Top 10
Video of Conner Hurst escaping a rundown between third base and home plate made ESPN’s Top 10 best plays, coming in at No. 5. The video was captured by Bethany Bowman of ESU Athletics. See the play here.\
In the Hall of Fame
The leading scorer in MIAA women’s basketball history and the league’s career leader in wins and strikeouts for softball headline the 2019 inductees into the MIAA Hall of Famefrom Emporia State. Michelle Stueve-Corpening and Melissa Stevens will join five other Hornets and the 2010 National Championship Lady Hornet basketball team in the MIAA Hall of Fame.
Arts & Sciences
About 40 alumni from the Mathematics and Economics Department came back to campus for a reunion on March 23. The afternoon festivities included departmental tours and a lock box challenge where alums were grouped together to solve a problem to unlock a “treasure” box. Later that evening about 90 alumni, faculty and friends of Drs. Joe and Betsy Yanikgathered at Sauder Alumni Center for a meal and reception to honor the Yaniks for their 28 years of service to ESU. During the celebration, alumni and faculty shared how the couple impacted them while at ESU. The couple is retiring at the end of the spring semester.
Congratulations Destiny Lalicker, winner of the 2019 George Mason awardfrom the local chapter of the Colonial Dames.
English and mathematics majors often live in different worlds, but Drs. Kevin Rabas (English) and Brian Hollenbeck (Mathematics) found a way to bring both majors together — Pi Poetry. Students and faculty from both departments wrote and presented their own poems about the special number pi for each other to enjoy on March 20,. In addition to being entertained by the multiple pi poem presentations, the departments also celebrated the number by eating pie together, of course.
ESU Debate sent two teams to the National Debate Tournamentin late March. The partnership of Niko Sims and Kalese Warfield finished with a 4-4 record, wins against Gonzaga, Concordia (Minnesota), Pittsburgh and Michigan State. Kalese was the 39th best individual speaker in a field of 156. They were one win away from elimination debates, finishing as the 31st seed. The partnership of Squid Monteith and Keryk Kuiper ended with a 2-6 record, wins against Texas-Austin and Binghamton.
The Earth Science Clubtraveled to the Oklahoma City/Moore/Norman area during spring break. They visited the National Weather Center in Norman, the Osteology Museum, attempted (un)successfully to escape an escape room, explored the Oklahoma City Zoo and stopped at the Sam Noble Museum. Members of the Earth Science Club who attended the trip included undergraduate (Sarah Braddy, Alexander Doktor, Briana Edwards, Amber Gaffney, and Anthony Schreiber) and graduate (Erin Roberts and Nick Thurber) students.
Athletics
Emporia State’s Hayden Goodpaster had a part in two-event championships to earn MIAA Men’s Track Athlete of the Weekas he led the Hornets to the team championship at the ESU Relays presented by Quality Inn.
Emporia State’s Hannah Shield earned MIAA Women’s Track Athlete of the Weekfor her part in the women’s team championship at the ESU Relays.
Emporia State outfielder Connor Hurst was named the MIAA Baseball Hitter of the Week after hitting six home runs last week as the Hornets moved into sole possession of second place in the MIAA.
Lady Hornet Tyra Jones capped off her Emporia State career by being named honorable mention All-Americanby the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) this week.
Brianna Schmitz continued her outstanding senior campaign by turning in the third best heptathlon in Emporia State history at the Herm Wilson Invitational in Wichita. Schmitz finished second to Wichita State's Claudia Rojo by just four points in the seven-event heptathlon. She started the day going 17-00 (5.18m) in the long jump and followed it with a mark of 110-08 (33.74m) in the javelin. She finished the day running 2:19.75 in the 800m. Her total of 4,969 points is a provisional qualifier, currently ranked second in the nation in NCAA Division IIand is the third best mark in Emporia State history.
Library & Information Management
On Saturday, March 23, Dr. Michael Widdersheim’s Organization of Information class visited the Anderson Memorial Library on the old C of E campus in Emporia with guide Nina Haught and the Lyon County History Center, led by Lisa Soller.
Koch Center
On March 25, Dr. Yonai was at Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth, Texas, working with U.S. history, world history, geography, and world cultures teachers. He led sessions on “Markets and Morality” and “Culture and Trade” for the Teaching Free Enterprise Programout of the O’Neil Center at SMU.
On March 28, Joe Coletti presented his talk “Taxing and Spending Lessons from North Carolina and Kansas”where he discussed the differences between how tax cuts were implemented in Kansas and in North Carolina and why each state saw dramatically different results.
The Teachers College
Dr. M. Alexandra Vuyk (BS 05 - Psychology, MS 10 - Special Education/Gifted) recently was named an associate editor of Gifted and Talented International, the journal of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children.
The Art Therapyprogram at Emporia State was accredited in March by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs. The accreditation was granted for the next five years and done so because of the program’s “commitment to continuous quality improvement in education.”
Emporia State University’s Department of Counselor Education was recently approved as an Accredited Continuing Education Providerthrough the National Board of Certified Counselors for a term of five years.
During spring break, Dr. Katrina Miller, Dr. Alice Hinck and Amy Sage Webb participated in a comparative study tourfocused on educational reform and inclusion in Colombia and Peru with faculty and students from University of Massachusetts Boston. In Bogota, they attended educational sessions at Uniminuto Universidad, Nacional Universidad, and Universidad de los Andes. In Lima, they visited with social researchers at Instituto de Estudios. Informal learning activities included a two-mile high cable car ride to view the chapel atop Monserrate; a seven-course meal at the famous Kjolle restaurant prepared by top Latin American chef, Pia León; and, a guided hike of Machu Picchu.
