LLP.
Drew Bagot (J.D. ’73) joined Dallas-based law firm Cowles & Thompson PC in the corporate and business section. He has 35 years of experience in company formation, acquisition, regulation, compliance and licensing issues.
Jane Hansen Gilbert was appointed president and CEO of The ALS Association in March 2009. The association helps people with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
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Elizabeth (Betty) Underwood serves as the 2009-10 corresponding secretary for the Dallas alumnae of Pi Beta Phi. She is also a deacon at Highland Park Presbyterian Church.
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Larry Maday retired in 2009 after 34 years of teaching math at Tinley Park High School in Illinois but continues as varsity football assistant coach.
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Roy R. Campbell III was elected chair of the board of directors of Methodist Healthcare Ministries, a private, faith-based, nonprofit organization providing medical and health-related services to low-income families and the uninsured in South Texas. He is vice president of investment services at Frost Financial Management Group.
Robert K. Carrol (J.D. ’77) is listed in the 2009 edition of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business as a top attorney in labor and employment in the international law firm Nixon Peabody LLP in California.
Jan Carroll is a Super Lawyer for 2009 in the March issue of Indiana Super Lawyers magazine. A partner with Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis, she co-chairs the media practice group, handling product liability, professional liability and real estate and land use.
Lea F. Courington is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a distinction for less than one-half of 1 percent of American lawyers. She is a partner in the firm Curran Tomko Tarski LLP.
Don F. Davison (M.B.A. ’80) completed his second term in May 2009 as Faculty Senate president at Galveston College. He is a recipient of the Galveston College Faculty Exceptional Service Award and a member of the Texas Faculty Association Board of Directors and Texas Community College Teachers Association Legislative Affairs Committee.
Peter G. Pierce released his first book March 31, 2009. Baseball in the Cross Timbers: The Story of the Sooner State League (Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2009) tells about the last Class D baseball league west of the Mississippi, which operated in 11 Oklahoma and four Texas cities from 1947 to 1957.
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Reunion: November 2010
Howard Barnett was named president of Oklahoma State University’s Tulsa campus in September. He was managing director of TSF Capital LLC in Tulsa, a specialized merchant banking firm, and previously served as state commerce secretary and chair of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce.
Jim Dent is the author of Twelve Mighty Orphans, now in its 20th printing. A film production company acquired the movie option rights to his true story of a math teacher who leads a group of orphans in forming a winning football team that plays the toughest teams in Texas.
Marilyn O’Hearne is vice president of the International Coach Federation, advancing the coaching profession for over 15,000 members in 92 countries, and a three-year member of the board of directors. She is a writer and speaker and a master certified coach and trainer.
Radamee Orlandi sold his dental practice after 30 years and is now assistant to the pastor at First United Methodist Church of Port St. Lucie, FL, serving in Christian education and discipleship.
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Nancy Wheeler Heller reports that her family is all-SMU: husband Robert Wayne Heller (’75, M.S. ’77, Ph.D. ’80); son Ridley Mathias Heller ’06, a senior associate at Site Selection Group of Dallas recognized as a Heavy Hitter by the Dallas Business Journal; and son Andrew Cole Heller ’08.
The Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson was honorary chair for the 5th annual 5K walk for the National Alliance on Mental Illness May 2, 2009, at Fair Park in Dallas. She also joined the board of directors of The Progressive Center of Texas, formerly Obama Dallas. As a U.S. congresswoman, Johnson represents the 30th Congressional District of Texas, encompassing much of Dallas.
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Chris Abood is marketing manager of Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the Best Children’s Hospitals. Last March he and SMU classmates Chris Good and Mark Kane ’76 celebrated the life of R. Chris Moore ’78, who died in February.
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C. Wade Cooper was named to the 2010 edition of Best Lawyers in America. He is managing partner in the Austin office of Jackson Walker LLP.
Richard (Rip) Hale is a senior institutional consultant with Smith Barney in Dayton, Ohio, and one of Barron’s Top 1000 Advisors for 2009.
Rod and Cindy Funkhouser MacIlvaine recently completed a study tour of Greece and Turkey, tracing the journeys of the apostle Paul. A portion of Rod’s doctoral dissertation will be published in the upcoming edition of The Theological Journal Bibliotheca Sacra.
Thomas Slater (D.Min. ’81) was the Bible study leader for 20 pastors on a two-week pilgrimage to Nazareth, Caesarea Philippi, Bethlehem, Masada and Jerusalem, sponsored by Mercer University, where he is professor of New Testament studies in the McAfee School of Theology.
T.A. Taylor performed in The Merry Wives of Windsor last summer at the 2009 Shakespeare Festival of Dallas.
Les Weisbrod has been certified a member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum for attorneys who have won million- and multimillion-dollar verdicts, awards and settlements. His specialty is medical malpractice law at Miller, Curtis & Weisbrod, a national firm based in Dallas.
John Wilson is executive director of the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego.
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Doug Adelstein recently completed eight years as city councilman in Lynden, WA.
Martha L. Danhof is lead hospitalist and palliative care physician at Baylor All Saints Hospital in Fort Worth.
Craig Levering retired in March 2009 as CEO of Dallas-based Crawford Electric Supply. In 2007 he sold the business to the largest electrical and lighting distributor in the world. Levering and his wife, Carrie, have two daughters, Courtney and Christen Levering Redlich ’07. They live in Dallas.
Jess Moore and his wife, Beth Sanders Moore, are the youngest recipients to receive the Loving Hearts Caring Hands Award, presented April 30, 2009, in Houston at the 15th annual awards dinner at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Mrs. Moore is a breast cancer survivor.
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Tony Jack Howard (M.L.A. ’98) is editor of The Collected Works of James Ingall Wedgwood and author of the pamphlet St. Clement of Alexandria and Universal Salvation.
Rene Moreno (M.F.A. ’01) directed The Merry Wives of Windsor at last summer’s Shakespeare Festival of Dallas.
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The Hon. Antonio Oscar (Tony) Garza Jr. joined ViaNovo LP management and communications consulting firm and chairs ViaNovo Ventures with a focus on cross-border business development. He also serves as counsel in the Mexico City office of law firm White & Case. He is a former Texas secretary of state, railroad commission chairman and U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
Hector Reyes is a senior Fellow at the Raytheon Company and recently was named chief technologist for Raytheon’s network centric systems business unit in Texas.
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John E. Davis retired June 30, 2009, as a United Methodist minister in the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference.
Barbara Elias-Perciful, a Dallas attorney and child advocate, was honored by the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division with the 2009 Child Advocacy Award. She is founder and director of Texas Loves Children, a nonprofit organization that assists lawyers, judges and others working with child protection cases.
Mike Higgins reports that Joe Drape had a book signing in August for Our Boys.
J. Jeffery Johnston (J.D. ’90) won second place in the 2009 Texas Bar Journal short story fiction writing contest for Marsdenbia, which was published in the June issue. He and his wife, MaryBeth Flahavin Johnston, live in Dallas with their children, Arden, Griffin and Hudson. MaryBeth’s clothing boutique, MaryBeth, celebrated 18 years in July 2009.
Gardner Savage joined the real estate and finance section of Dallas-based law firm Curran Tomko Tarski LLP in April 2009. His practice of more than 20 years includes commercial real estate transactions throughout Texas and the nation.
Walker Schupp and Bob Tullier ’83 made their first television commercial together as SMU students. Today they are independent film and video professionals at Dallas-based Reveal Film & HD Productions. Tullier’s wife, Clare Skwirz Tullier ’83, is a freelance producer at Reveal, which was co-founded by Bill Pridham ’78 and Cynthia Frazier Collins ’00. The company partners with local, regional and national advertising agencies to produce television commercials and corporate marketing videos.
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Reunion: November 2010
Melanie Wells has an online campaign, IToldTwoFriends.com, to raise $100,000 for ProLiteracy, an organization aimed at ending adult illiteracy worldwide. She will donate profits from the online sales of her psychological thriller My Soul to Keep (Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers, 2008) to the campaign.
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Patrick Aulson was appointed in June 2009 as chief administrative officer of HRsmart, a leading global talent management software company.
Bart Bevers received the 2008 National Sentinel Award from the Association of Certified Fraud Specialists and was 2009 Public Administrator of the Year from the Society for Public Administration.
Asif Dowla was named to the Hilda C. Landers Endowed Chair in the Liberal Arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He is co-author of The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story about the Nobel Prize-winning Grameen Bank.
Gary Walsh is chair of the board of trustees at Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth and principal and portfolio manager at Luther King Capital Management. He and his wife, Janice, have two children.
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Missy Brown Bender won re-election in May to the Plano (TX) school district board of trustees, place 7.
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Luann Aronson performed the role of Anna in last June’s world premiere of the restored The King and I at the Irving (TX) Arts Center. Among other roles she has played is Christine in Broadway’s The Phantom of the Opera.
Darlene Doxey Ellison received a 2009 National Independent Publishing Award Gold Medal for her book The Predator Next Door. She is a national children’s advocate, speaking across the country on child abuse and betrayal recovery.
Kathleen Mary Mulligan was awarded a Fulbright grant to Kerala, India, for spring 2010 for her project “Finding Women’s Voices,” focusing on the empowerment of women and girls. She is assistant professor of voice and speech at Ithaca College.
Melinda Olbert was honored March 6, 2009, by the Oklahoma Hospitality Club for her work as board chair for CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates, for abused and neglected children. She and her husband, Mark, have two sons, ages 16 and 7.
Linda Williams Tomlinson (M.L.A. ’93) is an assistant professor in the Department of Government and History at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.
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Ann Coleman Fielder returned to SMU May 11, 2009, as assistant dean for development and communications at the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, where she will lead fundraising efforts. Previously she was director of outreach for the Bickel and Brewer Foundation.
Cathy Cadman Read was matron of honor at the March wedding of her sister, Mary Cadman ’94.
Joe Nemmers appeared as the King in the world premiere last June of the restored Broadway show The King and I at the Irving (TX) Arts Center.
Johnson Samuel Subramanian is a contributor and co-editor of Resourcing New Testament Studies: Literary, Historical, and Theological Essays in Honor of David L. Dungan (T&T Clark, London, 2009).
Kristin Sullivan was named assistant vice president for media relations at The University of Texas at Arlington. She and her husband, Mitch Whitten ’91, have two sons, ages 6 and 2. Whitten is executive director of integrated marketing and advertising in the SMU Office of Public Affairs. The family lives in Fort Worth.
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Donald Hightower (M.B.A. ’93, M.A. ’93) is an associate attorney at Edison, McDowell & Hetherington LLP in Houston, where he previously was briefing attorney in the Fourteenth Court of Appeals.
Jennifer Gleason Zander and her husband, W. Kyle, announce the birth of Ginger Dorothy Dec. 1, 2008. They also have a daughter, Charlotte, 6, and sons Bennett, 5, and Graham, 3. The family lives in Frisco, TX.
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Jennifer Ann Carnovale and Philip Steven Marwill were married May 2, 2009, in Chatham, MA. She is a manager in the New York office of Sun Microsystems, a California-based software company.
Anne Dunlap graduated with distinction in June 2008 from the Iliff School of Theology. She was ordained a minister in the United Church of Christ last May and is pastor of Comunidad Liberación/Liberation Community in Aurora, CO.
Jennifer Daniel Milligan and her husband, Kelly, announce the birth of Virginia Maureen (Ginger) Jan. 27, 2009; daughter Mary Kate is 5. Jennifer was recognized in 2009 for the third consecutive year as a D magazine Best Realtor in Dallas.
Monica Mullens was a film executive for 10 years before switching to screenwriting. She wrote her first screenplay, Swing State, with her husband, Chris Warren, and sold it to Sony Pictures.
93
Brad Adams is general counsel of The Brinkmann Corporation. He and his wife, Jen Cannella Adams, live in Dallas with their three children.
W. Ross Forbes Jr. is a Rising Star in the April 2009 issue of Texas Monthly magazine. He litigates business disputes in state and federal courts through the Dallas office of law firm Jackson Walker LLP.
Emily Adams Haly is a primary care physician in Charleston, SC, and mother of four children: Judith Grace, born April 15, 2009; Coleman, 3; Emily Catherine, 8; and Addison, 11.
Sean Whitley wrote and directed the documentary Southern Fried Bigfoot about the Bigfoot legends of the southern United States. It premiered on The Documentary Channel in April 2009 and is now in broadcast rotation.
94
Mary Cadman married William T. Turso III March 14, 2009, in Miami, where she heads global consumer insights for the Burger King Corp. Her sister, Cathy Cadman Read ’89, was matron of honor. At the wedding were Laura Gorten and Ashley Gossey Mock. Kimberly Head-Amos, who also attended, joins her husband, Lewis, in announcing the birth of their daughter, Elizabeth Wynn, June 25, 2009; daughter Anne is 2. The family lives in Decatur, GA, where Kim is a leader in SMU’s Atlanta alumni chapter.
Adam McGill is managing director of Perry Street Communications in Dallas, specializing in media and investor relations and corporate communications. He was founding executive editor of D CEO, a business publication for corporate executives, and former senior editor at D magazine.
Robert L. Paddock was named to Texas Rising Stars 2009 in the April issue of Texas Monthly magazine. He is a trial attorney in the Houston office of global law firm Thompson & Knight LLP.
Ryan Turner and his wife, Susan, welcomed a son, Aidan Ryan, July 3, 2009. Turner is director of choral studies at Phillips Exeter Academy.
95
Reunion: November 2010
Joy Berry, and her husband, Stuart, announce the birth of their second child, Morgan Elisabeth Berry, Sept. 18, 2009.
Ellen Anderson Rings and her husband, John, announce the birth of daughter Celeste Alexandra April 5, 2009. Big brother is Anderson.
Jennifer Mills Schiltz and her husband, Jared, welcomed twin sons, Tyler Michael and Cooper William, Oct. 30, 2008, in Denver.
96
Bogdan Antohe was named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is a senior engineer at MicroFab Technologies Inc., where he has expanded the use of micro-dispensing technology. He lives in Dallas.
Luis Bartolomei and Ryan Browne joined in the formation of Dallas-based law firm Reyes Bartolomei Browne in June 2009. Bartolomei is a trial attorney. Browne focuses on business and tort litigation and personal injury cases.
Bryan Batson co-founded Ten for 10, a nonprofit organization committed to providing clean drinking water to Sub-Saharan Africa. Through dinners and social events, the group raises money and awareness.
Cynthia Lee Caruso was a television news anchor for 12 years before forming a multimedia company, Motah LLC, described as “all positive, all the time.”
Matthew J. Farruggio is president and CEO of California Quivers Inc. in San Diego.
97
Jennifer Emilia Eells and her spouse, Brent Loewen, welcomed baby Gabriela Nohelia Loewen-Eells on July 30, 2009.
Ramsey Alan Fahel ’02 was among recipients of the prestigious Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China Sept. 29, 2009. Fahel is president of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s China subsidiary, which is involved in a long-term joint venture with the China National Offshore Oil Corp. to develop heavy crude oil and natural gas underneath China’s offshore seas. He and his family have lived in Beijing since 2007. The award is the highest honor given by China to foreign experts.
Dave Henigan left his five-year position as Corsicana High School’s head football coach and assistant athletic director to become head football coach and athletic coordinator at Grapevine High School near Dallas. He and his wife, Laurie, have three children.
J.R. Johnson is co-founder and CEO of one-million-member VirtualTourist.com, one of the Internet’s most popular travel websites.
Amy Clark Meachum and her husband, Kurt M. Meachum ’98, have three children: Benjamin Zachary, born in February 2009, and Kendall and Allie. Amy is a candidate for 353rd district civil court judge in Travis County, TX. The primary election will be held in March 2010.
Suzy Shire and Cord Adams ’95 were married at Perkins Chapel Feb. 21, 2009. They live in Dallas.
98
John D. Edwards and his wife, Dina, announce the birth of their son, Reid, March 25, 2008. Edwards works in accounting at FedEx, and the family lives in Frisco, TX.
Megan Elliott married Derek DiCiccio Jan. 31, 2009, in Indianapolis. They live in Dallas.
Emily Muscarella Guthrie and her husband, Ben Guthrie ’00, ’01, welcomed a daughter, Judith Louise, March 1, 2009. Their sons are Joseph Steven, born in September 2005, and Felix Benjamin, in April 2007.
Ian Leson was in Dallas last summer in the Shakespeare Festival production The Taming of the Shrew.
Sharon K. Snowton is a bilingual teacher with the Dallas Independent School District and a part-time teacher-trainer with Alliance/AFT Education Center. She helps prepare new teachers to take and pass the bilingual, ESL and PPR (pedagogy) tests.
Regan Stewart and Adam Schiestel were married in Las Vegas May 9, 2009. They live in Carrollton, TX.
99
Michael P. Davis is chief engineer at Post Asylum (formerly the Stokes Group), a Dallas video-audio post-production company.
Rosario (Chachy) Segovia Heppe and Hansjoerg Heppe ’97 announce the birth of their son, Otto Arturo Joerg Leopold, in Dallas July 2, 2009.
Naoko Imoto is working with UNICEF in Sri Lanka. She builds classrooms in refugee camps and contributed to a January 2009 UNICEF case study of the country’s school system.
Doug Linneman and his wife, Jennifer, have a son, Carpenter MacRae, born April 23, 2009. They live in Tucker, GA. Doug is a member of SMU’s national alumni board and a leader in the Atlanta alumni chapter.
Marc Sanderson is director of international development for the city of Málaga, Spain. Previously he was chief of staff to the U.S. ambassador in Spain and Andorra.
Evyan Strompolos married George N. Maniatis in 2002, and they have two children: Eleni Zoe, born March 1, 2006, and Nikolaos George, July 29, 2008. She previously worked as an actor-educator for the Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre Programs and performed in local professional theaters in Denver. The family lives in Centennial, CO.
Nicole Brende is founder/publisher of Houston’s first online social magazine, RSVP713.com, and host and senior account manager of the television show Hot on Homes.
Rob Fowler is a U.S. Air Force pilot flying F-15Cs at Eglin Air Force Base in Destin, FL.
Tammy Nguyen Lee is producer/director of the documentary Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam, which premiered April 3, 2009, at the Vietnamese International Film Festival in Santa Ana, CA. The film, recounting the 1975 U.S. airlift of over 2,500 Vietnamese orphans before the fall of Saigon, was honored with the Audience Choice Award.
Laura C. Willmann Mason was elected shareholder of the law firm Oppenheimer, Blend, Harrison and Tate Inc. of San Antonio. From 2004 to 2009 she was recognized by Law & Politics and Texas Monthly as a Texas Rising Star. She received the 2009 Outstanding Young Lawyer Award by the San Antonio Young Lawyers Association.
Vanessa Rusk Pierce and Read Pierce ’01 welcomed a son, Bryant William, Jan. 6, 2009, in San Francisco.
Stephen Shannon is the senior manager at Denkmann Southwest LLC, a family-owned business since 1860. He and his wife, Leslee Harp Shannon ’99, live in Argyle, TX, with their children, Anne and Jack.
02
Billy Gannon is an associate for the commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield. He serves on the executive board for the Real Estate Council’s Young Guns, a committee for brokers ages 22 to 30. Recently he was named Emerging Broker of the Year.
Lakeisha Hall received a Master’s degree in library and information science May 2, 2009, from the University of South Florida. She is the instructional services and science librarian at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL.
Adrianne Jaretha Jessie was promoted to assistant division controller of Republic Services Inc. in Houston, one of the nation’s leading providers of environmental and waste services.
Lindsay R. Lowery joined Brookmont Capital in May 2009 to direct the firm’s corporate development activities.
S. Talmadge Singer II was promoted to senior associate for capital raising, national expansion, securities issues and government relations at Advantage Capital, where he started in 2007.
The Rev. Michael W. Waters (M.Div. ’06) is founder and senior pastor of Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church in Dallas, studying for his Doctor of Ministry degree at Perkins School of Theology. He was featured in the April 2009 issue of Ebony magazine as one of the top young leaders in America under age 30. Waters and his wife, Yulise Reaves Waters (’02, J.D. ’08), are parents of Michael Jeremiah, age 2.
03
Spencer Browne is a partner in the newly formed Dallas-based law firm Reyes Bartolomei Browne, focusing on pharmaceutical, contract, insurance, trucking and general personal injury litigation. He served as law clerk for the National Football League.
Dodee Frost Crockett was named for the fourth consecutive year to Barron’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisers.
Annie Flanagin joined Baron + Dowdle Construction in 2009 as project manager, drawing on three years of experience as assistant project manager for SG Contracting in Atlanta. She is a LEED Accredited Professional of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Jake Jordan co-founded Accent Commercial Real Estate, a brokerage and investment firm dealing in retail site selection, development, land acquisition and disposition, retail leasing and investment property sales.
Lydia Mackay starred in last summer’s Dallas Shakespeare Festival production The Taming of the Shrew, and Aaron Roberts performed in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Stephanie Torres has joined the special projects and fundraising events team in program services at SMU. She was previously content manager for TRAVELHOST Inc.
04
Oscar C. Carr IV practices civil litigation and construction, employment, health care and personal injury law at Blankler Brown PLLC. Last April he was named to the alumni board of directors of Presbyterian Day School, the largest elementary school for boys in the United States.
Todd Haberkorn is the lead voice in several animated shows released worldwide this fall, including voices for Sgt. Frog, Soul Eater and D. Gray Man. He is producing the film State of Loss with his Blue Logic Productions group.
Rogers Healy is broker-owner of Rogers Healy and Associates in Dallas, catering to recent college graduates seeking their first home rental or purchase. In 2008 he personally closed sales of $15 million. Healy was profiled in Realtor magazine’s top 30 Under 30 in 2009 real estate.
Zac Hirzel and his wife, Hollee, announce the birth of their son, Thomas Lewis, Nov. 14, 2008.
Aubrey Knappenberger is a sales planner for the digital advertising team at Comedy Central.
Jeremy Roebuck was named Star Reporter of the Year by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors in April 2009. Since 2006 he has been covering courts and legal issues at The McAllen Monitor, the largest newspaper in South Texas.
05
Reunion: November 2010
Paige Corbly and Adam Buffington were married Jan. 3, 2009, in Columbus, Ohio, where they live. Bridesmaids included Lauren Chapman and Brittney Schaeffer. Paige received her J.D. degree in May from the College of William & Mary.
Elaine Ferguson had her second art exhibition and first solo show, Texas Blues, last December in London.
Ellen Kline married William Nelson Mabry in Nacogdoches May 10, 2008. They live in Houston, where she is an associate in the law firm Short, Carter, Morris LLP.
Meghann O’Leary and her sister, Erin O’Leary ’04, turned a passion for baking and adapting cookie recipes into an online business, O’Cookies Wholesome Bites. Meghann lives in Dallas and is in the business full time, while Erin works from New York, where she also pursues a dance career.
Emily Powell and Brian Fox were married at Perkins Chapel Jan. 3, 2009.
Sarah Stutts teaches world cultures to sixth-graders at McCulloch Intermediate School in Highland Park, TX.
Brittany Timmerman works in program services at SMU on the athletic forum and projects team. She is studying for her M.B.A. degree at the University of Dallas.
Kara Torvik-Smith performed in The Merry Wives of Windsor last summer at the Dallas Shakespeare Festival.
06
Courtney Birck has joined the Dallas office of Jackson Spalding, an Atlanta-based marketing communications firm, as an account professional.
Rebekah Hurt spoke at the Gartner Honors Lecture at SMU last March, discussing “Responsibilities of the ‘Been-To’ in African Literature and the Experience of an SMU Marshall [Scholar].”
Michael A. Olimpio received a Master of Theological Studies degree May 11, 2009, from Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
<pJeffrey I. (Jeff) Rose and Metin Eren ’07 are featured in the five-part BBC TV series Incredible Human Journey, which airs in the United States on The Travel Channel. Rose is a lecturer in the Human Origins and Palaeo-Environments Research Group at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.
07
Tamara Carrell married Jason Jones ’08 in Dallas Aug. 1, 2009. They are living in Austin while Jason attends The University of Texas Law School. At the wedding were Cameron Baynard ’08, Bud Beunier ’08, Catherine Garrett, Kent Kirkwood ’08 and Elsa Monge ’06.
Brentney Hamilton received her Master’s degree in religious studies from Harvard University June 4, 2009. While in Massachusetts, she interned in the office of the late Senator Ted Kennedy.
Nicole Sarhady Kellogg was recently married.
Brittany Merrill is founder and development director of Ugandan American Partnership Organization, which held a dedication ceremony in Uganda March 7, 2009, for the Ranch on Jesus orphanage, built for up to 180 children with funds Merrill raised. Her story was recently featured on CNN World.
Ashley Parker and John Pope ’06 had a Houston wedding May 9, 2009. They live in Dallas.
Halle Smith has joined the Dallas office of Jackson Spalding, an Atlanta-based marketing communications firm, as an account professional.
Lauren Smith and Jim Gutierrez ’06 married Aug. 1, 2009, in Kansas City, honeymooned in the south of France and live in Hoboken, NJ.
08
Meredith Baker is pursuing a J.D. degree at the University of Tulsa College of Law.
C. Taylor Chalmers bought a national junk removal franchise for the Dallas market. College Hunks Hauling Junk employs college students as junk removal specialists.
Esmeralda Duran was selected for a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Continuing Scholar Graduate Award for up to six years of graduate study at up to $50,000 per year.
Lee Helms is working this season as company manager for Theatre for a New Audience, an Off-Broadway theater company.
As chief of staff to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Rob Johnson ’96 makes sure the wheels of government run smoothly in the second-highest executive office in state government.
While Johnson manages a staff of over 30 employees with a budget of about $3 million, he also serves key roles as legislative strategist and senior political adviser to the lieutenant governor, who is president of the Senate and chairs the Legislative Budget Board and Legislative Council. As Dewhurst’s right hand, Johnson works closely with senators and their staffs as he directs and guides priority legislation from inception through passage. He also advises Dewhurst on Senate committee assignments and state agency appointments and participates in the development of the Texas’ $160 billion-plus budget. And those are just the high points of Johnson’ high-profile post.
The former student body president, Hunt Scholar and president of Sigma Chi fraternity left SMU with Bachelor’s degrees in political science and public relations and “valuable skills that have helped me in my professional life.”
Johnson remembers SMU “as a special place” with “opportunities to get involved and serve in leadership positions from day one.” While he jokes that he “did not enjoy 8 a.m. meetings” as student body president, he did like “solving problems and creating change and new opportunities” for students.
“Patience is a virtue that I learned at SMU,” Johnson says. “I also learned that there is not always just one way to get things done. Lots of times leadership positions require navigating the process in the most advantageous route for your cause, and that’s an invaluable skill that I learned at SMU. Compromise and listening are abilities that my experience taught me. And maybe most importantly, I learned that if you do not understand your opponent’s argument, then you do not truly understand your own. This lesson has served me well in my career.”
Elena Holy ’90, shown with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founded The New York International Fringe Festival. New York magazine called FringeNYC “Sundance for the theater crowd” when it named the SMU alumna to its list of “The Influentials” in theater. Photo by Dixie Sheridan.
Former Program Council president Elena Holy’s story is the stuff of Broadway musicals. During spring break of her senior year, she went to New York and landed a job with Roundabout Theatre Company. Just three years after graduating in 1990, with a Bachelor’s degree in radio-television communications, she teamed up with husband-and-wife John Clancy and Nancy Walsh ’90 to create The Present Company. She’s now the company’s producing artistic director.
“While my classroom experience was invaluable, in my particular case, what I learned about management, budgeting, long-term planning, marketing, press relations and so many of the skills I use every day at The Present Company derive almost entirely from my student leadership experience.”
In 1996 she established The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC). For 16 days each August more than 200 companies from around the world perform in more than 20 venues during FringeNYC, the largest multi-arts festival in North America.
“What I’m most proud of is the fact that FringeNYC is still run almost entirely by volunteers – an extraordinary community of artists, volunteers and audience members who willingly give their time, talent and energy to make it happen.
“When I think about it, it’s pretty much just like SMU Program Council.”
Lucretia Donnell Coke’s artworks are the subject of Timeless Style: Pastels by Lucretia Donnell Coke, Protégée of Frank Reaugh. The exhibit continues through Aug. 2 at the Texas/Dallas History & Archives Division, on the seventh floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in Dallas. Lucretia’s mother, an artist and teacher, studied with the eminent Dallas artist Frank Reaugh, sometimes taking her daughter along to the lessons. Reaugh took notice of the young girl and invited her to study with him, thus beginning a relationship that lasted more than two decades. While working toward her Bachelor of Arts degree at SMU, she was already being exhibited at venues such as the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. One of her prize-winning pieces from this period – Rain-Washed Canyon with View of Double Mountain – is included in the display. Other works in the exhibit have been selected to show the range of subjects and evolution of her style during the ensuing decades. She continues to paint, teach and exhibit her work from her home in Austin.
On July 1, Ricardo Martinelli was inaugurated as president of the Republic of Panama during a ceremony at the Atlapa Congress Center in Panama City. His term will run from 2009-14. President Martinelli serves on the SMU International Center Advisory Council, and his son, Luis, is a 2004 graduate of SMU. Michael Clarke, executive director of the International Center, represented SMU at the inauguration ceremony and at the reception that followed.
Beyond the classroom, they learn leadership skills through student government, Alternative Spring Break trips, social organizations, Program Council, Student Foundation and the Board of Trustees. They volunteer in the community. They advance Mustang spirit through the Band, varsity athletics and traditions like Homecoming and Celebration of Lights. Nearly 200 student organizations, 400 cultural events annually and numerous high-profile visiting speakers – all are designed to help students encounter a diversity of ideas and interests, enrich their college years, but more importantly, empower their futures.
To ensure the vitality of campus life, The Second Century Campaign seeks in part to raise funds to enhance the campus experience. Goals include creating residential commons; expanding services in wellness and career placement; improving competitiveness in athletics; and broadening leadership opportunities.
SMU Magazine offers a glimpse of collegiate life today, perhaps rekindling a cherished memory of your own. As the class of 2009 graduates in May, its members will carry the lessons of their campus experience wherever they go.
Read about just a few of the people, programs and places that make the SMU campus experience like no other:
Ashley Bruckbauer, a senior majoring in art history and advertising, is a member of the University Honors Program and recipient of a Richter International Fellowship that funded a summer in Paris for independent, graduate-level research in art history. She calls the educational adventure “the first step on the path of a long journey as an art historian.”
Bruckbauer is wrapping up her third year with CORE, the Women’s Symposium student planning committee, and served as this year’s co-chair. “Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a recognizable face on campus,” she says. “Leadership is about networking with others and hearing their ideas and coming together to not only support a tradition, but to make a difference.”
When students do not find a fit in an existing group on campus, they have the freedom and encouragement to become grassroots organizers, says senior Robert Perales. The religious studies major is a student assistant in the Office of the Chaplain and Religious Life and a resident college chaplain for SMU Service House and Moore Hall.
“Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a recognizable face on campus. Leadership is about networking with others and hearing their ideas and coming together to not only support a tradition, but to make a difference.”
With guidance from department chair Mark Chancey and assistant professor Jill DeTemple in Dedman College’s Department of Religious Studies, Perales established the Religious Studies Club “to create better relationships between religious studies majors, minors and professors.” The club has sponsored programs exploring such diverse religious movements as Scientology and Messianic Judaism.He serves as president and has started the chartering process required for the group to become an official SMU student organization.
There is no central, unifying theme at the University, but there is a place for everyone if you’re willing to look for it,” Perales says. “You can create your own place. There’s room for growth here, and that’s one of the most positive aspects of SMU.”
“We provide students with the tools and opportunities to investigate what leadership means to them.”
Clyde’s office sponsors several programs to meet the demand for basic leadership training across majors. Last fall, 30 students participated in the new Leadership Certificate Program. Free to all SMU students, the program involves nine hour-long workshops during a semester, as well as six community service hours and a reflection paper.
“We help students develop the soft skills that employers value: the ability to communicate effectively, manage their time and projects, and even how to handle failure,” she says.
Kevin Maher, 2008 chair, credits Emerging Leaders with motivating him to become more involved on campus. “You meet a broad spectrum of people who expose you to other opportunities – on campus, in Dallas and beyond,” he says. “It’s an excellent networking tool.”
“I want to be a physician, and the skills that I’m developing now not only help me communicate with my peers, but also in organizing and influencing change where it’s needed,” she says. “Those skills apply to all facets of my life.”
“We help students develop the soft skills that employers value: the ability to communicate effectively, manage their time and projects, and even how to handle failure.”
Engineering graduate student Daniel Liu already has accepted a business technology analyst job with Deloitte and believes his myriad extracurricular activities aided him in landing the plum post. “The leadership skills I’ve cultivated here, especially effective communication skills, helped me stand out from other candidates,” he says.
In his five years of undergraduate and graduate studies at SMU, Liu has held an impressive array of titles: student moderator for the Tate Lecture Series, student representative to two Board of Trustees committees and Resident Assistant in Peyton Hall.
In March he led 13 students on an Alternative Spring Break trip to Taos, New Mexico. He participated in the joint project with Habitat for Humanity last year and stepped up to pilot the SMU effort this year.
“It’s a great opportunity to do something worthwhile and productive over spring break,” Liu says.
First-year student Melissa Perette tutors neighborhood children at the Academic-Community-Engagement (ACE) House in East Dallas.
Students Lead Their Way
One morning last February, the former leader of the free world spoke to future leaders in an SMU political science class – not your typical collegiate experience.
A relaxed George W. Bush discussed his presidency and the planned library and institute at SMU for about 10 minutes in the American Political System class taught by Harold Stanley, the Geurin-Pettus Professor of American politics and political economy in Dedman College. For the next 40 minutes, Bush took questions from 29 awestruck students.
“SMU offers so many interesting opportunities – like having George Bush drop by your class,” says sophomore Max Camp, a double major in pre-business and pre-political science and a student in the class.
A member of Christian social fraternity Beta Upsilon
Chi and College Republicans, Camp chose SMU for its academic qualities, and “leadership is definitely a part of that. Whether it’s taking on an office in the groups I now belong to or possibly in other organizations, I feel I have so many opportunities to grow as a leader here; it’s up to me to take advantage of them.”
Like Camp, the majority of SMU students place a high value on campus experiences that prepare them for life’s challenges and responsibilities. The University participates in a large national survey by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute called the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey. According to 2007 CIRP data, more than 50 percent of SMU’s incoming students believe that becoming a community leader is “essential” or “very important.” Almost
85 percent indicated that developing leadership ability in the coming year was either “essential” or “very important.”
Student groups are integral to the planning and execution
of big universitywide celebrations like Homecoming, Family Weekend and Celebration of Lights, notes Lori White, vice president for student affairs. “We believe strongly in the shared student governance of our institution,” she says. “Involving student leaders in the business of the University is a very important value to SMU.”
Exploring The Possibilities … <a href="https://blog.smu.edu/smumagazine/2009/05<.bClick here to read more.
SMU Alumni Take The Lead … Elena Holy ’90 and Rob Johnson ’96 share how their SMU leadership experiences shaped their future careers.
The Office of Leadership and Community Involvement helps student volunteers match their skills to organizations that need their help. Students can apply at the LCI office or online using a placement database with 10 search criteria that returns a list of agency options. LCI also hosts an annual volunteer expo for students to learn more about service opportunities.
Clyde notes that as many as 90 percent of students participated in service projects while in high school, while only 30 percent continue serving after high school. She hopes SMU service offerings will reignite students’ passion for volunteering.
Like many students, Ryan Moore was active in high school volunteer service in
his hometown of McKinney, Texas, and wanted to stay involved once he arrived
at SMU.
Moore, now the president of SPARC, says the growing number of students who want to volunteer is encouraging. SPARC has about 50 regular volunteers, but its biggest event, Community Service Day, attracted 500 students last year. Students also choose to work with groups such as Teach for America and the Volunteer Center of North Texas.
“We have something for everybody,” says Moore, a junior with a triple major in economics, public policy and cinema/TV. “No matter what you are interested in you will find a project. We just want students to take the first step.”
Junior Nicola Muchnikoff began volunteering with SPARC two years ago and now serves as director of youth tours on campus. Twice a week she and other volunteers introduce potential first-generation college-bound students to SMU, discuss scholarship options and answer their questions about campus life. SPARC hosts 20 to 30 middle schools each semester.
“We want to plant the seed and tell them that college is an option for them,” says Muchnikoff, a political science major with aspirations of joining the Peace Corps. College is so necessary to go anywhere in life.”
Muchnikoff, who attends SMU on a scholarship, says helping others puts her own life in perspective.
“I honestly see how lucky and blessed I am,” she says. “A lot of students think they’re too busy, but they don’t realize that maybe taking out one hour a week, they will get such joy from helping others. When I finish a tour, there is such a high. The kids are so happy. Who knows what these kids will do
with their lives because of this experience?”
Student residents of the SMU Service House – also known as SMUSH – share a passion for volunteering.
For more than a decade, SMU’s Service House – also known as SMUSH – has offered students a unique learning environment. The former fraternity house, located at Dyer Street and Airline Avenue, is home to 28 students who live and breathe community service.
“(The SMUSH house) draws students who usually have an interest in service, but it also attracts students interested in gaining a stronger sense of community,” says Antron Mahoney, SMUSH community director. “Once students get in the house, they stay because there’s nothing else like it on campus.”
Residents must perform a minimum of 20 hours of service as individuals and 10 hours of service with the house each semester. Students volunteer with such agencies as Vickery Meadows through SMU’s Catholic Center, the YMCA and North Texas Food Bank.
The close-knit group cooks together, creates its own house rules and organizes service projects ranging from providing after-school activities for Dallas-area children to recruiting other students to become involved in the community.
Jake Fields moved into the SMUSH house in 2007 – when he came to campus as a first-year student from his native England – and plans to stay until he graduates.
“It’s the best place to live on campus,” says Fields, a psychology major who is also a member of the service fraternity APO and participates in after-school tutoring and local clean-up projects. “A lot of people might see service as quite boring, sadly, but we do a lot of community building and plan fun activities like game nights and karaoke. It’s a great balance.”
Hannah Kolni lived in the SMUSH house her last semester before graduating
in 2008. She enjoyed living with like-minded, socially aware students and coordinating local environmental projects. She believes it offered a resource for students to learn about area nonprofits and make valuable contacts.
“Volunteering is the best way to get a job with nonprofits for those who are interested in going into that as a profession,” says Kolni, an outreach coordinator for the city of Dallas” Office of Environmental Quality.
The service house attracts students from all majors, cultures and walks of life, says Mahoney, who receives up to 30 applications a year from potential SMUSHies, as they call themselves.
Students Live Where They Serve …Click here to read more.
Sophomore Linwood Fields grew up without a father in a drug-infested Dallas neighborhood, but he always had family and friends around “to nurture me and help me fulfill my potential,“ he says. He refused to let his environment interfere with his goal of attending college.
“People took time out to mentor me through difficult situations when I was growing up,” says Fields, who is majoring in political science and English with plans of attending law school. Since he was 8, he has volunteered with a Dallas nonprofit, Youth Believing in Change. But it wasn’t until he participated in LeaderShapedfw, a conference offered through SMU’s Office of Leadership and Community Involvement (LCI), that he became more involved as a volunteer at the University.
“I feel very passionate about helping others. As long as
they are succeeding as human beings and at their school work, I feel my purpose is being fulfilled,” he says.
This spring he took a Wellness course that requires 45 hours of community service. Fields worked with Heart House of Dallas, a nonprofit that offers after-school programs, tutoring and mentoring. He also works a paid part-time job tutoring students at North Dallas High School.
Fields isn’t alone in his quest to enrich his campus experience and serve others. Each year, 2,500 students volunteer with more than 70 Dallas-area agencies, says Carol Clyde, director of LCI. Other students serve the community through programs in the various schools at SMU.
SMU offers numerous opportunities for students to engage in social activism.
In addition to LCI’s online volunteer database, the University provides a service house; service-learning coursework; an off-campus house sponsored by the Center for Academic-Community Engagement (ACE); and the community-service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega.
“SMU tries to help students become leaders in a global society,” Clyde says. <ldquo;The service options introduce students to what it is like to be part of a larger community.”
Finding The Right Fit
As native of Arizona, Amy Ward was in search of opportunities to connect
with people and adjust to her newly adopted city of Dallas. An active volunteer in high school, she sought out SPARC (Students Promoting Awareness, Responsibility and Citizenship), a campus-sponsored program that encourages students to become involved in community service.
Ward began her tenure with SPARC as its arts and culture coordinator and now serves as its vice president. She says the organization offers eye-opening opportunities for students through programs such as Community Service Day and Alternative Spring Break. Her passion for the arts led her to volunteer with sixth-grade students at the Meadows Museum, but she also participates in Habitat for Humanity projects and efforts to clean up White Rock Lake.
“We get in our little bubble at SMU and forget there’s
a whole other community out there that’s not quite as well off as we are,” says Ward, a senior majoring in corporate communications and public affairs and Spanish. “It’s really great as a college student to stay connected to the outside community.”
Two years after earning a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from SMU, Simeon Knight ’92 returned to campus to visit the career center. He underwent two rounds of mock interviews and critiques by counselors to prepare for an all-day job interview.
“I remember thinking, ‘If only I had done this earlier!’” says Knight, who aced the actual interview and landed a position in banking management.
Top companies recruit new employees at Hegi Career Center career fairs, which are open to students and alumni.
Fifteen years later, with his bank division scheduled to close, Knight is revisiting SMU’s Hegi Family Career Development Center to seek a new direction. He updated his résumé and took assessments of his interests and personality traits.
“I haven’t needed to think about a résumé for 15 years, so this process has been extremely helpful,” he says.
In today’s uncertain economic climate, more alumni and students are turning to SMU’s career counselors for guidance, says Troy Behrens, career center executive director. “The center connects alumni and students with employers, even in a tough market,” he says.
Since August 2007, alumni who attended job fairs at SMU increased from 1 percent to nearly 6 percent. From August to December 2007, the Hegi Center had
only three alumni career counseling appointments; during the same time in 2008, it had 29.
In addition, the center offers job and internship search strategies, company and graduate school research, mock interviews, workshops on networking and working abroad, and career fairs that attract from 75 to 95 employers.
The center’s online MustangTrak features hundreds of jobs and internships, 75 percent of which are open to all majors.
“Whether you’re 18 or 78, the center offers significant resources for career transitions and growth,” says Fred Hegi ’66, who serves on the SMU Board of Trustees. In 2001, Hegi and his wife, Jan ’66, along with their family, provided the lead gift for a $3 million endowment and expansion of SMU’s career center at Hughes-Trigg Student Center.
As part of The Second Century Campaign, the University is seeking additional donor support for the center’s endowment and programs, including enhanced four-year planning for students and an expanded alumni network.
“The career development process should start with freshman orientation and continue throughout the alumni’s lifetime as we repot ourselves during our careers,” Hegi says.
With students, the career center emphasizes the importance of balancing academic achievement, leadership activities and internships.
Sophomore Andrew Hendrix, a triple major in political science, public policy and economics with financial applications, already has participated in several career workshops and met with counselors to sharpen his résumé.
“The counselors tie what you’re doing now with what you hope to be doing in the future,” says Hendrix, who is considering a law or Master’s degree in international economics after he graduates. “They know how to market you.”
Since 1973, in the mountains of northern New Mexico, SMU-in-Taos has been offering summer courses. The rustic
casitas at the Fort Burgwin campus, however, were impractical for use during colder weather. And lack of cell phone service made students and faculty feel more isolated than they prefer in this day of instant communication.
Now, the construction of new casitas, renovations to existing housing and technological improvements will allow students and faculty to live at SMU-in-Taos comfortably during the fall and winter, making it possible to offer a fall semester for the first time. A $4 million gift from William P. Clements Jr. ’39 and his wife, Rita, is funding the improvements, which will be dedicated this summer.
To qualify as fall Taos Scholars, students must have a minimum 3.3 GPA and be sophomores in fall 2009. Students will take 12-16 hours of courses, among them anthropology, geology, biology, statistics, accounting, photography, art, literature and history. SMU-in-Taos director Mike Adler says each course will use the region’s history and culture as a platform for experiential learning.
The semester will be broken into four blocks of about three weeks each, with five-day breaks between each block. During breaks, students can participate in outdoor adventures to places like the Grand Canyon; SMU-in-Taos will cover the cost of one excursion for each student.
Adler believes a unique aspect of the new fall program will be the Taos Experience course required of all students. Meeting once a week, the course will include a service-learning component, allowing students to work with such groups
as Habitat for Humanity and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, among others. In addition, a wellness program will offer activities ranging from hiking to fly-fishing.
When an influenza outbreak hit campus in January, the SMU Memorial Health Center medical staff treated hundreds of flu-related complaints and teamed up with the Dallas County Health Department to offer a series of vaccine clinics. A total of 1,000 flu shots was administered
in a matter of days.
Staff, programs and services have been expanded over the past decade to meet changing student needs, says Pat Hite, director of health services for the past 13 years. “Especially
in the area of drug and alcohol counseling, we’re taking a more proactive approach than when I started here in the 1990s.&rdquo
Several recent improvements evolved from recommendations made by the SMU Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention. The center’s hours have been extended to 7 p.m. on Thursdays and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, and emergency services are available from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In November, Nurse Response, a medical triage phone service, was implemented to provide 24-hour health
care advice and assistance. A total of 64 calls had been received as of mid-March, with 34 occurring in January during the
flu outbreak.
In addition, the center is emphasizing health education as a preventive measure. Megan Knapp, who holds a Master’s degree in public health, joined SMU in 2007 as health educator. “I cover everything health related, but a lot of my effort also is focused on substance abuse issues,” she says.
She teaches two classes designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills to intervene with peers who wrestle with substance abuse issues:
TIPS (Training for Intervention ProcedureS) provides strategies and language to use in situations where alcohol is being abused or misused, she explains. Topics such as evaluating behavioral clues and devising appropriate responses are covered in the 2.5-hour class, which 200 students completed in the fall.
Because I Care supplements the TIPS program by emphasizing drug abuse intervention techniques. Last fall, 700 students completed the one-hour Wellness module. “The idea is to create a caring community so that when students see friends grapple with abuse problems, they’ll step up and say something and assist them in getting help,” Knapp says.
A Peer Advising Network (PAN) that Knapp is building expands the student-to-student conversation to such matters as sexual responsibility, safety and stress alleviation. “The aim is for students to get involved, to take responsibility for themselves, their campus and their community.”
The Guildhall, a graduate-level digital game development program, is located at SMU-in-Plano.
As the sun sinks into the western horizon, the school day is just beginning for those driving into the SMU-in-Plano parking lot.
“Our student profile is very different from that of the main campus,” says campus director Kate Livingston. “In a single class, people may range in age from 22 to 72. More than 47 percent of those age 25 and older in Collin County have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Most are working professionals, so evening classes are ideal for their schedules.”
Daytime classes also are offered at the University’s 16-acre facility, located off the Dallas North Tollway on Tennyson Parkway. Approximately 800 students from the Dallas-Fort Worth area are enrolled in graduate studies and professional development programs in business, technology, engineering and education.
SMU appears to be in the right place at the right time. According to a 2008 U.S. Census Bureau report, Plano is the wealthiest of U.S. cities with a population of 250,000 or more, and Collin County is one of the fastest-growing counties
in Texas. The campus opened in 1997 in the heart of the Legacy Business Park in four two-story buildings formerly occupied by Electronic Data Systems (EDS).
“SMU-in-Plano boosts the business IQ of Plano,” says Jamie Schell ’79 of AR Schell & Son Agency-Insurance, president of the Plano Chamber of Commerce. “The quality of the educational experience through the Cox Professional M.B.A., The Guildhall [graduate-level digital game development], Dispute Resolution, Engineering Master’s and other programs adds measurable value to the local business community.”
And an online recruitment tool offered by Cox’s M.B.A. Career Management Center, Coxmbatalent.com, “offers local businesses the
chance to tap into an excellent talent pool,“ Schell says.
Programs mine the resources of the entire University. For example, the Cox School of Business offers part of its evening PMBA program, ranked 10th in the nation by Forbes magazine, at the Plano campus. In the first year, students take core classes together in Plano, and in the second year, they take electives
at the main campus.
When Jason Degele, a client director in AT&T’s wireless division, researched graduate program options, SMU’s strong academic reputation and the convenience of the Plano campus to his Denton County home made it
an easy decision.
Although he will not complete the PMBA program until August or December, his graduate studies already have had the desired effect. “I wanted to advance my career at a faster pace, and the PMBA program has opened doors already,” he says. “I’m now in AT&T’s leadership development program.
I see good things in store for the future.”
For first-year Student Senator Jack Benage, inspiration struck on his way to class last fall – when he realized he could not see a single recycling bin anywhere along SMU’s traditional entrance to campus.
“If there are any permanent bins on Bishop Boulevard, they aren’t prominent enough,” he says. “I asked several students if they recalled the presence of recycling bins during home tailgate parties, and none of them could
remember seeing any.”
Benage took action: He wrote and sponsored a Student Senate proposal to add recycling bins to the Boulevard festivities that take place before every SMU home football game. In 2009, the Senate passed the legislation, which aims to establish a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of recycling bins to trash cans during Boulevard tailgate activities.
That victory “got me thinking about how SMU could be more environmentally friendly,” Benage says. It also attracted attention from other students concerned about the environment. As a result, the University has formed a new committee on sustainability, which has become a hub for environmental efforts by faculty, staff and students.
“We noticed a lot of overlap as far as green efforts are concerned,” says Tiana Lightfoot ’07. “Coordinating all these efforts became important, and that’s where the Sustainability Committee comes in.”
Lightfoot, a markets and culture graduate and former student leader in
the Environmental Society, now works with Engineering Dean Geoffrey Orsak
in SMU’s greenest facility – the Embrey Engineering Building. A showpiece of campus sustainability, the Embrey Building was certified in December 2007 as meeting the gold standard established by the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design (LEED) program. A three-story skylight provides natural sunlight to the interior, while specially designed pavers reflect excess rays away from the building to make it easier to cool in the summer. Recycled materials appear everywhere from cabinets to carpets, while the landscaping features drought-tolerant plants kept healthy with recycled water. The building also serves as a living laboratory for students in the Environmental and Civil Engineering Department housed within it.
Yet even older campus buildings can be made significantly more earth-friendly, says Michael Paul, Sustainability Committee interim co-chair and executive director
of facilities management and sustainability in SMU’s Office of Campus Planning
and Plant Operations (CPPO). Paul’s department has initiated dozens of refinements designed to reduce the University’s ecological footprint.
Super-efficient, long-lasting LCD and compact fluorescent bulbs now illuminate signs and buildings, while upgraded heating and cooling systems save even more electricity. Rainwater recovered from the roofs of campus buildings
is used to soak lawns and flower beds. Recycling boxes in every facility allow community members to deposit paper, plastic, aluminum and other materials into a single convenient receptacle.
Even paper products used are now Green Seal Certified: made with 20 to 40 percent recycled materials and constructed without cores, resulting in less waste delivered to landfills.
The University demonstrated its commitment to sustainability by joining the EPA Green Power Partnership in 2006 and the Green Building Initiative in 2008. In addition, SMU is a member of the National Center for Science and the Environment, part of the subgroup that works with university curricula, says Bonnie Jacobs, Sustainability Committee interim co-chair and director of the Environmental Science Program in Dedman College.
The awareness theme continues into SMU’s residence halls. These campus communities have added an Environmental Representative (or E-Rep) to each Hall or Community Council, says Cori Cusker, residence hall director of Boaz Hall.
E-Reps promote and model environmentally conscious behavior in their halls or communities – from providing recycling bags to planning educational meetings.
E-Reps also help rally SMU participation in Recyclemania, an annual intercollegiate competition that helps colleges and universities set goals for campus waste reduction.
Cox’s Niemi contends that Texas’ fortunes will not diminish drastically, and when the national rebound begins, the state stands to prosper. He predicts that companies will leave high-tax states
and relocate to Texas. The flood of employers and job seekers could boost the state’s population by as much as 50 percent through 2030, he says. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and California also will gain population. Two of those states, Florida and California, are major sources of SMU’s enrollment.
“You can’t separate higher education from the underlying strength of the economy,” he says. An influx of affluent, well-educated migrants ultimately could benefit SMU, he adds. “Think of the demand [for their children] to get into SMU. Think of the quality of our freshman classes. It’s a good time to
be in Dallas, Texas.”
Paul Escamilla also believes the recession presents opportunities to learn and reevaluate. And like Fomby, Escamilla, an author, adjunct professor of preaching and associate director of public affairs
at Perkins School of Theology, finds poetry in the fiscal crisis.
“The narrowed economic environment in which we find ourselves globally reminds me of a couple of lines from Emily Dickinson: ‘By a departing
light/We see acuter quite/Than by a wick that stays.’”
“When things aren’t so sunny, in that ‘departing light,’ we start to think with more intention about our true source of fulfillment. What we mean by ‘the good life’ changes into a more classical notion,” he says. “We become
less focused on our comforts and conveniences and begin to think
about relationships, community
and responsibility.”
Escamilla’s latest book, Longing for Enough in a Culture of More (Abingdon Press, 2007), hit the shelves before markets plummeted. As a reflection on building a richer life by simplifying material needs and focusing outward, its themes are especially relevant. He believes the worst of times can bring out the best in people.
“We become
less focused on our comforts and conveniences and begin to think
about relationships, community
and responsibility.”
While people are not flocking to worship services in exceptional numbers, “the church has seen a strong and steady expression of generosity and compassion in giving,” he says. “To the degree that we are compassionate, we find resources. It is more our compassion than our resources that provides the catalyst for responding to others’ needs.”
Tom Fomby, professor of economics in Dedman College, agrees that any stimulus initiative is better than nothing.
“It’s like exploratory surgery,” he says. “We will finally get to the cancer and remove it, but there’s a lot of repairing to be done in the process. It doesn’t always work as we may like, but we have to do something.”
Fomby, who is also a research associate with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a consultant to the World Bank,
visualizes “an L-shaped recovery” forming. “The economy will slide down, then stay flat for a long period” before steadily ticking upward.
“The unusual nature of this recession is that it’s happening worldwide,”
he says. “In previous recessions, other countries weren’t affected in the
same way at the same time, so we could rely on them to help pull us out. Now, we’re a global economy and world trade is stymied.
“There’s reticence to lend. There’s reticence to buy. There’s reticence here, reticence there, reticence, reticence everywhere,” he says, adding an economics spin to Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Trade protectionist rumblings in Washington worry Fomby. His research tracking Texas’ financial status indicates that if the North American Free Trade Agreement is dismantled, “Texas will be seriously affected and we could see the unemployment rate go up. On a national scale, trade wars potentially could deepen and prolong the recession,”
he says.
“New economic history is being written as we speak.”
Such unprecedented global circumstances pose intriguing questions for economists. “There’s more contemplation of market regulation and rules of commerce,” Fomby says. “We’re coming to better understand efficient regulation – which markets need more regulation, which markets need less.”
The interconnectedness of links in
the world economy is becoming clearer. “What has happened in the past two years has demonstrated how important the credit market is to our global economy. When the markets freeze up, there’s a much more profound effect than we have appreciated in the past,” he says.
“New economic history is being written as we speak.”
Redefining the good life … Click here to read more.
Speaking about the economic outlook at a luncheon sponsored by the SMU Faculty Club in February, Niemi didn’t mince words: “2009 looks like a painful year.”
Niemi, who holds the Tolleson Chair in Business Leadership, credits Bush administration tax cuts for fending off the downturn until the end of 2007
and believes that a $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress in February was necessary. “Nothing else seems to be working,” he says. “We need a shock to the system, a huge infusion of new spending.”
Although the final legislation may not be perfect, “there’s a lot of job creation in the stimulus package that hasn’t been accounted for yet,” he says. He notes that refilling shrinking state coffers ultimately could boost the economy
by putting furloughed state employees back to work around the country.
“Reticence, reticence everywhere” … Click here to read more.
nationally recognized leader in the field of evidence-based education,
Lyon served as a research scientist in the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1992 to 2000 and was chief of that branch from 2000 to 2005. In addition, he was an adviser to the Bush administration on child development and reading research.
At the NIH, Lyon directed research that led to improvements in math and reading scores. “What we found was that even at Blue Ribbon schools recognized for their excellence, there were substantial numbers of students
who had not learned to read,” he says. “Because those schools had more students at high levels of proficiency, the underachievers were hidden.”
Armed with those results, he championed the requirement that all racial, ethnic and economic student subgroups show similar success for a school to be highly rated. That policy change forced schools to concentrate efforts on low-achievers.
In addition, breaking out that data made it possible to conduct research demonstrating that the underlying problem is poverty – not race or ethnicity, he says.
Texas’ graduation rate of 69 percent lags behind the national average of 71 percent, according to statistics from the Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE),
a national policy and advocacy organization that promotes high school reform. AEE figures show that 118,100 students did not graduate from Texas high schools
in 2008. The estimated lost lifetime earnings for those dropouts are more than $30.7 billion, according to AEE statistics.
Lacking adequate reading skills, students are destined for low-paying jobs, Lyon says. “In addition to the negative effect illiteracy has on health outcomes, they likely will drain public resources because of reduced tax revenue and increased expenditures for services like [government-funded] health care and prisons, two areas
where those with low literacy are over-represented.”
Lyon notes that the SMU educational leadership program seeks to produce graduates who can help prepare the future North Texas workforce to obtain the well-paying jobs of tomorrow that will require solid literacy skills.
“The number of opportunities for meaningful employment for non-readers has shrunk to minimal levels because all world economies are now based upon the ability to process print.”
n top of global financial uncertainty, Texas faces a further threat: schools that fail their students. They will continue to damage the state’s economy unless school districts have the leadership to institute change in the way children are taught, says G. Reid Lyon, an expert on how children learn.
“If you don’t make it in school, you do not make it in life, and that is a fact,” Lyon declared at the groundbreaking of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development in December. “Here’s what we’ve learned through research conducted at SMU and elsewhere: We actually know a great deal about how kids learn. We know a lot about why kids do not learn, and we know a lot about what to do about it.
“Unfortunately, a huge gap exists between what we know and what we
do in schools.”
G. Reid Lyon shares a joke with second-grade students at Williams Preparatory School in Dallas. A former elementary school teacher, Lyon says most reading difficulties can be prevented through early identification of problems and effective instruction.
Three decades of research show that most reading difficulties actually can be prevented if children are identified early, in kindergarten and first grade, and provided with effective instruction, says Lyon, one of the authors of the federal Reading First legislation – a component of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Even the mathematics skills that need to be learned and applied require proficient reading and comprehension capabilities. Too often, help is withheld until third grade or later, when the struggling learner is so far behind it takes hours of daily intervention to catch up, he says.
“What’s needed now, in addition to expert teachers, is outstanding education leaders to create a school environment that fosters success,” he says.
Lyon joined the faculty of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School in September as Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and Leadership. A neuropsychologist and former third-grade teacher, he helped create the school’s new Master of Education degree in educational leadership, which will be launched this fall.
He describes the new Master’s degree as a rigorous, evidence-based graduate program that stresses the immediate application of theory and leadership concepts in the school setting. Students in the program will intern at schools in the Dallas area and will be assessed on their ability to apply what they learn.
SMU plans to partner in the assessments with the Dallas Independent School District’s research department, an office that has led the nation in developing computer-based systems to track student achievement. The district recently received a $3.77 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to strengthen efforts to track student performance and improve college readiness.
A nationally recognized leader in the field of evidence-based education, Lyon served as a research scientist in the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1992 to 2000 and was chief of that branch from 2000 to 2005. In addition, he was an adviser to the Bush administration on child development and reading research.
At the NIH, Lyon directed research that led to improvements in math and reading scores. “What we found was that even at Blue Ribbon schools recognized for their excellence, there were substantial numbers of students who had not learned to read,” he says. “Because those schools had more students at high levels of proficiency, the underachievers were hidden.”
Armed with those results, he championed the requirement that all racial, ethnic and economic student subgroups show similar success for a school to be highly rated. That policy change forced schools to concentrate efforts on low-achievers. In addition, breaking out that data made it possible to conduct research demonstrating that the underlying problem is poverty – not race or ethnicity, he says.
Texas’ graduation rate of 69 percent lags behind the national average of 71 percent, according to statistics from the Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE), a national policy and advocacy organization that promotes high school reform. AEE figures show that 118,100 students did not graduate from Texas high schools in 2008. The estimated lost lifetime earnings for those dropouts are more than $30.7 billion, according to AEE statistics.
Lacking adequate reading skills, students are destined for low-paying jobs, Lyon says. “In addition to the negative effect illiteracy has on health outcomes, they likely will drain public resources because of reduced tax revenue and increased expenditures for services like [government-funded] health care and prisons, two areas where those with low literacy are over-represented.”
Lyon notes that the SMU educational leadership program seeks to produce graduates who can help prepare the future North Texas workforce to obtain the well-paying jobs of tomorrow that will require solid literacy skills.
“The number of opportunities for meaningful employment for non-readers has shrunk to minimal levels because all world economies are now based upon the ability to process print.”
– Deborah Wormser
Bonnie Resler Karlsrud has written Dale Resler Behind the Scene in El Paso, a historical narrative about her father, an El Paso civic leader and philanthropist.
James (Jim) Cronin, the 1980 Nobel Prize winner in physics, attended his Highland Park High School class’ 60th reunion in September.
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William (Bill) Shockley was at the 60th reunion last fall of the 1948 and 1949 Highland Park High School classes. He retired in 1996 as president of the Andrews Corporation after a 46-year international high-tech career.
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Patricia Keene Stewart and her husband are active volunteers in Palm City, FL, where they raised funds for a shelter for abused women and children. She serves local charities and is a member of the library board.
56
Richard Deats wrote Marked for Life (New City Press), the story of Hildegard Goss-Mayr and her work in human and civil rights.
Geraldine (Tincy) Miller received the TACA Silver Cup March 6, 2009, in recognition of her support for and contributions to the performing arts in Dallas. She has advocated for arts education in Texas as a member of the State Board of Education for the past 24 years.
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William R. (Bill) Janowski was honored Jan. 29, 2009, at the opening reception for “Art Collection of Bill and Jo Janowski,” a six-month exhibit at the National Automobile Museum in Reno. The paintings and sculptures feature racing as a theme and include cars, legendary drivers and activities of the sport. He retired from active racing in 2008.
Geri Sue Hudson Morgan is a six-and-a-half-year kidney transplant survivor. During 1980-2001 she helped establish an eye hospital in China to provide free care to the needy.
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Bill B. Hedges has been appointed archivist of the South Central Jurisdiction Mission Council. He also is a member of the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church.
In memory of James E. Caswell (M.T. ’66, M.T. ’70), the Texas Association of Student Personnel Administrators renamed its highest honor the Dr. James E. (Jim) Caswell Distinguished Service Award. He was vice president for student affairs at SMU from 1988 until his retirement in spring 2007.
64
Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: John M. Haley, Sandra Garland Cecil
John H. Buck wrote Words of Enrichment (Vantage Press, 2008), a vocabulary guide of 500 words. He moved to Grandview, TX, after retiring from a 30-year law practice in Houston.
65
Steven C. Salch (J.D. ’68) has been named the Outstanding Texas Tax Lawyer by the taxation section of the State Bar of Texas.
66
Helmut Sohmen received the Friendship Ambassador Award in October 2008 from the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. He is chair of BW Corporation Limited in Hong Kong (formerly World-Wide Shipping Group Limited).
67
Walter J. Humann was presented the Legacy of Leadership Award by the White House Fellows Foundation Oct. 24, 2008, in Washington, D.C., to honor his public service at national and local levels. He was a White House Fellow in 1966-67. He is married to the former Beatrice Read (’59), and they have three children and 11 grandchildren.
68
Dale Bulla and his wife, Pat, received the National Wildlife Federation’s 2008 Volunteer of the Year award in Keystone, CO, for ensuring a wildlife heritage for future generations by protecting wildlife and habitat in Central Texas.
69
Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: G. Mark Cullum, Delilah Holmes Boyd, Cynthia Taylor Mills
Jerry LeVias appeared in the HBO special Breaking the Huddle Dec. 16, 2008.
Harry M. Wyatt III was nominated by President George W. Bush in November 2008 as the next Air National Guard director with the rank of lieutenant general. He will develop and coordinate policies, plans and programs for more than 107,000 Air Guardsmen nationwide. He succeeds Gen. Craig R. McKinley ’74.
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William Frank Carroll was elected to the Dallas Bar Association Board of Directors for 2008-10, the Dallas Bar Antitrust and Trade Regulation Council for 2009 and the American Law Institute.
Janet Bunn Hensell and her sisters, Patricia Bunn Green ’77 and Ellen Craig, mourn the loss of their father, Rufus Eugene Bunn ’46, who died in April.
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Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: Steve Morton, Robert G. White Jr. and Brenda Beach White
Gary L. Ingram was chosen a Top Attorney by his peers and featured in Fort Worth, Texas magazine. He is a partner in the Fort Worth office of Jackson Walker LLP and statewide chair of the firm’s labor and employment section.
Deanna Koelling married Steve Blahut in 1987. She is a certified professional coder at Claremore Indian Hospital in Claremore, OK.
Craig R. McKinley was promoted to four-star general, the first in National Guard history, at a Pentagon ceremony Nov. 17, 2008. Present were his wife, Cheryl, son Patrick and daughter Christina. As National Guard bureau chief, he is principal adviser to the defense secretary on all National Guard matters.
Patrick Yack was named Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska – Anchorage.
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Radamee Orlandi sold a clinical dental practice after 30 years and is now an assistant to the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Port St. Lucie, FL., working in Christian education and discipleship.
Donnie Ray Albert performed a selection of Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs in February with the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera and narrated A Lincoln Portrait.
David Bates is a Dallas artist whose painting was featured on the poster for the 2008 Texas Book Festival. A monograph of his work, David Bates (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in association with Scala Publishers), was published in 2007.
Michael M. Carlson joined the San Francisco office of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP as a partner in commercial litigation. He has been recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer by Law & Politics and was named one of Silicon Valley’s Top Attorneys in 2005 and 2006 by San José Magazine.
Edward B. Rust Jr. is a board member of the Chicago Public Education Fund, which seeks to improve the management of schools and the performance of principals and teachers. He is an attorney and chair and chief executive since 1985 of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.
Ralph C. Shive is a chartered financial analyst and former manager of the mutual fund FMIEX. He works in South Bend, IN.
Gary Alan Smith was named by The United Methodist Publishing House as project director and co-editor of the new hymn and worship book authorized by the 2008 General Conference.
John Samuel Tieman (M.A. ’79) presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in January 2009. “The Ghost in the Schoolroom: A Primer in the Lessons of Shame” is published in Schools: Studies in Education (Journals Division, University of Chicago Press) and addresses teachers’ use of shaming in the classroom. He is a widely published essayist and poet.
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Arthur (Art) Hains was game-day host for the Kansas City Chiefs radio network in the 2008 season and is in his 29th year as the “Voice of the Bears” on the Missouri State University radio network.
Jeannette Stephenson Keton wrote a second book, a biography of Beatrice Carr Wallace, the first woman to serve on the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission. Keton coaches Children’s Medical Center executives in Dallas on presentation and communication skills and is in her fifth year as a communications consultant for Trinity Industries.
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David Bostick is chief executive officer of Goodwill Fort Worth. He has doubled revenue growth, expanded the number of retail stores, started a recycling program and opened a computer store to provide additional revenue. He started with Goodwill in 1993 as director of rehabilitation.
Valerie E. Ertz was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to a second six-year term on the Board of Regents at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. A board member since 2003, she was chair in 2008. She is owner and president of VEE Services.
Ronald (Ron) Gaswirth was selected a 2008 Texas Super Lawyer. He is an employment and labor attorney in the Dallas office of Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP.
Lisa Loy Laughlin is director of major gifts and planned giving for Communities in Schools Dallas Region Inc., which provides academic and social support services to more than 420,000 children and helps underachieving, at-risk students. She has been an educator, community leader and fund-raiser for more than 20 years. She and her husband, Kendall, have three sons.
Thomas B. Slater (D. Min. ’81) is a New Testament professor in McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta. His article on a key phrase in Revelations 19:11, 21:5 and 22:6 was translated into French for use by ministers in French-speaking African countries.
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Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: Patrick F. Hammer, Kevin Meeks and Laura Green Meeks
Martha L. Danhof, DO, is the lead hospitalist and palliative care physician at Baylor All Saints Hospital in Fort Worth. She also is the POD group leader for IPC, a leading national physician group practice focused on hospital medicine.
Doug Adelstein just completed almost eight years of service as a city councilman in Lynden, WA.
Vasile Beluska was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in May 2008 by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations for helping musicians from Eastern Europe come to the United States to develop their careers. He is a professor of music performance studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Nancy Lowell George and her children, Emily George Grubbs ’08, Adam and Andy, were featured in the December 2008 Guideposts magazine in Nancy’s story of her family’s Christmas 12 years ago when a now-healthy Andy was critically ill with leukemia. She is a senior writer and editor in the Office of Public Affairs at SMU and a freelance magazine writer.
Bill Bogart has been appointed to the Board of Directors of TACA, a nonprofit organization that funds the arts in North Texas. He has served on the boards of Texas Ballet Theater, The Dallas Opera and the President’s Council of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. A managing director for JP Morgan, he and his wife, Brenda, have six children.
Regina Picone Etherton is the director of Regina P. Etherton & Associates LLC, a Chicago law firm. She was appointed to the Board of Managers for the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, selected as one of the American Trial Lawyers Association’s top 100 trial lawyers and named to the Illinois Super Lawyers list. She also was chosen by Lawdragon magazine as one of the leading lawyers in America for plaintiffs.
John Fisher, M.D., is an interventional radiologist with extensive experience in breast imaging and breast biopsy. He founded Biopsy Services in 2001, a biomedical research and device company that developed the products HydroMARK and BioSEAL. He is moving his company from Tucson to Pinellas County, FL. He has a daughter, Libby.
Harvey Solganick published an article, “Apologetics Worldviews,” in Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (Blackwell Publications, 2009).
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Ann Swisher is a new member of the Board of Directors of TACA, a nonprofit organization that supports performing arts organizations in North Texas. She serves on the President’s Advisory Council of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and the Brinker International Forum Board of Advisors. She is married to Michael McGehee.
Kurt-Alexander Zeller was promoted to associate professor with tenure at Clayton State University in Atlanta, where he is director of opera and vocal studies. He co-authored the book What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body (Plural Publishing, 2008).
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Sheron Patterson (M.Div. ’89, D.Min. ’96) was honored at the Susan G. Komen Dallas Race for the Cure Eighth Annual Kick-Off Luncheon Oct. 15, 2008
Joseph D. (Chip) Sheppard III received the President’s Award from the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association for extraordinary service to the legal profession and was a 2008 finalist for Missouri Lawyer of the Year. He is a shareholder of Carnahan, Evans, Cantwell & Brown PC and practices real estate, business, securities and intellectual property litigation and dispute resolution.
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Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: Hal Gibbs, Chris J. Gilker and Heather Evans Gilker
Barbara Elias-Perciful, a Dallas attorney and child advocate, was honored by the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division as the Distinguished Lawyer recipient of the 2009 Child Advocacy Award for her service on behalf of abused and neglected children. The prestigious award is based on an individual’s personal achievements and impact in helping abused and neglected children. She is the founder and director of Texas Loves Children, a nonprofit organization that assists lawyers, judges and others working with child protection cases.
Larry McCord is in his 23rd year of teaching college-level music. Currently at Hill College in Hillsboro, TX, he also directs the music ministry at a United Methodist church near Waco.
Christopher Braun is one of 48 new Fellows elected to membership in the American College of Environmental Lawyers as announced at the annual meeting in San Francisco Oct. 1, 2008. He has a practice with Plews Shadley Racher & Braun LLP in Indianapolis.
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Roald Bradstock is shown throwing the javelin at a May 1985 SMU competition in a popular video posted online. Along with a full-time career in fine art, he still competes at age 46. He holds the world’s masters age group record and last year competed in a record-setting seventh Olympic trials. He stages videos on YouTube.com and sets unofficial world records for throwing such items as eggs, fish, iPods, cell phones and golf balls.
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Bob Jennings is co-author of The Adversity Paradox: An Unconventional Guide to Achieving Uncommon Business Success (St. Martin’s Press, April 2009). He is president of Lean Management Inc., a consulting company focused on senior management methods and execution. He lives in Des Moines, IA.
Curt R. Roberts is a commercial pilot, currently a DC9 captain for Delta Air Lines. He has homes in St. Paul, MN, and Scottsdale, AZ.
Millie A. Sall joined the Houston office of law firm Thompson & Knight LLP in January 2009. She has 20 years of legal experience and practices corporate reorganization and creditors’ rights, corporate crisis management and restructuring.
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Mary Kay Holman-Romero was married in June 2008 in Orange County, CA, in one of the first same-sex marriages in a mainline denominational church.
Fred Meisenheimer joined Atmos Energy Corporation in June 2000 as vice president and controller. His promotion to senior vice president and chief financial officer was announced Feb. 3.
Andrea Nicole Copeland Sexton wrote her first novel, Party Favors (Globe Pequot Press, 2008).
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Whit Sheppard lives with his wife and young daughter in Richmond, VA. He contributed a piece to the recently released Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Golf Book.
Lilian Garcia-Roig had an exhibition in January and February at Valley House Gallery in Dallas of more than 30 “Autumn Spectacles” maximalist landscapes she painted in Texas, Florida, New Hampshire, Alabama and Washington. She is a professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Steve Kinderman is a member of the Air Force Band of the Rockies Brass Quintet.
John O’Reilly has appointments by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to the Palomar Airport Advisory Committee and by the Carlsbad, CA, mayor and city council to the Envision Carlsbad Citizens Committee to create a vision of Carlsbad 20 years into the future. He owns a comprehensive wealth management firm in Carlsbad.
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Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: Tracey E. George, Caroline Waggoner Hautt and Craig H. Yaksick
Yikwon P. Kim has worked since October 2007 as an exhibits designer/specialist for the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, CA.
Laura Claycomb sang the role of Tytania in the Houston Grand Opera’s February production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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Kimberly Grigsby was keynote speaker Feb. 9 at the Dallas Museum of Art when TACA, a nonprofit fund-raising organization for the performing arts in North Texas, distributed grants, including one to Meadows School of the Arts.
She is a pianist and musical director in New York City with extensive Broadway credits. She also served an artist’s residency at SMU, working with music and theater students in preparation for the musical production The Two Orphans April 29-May 3.
Stephanie Murdock is a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain. As media operations officer, she handles public affairs, media outreach and queries from international news outlets.
Steven E. Ross was named in October 2008 to head the intellectual property practice group at Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP in Dallas. He focuses on business development, management, administration, training and mentoring programs for more than 50 attorneys, patent agents and staff.
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Matt and Jennifer Leslie Boettcher announce the birth of Bo Haworth Dec. 17, 2007, a brother for son Blake. The family lives in Atlanta.
Nadja Swarovski was profiled in The New York Times Style Magazine for winter 2008. She lends assistance to the fashion industry by providing financing and raw materials to designers and design newcomers. She and her husband, Rupert Adams, live in London with their children.
Steven M. Tyndall joined the Austin office of Baker Botts LLP Jan. 1, 2009, as partner. He practices general corporate law, securities law and mergers and acquisitions.
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William E. (Bill) Adams Jr. (J.D. ’96) is a shareholder at Gunster Yoakley in Jacksonville, FL, specializing in commercial litigation. Florida Trend magazine named him among the “legal elite” for 2008.
Michael T. Carney and his wife, Eunjung, had their first child, Tom, in 2008. Carney continues his business law and trust and estates practice in San Mateo, CA.
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Reunion: November 7, 2007
Chairs: Molly Noble Kidd and Scott J. Mallonee
Jennifer Adams Brinks and husband Bryan of Denver welcomed a son, Alexander Richard, June 15, 2007. Big brother is Adam.
Monica E. Edwards (M.S. ’96) was named a partner in the Evansville, IN, law firm Kahn, Dees, Donovan & Kahn LLP effective Jan. 1. She practices environmental, intellectual property and real estate law.
Kimberly Head-Amos and her husband, Lewis, announce the birth of their daughter, Anne Beaty, Aug. 18, 2007. They live in Decatur, GA, where Kimberly leads SMU’s Atlanta Alumni Chapter
Ashley Farmer Jenkins and her husband, Chad, are parents of James Clark, born July 19, 2007, and Grant, born Oct. 30, 2004. Their home is Nolensville, TN.
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Anjie Coplin is the director of communications for the west and southwest regions of Aetna.
Erin Nealy Cox, a Dallas digital forensic expert, has been named to the Dallas Business Journal’s “Forty Under Forty” list of the city’s top young business minds. She is a managing director and deputy general counsel for the global digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg.
Gavin Harris and his wife, Lisa, welcomed Claire Elizabeth, Sept. 21, 2007. They live in Atlanta.
Quino Martinez was elevated to partner at the Orlando law firm Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed PA, practicing real estate and finance law.
Colleen Smith McTaggart and her husband, Lawrence, are the parents of Lawrence John McTaggart IV, born May 20, 2007. They live in Chicago.
Charlotte Harrington Page and her husband, Michael, announce the birth of Naomi Catherine Aug. 6, 2007. They also have a son, Austin, and live in Hailey, ID.
James W. Worlein speaks before groups about his experiences as an Iraq war veteran. An essay he wrote was published online by Iraq Veterans Against the War.
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Brad Ashlin announces the birth of his son, William, Sept. 5, 2007.
Pietro Rizzo made his American conducting debut in February at the Dallas Opera production of La bohème, which he conducted from memory. His next engagement was at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci.
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Suzy Shire Adams and Cord Adams ’95 were married Feb. 21 in Perkins Chapel. They reside in Dallas.
Sean Mackay was awarded a National Science Foundation research fellowship for his Boston University graduate study in geomorphology, polar glaciology, which is linked to his interest in issues of global climate change. At SMU, he was in the first class of Hunt Leadership Scholars (’93) and graduated with a double major in physics and music.
J.R. Johnson is co-founder and CEO of VirtualTourist.com, one of the world’s largest online travel communities. The nine-year-old business receives more than 6 million unique visitors each month, according to the company.
Tara Bratcher Key announces the birth of her third son, Micah Bratcher Key, Nov. 10, 2008.
Melissa Michelle Long married Kurt Francis Mohlman Sept. 6, 2008. They live in Austin, where she is the chief psychologist at Travis County Juvenile Probation Department.
Rio Puertollano’s short film, Tamarind, was a winner in the Thirteen/WNET Reel 13 Shorts competition. He holds a Master’s in acting from Yale, has performed Off-Broadway and has worked for Viacom/Paramount Pictures and HBO. His short films have been screened at numerous film festivals.
Christopher J. Schwegmann joined the trial firm Lynn Tillotson Pinker & Cox LLP in 2005 and was recently named a partner. He was a Texas Monthly Rising Star in business litigation for 2007 and 2008.
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Andy Buitron and Maria Sanchez ’06 were married September 5 in Dallas. The couple resides in Dallas.
Jill Thieleke Purcell and her husband, Scott, announce the birth of their son, Dominic Borg, Nov. 8, 2008. Daughter Lucy is 2. Jill is an assistant vice president of compliance for Wells Fargo. The Purcells live in Urbandale, IA.
Jason Wood was honored last November by Rochester Business Journal in its 2008 Forty Under 40 list for his professional and civic contributions. He is senior manager of audit and enterprise risk services at Deloitte & Touche LLP in Rochester, NY.
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Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: Taylor Martin and Lindsay Feldhaus Perlman
Rosario (Chachy) Segovia Heppe and Hansjoerg Heppe ’97 announce the birth of their son, Otto Arturo Joerg Leopold Heppe, July 2 in Dallas.
Nicola Hobeiche (J.D. ’02) and her husband, Todd Hewes, welcomed a daughter, Gabrielle Elisabeth, July 30, 2008.
Jacquline (Jackie) Brabham (M.B.A. ’05) was promoted in December 2008 to senior vice president of AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company. She heads the annuity operations center in Secaucus, NJ, and manages new business, customer service, in-force processing and business services.
01
Catherine McEachern was appointed chief financial officer last November for U.S. operations for Destilería Serrallés Inc. distillery.
Susan McIntyre is development director for major gifts for the Nashville Opera.
Katherine Ryan married Shawn Fullam ’96 in Austin June 7, 2008.
Laura Staub married Vince Pusateri Oct. 18, 2008, in Atlanta. Bridesmaids included Kristen Cruikshank Gary, Julie Kay Gabennesch Maguire and Sarah Adams Trampe. The newlyweds live in Atlanta, where Laura works in communications and marketing at Georgia Tech.
02
Barrett Kingsriter was promoted to vice president of corporate finance and investment banking at Commerce Street Capital, a Dallas-based investment banking firm. He is a licensed attorney in Texas.
Todd F. Lokash was promoted in September 2008 to vice president of TDManufacturing at TDIndustries’ Dallas manufacturing division, which operates the largest prefabrication shop in North Texas.
Benjamin Parkey married Allison Morris Feb. 9, 2008, in Fort Worth. They live in Dallas.
Theresa Garza Remek (M.L.A. ’07) works as FAS coordinator at SMU in the office of the vice president of development and external affairs.
03
Nina Bradstreet, PE, LEED AP was named the first member of the University of Texas at Dallas Mechanical Engineering Industrial Advisory Board at the Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. She is an engineer in the Richardson, TX, office of Halff Associates Inc., one of the nation’s leading architecture-engneering-consulting firms.
Lyle Steelman was appointed associate principal trumpet in the Cleveland Orchestra.
04
Reunion: November 7, 2009
Chairs: Britt Moen Estwanik and Dustin T. Odham
Lindsay A. Allen works with redevelopment opportunities and sells development sites in the Dallas office of the Atlanta-headquartered Apartment Realty Advisors, a privately held, full-service investment advisory brokerage firm. She was 2006 National Rookie of the Year at the Grubb & Ellis Company.
Artist Amanda Dunbar was awarded the DAR Americanism Medal for the State of Texas at a ceremony March 14 in San Antonio for her trustworthiness, leadership, patriotism and service. She funds community arts programs and assists children’s charities through sales of her art. Her newest collection, “Precious Rebels,” includes fully playable instruments, primarily guitars, adorned with Swarovski crystals. She was commissioned to create three exclusive designs for the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book 2008.
05
Lyndsey Hummert Hill works with alumni volunteers as assistant director of chapter programs at SMU.
Shakeeb Mir is a new associate in the transactions section at law firm Jackson Walker LLP.
06
Grant Clayton was promoted to senior associate in the dispute consulting group at Duff & Phelps LLC in Dallas, a provider of independent financial advisory and investment banking services.
John Pope married Ashley Parker ’07 May 9 in Houston. They live in Dallas.
Maria Sanchez and Andy Buitron ’98 were married on September 5 in Dallas. The couple resides in Dallas.
07
The Rev. Dr. Daniel Chesney Kanter was named senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Dallas Jan. 11, 2009. He had been second minister since 2003.
Gabe Travers was promoted to executive producer at WSAV-TV in Savannah, GA, after working on the morning show and evening newscast.
Cortney Garman was selected from among hundreds of applicants to be one of eight Eugene McDermott interns for 2008-09 in the curatorial and education divisions at the Dallas Museum of Art.
08
Ulderico (Rick) Calero Jr. joined Regions Bank as consumer banking executive for South Florida to enhance the consumer banking experience for customers and oversee banking centers and consumer banking personnel in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. He lives in Miami with his wife and three children.
Hector J. Fontanez has completed his Master’s degree in engineering and has started working toward his doctorate at SMU.
Matthew Nudell won one of two openings for trombonist in the U.S. Air Force Band after competing with dozens of players from top music schools across the nation.
The cell phone rang. It was Erin Eidenshink, an SMU senior we hired to watch our 14-year-old twins, Louise and Emma, while we taught in London. Louise had been feeling lousy for weeks. Despite three visits to the doctor, the diagnosis was the same – only a virus. Not satisfied, we demanded a blood test. By that time we had already left for London, where we teach communication classes through SMU-in-London (and Nina directs the program). We were in a faculty meeting at Regent’s College when we got the call. “Louise has leukemia.” Tuesday, July 1, at 8:05 p.m. our world crashed.
We scrambled to get the next flight home, stuffed clothes into suitcases and fretted about the London program. (Our oldest daughter, Helene, a senior CCPA major who was in London interning with Amnesty International, also left.) So, who would take charge of the 48 SMU students? Who would teach our classes? Nina had placed some students in internships at nonprofit organizations throughout London. Who would oversee the interns? All the months of planning plays, tours, guest speakers and trips &ndash who would take the ball?
SMU-in-London co-director Rita Kirk would. A scholar and author with a doctorate in communications, Kirk is a professor and former chair of corporate communication and public affairs (CCPA) at SMU. She also has a big heart and a Ph.D. in friendship. “We’ll take care of London,” she told us. “You take care of Louise.”
Becky Hewitt would. London program assistant and the Mother Superior of the CCPA division, Hewitt said, “I’ve got it, Nina. Go home and don’t look back.”
On the other side of the ocean we found Louise shivering in a hospital bed in Dallas. A biopsy revealed cancer in 96 percent of her bone marrow. Her kidneys were shutting down. She was terrified and angry, fighting to find footing in a world of spinal taps, bone marrow aspirations, catheters and chemotherapy. With the help of the sharp staff at Children’s Medical Center, as well as the immense outpouring of prayers and well wishes from family and friends, Louise found solid ground. We did, too. Assurances from Kirk and Hewitt that the London program was running smoothly allowed us to focus on our family. But we knew from experience how many plates they were juggling at once.
In London, Kirk was directing the program, overseeing the interns, teaching a CCPA class and, for the first time, a journalism class. But she needed help. Enter Tony Pederson – a journalist who spent 29 years at the Houston Chronicle, serving as managing editor and then editor. Today, he directs the SMU Journalism division and holds the Belo chair in journalism. A guy with a big heart, Pederson volunteered to teach Craig’s class – for no pay. He left for London on a few days advance notice. “I’m free that month,” he said.
We worried our family trauma would cast a cloud over SMU-in-London. We needn’t have. The group visited Cambridge and Oxford, Scotland and Stonehenge. They went to Parliament, Speaker’s Corner, the British Library and various plays. In five weeks they read and wrote as much as many students do in a year. Their final projects were superb, their presentations top notch.
It was another successful summer for the London program, despite the meteor that came hurtling out of nowhere. Many students emailed us asking what they could do. Nina replied by telling them that the best way to help was to “make this the time of your life.” By all accounts, they did.
As for Louise, her prognosis is good. She has an excellent chance of beating the leukemia. And because of the kindness of our SMU colleagues, we were there when Louise needed us most.
The Meadows Museum will honor the 15th anniversary (in 2009) of SMU’s archaeological excavation at Poggio Colla, Italy, with exhibitions on the great ancestors of Rome – the Etruscans – Jan. 25-May 17. University Distinguished Professor of Art History P. Gregory Warden serves as principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project and co-director of the project’s Poggio Colla Field School, an internationally recognized research training center in which SMU has participated since 1995.
More than 350 objects spanning the ninth through first centuries BCE will be on
display at the Meadows. Included will be some of the most significant objects from Florence’s National Museum of Archaeology, which holds one of the finest collections of Etruscan art.
In addition, a co-exhibit, “New Light on the Etruscans: Fourteen Years of Excavation at Poggio Colla,” displays for the first time in this country nearly 100 Etruscan artifacts discovered by SMU-led excavations in Tuscany. Among the artifacts will be a coin discovered by SMU senior Jayme Clemente.
Spending six weeks in the SMU-in-London program, exploring the city’s culture and diversity, may not sound like work. But sleep took a back seat this summer when 48 students and five SMU faculty members used London as a classroom.
Students took six credit hours in communications topics as varied as the history and philosophy of free speech, advertising and British cinema. Living at Regent’s College during the week, the SMU group traveled throughout the United Kingdom and Europe on the weekends.
Although they discovered that the British arguably speak the same language, they realized that is where the similarities end. Londoners ride the Tube, use a different currency, are more immersed in international news and politics, and view Americans through different lenses.
SMU students explore London from a double-decker bus.
Hendrika Rhoad, a junior majoring in corporate communications and public affairs and marketing, says cultural differences in the workplace, such as British humor and jargon, took some getting used to, but her work with Save the Children and the Child Rights Information Network was both eye-opening and inspiring.
“Working with another culture gave me a lot of confidence,” Rhoad says. “It was difficult, but I learned a lot of patience. I didn’t have friends there, so I had to work my way up with everyone, and projects took a lot longer than I thought they would. It allowed me to focus on particular children’s rights issues and made me more aware of it all. I love the nonprofit sector.”
Senior Katie Reynolds, who worked for Mencap, a nonprofit that helps individuals with learning disabilities, saw the full effect of her organization’s lobbying efforts before Parliament. “My organization had a big breakthrough while I was there. The disabled were not receiving adequate medical care, and my organization lobbied and got the policies changed,” says Reynolds, a corporate communications and public affairs major.
Such experiences make indelible impressions on students and shape their views on future employment, says Rita Kirk, professor of corporate communications and public affairs who taught in the SMU-in-London program.
“It makes a difference in their outlook toward the rest of the world and gives them a sense of purpose that maybe they didn’t have before,” she says.</p.
Full Circle
While working in the Mexican orphanage, Elledge was impressed with its employees, who devote their lives to serving others in need. Back in Dallas, he plans to tutor English as a Second Language students and work with the homeless downtown. He says he tries to follow Albert Einstein’s words: “Strive not to be
a success, but rather to be of value.”
“My experiences have changed my thinking about jobs and employment,” he says. “I thought about going to law school, but now there are a lot of alternatives I never considered before.”
– Karen Nielsen
Nina Flournoy, senior lecturer in Corporate Communications & Public Affairs and director of SMU-In-London, and her husband, Craig, assistant professor of journalism, were with the London program last summer when a family crisis developed and the SMU community rallied to help. Click here to read their story.
The résumé of Kevin Lavelle (’08) brings to mind the Johnny Cash recording of “I’ve Been Everywhere.” The President’s Scholar took advantage of the University’s education abroad programs in Britain, Spain, Southeast Asia and Australia.
Thus, it seemed only natural that Lavelle would join Oliver Wyman, an international management-consulting firm, to begin his career. Although he expected to work as an analyst in the Dallas office, he didn’t hesitate to accept an offer to relocate to the firm’s office in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s fastest-growing real estate markets. Lavelle, who was a management science major in the Lyle School of Engineering, now works with 120 other employees of 34 different nationalities, mainly from the Middle East, India and Europe.
Alumnus Kevin Lavelle with an alternative mode of transportation in Dubai.
Although new on the job, Lavelle already considers his relocation to Dubai a career-making move. “I think it is essential in business and life today to be able to think about global opportunities and consequences,” he says. “Many U.S. corporations are looking beyond the borders to emerging markets for growth potential.”
Lavelle’s willingness to travel and work abroad places him squarely in the middle of a generation that pollster John Zogby calls the “First Globals, 18 to
29 year olds who are as likely to say ‘I’m a citizen of Planet Earth’ as those who say ‘I’m a citizen of the United States,’” Zogby recently said in a speech at SMU. “Sixty percent have passports. Twenty-three percent say they expect to live and work in a foreign capital at some point in their lives.”
In that regard, the recent report by SMU’s Task Force on International Education could not be more timely. Appointed in 2006, the Task Force was charged with recommending ways to broaden global perspectives as part of SMU’s educational mission.
One goal is to double the percentage of seniors who graduate with an education abroad experience (from nearly 25 percent to 50 percent). The Task Force also recommends that SMU increase the numbers and locations of education abroad programs. In the past year, SMU added programs in Australia, Asia, India, South Africa, Cairo and Oaxaca, Mexico, for a total of 30 programs in 16 counties smu.edu/studyabroad. An International Center was created to work with education abroad programs as well as international students attending SMU.
SMU Magazine looks at some of the University’s international connections – education abroad, faculty research and alumni who work overseas – to understand how SMU is going global.
Jamie Corley was nearly booed off the stage last year at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) after she gave her speech as a candidate for student union representative.
“When you run for office at LSE, you also express your personal political views,” says the senior, who is majoring in history and corporate communications and public affairs. “As a conservative, my views were different from 99 percent of the other students. But I reminded them that the spirit of LSE was the discussion of conflicting views.”
Corley won the election as the representative for international students. When she finished her year at LSE, she was named one of the 20 most influential students among the 8,600-member student body and awarded a life membership to the London School of Economics Student Union.
“I showed up at every meeting and worked very hard,” she says. “I think they respected me because I accepted their ideas, but I didn’t back down from my own views.”
Corley met her goal to become immersed in British culture through the SMU-in-Britain program, in which students who qualify enroll in yearlong courses at prestigious universities in Britain. Corley joined students from throughout the world
in her classes on the Arab-Israeli conflict, foreign policy analysis, human rights and the history of the Enlightenment.
“After studying at some of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the world and competing successfully with their gifted peers, our students resume their SMU educations with an enormously enriched sense of what their futures may hold,” says Jim Hopkins, professor of history and director of SMU-in-Britain. Hopkins, an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, teaches British history in the Clements Department of History in SMU’s Dedman College. He attended Cambridge University from 1970-71 as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
Senior Jamie Corley at Westminster Abbey in London.
More than 400 SMU students have spent a year at universities such as St. Andrews in Scotland, University College London and the University of Kent at Canterbury through SMU-in-Britain since the program began in the early 1970s. According to the London Guardian, 32,000 American students participated in study abroad programs in Great Britain last year. Of those students, only 4,250 were enrolled full time in British universities, according to the British Higher Education Statistics Agency.
“Our goal for SMU-in-Britain was to provide a year-long academic experience that required students to perform at very high standards,” says Ken Shields, professor emeritus of English and director of SMU-in-Britain from 1975 to 2000. “It takes more than four months for a student to adjust to a new culture and understand how a different education system works.”
At the London School of Economics, for example, students’ grades are based on one final exam, says Alan Lin (’08), who studied there in 2006-07 and is now an editor at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a public policy think tank. “A three-hour test determined my grade for the entire year. Exam preparation is intense; there are times when one could not find a study space in the library.”
During her junior year, Jessica Erwin Greenwood (’08) studied history and literature at University College London, where “I read more that year than ever before in my life. Students at British universities have to be much more independent and responsible for their own learning,” says Greenwood, now a Dedman School of Law student.
SMU was one of the first universities to offer study abroad at British universities, Shields says. He relied on his personal network of British friends and colleagues to match SMU students to universities. As a Fulbright Scholar to Great Britain from 1957-59, Shields studied at the University of Edinburgh for two years.
Now SMU-in-Britain is part of the University’s education abroad, which offers 30 study programs in 16 countries. Students first are accepted to SMU-in-Britain, and then apply directly to a British university. They compete with other students from around the world for a limited number of openings.
“Before I went to LSE through SMU-in-Britain, I spoke with others who had participated in the program,” Lin says. “They stressed that this was a year to become more independent, and that when I returned to the United States I would be a different person. It was difficult to fathom what that meant when I
first arrived in London, but now I realize just how true their statements were. This year is one to remember for a lifetime.”
Sophomore Nick Elledge spent part of his summer digging ditches, cleaning chicken coops, hanging drywall and
organizing activities for orphans in Guadalupe, Mexico. Despite the heat and flies, Elledge says the hard work and simple life at the Rancho 3M Christian Orphanage was just what he needed to refocus his priorities.
“I spent my freshman year studying all the time and having superficial relationships,” says Elledge, a President’s Scholar who is majoring in economics, political science and Spanish. “I wanted something real and different.“
These children at Rancho 3M Christian Orphanage in Mexico are among those Nick Elledge worked with last summer.
Many students say they pursue opportunities to travel to learn about other cultures, but most wind up gaining much more from these life-changing experiences.
“One of the first things we hear from the students is that the internships opened their eyes to another part of the world and a different way of life,” says Tom Mayo, director of the Maguire Center, which has awarded stipends for domestic and international internships to more than 90 students over the past 12 years.
“The second thing is that very often the work they do as volunteers either ties into or underscores some real-world aspect of their academic studies,” he says. “And third, they are much more informed. They have a mature take on the way the world works and they come back with some pretty firm opinions about how the host organizations work and what some of the hurdles are for effecting change.“
No Borders
When sophomore Tara Hemphill heard that Southlake-based Sabre Holdings Corp., a technology travel solutions provider, was interviewing for internships in Poland, she at first thought that Eastern Europe was a little far to travel for a summer job. But the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in her area of study – computer science and math – won her over. Hemphill was chosen as one of five SMU engineering students to work at Sabre’s European Solutions Center in Krakow, Poland.
The eight-week stint proved priceless. Navigating the public transportation system and living in the center of the bustling city filled with history and art “opened up new things to me,” she says. “It’s a lot different from a vacation because you are living and working there.“
Another Sabre intern, sophomore computer engineering major Austin Click, says that he appreciated the opportunity to work on projects alongside other company employees, but is especially pleased that Sabre is using some of the code he wrote.
“I never considered working out of the country before, but it was a great experience and I would consider it now,” Click says. “The way my field is going, it’s good to have international experience in a country like Poland, where the IT industry is exploding.“
The technology community knows no borders, says Tom Klein, group president of Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions, which partnered with SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. The internships allow the students to work with software developers and project managers and witness firsthand the issues facing the global travel industry, he says.
Kathy M. Hubbard, director of SMU’s Center for Engineering Leadership, says she wishes every engineering and technology student could have a similar international experience. “We are living in such a global society, and our students are going to encounter companies having operations in the United States and abroad. Companies are finding it important that their employees have international experience, especially if they are going to move into leadership roles.”
An internship at a real estate investment firm in Dubai this past summer likely will give senior finance major Mohammed Nagda a competitive boost in the financial field, setting him apart when it comes time to finding a job, he says. “I wanted to work in a dynamic international market and get experience in an actual financial field.”
He arranged the internship himself and stayed with a brother living in Dubai. On the second day of the job, Nagda was assigned three projects and immersed in the culture of long hours. He observed people of many nationalities interacting with each other, from British businessmen to a Lebanese man who always lit incense on the boardroom table during meetings.
Roycee Kerr, director of Cox B.B.A. Career Services, encourages students to plan well in advance for international internships or study abroad programs. “If their dreams are to work with a global company that does business in China, which a lot of Cox students want to do, then the ideal thing would be a summer internship in Shanghai,” she says. “It’s never too early to start thinking about a timeline and understanding what is required to be a good candidate.” Both Cox B.B.A. Career Services and the Hegi Family Career Development Center provide services that help students learn how to locate international opportunities and to successfully pursue internships.
London Calling…click here to read more of this story.
China’s bullish economy grew almost 10 percent a year over the past two decades. By some measures, the birthplace of paper currency is now the world’s second-largest economy.
If China stays on pace, it will vault ahead of the United States to become the top economy by mid-century.
Linda Kao at the Great Wall in China.
“Even if you aren’t working directly with a Chinese company, you will be impacted by what is happening in China,” says Linda Kao (’78), Cox School of Business’ assistant dean of global operations. Recent U.S. Census Bureau statistics on foreign trade show that China is now this country’s second-largest trading partner and source of imports (Canada is number one). It is the third-largest export market, behind Canada and Mexico, respectively.
Recognizing that “the sleeping giant” had awakened with a burst of energy, Cox launched its first American Airlines M.B.A. Global Leadership Program to the emerging powerhouse in 2000. “We’ve all heard the clichés – the world is flat, the global marketplace – but they’re accurate,” Kao says. “Next-generation business leaders have to develop a global perspective.”
Kao, who was born in Taiwan, has directed global programs at SMU since 1999. A former chair of the Greater Dallas Asian-American Chamber of Commerce, she first dove into international waters as a consultant for big-stage events like soccer’s World Cup and the Olympics, even acting as production manager for the live telecasts of Miss Universe pageants. Through these experiences, Kao learned that there is no substitute for human contact in navigating the complexities of intercontinental transactions.
Under Cox’s Global Programs, groups of 20 to 30 M.B.A. students will choose one of four two-week trips in May 2009: two to China, as well as one to India and to Europe (London, Budapest and Madrid). “We target the most viable regions, whether it’s in an emerging or a mature market, because students can learn a lot about innovation and creativity from both,“ Kao says.
Cox’s immersion experiences cover a broad swath of the business map. Students get a firsthand look at everything from city-sized computer module factories in China to hospitals specializing in medical tourism in India. In each country, students learn to master the nuances that can cement or sabotage a business relationship.
“Meeting people from another culture and determining how to make a good first impression – from learning how to properly greet them to finding topics of mutual interest for conversation, like movies and sightseeing in their country – was an invaluable experience,“ says Alex Bagden, a finance M.B.A. student who visited China in the spring.
Sometimes the unscripted moments, like a candid conversation over dinner with ex-patriots, yield the most practical insights, says Wes Davis, who is pursuing an M.B.A. in marketing and went to India in the spring. “They offered a good sense of what it’s really like to live and work in India. I’m not sure I want to live there, but now I’ll keep that door open.”
Occasionally the first leg of the journey begins much closer to SMU. Executives of homegrown businesses – such as Mary Kay, Perot Systems, Blockbuster and 7-Eleven (now an indirect subsidiary of Seven & I Holdings Co. of Japan) – share insights before students visit their overseas operations. “It was fascinating to tour 7-Eleven stores in Hong Kong and see how they differ from U.S. stores,” Bagden says. “The stores are much smaller, but have more staff and fresh food.”
Cox students survey China’s Forbidden City.
Overseas professional development trips are de rigueur for leading M.B.A. programs. Cox is one of only a handful of schools, however, that requires full-time, first-year M.B.A. students to complete an intensive two-week exploration of foreign business capitals. And it was one of the first to send students to China.
Travel abroad also is a core component of Cox’s nationally ranked Executive M.B.A. (EMBA) program. In October, approximately 100 students traveled to Santiago, Chile, and in March, they will visit China. About 80 Professional M.B.A. (PMBA) students are expected to take advantage of seven optional trips to Mexico, South America, Europe and China next year.
This on-the-ground study, Kao says, gives SMU’s M.B.A. students the advantage of “learning to communicate with foreign colleagues using the common language of understanding and respect.“
For her International Advertising classes, Carrie La Ferle passes out a list of advertising blunders made by famous multinational companies. One of those blunders is a Coca Cola ad in China that used Chinese characters to spell out the sounds “Co” “Ca” “Co” “La.” Unfortunately for Coke, it found out after the ad ran that the characters they used actually meant “Bite the wax tadpole.” The ad was pulled.
The story is a powerful reminder, La Ferle says, that cultural sensitivity can be as important as brand identity in global markets.
Associate Professor Carrie La Ferle
La Ferle is an associate professor of advertising in SMU’s Temerlin Advertising Institute. The daughter of an ad executive, she grew up in Toronto, ranked by the United Nations as the most multicultural city in the world. Her friends included Koreans, Germans, Caribbean Islanders and Africans. She never thought any of that was unusual until she went to graduate school at Michigan State University, “and then I realized my experience was pretty unique,” she says.
After earning her Master’s degree in 1990, La Ferle worked on the Nissan automotive account with advertising giant Chiat&slash;Day in Toronto. She later moved to Japan, where she edited ad copy that had been translated into English from Japanese. The occasionally bizarre differences between literal translation and original meaning emphasized the cultural divide between East and West.
“When I first moved to Japan, I thought their ads were weird,” she says. “Some of them didn’t even tell you what the product was, much less what it did. Then I learned that the Japanese use more indirect forms of communication versus hard-sell, persuasion-driven advertising. They also focus more on building a relationship with the brand, in the same way that their more collectivist society focuses on relationships among people.”
And when it comes to global advertising, those differences in mindset can have a huge impact, La Ferle says. “If companies do their research and blend into the culture and surroundings, they can increase market share.”
La Ferle points to the success of McDonald’s first global ad campaign, “I’m Lovin’ It.” The campaign used Justin Timberlake and the same slogan in more than 100 countries, but also featured local celebrities and promotions from each of the countries in which it was running.
In contrast, when MTV first tried expanding into Japan, “it failed to the extent that it had to pull out entirely,” La Ferle says. The music-television titan ignored the burgeoning Japanese music scene and programmed only American artists.
“Everybody loves their local bands,” La Ferle says. “So when MTV relaunched its network in Japan, it played a much bigger percentage of Japanese artists. Now the channel is a huge hit.”
“When I first moved to Japan, I thought their ads were weird. Some of them didn’t even tell you what the product was, much less what it did. Then I learned that the Japanese use more indirect forms of communication versus hard-sell, persuasion-driven advertising.”
The cultural exchange that takes place through advertising is similar to exchanges that have taken place throughout history, La Ferle says. She and co-author Jeffrey Johnson of Michigan State University presented research challenging common criticisms of globalization – and advertising’s role in the process – at the International Advertising Association World Educator’s Conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.
“Cultures have been blended throughout history and most situations have resulted in mutually beneficially outcomes,” she says.
La Ferle, who received her doctorate in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin, has focused her research on how culture influences advertising and consumers’ responses to it. In her classes on ethics in advertising, she teaches students that by being culturally sensitive and socially responsible, advertisers and the companies who hire them can improve their profits as well as their practices.
Today, many corporations &ndash including ad agencies – are working to be more culturally and environmentally sensitive, “whether it’s because they’re altruistic or because their bottom line demands it,” she says.
Cyprus’ spectacular natural beauty, Mediterranean food and warm people make it a choice diplomatic posting, says Amy Dahm (’97), who just completed two years of service with the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia. However, as the U.S. government’s human rights and trafficking-in-
persons (TIP) officer, she often delved into the seamier side of life on the island nation.
“Cyprus is the only European Union country on the U.S. State Department Tier 2 Watch List,” Dahm says. According to the State Department’s Web site, countries placed on the list “deserve special scrutiny for failure to show evidence of increased efforts to combat human trafficking and fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” established in the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Alumna Amy Dahm (left) and a friend work an olive press in Cyprus.
The Cypriot police officially identified 79 trafficking victims in 2006 and 40 last year, but “the suspected number is much higher because of the difficulty in identifying them,” Dahm explains. “Many are ashamed and afraid to come forward.” Most are from the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and Eastern Europe, places where employment opportunities are limited. The young women, including some university students, are lured by the promise of legitimate jobs. Once in Cyprus, they are often held hostage and forced into prostitution.
“In my eyes, sex trafficking is one of the worst crimes imaginable,” says Dahm, who has interviewed victims. “It’s using a woman’s innate femininity and sexuality as a weapon against her.”
She describes her role as “kind of like an investigative reporter.” She received assignments from Washington, checked sources, found information and “reported both formally and informally” back to D.C. on recent developments.
The island crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Cyprus’ strategic location makes it “one of the most diplomatically sensitive environments on earth,” she says, noting that Nicosia, where she lived, is the world’s only divided capital. The country’s largest city is split into northern and southern sectors by the Green Line, a United Nations-created buffer zone. Since 1974, when the country was officially separated, the southern two-thirds of the country are under Greek Cypriot control while the northern third is claimed by Turkish Cypriots.
“Every day is different, which is probably part of the reason I like my job so much,” says Dahm, who received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 and an invitation to join the State Department within 24 hours of finishing her last exam. “Most of my training has been on the job,” she says, and has included learning a “smattering of Greek and Turkish” languages.
At SMU, the history and international studies major took advantage of study abroad opportunities. A President’s Scholar and former student member of the SMU Board of Trustees, Dahm spent her junior year in Japan. For a taste of Europe, she participated in the inaugural season of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project – the excavation of an Etruscan settlement near the modern town of Vicchio, Italy. She revisited in 2004 as a project volunteer.
The direction of her future was clear by the time she graduated in 1997. In a Rotunda profile, Dahm expressed her hope of becoming a foreign service officer in Italy.
“I haven’t made it to Italy yet, but I’m working on it,” she says. She’s now back in Washington for Spanish language training, after which she will head to Costa Rica for her next assignment. “My focus will shift to such consular work as helping American citizens and screening potential visa applicants to the U.S.”
Robert Hunt (’82) felt the rumblings of change in China while serving as a professor at Trinity Theological College in Singapore from 1993-97. He witnessed “a real opening up of contact.” It wasn’t unusual for the institution to host members of the Chinese Christian church as guests. By the time he left, “the new leadership in China saw their country as a place of possibilities,” including a fresh tolerance for religion.
By some estimates, there may be as many as 100 million Chinese Christians. “Both ‘official’ – those registered with the government – and ‘unofficial’ churches are growing rapidly,” notes Hunt, a graduate of Perkins School of Theology and now the school’s director of Global Theological Education.
With more than 5,000 members, the largest “unofficial” church in Beijing doesn’t operate in the shadows, Hunt says, but it’s a mistake to parse the Sino-Christian movement using an American model. “They don’t enjoy freedom of religion as we understand it; our free-for-all notion is almost unique to the United States.”
Professor Robert Hunt
Hunt and Perkins colleague Sze-kar Wan, professor of New Testament and a native of China, took a group of 15 students to China in June. In addition to attending worship services, the group met with families and ministers, as well as students at the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary. “What challenged our students were the
personal testimonies of faith. Coming from a non-religious background, the Chinese talked about wanting to put their lives in the context of something bigger and transcendent,” Hunt says. “They didn’t emphasize the ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ’ dimension of Christianity that we’re used to.”
But there were unexpected similarities between West and East as well, says Master of Divinity student Jacki Banks, the pastor of Methodist churches in Duncan and Velma, Oklahoma. “Worshiping there was pretty much like being in our church here; it was just in a foreign language,” she recalls. “The order of worship was almost the same, and they sing many of the traditional hymns. It was extremely moving, though, to hear a hymn like ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’ in Chinese.”
For the visitors, clarity came through seeing the Chinese “in their own light,” Hunt says. “I think one of the non-students on the trip put it most succinctly: ‘Nothing I had learned about China in the United States has been relevant to understanding what I’m seeing with my own eyes.’ And he’s right. You have to see people in their own world and talk to them.”
Although globalization “flattens” the commercial sector, it creates a need for well-rounded spiritual leaders. Whether guiding a small-town flock or an urban megachurch, “pastors no longer serve in a monocultural world,” Hunt says. They not only must minister to churchgoers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but they need to be able to relate to peers of other faiths because “they will be working with members of mosques and Hindu temples and others” on community matters.
Because of this transformation within churches of all denominations, international study now plays a key role in a Perkins Theology education. All M.Div. students have the opportunity to participate in a 10-day to two-week cultural immersion course. The immersion program was launched in 2004 with three trips and approximately 40 participants. In 2009, at least seven groups – and a total of 60 students – will travel to Mexico, Europe, Asia or South America. There also will be a course offered in New Orleans.
Hunt, who also has lived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Vienna, Austria, believes there’s no substitute for personal contact to “understand the culture, respect it and learn to work from within it.” While teaching at the Seminari Theoloji Malaysia, a Christian seminary, from 1985-92, that work-from-within philosophy motivated him to study Islam. He has written several books, including What Every Christian Should Know about Muslim Ideals and Islam in Southeast Asia, A Study Guide for Christians.
When your specialty is U.S. foreign policy, the world is your laboratory.
“The United States is a big experiment &ndash and in a sense a microcosm of the world’s big experiment &ndash on how people can live with each other without killing one another, even though they disagree,” says Seyom Brown, the John Goodwin Tower Chair in International Politics and National Security in SMU’s Tower Center for Political Studies of Dedman College.
In his national security seminars, Brown helps students identify not only what changes, but what has not changed &ndash whether they talk about counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the volatile relationship between Russia and Georgia, or China’s growing influence in Africa.
Professor Seyom Brown
Brown uses the Cold War – the struggle for world dominance between the United States and the old Soviet Union after World War II – as a prime example of how issues that sprang up in its wake continue to influence the world students face today. “What has happened is that the new world order [created after the
collapse of the Soviet Union] is really a world of disorder, in which your friend on one issue is your enemy on another. Today’s partner can be tomorrow’s opponent,” he says.
He calls this complex and shifting pattern of alliances a “polyarchy,” and uses President Bush’s pre-Olympics visit to China as an example. “We need the Chinese to ensure that North Korea doesn’t keep nuclear weapons. We also need them to bring pressure on the genocidal regime in the Sudan, because they’re big Sudan oil consumers,” Brown says. “So Bush visited the Chinese for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and said nice things about them while he was there. But later, from Thailand, he harshly criticized China’s human rights situation.”
Brown’s main field of research is U.S. foreign policy – a specialty that has led him to and from government service, think tanks and university teaching and research. During his five-decade career in national security, he has held positions in the field, including as a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In addition, he has served as a special assistant in the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of State. Brown also has taught at numerous universities.
His research activities focus on military factors in world politics, including arms control, terrorism and conflicts between homeland security and human rights, among other areas. “I’ve had one foot in the policy community and one foot in academia my whole life,” Brown says. One of his current goals is to help build the Tower Center as a national leader in public policy thought and theory, he says. “I like that challenge, because it fits with my own definition of what I do.” To enhance the Tower Center’s interactions with the policy world, Brown has established a Tower Center office in Washington, D.C.
“The United States has been operating under what I call a double-O fallacy: omnipotence and omniscience. Behaving as a nation as if we’re all-powerful and all-knowing just rubs other people the wrong way. We need to show that we do believe in cultural diversity.”
At SMU, Brown says he has found students who hope to confront the difficult issues head on. “This is a generation that has been bombarded by the complexities. A good many want to continue in the international relations field – not just earn their Ph.D.s, but engage in practical solutions. The Tower Center can be of good counsel to them, as well as provide opportunities.”
Those opportunities include a new program on national security and defense presented in November in a Tower Center forum on “The Future of Conflict: Military Roles and Conflict.”
Brown discusses important issues for students and citizens, as well as for practitioners of the political arts, in his upcoming book, Higher Realism: A New Foreign Policy for the United States. The book explores urgent challenges requiring international cooperation such as global warming, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, poverty, disease, human rights and the declining health of vital ecologies such as oceans and forests.
“The United States has been operating under what I call a double-O fallacy: omnipotence and omniscience,” Brown says. “Behaving as a nation as if we’re all-powerful and all-knowing just rubs other people the wrong way. We need to show that we do believe in cultural diversity. We’re so inextricably intertwined with the rest of the world that we have to be interested in what happens out there – not simply out of the goodness of our hearts, but because those problems can bounce back and hit us.”
Senior art history major Jayme Clemente was working in trench No. 35 in July at an archaeological dig 20 miles northeast of Florence, Italy, when something caught her eye.
“I saw something green in the dirt,“ she recalls. Green is the color of oxidized bronze.
Jayme Clemente digs in at Poggio Colla.
“When you’ve been staring at this light brown mixture of dirt and you see something that is not in the same color palette – it was just an exhilarating feeling to know that there was something (potentially important) in the ground.”
Her trench supervisor raced over and confirmed the first coin discovery of SMU’s 2008 Poggio Colla Field School season in the Mugello Valley. Clemente then worked as slowly as she could to extract the item from the dirt because bronze coins are very fragile after being buried for 2,000 years.
“Your first reaction is to get it out as fast as you can, but you have to take your time and be very patient” to deliver it to the dig conservator in one piece, Clemente says. She is fascinated by the coin’s ability to reveal so many details about the culture in which it was used. Through her research she learned this particular coin was struck far to the south, somewhere between Rome and Naples, between 275 and 250 BCE.
As the site’s field manual says: “It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.”
Clemente learned her lessons well, says P. Gregory Warden, University Distinguished Professor of Art History. He also serves as the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project’s (MVAP) principal investigator and co-director of its Poggio Colla Field School, an internationally recognized research training center in which SMU has participated since 1995. Clemente was one of a dozen SMU students who were joined at the field school last summer by students from Dartmouth, Princeton and other universities.
The Poggio Colla site spans most of Etruscan history, from 700 BCE to the town’s destruction by the Romans around 178 BCE, which makes the site very rare. It also is distinctive because of what is not there. The Etruscans picked beautiful, easily defended hilltops for their settlements. As a result, generation after generation built new cities on top of their sites. That means many have 2,000 years of other civilizations on top of Etruscan artifacts, Warden says. Not so Poggio Colla, which is all Etruscan.
The oxidized-green bronze Etruscan coin discovered by Clemente features the head of Athena on one side, a rooster on the reverse.
No one knows why the Etruscans disappeared. Most of what archaeologists have learned about the culture in the past 40 years comes from funerary remains that represent the death rituals of the wealthy. Poggio Colla is different, Warden says. It represents an entire settlement, including tombs, a temple, a pottery factory and an artisan community. Excavations of workshops and living quarters are yielding details about Etruscan life to scholars from SMU and its partners, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Recent finds included a large stone column base that probably belonged to the
temple and a ritual pit within the sanctuary where the Etruscans placed a series of sacred objects such as gold thread, two statue bases and two bronze bowls. One of the bowls rests atop the bones of a suckling pig that was sacrificed as part of a purification ritual.
The temple is revealing new information about the Etruscans, who had a theocratic social structure and were considered “the most religious peoples of the ancient Mediterranean,” Warden says. “We can show where the priest was standing and how the objects were placed in this sacred pit with attention to the cardinal points of the compass, reflecting Etruscan religious beliefs and their idea of the sacredness of space.”
The findings are so striking that the British Museum invited Warden to deliver a lecture there in December 2007 on “Ritual and Destruction at the Etruscan Site of Poggio Colla.”
The Italian government long had planned to create a regional archaeological museum in the area. The many discoveries at Poggio Colla moved that plan along, and Warden was a special guest at the museum’s opening in December.
All the artifacts found at Poggio Colla are the property of the Italian government and remain in that country. Because of connections created through the MVAP, more than 350 Etruscan artifacts from Italian museums and 100 artifacts from the field school site will be on loan to the Meadows Museum starting in January for the largest and most comprehensive Etruscan exhibits ever staged in the United States. Warden also will teach a course on “Etruscan Art and Archaeology” for the SMU Master of Liberal Studies program in the spring.
The coin that Clemente found is expected to be part of the exhibit. “I never knew that it would be put into a museum,” she says, “but I feel pride in knowing that I was a part of the process.”
Unbridled Opportunity: The Second Century Campaign Launch
With fanfare, balloons, confetti, music and a call to action, the University announced its commitment to achieve a dramatic increase in academic quality and impact.
“Today we stand as the bridge between the SMU of 100 years ago and the SMU of 100 years from now. Our second century awaits with new challenges and opportunities,” President R. Gerald Turner told the crowd of faculty, staff, students, alumni and donors. “The responsibility to continue SMU’s rising quality now rests with us, and we will boldly answer the call.”
Fred Hegi (standing), campaign steering committee co-chair for Dedman College, and Dedman Dean Cordelia Chávez Candelaria (left), present the College’s priorities to the Campaign Leadership Council and Steering Committees.
The campaign seeks $750 million for student scholarships, endowed faculty positions and academic programs, and enhancements to the campus experience.
The campaign already is off to a running start, with 29,488 donors providing $317 million in commitments during the two-year quiet phase of the campaign. This includes 49 donors who have made commitments of $1 million and above.
“This campaign will strengthen our ability to enable the best students to attend SMU and the most distinguished faculty to teach and inspire them through challenging academic programs,” Turner said. “As a University we cannot stand still. We must remain vital and relevant to meet the emerging needs of our students. And we must play a greater leadership role in supporting our region as a center of commerce and a gateway to the global community. The Second Century Campaign represents a great opportunity to shape our future with confidence and optimism.”
The campaign includes ambitious goals for alumni participation. It seeks to have 25 percent of all alumni make contributions every year, and to have 50 percent of all alumni give over the lifetime of the campaign. “No matter what the size of their gifts, alumni participation will represent satisfaction with the SMU education they received. It also will show an understanding that when they were students, they were the beneficiaries of alumni giving,” said Connie Blass O’Neill (’77), president of the SMU Alumni Board. “It’s a cycle of support that represents the best of SMU spirit.”
Gerald J. Ford (’66, ’69), SMU trustee and convening co-chair of the campaign, said the new effort is befitting a university with high aspirations. “The campaign’s theme, SMU Unbridled, reflects the bold vision of our founders as they looked at the North Texas prairie and envisioned a great university there,” he said. “SMU’s founders were daring, imaginative and creative, and they saw unlimited potential in what they were establishing. We’re going to take that drive and aggressively carry it forward.“
Logo T-shirts were distributed during the event.
Toward that end, SMU has hit its stride with significant progress in recent years. For example, gifts during the campaign’s quiet phase have endowed a seventh school for SMU – the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development – with a $20 million gift from Harold and Annette Simmons (’57). Also in the quiet phase, SMU received the largest gift ever made by The Meadows Foundation – $33 million for the Meadows Museum and Meadows School of the Arts.
Students and faculty, as well as staff, alumni and donors, attended the launch event.
With more emphasis on merit scholarships, SMU has seen its entering SAT scores rise 97 points in the past decade. In addition, SMU prevailed in the statewide competition to house the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which will provide historic resources for research by scholars worldwide as it contributes to the strength of the Dallas economy.
“The Board of Trustees believes that SMU has all the ingredients for a major leap in academic excellence, and it’s our commitment to accelerate this momentum,” said SMU Board Chair Carl Sewell (’66), a co-chair of the campaign. “Our recent improvements in student quality show us that SMU increasingly attracts the best students, and we must provide scholarships that remove financial barriers for these talented young people. They will be inspired by faculty who excel at teaching and creating new knowledge, and they will benefit from a campus experience that develops leadership skills.”
In addition to Ford and Sewell, campaign co-chairs include Ruth Altshuler (’48), Ray L. Hunt (’65) and Caren H. Prothro, all SMU trustees. They lead the 15-member Campaign Leadership Council guiding 39 Steering Committee co-chairs who support fund-raising efforts focused on the various SMU schools and programs on campus, and in cities and regions beyond Dallas. To date the campaign has enlisted 327 volunteers throughout the world.
Moody Coliseum was transformed into an elegant dining area, where faculty, students and staff mingled after the campaign kickoff.
SMU Vice President for Development and External Affairs Brad Cheves said the campaign will benefit from long-standing supporters and from newcomers to the SMU donor family. “We have a solid volunteer structure that will take this campaign across the globe, and we expect broad participation among our more than 100,000 alumni.”
SMU’s last campaign, “A Time to Lead,” ran from 1997-2002 and was the first successful campaign in the University’s history. That campaign set an initial goal of $300 million but succeeded in raising $542 million in the five-year time frame. The campaign funded 80 endowments for academic programs, 171 student scholarships and awards, 28 campus life initiatives, 16 academic positions and 14 new or renovated facilities.
The Second Century Campaign places more emphasis on endowments for people and programs, although some new facilities are included to support academic programs. “Endowments are essential in providing long-term resources that grow over time and ensure economic stability,” Turner said. SMU’s endowment of $1.4 billion currently ranks 54th among institutions nationally. “But because much of the endowment is targeted to specific programs, we need additional endowment funds to support new initiatives. That’s what this campaign is all about.“
As competition for the brightest students intensifies, the campaign will expand scholarship programs, such as SMU President’s Scholars and Leadership Scholars; create innovative scholarships within schools and disciplines; expand opportunities to study abroad through scholarships and additional programs; establish new programs that foster leadership skills and personal development; and increase support for graduate students. For example, for this academic year, quiet phase gifts have added 12 new President’s Scholars for a total of 100 students who are receiving this full-tuition award, and 26 new Hunt Leadership Scholars, for a total of 73 receiving close to full-tuition awards.
The campaign aspires to increase to 100 the number of endowed academic positions, including department chairs and deanships; increase by 50 percent the amount of annual faculty research grants; endow departments and institutes that provide core academic disciplines as well as those that address emerging issues; increase resources for graduate programs, including graduate student fellowships and equipment; significantly expand opportunities for undergraduate research; and invest in academic facilities and technology to address changing student and faculty needs. SMU now has 71 endowed academic positions, nine of them newly created with quiet phase gifts. Current external grant funding for faculty research and sponsored projects is $20 million, and the campaign goal is to reach $30 million.
To help ensure the health and vitality of campus life as a resource for the highest achievement, the campaign seeks to create residential colleges or commons as part of a sophomore housing requirement; expand student services in health care, wellness and career placement, among others; enhance competitiveness of the athletics program, which teaches leadership skills and builds community spirit; and continue to enrich the campus environment on the main campus in Dallas as well as at SMU-in-Legacy and SMU-in-Taos. For example, the University seeks to add residential facilities to accommodate 1,200 additional students living on its Dallas campus.
The Second Century Campaign seeks broad alumni participation through gifts of all sizes. The goal is to achieve 25 percent alumni giving every year and 50 percent giving throughout the campaign. To engage alumni across the country, President Turner and campaign volunteers hosted fall events in four regions. Events in every city have attracted the largest crowds in SMU’s recent history. Others events, including the Houston kickoff on Jan. 28, will be scheduled for 2009.</blockquote
The Second Century Campaign has attracted a group of committed leaders who will reach out to alumni and friends internationally. SMU extends its appreciation to the following volunteers and to others who daily are joining the ranks.
Leadership Council
Campaign co-chairs shown at right are:
Ray L. Hunt, ’65, co-chair
Caren H. Prothro, co-chair
President R. Gerald Turner, ex-officio
Gerald J. Ford, ’66, ’69, convening co-chair
Ruth Collins Sharp Altshuler, ’48, co-chair
Carl Sewell, ’66, co-chair.
Also shown: Brad E. Cheves, CEC ex-officio
Other members are:
Michael M. Boone, ’63, ’67, Dallas
Gary T. Crum, ’69, Houston
Linda Pitts Custard, ’60, ’99, Dallas
Robert H. Dedman Jr., ’80, ’84, Dallas
Milledge A. Hart III, Dallas
Gene C. Jones, Dallas
Jeanne L. Phillips, ’76, Dallas
John C. Tolleson, ’70, Dallas
Richard Ware, ’68, Amarillo
Steering Committee Co-Chairs
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences
Kelly Hoglund Compton, ’79, Dallas
Frederick B. Hegi Jr., ’66, Dallas
Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, dean of
Dedman College, ex officio
Cox School of Business
Frank M. Dunlevy, ’71, San Francisco
David B. Miller, ’72, ’73, Dallas
Albert W. Niemi Jr., dean of Cox School
of Business, ex officio
Meadows School of the Arts
Linda Harris Gibbons, ’58, Dallas
John S. McFarland, ’59, ’61, Dallas, convening
committee co-chair
Sarah Fullinwider Perot, ’83, Dallas
José Antonio Bowen, dean of Meadows
School of the Arts, ex officio
Lyle School of Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle, ’67, Dallas,
convening committee co-chair
Karen Livesay Shuford, ’70, Dallas
Geoffrey C. Orsak, dean of the Lyle School
of Engineering, ex officio
Dedman School of Law
Alan D. Feld, ’57, ’60, Dallas, convening
committee co-chair
Marilyn Hussman Augur, ’89, Dallas
Ron K. Barger, ’81, Plano
George W. Bramblett Jr., ’63, ’66, Dallas
Philip J. Wise, ’78, ’81, Dallas
John B. Attanasio, dean of Dedman
School of Law, ex officio
Perkins School of Theology
Dodee Frost Crockett, ’03, Wimberley, Texas
The Rev. Michael McKee, ’78, Hurst, Texas
Kay Prothro Yeager, ’61, Wichita Falls, Texas
William B. Lawrence, dean of Perkins School
of Theology, ex officio
Annette Caldwell Simmons School
of Education and Human Development
Richard H. Collins, ’69, Dallas
Connie Blass O’Neill, ’77, Dallas
David J. Chard, dean of Annette Caldwell
Simmons School of Education and
Human Development, ex officio
Central University Libraries
Ann Warmack Brookshire, ’77, Tyler, Texas
Tavenner C. Lupton III, ’79, Dallas
Gillian M. McCombs, dean and director of
Central University Libraries, ex officio
Campus and Student Life
Craig James, ’83, Celina, Texas
Richard Ware, ’68, Amarillo, Texas
Christine Casey, SMU vice president for
business and finance, ex officio
Paul W. Ludden, SMU provost and vice
president for academic affairs, ex officio
Lori S. White, SMU vice president for student
affairs, ex officio
Athletics
Denny R. Holman, ’67, Dallas
Paul B. Loyd Jr., ’68, Houston
Steve Orsini, SMU director of athletics
Atlanta
Jennifer D. Flanagan, ’82
Martin L. Flanagan, ’82
Chicago
Royce E. (Ed) Wilson
Leslie Zahn Wilson, ’81
Houston
Scott J. McLean, ’78
Dennis E. Murphree, ’69
Los Angeles
Marion O. Palley, Newport Beach
Roger B. Palley, Newport Beach
Kelly Allen Welsh, ’78, Pacific
Palisades
Kevin D. Welsh, Pacific Palisades
New York City
James H. MacNaughton, ’72, ’73
International Regions
Juan L. Elek, Mexico City
Helmut Sohmen, ’66, Hong Kong
Ex-Officio Members
R. Gerald Turner, SMU president
Brad E. Cheves, SMU vice president for
development and external affairs
Vernon Stutzman spent three years as a hospital chaplain before receiving a Master’s degree in hospital administration from Columbia University. For 28 years he was an administrator in three New York City hospitals. He will celebrate his 90th birthday in December 2008.
44</font
Bennie Houser Furlong was guest of honor at a June 2008 ceremony in Jacksonville Beach, FL, where the Beaches Senior Citizen Center was renamed the Bennie Houser Furlong Center. She is a former city councilwoman and longtime community volunteer.
45</font
Muriel Silberman Brahinsky is retired from an obstetrics/pediatrics practice. She taught anatomy and physiology and now holds reminiscing sessions with seniors in San Antonio.
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H. Neil McFarland, professor emeritus of history of religion and former SMU provost, provided items for display in the exhibit Texas Collects Asia: Japanese Folk Art, sponsored by the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas.
Donald A. (D.A.) Waite and his wife, Yvonne, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary Aug. 27, 2008. After serving as a U.S. Navy chaplain, he served two pastorates in Massachusetts before settling in Collingswood, NJ. They have eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
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Bernard J. Bagley is retired after 34 years at Texas Instruments in Dallas. He is the father of Gina Bagley (’74).
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William C. (Bill) Mounts celebrated 50 years in the ministry June 1, 2008, at Morningside Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, where he was ordained June 1, 1958. He has held pastorates in Atlanta, Knoxville, San Antonio and Athens, GA, and two post-retirement interim ministries at Union Point and Elberton in Georgia.
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Elizabeth Crump Hanson received the 2008 Distinguished Scholar Award for International Communication from the International Studies Association. She is the author of The Information Revolution and World Politics.
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Col. Gary D. Jackson was inducted April 18, 2008, into the U.S. Army Infantry School Class of 2008 Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame at Fort Benning, GA. He is an adjunct faculty member at the U.S. Command and Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, KS, a Civil Air Patrol officer in Tyler, TX, and an attorney in Lindale, TX, where he lives with his wife of 50 years, Gloria Ann Galouye Jackson (M.A. ’59, J.D. ’78). They have two sons, David and Daniel.
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Golden Reunion Weekend: May 15-16
Daniel A. Carter Jr. is a retired U.S. Air Force major and former Boy Scout leader.
Martha Ann Madden (M.A. ’63) wrote Wake Up, It’s Gap Time, a transition and planning guide for retirement and a how-to for stimulating the emotional, spiritual and psychological parts of one’s life.
Harry M. Roberts Jr. is among D magazine’s “Best Lawyers in Dallas” for 2008 and one of 20 attorneys from Thompson & Knight LLP named to the “Who’s Who Legal: Texas 2008” list published by Law Business Research Limited.
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Bennett W. Cervin was inducted as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers Sept. 13, 2008, in Denver. He is with Thompson & Knight LLP in the labor and employment law practice group in Dallas and has been named to The Best Lawyers in America every year since 1983.
Henry Doskey (M.M. ’66) is chair of the Keyboard Department at the School of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, where he directs piano and organ competitions for pre-college students. He has recorded the complete Debussy Preludes and complete works of William Gillock for Green Mill Recordings.
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Reunion chairs: John M. Haley, MD, and Sandra Garland Cecil
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Mary Elizabeth Moore (M.A. ’67) has been appointed dean of Boston University’s School of Theology. An ordained deacon in The United Methodist Church, she earned a Ph.D. in theology from the Claremont School of Theology (CA). Previously she was the director of the Program for Women in Theology and Ministry and a professor of religion and education at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.
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Pam Lontos (M.L.A. ’72) wrote I See Your Name Everywhere: Leverage the Power of the Media to Grow Your Fame, Wealth and Success (Morgan James) and Don’t Tell Me It’s Impossible Until After I’ve Already Done It. Her company, PR/PR Public Relations, generates publicity for speakers and best-selling authors.
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Dale Bulla volunteers in protecting wildlife and habitat in Central Texas. His church was the first in Texas to be certified a wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation after he and his wife, Pat, created native plant and butterfly gardens. Their yard was certified a “Best of Texas Backyard Habitat” by both the National Wildlife Federation’s Certified Wildlife Habitat and the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Texas Wildscapes.
The Rev. Jack Moffatt is a retired special ministry Christian clown. He and his wife, Ellen, entertained with Patch Adams and 37 other clowns from around the world at children’s hospitals and orphanages in Russia for two weeks in November 2007.
William W. Reynolds is executive vice president of global asset consulting for R.W. Beck Inc. in Orlando.
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Reunion chairs: Delilah Holmes Boyd, G. Mark Cullum and Cynthia Taylor Mills
Jim (J.V.) Hart is a celebrated moviemaker who also teaches screenwriting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts. He is working on his first animated movie with children’s book illustrator William Joyce (’81).
Dolores Johnson married Phil Chapman March 2, 2008.
Rhett G. Campbell is an insolvency and restructuring attorney in the Houston office of Thompson & Knight LLP. He was named to the Who’s Who Legal: Texas 2008 list from Law Business Research Limited.
Fletcher Freeman (J.D. ’73) is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church in Ely, MN.
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Jana Cole Bertrand wrote Beware the Red Flag Man: What Mothers Wish Their Daughters Could Know (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2008). She is a kindergarten teacher and single mother of seven daughters and three sons, one of whom attends SMU.
Elizabeth (Betty) Underwood is a real estate agent with Tom Gilchrist Co. in Dallas. She recently was elected a deacon at Highland Park Presbyterian Church.
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The Rev. James (Jim) Dorff is the new bishop of the Southwest Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church, based in San Antonio. He was associate pastor at Highland Park UMC from 1972-89 and served other Texas churches in Gainesville and McKinney.
Jack W. Lunsford was named one of 50 Powerful People in metropolitan Phoenix for 2007 by Phoenix Business Journal and one of 24 Movers & Shakers for 2008 by West Valley Magazine. He appeared in 1,000 People to Know in Real Estate for 2008 in AZRE Magazine.
Marsha Ann (Shan) Pickard Rankin (M.B.A. ’82) was honored last April by the Zonta Club of West Hidalgo County (TX) at the 2008 Shining Stars event for her professional contributions to the community as executive director of the Museum of South Texas History. She lives in McAllen with her husband, Davis, and two sons, Marshall and Duncan.
Dr. John R. Richmond taught family medicine for 12 years at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and then established a primary care practice at Health Care Clinic in Dallas. He was honored as the 2007 Texas Family Physician of the Year by the Texas Academy of Family Physicians and in 2007 received the Silver Beaver Award from the Dallas Circle Ten Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He and his wife of 31 years, Carol, have six children and four granddaughters.
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Jay Garrett is a Texas Super Lawyer, a Top Attorney in Fort Worth, Texas magazine and one of the Best Lawyers in America 2008 for real estate law. He is managing partner of Law, Snakard & Gambill in Fort Worth.
James C. Morriss III practices environmental law in the Austin office of Thompson & Knight LLP. He was named to the Who”s Who Legal: Texas 2008 list published by Law Business Research Limited.
Robert L. (Bob) Phillips is president and CEO of Phillips Productions Inc. in Dallas. Better known as the Texas Country Reporter, he has spent more than 35 years on the back roads of Texas and has been on every paved road in the state. His half-hour television programs total more than 2,000, and plans for a national show are in the works. He and his wife live in Beaumont, TX.
Glen Pourciau is the author of Invite (University of Iowa Press, 2008), a collection of stories that received the 2008 Iowa Short Fiction Award. He lives in Plano, TX.
Howard I. Zusman is a commercial lending expert with more than 30 years of experience. He has joined CNLBank in Miami-Dade County (FL) as senior vice president and commercial relationship manager.
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Reunion chairs: Steve Morton, Robert G. White Jr. and Brenda Beach White
Ralph H. Duggins was appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission for a five-year term beginning February 2008. He is a senior partner at Cantey Hanger LLP and serves on the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee. He lives in Fort Worth.
Kathy LaTour (M.A. ’83) is a 21-year breast cancer survivor and editor-at-large for Heal, a magazine for cancer survivors. She performed a one-woman show, One Mutant Cell, in Arkansas and Oklahoma last summer to celebrate National Cancer Survivors Day.
Barry Ross (M.B.A. ’79) started a full-service CPA firm in 2005 in Richardson, TX. Patrick Yack made a presentation on open government at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig McKinley became the first four-star general in the 372-year history of the National Guard in November. He is chief of the nation’s National Guard Bureau, overseeing 468,000 citizen-soldiers and airmen in Guard units in each state and territory. As the nation’s senior Guardsman, he also serves as principal adviser on National Guard matters to the Defense Secretary through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After completing ROTC at SMU, McKinley earned an Air Force commission. Rated as a command pilot, he has more than 4,000 flying hours in F-106, F-16 and F-15 fighters, and has been a command pilot in C-131 and C-130 aircraft.
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Roger D. Aksamit, a corporate tax attorney in the Houston office of Thompson & Knight LLP, has been selected for the Who’s Who Legal: Texas 2008 list published by Law Business Research Limited.
James B. (Jim) Harris practices environmental law at Thompson & Knight LLP in Dallas. He joins 19 peers named to the Who’s Who Legal: Texas 2008 list.
Frank Kanelos is a home health care speech and language pathologist. He is on the board of directors of the Miss Alabama pageant and poet laureate emeritus for Birmingham.
Gary L. Malone is a Texas Monthly super doctor for the fifth year in a row. He is medical director and chief of psychiatry at Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth and a faculty member at the Dallas Psychoanalytic Institute at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He has been married for 30 years and has two children.
James W. McKellar is one of 20 Thompson & Knight LLP attorneys named to the Who’s Who Legal: Texas 2008 list published by Law Business Research Limited. He is in banking law at the firm’s Dallas office.
Nancie Nieman Wagner is the 2008-09 president of the Junior League of Dallas Sustainers and a member of the Dallas Women’s Club. She and Alden E. Wagner Jr. have four children, two of whom attend SMU.
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The Rev. Mike Lowry has been elected bishop of the Fort Worth-based Central Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. He served Texas churches in Kerrville, Harlingen, Corpus Christi, Austin and San Antonio.
Dr. Timothy S. Mescon was named president of Columbus State University by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. Since 1990 he had been dean of the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
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O. Paul Corley Jr. is an attorney in the Dallas office of Thompson & Knight LLP named to D magazine’s Best Lawyers in Dallas for 2008.
Curtis Dretsch has been a teacher, designer and administrator at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, for almost 30 years. Primarily a professor of theater arts and director of design and technical theater in the Department of Theater and Dance, he received a Lifetime Achievement Henry Award in April 2002 for his contributions to the Muhlenberg College community.
The Rev. Dr. C. Robert Hasley Jr. (D. Min. ’78) has been elected to the Methodist Health System corporate board of directors. He was associate pastor of Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas from 1978-86 before becoming organizing pastor at St. Andrew UMC of Plano, where he is senior pastor.
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Rip Hale was recently named one of Barron’s magazine’s “Top 1000 Advisors” for 2009. He is a senior institutional consultant with Smith Barney in Dayton, Ohio.
Cindy Funkhouser MacIlvaine and Rod MacIlvaine live in Bartlesville, OK, where he is senior pastor of Grace Community Church and she leads adult ministries. Their church recently assisted in forming a school in Cuba.
Les Weisbrod is the 2008-09 president of the American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. He is a partner in the Dallas law firm Miller, Curtis & Weisbrod, representing cases involving serious injury or death as a result of negligence or product defect.
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Reunion chairs: Patrick F. Hammer, Kevin Meeks and Laura Green Meeks
The Rev. James E. Large completed 10 years as director of connectional ministries for the New Mexico Annual Conference and now serves as senior pastor at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Las Cruces.
Janet Pace is director of volunteer outreach for Louisiana, a position created after Hurricane Katrina. Her office promotes national service opportunities through AmeriCorps and supports the efforts of eight volunteer centers in the state, as well as nonprofits, faith-based organizations and governmental agencies. In June 2008 she was in Cedar Rapids, IA, to help organize volunteers to assist with flood relief.
Kathleen (Kathy) Vollenweider Waring is a volunteer for the New Orleans Secret Gardens Tour where participants open their private gardens to the public as a forum for creating awareness for brain injury recovery issues. Her interest results from a traumatic brain injury sustained by her own young daughter. For details on the March 2009 event, see www.secretgardenstour.org.
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R. Stephen (Steve) Folsom of Dallas was elected to the Methodist Health System corporate board of directors. He is president of Folsom Companies Inc. and a director of the Alzheimer’s Association, The Hockaday School and the Methodist Health System Foundation. He and his wife, Sharon, have two daughters and a son.
Emanda Richardson Johnson (M.A. ’93) is an adjunct faculty member in art education/art history in the College of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas.
Mark A. Shank is the new chair of the Texas Bar Foundation Board of Trustees and a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He is with K&L Gates LLP in Dallas.
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Charlene (Charl) Boyd has worked in real estate in Scottsdale, AZ, for 13 years and was a founding member of Equitable Real Estate Company. Recently she was named chair of the Habitat for Humanity Raise the Roof Golf Classic.
Joe Pouncy was awarded a Paul Harris Fellowship by the Carrollton-Farmers Branch (TX) Rotary Club in appreciation for his service to the club. He is a high school principal in Carrollton.
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Hector Reyes is a Senior Fellow at the Raytheon Company in McKinney, TX. Recently he was named chief technologist for Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems business unit in Texas.
Rodney Harmon was head coach of the men’s U.S. Olympic tennis team in Beijing this summer.
A. Brandon is a breast cancer survivor who has established a non-profit organization, Triangle Helping Hands, for cancer patients facing treatment.
Ruthelen Griffith Burns is one of five poets celebrating their first collaborative book, Rivers, Rails, and Runways (San Francisco Bay Press), launched Aug. 27, 2008. Termed “The Airpoets,” they wrote about faraway places and homecoming. An artist interpreted their verses as abstract images and acid-etched them onto 14 stained glass windows in the new terminal at Indianapolis International Airport. Burns lives in Indiana and New Mexico with her husband, Andy, and their three children.
Dr. Michael Joel Lanoux graduated from UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, completing a residency in diagnostic radiology. Since 1992 he has been vice president of Fort Worth Imaging PA.
James (Jim) Lewis moved to The University of Texas at Arlington May 15, 2008, as vice president for development, following 13 years as vice president for institutional advancement at Austin College in Sherman, TX.
Nancy Foreman McClure was recognized as one of Tucson’s 10 Most Influential Women of 2008. She is a first vice president for CB Richard Ellis, specializing in retail properties. She and her husband, Doug, have two daughters, Morgan and Erin.
Jon S. Wheeler has a company, Wheeler Interests, in Virginia Beach, VA, that has been listed among the Top 15 fittest companies in the nation, cited by Men’s Fitness magazine for offering employees catered lunches twice a week and free use of a gym.
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Reunion chairs: Hal Gibbs, Chris J. Gilker and Heather Evans Gilker
Christopher Braun, a senior partner at Plews Shadley Racher & Braun LLP in Indianapolis, was named to the Super Lawyers listing in environmental, business litigation and real estate law. He is Indiana’s only attorney to be accorded membership in the American College of Environmental Lawyers, which inducted him in September 2008 at the annual conference in San Francisco.
Hal Curtis is an Emmy-winning art director with Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency and creative director since 1997 of national campaigns for Nike and Coca-Cola. Advertising Age’s Creativity magazine named him one of the 50 most influential creative leaders of the past 20 years. As part of the ExxonMobil Lecture Series at SMU last spring, he spoke to students about “Brand Heroism: Advertising as a Force for Good.”
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The Rev. Earl Bledsoe has been elected bishop of the 20-county North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church, which includes Dallas. He was pastor of churches in Houston and Cypress, TX, before becoming a district superintendent in 2002.
George Lancaster is senior vice president of corporate communications in the Houston office of Hines, an international real estate firm. He holds the designation of senior certified marketing director and senior certified shopping center manager from the International Council of Shopping Centers.
Susan Lang is a personal home building consultant in design, construction and decorating and the author of Designing Your Dream Home: Every Question to Ask, Every Detail to Consider, and Everything to Know Before You Build or Remodel. She lives in Nashville.
Robert (Bob) O’Boyle is a partner at Strasburger & Price LLP and president of the Austin Bar Association for 2008-09. He received the J. Chrys Dougherty Award for 2008 from the Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas for his commitment to pro bono work.
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Bart Bevers was appointed Texas Health and Human Services Commission Inspector General by Gov. Rick Perry. He received the Founders Award in San Francisco from the Association of Certified Fraud Specialists.
Asif Dowla is a professor of international economics and the economics of developing countries at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. In May 2008 he received the Homer L. Dodge Award for Excellence in Teaching. He co-authored The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story.
Dawn Estes formed Taber Estes Thorn & Carr PLLC, a female-owned law firm in Dallas. She practices civil litigation and technology law and serves as an arbitrator and court-appointed mediator.
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Suzannah Bowie Moorman made her New York debut at Carnegie Hall June 14, 2008, as soprano soloist of Mass in C major, No. 1, “Wedding Mass.” The concert was sponsored by Distinguished Concerts International – New York.
Roger O’Neel (M.M. ”88) was promoted in August 2008 to associate professor of church music with tenure at Cedarville University in Ohio.
Sima Salamati-Saradh received the Managerial Leadership Award for 2008 by Women of Color magazine, IBM Corporation and the selection panel of the National Women of Color Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Conference. She was honored in October at the Awards Gala at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas.
Raymond W. Starmann wrote the movie Generation Gap about a troubled teen who spends a summer in Maine with his grandfather. It will be shown on the Hallmark Channel.
Thomas Wiberg worked as a geologist in the environmental consulting field for almost 20 years. He and his wife have left Dallas and opened a wine shop and wine bar in Comfort, TX.
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Naida Albright Graham is co-founder and former co-publisher of Below the Line, a daily newspaper focused on film crews. She left her position in April 2008 to pursue media and entertainment opportunities with a new production entity, Conshimfee Prods.
Sue Hostetler was appointed to the Board of Trustees at Ballroom Marfa, the non-profit cultural arts center in Marfa, TX. She is host of a television show, Plum Homes with Sue Hostetler, style editor for Aspen Magazine, a contributing editor at Gotham magazine and the author of two books, Hip Hollywood Homes (Random House, 2006) and Oceans (Rizzoli, 2002). She lives in New York with her husband, Jon Diamond, and her young daughter.
John O’Reilly was appointed by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors as one of nine members of the Palomar Airport Advisory Committee; his term expires January 2011. He owns a comprehensive wealth management firm in Carlsbad, CA.
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Reunion chairs: Tracey E. George, Caroline Waggoner Hautt and Craig H. Yaksick
Kristi Birch is a science writer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. She also writes for Johns Hopkins Magazine and other JHU periodicals, including Johns Hopkins Public Health, Arts & Sciences, Hopkins Medicine and Peabody Magazine.
Doug Renfro is president of Renfro Foods in Fort Worth, which received the 2008 Greater Tarrant Business Ethics Award from TCU’s Neeley School of Business.
Laura Claycomb made her debut with the Santa Fe Opera this summer. She is working on a touring dance-theater piece and has moved from Brussels, Belgium, to Turin, Italy.
Rena Wilson Fox formed UnTapped Talent LLC, a Hershey, PA-based company geared toward publishing writers with little or no experience. She has 24 years of experience in publishing, copywriting and production.
Arthur (Art) George was honored at the 2008 Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference, produced by the Career Communications Group Inc., in recognition of lifetime achievement and exceptional career gains in government and industry.
Lee Mulcahy (Ph.D. ’00) is a guide and teaches fly fishing in the Aspen, CO, area.
Darren Taylor has three sons: Jack, 3, and twins, Ryan and Luke, born in January 2008 in Evanston, IL. He is director of e-commerce at W.W. Grainger.
Charles Valvano (M.B.A. ’91) was appointed a commissioner to the Toms River Municipal Utilities Authority in Toms River, NJ. He is an adjunct professor of economics and investments at Ocean County College (NJ).
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Katherine Bongfeldt married Kaushal Vyas in Mai, Hawaii, March 29, 2007. Their daughter, Maggie Anu, was born Sept. 9, 2007. Katherine is signed with nationally known talent manager Maggie Smith of Los Angeles.
John Clanton is senior vice president and senior portfolio manager with Compass Wealth Management Group in Dallas, working with high-net-worth families and individuals.
Mary Hutchings Cooper was honored at a Winter Ball last March as an Outstanding Volunteer of the New York Junior League for 2008. She has worked with teenagers in Harlem, encouraging careers in the arts and media; helped teenage mothers with family life skills; renovated community playgrounds; and built houses for the homeless in Sri Lanka. Cooper is a product manager at Reuters America.
Katy Etheridge has co-authored with ChiChi Villaloz the book Do Dogs Vote? (Malamute Press, Inc., 2008), a whimsical, educational and rhyming picture book for children ages 4-8 that introduces timely themes and vocabulary about the importance of having a voice and making responsible decisions in the voting process.
Patrick Maher is founder and CEO of Eight Crossings, a Sacramento-based company that provides off-site support services for doctors through Windward Health, lawyers through Windward Legal and authors through Two Tree Press. His company has been recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.
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Scott Hancock is regional executive vice president of Liberty Bank of Arkansas in Springdale. He plays Santa at civic and charity events and is an active volunteer in northwest Arkansas.
C. Sam Walls III is president of the Arkansas Economic Acceleration Foundation in Little Rock, where he sees business ideas come to fruition and supports entrepreneurial development projects. He is a graduate of the Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Mark Yee has joined Deutsch creative agency in Los Angeles as senior vice president/account director. Previously he was an account director at Latitude/The Richards Group.
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Andrew Arroyo is vice president of information technology at eCardio Diagnostics, where he directs strategic technology planning for information systems and business applications. He held senior executive-level positions at Mobil Oil, Motorola, Lucent, The Feld Group and Centex.
Jamie McIver lives in Brandon, FL, and has worked in training and communications for six years at the Florida Department of Transportation. She is studying for a Master’s degree in strategic communications and leadership at Seton Hall University (NJ) through the distance-learning program.
Eliza Stewart is Sister Mary Thomas, O.P., a cloistered Dominican nun at the Monastery of the Infant Jesus in Lufkin, TX. She handles the altar bread department and Web site and is head chantress and organist.
Heather Wilson is vice president at the Los Angeles office of Weber Shandwick, where she runs the crisis management group for the global public relations firm.
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Reunion chairs: Molly Noble Kidd and Scott J. Mallonee
Kirsten Castañeda was elected to the 14-member Executive Committee of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers for 2008-09. She is senior counsel in the Dallas office of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell.
Marla Mason Ross owns Adelante Boutique in San Antonio. She invented a clothing garment, Chickies Cleavage Coverage by Juls & Meg, as a way for women to layer clothing.
Rawson Stovall is a producer at Electronic Arts, a video game publisher in California. He lives in Redwood City.
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Thomas E. (Tom) Jones has been promoted to vice president of sales for Exar Corp., where he held sales management positions for 10 years. He lives in Plano, TX, with his wife, Brenda.
Dana Babb McGowan announces the birth of twins, Ian Derek and Avery Barbara, Feb. 11, 2008. Her other children are Evan, 4, and Abby Grace, 2.
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Stephanie Walsh completed a Master’s degree in counseling psychology in June 2008 and moved to China in September. She has published two children’s books with Aardvark Adventure Stories.
Gregory Dean Watts is board certified in criminal law by the Texas Board of Legalization. He has written a screenplay, “Big Foot Took My Girlfriend,” which was optioned by a production company.
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Eric Holcomb was promoted to region controller for Europe, Africa, Russia and Caspian for Baker Atlas, a division of Baker Hughes. He lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, with his wife, Lea, and two daughters, Anna Catherine and Elizabeth.
J.R. Johnson left a Los Angeles law practice to co-found VirtualTourist.com, a travel Web site with mentions in Newsweek, The New York Times and Travel+Leisure.
Paige Puryear McGehee announces the birth of her third daughter, Corinne Copeland, April 18, 2008.
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Emily Muscarella Guthrie and husband Ben Guthrie ’00 ’01 welcomed their third child, Judith Louise, on March 1, 2009. She joins big brothers Joseph Steven, born in September 2005, and Felix Benjamin, born in April 2007.
Alison Ream Griffin and her husband, Paul, announce the birth of Nicholas Owen Sept. 23, 2007. The Griffins live in Alexandria, VA, where she is a part-time higher education consultant.
Anna Katherine Whitehead received a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary May 17, 2008.</P.
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Reunion chairs: Taylor Martin and Lindsay Feldhaus Perlman
Jay Whittaker starred as Ian in “Shining City” at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Jan. 12-Feb. 17, 2008. He also has television and film credits.
Justin Philips and his wife, Tricia, own and run Beer Table, a small, upscale bar in Brooklyn, NY, that received a positive review last April in The New York Times.
Karolyn Stewart was promoted to marketing resource manager at MSCW Inc., an Orlando-based design firm, overseeing marketing initiatives. She is a member of the Junior League of Greater Orlando and the Society of Marketing Professional Services.
01
Carrie Warrick de Moor is a third-year emergency medicine resident at Thomason Hospital in El Paso, where she is chief ER resident for 2008-09. She lives in El Paso with her husband and son, Christian, 2.
Songming (Anthony) Feng works in international media relations at the Beijing headquarters of Lenovo, and worked on the public relations program of the company’s Olympic marketing campaign.
Cedric Mayfield is in the Middle East with the Air Force Band on a concert tour for deployed military and local villagers.
Bethany Brink Somerman and her husband, David, welcomed son Hunter Davis April 24, 2008, in Plymouth, MA.
02
Chuck Constant moved from Citigroup to Wachovia Securities Southwest Region as vice president and regional banking consultant, responsible for developing and integrating Wachovia’s banking services group within 55 branches and for 450 financial advisers.
The Rev. Stephanie Toon Glassman became pastor of First United Methodist Church of Orange, CA, in July 2008. During the previous six years, she was associate minister at Mesa Verde UMC in Costa Mesa, primarily working with children and youth. She married Bryan Glassman in 2007.
Kelley McRae is a singer-songwriter in New York City. She released her second album, “Highrises in Brooklyn,” in August 2008 and her debut album, “Never Be,” in 2006.
Jannie Luong Nguyen is a public relations manager at Idearc Media in Dallas. She married Binh Nguyen May 31, 2008.
03
Dodee Frost Crockett was recognized in Barron’s magazine as one of the Top 100 Women Financial Advisers for her work in the Dallas market.
Jimmy Tran is in graduate study at Harvard Business School. He was named a George Leadership Fellow for 2008-09 at the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
04
Reunion chairs: Britt Moen Estwanik and Dustin T. Odham
05
Bryan Warrick is a 2008 graduate of SMU Dedman School of Law.
06
Lindsey Jandal Postula joined the Dallas office of law firm Looper Reed & McGraw PC as an associate in real estate law.
07
Megan Crichton is in the national touring company of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. She is engaged to Garrett Haake, who works as a researcher for NBC Nightly News in New York City.
Ashley Elizabeth Johnston joined the law firm Looper Reed & McGraw PC in Dallas with a practice in health care and corporate transactional matters.
Bailey McGuire began working full time with the Dallas office of Genesco Sports Enterprises following a senior-year internship. In January 2008 he moved to the Denver Genesco office to work on the Coors/NASCAR account.
Aaron D. Pan has been named curator of science at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. He has done curatorial work at the Natural History Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
08
Hector Fontanez, who holds a Master’s degree in software engineering, will begin his doctoral studies in engineering at SMU in the fall.
Michael Blachly has been promoted to director of client development in the Dallas office of law firm Looper Reed & McGraw PC. Previously he was director of communications at SMU Dedman School of Law.
Martha Harms and Lee Helms were in last summer’s Dallas cast of the world premiere of the dark comedy “SICK,” a production of Kitchen Dog Theater’s 2008 New Works Festival.
Paige Pyron spent the summer in Namibia as a WorldTeach volunteer, teaching math, English and science to secondary school students.
Norma Whittekin Allen is enjoying life in Palm Beach, FL.
44
William E. (Bill) Sprowls and his wife, Midge Williams Sprowls (’49), celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary on a cruise around the British Isles, ending in Paris.
49
The Rev. Norma Prince Swank Trump (M.T.S. ’86) is retired with her husband, Roger, in Hickory, NC.
51
Herb Robertson (M.S. ’59) has published his first book, The ABCs of De: A Primer on Everette Lee DeGolyer, 1886-1956 (DeGolyer Library, 2007).
53
Patsy Pittman Light has culminated 10 years of research and writing in her new book released April 1, Capturing Nature: The Cement Sculpture of Dionicio Rodriguez (Texas A&M University Press), which examines the artist’s faux bois sculpture.
54
Lowell (“Stretch”) Smith Jr. was special guest at a ceremony last September to rename the former Cleburne Middle School to Smith Middle School in his honor. He has been a longtime force in the Cleburne and Johnson County (TX) business and civic communities, promoting education as the driving force and major factor in success.
56
Richard Deats led a retreat on the committed life at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in Pennsylvania and lectured on the nonviolent Jesus at the 100th anniversary of Union Theological Seminary.
Bill Diller recently was elected president of the Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs, comprised of 104 county fairs statewide.
57
Gary Dean Jackson and his wife, Gloria Ann Galouye Jackson (M.A. ’59, J.D. ’78), celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last December in Lindale, TX. The accomplished lawyers have two sons and two granddaughters. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel.
Barbara Jensen Vernon is newly retired as city administrator of Prairie Village, KS, a position she has held since 1978.
58
Robert (Bob) LaFavre was a member of the 1954 SMU swim team that won the Southwest Conference Championship. Now at age 75, he has qualified in six events for the 2008 U.S. Masters Championship Meet. He won five gold medals at the U.S. Masters Zone Championship Meet and six golds at the 2007 Iowa Games. After retiring from business in Dallas, he returned to his hometown of Cedar Falls, IA.
59
Martha Madden (M.A. ’63) was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Northwestern State University of Louisiana at the fall commencement exercises Dec. 14, 2007. President of Madden Associates LLC in New Orleans and Washington, DC, she is an executive consultant in governmental affairs, environmental management, health, education and economic development.
61
Mary Earle Persons Russell has a private practice as a reading and learning specialist in Denver.
Submit a Class Note or address change online, or send information to SMU Magazine, P.O. Box 750174, Dallas, TX 75275-0174. Be sure to include your class year.
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs:Harriet Hopkins Holleman, George W. Bramblett Jr.
64
Mike Boone (J.D. ’67) received the 2008 J. Erik Jonsson Ethics Award February 12 at a luncheon at the Belo Mansion in Dallas. He is co-founder of the law firm Haynes and Boone LLP.
65
Molly Porter Burke is retired from teaching. She lives in San Antonio where she is a volunteer counselor at Agape Ministry, a coalition of churches providing funds, food and clothing to those in financial need.
66
Mary Ann Lee wrote a chapter in the recently published book Crisis of Conscience: Arkansas Methodists and the Civil Rights Struggle.
68
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Johnetta Alexander Burke, Robert A. Massad, Gail Vosburgh Massad
Jerry C. Alexander (J.D. ’72) has been elected secretary-treasurer of the Dallas Bar Association for 2008 and was selected a Texas Monthly “Super Lawyer” for 2007. His firm is Passman & Jones PC.
Betty Roddy Bezemer is the 2008 president of the Dover Club, Houston’s entrepreneurial club of business professionals. She is a realtor with Keller Williams-Memorial.
Kathleen Gilmore (Ph.D. ’73) is an archaeologist who searched two decades for the lost fort of French explorer LaSalle, finally discovering it near the Texas Gulf Coast. Now age 92, she made a documentary last July at the site of Fort St. Louis. In December she visited Spain to study documents sent from early Texas missions, and she is writing a paper on Texas presidios.
69
Albon O. Head Jr. (J.D. ’71) is a Texas Super Lawyer, a “Top Attorney” in Fort Worth, Texas magazine and a leading U.S. attorney in The Best Lawyers in America 2008. He is a partner in the litigation section at Jackson Walker LLP and managing partner of the Fort Worth office.
Larry Van Smith (J.D. ’73) was named to The Best Lawyers in America 2008 for banking law and real estate law. He is with
the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP.
70
John Alexander is a contemporary painter whose first full-scale examination of his three-decade career was celebrated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, Dec. 21, 2007, through March 16. The retrospective moved to Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts April 13 to June 22.
Janie Bryan Loveless (M.L.A. ’74) is the communications manager at the national MADD office in Las Colinas (Irving, TX) and a freelance writer-editor and consultant. She and her husband, a television photographer, have a son, Bryan, 22.
71
Robert C. Margo joined the National Arbitration Forum’s panel of independent and neutral arbitrators and mediators based on experience in health care and contract and employment law. In 2006 and 2007 he was selected an Oklahoma Super Lawyer. He lives in Oklahoma City.
72
William Frank Carroll joined the Dallas office of law firm Cox Smith Matthews Inc. He was elected to the councils of the State Bar of Texas and Dallas Bar Association in the antitrust, business litigation and trade regulations sections.
Terry Daniels is retired in Ohio after 25 years as a private investigator in Texas. He is a former world heavyweight boxing contender.
Mike McCurley was named in October 2007 to the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. He is founding partner of McCurley Orsinger McCurley Nelson & Downing LLP, one of the largest firms in Texas specializing solely in family law.
Submit a Class Note or address change online, or send information to SMU Magazine, P.O. Box 750174, Dallas, TX 75275-0174. Be sure to include your class year.
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Linda Gibson Stephens, Kay Barker Enoch
Dan Kremer (M.F.A. ’75) appeared as Horace Vandergelder in the summer 2007 production of The Matchmaker at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, UT.
74
Gary Ingram has been selected one of Fort Worth, Texas magazine’s Top Attorneys and was listed in the 2006 and 2008 editions of The Best Lawyers in America. He heads the labor and employment section of Jackson Walker LLP.
Joe Pouncy (M.L.A. ’82) is president-elect of Rotary Carrollton-Farmers Branch (TX). He is principal of Newman Smith High School in Carrollton.
75
Donnie Ray Albert sang the role of Trinity Moses in LA Opera’s production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which premiered in December 2007 on PBS.
James B. (Jim) Harris is a partner in regulatory litigation and counseling, including environmental matters, in the law firm Thompson & Knight. He was named in September 2007 to a one-year term as chair of the board of Dallas Heritage Village, a living history museum that portrays life in North Texas from 1840 to 1910.
76
Maxine Aaronson (J.D. ’80) has been named a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. She has offices in Dallas and Houston.
77
Elizabeth (Beth) Mahaffey Anderson is chair of the governing board of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the state’s affordable housing finance agency. In November 2007 she was appointed a commissioner of the Texas Department of Public Safety by Gov. Rick Perry.
Mary Brooke Casad was named executive secretary in September 2007 of the Connectional Table of The United Methodist Church based in Dallas and will provide administrative leadership to the group. She and her husband, the Rev. Victor Casad, have two sons and one grandson.
Brian Cobble has received his fourth award in five years from the annual exhibition of the Pastel Society of America in New York. He received the 2007 National Arts Club Award for his pastel Lexington Alley (Nebraska).
Dr. Jeffrey Whitman is a physician-ophthalmologist in Dallas at the Key-Whitman Eye Center. He is a pioneer in some of the most advanced eye-care technology to date.
Ken Yano has joined the Kansas City office of Grant Thornton LLP as a state and local tax executive director. He has over 25 years of experience in multistate income/franchise taxation, serving clients in the retail, financial, oil and gas and service industries.
78
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Karen Selbo Hunt, Reagan Brown
Steve Alter is associate professor of history at Gordon College in Wenham, MA.
Tom Aronson helps manage the assets of Julius Schepps Corp. After a 13-year layoff, he concentrates on his Fender Stratocaster in his free time.
C. Wade Cooper of Austin was included in The Best Lawyers in America 2008 for his work in bankruptcy and credit-debtor rights law. He is with the firm Jackson Walker LLP.
79
Mina Brees taught dispute resolution seminars in Poland and Estonia in 2006-07. She is co-author of Arbitration Road Map (Texas Bar Books, 2007).
Peter Meza was appointed counsel Jan. 1, 2008, by Hogan & Hartson LLP. His legal practice focuses on intellectual property matters for U.S. and international semiconductor and high-technology electronics clients.
81
J. D. Salazar was chosen one of Chicago’s 45 finest business leaders and featured in Chicago United’s 2007 Business Leaders of Color, released in November. He is managing principal for Champion Realty Advisors LLC, which under his leadership has become one of the most successful Hispanic-owned commercial/industrial real estate companies in the country. He is on the Board of Directors of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which annually distributes more than 45 million pounds of food in Chicago and
Cook County. He also is a director of the Rediehs Foundation, which supports Christian missions and missionaries around the world.
Karla K. Wigley announces the adoption of her daughter, Larkin Faith MengFen, born Sept. 23, 2006, in The People’s Republic of China. She and her brother spent three weeks in China in September 2007 finalizing the adoption.
82
C. David Cush (M.B.A. ’83) was named CEO of Virgin America airline in November 2007. He is former senior vice president of global sales at American Airlines.
Submit a Class Note or address change online, or send information to SMU Magazine, P.O. Box 750174, Dallas, TX 75275-0174. Be sure to include your class year.
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Meaders Moore Ozarow, Sam J. Chantilis
Yolette Garcia is the new assistant dean for external affairs and outreach in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at SMU. She held positions for 25 years at KERA, the North Texas public broadcasting station, including executive producer for KERA-TV Channel 13 and assistant station manager and news director for KERA-FM 90.1.
Hector Guzman received the Mozart Medal, Mexico’s highest honor for musical excellence, in a January 2008 ceremony at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. He is music director of three Texas symphony orchestras: Plano, Irving and San Angelo. He became a U.S. citizen in 2001 and now lives in Plano.
Phil Hubbard took a comic turn as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and also appeared in King Lear and Coriolanus in the 2007 Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, UT.
84
Gordon H. (Gordie) Hamilton III and his wife, Ann Marie, adopted their daughter, Dasha, 6, from a Russian orphanage in December 2006 through the Bridge of Hope summer program of the Cradle of Hope Adoption Center
based in Maryland. She has three brothers: Gordie, John and Charlie. Dad Gordie, Cradle’s new regional director,
wants to bring the Bridge of Hope program to Kansas City-area families. He also is a financial adviser and planning specialist for Smith Barney.
Pamela L. Rundell is a senior compliance analyst in the Ethics and Compliance Department at Tenet Healthcare in Dallas, where she coordinates legal issues for Tenet’s U.S. facilities. She has a son, Reiny, 13.
85
Teresa Weiss (Tisa) Hibbs plays the role of Annabel in the TV series Friday Night Lights on NBC. She is married to Billy E. Hibbs Jr. (M.B.A. ’81). They live in Tyler, TX.
Lara Lowman sailed September to December 2007 from Florida to Tahiti with her uncle and three others on a 43-ft. catamaran built by her uncle.
Mark Miller has been named assistant managing editor and chief of correspondents for Newsweek.
Christine Karol Roberts has a California intellectual property law practice and has established GazetteWatch.com,
a trademark watching service. She has written a novel, The Jewel Collar, and is working on a legal thriller to be entitled License to Die For.
Douglas S. (Doug) Rogers has been named chief investment officer of Seattle firm Laird Norton Tyee. He is a noted investment expert and author of Tax-Aware Investment Management: The Essential Guide (Bloomberg Press, 2006).
He is a frequent conference speaker and contributor to industry journals.
Patty Sullivan joined Texas Capital Bank as senior vice president of marketing and media after six years as director of public relations for Pizza Hut U.S. In September 2005 she adopted a baby from China, Catherine Mei Sullivan.
Elena Rohweder Turner was named vice president of corporate marketing at Wachovia bank’s central region
in Addison, TX.
Melanie Wells continues her string of Dylan Foster psychological thrillers with her third book, My Soul to Keep (Multnomah Books, February 2008). Her previous books are When the Day of Evil Comes (2005) and The Soul
Hunter (2006).
86
John R. Bear (M.B.A. ’89) has been named president and COO of Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator Inc., based near Indianapolis. It operates 93,600 miles of high voltage wholesale electric transmission lines over a 920,000 sq. mi. area touching 15 U.S. states and one Canadian province.
Craig Flournoy has been recognized by the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Preparation at The University of Texas at Austin as one of eight Texans who improved the lives of those in their communities for his work as an investigative reporter at The Dallas Morning News and investigative projects by students he directed at SMU. He teaches advanced news writing, computer-assisted reporting, history of American journalism and investigative reporting. He has won more than 50 state and national journalism awards, including the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, and was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting.
Janie E. James (J.D. ’92) has been named a Texas Super Lawyer. She is senior counsel in the business transactions section of the Dallas office of Jackson Walker LLP.
87
Karl L. Fava, CPA, is founder and president of Business Financial Consultants Inc., a national tax and financial advisory firm. He has been elected chair of the board of the Henry Ford Community College Foundation. A. Joseph Shepard has been appointed director of the Office of Investment at the U.S. Small Business Administration based on leadership skills and experience in investment banking and mezzanine and private-equity investing. He will oversee the Small Business Investment Company program which has invested about $51.4 billion in more than 103,000 small U.S. businesses.
88
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Kathy McCoy Turner, Stephen L. Arata
Mark W. Peters was elected secretary of World Services Group for 2007-08 at the annual meeting in Montreal. He is a member of the law firm Dykema, where he deals in mergers and acquisitions of public and private companies, subsidiaries and divisions. He lives in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
90
Rafael Anchía has been named a partner in the Financial Transactions Practice Group of Haynes and Boone LLP. In addition, Anchía has been twice elected Texas state representative for District 103, which includes parts of Dallas, Irving, Carrollton and Farmers Branch.
Craig Anderson (J.D. ’93) has joined the Dallas law firm DLA Piper LLP as a partner in the real estate section.
Greg Brown (M.B.A. ’02) is managing director of the AFI DALLAS International Film Festival. He is responsible for the workings of the festival and year-round programming.
John Clanton is a veteran Texas investment adviser and portfolio manager. He joined Wachovia Wealth Management as a vice president and investment strategist. Most recently he served as portfolio manager for Northern Trust in Dallas.
Carolyn Herter has some of her photos included in an exhibition at Montserrat Gallery in New York City from
October 2007 to September 2008.
Katherine Staton is president-elect of the International Aviation Women’s Association, which brings together
women of achievement in the aviation industry and promotes their advancement internationally through a worldwide network of aviation professional contacts. She is a partner in the litigation and aviation sections of Dallas law firm Jackson Walker LLP.
Johnson Samuel Subramanian recently published the academic book The Synoptic Gospels and the Psalms as Prophecy (T&T Clark International).
92
William R. Jenkins is one of Fort Worth, Texas magazine’s Top Attorneys. He is a partner in the litigation section of Jackson Walker LLP and a board member of the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County.</p
Bettye Anderson McLaughlin, at age 78, leads an aerobics exercise class for older ladies at San Saba (TX) UMC.
Dawn McMahan and her husband, Terrell Steketee, announce the birth of their second daughter, Madeline Dawn,
Aug. 23, 2007.
Ross Vick left his family business to write adult contemporary music. His album, released last October, contained the hit single “The Road”.
Michele Wallis is living in southern Florida’s Treasure Coast. She has relaunched the Web site SisterDelirious.com.
Submit a Class Note or address change online, or send information to SMU Magazine, P.O. Box 750174, Dallas, TX 75275-0174. Be sure to include your class year.
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Neisha Strambler-Butler, Richie L. Butler, Bradley L. Adams
Dan Davenport is a co-founder of RiseSmart, an online job search company that matches member profiles and résumés with job opportunities from online listings.
Gretchen Hoag Foster and her husband, Charlie, announce the birth of their daughter, Kathleen Stewart, Aug. 14, 2007.
Kelly D. Hine (J.D. ’97) has been elected to the Fellows of the Texas Bar Association. He is a Dallas attorney with Fish & Richardson PC.
Jack Ingram is enjoying a renewed career in mainstream country music after relocating to Austin from Dallas with his wife, Amy, and three children, Ava Adele, 5; Eli, 3; and Hudson, 2. He has a new record label, Nashville’s Big Machine Records, and in March 2007 released the CD “This Is It.”
Jeffrey John (Jeff) Kimbell married Jessica Elizabeth Clement Sept. 29, 2007, at San José del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico. He is president of Jeffrey J. Kimbell & Associates Inc., managing director of Jackalope Real Estate Inc. and president of Magnum Entertainment Group LLC. The couple has homes in Washington, DC, and Park City, UT.
95
Mary Beth Wade Schad is the owner of Ellie & Ollie Cookies for Dinner and a recent finalist for the Martha Stewart Dreamers to Doers contest based on women turning their passions into businesses. Her cookies were featured in the November 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine.
96
Anthony R. (Tony) Briley and his wife, Ana Pia, announce the birth of their daughter, Izabella Maria, Oct. 25, 2007.
W. Ross Forbes, a partner in the litigation section of the Dallas office of Jackson Walker, has been elected a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation. Fellows are selected for their outstanding professional achievements and their demonstrated commitment to the improvement of the justice system throughout Texas.
97
Allison Martin Christie lives in rural England and owns/operates a restaurant and pub. Her daughter was born in August 2007.
Michelle Campbell Gilmartin and her husband, Sean, announce the birth of identical twins, Timothy (Tim) Sean and Thomas Samuel (Sam), Aug. 4, 2007.
98
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Charles W. Wetzel, Julie Bordelon Wetzel, Alison Ream Griffin
Carmen Hazan-Cohen works in the International Outreach Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Mississippi.
Jennifer Clark Tobin (J.D. ’01) became a shareholder of Geary, Porter & Donovan PC Jan. 1, 2008.
99
Dominique Eudaly married Jeff Jordan in 2002. They live in Tyler, TX, with their sons, Jeffrey, 3; Wells, 2; and Henry, 8 months.
Rosario (Chachy Segovia) Heppe and Hansjoerg Heppe (’97) announce the birth of their daughter, Helena Maria del Socorro Brigitte, April 5, 2007, in New York City. The law school graduates have relocated to Dallas where he joined Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP as an associate in the corporate securities section.
2000
David Kelly has been appointed president and CEO of Bluefin Robotics, which manufactures and develops autonomous underwater vehicles, systems and technology for military applications, oil and gas exploration, sea floor mapping
and archaeological purposes. He has more than 25 years of comprehensive, hands-on, high-tech experience.
Aaron Z. Tobin has joined Dallas-based Anderson Jones PLLC as a partner in complex commercial trial, creditors’ rights and appellate matters and will represent clients in business, bankruptcy, intellectual property and employment litigation matters.
James N. Zoys became a shareholder with Geary, Porter & Donovan PC Jan. 1, 2008.
01
Mary Elizabeth Ellis Day has been a recurring cast member for three seasons on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on Fox TV.
Carrie Warrick deMoor and her husband announce the birth
of their son, Christian, June 7, 2006. She is in her second year of emergency medicine residency at Thomasson Hospital in El Paso.
02
Patricia A. (Tricia) Barnett is director of development for the School of Economics, Political and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. She has served as director of communications for the Office of Private Sector Initiatives at the Reagan White House and director of public affairs for United Way of America.
03
Reunion: November 8, 2008
Chairs: Lizanne H. Garrett, Rogers B. Healy
Dr. Alonso N. Gutiérrez is a radiation oncology physicist with an appointment as assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Ryan Long, as the business operations lead for Boeing Simulator Services in Los Angeles, updates flight simulators around the world.
04
Courtney Cooper St. Eve is a reporter at KSDK-TV in St. Louis. She won an Emmy at the 2007 mid-America regional Emmy ceremony last October for her story on a St. Louis museum that features dollhouse miniatures. In 2004 she had the AP story of the year and won a Telly award for her live coverage of a local plane crash. She married Bryan St. Eve in September 2007.
Luke Vahalik married Mackenzie Britton (’06) Aug. 25, 2007, in Ellsworth, KS. Both are employed at L-3 Integrated Systems in Greenville, TX, where he is an electrical engineer and she is a software engineer.
06
Michael Whaley, a second-year Teach For America corps member who teaches fifth grade in Memphis, has been awarded a fellowship with the Building Excellent Schools (BES) organization. As a BES Fellow, Whaley will enter a yearlong training program in general charter school management. He will open a charter school in the area when he completes his fellowship in summer 2009.
Submit a Class Note or address change online, or send information to SMU Magazine, P.O. Box 750174, Dallas, TX 75275-0174. Be sure to include your class year.
At any moment in the Owen Arts Center, piano tunes waft from classrooms, budding actors practice their faux swordfights and ballerinas pirouette in the hallways. Advertising Professor Patricia Alvey finds the creative environment “thrilling and stimulating.”
Patricia Alvey, Temerlin Advertising Institute
SMU’s Temerlin Advertising Institute for Education and Research in Meadows School of the Arts shares space with art, music, theatre and other fine arts students and faculty. “I love the energy. It’s delightful that I ended up back in an art school,” says Alvey, Distinguished Chair and Director of the Institute. Before receiving a Ph.D. in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin, Alvey earned a B.F.A. in drawing and painting from Murray State University.
With a painter’s eye and a pragmatist’s work ethic, she “fell into advertising,” making a happy landing in a field where her passions for art, academics and altruism intersect. Early on she appreciated the blend of personal and professional satisfaction that came from working with nonprofit groups. She designed everything from brochures to brand-identity programs for the Texas Capital Preservation Campaign, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and other organizations. Her work on behalf of the March of Dimes won national Summit International Design awards, which recognize outstanding efforts by small- to mid-sized creative companies.
Alvey also made a name for herself in academia. She headed the creative advertising program at the University of Texas at Austin before being named executive director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Adcenter, an elite two-year advertising graduate program.
When Alvey arrived at the Temerlin Advertising Institute (TAI) in fall 2002, it was “brand-new and had the blush of fresh success. Although the strategic business portion of the program was strong, there was no creative program to speak of,” she recalls.
Working with TAI faculty, she implemented new admission criteria and a redefined curriculum with “toughened courses.” She recruited and hired new creative faculty, and to supplement classroom lessons, Alvey and her faculty called upon their industry colleagues for lectures and critiques.
Students have responded to the higher expectations by becoming nationally competitive and collecting a trove of trophies. In addition to a cluster of Dallas Ad League ADDY awards, students earned awards from the Houston Art Directors Club and the Dallas Society for Visual Communication. Their work has been published in CMYK Magazine, which is a national showcase for student creative work in advertising, design, illustration and photography. Last year two students made it to the finals of the international One Club Client Pitch, where only seven schools qualified to compete. In 2006, a 30-second TV spot created by an eight-student team won a contest sponsored by national restaurant chain Chipotle.
“These are not lightweight competitions,” says Mike Sullivan, president of The Loomis Agency in Dallas, who has been a guest speaker at the Institute. “Patty and her team didn’t take it up just one notch; they took it up five or six.”
“An overarching goal of the Institute is to help students understand that the creativity and skills used to drive business also can be used for public service.” – Patricia Alvey
In preparing for the high-caliber contests, students experience the creative process – from concepting to storyboarding to post-production work – as if they were producing a national advertising campaign at a top agency. Senior advertising major Allie Edwards is part of a team of advertising and cinema-television students developing a TV spot for the One Show national student competition. She appreciates Alvey’s critiques. “She looks at our work from the standpoint of a creative director who would be hiring us, so her feedback is important and helpful,” Edwards says.
Good advertising is “different, engaging, provocative and surprising,” Alvey says. “Much of what I truly love isn’t seen that much by the public in the U.S.” She likes the steamy spots by Bartle Bogle Hegarty for Axe men’s body products and Levi’s; the visually complex, whimsical work of Wieden & Kennedy for British Honda; and “a great deal of the work coming out of Amsterdam, São Paulo and Singapore.”
Alvey also prizes advertising that serves the greater good. “An overarching goal of the Institute is to help students understand that the creativity and skills used to drive business also can be used for public service,” she says.
A few months after she arrived, Alvey accepted a challenge from SMU’s Center for Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention for TAI to develop an alcohol awareness campaign targeted at students. Advertising students teamed up with faculty to produce a series of bold posters, visible across campus over the next four years, to send the message that irresponsible drinking was the exception, not the social norm. Most recently she led focus group research as a member of SMU’s Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention.
Another significant project, the World Citizens Guide, reached more than 800 campuses across the country. Published in 2004, the passport-sized book serves a weighty purpose: to sensitize students to cultural differences, making them “worldly” travelers and effective ambassadors. To date, more than 120,000 copies have been distributed. A sister publication, tailored to business travelers, has been distributed to more than 40,000 individuals and businesses.
Alvey ticks off some of the Institute’s current projects: “Right now, we’re teaming up with the Division of Cinema-Television to produce spots for Doritos for The One Show National Student Competition. The TAI Ad Team is working on an AOL project for the American Advertising Federation’s National Student Advertising Competition. Our research and campaigns classes are working with IDEARC, a recent spin-off of Verizon, as a corporate client. And the list is just for this semester.”
A large world map, drawn from the old Soviet Union’s perspective, dominates a wall in Jeffrey Kahn’s office. The map is more than a Cold War artifact for this Dedman School of Law assistant professor. It is a reminder that even the most powerful institutions are not invulnerable.
Jeffrey Kahn, Dedman School of Law
In his second year at SMU, Kahn is carving out an academic niche at the intersection of U.S. constitutional law, human rights, counterterrorism and comparative law.
But when he began his undergraduate studies at Yale in 1990, the Berlin Wall had just fallen and there was a new, reform-talking leader in the Kremlin. Kahn pursued four years of Russian language studies, despite warnings from Yale faculty that the difficult language was not the best use of time for a young man determined to practice law in the United States.
“But I wanted to see how the Soviet story ended,” Kahn recalls. If that seemingly indestructible powerhouse could be disassembled, he wondered what parallels could be drawn to the relative strength and stability of the foundations of U.S. government.
“What do I have to do as a citizen to keep these institutions strong?” he asked himself.
The question continues to shape his teaching and engage his students, particularly in studying U.S. constitutional law. His syllabus for the course directs students toward an answer before they ever enter his classroom:
“At our first class, I will issue you a pocket-sized U.S. Constitution,” reads the syllabus. “You should strive to develop the same level of affection and familiarity toward it that a United States Marine accords to his or her rifle.”
For 2007-08, Kahn was named a Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Professional Responsibility teaching fellow. He already was teaching a seminar on the role of lawyers in counterterrorism, studying the cases of illegal immigrants, citizens claiming to be victims of “rendition” and torture overseas, charitable organizations subject to asset forfeiture after being labeled terrorist fronts and travelers caught by government-issued “no fly” lists. “I want to include the stories told by lawyers who anguish over their ethical responsibilities to country and client,” Kahn wrote in applying for the fellowship. The Maguire fellowship enabled him to bring in guest lecturers to tell those stories firsthand.
One of those classroom lessons played out in a Dallas courtroom: Last year Kahn became a “go-to” source for local and national news media in the federal case against Richardson’s Holy Land Foundation as an alleged front for the terrorist group Hamas. The case ended in mistrial.
He now is researching how the war on terror is affecting a citizen’s right to travel. “The right to travel is a core democratic principle dating back to Athens,” he says.
Kahn first traveled to Russia in summer 1993, just before the October constitutional crisis that prompted President Boris Yeltsin to illegally dissolve the country’s legislature. Kahn returned numerous times while earning a Master’s and Doctorate from Oxford University. His dissertation, “Federalism, Democratization and the Rule of Law in Russia,” was published by Oxford University Press. Even while enrolled at the University of Michigan Law School, Kahn delivered lectures on European human rights law to Russian attorneys at summer programs in Moscow sponsored by the Council of Europe.
After graduating from law school in 2002, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa and took a job (on Griesa’s advice) as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice from 2003-06. Kahn traveled the country on a variety of cases, and remembers exactly when the real significance of the job hit him.
“The first time I stood in front of a federal judge to identify myself for the record and say, ‘My name is Jeffrey Kahn and I represent the United States of America in this matter’ – well, the responsibility behind those words really took my breath away.”
He long since had proven wrong the naysayers who questioned his determination to learn Russian: Among his last assignments, the Justice Department detailed Kahn to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to conduct research on criminal procedure in that evolving democracy.
“I am far from fluent and my American accent, I am told, is very strong,” Kahn says. “But I have found that perseverance and a willing smile accomplishes a lot.”
Acting on a long-developing desire to teach, Kahn calls his faculty appointment a cherished opportunity to think hard on tough issues and talk with intelligent students. “It’s wonderful to be invited into this faculty, where I can take an idea and run with it,” he says.
Like most Western countries in the 1970s, Italy was experiencing its worst economic downturn since the worldwide depression four decades earlier. Double-digit inflation and high unemployment soured la dolce vita.
Maria Minniti, Cox School of Business
“People were concerned about job security,” economist Maria Minniti recalls about her native country. “They worried about being able to afford their rent. Everyone was affected – my family, the parents of my friends. Although I was a child, I could tell there was much distress throughout society.”
Despite its problems, Italy remained a wealthy country, particularly when compared to the misery of the Third World exposed in newscasts in the 1980s. Dismayed by what she saw, Minniti searched for a way she could effect positive change where it was needed most. As the young political science student was researching an honors thesis, the nascent Grameen Bank project in Bangladesh grabbed her attention. The microcredit initiative, which earned the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for American-trained economist Muhammad Yunus, assisted the rural poor in the famine-ravaged country by making tiny loans, primarily to women, to jumpstart small, self-sustaining businesses. As these female entrepreneurs took baby steps up the economic ladder, they gave their children a boost; consequently, entire families lifted themselves out of grinding poverty.
Minniti’s future snapped into focus as she probed deeper into the complex and multilayered role played by entrepreneurs in the economy. “We all want to make a difference, especially when we’re young, and I believed that, as a social scientist, I could make a difference by understanding the issues that influence economic growth, such as having the right institutions in place to promote entrepreneurship.”
Following a national search, Minniti recently was named the Bobby B. Lyle Chair in Entrepreneurship in the Cox School of Business. “Maria adds depth to the entrepreneurship team at Cox with her research on a global scale,” says Jerry F. White, director of the school’s Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship.
A native of Rome and a longtime New Yorker, Minniti earned a Ph.D. in economics from New York University. She comes to SMU from Babson College, Boston, where she was a professor of economics and entrepreneurship and served as research director for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project. Launched in 1999 and coordinated by Babson and the London Business School, GEM is the largest survey-based study of entrepreneurship.
“We assume if there’s more entrepreneurial activity, there will be more economic growth, but we don’t exactly know how the mechanism works,” she says. “We need to better understand which institutional settings are most effective and why. While entrepreneurship is a mechanism for growth, good institutions are a necessary condition for productive entrepreneurship.” The project collects data from more than 60 countries annually to paint a global picture of entrepreneurship and its role in economic development.
“Over the past few decades it has become very apparent that entrepreneurs are the change agents of an economy,” the Caruth Institute’s White says. “If you want to revitalize your country, then encourage entrepreneurship.”
“We assume if there’s more entrepreneurial activity, there will be more economic growth, but we don’t exactly know how the mechanism works. We need to better understand which institutional settings are most effective and why. While entrepreneurship is a mechanism for growth, good institutions are a necessary condition for productive entrepreneurship.” – Maria Minniti
Broadly defined, “entrepreneurship generates innovation or taps unused resources,” Minniti says. The term “entrepreneurship” is entwined in the vernacular with small businesses, but it can be appropriately applied to ventures of all sizes. She offers Southwest Airlines, Google and 3M as examples of large companies that nurture entrepreneurship within a corporate framework by empowering “individuals to pursue their interests and to research and develop new projects and products.”
In the fall she will teach her first SMU classes – on business decision-making. “We will talk about how individuals make rational decisions, and how they can deviate from the rational by following ‘gut’ feelings, which are influenced by rules of thumb and biases,” she explains. “In the end, we want to be able to make better decisions as both entrepreneurs and consumers. When facing an uncertain choice, the best way to make better decisions is to begin by asking the right questions.”
Until then, she will continue to delve into the characteristics of entrepreneurial behavior and the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth. Eager to continue developing her research agenda at SMU, Minniti may not have to venture beyond her own backyard. “Human capital is the main resource of entrepreneurship, and with a fast-growing, ethnically diverse population, Dallas has a lot of that,” she says. “The Dallas area lends itself very well to an exploration of what works and what doesn’t to encourage entrepreneurship.”
A thoughtful and curious observer, Minniti finds that her warm manner and Italian accent are good icebreakers as she explores her new city, drawing her into conversations with everyone from taxi drivers to fellow shoppers. “I’m always asked where I’m from. And when people find out that I have just moved to Texas, they immediately list the many reasons I will love it here,” from reasonable housing prices to the abundance of good restaurants, she says. “It’s a positive sign when so many people can find so many things they like.”
At the age of 12, Harold J. Recinos was homeless on the streets of New York City, abandoned by destitute immigrant parents. Dropping out of junior high school to focus all his attention on survival, he begged for money, wore the same clothing for months and lived in abandoned urban tenements, public parks and parked Greyhound passenger buses.
Harold J. Recinos, Perkins School of Theology
“My answer to rejection and the pitiful existence of street life was to become a street-grown heroin addict. I was one of the youngest junkies in the neighborhood. Shooting dope made it easier to eat food from restaurant garbage dumpsters,” he recalls.
Now a professor of church and society in Perkins School of Theology, Recinos contends that those same mean streets of the South Bronx, which he calls “a tough and crucified place,” shaped his understanding of God and later defined his approach to teaching and research as a theologian.
After four years of living on the streets of New York, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico, he met a Presbyterian minister, who took him into his home and family in the New York City area. They helped him to overcome heroin addiction and to return to school.
The minister also introduced Recinos to A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation by Gustavo Gutiérrez, a book that greatly influenced his approach to the ministry. He enrolled in the College of Wooster (Ohio), his mentor’s alma mater, and later earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, a Doctor of Ministry from New York Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from American University. He was ordained in The United Methodist Church in 1986 and later served pastorates working with the homeless in New York City, Central American and African refugees, and youth gangs in Washington, D.C. He also was a professor for 14 years at Wesley Theological Seminary on the campus of American University, where he developed and directed programs for student pastors and urban ministries.
Recinos says his hard-scrabble experiences motivate his research on race, ethnicity and the effects of religion on marginalized groups in the United States; he has published numerous articles and books on the topics. He also calls upon mainline Christian churches to broaden their thinking about evangelism among the poor, particularly Latinos in the United States. In Good News From the Barrio: Prophetic Witness for the Church (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), he writes, “By intentionally understanding and welcoming people of different cultural backgrounds into the local church, Christians undergo the transformation necessary to proclaim the gospel of a community-commanding God.”
I woke up this morning feeling sick about America and picked up the telephone to call the equal opportunity office in the nation’s capital responsible for writing us out of history. America why do you hang a threat over our heads like daily bread and keep us in the shadows cooking, cleaning, and caring for your children? – From “Suspects” by Harold J. Recinos
Recinos infuses the theology in his books with his own poetry, a writing activity he developed years ago as a way “to remember growing up at the edges of society and the barrio’s forgotten people,” he says. As a graduate student in New York City, Recinos was befriended by the late Nuyorican poet/writer Miguel Piñero, who established the Nuyorican Poets Café in Lower Manhattan and encouraged the budding writer.
An excerpt from “Suspects,” a poem in Good News From the Barrio, reflects his efforts to capture the Latino experience and contribution to U.S. society: “I woke up this morning feeling sick about America / and picked up the telephone to call the equal opportunity / office in the nation’s capital responsible for writing us out / of history. America why do you hang a threat over our heads like daily bread / and keep us in the shadows cooking, cleaning, and caring for your children?”
His latest research is on how young people, particularly those in poor urban settings, interpret their social reality and produce their own forms of culture. Recinos is looking at the music, films, art and literature embraced by ethnic young people as a form of theological and political discourse among them. More specifically, he writes about rap and hip-hop cultures, which originated in the South Bronx, knowing that they have been subjected to fierce criticism from many parts of society and argued about in U.S. Senate hearings. “I think something good comes from rap music, and what deserves our attention are the existential concerns and material conditions expressed in this popular musical genre, which in part provides a voice of social criticism to young people,” he says.
To help his Perkins Theology students better understand the diverse society they will serve, Recinos encourages them to minister in inner-city communities in this country and to accompany him to minister to the poor in places like El Salvador.
D. Anthony Everett, a fourth-year M.Div. student in the Urban Ministry Certification program in Perkins, says that Recinos has helped “this African American man to better interpret the dialogue between the African and Latino/a worlds through theological discourse. It is further a delight to know that my professor is an avid martial artist and is willing to reach beyond the world of a traditional European-influenced theological perspective to see the significance in African, Asian and Latino views in theology. I aspire to be as generous in spirit and genuine in character as he.”
Recinos says that when his students “leave my courses with a clearer understanding of cultural diversity and a concern to act contrary to the conventions of a divided world, I find a reason to celebrate. It is my hope students will provide the church with the leadership that will deliver society to a more hopeful future.”
Some types of scientific research are driven by opportunity, which frequently means waiting for the next shoe to drop. For Laura Steinberg, that shoe usually is large and destructive.
Laura Steinberg, Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering
Steinberg is a nationally known expert on how natural and technological disasters are magnified in urban areas. From earthquakes to hurricanes to plant explosions, Steinberg aims her research at mitigating the ripple effects from the next “big one.”
In one of life’s ironies, Steinberg arrived at SMU because of the indiscriminate hand of Hurricane Katrina, which chased her from her New Orleans home in advance of the catastrophic flooding and interrupted her teaching at Tulane University, just as the 2005 fall semester was getting under way. She took no comfort in being right: She had been warning people for years that the right storm would create huge environmental problems for residents along the Gulf Coast, thanks to the regional proliferation of industrial plants and petrochemical refineries. The black sheen of spilled oil floating on the New Orleans floodwaters remains an iconic image from post-storm days.
Steinberg was cast adrift in every sense: Tulane closed its doors for four months after the flooding, but her expertise was in high demand. She moved briefly to Washington, D.C., to serve a fellowship at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, focusing on critical infrastructure research as well as risk assessment and modeling strategy for natural disasters. She also took an appointment as a visiting scientist at George Washington University’s Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management, where she continued to work on Hurricane Katrina response issues, including U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ preparations for the 2006 hurricane season.
Professor of Environmental and Civil Engineering Bijan Mohraz, former chair of the SMU department, invited Steinberg to join the School of Engineering faculty starting in fall 2006, and she became chair in spring 2007. Steinberg barely paused for breath in her scholarly activities and has broadened her Katrina-related research, bringing
it into a project for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“We’re evaluating a multimillion-dollar computer model that the Los Alamos National Laboratory has built to predict the cascading effects of a large natural disaster or major terrorist attack,” Steinberg says. The model predicts how change or damage to one level of infrastructure would impact others like police and fire departments, health services, transportation, telecommunications and utilities.
“The problem is, are all these big projections right? We have to have a big disaster to provide real world data,” she says. “So we’re running the model simulating part of Hurricane Katrina’s effects on the infrastructure of Baton Rouge, which actually turned out to be a place where almost 200,000 people fled.” If the model is good at “predicting” the effects on Baton Rouge, it will be reasonable to assume its ability to accurately predict the effect of other large events.
“The School of Engineering is committed to sustainability as a way of life, as evidenced by this building [Embrey Engineering Building] and the programs within it. The growing Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex cries out for attention to issues of renewable resources and the promotion of a healthy and clean environment.” – Laura Steinberg
Another Katrina-based project she is leading is an effort to understand the effect of Katrina on Gulf Coast industrial facilities, pipelines and terminals in the path of the hurricane. “We plan to conduct interviews with the facility plant managers where there was significant damage to understand better the nature of the damage, the causes and effects of it, and to brainstorm mitigating measures to prevent them from happening in the future.”
Steinberg received Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in environmental
engineering from Duke University. Her personal experience with disaster started with her fieldwork in Turkey after a 1999 earthquake killed 17,000 people and injured 43,000. The quake was concentrated in an area dominated by oil refineries, several automotive plants and a military arsenal. That experience, coupled with her more recent work after Katrina, has given Steinberg a heightened sense of responsibility. “It makes the issues so much more human,” she says. “And not just because of my experience in New Orleans – but because of the people I know, the faces I’ve seen.”
“I see myself working in the sustainability area, both developing curriculum and programs, merging that with disaster resilience and focusing a large part of my efforts on water supply issues relevant to the entire Southwest and North Texas,” she says. “The School of Engineering is committed to sustainability as a way of life, as evidenced by this building and the programs within it. The growing Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex cries out for attention to issues of renewable resources and the promotion of a healthy and clean environment.”
She also helped to develop a plan to prevent personal disaster among students by serving on SMU’s Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention, which delivered its numerous recommendations in February.
Although she likes her new life in Dallas, Steinberg misses the Big Easy. She returns every six weeks or so to keep up with friends and past projects. She reports that the areas of New Orleans that are thriving “are doing well and full of beautiful architecture and landscaping, and yet a good portion of the city (geographically and socioeconomically) is poor and living in substandard housing, or even homeless. Now that much of the city lies unreconstructed, the divide is even more obvious and exaggerated than previously.”
For Harold Stanley, the 2008 presidential campaigns are serving as a laboratory for a class he teaches every four years. He uses the primaries, media coverage, campaign finance reports and voter patterns to teach
Harold Stanley, Political Science Department
Dedman College’s popular political science course on “Presidential Elections.”
“The challenge is trying to figure out what is happening while it is happening,” says Stanley, the Geurin-Pettus Distinguished Chair in American Politics and Political Economy. “Most election analyses are written well after the fact.”
Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were on the ballot in 1996, the first time Stanley taught “Presidential Elections” at the University of Rochester in New York. Since then he has seen voters and students grow more polarized.
“Typically, young people are not strong partisans,” Stanley says. “But what is happening in society is reflected in students. The specialized news outlets that developed over the past few years have reinforced polarization by enabling voters to select what they want to hear.”
Stanley avoids strident polarization in class discussions, instead encouraging thoughtful consideration of each candidate’s stand on issues. “For students to form their own positions, they need to broaden their horizons to understand other political positions,” he says.
Stanley joined SMU’s Political Science Department in 2003 as the first professor to hold the Geurin-Pettus endowed faculty chair. The position was created to attract a scholar whose research and teaching interests related to domestic policy and government and fiscal issues, says Cal Jillson, Dedman College associate dean and former chair of political science.
“Harold taught in one of the nation’s leading political science departments for 20 years,” Jillson says. “We knew that he could help lead an effort to continue the growth and development of our department. And he has done just that.”
Stanley has developed new political science courses that draw upon his research interests, including Southern politics and Latino politics, which he teaches at the Dallas campus and at SMU-in-Taos. Active in the SMU community, he was appointed by President R. Gerald Turner to chair the University’s Task Force on Honors Programming and serves on the Board of Directors for Friends of the SMU Libraries.
“Typically, young people are not strong partisans. But what is happening in society is reflected in students. The specialized news outlets that developed over the past few years have reinforced polarization by enabling voters to select what they want to hear.” – Harold Stanley
Students in his courses benefit from small class size &ndash political science class sizes are limited to 30 &ndash and spirited discussion. He schedules 15-minute meetings with each student at the beginning of the semester because “it puts them at ease to come in later to talk about their research papers, and it leads to better discussion in class,” he says.
An expert in American national politics and electoral change in the South, he has served as president of the Southern Political Science Association. His publications include Vital Statistics on American Politics, now in its 11th edition, which he co-authors with Richard G. Niemi, professor of political science at the University of Rochester. Vital Statistics, the standard resource for political science researchers and students, includes updated data, facts and figures on key areas such as elections, political parties, public opinion and voting patterns.
Stanley earned B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Yale University and a Master of Philosophy in politics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 1979 he joined the University of Rochester Department of Political Science.
Stanley’s interest in political science and an academic career dates to his days as a student at Yale. “By the end of my freshman year I realized that professors had the enviable job of pursuing what they were really interested in,” he says.
While at Yale from 1968 to 1972, Stanley reported on years of student political unrest as news director of the campus radio station. Classes were suspended when, on the heels of Vietnam War protests, 15,000 demonstrators converged on New Haven to protest the murder trial of Bobby G. Seale, national chairman of the Black Panther Party.
“It was a very contentious and difficult time,” Stanley recalls. “Everything was political.”
A native of Enterprise, Alabama, Stanley says he knew “a lot was at stake for the United States. Growing up in Enterprise, I had a real sense that the world is out there and going on somewhere else. My sense was, ‘Let’s go see.’ ”
He encourages the same attitude in his students today.
When alumni are asked to recall their fondest memories of SMU, a favorite faculty member always comes to mind. As they probe and provoke, demand and debate, SMU professors make an impact in their own special ways. The faces highlighted in these profiles – Harold Stanley, Laura Steinberg, Harold J. Recinos, Maria Minniti, Jeffrey Kahn and Patricia Alvey – exemplify the quality of SMU’s faculty and are sure to turn up on the list of favorites among future alumni.
Harold Stanley: Teaching Politics Without Prejudice
For Harold Stanley, the 2008 presidential campaigns are serving as a laboratory for a class he teaches every four years. He uses the primaries, media coverage, campaign finance reports and voter patterns to teach Dedman College’s popular political science course on “Presidential Elections.”
“The challenge is trying to figure out what is happening while it is happening,” says Stanley, the Geurin-Pettus Distinguished Chair in American Politics and Political Economy. “Most election analyses are written well after the fact.”
Some types of scientific research are driven by opportunity, which frequently means waiting for the next shoe to drop. For Laura Steinberg, that shoe usually is large and destructive.
Steinberg is a nationally known expert on how natural and technological disasters are magnified in urban areas. From earthquakes to hurricanes to plant explosions, Steinberg aims her research at mitigating the ripple effects from the next “big one.”
Harold J. Recinos: Finding Salvation On The Mean Streets
At the age of 12, Harold J. Recinos was homeless on the streets of New York City, abandoned by destitute immigrant parents. Dropping out of junior high school to focus all his attention on survival, he begged for money, wore the same clothing for months and lived in abandoned urban tenements, public parks and parked Greyhound passenger buses.
“My answer to rejection and the pitiful existence of street life was to become a street-grown heroin addict. I was one of the youngest junkies in the neighborhood. Shooting dope made it easier to eat food from restaurant garbage dumpsters,” he recalls.
Maria Minniti: Getting To The Heart Of Entrepreneurship
Like most Western countries in the 1970s, Italy was experiencing its worst economic downturn since the worldwide depression four decades earlier. Double-digit inflation and high unemployment soured la dolce vita.
“People were concerned about job security,” economist Maria Minniti recalls about her native country. “They worried about being able to afford their rent. Everyone was affected – my family, the parents of my friends. Although I was a child, I could tell there was much distress throughout society.”
Jeffrey Kahn: Reinforcing The Value Of Constitutional Law
A large world map, drawn from the old Soviet Union’s perspective, dominates a wall in Jeffrey Kahn’s office. The map is more than a Cold War artifact for this Dedman School of Law assistant professor. It is a reminder that even the most powerful institutions are not invulnerable.
In his second year at SMU, Kahn is carving out an academic niche at the intersection of U.S. constitutional law, human rights, counterterrorism and comparative law.
Patricia Alvey: Inspiring An Artful Approach To Advertising
At any moment in the Owen Arts Center, piano tunes waft from classrooms, budding actors practice their faux swordfights and ballerinas pirouette in the hallways. Advertising professor Patricia Alvey finds the creative environment “thrilling and stimulating.”
SMU’s Temerlin Advertising Institute for Education and Research in Meadows School of the Arts shares space with art, music, theatre and other fine arts students and faculty. “I love the energy. It’s delightful that I ended up back in an art school,” says Alvey, Distinguished Chair and Director of the Institute. Before receiving a Ph.D. in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin, Alvey earned a B.F.A. in drawing and painting from Murray State University.
By Susan White
Poet Jack Myers loves words – long and short, complex and simple, lovely and lyrical, shabby and flabby.
Thus, his love of penning his thoughts in poetry – a medium that can capture life’s profound themes in a compact space, says Myers, professor of English who has taught creative writing at SMU for more than 30 years. “Poetry addresses very intimate aspects and happenings within the personal self that you
don’t normally talk about in everyday life.”
In his poetry workshops, Myers tells his students that the nature of poetry is all about the writing process, “shaping whatever we are trying to sculpt from inchoate fog that allows us to feel what it is to be human.” And above all, he emphasizes writing in the vernacular of 21st-century young adults, and NO rhyming! To do otherwise would negate their efforts to become contemporary poets, he says. SMU’s Department of English aims to support these budding poets and other writers through recent establishment of the Laurence and Catherine Perrine endowed chair in creative writing and the Marshall Terry Scholarship in creative writing.
The 2003-04 Texas Poet Laureate, Myers is the author of 17 books of and about
poetry and recipient of The Violet Crown Award, the Texas Institute of Letters
Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. He is a National Poetry Series Open Competition winner and has been Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at several universities. Myers has served as vice president for the national organization Associated Writing Programs, and was a trustee of The Writer’s Garret in Dallas.
Myers says he began writing poetry at age 12 – “that great transformative and troubling age – because it seemed the right vessel for carrying strong emotions contained within a small space (me). As I progressed in skill and understanding, and my thinking became more metaphorical and analogical, poetry became a sort of high-intensity beam I could shine on whatever intrigued, puzzled, deeply interested, eluded or moved me. Now, in my advancing years, it again has transformed itself for me into a vehicle for inner growth, spiritual quest, and self-discovery, all of which attests to the old saying: ‘Life is short, art is long.’ Aside from my loved ones, I can think of no better companion through the years.”
Myers generously has shared with SMU Magazine six unpublished poems, which will be included in his next book of poetry, and more of his thoughts on poetry. Q. What makes poetry such a challenge to read or write? A. With poetry, you are using your brain in different ways. We’re used to thinking linearly, logically and rationally in most writing, but poetry makes us think metaphorically. There is a kind of a mathematical, image-based thinking that goes on, where we compare or contrast or substitute one thing with another. It’s not all cause and effect or syllogistic reasoning; it’s associative. It’s the kind of thinking that you do when you are a child: You come up with wild metaphors or images that you wouldn’t as an adult. The untrained mind thinks naturally in associative patterns. I think many people find poetry difficult because they’re using a part of their brains they more or less have been trained out of in the education process. Q. How does that affect the way you teach poetry to young people? A. I try to get them to drop the more rational aspects of their minds to allow them to free associate – open up those areas of the mind that they use in dreaming. When they have an experience and want to write a poem about it, my aim is to get them to think more deeply about it; not what happens next as in a plot or narrative, but what does it mean. Q. Why does poetry seem much more personal than a novel? A. Most poetry addresses very intimate aspects and happenings within the personal self that we don’t normally talk about in everyday life. Most poems stand outside of time; they’re not a sequence of events that take place chronologically. An individual poem does not have to be plot-based. In a poem I might start talking about a feeling that I’ve had, connect it back to something that happened to me in first grade and then zigzag over to being 12 years old when something opposite or similar happened. I can go all over time with nothing really happening in the plot. I’m an adherent to the [Carl] Jungian school of psychology, in which things that you dream or what the imagination comes up with stand for larger aspects within you. If you’re dreaming of someone stealing your car, typically a car represents a sense of self; I tend to look at it as a universal but also a personal thievery that’s going on inside the spirit of the person. Contemporary poets intuit how a poem will be on a page – the unconscious and subconscious are partners in creating poetry. Q. Do you have any rules for writing poetry?
A. I tell students the first day of class ‘no rhyming!’ A lot of people think that’s what poetry is, but I take away the crutches of this form. I ask them to let the scales fall from their eyes and to write from their hearts and the way they speak. It allows more of who they are to come out. If they write in a sonnet form today, they are using a costume, a mask for an experience that’s contemporary, which doesn’t seem to fit. Not that they can’t write in a fixed form – people do it all the time – but that takes a certain kind of facility. If most people start from the way they speak, their own natural rhythms, patterns and thoughts will emerge. If they have something to say or they feel deeply about, they pretty much have all the raw material they need. Then they learn to focus sharply on language, how one word in a line affects another in the next line.
Not rhyming is uncomfortable for a lot of people. It’s how I started out. I was horrible, but I had no one to talk to in the blue-collar New England town where I grew up. I couldn’t tell people about the poetic thoughts I had – they would have laughed at me or disregarded it or thought I was weird. I wrote to myself in rhyming lines, but my feelings on the page were valuable to me. It’s the same for the students today. Although the forms change, according to the time and culture, poetry serves the same basic function and works in the same way it always has – capturing life’s profound themes in a compact space. Q. How do you get students comfortable with contemporary poetry?
A. I tell them to read any poet from 1945 on – the good, bad and ugly. That’s how they will form their standards. I have a lending library in my office – stacks of books they can borrow – and then I have them talk to me about what they’ve read. Through the books they borrow, they begin to figure out their tastes and I figure out who they are. Q. Who are some SMU alumni who have become accomplished poets? A.Timothy Seibles (’77) was in one of my earliest creative writing classes in the 1970s. He was a Dallas favorite. He now teaches in Old Dominion University’s M.F.A. in Writing Program and is the author of five collections of poetry. Gillian Conoley (’77) is a widely published poet who teaches in the English department at Sonoma State University. Her poetry is not easily understood – she uses language in an affected way – but I experience [the feelings in] her poems. Most SMU alumni who are publishing poetry are teaching at the university level or work in administration. You can’t make a living as a poet alone. Q. Which poets do you read? A.Jack Gilbert. He’s able to speak of grand things in very short spaces. He plumbs the depths quickly. He’s a wise and smart man and his poems are brilliant. W.S. Merwin, who talks about everyday events in a magical way. He uses pastel tones, and I love to relax and watch his images. As I get older, there are fewer poets who interest me. It all seems like I’ve seen it before or it is derivative. That’s not how I felt when I was younger – everything was interesting and new and astounding and confounding. I’m not jaded; I just don’t get excited about as many poets as I used to. Q. What are you aiming for with your poetry? A. When I was young, I wrote about death a lot, but in a “romantic” sense. Now that I’m 66, I can see death &ndash its actual existence as a boundary. I have a different feeling about death now, and it’s not romantic at all. Whatever I write now, I want it to be as deep and true as I can make it, because I don’t have much time left.
AS a teenager Hector Rivera escaped the civil war in El Salvador and traveled alone to Los Angeles, where he lived a double life as a 10th-grader by day, full-time dishwasher by night. Often he would get off work at 3 a.m., return to his grandmother’s apartment and do his homework, then attend class at a public high school with students from 85 countries, including Cambodia, Laos and some in Africa. He admits to struggling sometimes to stay awake in class.
“My teachers were aware of the things I was going through, and they were supportive,” says Rivera, now an SMU assistant professor of education, working to help educators ease the transition for a new generation of students.
Francesca Jones, research assistant professor in the Department of Literacy, Language and Learning, works with children at a Fort Worth elementary school.
Another assistant professor, Paige Daniel Ware, left her sheltered life on a farm in Kentucky for a high school cultural exchange trip to Japan, an experience that sparked her interest in languages and education. After college, she taught high school English in Burgstaedt, Germany, as a Fulbright scholar and taught English in Spain.
The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded five-year grants totaling $3.9 million to Rivera and Ware to provide training for English as a Second Language (ESL) certification to teachers in the Dallas, Grand Prairie and Irving school districts.
In their work, Rivera and Ware demonstrate a key strength of the new Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at SMU: a commitment to provide practical solutions with an emphasis on language and literacy for the men and women who report daily to the front lines of education.
The School covers the full spectrum of education – from programs that help teachers develop young learners to those that offer lifelong learning to students of all ages. It offers graduate degrees and certificates to educators and strong research programs on how teachers can best help students learn and develop language skills. Specialized programs include literacy training, bilingual education, English as a Second Language, gifted student education and learning therapy.
Under human development, the School also offers Master’s degrees in counseling, dispute resolution and liberal studies, along with wellness courses, professional and continuing studies, and non-credit enrichment classes that serve the Dallas-Fort Worth community.
David Chard, the Leon Simmons dean of the School, says it will continue the University’s tradition of preparing leaders and innovators as it strengthens its commitment to research. In that way, SMU education alumni can provide “a voice of reason” when confronted with the shifting fads that plague the profession, he adds.
Michael Colatrella teaches a dispute resolution class at SMU-in-Legacy in Plano.
“We work in a desperate industry that’s looking for simple answers to complicated questions such as: What factors help children learn to read? Why is it that some children have all those factors in place and some don’t? Why do some children growing up in economically disadvantaged communities succeed when the
odds are against them? Or scholars in SMU’s Center for Dispute Resolution & Conflict Management might ask questions such as: What are the best approaches to resolving international disputes that have a history of failed attempts.”
In fall 2007, Chard had been on the job only two weeks when he learned about the possibility of the $20 million gift from Harold and Annette C. Simmons (’57) that endowed and renamed the School. Their endowment includes $10 million toward
the construction of a new education building, the Annette Caldwell Simmons Building, which Chard says should aid in recruitment of faculty and students. Other goals include opening a Family Counseling Center at SMU-in-Legacy in Plano to provide more opportunities for students to work with the community.
National searches are under way to recruit additional faculty who demonstrate leadership in the classroom, research expertise and the courage to seek answers to difficult questions. “Any good question in education and human development is a controversial one. Otherwise, no one would be asking it,” Chard says.
Interdisciplinary faculty members already on board are in the process of getting to know each other – a crucial step toward becoming the productive team Chard envisions.
“A linguist’s worldview differs from an anthropologist’s, which differs from a cognitive psychologist’s, but all can contribute to research projects that cross discipline boundaries,” he says. “Education is not a discipline, it’s an interdisciplinary field.”
Although Chard will give the faculty leeway, there are basic tenets on which he is unbending. “We believe that you can measure growth in human beings quantitatively,” he says, adding that sound research is vital for educators and policymakers if they are to make evidence-based decisions rather than follow fads.
The School’s commitment to research is exemplified by a rigorous new doctor of philosophy degree program in education, better described as a doctorate in educational research. Three years of full-time coursework and research will prepare graduates to work in educational research settings.
Chard also plans to ensure that the School continues to provide solutions to special problems faced by educators statewide. For instance, under her new grant, Ware recently completed the first semester of training teachers for Project Connect, which will certify in ESL up to 25 teachers a year from the Irving and Grand Prairie school districts. “Rapidly changing demographics have dramatically increased the need for ESL teachers in those communities,” she says.
Unlike elementary schools, secondary schools have no bilingual classrooms. English-only is the rule and all secondary teachers encounter students of varying English proficiency in every class. Project Connect prepares educators to teach both ESL and native English speakers simultaneously. One strategy is to modify lessons by reducing the use of idioms so that everyone understands.
“A linguist’s worldview differs from an anthropologist’s, which differs from a cognitive psychologist’s, but all can contribute to research projects that cross discipline boundaries. Education is not a discipline, it’s an interdisciplinary field.” – Dean David Chard
“For example, a writing prompt for a test that mentions a boy picking up a Louisville Slugger could be rewritten to say he picked up a baseball bat – a small change that greatly increases the level of understanding,” she says.
Rivera, who has a developmental psychology background, is using his grant to train 25 Dallas ISD secondary teachers each year to serve students new to this country. At least half the educators in the program will receive scholarships to attend math and science enrichment classes conducted in Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico. His program also fosters community development by partnering with organizations working with the African-American, Asian and Hispanic communities, he says.
The Vocabulary Of Numbers
Chard’s own background includes teaching both mathematics and reading, as well as time teaching in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. He served as assistant director of the Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts at The University of Texas at Austin and most recently as associate dean in the College of Education at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Although it might seem unusual to have a background in both reading and mathematics, he says, the disciplines are intertwined because humans learn everything through language. “Mathematics is a more precise convention, but reading is where it starts.”
The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded Chard and his colleagues a grant to study language-based strategies for teaching math concepts to kindergartners. The work is based on cognitive psychology research on human infants and primates that finds both have a rudimentary understanding of math, such as the ability to notice when the number of objects displayed on a video screen changes. “If primates and human infants share this skill, when do human beings launch into more complex mathematics” he asks and then answers: “Research indicates it happens when human infants understand language.”
Chard’s research attempts to build fluency early by giving young learners a precise mathematical vocabulary rather than the proxy words that some teachers use because they assume 5- and 6-year-olds cannot understand the actual terms. For instance, children in the study group learn to use the words “addition” and “subtraction” rather than “plus” and “minus.”
The first phase of Chard’s project – a three-year feasibility study on 150 students in Oregon demonstrated the method’s effectiveness. The study found that students in the treatment group outperformed those in the control group by roughly 15 percent. The second phase of the study, to determine whether those gains persist long term, will be conducted in a larger, more diverse group including 600 students in the Dallas community.
By The Numbers
4 Departments – Literacy, Language and Learning; Center for Dispute Resolution & Conflict Management; Lifelong Learning; and Wellness
35 faculty members
More than 900 full- and part-time credit students and 6,000 non-credit students
1 Ph.D. and 8 graduate degrees and 10 graduate certification programs offered
Working with numerous school districts, agencies, city, state
and federal governments on human service issues
Support For Struggling Learners
An estimated 50 million Americans have dyslexia, a neurological condition characterized by difficulty decoding words. Because many with the disorder have average or above-average intelligence, until recently they often could not qualify for special services, which required performance below grade level, although dyslexics consistently failed to meet their potential without academic support, says Karen S. Vickery, director of the Learning Therapy Program.
Based at SMU-in-Legacy, Learning Therapy includes a diagnostic clinic for dyslexia and related learning differences. Diagnosis is the first step in getting a student the specialized learning plan now required under state law. Learning Therapy also provides advanced degrees and certificates to prepare educators to help dyslexic students using methods developed at Columbia University in New York and Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, she says.
Classes are held on weekends and in short summer sessions in Dallas, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley and Shreveport to accommodate the needs of SMU students with full-time jobs and to help those in rural school districts across the state, Vickery adds.
In one of the Learning Therapy Program’s first lectures, Jana Jones, coordinator of the learning therapist certificate program, shows photos from brain imagery studies comparing dyslexic readers to non-dyslexic readers. Those images show that dyslexics use less efficient brain pathways when they try to discriminate and analyze the sounds within words and then tie those sounds to the symbols (letters) used in written language.
The Dallas Branch of the International Dyslexia Association honored Jones with its 2008 Excellence in Education award at its annual conference. At the same meeting, educators packed a large seminar room to see a multimedia presentation by one of Jones’ former students, Rene King (’05) of Texarkana’s Pleasant Grove ISD. Originally a first-grade teacher, King came to the SMU program for training after her son, Curt, was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade. At the time, Texarkana’s Pleasant Grove ISD had no dyslexia therapists, she says, explaining how she herself ended up leading the district’s dyslexia program for middle and high school students. At the conference, King presented a technology-based program she developed using computers and iPods that helps dyslexic high school students keep up with the heavy reading and writing load of advanced placement courses.
State Board of Education member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller (’56) is a veteran of battles fought to gain funding for learning disabilities programs in Texas public schools. Her son, Vance C. Miller Jr., was born in 1958 and had problems with reading long before most educators acknowledged the existence of dyslexia. Like many dyslexics, Vance was bright and verbal in class discussions, so teachers assumed that mere laziness was keeping him from achieving success in reading and writing, she recalls.
Student teacher Peter Asher helps students at St. Thomas Aquinas School with their lessons.
As a result, Vance never received the help he needed and dropped out of high school. Despite having only a general equivalency degree, he was admitted to SMU’s Cox School of Business, where he excelled and graduated in 1982 with a B.B.A. degree. He went on to work for the family’s real estate business until his death in a car accident at age 37.
Because of her son, Miller dedicated her life to education, obtaining dyslexia certification from Scottish Rite and East Texas State University (now Texas A&M-Commerce) and serving more than 20 years on the State Board of Education, including time as its chair. During her first term, in 1985, Miller helped push through legislation that made Texas one of the first two states to categorize dyslexia as a learning problem separate from special education. That meant students could qualify for help with their disability even if they had not fallen behind in school.
Miller says she admires the dyslexia screening and teaching done by staff therapists at SMU, and is always impressed by the intellectual quality of the students she meets when she comes to campus to explain the history of the Texas law. “I look at SMU as a school that always has been open to innovation and not a status quo kind of place where people say, ‘It’s always been done this way.’ ”
Miller says she can imagine a day when the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development will have a reading laboratory, similar to Scottish Rite’s, where education students can practice working with dyslexic students. And the gift from Harold and Annette Simmons holds particular significance for Miller. She and Annette were sorority sisters and have remained close friends. “When she made that gift with Harold, it just touched my heart,” she says.
“I look at SMU as a school that always has been open to innovation and not a status quo kind of place where people say, ‘It’s always been done this way.’ ” – State Board of Education member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller (’56)
Among the School’s priorities is strengthening SMU’s ties with local school districts and community agencies. Toward that end, Chard has appointed Yolette Garcia (’83) as assistant dean for external affairs and outreach. She previously held positions for 25 years at KERA, the North Texas public broadcasting station.
“It’s a privilege to work at SMU, where significant intellectual and cultural activities happen daily,” Garcia says. “Our School and University already have made solid community connections, but what’s exciting is to help figure out ways to deepen our impact.”
Ultimately, Chard and his colleagues believe their local efforts will help inform the national debate about the needs in education.
“Further development of our programs will strengthen our important partnerships,” he says, “and will make us increasingly competitive for external research funding with national implications for education and human development.”
Where We Are Growing
Planning a new building on main campus
Opening a Family Counseling Center at SMU-in-Legacy
in Plano
Renovating three office areas in Expressway Towers
Developing undergraduate program in Sports and Fitness Management and Promotion
Establishing graduate program in Educational Leadership, Policy and Management
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For SMU visual arts students, the act of creating is anything but neat. Paint drippings and inky blobs, pencil shavings, dried bits of clay, photo chemicals, metal chunks and plaster pieces – such are the substances that, in their hands and through their imaginations, become works of art. The Division of Art in Meadows School of the Arts offers study in six media: drawing, painting, ceramics, printmaking, photography and sculpture. Faculty members, such as Professor of Printmaking Laurence Scholder, are master artists who continue to create their own works. Students also can attend art classes at SMU-in-Taos or in Rome, Paris and London, among other European cities. Over the years, the SMU art program has produced nationally recognized artists such as John Alexander (’70), David Bates (’75, ’78), John Nieto (’59), Dan Rizzie (’75) and Yvette Kaiser Smith (’90). The Meadows School hopes to build new facilities that will provide space for the interaction of traditional art with new digital and video media.
When It Comes To Running SMU, There’s More Than Meets The Eye
By Kim Cobb
Illustration By Linda Helton
University of Virginia founder Thomas Jefferson once referred to a college campus as an “academical village.” He was right in more ways than one – a university is a small city, requiring everything from stores and eating establishments to police services and trash collection. More than 1,380 full-time staff members keep SMU running 24/7 for its 10,829 students and 726 faculty members. That includes staff who raise the annual funds to pay for campus operations.
“It’s easy to take for granted all the work that takes place behind the scenes,” says Bill Dworaczyk, president of SMU’s Staff Association. “But whether it’s providing security for the campus, cooking meals in the cafeteria, counseling a student who’s struggling emotionally or programming a Web site, the work of staff is everywhere.”
Some interesting campus facts and figures help tell the story:
For the books. SMU libraries comprise more than 2.9 million books, about 2 million microforms and more than 500,000 photos. The old and the rare find a home here, too – such as a Christopher Columbus letter in Latin, published in Rome in 1493, now housed in DeGolyer Library, and a rare Bible collection in Bridwell Library.
Feeding the masses. Umphrey Lee dining hall serves about 3,000 meals daily during the fall and spring semesters. And while you might think that a thick juicy burger is the most requested meal, you would be wrong: Dining Services dishes out about 500 quesadilla orders a day.
House calls. Campus Planning and Plant Operations staff make more than 12,000 campus service calls a year, including changing 25,400 light bulbs and 4,000 filters.
Parking puzzle. The Hilltop includes approximately 5,700 parking spaces, but almost three times as many tickets were issued for parking violations during the past academic year.
Cleanliness is next to… It takes 100 custodians to keep 72 buildings on campus clean. Each custodian cleans an average of 32,000 square feet a day.
Showing our colors. The SMU Bookstore annually sells more than $1.5 million worth of clothing branded with SMU’s mascot, colors and logo. Pony up with pride.
No place like home. About 1,765 students are tucked into approximately 825 residence hall rooms, most of them double occupancy. Almost 2,000 students live on their own immediately surrounding the campus in zip code 75205, which includes Highland Park and University Park, and zip code 75206, east of North Central Expressway.
Red, blue and green. SMU recycles an average of 350 tons of material each year, part of an ongoing commitment to go green.
One ringy dingy… It’s not coming from pockets or purses, but from more than 5,000 land-line telephones wired into the main campus, from residence halls to staff and faculty offices.
Goin’ to the chapel of love. More than 200 couples marry in Perkins Chapel annually; about a third of those weddings include an SMU student or graduate.
Show-offs. Meadows School of the Arts hosts more than 500 events every year, including museum exhibits, art lectures and dance and musical performances ranging from
Bach to Basie. Theatrical productions include classical dramas and hip urban comedies.
Flower power. The campus groundskeepers plant about 20,000 bulbs after Thanksgiving every year to produce those breathtaking blooms in the spring.
Snail-mail central. The U.S. Post Office at Hughes-Trigg Student Center processes about 70,000 outgoing letters and packages a month. The incoming mail is massive – about 300,000 pieces of first-class mail and about 26,000 boxes – thanks to online orders by students and care packages from home.
Bodies in motion. The start of each semester at the Dedman Center for Lifetime Sports sees the most activity – the facility logged in 46,684 visits last September and 47,021 visits last February. [For visuals and more statistics, see pages 16-17.]
“What these numbers and more add up to is SMU’s dedication to maintaining a high-quality campus experience for its students and faculty that helps keep us competitive,” Dworaczyk says.
Attracting High Achievers and Big Thinkers With Merit Scholarships
By Joy Hart
Photographs By Hillsman S. Jackson
To attract the best students to SMU, admission officers cite a campus experience that is challenging in and out of the classroom, the opportunity to interact closely with distinguished professors and other bright students, and the benefits of living and learning on a park-like campus in a vibrant city. They get all this – and the incentive of merit scholarships.
As SMU competes nationally for the best students, merit scholarships "help attract young scholars who will benefit from and enrich the SMU experience. They stimulate an environment of academic excellence," says Ron Moss, dean of undergraduate admission and executive director of enrollment services. And as SMU strives to grow in academic stature, seeking resources for additional merit scholarships is a high priority, championed by SMU’s Board of Trustees and other University leaders.
Two top scholarship packages supported by donors are the President’s Scholars Program, now 25, and the Hunt Leadership Scholars Program, which turns 15 next year. And a new endowment has just been announced for B.B.A. scholars in the Cox School of Business.
Students who win the highly competitive scholarships say it is more than money that seals the deal – it is the total SMU experience and a package of benefits that often includes study abroad, meeting world leaders on campus, close mentoring by faculty, research opportunities and the possibility of pursuing double or triple majors. The students bring the right combination of attributes, too – brains, broad interests, leadership, civic awareness and other talents. They stand out, yet fit in. The following profiles of seven merit scholar recipients make the point.
Balancing Engineering And Athletics – Swimmingly
Brett Denham
Brett Denham was a fraction away from making the Olympic trials in 2008.
At the U.S. National Swimming Championships in July, he completed the 100-yard butterfly in 55.9 seconds – only 3/10th of a second over the qualifying time.
"I have mixed feelings," Denham says. "My time last year was 56.5 seconds. It was a good drop for me, but it’s a little tough to be so close."
Denham, now ranked 54th in the country in the 100-yard butterfly, will try again next year to make the Olympic trials.
"Brett is a great swimmer," says Andy Kershaw, the SMU swim team’s assistant coach. "He has talent, but he also works hard and he’s disciplined." He’s disciplined enough to compete athletically while pursuing the academically demanding major of mechanical engineering. Denham, a senior, swims five hours a day. During the school year, he trains two hours in the morning before classes and three hours in the afternoon. During the summer, he continued the same rigorous schedule, fitting in an internship at Stanley Tool Company between practices.
"Swimming alone is a tough thing to do," Kershaw says. "Swimming and engineering are about as tough as it can get. Brett does both with a smile on his face."
With a 3.6 G.P.A., Denham is one of the reasons why the SMU swim team has earned the NCAA Academic All-American team award for the past three years. Last season, the Mustang swimming team posted a 3.3 overall team G.P.A., ranking it sixth in the nation.
Even though his parents, older brother and numerous cousins attended Texas A&M, SMU is the right place for him, says Denham, who received an Embrey Engineering Scholarship and is an SMU Scholar, both awarded for academic excellence.
"I visited other schools, but I didn’t receive nearly as warm a welcome as I did when I came here on a swimming recruiting trip," he says. "SMU has a good swimming program and a solid engineering school. And the scholarships have helped me tremendously."
Finding The Right Stage For His Talents
Travis Ballenger
When Travis Ballenger was in the second grade, he played the role of a Native American chief in his school’s Thanksgiving play. It was the start of his passion for theatre. During his last two years of high school, he attended the prestigious South Carolina Governor’s School of the Arts and Humanities.
But as a sophomore theatre major at SMU, he discovered that his true calling was working behind the scenes – as a director.
"From the moment of my first rehearsal as a director, it felt right to me," he says. "I felt tense in a good way. There is a spark or fire that directing lights in me."
Ballenger directed seven theatre productions during his first three years at SMU, an impressive number for any student, and in November directed the Meadows School of the Arts production of Lanford Wilson’s "Balm in Gilead."
The first in his family to attend college, Ballenger chose SMU over other universities that offered him scholarships because he wanted to study with Cecil O’Neal, professor and chair of SMU’s Division of Theatre. O’Neal met Ballenger when he visited his high school to provide monologue coaching and encouraged him to compete in SMU’s national auditions in Chicago. Based on Ballenger’s talent and potential, SMU offered him a Meadows Foundation Scholarship.
"SMU has been a terrific place for me," Ballenger says. "The professors really care about the students. You can tell that, for them, this is much more than a job."
To earn extra money and gain even more experience, Ballenger also has worked in the Theatre Division assisting the faculty member who serves as stage manager.
"Basically, I live in the theatre department," Ballenger says.
Last summer Ballenger received a full scholarship to attend a three-week playwriting course taught by playwright Mac Wellman at SMU-in-Taos. He also spent part of the summer teaching acting at his old high school.
"Travis has done everything in his power to take advantage of all the opportunities available to him at SMU," O’Neal says.
Ballenger, who calls himself "extremely ambitious," says his goal is "to have my own company. We would write, direct, act and produce our own work." Based on his studies and experience on and off the stage, Ballenger could probably play any or all of those roles.
Civic-minded, Business-oriented
Jessica North
As a student at a private high school in Salt Lake City, Jessica North entered the public arena to encourage fairness in the treatment of women. She joined a group of students who successfully lobbied Utah legislators to support a bill on pay equity. The bill required the state to conduct employment surveys to verify 2000 census information showing that women in Utah made 67 cents to every dollar made by men, making it the second worst state in the country for pay equity. "It was a first step in correcting the problem," she says. "I learned that you can talk to your legislators."
At SMU North is among those making policy on campus issues. Last year she represented the Cox School of Business on the SMU Student Senate and served on the SMU Honor Council, helping to decide cases involving students accused of cheating or other violations of the University’s Honor Code. She also served as vice president of finance for Delta Sigma Pi, the business honorary fraternity; as an officer in her sorority, Tri Delta; and as a Week of Welcome leader to incoming first-year students.
Although North applied to colleges all over the country, from Santa Clara in California to Duke in North Carolina, she chose SMU for several reasons. The friendly campus was an attraction, she says, as well as the highly rated Cox School of Business.
The clincher, however, was scholarships. North, a double major in finance and political science, received merit awards as an SMU Scholar and a Cox B.B.A. Scholar, which recognize outstanding academic achievement and strong leadership skills. "When I was weighing the pros and cons, the scholarships had a big impact on my decision," she says.
For North, it has been a wise decision. Last spring she learned the value of networking when she was one of 20 students invited to a dinner with the SMU Board of Trustees. She sat next to Trustee and alumnus John Tolleson (’68), who heads Tolleson Wealth Management.
"I hadn’t heard of the company but, after talking to Mr. Tolleson, I thought that it would be a great place to work."
When summer internship opportunities were posted several days later, North found a listing for Tolleson Wealth Management – and applied. She spent her summer at the company helping clients research investment opportunities and file tax returns. She also spent two weeks with the CFO and controller observing their roles in the company. At the end of summer she helped develop a training session that the company now uses to train new hires. "It was a great internship because I was able to put into practice a lot of the things I was learning in classes and see how it actually operates in the real world."
Although she had planned to go to law school after graduation next spring, North has decided to continue her career with Tolleson Wealth Management as an analyst, starting in June. "I want to see where finance will take me first," she says. "Later, I would like to enroll in a J.D./M.B.A. program," combining her interest in lawmaking with her talent for business.
Educating The Youngest Victims Of Civil War
Pragya Lohani
Junior Pragya Lohani returned to her native Nepal last summer to visit her family in the country’s capital, Kathmandu. From there, she traveled even farther in miles and time to the remote village of Rukum, where Nepal’s violent civil war began more than a decade ago.
"We had to fly, and then we had to walk two hours to get to the village," Lohani says. "There are no roads, no electricity, no telephone connections."
With a $10,000 grant from the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Fund, Lohani and a former high school classmate went as "peace ambassadors" to Rukum, where they helped restore a school and selected 20 children for scholarships to attend the school.
"Many of the children in Rukum drop out of school," Lohani says. "Some of the children are so hungry they eat soil. Many of their parents have been killed."
One student, Bimala Pun, described to Lohani how Maoists pulled her father out of their home, kicked him for three hours, dragged him away and shot him. "Bimala was calm because shis used to the war, but I felt very anxious," Lohani recalls. "As soon as I got back to the airport in Nepal’s capital, I started crying so hard."
Lohani says she made "a connection" with the children in Rukum and now has a mission. After she earns degrees in operations research and economics from SMU and then completes graduate school, she hopes to work for the International Monetary Fund. Eventually, she wants to create a nonprofit nongovernmental organization (NGO) to help the children in Nepal.
To help further her goals, Lohani is spending this year at the London School of Economics studying international trade and developmental economics and modernity in Asia, which covers the history of China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea. Study abroad was made possible because at the end of her sophomore year, SMU awarded Lohani an upper-class President’s Scholarship, the highest academic merit award providing full tuition and fees, study abroad and other benefits.
"I love SMU," Lohani says. "I don’t think I could find a better university and education."
A Scholarship Called Serendipity
Rafael Anchia with his wife, Marissa, and their daughters, Sophia and Maia.
Rafael Anchía (’90) calls it serendipity that his father accompanied him to a college fair at the Miami Expo Center in 1985. Dad struck up a conversation with an SMU recruiter who spoke his first language, Spanish, and informed his son, "This is an excellent university."
And when SMU called their home in Florida several months later to offer Anchía a scholarship, Dad accepted for the son, putting him on a path to graduating cum laude from the Hilltop in 1990 with majors in anthropology, Ibero-American studies and Spanish.
Although all four schools Anchía applied to accepted him, SMU offered the most generous scholarship. "This was a big, big deal," he recalls. "I didn’t have my sights set on anything more than going to our state university. I thought that was pretty terrific."
But there would be even more good news for Anchía, who went on to earn a law degree from Tulane University.
Now a Dallas lawyer and state representative, he was named one of the 10 best legislators for 2007 by Texas Monthly magazine. "If the Legislature were a stock market, Anchía would be Google," Texas Monthly concluded.
Anchía represents the future as the son of immigrants who became a lawyer with a blue chip firm, the magazine stated, also noting that he emerged last spring as a top floor debater against a bill that would have required voters to present a government-sponsored form of identification at the polls. Anchía argued that the bill was directed at a voter impersonation problem that does not exist and would have resulted in disenfranchising minority and low-income voters. The bill died after passage in the House but lack of support in the Senate.
At SMU, Anchía remembers putting a lot of pressure on himself. "On many different levels, I wanted to show that a public school kid from a new immigrant community (in Miami) could not only compete but excel," he says. While an undergraduate he joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and says he continues to enjoy an extensive social and business network in Dallas because of that experience.
"I would rank my academic preparation at SMU with any education I could have received anywhere else," he says. He has strong memories of the classes he took under linguistics and bilingual education expert William Pulte, associate professor of anthropology, and clearly relishes the opportunity to work as a legislator on community projects with Pulte.
Anchía continues the relationship with his beloved alma mater in numerous ways. He returns often to campus to speak to student groups and says he is pleased to see the increased diversity of the University. He serves on the advisory panel of SMU’s Clements Center for Southwest Studies in the Clements Department of History, the President’s 21st Century Advisory Board and the Executive Board of Dedman College. Anchía and his wife, Marissa (’07), who earned her Master of Liberal Studies degree from SMU in May, still worship at the 9 a.m. Catholic mass at Perkins Chapel, and they baptized both their daughters at SMU.
"So we feel quite invested in the University," he says.
Passport To Cultural Understanding
John Hunninghake
For John Hunninghake (’07), the path to medical school has included stops in Latin America, Australia and Asia.
"In the United States today, there is a huge melting pot of cultures with different values and ideas about health care," he says. "Being open to appreciating those cultures and understanding the different ideas of people will help me as a doctor to communicate with them."
Hunninghake earned a B.A. by pursuing individualized study in the liberal arts with a specialty in medical anthropology and a minor in Spanish. After graduation, he joined another Hunt Scholar, senior Stephen Alexander, to travel to Costa Rica and Ecuador under a Richter International Fellowship. SMU is one of only 12 schools offering the highly competitive Richter Fellowship to conduct independent research, usually outside the United States. Their research evaluated volunteer organizations that are helping citizens in those countries develop ecotourism activities so they will not have to depend on jobs that deplete their environment.
"Volunteers travel to different countries with organizations to help small villages with tourist projects that utilize the beauty of the surrounding environment, instead of destroy-ing it, while improving the sustainability of the village through gardening and maintenance," Hunninghake says.
The two plan to publish a report and a magazine article on what they learned about specific organizations to increase awareness about the meaningful work of volunteers. They also want to make suggestions that challenge organizations to improve themselves.
His studies at SMU prepared him for his work in Latin America, Hunninghake says. "Anthropology is the study of how cultures relate to each other and how they can interact together; by working together they can improve each other."
Hunninghake got a firsthand look at other cultures during his junior year, when he studied for a semester in Spain and a semester in Australia. Through additional travel he has explored Europe and Southeast Asia, where he joined a study tour through Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand. His study abroad was part of his Hunt Leadership Scholarship, created to recruit and foster students who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership, academic achievement and a strong sense of civic responsibility. The scholarships cover tuition less the amount of resident tuition of the leading public university in the student’s home state, plus costs associated with education abroad.
"Being a Hunt Scholar opened up many opportunities for me. The financial support the program provides for studying abroad was one of the reasons I decided to come to SMU."
After gaining work experience in the medical field, Hunninghake plans to begin medical school in 2009; but before reaching that destination, he has more travel on his itinerary.
Finding Her Future By Exploring The Past
Karen Gutierrez
Karen Gutierrez spent part of last summer in Portugal carefully extracting pieces of fossilized dinosaur eggs from a big block of dirt. Gutierrez, a senior studying geological sciences, removed the egg fragments from the dirt with an air scribe pen.
"When the pen pulsates, it breaks up the dirt and exposes the layers that contain fossils," she says. "But, if you touch the pieces of egg with the pen, you can cause damage to the surfaces. I was really nervous at first because I never had done anything like that before."
After studying in Madrid with SMU-in-Spain last spring semester, Gutierrez went to Lourinhã, Portugal, about an hour north of Lisbon, to explore a dig site with Octávio Mateus, who is working on a project in Angola with SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs, president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man and professor of geological sciences. It was Gutierrez’s second trip to Portugal. During spring break in 2006, she worked as a research assistant with graduate student Scott Myers while studying with Jacobs.
"I am really happy with the opportunities that SMU has offered me," says Gutierrez, a President’s Scholar. "Not many undergraduates get to work in the field."
Gutierrez already has gained an international perspective through working on rock cores from the Congo and dinosaur eggs in Portugal as part of an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund grant. "Karen is a personable, adept and quick student, and a poised ambassador for SMU, geology and paleontology," Jacobs says. "Her work – a mixture of fossils, rock and chemistry – is on the cutting edge of understanding ancient climates. She is destined to be an innovative leader in her field."
Gutierrez says she has wanted to be a paleontologist since watching the movie "Jurassic Park" at age 7. She went to high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and chose SMU because of its strong Geological Sciences Department. But a deciding factor, she says, was a four-year President’s Scholarship that pays full tuition and fees, supports a semester of study abroad and provides a retreat at SMU-in-Taos.
After she graduates from SMU with a triple major in geology, math and Spanish, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in paleontology, to work at a museum or teach and conduct research at a university.
"I have always liked solving mysteries," Gutierrez says, "and there is so much that we don’t know about the dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago."
Speaking The Many Languages Of Learning
Esmeralda Duran
Senior English major Esmeralda Duran met an Arab family this past summer while studying in SMU’s South of France program. She noticed the family speaking Arabic and French and introduced herself. "One of the languages I want to learn next is Arabic," says Duran, who is fluent in French and Spanish.
"The family invited me to their house for dinner, and we watched an Arabic TV station and went to an Arabic market. Seeing France through their eyes was one of the most interesting experiences I had last summer."
As the daughter of immigrants from Mexico who is a first-generation college student, Duran well understands the value of learning from other cultures. She understood only Spanish when she started kindergarten in Fort Worth. "I was only 5, but I still remember my hunger to learn English," Duran says. "It is a hunger for knowledge that I feel at the beginning of every semester."
She quickly became fluent in English and advanced in school, while helping take care of her younger brothers when her mother worked cleaning houses. In high school, a teacher encouraged Duran to apply for a scholarship to study in France through Fort Worth Sister Cities International. Duran, who completed all the applications herself, lived as an exchange student with a Franco-Portuguese host family in Nancy, in northeastern France.
After high school, she studied through the honors program at Tarrant County College. "I decided to make really good grades so that I would be offered a scholarship to a four-year college," she says. Now part of SMU’s Honors Program, she receives support from an SMU scholarship for community college transfer students who have maintained a minimum 3.7 G.P.A., in addition to a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation scholarship, awarded to only 50 transfer students each year.
After SMU Duran plans to attend law school specializing in immigration law. "While I was growing up, I saw things and heard my parents talk about the injustices done to them," she says. "I want to change the world."
At Expanded Dedman Center, Getting In Shape Never Felt So Good
Photographs By Hillsman S. Jackson
At 5 p.m. most weekdays, Dedman Center for Lifetime Sports hums at its peak of activity – with hundreds of bodies running, swimming, weightlifting, spinning, playing basketball and racquetball, rock climbing, puffing on treadmills and punching the bags. Students, but also many faculty and staff, begin pouring into the facility the minute it opens at 6 a.m. and keep the place hopping until it closes at midnight. Weekends also see their fair share of users, although fewer. For a typical week in September, the daily number of visitors ranged from 800 to 2,300.
Built in 1976, Dedman Center re-opened in phases in 2005-06 after undergoing a $25 million expansion and renovation. It was funded through a student-led initiative supporting an additional 1-1/2 percent increase in tuition and fees in fall 2003 and 2004. Several donors also provided funding for the construction and renovation. Dedman Center now offers 170,000 square feet of indoor recreational space plus an outdoor area that includes The Falls (zero-entry pool with 7-foot waterfalls), two sand volleyball courts and leisure spaces.
The center enhances campus life and enables SMU to uphold its commitment to excellence in all aspects of the collegiate experience.
Judith Banes (’69, ’78), executive director of recreational sports, says she was forewarned by some of SMU’s peer institutions to expect usage to triple once the center became fully operational in 2006, and it has.
"The expanded Dedman Center serves as a positive meeting place for making new friends, relieving stress and achieving potential mentally and physically," Banes says. "The center enhances campus life and enables SMU to uphold its commitment to excellence in all aspects of the collegiate experience."
Increasingly, prospective students assess fitness resources in choosing a college. Nathan Fine, a first-year student from Japan (above, lifting weights), was undecided about his major, but "the Dedman Center greatly influenced my decision to come to SMU," he says. "Its facilities are better than any other university I visited. The center offers me a place to break away from studying."
SMU alumni also can use the facilities at Dedman Center for an annual membership fee.
SMU’s Office of Endowment and Scholarship Giving can help donors establish a new endowment fund at the University.
For more information, call 1-800-766-4371, ext. 2675; or contact Linda Preece, director, Office of Endowment and Scholarship Giving, P.O. Box 750305, Dallas, TX 75275-0305; 214-768-4863, 1-800-766-4371, ext. 4863, lpreece@smu.edu.
For more information about all of SMU’s giving opportunities, visit www.smu.edu/giving.
Benjamin Franklin once advised that a penny saved is a penny earned – but if he were alive today, he may have added that a penny wisely invested is an even better deal.
That sums up the philosophy of those who manage SMU’s $1.363 billion endowment, the foundation of the University’s long-term financial strength and part of its permanent resources.
The Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees oversees the SMU endowment and guides the SMU Treasurer’s Office in finding attractive investment opportunities. Last year’s growth of $200 million in endowment assets and return of more than 20 percent resulted from good investment choices, strong markets and more than $22 million in new gifts, says University Treasurer Liz Williams.
Even before SMU opened its doors in 1915, the General Education Board of the Methodist Church established an endowment of $111,540 for the new University. It took 80 years for the SMU Endowment to reach the $500 million mark – in 1995. That growth accelerated dramatically, however, with the last major fund-raising campaign: A Time to Lead. About one-third of the total $542 million given by alumni and friends was designated for the endowment, says Marianne Piepenburg, assistant vice president for planned and endowment giving. “We were able to increase the endowment by nearly $150 million through new gifts during that campaign. Those gifts, together with the wise investment counsel provided by the University’s trustees, have allowed SMU to double the size of its endowment in the past 10 years.”
So what does this growth mean for students and faculty? Endowment funds, supported by gifts of all sizes, enable SMU to develop innovative programs, enhance academic quality by attracting outstanding students and faculty and raise the profile of the University. In the competitive world of higher education, current endowment income and the assurance of its continued support for the future will allow SMU to compare more favorably with some of the best universities in the country such as Notre Dame, Duke, Brown, Emory, Vanderbilt and Northwestern.
The University’s endowment requires not only investment skill and donor support, but also discipline and patience. “Sometimes an observer will hear about a large endowment gift to SMU and think that this amount can go fully and immediately into supporting the scholarship, academic program or faculty position created,” Williams says. “However, it will take awhile for earnings to accumulate and provide a consistent level of support.” That support is ordinarily about 4 to 5 percent of its market value (gift plus capital gains), she adds.
“As the market value grows from reinvested earnings, future support will increase as well. Building endowment is an exercise in patience, but one that pays off in the long term.”
Funds held in endowment cannot be withdrawn at will, like a checking account, to cover the University’s daily operating costs. Donors who make the original gifts restrict them to endowment and designate use of the income from those funds for specific purposes. So an endowment is more like a savings account, earning a return for current financial stability as well as future growth.
An endowment works this way: An individual gives $500,000 to SMU to endow a President’s Scholarship, the University’s most prestigious and competitive award. The University then invests the gift through a number of strategies and markets. A portion of the interest and capital gains earned from the fund is spent annually for the purpose designated, in this case, the scholarship, while the excess remains in the fund’s principal to protect its value against inflation. So, the original value of the fund, plus any additional gifts, is preserved and invested. As the principal grows, earnings grow.
Williams compares the SMU endowment to a mutual fund pool, with each donor’s fund holding shares in that pool. “Essentially, we pool the endowment gifts and manage them as a single entity,” she says. “In inflation-adjusted dollars we are trying to support the purpose of the funds at the same or greater level each year,” Williams says. “That’s why it is important that we achieve returns that are equal to or greater than the amount we spend on the purpose, plus the amount of inflation.”
She points out that inflation is higher for universities than that reflected by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) because “our costs are related to people and quality improvements such as books and high technology. The price of a computer may go down each year, but the cost of improvements and upgrades in technology, allowing for the newest research capability to keep pace with competing institutions, continues to go up every year.” The impact of increasing costs for the kind of educational experience SMU provides affects the quality of that experience.
In the example of the President’s Scholar award, which provides the student’s full tuition and fees for four years plus study abroad and other benefits, the scholarship must increase each year as tuition rates and other costs rise. “If you give a full tuition scholarship to an incoming first-year student, that student will be much happier as a sophomore if the University continues to support the full cost of tuition with the scholarship,” Williams says.
According to a 2006 study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), SMU’s endowment ranks 55th nationally (out of a total of 62 schools with $1 billion in endowment). That’s fourth in Texas behind the University of Texas System with $13.2 billion; Texas A&M University System and Foundations, $5.6 billion; and Rice University, nearly $4 billion. Harvard University, which has had the longest period of time to accumulate endowment, had $29 billion and Yale, $18 billion.
What is the budgeting impact? Last year endowment income provided approximately $45.5 million of SMU’s $320 million operations budget, or 14 percent of the total. That means 86 percent of the University’s budget came from sources such as tuition and non-endowment gifts. As SMU increases the income generated by its endowment, it is less dependent on tuition as a means of support – income that can vary each year with enrollment trends. This allows the University more flexibility in recruiting and retaining the best students in the applicant pool because it is not required to accept students it may not want, just to meet a budgetary number.
Despite the endowment’s strong growth, SMU, as a relatively young institution, remains undercapitalized compared to the majority of its benchmark schools, those that SMU emulates. One way to look at the strength of a university’s endowment is to calculate endowment assets per student. Using this measure, for 2006 SMU held $120,593 in endowment per student, compared to an average $257,455 per student among SMU’s benchmark schools. (For more information: www.nacubo.org/x2376.xml) “While we are building our endowment, those schools with which we compete are working just as diligently to build theirs,” Williams says.
That is why SMU’s new major gifts campaign will be devoted primarily to raising funds for the SMU endowment in four key areas: student quality, faculty excellence, academic distinction and the campus experience.
“Endowed professorships provide competitive salaries, research funds and other academic resources for the highest quality teaching and learning,” says Brad Cheves, vice president for development and external affairs. “Scholarships provide financial support for those talented and eager students who would thrive at SMU but are courted by other national universities. Gifts for academic programs enable us to strengthen and add to the curriculum, and support for extracurricular opportunities broadens the SMU experience for our students.”
Scheduled to begin its public phase in 2008, the campaign aims to elevate the endowment to a level comparable with competing institutions, which have more resources for growth in quality and impact.
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With each step and sauté, push and pull, students in the Division of Dance learn their craft while perfecting their art. Beyond the barre, dance students show off the forms they have fine-tuned in the studio with Main Stage productions in the fall and spring, as well as a graduate thesis performance by the division’s M.F.A. candidates in April. The concerts feature historic and contemporary works by such choreographers as Martha Graham, George Balanchine, Judith Jamison and Paul Taylor, among others. SMU must obtain approval from the choreographers’ foundations for performances of these works, which is granted to few college dance departments. Students receive training from such faculty members as Dance Chair and Professor Myra Woodruff, a former member and teacher with the internationally renowned Béjart Ballet Lausanne in Switzerland and with the Martha Graham Dance Company. In addition, students have opportunities to work with internationally renowned guest choreographers, including Alison Chase, co-founder of Pilobolus Dance Theatre; Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem; and Douglas Becker, founding member of the Frankfurt Ballet. For the informal Brown Bag Series, staged at lunchtime in the lobby of Owen Arts Center, students don their choreographer hats and create works of ballet, modern, jazz, or tap that are performed by their peers. As a result of their broad-range exposure, dance graduates are members of numerous companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Dance Theatre of Harlem and David Parsons Company, among others. For more information: www.smu.edu/meadows/dance.
Maguire Interns Recall Lessons Learned As ‘Servant Leaders’
By Sarah Hanan
Quotes from great thinkers plaster a wall in the office of SMU’s Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, including this one from Henry David Thoreau: “Aim above morality. Be not simply good – be good for something.”
That saying sums up the philosophy of Law Professor and Maguire Director Tom Mayo on teaching future leaders to put service to society first. It underlies the vision behind the Maguire Center since its founding in 1995: to guide students on the wise and moral use of the power they have gained through the acquisition of knowledge and to encourage ethical thinking and action.
Much of this work is accomplished through public lectures and national conferences sponsored by the center and in classroom discussions across campus, where students and faculty work through ethical issues such as end-of-life care, promise-keeping and trust and the war on terror. “The hope is that exposure to time-honored principles will rub off on students so that they will be better prepared to handle the ethical problems that inevitably will come their way,” Mayo says.
The Maguire Center also awards summer stipends to students to gain real-world experience in public service and ethics research. Since 1996, more than 90 Maguire interns have served more than 80 agencies of their choosing throughout the United States and in nine other countries.
“In addition to teaching service, many of the internships abound with ethical issues,” Mayo says. “How hard should a prosecutor push a victim of domestic violence to press charges and testify against her attacker? What does a community owe the undocumented immigrants who live and work there?
“There’s no better time for students than now to learn the skills they’ll need in only a few years for their powerful new roles of business associate, trusted adviser or community volunteer.”
Six Maguire interns provided excerpts from essays that they wrote about their experiences.
Brandie Ballard Wade interned in the family violence division of the Dallas County district attorney’s office, where she hopes to work after graduating from Dedman School of Law. She assisted with misdemeanor trials and helped educate victims, witnesses and even other prosecutors about legal resources and family violence.
“Every day in the misdemeanor courts presents a new challenge – either from the defense attorneys, defendants, victims, witnesses or the judge. I discovered that sometimes even other prosecutors can create a challenge for you because each comes in with his or her own perspectives on family violence. … As I had to explain to one misdemeanor prosecutor, the job of the officers and prosecutors is to protect the victim even when she does not want to be protected; even when she has forgotten the reason she asked for protection – she did ask. So it is still the officers’ and prosecutors’ and, hopefully one day, my job to remember her reason and fight for her protection and safety at all times.”
“The realization that every nonprofit, every effort to really impact the world and help people on a large scale, is reliant on generosity is frightening. It’s frightening because then one has to have faith in humanity’s ability to be generous. I’ve learned to have faith in that ability. I’ve learned that having that faith gives you the strength to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.”
— Sommer Saadi
Katherine Bartush, a sophomore majoring in business and pre-med and a soccer player who has sustained several knee surgeries, hopes to become an orthopedic surgeon. She spent the summer with the Community Outreach Department at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in her home state of Indiana, where she learned “about being a servant leader in medicine.”
“As part of the medical center’s mission, I organized an afternoon program for underprivileged children at the Martin Luther King Center. The kids who attended came from the neighborhood in my community with the highest homicide rate. The program met one afternoon a week for six weeks to teach young women self-esteem and other life skills. I helped brainstorm topics, called volunteers and set the schedule for a health lesson and a fun activity each day. I was in charge of the activity concerning women’s health and self-respect. A school psychologist talked about cutting (which is on the rise in young women) and self-love, and I showed the girls how to make and decorate their own bulletin boards to hang pictures of themselves, their friends and their family. … My time with Saint Joseph helped confirm my career goals and exposed me to part of my own community that needs the most help. ”
Leah Bhimani served an internship with Immigration and Legal Services of Catholic Charities of Dallas that gave her a firsthand look at the human side of America’s debate on immigration reform. The Dedman School of Law student says she experienced the emotional ups and downs of helping clients seek legal status.
“To our clients, legal immigration status is a coveted luxury, something a person waits years for, saves their money for, spends weeks filling out paperwork and taking time off work for, dreaming about reuniting family. When finally a legal permanent resident card arrives in the mail, or their family officially crosses the border, it’s like winning the lottery – it’s unbelievable until it actually happens. On occasions where I was the person lucky enough to find a way to make someone’s difficult immigration case successful, I felt the way I imagine my clients must feel. … There also were moments when my heart would sink and I didn’t want to go back to my office to face a client.”
Bethany Johnson, a pre-med senior majoring in Spanish and Latin American studies, worked with the Agape Clinic at Grace Methodist Church in Dallas. Johnson translated for the mostly Hispanic patients, recorded their histories and checked blood pressure, as well as helped the clinic’s “promotoras” – trained community members who visit schools and offer classes on health.
“The focus on community health was one of the most fascinating aspects about working at the clinic. I was involved in researching problems such as diabetes and childhood obesity, which are prevalent in the Hispanic community. I was able to learn a lot about social work, and I now have a better understanding of the health care system in the United States. The waiting room at the clinic seemed to always be overflowing with people waiting for access to health care that would not have been available otherwise. … I realized that I really want to be in a profession where you can get to know people and help them.”
Ethics By The Numbers
Since the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility was funded by an endowment of $2.5 million from its namesake in 1995, it has upheld its mission by supporting student formation and curricular and faculty development; encouraging national dialogue and community partnerships; engaging research and publication; and sponsoring public virtue recognition. All that activity adds up to:
90 students who have been awarded summer grants for public service work in Dallas and around the world 59 ethics-related conferences and other events across campus and throughout North Texas 35 students who have participated in the regional and national Ethics Bowl competition during the past five years 32 teaching fellowships for the creation of a new ethics-oriented course or a new ethics component in an existing course 21 extended essays in its Occasional Papers series 19 public scholar lectures by faculty members from Dedman College, Perkins School of Theology and Dedman School of Law 16 students who have worked on the Design Team to address ethics issues on campus since its creation four years ago 15 major conferences on topics ranging from the ethics of managed care to college athletics to immigration 10 ethics awards presented to members of the Dallas community in recognition of their public-spiritedness and devotion to the common good 2 books co-published with SMU Press – The Ethics of Giving and Receiving: Am I My Foolish Brother’s Keeper? edited by William F. May and A. Lewis Soens Jr. and War: A Primer for Christians by Joseph L. Allen
Dedman School of Law student Letha Allen confirmed her passion for working in affordable housing during her internship with the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation. She researched a legal case involving residents of a poorly maintained mobile home park whose owner ordered them to move after he was sued for city code violations. Admitting the park needed work, the residents agreed to try to meet the terms of a proposed special-use permit that would allow them to stay for two years, if the landlord paid for some improvements.
“The residents’ problem made me ask what was the most ‘fair’ resolution. They had small mortgages on their homes, which theoretically allowed them to build equity, but in reality their aging homes were worth nothing without the land underneath. They paid an average of $192 a month to rent a space in the park. Was it reasonable for the residents to expect to find alternative housing in Dallas for that little? Was it the city’s or landlord’s responsibility to pay for relocation expenses? I did not have the answers to these questions. I did know that there were not enough good alternatives for poor people who wanted to raise their kids in close-knit communities with good schools and other amenities. When I left CDCDC, the residents were waiting to hear what the landlord’s next step would be.”
Sommer Saadi’s internship with Humanity United in Giving (HUG) Internationally took her from Richardson, Texas, to Romania. The sophomore majoring in history and journalism spent the first part of her summer organizing fund-raisers and donation drives from the nonprofit’s home office and the last part visiting two of the orphanages it sponsors overseas. Along the way, she learned the value of generosity.
“The realization that every nonprofit, every effort to really impact the world and help people on a large scale, is reliant on generosity is frightening. It’s frightening because then one has to have faith in humanity’s ability to be generous. I’ve learned to have faith in that ability. I’ve learned that having that faith gives you the strength to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. … The most rewarding and most influential experience of my internship was my trip to Romania to visit the orphanages HUG sponsors. It was my turn to dedicate myself fully and devote the generosity I had been seeking in others.”
Chronicling The Journey Of The American West
By Deborah Wormser
From the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World to the railroads, industry and technology that changed the landscape of the new frontier, SMU’s DeGolyer Library contains the rare documents and artifacts that tell the stories of human discovery – and beckon scholars to keep exploring.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the foundation that provided the original collection of materials. It began with one man’s yearning to collect, learn and share.
Renowned oil entrepreneur and philanthropist Everette L. DeGolyer Sr. (1896-1956) began acquiring one of the greatest private libraries of the 20th century after he discovered a first edition of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers in a London bookstore in 1914. DeGolyer went on to build a fine collection of literary first editions, most of which he gave to the University of Texas, but he also achieved fame as a collector in the fields of the history of science, a collection he gave to the University of Oklahoma, his alma mater, and Western Americana, a collection now housed at SMU. How that collection came to SMU, however, is a somewhat circuitous journey.
In his will DeGolyer created and endowed the DeGolyer Foundation, which first met in 1957. Under the direction of his son, Everett L. DeGolyer Jr. (1923-1977), a private library was transformed into a public trust and deeded to SMU in 1974. Supported since then by the DeGolyer family, SMU alumni, faculty and friends, the collection has nearly tripled from the core 40,000 volumes of 1957.
Now housed in the original Fondren Library building, DeGolyer Library contains about 120,000 rare books, half a million photographs, 3,000 early maps, 2,000 periodicals and newspaper titles and more than 2 million manuscripts in 2,500 separate collections. Each year nearly 2,000 users, including students, faculty and visiting scholars, patronize the library, which also hosts exhibits and seminars on its collections. Annually the library staff answers more than 3,000 reference queries through the mail or the Internet.
Concentration on particular subjects such as the American West or the railroad has enabled the DeGolyer Library, in the words of Everett DeGolyer Jr., “to provide exquisitely detailed information on a handful of scholarly concerns.” As a result, there are materials at the DeGolyer available nowhere else.
“Without the DeGolyer Library, the History Department could not have moved forward to build a Ph.D. program that specializes in Southwestern America or to operate the Clements Center for Southwest Studies with its emphasis on postdoctoral work,” says David Weber, Robert and Nancy Dedman Professor of History and director of the Clements Center. “The DeGolyer houses the manuscripts and imprints that support cutting-edge research and help us recruit outstanding faculty and graduate students.”
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The younger DeGolyer’s chief interest was transportation – from sailing ships to aircraft – but the history of railroads was his passion. As director of the family’s foundation, he snapped up as much industry memorabilia as possible.
“A lot of foundation board members were really critical of him for that. They saw the railroad collection as a diversion from the Western collection, something a little too narrow that would not lead anywhere,” says DeGolyer Library Director Russell L. Martin III (B.A. ’78, M.A. ’84), who also holds a doctorate from the University of Virginia.
History has validated the vision of DeGolyer Jr. “Because so much of the West was developed by the railroad, it is very difficult to separate the two,” Martin says. “Mr. DeGolyer saw that the fields were complementary. He also knew the market and acquired much of the railroad collection when it was comparatively inexpensive.”
Since 1957 the railroad industry that opened up the settlement of the West has dwindled to a handful of companies. In contrast, the SMU collection has grown into one of the nation’s finest repositories of railroad memorabilia, documenting nearly 4,000 railroad companies and lines in the United States as well as Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. The collection includes company documents such as timetables, route maps and photographs, the latter composing part of the DeGolyer’s massive photography collection.
Scholars worldwide are taking notice. Recently, a researcher in India scoured the world for photographs of 19th-century architecture in that country. He found what he was looking for at SMU because photographers who documented the construction of India’s railroads also documented the towns being added to the lines.
“I believe that if you collect long enough, there will be some use for it that you cannot foresee,” Martin says.
SHOWING THE MONEY
For example, the DeGolyer houses the best collection of Texas bank notes in existence, from the earliest days of the Republic of Texas to 1933, when a change in the banking laws meant that local banks could no longer issue notes. A parallel can be drawn between railroads and bank notes. Both were common on the frontier, yet today many U.S. residents have never traveled by locomotive or held a privately issued bank note in their hands.
Little hard currency existed on the Texas frontier and none during the Civil War, so commerce relied on loans and other paper obligations, such as notes issued by banks, merchant houses or state and local treasuries, Martin says.
The notes reveal early printing and engraving techniques – another SMU collection specialty – and show both the difficulties of doing business in a rustic economy and the creative ways business and government leaders overcame those challenges. The collection includes proof sheets for all of those notes, too, says John N. Rowe III, who attended SMU, 1955-58. Founder of Southwest Numismatics, Rowe donated the collection in 2003 with his brother-in-law and co-founder, B.B. Barr.
OVERLAND TALES
SMU’s collection depicting life west of the Mississippi is one of the finest in the country. In addition to vast collections on Texas, California and other western states, DeGolyer chronicles the details of voyages and other travel.
The library recently staged an exhibit on overland narratives – first-person accounts of travel. Items documented the fur trade as well as the lives of Plains settlers and mountain men, Mormons, foreign visitors, military life, literature, art, the gold rush, stories of captivity and early accounts of encounters with Native Americans.
Many of the documents are travelogues filled with practical advice on choosing a route or staking a gold claim, while others are more personal, such as the only known copy of Mountain Charley, or the adventures of Mrs. E.J. Guerin, who was thirteen years in male attire. An autobiography comprising a period of thirteen years life in the states, California, and Pike’s Peak (Dubuque, 1861).
DeGolyer’s collection on the history of the West includes the library’s oldest book, the Latin edition of Christopher Columbus’ letter describing his discovery of the New World, published in Rome in 1493. Unsure of what he had found, Columbus set about convincing his royal patrons that the expense of the journey was worth it and that the islands he had discovered warranted further investigations. He described the land as “extremely fertile,” with “broad and sheltered harbors, incomparably better than any I have ever seen.” Future western narratives often contained similar enticements – as well as accounts of disappointments, Martin says.
PETTICOAT PIONEERS
The Archives of Women of the Southwest represents an area that DeGolyer is steadily building. The Archives documents the historical experience of women in the Southwest through the papers of leaders in women’s organizations, the professions, the arts and voluntary service, along with papers of families and of women in private life, among other records. One recent significant acquisition is the donation by Gayle Eubanks Coleman of the papers, photographs and awards of her late mother, Julia Scott Reed. As a reporter and columnist for The Dallas Morning News for 11 years starting in 1967, Reed was the first African American writer to be employed full time at a major Dallas daily.
Also in the collection is the Diary of Lucy Pier Stevens (1863-1867), materials that tell one of the most dramatic stories in the library’s stacks, Martin says. Lucy Pier Stevens was visiting friends and relatives in Texas when the Civil War broke out, trapping her in the state. To escape she hopped a blockade-runner on the Gulf Coast and went to Cuba. From there, she was able to return to Ohio and eventually marry. Folders include two diaries and two albums: one of photos and the other of locks of hair from people mentioned in her diary.
THE NEWS AS HISTORY
Newspapers are among the most valuable sources for scholarly work because the creation of a community newspaper indicated a town’s success. DeGolyer houses a collection of some 2,000 newspapers in English and Spanish, from Europe, the United States, Mexico and South America. The collection includes small-town weeklies as well as papers from metropolitan centers, such as The London Chronicle from 1755-1865 and a nearly complete run of Gazetas de Mexico, one of the earliest Mexican newspapers, from 1785 through its demise in 1808.
Martin’s personal favorite is the only known complete file of the Harmon News, an amateur newspaper from Lamar County (Harmon, Texas, 1902-1905). “Amateur newspapers were like a Web page in their time. Most were produced by kids who had hobby presses and would write and print their own newspapers, noting what was going on in school and the usual things kids are concerned with,” Martin says, adding that the Harmon News was unique. Its 14-year old editor and proprietor, Jesse Drummond, actually covered the news in his small town, which lacked a regular paper.
PENNEY AND HIS THOUGHTS
The great American retail merchant James Cash Penney (1875-1971) opened his first store in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and named it “The Golden Rule.” By doing so, Penney was proclaiming the idea that set his store apart from his competitors, namely, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” His initiative changed the way Americans do business with retail merchants.
JCPenney donated the papers of its founder and its corporate archives to DeGolyer in 2004. The Penney Archives include more than 20,000 photographs as well as 1,500 linear feet of letters, speeches, advertisements and other publications chronicling more than a century of corporate history. Some of the company’s papers will be digitized for access on the Internet. DeGolyer also includes Penney’s personal papers and correspondence starting in 1895.
CALCULATING TECHNOLOGY
In conjunction with its 75th anniversary, Texas Instruments donated the TI Historical Archives to SMU in 2005. The elder DeGolyer was a silent partner in Geophysical Services Inc., a precursor to TI, Martin says. The archives include some rather unbookish items: TI’s first transistor radio, first Speak and Spell educational toy, invented by SMU alumnus Paul Breedlove (’67), and first hand-held calculator, as well as TI engineer Jack Kilby’s 2000 Nobel Prize medal for his work inventing the integrated circuit, which put Dallas on the map as a hi-tech research hub.
Because Margaret Jonsson Rogers, daughter of TI co-founder J. Erik Jonsson, had given SMU her father’s personal correspondence and business papers, the DeGolyer seemed a natural repository when TI began looking for a home for its corporate archives, Martin says. Jonsson became mayor of Dallas in the uncertain times after the Kennedy assassination. Professor Emeritus Darwin Payne (’68), who covered the assassination as a Dallas Times Herald reporter and served as chair of the Journalism Department during his 30-year teaching career at SMU, is using the collection to research a book on Jonsson.
“The city turned to him to lead it out of its despair and to find some way to recover its balance after the awful effects of the Kennedy assassination,” Payne says. The Jonsson papers is one of many “very important collections that are relatively untouched and still there for our scholars to pursue and investigate.”
FROM RETAIL TO REBUILDING DALLAS
In 2003 SMU received the private library of another world famous Texas book collector, retailing innovator Stanley Marcus (1905-2002), of Neiman Marcus fame, prompting the DeGolyer to name its reading room in his honor. The collection’s 8,000 volumes and Marcus’ letters and other memorabilia reflect his wide-ranging interests in art and art history, business history, English and American literature and the craft of printing books.
Marcus was a longtime SMU trustee and member of the Meadows Museum advisory board during the expansion of Meadows School of the Arts. Like Jonsson, Marcus also was involved in post-Kennedy assassination reflections on Dallas and its image. He published a book containing the speech Kennedy would have delivered the day he was killed. In response, Marcus received letters from Jacqueline Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, U.N. Representative Adlai Stevenson, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, violinist Isaac Stern and others.
A BULLY PRESIDENT
One of the most prominent presidential collections featured in DeGolyer Library is the Doris A. and Lawrence H. Budner Theodore Roosevelt Collection, comprising thousands of books, periodicals, broadsides, photographs, manuscripts and other items documenting the life and times of the United States’ 26th president. “It’s the most important Roosevelt collection in private hands, and SMU is fortunate to have someone with Larry Budner’s foresight and generosity,” Martin says. “It will add tremendous depth and breadth to our resources for the study of the American presidency.”
EXPANDING HORIZONS
To round out DeGolyer’s holdings in literature and entertainment, as well as business, law and government, Martin has targeted SMU’s distinguished alumni and friends in those fields. He plans to stage an exhibit of American trade catalogs drawing not only from the JCPenney and Neiman Marcus collections, but also from the recently donated Roger Horchow Collection.
The Horchow Collection fits well with DeGolyer’s focus on business history but it also feeds other interests. The collection includes playbills, posters and other memorabilia from the Broadway shows Horchow produced, strengthening DeGolyer’s collections devoted to entertainment and the performing arts, including the Horton Foote Collection, the African American Film Collection and the Larry McMurtry in Film Collection.
In addition, Martin is working to expand the DeGolyer’s collection of children’s books. The library already owned first editions of books in the Tom Swift and Horatio Alger series, as well as both British and American first editions of Huckleberry Finn. The Marcus collection added signed first editions of Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeline and Eloise by Kay Thompson. DeGolyer’s comprehensive collection of the works of SMU alumnus William Joyce (’81) “is essential for us,” Martin says. “Joyce is one of the most distinguished children’s authors and illustrators today.”
For DeGolyer Library’s immediate future, Martin’s chief goal is to increase financial support and physical space. “We need proper space to house our collections of primary materials,” he says. “And even though we are 50 years old, we are only beginning to collect.”
The new J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building lets SMU walk the green walk. Professors and students agree: When it comes to state-of-the-art engineering facilities, the grass is now greenest in their own backyard.
For those who’ve advocated a more environmentally responsible future, the Embrey Building has proven to be the logical vehicle for converting visions of sustainability into hands-on education and innovative design.
As the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold-certified building on a university campus in the Southwest, Embrey has firmly placed SMU on the short list of schools with a demonstrated eco-conscience.
“Embrey is a key model of successful green building,” says Geoffrey Orsak, dean of the School of Engineering. “Not only does it provide academic focus for students and professors, it has impact on public and educational policy. There is a transition in higher education construction, and SMU is among the first to complete an engineering facility that meets the strictest environmental design requirements.”
The LEED-designed building houses the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering and Department of Mechanical Engineering. “While the full impact on educational programs will take several years, the building is already serving as a laboratory for critical issues concerned with energy and the environment,” says Bijan Mohraz, Environmental and Civil Engineering chair and professor.
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A Better Place to Work and Learn
Combining SMU’s collegiate Georgian architecture outside with cutting-edge technology inside, this virtual environmental laboratory demonstrates the logical connection between engineering and green construction. Offices, classrooms, laboratories and collaborative study spaces have been created using highly energy-efficient design — including substantial amounts of natural light, heat-reflecting materials, smart electronics and water-wise, low-flow bathroom fixtures. Combining these features adds up to about 30 percent less energy usage than typically found in comparably sized buildings.
“There is substantial research documenting that LEED buildings are better places to work and learn,” says Sam Latona, preconstruction manager, Turner Construction. “Three of the key components contributing to these benefits are natural light, clean inside air and building materials that don’t off-gas [release odors and gases from new products that are often harmful] or don’t have very low volatile organic compounds.”
Involved since the genesis of the Embrey project, Latona helped develop a plan that included direct window views from every room and highly efficient and sophisticated air-flow systems to bring in large amounts of outside air and reduce CO2 and particulate matter levels. Finally, there was a lockdown air flush to eradicate any lingering airborne impurities before professors and students took occupancy.
“You can receive a lower-level LEED certification without all of these things,” Latona says. “But if you want a really healthy, productive environment, you add the filters and an abundance of windows and use the right materials. SMU’s commitment to doing it right says a lot about its concern for the students, faculty and the environment.”
What Makes Embrey Green
To achieve the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold certification standard, the J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building had to meet stringent guidelines set by the U.S. Green Building Council. Standards to meet them include:
Innovative Wastewater — dual use of water for air conditioning, plumbing and irrigation. SMU evaporates 40 million gallons of water a year at the cooling towers; approximately 5 million gallons are sent to the sanitary sewer system. Using the water at the Embrey Building for irrigation and sewage conveyance will save about 1 million gallons a year.
Waterless Urinals — each saves 40,000 gallons a year by using a special cartridge that allows liquids to enter the sanitary sewage system but prevents odors from entering a restroom.
Low-emitting Materials — adhesives, sealants, paints, coatings, carpet and composite woods have no or very low volatile organic compounds and no formaldehydes, which reduces indoor air quality problems and provides a superior environment for users.
Construction Materials — most were obtained from within a 500-mile radius of the campus to reduce the use of transportation fuel.
Construction Waste Management — large bins separated and collected unused materials; hundreds of tons of scrap and leftover materials were recycled.
Drought-resistance Landscaping — shade trees and reflective plaza pavers block and reflect heat away from the building.
Inspiring Staff and Students
Faculty and student accolades have grown since the doors to Embrey opened in August. Civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering faculty rate the academic setting and their day-to-day work experiences far above those they encountered in previous buildings.
Abundant space; areas that promote collaboration among students, professors and departments; improved lighting and sleek, open architecture top the list of attributes cited by professors. Expanded labs are enhancing research efforts. Some feel their work in them already may be gaining increased attention and potential funding from new sponsors.
Environmental engineering faculty members are especially pleased by the LEED gold-accredited design.
“I teach a lot of courses related to environmental issues,” says Al Armendariz, assistant professor of civil engineering. “I use this facility as a real-world example of how construction impacts the environment. For instance, when I discuss things like managed wood [derived from forests earmarked for harvesting and delivered from a local source], waste management and how certain materials can have minimal environmental impact, I actually can point to classroom and lab components as examples.
“The students see that green concepts are not just pie-in-the-sky thinking, but are realities within their own academic experience,” Armendariz continues. “Many students go into environmental engineering because they have a certain altruistic goal of doing something positive for society. When they see their own university moving along that same path, it validates what they feel, and they realize they actually can make a difference in the quality of others’ lives.”
Among the specific LEED criteria that Armendariz mentions are construction site recycling and using materials from local sources to reduce fuel use in transporting them. During the construction of the building, hundreds of tons of scrap and leftover materials were recycled. Large bins were set up to separate and collect unused materials. Additional LEED credits were awarded for the acquisition of construction materials from within a 500-mile radius of the campus.
Further, noting that natural light has been credited with providing a superior learning environment and energy efficiency, Armendariz points to Embrey’s large central atrium skylight and the addition of about 30 percent more windows as further examples of green-minded design.
Laura Steinberg, professor and incoming chair of the Environmental and Civil Engineering Department, joined SMU last fall — in great part due to the visible commitment the campus has made to engineering. Previously at Tulane University and the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., Steinberg has strong feelings about sustainability and environmental practices.
“The construction of the Embrey building is an obvious commitment to environment issues that I care about,” Steinberg says. “The design is spectacular. You can look all the way through the center of the building and see trees through the windows on the other side.”
Beyond Green
Mechanical engineering faculty and students, also housed within the eco-sensitive building, contend that the open design adds considerable value to their own work.
“I feel enthused about coming to work every day,” says José Lage, professor of mechanical engineering. “The design has given students, professors and departments more room for collaboration, and we are developing better projects, proposals and research. It is making us stronger teachers and adding to student opportunity.”
Expanded lab space has enabled Paul Krueger, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, to use larger equipment for micro-propulsion research. Space restrictions in previous facilities had made studies of this type difficult, if not impossible. This spring, Krueger is highlighting energy efficiencies built into Embrey’s air-conditioning and heating systems in his course on thermodynamics — a significant reference tool he never had before.
Harvesting the Future
Because Embrey has been in use for only two semesters, only a fraction of its potential has been experienced. However, those who have had the opportunity to work in the labs, and appreciate LEED engineering, immediately grasp the day- to-day benefits and future possibilities.
Whitney Boger, a graduate student completing a Master’s degree in environmental engineering, works in one of the labs designing an electrostatic precipitator, a device to remove particulate matter from diesel exhaust before it is released into the air.
“The new lab provides much needed space and improved ventilation for this major project on air pollution,” Boger says. “Before, we were limited in the labs and had to fight for computer access.”
Alumnus Joseph Grinnell (’06), an environmental science major, spearheaded SMU’s recent participation in the Green Power Partnership, developed with Green Mountain Energy to reduce the use of traditionally produced energy and replace it with power derived from alternative sources. He articulates a sentiment shared by other campus environmentalists: “Universities have always been at the forefront of socially progressive ideas. Embrey is no exception — and serves as an important message to the next generation of leaders and decision makers. We have proven that we have solutions at our fingertips that can change global warming trends. It’s now up to us to implement them.”
For more information, visit engr.smu.edu/about/embrey.html.
and educational needs of the city. The result was to be a unique marriage of faith and intellect: to reunite, in the words of Charles Wesley, “those two so long divided, knowledge and vital piety.” We are the keepers of that grand vision. We hope that those who gather on campus 100 years from now will feel the pride and optimism with which we began the second century, whose conclusion they will be celebrating in 2115.
The beautiful Meadows Museum, celebrating its 50th birthday, is hosting world-class exhibitions never before seen in the United States to augment its incredible collection of Spanish art. Our student scholars are engaged in research projects designed to benefit not only Dallas, but also cities and communities across the globe.
moved into the top 25 in the country in our high-performance computing capacity. This allows us to analyze massive amounts of data, and through computer modeling, it facilitates innovative and interdisciplinary research – from the liberal arts and sciences to engineering and communications and fine arts.
City of Dallas is completed.” Today, SMU and our host city are both more mature, more dynamic, more diverse and more international than our founders could have asked or imagined. Yet, Dallas and SMU are both far from complete – still evolving, still becoming ever more important to our country and beyond.
In the classroom, we want our students to have the right balance of technical implementation details, adversarial thinking and fundamental principles. On the one hand we want them to be “front-line qualified” when they graduate, but at the same time we want to ensure that they are well prepared for the future, because we know the specific attacks that they witness today will be very different two and five years from now. Undergraduate and graduate students gain valuable theoretical and practical skills that prepare them for additional formal training in cyber security or for positions in the job market.
You receive many requests for speaking engagements. What do people want to learn about cyber insecurity – especially in industry, where problems are occurring faster than many experts can form a response?
While I consider Schubert Ogden my mentor at Perkins School of Theology, when he retired, he suggested that I work with Billy Abrahamas my dissertation adviser. Although I never took any courses from Billy, we spent countless hours in deep discussion, bouncing ideas off each other. One of the things he showed me was that my own position [on theology] was not as solid as I thought it to be. He forced me to consider things I had never even thought of. He possessed an infectious enthusiasm and passion for his work, as well as a fierce dedication to his students. – Allen Pomeroy ’93
We all have teachers in our pasts who made a difference in how we viewed the world. For me there were two: Jeremy Adams, history, and Bonnie Wheeler, English. I accompanied them to Oxford one summer, during which I learned a great deal about medieval history, Arthurian legend, and how to power through lengthy bus rides and castle tours. I wouldn’t trade a moment of the glories we saw and the marvels we experienced. Professors Adams and Wheeler pushed us to study hard and challenged us to think for ourselves. I became a history teacher myself, and I hope I can bring the same enthusiasm and passion to my students. – Polly Granzow Viehman ’83, ’09Franklin Balch, political science, was smart, entertaining and interested in his students’ intellectual progress and their well-being. Our freshman group seminar met in his home, where his gracious wife made incoming students from widely divergent backgrounds feel at home. Prof. Balch fanned our desire to be intellectually curious and to hone the critical thinking that should be the cornerstone of a liberal arts degree. – R. Bruce Moon ’81
Kenneth Hamilton ignited my interest in African-American history. His classes formed the foundation that I would use in writing articles on race and ethnicity. That foundation also proved helpful when I returned to graduate school and got my Master’s degree in history at the University of Nevada, Reno. – Geralda Miller ’98Jim Hopkins in history is an example of the exemplary dedication of faculty to undergraduate education – one of the many things that attracted us both to SMU. As a history major, one of us (Read) recalls fondly the atmosphere of intellectual engagement and curiosity that Jim fosters in every classroom discussion. But our warmest memories are of Jim and his wife, Patti LaSalle, from Alternative Spring Break in March 1999, when they joined our group of SMU students on a service trip to San Francisco, where we served the city’s homeless. Over meals, Jim regularly led riveting discussions. Alternative Spring Break became an extension of the applied learning laboratory that Jim and others create everyday on the SMU campus. – Read ’00 and Vanessa Rusk Pierce ’01
I once told Alice Kendrick, advertising, that I did not like, nor watch, much TV. She said I should think twice about majoring in advertising then. She was always blunt, but right. I became a publicist in New York City, where I lived for 12 years, and now have my own event production business in Los Angeles. – Nichole Wright ’98Sheri Kunovich, in her Sociology of Wealth and Consumption course, brought many things to our attention that most of us hardly ever think about. For instance, Americans are willing to work longer hours and spend less time with family just to have enough money to consume more, and buy things we don’t really need. Dr. Kunovich sheds light on how happy we could be if we all lived a little more simply. Her class was my last final before graduation, and in a way it was quite fitting, as I believe this class truly sent me off [well prepared] into the real world. – Gianna Marie Philichi ’13
Dr. Ruth Morgan taught a course on the American Presidency. Every class was filled with memorable information. I was amazed at how prophetic she was and that so much of the information I learned is still pertinent. She made us aware of not believing everything we read but to do the research and think for ourselves. Dr. Morgan was professional in every way and I felt that her course was one of the most valuable courses I ever took. – Gerry Brewer Hudnall ’71
One of the professors at Cox who made an impact on my career was Robert Rasberry. He reminded us that ethics was a critical part of business and encouraged my inquiry into ethical leadership and organizational behavior. I have been designing and delivering corporate training since 1998 and have worked with some of the largest companies in the world. When I stand in front of executives and discuss how the role of a leader is to create an environment where employees can make ethical decisions and behave in a way that promotes good communication and sustains healthy relationships, I try to honor Dr. Rasberry and all he taught me. – Martha Acosta ’96The late David Weber was a brilliant professor of history, and he had a way that made you want to learn. He wrote many books, and besides his knowledge of the Southwest, he truly loved the Southwest. He was kind, laid back and patient, and such a wonderful mentor to so many. He became my friend for life, and we kept in touch until he passed away. He had a profound impact on my SMU experience, and I will be forever grateful I was his student. – Katie Gordon ’86
Harlan Crow earned his B.B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin and soon afterward joined The Trammell Crow Company. He has worked with Crow-affiliated entities for nearly 40 years and currently serves as chairman and CEO of Crow Family Holdings. He is a member of several boards of directors, including the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Monticello Foundation Board.
Hilary Russo (right) was honored in May with the “Excellence in Teaching” award from the National Society of Leadership and Success. Hilary is an adjunct professor at St. John’s University in New York City and teaches TV performance and production. She is also a TV host/lifestyle and design specialist and a guest host on QVC, the national shopping network.
Colette Kress (right), a 24-year veteran of the tech industry, has been named executive vice president and chief financial officer of Nvidia Corp., a graphics chip maker. She previously served as senior vice president and CFO for Cisco’s Business Technology and Operations Finance organization for three years. Prior to that, she spent 13 years with Microsoft, including four years as CFO of its Server and Tools division. In addition, she has held various financial positions with Texas Instruments.
Mary Elizabeth Ellis (right) is an actress living and working in Los Angeles, who has appeared in the television programs “New Girl,” “Up All Night,” “Happy Endings” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Matt and Melissa Rothschild Bragman (right) welcomed future Mustang Molly Elizabeth Bragman (Class of 2027) September 17. She was born just in time to watch the Battle for the Iron Skillet, says Matt. The Bragmans live in Long Beach, CA where Matt is an administrator for Green Dot Public Schools and Melissa is the entertainment events manager at the Queen Mary.
By Susan White
Every so often, universities take stock of their academic offerings, particularly those in the liberal arts. In 2008 President R. Gerald Turner asked SMU’s provost to review the General Education Curriculum to ensure that it was meeting the needs of 21st-century students entering a global marketplace. Provost Paul Ludden asked a committee of 17 faculty and staff members, “What will be the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences that characterize a person with an SMU education, regardless of major?”
From the ruins of an old fort and 13th-century Indian pueblo, SMU grew a campus that provides a unique setting for teaching and research.
A ceramics class taught in an outdoor studio attracted sophomore Alexandra Jones to SMU-in-Taos for the August term. The chance to dive more deeply into an opportunity she calls “life-changing” cemented her decision to remain for the fall semester.
Thomas R. Hegi (right) has been elected a partner of the firm Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP. Hegi’s law practice includes corporate and partnership tax, executive/employee compensation, income tax, state and local taxation, aviation law and corporate transactions including hedge funds, partnerships and joint venture transactions, and private equity. A graduate of SMU’s Dedman School of Law, he joined the firm as an associate in 2006. Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP is a limited liability partnership with more than 139 resident attorneys in its offices in Fort Worth and Austin.
By Patricia Ward
The CCE is among the most recent University-community partnerships to build on a century of tradition. While launching SMU’s centennial celebration in 2011, President R. Gerald Turner traced the roots of the Simmons School to the mutually beneficial SMU-Dallas relationship: “We established a new school of education focused on applied research in response to the needs we were hearing from our area superintendents and others in the schools.”
Senior Lindsay Sockwell, one of the first Engaged Learning grant recipients, experienced her own “journey of discovery” this past summer while working with orphans in Zambia. She used her skills as a dance performance major with a psychology minor to inspire the children, most of whom lost their parents to the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Senior and grant recipient Michael McCarthy, a double major in statistics and mathematics, is using his knowledge to analyze data for Veterans Affairs in Dallas while covering school expenses. Receiving the Engaged Learning grant enabled him to participate in the program by replacing the salary he otherwise would earn working part time, which he needs to do to cover school expenses. McCarthy is conducting database analysis that evaluates home care support the VA Spinal Cord Injury Center provides to injured veterans.
The new program will build on elements of the new University Curriculum, which will debut in fall 2012. Starting then, students will be required to engage with local and global communities around issues of civic responsibility and cultural understanding either through coursework, volunteer opportunities, or study abroad. The Engaged Learning program takes students a step further: They can enhance their experiences through independently designed projects that require more depth and serious commitments of both time and effort. A major component of Engaged Learning requires the students to write reports about their projects, reflecting on their experiences. All students’ reports will be published in an online journal organized by Central University Libraries.
Grant recipient and sophomore Jaywin Malhi also praises the Engaged Learning program. Malhi is a political science and business management major who plans to attend law school and
Senior Colby Kruger wanted to expand her previous volunteer services for Girls Incorporated of Metropolitan Dallas. With her Engaged Learning grant, she is teaching photography to teens from low-income neighborhoods while encouraging them to develop a realistic understanding of beauty. The business marketing major, who has a double minor in photography and art history, is working through a partnership with Girls Inc.
Volunteers worked with Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, which provides food to those in need in Middle and West Tennessee. Alumni helped stock refrigerators, boxed food and sorted canned goods.
Alumni volunteered with City Meals on Wheels at the Stanley Isaacs Senior Center. The program’s mission is to ensure that homebound elderly New Yorkers never go a day without food or human company. Volunteers followed a walking route to deliver meals to the elderly.
Alumni helped spruce up Onward Neighborhood House, which offers educational, recreational and social services programs. Afterward, the Mustangs gathered for an SMU-Tulsa watch party. Pictured from left are Tom Cooper ’02, Jesica Cooper ’02, John Gaines ’04, Tim Moen ’74, Steve Swanson ’74 and John Simon ’10.
Alumni aided SOME (So Others May Eat). SOME is an interfaith, community-based organization that exists to help the poor and homeless of our nation’s capital. The organization meets the immediate daily needs of the people it serves with food, clothing and health care. SOME helps break the cycle of homelessness by offering services, such as affordable housing, job training, addiction treatment and counseling, to the poor, the elderly and individuals with mental illness.Alumni in St. Louis volunteered at City Academy, a K-6 school that strives to admit promising children from committed families in the urban community; offer an exceptional and affordable education; foster a culture of academic rigor, integrity and citizenship; and cultivate an appreciation of lifelong learning that inspires future success.
SMU alumni assisted the United Methodist Children’s Home (UMCH) with landscaping. The mission of UMCH is to provide redemptive, healing services that bring meaningful change to children and families. The Children’s Home has been a safe haven for abused children and youth since 1871. Services are aimed at preventing the breakup of families, restoring and healing separated families, and teaching teens and young adults how to create successful lives for their future families.
As a student in 1991, Chris Lake ’92, ’95 began tutoring a 9-year-old boy living in the crime-riddled East Dallas neighborhood where he rented a house. Despite Lake’s best efforts, his student usually dozed off during their sessions. Unable to sleep one night as he puzzled over the problem, the tutor took a 2 a.m. walk through the neighborhood and found an answer: He spotted the youngster helping his mother clean the local Laundromat.
In spring 2011, Greenland Hills United Methodist Church in Dallas celebrated the opening and consecration of a new fellowship hall. Under the guidance of Greenland Hills’ minister of music Chelsea Stern ’10, children proceeded into the sanctuary singing a Rwandan song of praise: Munezero! Munezero kwa Jesu. Munezero Hallelujah! (“Sing out gladly! Sing out gladly to Jesus. Sing out gladly Hallelujah!”). Though Stern had planned to ask the congregation to stand after the children finished singing, the people spontaneously leapt to their feet, clapping and singing along.
By Kara Kunkel
A public service internship from SMU’s Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility enabled Nair to spend her summer volunteering. She requested and received a teaching position at Swasraya, a school for mentally handicapped children near her grandparents’ home in Kerala, India, where she spent summers as a girl and would play with the children during break time at the school. “The teachers knew me and the students became my friends,” says Nair, who is majoring in computer science in the Lyle School of Engineering.
the best possible preparation for life and career in America today: look at any corporate board of directors or the leadership of any top government agency and you are likely to find a slew of liberal arts graduates; the liberal arts prepare you not just for one job (as more narrow professional or vocational training might) but for a wide range of jobs that need readily transferable skills like reading, writing, research, analysis and creativity; the liberal arts prepare individuals to lead full, open-minded, civically engaged and reflective lives; today, nations like China and India are trying to emulate the liberal arts from America to stir creativity and breadth in their undergraduates. But we also need to emphasize the role of the liberal arts in combating the fear that seems so prevalent today in American families and throughout our society, a pervasive sense of anxiety growing from economic uncertainty, international concerns, and political divisions. It is precisely at this moment, I believe, that the liberal arts are the most valuable. The constant questioning, critical thinking and healthy skepticism that characterize the humanities and sciences are a potent antidote to uncertainty and anxiety. A liberal education teaches us that “not knowing” is the normal state of being and that by thoughtful, self-reflective and collaborative investigation, experimentation, discussion and debate, new options can be discovered, new truths revealed and a new comfort found amid insecurity and doubt. The liberal arts help us master and direct our fears and approach the future not with apprehension and unease, but with the confidence that no challenge is too great to be studied, contemplated and eventually surmounted.
must ensure that the natural and social sciences have adequate laboratories and collaborative spaces, and that they have the latest technology to support the work of scholars and students. Dedman College faculty members have long been enthusiastic participants in the process of discovery, and a lot of people locally recognize the value of that research – the benefit it brings not just to the world but to Dallas in particular – because it generates new economic opportunities and addresses a wide variety of social, political and cultural challenges. People want to invest in people. That’s why it is so important to get our faculty out into the community as part of The Second Century Campaign. When alumni see the passion that our biologists, economists, psychologists and other faculty bring to their research, they understand that what can seem like a faceless institutional gift actually has a very human imprint. To help stimulate research activity, the College, working with our Campaign Steering Committee co-chairs Kelly Hoglund Compton ’79 and Fred Hegi ’66, has created the Dean’s Research Council, a donor organization that provides resources for promising new scholarly projects. We’ve already received a $100,000 leadership gift from Pierce Allman ’54 and have selected some impressive young, tenure-track faculty members – Amy Pinkham in psychology, Yunkai Zhou in mathematics and Lisa Siraganian in English – who will receive seed funding as a springboard to compete for large federal grants.
Vaughn is one of the nearly 150 undergraduate and graduate students attending SMU on the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which provides education benefits to military veterans and their dependents. The bill is a 2008 update to the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, which awarded scholarships to World War II veterans to colleges of their choice.
The leadership skills that served Vaughn well while in the military continue to do so at Cox. He has been a member of the M.B.A. Energy Club and was president and a founding member of Veterans in Business, which helps student veterans in their transition from the military to a career in business.
When Kashima Jones served in the Navy from 2004 to 2008, she was stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. She won numerous awards working as a dental technician, providing care to Marines as they deployed to and returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jones’ husband, Necorian, 26, a Navy veteran and active Reservist, is a junior mathematics major in Dedman College. The couple continues to serve one weekend each month as dental technicians at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.
Former Petty Officer 2nd Class James Noel, 28, served aboard warships around the world during his six years in the U.S. Navy and two in the Navy Reserve. His first time at sea was at the start of the Iraq war in 2003 on the USS John S. McCain, where he worked as a sonar technician, watching for underwater threats and minefields.
professors,” he says. “And I love the atmosphere at SMU, the school spirit, game days and Boulevarding. Even though I’m not a traditional college student, I feel like one here. Everyone – the professors, staff and students – has been very welcoming.”
Throughout red-and-blue SMU, green practices have become a way of life as the University community rallies to cut waste and conserve precious resources.
Professor Bonnie Jacobs
A piano lesson with music therapy students.
The community garden outside Patterson Hall.
Rob Johnson
G. Reid Lyon shares a joke with second-grade students at Williams Preparatory School in Dallas. A former elementary school teacher, Lyon says most reading difficulties can be prevented through early identification of problems and effective instruction.
