Archive for November, 2010

A&S Staff Member of the Year Recognized at A&S Convocation

Friday, November 19th, 2010

In 2009, Dean Karen Vorst initiated a new annual award, the Staff Member of the Year Award, in order to recognize and celebrate an A&S staff member each year who best exemplifies the characteristics of being Respectful, Responsible, Resourceful, Receptive, Responsive, and Reasonable. We are pleased to report that the A&S Staff Member of the Year for 2010 is Patty Wolverton. She received her award at the September 15, 2010 A&S Convocation.

Patty joined UMKC in June of 1989, working as Assistant Supervisor in the Transportation Department until 1994 when she transitioned to a new position in the A&S Dean’s office. Patty’s official title is Human Resources Facilitator, and her main role is to serve as the primary source of support and training for all support staff in the College. Of course, we all know that Patty does much more than that, and that she is an invaluable resource to the College, especially on issues related to hiring, payroll, and personnel management. A fun fact about Patty is that during her 16 years in the dean’s office, she has worked with three different deans and two interim deans!

In her life away from UMKC, Patty has displayed a variety of interests and talents.  A native of Kansas, she was involved in and played fast-pitch softball until she was 40.  She had trained as a hairstylist and once hoped to have her own beauty salon. Now her hobbies are painting, making craft items, camping, dancing and enjoying her family. She has three children and 10 grandchildren.

Three other A&S staff members were also recognized for their efforts in 2010 and given certificates of appreciation and gift cards. They are: Nan Darnell (Social Work),Sherry Neuerburg (English) and Heidi Updike (Philosophy).

A&S Good Teaching Award Winners For 2010 Recognized

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Three faculty members were among those recognized at the A&S Convocation in September.  They are:

Virginia Blanton Virginia Blanton (English) won the Alumni Good Teaching Award awarded annually to an outstanding regular faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences. ($1,000).
Toya Like Toya Like (Criminal Justice and Criminology) won the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award awarded annually to one regular faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences for outstanding teaching. ($1,000).
Andrea Drew-Gounev Andrea Drew-Gounev (Chemistry) won the Dean’s Non-Regular Lecturer Award awarded annually to one non-regular faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences for outstanding teaching. ($1,000).

Environmental Forum Held

Friday, November 19th, 2010

The Center for Applied Environmental Research of the Geosciences Department in partnership with the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists, UMKC Chapter, presented their 18th Environmental Forum on October 12, 2010. The topic was: “EPA’s Priorities Toward Sustainability” and featured remarks by UMKC Chancellor Morton. The main address was by Dr. Karl Brooks, Administrator Region 7, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
See:- http://cas.umkc.edu/caer/

Recognitions

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Ann Wood (Sociology) reports that the  UMKC Sociology Department has been recognized for its work with a recent donation drive for “Stand Down”, a charity event on November 5th for marginal/homeless veterans in Kansas City  as the faculty, staff, students, and the Sociology Club collected clothing and personal items from various Sociology/Anthropology courses for donation.
See:- http://kcstanddown.org/index.html

Barry Anderson (Art and Art History) presented an invited lecture at Notre Dame University on October 28, 2010 on his video art. The lecture marked the opening of his exhibit of recent video works LoopPsych.
See:- http://artdept.nd.edu/events/2010/10/28/3945-photography-exhibition/
He also has a showing of other work currently taking place in St. Louis.
See:- http://www.brunodavidgallery.com/exhibition_spaces.cfm?exhibition_id=47&gallery_space_id=4

Richard Delaware (Mathematics and Statistics) was interviewed several times in 2010 (along with two Southwest Early College Campus Mathematics teachers) for an October 2010 Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation report titled “College Readiness: The View from Early College High Schools”. He is acknowledged on p. ii, and quoted on p. 14.
See:- http://cas.umkc.edu/mathematics/Delaware/WW_CollegeReadiness_Oct2010.pdf

Betsy Beasley,  the office administrative associate  for New Letters has been honored for her work in women’s rights with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Women in Politics Fund of  the Greater Kansas City Women’s Political Caucus . The award was presented on September 10 ,  2010.
See:- http://www.newletters.org/PDFs/News%20.pdf

Fredrick Lee (Economics) presented a paper on “Social Surplus Approach and Heterodox Economics,” at the 2010 Association for Heterodox Economics Conference in Bordeaux, France.
See:- http://ocs.sfu.ca/hetecon/index.php?conference=AHE&schedConf=AHE2010&page=paper&op=view&path%5B%5D=38&path%5B%5D=0

William Black (Economics) has had numerous media appearances and interviews in recent months.
See:- http://www.trutv.com/video/conspiracy-theory/liars-loans.html

Diane Mutti Burke (History) has published a book, On Slavery’s Border:  Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865, which focuses on the experiences of enslaved and slaveholding Missourians who lived and worked on farms within this state.
See:- http://www.earlyamericanplaces.org/?page_id=41
For a Missouri Research Board interview about her research
See:- http://umresearchboard.org/articles/15

Randall Wray (Economics) has published an essay on his perspective on the global financial crisis in The European. He also notes the work of his colleague, Bill Black (Economics) in identifying the origin of the crisis in fraudulent activities.
See:- http://www.theeuropean.de/wray

Faculty from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures used a Teaching Enhancement Grant (K. Krause and L. Myers, co-investigators) to attend a “Foreign Languages and Cultures Across the Curriculum” conference in Saratoga Springs, NY to research the possibility of starting such a program at UMKC. Lindsy Myers and Scott Baker will give a presentation as part of the FACET seminar series later this year.
See:- http://clac2010.wordpress.com/program and http://www.umkc.edu/provost/facet/

Kathy Krause, (Chair)  began a three-year term as a member of the Fulbright Review Committee for faculty fellowships to Belgium-Luxembourg-E.U.-and Poland.
See:- http://www.cies.org/
She also presented two papers this Fall: “Noblewomen and the Writing of History in Picardy and Flanders” as part of a panel on Lordship, History and the Dominae of Northern France at the Haskins Society Annual Conference at Boston College and  “The Charters of the Countesses of Ponthieu in the Thirteenth Century” at the Western Society for French History Conference, Lafayette, LA.
See:- http://haskinsatbostoncollege.blogspot.com/2010/07/2010-conference-schedule-and.html and http://www.wsfh.org/annual-conferences.html.

Kenneth Baker gave an invited lecture at the University of Exeter, Sept. 7-9, 2010 entitled “Schiller, Gutzkow, Laube, Hebbel—German Historical Drama of the 1850s.” It will be published next spring, in the Yearbook of the Forum Vormärz Forschung.
See: http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/research/conferences/gutzkow/
He also published an essay: “The ‘Nature’ of Pleasure: Homosexuality as Trope in Early Brecht.” in Limbus: Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2010): 195-210. The topic of the Yearbook was “After Nature.”
See:- http://arts.monash.edu.au/german/limbus/

Gayle Levy is just beginning her three-year term on the national screening committee for the Fullbright Student Program to Western Europe.
See:- http://us.fulbrightonline.org/about.html

Larson Powell, co-edited special issue of Musik-Konzepte, no. 150 (2010) on Stefan Wolpe.
See:- http://www.etk-muenchen.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=139523&template=neu_werke_default_musik
He also published : “The Modulated Subject: Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie II,” Search: Journal for New Music, no. 7, Summer 2010 and gave two invited lectures:“Heimat through a Double Lens: Wolf’s Einmal ist Keinmal.” Humboldt-Kolleg in honor of Jost Hermand, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, Nov. 19, 2010.  and  “Adorno and the American Radio,” University of Colorado – Boulder, CO, Nov. 11, 2010 (inaugural guest lecture for new program in Critical Theory).
See:- http://german.lss.wisc.edu/~smoedersheim/hermand/ and http://www.searchnewmusic.org/powell_stockhausen.pdf

Kati Toivanen (Chair, Art and Art History) had an exhibition of her work Domestic Debris at the Art &Design Gallery of the University of Kansas in October, 2010.
See:- http://ereview.org/2010/09/27/spots-spiders-and-sweepings-kati-toivanen/

The English Department reports many exciting activities and achievements as we move through the current semester.
See-: http://cas.umkc.edu/english/Newsletter.pdf

A&S Holds Town Hall Meeting

Friday, November 19th, 2010

On November 10, 2010, a Town Hall Meeting to review developments in the College over the past two years was held in the U-Center. Dean Karen Vorst  provided a commentary as the slides of the Power Point were viewed by the faculty and staff who attended. After the presentation, there was a Q&A session.
See:- http://cas.umkc.edu/docs/townhall%2011-08-10kv.ppsx to view the ppt.

$1,000,000 Grant to Psychology Department to Start Heartland Health Network

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Kathy Goggin, Jannette Berkley-Patton and Delwyn Catley (Psychology) were awarded a three-year, 1 million dollar grant from NIH to create the Heartland Health Network (HHN). HHN is slated to become a coalition of community partners working together to address health disparities  among African-American people by promoting wellness, facilitating health research and the dissemination of effective health interventions.  Founding partners include the Calvary Community Outreach Network (CCON), KC Free and UMKC.  The grant was one of approximately 30 proposals that were funded from 600 submitted grant proposals across the nation.
The “kick-off” event for HNN, a Community Health Fair, drew over 1000 people to the campus of the Calvary Temple Baptist Church on Saturday, October 30th. Chancellor Morton, Dean Vorst, Senator Clair McCaskill and Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver were on hand to express their support for the event and the mission of the HHN. Over 15 community health serving organizations including UMKC’s School of Medicine distributed vital health information and conducted health screening.
See:- http://heartlandhealthnetwork.org/ and http://umkcpsychology.blogspot.com/

Local Educator Recognized as Outstanding Science Teacher

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Dr. Ken Kramme, a Science teacher at Liberty High School, with more than 31 years of service  to UMKC through the  A&S High School/College Partnerships dual credit program, was recently recognized for teaching excellence by the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). This Outstanding Teacher recognition program by SCI rewards teachers for motivating students to pursue careers in chemistry or chemical engineering. The award carries a cash stipend of $1000 to be used for classroom purposes or professional development.
To support science education in the Unites States, one of SCI’s goals is to encourage students to pursue degrees in chemistry. Its SCI Scholars Program is a nationwide competition for college students in chemistry or chemical engineering. SCI Scholars may nominate a teacher who encouraged their interest in science and through their excellent teaching, gave them the foundation for their academic success. Dr. Kramme was nominated by Erik Nordwald, a former student at the Liberty High School, who now attends the University of Missouri – Columbia.
See:- http://www.soci.org/Membership-and-Networks/Regional-Groups/America-International-Group.aspx

PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS WIN AWARDS

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Congratulations to Lauren Buscher, an undergraduate psychology student, and her research mentor, Jared Bruce.  Lauren’s poster was selected for The Dr. Ted Blau Student Poster Award at this year’s National Academy of Neuropsychology  Conference. The title of the poster was “The relationship between self-reported cognitive difficulties and medication adherence in multiple sclerosis”.
See:- http://www.nanonline.org/NAN/Award/Award.aspx
Congratulations also to David Martinez, a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology.  David recently received a highly competitive NIMH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award to fund his dissertation work.  This $100,000  award will provide funding to support David as he completes his project “HIV Stigma Reduction and Screening in the Hispanic/Latino Church Setting.”  Faculty members Kathy Goggin and Jannette Berkley-Patton will serve as David’s research mentors.
See:- http://grants.nih.gov/training/nrsa.htm

IN MEMORIAM

Friday, November 19th, 2010

We report with sadness the passing of C. Neil Bull, Professor Emeritus of Sociology  on Sept. 26, 2010, after a brief illness.  During his years at UMKC, Neil had served as Chair of the Dept. of Sociology and as Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences. He also served as Director of The National Resource Center for Rural Elderly.  He published many books and articles on sociology.  Neil was a lover of gardens, nature and learning.  His memory is treasured by his wife, family and friends.  A memorial service was held at 3pm Friday, Oct. 1, at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 6401 Wornall Rd, Kansas City, MO.

A&S Fast Facts

Friday, November 19th, 2010

In Fall 2010, A&S students came from 40 of the 50 states. The top six states in order of ‘contribution’ to the total are Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Illinois, Nebraska and California.

In AY 2010, the A&S awarded 914 BA degrees, 173 MA degrees and 4 Ph.D. degrees (Psychology). In AY 2009, those numbers were: 829, 187 and 4. In AY 2008, they were: 713,198 and 2.  That is an increase of 28. 2 % in awarded BA degrees between 2008 and 2010 and a decrease of 12.2 % in awarded MA degrees over the same period.

Typically, each  MSW student  must complete 1,040 hours of supervised field work as part of the MSW degree program over a two-year period. The UMKC MSW fieldwork interns and their supervising instructors provide in-kind service valued at almost $1,000,000 to the community.

The A&S School of Social Work placed 143 MSW graduate students into 92 different agencies in the metro area in Fall Semester, 2010. They are being supervised by 86 on-site field instructors who are guided by 15 members of the Social Work faculty.

A&S Staff News

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Two A&S Faculty retired at end of AY 2009-2010

We report the retirements of Jim Falls (History) and    Gary Holcombe (Theatre) and wish them the very best for what they now move on to do.

New Staff

  • Mary McDonough — Administrative Assistant
    (Geosciences)
  • Gregory Rozell — Academic Advisor
    (Advising)

Years of Service Awards

  • 5 years: Stella Szymanski
    (AUPD)

A&S Grants and Awards

Friday, November 19th, 2010



Sept. thru Oct. 2010

Total: $2,432,579
Jean,Yanching Jerry Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy Studies in Selected M Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy Studies in Selected M Chemistry $64,141
Peng,Zhonghua Development of New Hybrid Polymeric Materials Army Research Office Chemistry $85,593
Peng,Zhonghua Development of New Hybrid Polymeric Materials Army Research Office Chemistry $612,807
Adegoke,Jimmy Omoniyi Interactions and feedbacks Nasa Johnson Space Ctr Geosciences $87,899
Eaton,Peter James Metropolitan Area Comprehensive Poverty Study II Mid America Reg Council(MARC) Economics $10,000
Nandan,Monica Contract for MSW Level Educational Training for Public C Mo Dept of Social Svc School of Social Work $132,731
Caruso,Anthony Nicholaus MRI: Acquisition of a High Energy Resolution Angle Resol NSF Div Materials Research Physics $643,283
Caruso,Anthony Nicholaus FRG: Bonding and Magnetic Exchange in the Metal-[TCHE] Nd St Univ Physics $59,562
Catley,Delwyn Can Motivational Interviewing be Effective for Smoking C Nih Natl Cancer Inst Psychology $537,279
Catley,Delwyn Can Motivational Interviewing be Effective for Smoking C Nih Natl Cancer Inst Psychology $50,365
Goggin,Kathleen Multi-site Collaborative Study for Adherence,Virologic Univ of CA Los Angeles Psychology $17,728
Goggin,Kathleen TICIPS:HIV/AIDS, Secondary Infections and Immune Modulat Nih Natl Cntr Compli and Alter Med Psychology $101,659
Stewart,Robert J New Letters Mo Arts Council New Letters $29,532
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