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College Highlights, February 2017

In the College of Arts and Sciences, there are always big things happening. Take a look at some of our highlights from February 2017:

Art

Chemistry

Communication Studies

Economics

English

Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Geography

Geology

Journalism and Mass Communications

Modern Languages

Music, Theatre, and Dance

Philosophy

Political Science

Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work

Art

Assistant Professor Shreepad Joglekar’s two national solo exhibitions opened in January 2017. “Towards An Outer Place” opened in the James May Gallery in Algoma, Wisconsin and “Heterotopia” opened in the Bertha VB Lederer Gallery at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Geneseo, New York. These exhibitions included works from two projects that Joglekar has developed in the past three years. One of the projects, called Landscapes For Fun, focuses on off road vehicle parks in Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The images in this project are made in the tradition of 19th century survey photography. The other project, called Non Places of Intelligence, explores the simulated environments used in military and law-enforcement training at Fort Riley post.

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Chemistry

Tuyen Nguyen, doctoral student in chemistry, hopes a new method she is developing may treat bone cancer faster than chemotherapy. It also could partner with MRI scanning to diagnose cancer more effectively. Nguyen said she has synthesized nanoparticles, which are a million times smaller than a tennis ball, to sniff out villainous cancer and attack bone tumors head-on. Additionally, the nanoparticles light up cancer in MRIs to streamline diagnosis.

“It’s exciting that this research could someday help chemotherapy patients in the fight against cancer,” said Nguyen, whose research is conducted in and supported by the Nanotechnology Innovation Center of Kansas State, or NICKS. Read the full story here.

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Communication Studies

Sarah Riforgiate, associate professor of communication studies, traveled to Norman, Oklahoma, Feb. 24 to be the keynote speaker at the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Communication Showcase Seminar. Riforgiate gave the keynote address “The Intersection of Paid Work and Private Life” about her ongoing research on domestic labor issues and the division of labor in the home. Later in the seminar, she gave a talk to students and faculty on navigating the process of promotion and tenure in academia.

Natalie Pennington, assistant professor of communication studies, recently published research that provides insight into the perception of social support provided by social networking sites when a loved one has passed away. Pennington’s article, titled “Tie Strength and Time: Mourning on Social Networking Sites,” was published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 

In the article, Pennington argues that two factors influence how supportive we can find the presence of social media: time spent online and how close we were to the deceased. The quantitative analysis, conducted in spring 2016 at K-State, suggests that those who use social media more find it more helpful as they process grief. For college students in particular, Pennington argues, having access to a site like Facebook can be useful when dealing with grief. Her research argues that having a place online to turn to long after the funeral can serve a crucial role for support.

The study also revealed an interesting relationship when it came to close relationships: while those who were closed to the deceased found support from the page, they were also more likely to want the page removed from Facebook.

“This really points to the complexity of maintaining relationships online,” Pennington noted. “Coupled with my past research on this topic, I get the impression that individuals really feel a push and pull about grieving so publicly and the access other members of the deceased’s network have to the site.”

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Economics

Assistant Professor Ross Milton received a Faculty Enhancement Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for his project titled “School Infrastructure Spending: Intra-District Allocation and Academic Outcomes.”

Professor of Economics Dan Kuester wrote an article for Wallethub.com, along with other economists and autors in related disciplines about the topic “Will Mexico Pay for the Wall?” Many of these articles are cited on CNBC or U.S. News and World Report, Kuester said.

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English

Assistant Professor Steffi Dippold and undergraduate students Hunter Nelson (BA ‘19), Sarah Peterson (BA ‘17), Malorie Wagner (BA ‘18), and Cheyenne White (BA ‘18) presented “Reading Kansas: Finding Early America in Local Special Collections” at the 10th Biennial Conference of the Society of Early Americanists in Tulsa. Their joint presentation shared the process and results from the digital humanities project “Reading Kansas: Hidden Histories of Midwestern Book Culture” completed as part of the Honors seminar course ENGL 399 “The Power of the Page: Books That Made Us” (Fall 2016). Peterson, Wagner, and White received Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Travel awards to attend the conference and present their work.
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Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

GWSS graduate certificate student Noelle Lynn Blood was awarded a top paper prize in the Popular Culture Interest Group at the Central States Communication Association Conference in Minneapolis. Blood’s paper, titled “A Barbie for Every Body? The Barbie Fashionistas as a Simulacrum of Real Beauty,” is an intersectional feminist critique of the newer doll line. Continue reading “College Highlights, February 2017”

College Highlights, September 2016

In the College of Arts and Sciences, there are always big things happening. Take a look at some of our highlights from September 2016:

Art

Biology

Economics

English

Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Geography

Journalism and Mass Communications

Military Science (Army ROTC)

Modern Languages

Music, Theatre, and Dance

Philosophy

Psychological Sciences

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work

Statistics

Art

lo Lo VidiAssociate Professor of Printmaking Jason Scuilla was invited to show his prints, including lo Lo Vidi (pictured at left), in an invitational group exhibition titled Grafica D’Arte Americana Contemporanea, September 9 – 23 at the Galleria Il Bisonte, Florence, Italy. The exhibition was curated by Andrew DeCaen.

 

 

 

 

Verfall

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design Daniel Warner had two posters selected to appear in the Ecuador Poster Bienal. The Ecuador Poster Bienal is the principal axis of visual communication for the new continent, focusing its efforts as an academic, professional and creative event. Pictured at right is Warner’s Verfall. His poster Music Is Oxygen also received an Award of Excellence from Creative Quarterly: The Journal of Art and Design.

 

Bubblegum

 

Assistant Professor of Ceramics Amy Santoferraro had works accepted into the group show Ceramics as Deception at the Urban Arts Space gallery in Columbus, Ohio. Pictured at left is Santoferraro’s Bubblegum. Return to top.

 


Biology

Alice Boyle was invited to two oral symposium presentations at the North American Ornithological Conference in Washington DC in late August and also presented three co-authored sessions with members of her K-State lab at thealice-boyle same meeting. The lab and K-State Biology had a major presence at this meeting—the largest ornithological conference in history.

Boyle is also spearheading a two-year, $200,000 National Science Foundation project to investigate how climate variation affects the survival, condition and reproduction of a small tropical bird, the white-ruffed manakin. The study aims to fill important information gaps that hamper our ability to predict consequences and mitigate ongoing global climate change.

Kathrin Schrick has been awarded a $321,000 grant from the National Science Foundation Genetic Mechanisms Program in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences. The gran, titled “START Lipid/Sterol Binding Domains in Homeodomain Transcription Factors from Plants,” will enable research to investigate protein-metabolite interactions underlying changes in gene expression in plants using the model system Arabidopsis. Schrick says, “We want to understand how plants respond to internal metabolic signals during development. The regulatory proteins we study are known to affect biomass in crop plants, so elucidating the mechanisms underlying transcriptional activity is of relevance to agriculture as well as to ecological systems.” The grant will fund postdoctoral trainees, STEM outreach activities, as well as two undergraduate summer students per year to participate in the Division of Biology REU program on Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of Changing Environments. Return to top.
Continue reading “College Highlights, September 2016”