The Quad

Burton Halpert (Sociology) is retiring after 28 years at UMKC.  He and his lovely wife Barbara will be wiggling their toes in warm sand and enjoying endless beautiful sunsets in Florida after December 31, 2010. Best wishes to Burton in his retirement!

Architecture, Urban Planning + Design students completed a studio project for the District Board with ideas on the use of 39 school buildings recently closed.  The students analyzed significant amounts of data about the District, developed a repurposing strategy, a community engagement plan and prepared recommendations that will be available in the form of a Guidebook to help the District move forward through this complex process. For more see: http://www.kmbc.com/ news/ 25932604/detail.html  and http://www.iterasi.net/ ReportViewer.aspx?presid=NaR 6VDHhIEuvD9elYlaT6Q 

There were 3,969 undergraduate degree-seeking majors in the A&S College in Fall Semester, 2010. The number of graduate degree seeking students was 690. For Fall 2009, those numbers were 3,762 and 676.

KSHB-41 NBC Action News featured Kathleen Kilway, (Chemistry), in a recent story about cell phones use by col­lege students. See: http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/education/ banning-cell-phones-from-class-helps-students-focus

Max Skidmore,(Political Science), begins his third year as Editor of this A&S UMKC-based on-line journal of The Policy Studies Organization. For the most recent issue see: http://www.psocommons.org/ppp/.

For more about the organization, see: http://www.ipsonet.org/

A&S Faculty were awarded $6,517,827 in grants and contracts from extra-mural sources in calendar year 2010. For calendar year 2009, the amount was $3,404,389.

Marijana Kotlaja, a pre-law double major in Political Science and Criminal Justice has received word that she is one of nine students who have been chosen from among more than 700 student applicants to take part in this summer internship program.The selection process required her to travel to D.C. as one of the 45 finalists who were inter­viewed before the final nine were selected. Congratulations to Ms. Kotlaja!

Under the mentoring of A&S HSCP adjunct faculty member Haley Brueck (who teaches broadcast journalism courses at the Columbia Area Career Center that serves students in the Columbia Public High Schools), several of her students got big time opportunities as ESPN and ABC television came to Columbia last year and enlisted their help in generating footage for programming around the national Game Day Coverage of the MU-Oklahoma football game. These students are earning UMKC credit in Communications Studies 220 along with their high school credits.  See: http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/ 2010/dec/04/broadcast120410/

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).

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

	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 (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 (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).

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/

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