Highest Honor
Congratulations to John Allison, named the 2018 Kansas Superintendent of the Year. He earned his master’s degree from The Teachers College at ESU and is the fourth ESU alum to earn the honor since 2011. Allison served as superintendent of Wichita Schools from 2009 to 2017 before becoming superintendent of the Olathe school district in July.
New TRIO Programs
Two new federal grants at Emporia State university will open doors for students’ future success. The university’s TRIO programs will receive $1.16 million for the McNair Scholars program and $1.3 million for Upward Bound. Both grants will be paid out over five years.
Science in Rural Schools
Emporia State’s focus on high-impact learning for students now extends to rural Kansas middle schools, thanks to a nearly half-million-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The joint effort between ESU’s The Teachers College and Flint Hills Technical College, involves creating curriculum and affordable equipment kits classroom teachers can use to model a variety of practical agricultural tasks. The National Science Foundation funded the three-year project with $454,356.
Alumni
Ole Miss Vice Chancellor for Athletics. Nationally known accounting expert. Activist for Americans with Disabilities Act. Kansas Superintendent of the Year. Founder of the Travel Channel. The 2017 Emporia State University Distinguished Alumni — Russ Bjork, Dan Deines, Duane French, Sue Givens and Jim Trecek — is an impressive class that Hornet Nation is proud to call our own. They will be honored during the Black & Gold Gala on Friday, November 3.
We also will honor our three Outstanding Recent Graduates during the gala. Andrew Heinicke, Ashley Long and John Moyer represent the three undergraduate colleges and school.
Arts and Sciences
Joyce Thierer, professor of social sciences, is featured on a segment of “Prairie Women: Engaging Women of the Flint Hills,” a video series from the Flint Hills Discovery Center Foundation and Prairie Hollow Productions.
The Stream Ecology class floated the Elk River near Pineville, Missouri, on a beautiful weekend in September. Hosted by Big Elk Camp & Canoe, students camped alongside the river and seined fishes at night. A Saturday canoe and kayak trip down the river was highlighted by collection of map turtles, red-eared sliders, northern hog suckers, Ozark minnows, northern studfish, orangethroat darters and greenside darters.
Congratulations to Hui Tian, MSFS 2017, who has a new job. She is a research assistant/laboratory manager in the lab of Dr. Zinovyeva, whose research focuses on microRNA. Hui did her MSFS research under the direction of Dr. Carlos Peroza.
Business
The School of Business welcomed 571 Kansas high school students from over 33 schools at the annual Business Career Day. Throughout the morning, the students learned about different careers in business. The day ended with a spirited game of Kahoot with over 160 teams!
The new director of the Koch Center for Leadership and Ethics is Dr. Derek Yonai. He is passionate about engaging students in the world of ideas and teaching them that business, properly understood, is inherently a social endeavor.
Emporia High School and Emporia State marketing club and Phi Beta Lambda students worked with local business people to teach them how to use or improve social media skills at the Social Media Workshop.
Our second Community and Business Enhancement tour took place on October 10. The students heard from business owners of Twin Rivers Winery and Uncommon Threads on how they got started and what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Athletics
Six members of the Emporia State softball program were recently honored by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association as Scholar-Athletes. The award is given to players submitted by a member coach who achieved a 3.50 grade point average or higher during the 2016-17 academic year.
Emporia State junior quarterback Braxton Marstall was named the MIAA Football Offensive Player of the Week for the second time this year after throwing for 421 yards and three touchdowns in the Hornets 41-30 win at Lindenwood.
The Teachers College
Secondary education students in Phase I this fall will gain experience teaching with current technologies thanks to a 1:1 Chromebook initiative sponsored by the Kathrine K. White Faculty Incentive Grant Program, The Teachers College Dean’s Office, and the Department of School Leadership/Middle and Secondary Teacher Education.
At the invitation of a local architecture firm in Wichita, Dr. John Morton, associate professor in School Leadership/Middle and Secondary Teacher Education, conducted a video conference with a nationwide group of zoo directors focusing on the book ”Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.