Dr. Melissa Reed spent spring break meeting with Paraguayan teachers, presenting a workshop and visiting elementary schools in Asuncion preparing for her July return when she will teach courses in the MS in Elementary Education Program. During her March trip she met up with Dr. M. Alexandra Vuyk (BS 05 - Psychology, MS 10 - Special Education/Gifted) and toured Santa Elena School in Paraguay to hear about its inquiry program, toured the Instituto Nacional de Educación in Paraguay, and Instituto de Formación Docente Paraguayo Americano.
Business
Congratulations to our top three winners of the Entrepreneur Challenge. The top two finishers will compete at the State Entrepreneur Challenge at Kansas State University on April 30. The winners are:
- First place and $2500 — Joshua Peck, senior management major, for his idea Outdoor Buddy, a mobile application that puts hunters one click away from the rules, regulations, seasons, and limits for the exact location in which they are standing.
- Second place and $1500 — Anni Paunisaari, graduate exchange student from Finland, for her idea The Circle, a concept café striving to reduce the amount of food waste in the U.S. by turning waste to taste.
- Thir place and $500 — Lisa Foster, senior management major, for her idea Chair Flair, a company providing wheelchair wraps and accessories to allow customers to decorate and personalize their wheelchairs.
Presentations
Dr. Joan Brewer, Dr. Tiffany Hill, Dr. Sunnin Keosybounheuang, Andrea L’Ecuyer (elementary education candidate), Dr. Amanda Lickteig, and Dr. Sara Schwerdtfeger presented “Using Aligned Clinical Assessments to Measure Candidate Growth - A Longitudinal Analysis” at the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation Conferencein Denver in March. Their session was so well-attended it was standing room only, with more audience members listening from the hall. An encore of the session was held the following day at the conference.
Psychology major and senior Theodore Wheeler presented his original research on “Leadership, Justification of Action, and Perceptions of Self-Morality” at the Great Plains Students’ Psychology Conventionon March 9 in Springfield, Missouri. Because of his prolific research and travel, and involvement in our animal lab, Wheeler is a recipient of the David W. Leipold Memorial Scholarship.
Psychology major and senior Olivia Wilkerson presented her original research on “The Effects of Yoga on College Students’ Subjective Well-Being and Physiological State” at the Great Plains Students’ Psychology Conventionon March 9. Wilkerson was recently accepted into Emporia State University’s Clinical Psychology program for Fall 2019.
Madison Orton, psychology student, presented her original research on music and college athletes’ workout motivation the Great Plains Students’ Psychology Convention. This research won the Outstanding Undergraduate Empirical Paperat November’s PERK/NPS research convention, and the second-place award at this recent convention. Orton was awarded the Stephen Davis Student Opportunity Fund in 2018 to help cover costs for her research and travel this year. She will start graduate studies at Emporia State University next year in the school psychology program.
Dr. Cate Crosby was part of a panel discussion called “Preparing PK12 ESL/ELL Teachers to Provide Resources” at the annual TESOL 2019 International Convention & English Language Expoin Atlanta, Georgia, in March. Graduate student Annette Petz, in the MA TESOL program, was invited to assist Crosby.
Dr. Gaelynn Wolf Bordonaro along with Shannon Schmitz (MS 07 – Art Therapy) were invited to participate in the Art in Service to Military & Veterans in Kansas: An Immersive Discussionat Kansas State University on March 22.
Dr. Connie Schrock, current president of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, spoke at various conferences during the past two months:
- “What Do Mathematics Educators Need To Know?” February 8, at AMTE Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
- “SMET, STEM, STEAM, STREAM or SCHOOL—Why?” February 22, Keynote speaker for Arkansas State STEM Summit in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- “Leveraging Technology into Modeling STEM Tasks,” March 8, at T3International Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
- “Bold Leadership,” March 23, at Mathematics and Statistics Associations Summit, Michigan State University, Lansing.
On March 20, Karith Foster presented her talk “Stereotyped 101”and shared with the ESU community how we can be more empathetic, breakdown stereotypes, and come together in civil conversation to discuss our differences and similarities.
Publications
Lorraine Cannistra (MS 94 - Rehabilitation Counseling) published a book titled “More the Same Than Different: What I Wish People Knew About Respecting & Including People with Disabilities” (2018). Cannistra is an author, blogger, speaker, and dancer who resides in Lawrence.
In the current issue of OLA Quarterly (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2019), a current student and two alumni have articles related to Open Educational Resources (OER):
- “iFixit With the Library: Partnering for Open Pedagogy in Technical Writing”, by current Forrest Johnson (2019) (with co-author Michaela Willi Hooper);
- “Let Us Get You into College: Community College Librarians, Barnes & Noble, and OER”, by Colleen Sanders (2015);
- “Getting up to Speed on OER: Advice from a Newbie”, by Amy Stanforth (2009).
SLIM Oregon alumni Linden How (2017), Amanda Meeks (2012), and Alyssa Vincent (2012) had an article published in the March 2019 issue of ACRL’s College & Research Libraries Newstitled “The art of information literacy: New competencies for art, architecture, and design learners.”