The Quad

Robert Stewart, editor of New Letters journal, will read his poems in a program with novelist, essayist, and short-fiction award winner Thomas E. Kennedy, who lives in Copenhagen.

Gayle Levy, director, Honors Program

The UMKC Honors Program just completed its 30th year of activities. Established in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1979 with 12 students by its first director, Bruce Bubacz (Philosophy), the program now serves almost 90 students campus-wide. Forty-four percent are A&S students; 16 percent are in Biological Sciences; 11 percent in Education; 9 percent in the Bloch School; 9 percent in Pharmacy; 5 percent in Medicine and the rest in other schools with undergraduate enrollees.

Several A&S faculty have served as Honors Directors or Co-Directors: Joan Dean (English), Harris Mirkin (Political Science), and Dick Murphy (Physics). The current director is Gayle Levy (Foreign Languages and Literatures) and the associate director is John Herron (History).

John Herron, associate director, Honors Program

Honors students come to UMKC with high expectations, high ACT scores (the average for those entering in 2009 was 30), and have the opportunity to be part of a living-learning community in Oak Street Hall. They leave with high achievements, often with double or triple majors. They have been active in the Southwest Early College Campus math and science program and publish their own journal of undergraduate research, LUCERNA.

For more, go to: http://cas.umkc.edu/honors

Fall 2010 applications for admission in A&S are up by 11.7 percent.

Bob Stewart of BkMK Press has written to tell us of the good word that a BkMk Press book of stories, Homicide Survivors Picnic, by Lorraine M. Lopez, is a finalist for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The PEN/Faulkner Award is the largest peer-juried fiction prize in the country. The winner of this award — the “winner among equals” — will be announced on March 23. The other four finalist books were published by Grove Press, Harper, Knopf and Doubleday.

• www.penfaulkner.org/award_for_fiction_current.php

Beth Miller (Political Science) has been interviewed by media from several continents about the results of the research she and Jennifer Lundgren (Psychology) recently published on obesity and political candidate evaluations. For two of these interviews see:

• www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7092996/Overweight-male-politicians-are-more-popular.html
• http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/01/body-size-obesity-political-candidates-voters.html

Randy Wray (Economics), at the invitation of the President of the Dominican Republic, participated in program hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in San Domingo during the week of January 19, 2010.

• For more on the Foundation see: http://www.globalfoundationdd.org/gfdd/
• For a summary (in Spanish) of Randy’s talk see: Posted in Faculty Recognitions | Comments Off on Recognitions