Students in alumni Blake Swenson’s class at Free State High School in Lawrence organized a gubernatorial candidate forum featuring the four teens who are running for the office.
Students in the class, High Impact Learning: Learn, reflect, connect, and lead: Advocating for education taught by Dr. Melissa Reed, associate professor in Elementary Education / Early Childhood / Special Education, toured the Kansas School for the Deaf and Deaf Cultural Center October 19 in Olathe.
Dr. Ken Weaver, dean of The Teachers College, visited elementary and secondary schools in Lüneborg, Germany, and Kolding, Vejle and Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as the leadership of the college of education at University College Copenhagen with executive director of international education Mark Daly recently.
Emporia State’s focus on high-impact learning for students now extends to rural Kansas middle schools, thanks to a nearly half-million-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The joint effort between ESU and Flint Hills Technical College, involves creating curriculum and affordable equipment kits classroom teachers can use to model a variety of practical agricultural tasks. The National Science Foundation funded the three-year project with $454,356.
Library & Information Management
Alumna Jane Corry has been elected co-chair elect for the Children’s Services Division of Oregon Library Association.
Alumnus Brian Campbell has accepted a new position as the records and data practices manager with the Twin Cities Metro Council in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Alumna Meggie Wright is the open educational resources librarian at Lane Community College and is featured in a newspaper article about alternatives to purchasing expensive textbooks.
Presentations
Lori Mann, Nancy Smith and Ken Weaver reported Hornet Connected Learning research at the Fall 2017 Annual Conference of TECSCU and The Renaissance Group on October 8, 2017.
Dr. Christopher Stone (School of Business) and coauthor, Dr. Jennifer Stone (Wichita State), presented “Those Disability Kids”: Reframing perceptions of providing accommodations in the college classroom” at the 2017 Michael Tilford Conference on Diversity and Multiculturalism.
Dr. Kevin Johnson, business professor and the university general counsel, served as an invited conference panelist for the Association of Corporate Counsel’s annual meeting on October 15-18, in Washington, D.C., during which he presented research and materials on “Developing a Legal Approach to Enterprise Risk Assessment.”
Max McCoy, professor of journalism and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, presented the keynote address, “The Unexpected Journey,” at the Ozark Creative Writers conference on Oct. 14, in Eureka Springs. He discussed his experience following the Arkansas River from the headwaters to the plains for his upcoming book, “Elevations.”
Dr. Mingchu Neal Luo, Department of School Leadership/Secondary & Middle School Teachers Education, presented his research on course-based evaluation by students at the 31th Annual Women in Educational Leadership Conference hosted by University of Nebraska at Lincoln in October 2017.
Nancy Smith, Lori Mann and Ken Weaver presented “Assessing the Value of Professional Development in a 1:1 Mobile Technology Initiative” at the annual conference of the Teacher Education Council of State Colleges and Universities and The Renaissance Group in Philadelphia on October 8.
Dr. Dan Colson (English, Modern Languages, and Journalism) presented his paper, “ ‘The Other Guy’: The Hulk, Bruce Banner, and Anti-Intellectualism in The Avengers,” at the South Central Modern Language Association Convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Publications
Dr. Brendan Fay, SLIM assistant professor, published the article “Conservative Music Criticism, the Inflation, and Concert Life in Weimar Germany, 1919-1924” in the journal Cultural History.
SLIM alumni Candise Branum and Turner Masland co-wrote “Critical Library Management: Administrating for Equity,” which appears in the OLA Quarterly, 23(2), 28-36, 2017.
Dr. Lizabeth Diers, Dr. Huaqing Wang and Dr. Lei Wen (School of Business) will publish a paper written with Dr. Hongwei Yang (Appalachian State U.) and Dr. Danlu Bu (SW University of Finance and Economics). “Public Accounting vs. Private Accounting, Career Choice of Accounting Students in China” will be published in the Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies.