Activities
Luis Belaustegui is UMKC’s Language Resource Center Director and first and second Year Spanish Coordinator in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. During the first two weeks of 2011, Belaustegui raced his motorcycle in The Dakar, an international, off-road endurance race. Originally called the Paris-to-Dakar rally, the event has been staged in various locations around the world since its beginning in 1979. Belaustegui, who uses his racing experience as an educational tool, wrote an account of the 15-day race for UMatters which is the source of this story. See:
Clancy Martin’s (Philosophy) review of The Immortalization Commission by John Gray appeared in the New York Times Sunday Review of Books, May 8, 2011. For more see:
Kathleen Kilway (Chair, Chemistry) reports that one of the new faculty who will be joining their department in September, Xiaobo Chen, was involved in the research group that led to the invention of the “Nanostructured Antifogging Coating” technology. The group was led by Samuel Mao, and members of his research group, Vasileia Zormpa and Xiaobo Chen, all with Berkeley Lab’s Energy and Environmental Technologies Division (EETD). This technology is designed to provide a durable, nontoxic, antifogging and self-cleaning coating for architectural glass, windshields, eyewear and solar panels.” For more see:
Barry Anderson (Art and Art History) will have a selection of new and recent single-channel video animations on view in a solo exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles July 16-August 14. For more see:
He has a new video, Spice Tower, that will be featured in the exhibition Between Thee and Me at the Kansas City Jewish Museum July 24 – September 4. For more see:
Jie Chen, Tom Fisher and Yong Zeng (Mathematics and Statistics) hosted the Kearney High School AP Statistics class field trip on May 11, 2011 to visit the department and the UMKC campus. During the visit, Chen, Fisher, and Zeng shared their experiences with the high school students about how one can advance his/her career in Statistics. To see what the AP Statistics students must do, go to:
Linda Voigts (Curators’ Professor of English Emerita) and Patricia Kurtz of William Jewell College had an article published in a book titled Communicating Early English Manuscripts, edited by Andreas Jucker and Paivi Pahta (Cambridge University Press, January 2011). The publication follows from their research into a manuscript in a digitized collection at the University of Pennsylvania that proved to be a translation of a 1539 Latin treatise, a copy of which was available to them to compare in Linda Hall Library. For more on this publication, see:
For other work by Voigts and Kurtz, see:
Michael Frisch (Architecture, Urban Planning +Design) was interviewed by NBC Action News on June 6, 2011 on the rebuilding of Joplin in the aftermath of its devastating tornado. See:
Jacob Wagner (Architecture, Urban Planning +Design) and guest instructor Daniel Dermitzel, with many other community guest lecturers, recently taught a course on “Urban Agriculture” for students in many different urban-related majors. The students also had to work on a community farm as part of the course. For more see:
- www.cultivatekc.org/urbangrownjune2011.html and scroll down to the third story.
Jacob Wagner (Architecture, Urban Planning +Design) and two senior AUP+D students appeared on KCUR’s Central Standard show dealing with Revitalizing Eastern Kansas City’s Urban Core May 11, 2011. To listen to the program, go here:
Joy Swallow (Chair, Architecture, Urban Planning +Design) reports that the Department’s efforts to help the KCMO school Board “repurpose” its many vacant schools was extensively covered on KCPT’s The Local Show on June 23 For more see:
Kathy Goggin (Psychology) sent us this report from the Heartland Health Network (the NIH funded grant program associated with the Psychology Depart.) See:
Bill Black (Economics) had his essay on the lawyers defending California’s Proposition 8 “spinning out of control” published in the on-line journal HuffPost Politics, June 15, 2011. See:
