The newest favorite picture of my niece

That's exactly what it is... I'm sure there will be more!

Update

Since my last post, I have given the first installment of our Honors Professor-Scholar Lecture Series (so much fun! - the schedule for the remaining talks is below - just click on it for an easier-to-read version), served as a Judge for the Miller Speech contest, sold invasive Red Cedar Christmas trees for KCWildlands, and spent a week with my family and new niece! Isn't she adorable in her little bunny onesie?!
What a fast couple of weeks it's been. And now it's already finals week, so good luck to all of our students and happy holidays!
P.S. An interview that my AWESOME research student, Ryan, and I conducted is linked on the Rockhurst homepage, or you can just click here if you'd like to see it and the other faculty videos conducted by our students.

Tessa!

My first niece, Tessa, was born last Wednesday, November 3rd! She is absolutely beautiful and weighed 8lbs, 13oz and was 20" long. It is so weird to think of my brother as a dad, but everyone says he's doing a fantastic job. Tessa looks just like him, so all I see is him when I look at pictures of her. I haven't gotten to meet her yet but I can't wait to do so over the Thanksgiving break! I am just counting down the days...

NCHC

The National Collegiate Honors Council annual conference is in Kansas City this week, so I will be there most of today and tomorrow attending some informative sessions about Honors Programs at other universities. Several of our outstanding honors students are volunteering, and two of our Honors Student Executive Board officers are running the raffle and auction tomorrow evening. This is a very exciting conference and I'm thrilled that it is in KC this year so that more of our students have the opportunity to attend!

Tibet talk

On September 22nd I was granted the opportunity to share my experiences in Tibet with my colleagues as a part of our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning's (CETL's) International Series. This is a fantastic program initiated and directed by Dr. Kathleen Madigan, and it allows RU faculty to experience other cultures through the eyes of our colleagues. The prior installment this semester was by Dr. Myles Gartland (Helzberg School of Management), who had spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Poland with his wife and children. His talk permitted us a glimpse into European academia and his wife, Lysa, even spoke about the day-to-day challenges of being an American family in Poland. These presentations allow us a level of multicultural exposure that is gleaned vicariously through other faculty and I am so grateful that I was able to be a part of this effort. [The picture shows a Tibetan lama at Mingdrolling Monastery placing a kahta (prayer shawl) over my head as a welcoming gesture.]

More Tibet Pictures

I recently established a Flickr account and was able to find some photos taken by my colleagues on our trip to Tibet in June. Because the photos are far better than the ones I took, I decided to post a few of them. The top picture shows a Buddhist lama outside of the Drak Yerpa meditation caves, and the lower photo shows two Tibetan women in traditional clothing, drinking yak-butter tea. Photo credit can be given to Marguerite Bennett.

Honors Orientation

This year is my first as Director of the Rockhurst University Honors Program and it has thus far been marked by fun and productive activities with some outstanding students. Last week, we welcomed the freshmen Honors students with a pasta dinner, prepared by their Honors mentors and our Honors VP of New Member Development, Ms. Kayla Miller. Dinner was followed by a trip (in the pouring rain!) to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum and coffee or frozen yogurt. The next day, Honors mentors and mentees worked together on their team-building and leadership skills at the Tucker Leadership Lab (pictured). Through these activities we were all able to grow to know one another and to depend on eachother's skills and knowledge. I can't wait for the next Honors event!

Snake Surgery

Just before classes started my research students (Caitlyn McCall and Ryan Miloshewski) and I, along with a colleague from KU (George Pisani), were consumed by dealing with a problematic study animal. One of the rattlesnakes we track decided to hang out a little too close to a neighbor's home, so we had to rescue her and re-re-locate her to a different site. Before we could do so, we needed to surgically remove the radio-transmitter that allowed us to track her in the first place. The first picture shows George "tubing" her, which entails wrangling her into a tube so we can handle her and anesthetize her prior to surgery. The second picture shows the snake post-op, with me (and Ryan in the background) waiting for her to come out from under the anesthetic, which she soon did. So the surgery was successful and she recovered rapidly enough to be set free a few days later.

Mathfest 2010

A fantastic student (Maureen Whalen, pictured) and I just returned from Mathfest in Pittsburgh, PA, where we each presented a talk concerning our Rockhurst-Hogan Interdisciplinary Summer Institute (a college-experience institute with local high school students). We discussed how the structure of this institute has influenced the Pre-Calculus course at Rockhurst and how it could potentially affect other courses like our Freshmen Seminars. We did this only with the behind-the-scenes help and coaching of a wonderful Math professor, Dr. Guadarrama, who had a baby last week and of course could not attend the conference. As a biologist, I was especially fascinated by the Biomathematics talks; and I also thoroughly enjoyed the discussions on fractals, which are just incredibly cool. To top things off, we got to enjoy a Pirates game and see the lovely Pittsburgh skyline from atop Mt. Washington. And on our way home, we shared a plane with the band Foghat! It was a great experience.

Back in KC...for a few weeks

I am in Kansas City again between trips. We just went to Milwaukee for my sister-in-law's (Heather's) baby shower (I guess it was my brother's, too) , and I'll be leaving for a conference in Pittsburgh next week. The baby shower was so much fun, and that day was when it really hit home that I will soon be an aunt and my brother will be a dad! We also got to go to a Brewer's game, which was awesome and really exciting since they won in the 10th inning. The pictures are of my brother, Jeremy and his wife, Heather; and me and Heather's sisters, Tanya and Brittany. We will all three become aunties in November and we are preparing to spoil little Tessa as soon as she arrives!

Busy busy.

I know it's been awhile since I last posted but May took me (and our Biology Field Trip class) to southern Missouri and then to a conference in Cincinnati, and June began with our Hogan Institute and a seminar in China and Tibet. In this picture I am eagerly awaiting the beginning of the Cham festival at Mingdrolling Monastery outside of Tsetang, Tibet Autonomous Region. During this festival the monks celebrate the life of Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava, or "the Second Buddha," the yogi who brought Indian Buddhism to Tibet) through dance. It was amazing! This celebration only occurs once a year on Guru Rinpoche's birthday (May 10th on the Tibetan Lunar calendar), and we just happened fortuitously to be visiting Mingdrolling that day. We couldn't believe our luck! I am wearing a kathak, or prayer scarf, given to each of us as we were graciously invited into the monastery by the interim abbott, a very kind Buddhist Lama who arranged for us to have a tour of the monastery and fantastic seats at the Cham.

An exciting week

Not only is this finals week and the lead-in to our Biology Field Trip, but over the past weekend my family celebrated a landmark event: my parents' 40th wedding anniversary! They are the cute couple pictured here, holding a gift from some friends. People came in from all over the country to celebrate the occasion, including friends they hadn't seen for years and I hadn't seen since I was little. After a picnic and some catching up we listened to their friends' band and I actually saw my parents dance for the first time in my life! We all had so much fun and we're so proud of them.

Belize reunion

This afternoon our Belize Service Immersion Trip group from this past spring break had a short reunion meeting. Seeing everyone truly brought the importance of the trip back to the forefront of our minds and reminded me of how much I miss all of the wonderful people I spent that week with. Not only do I miss seeing the energy and passion of our students, but I miss that of our Belizean companions. The two groups complemented one another so perfectly and I feel that a genuine solidarity arose among us as we all had a chance to see the world as others see it.

Walkin'

This past weekend was one for walking. On Saturday we held the annual Harry Wiggins Trolley Walk in honor of this generous RU alumnus in an effort to raise funds for two scholarships. I walked alongside nearly all of our fraternity and sorority members, as this was also the kick-off to Greek Week on campus. It was a perfect day for it and we enjoyed the opportunity to get together for this cause. Then on Sunday I attended the annual EarthWalk for Earth Day at Theis Park (a lovely site across from the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum and bordering Brush Creek). Because I thought that driving to the EarthWalk would defeat its purpose, I decided to walk to the walk. Including the walk back, this made for a trek that measured right around 6.5 miles. Fortunately, it turned out to be another beautiful spring day in KC so it didn't feel at all like work. I also saw several RU students (one of whom also walked to the walk!) and walked with the other representatives from the Kansas City Wildlands team (including Sam "Wildthing" Lehrbaum, a 5-month-old border collie/St. Bernard mix). Our team raised a substantial amount of money for Bridging the Gap, our wonderful local environmental not-for-profit agency. It was a great weekend, and it was said that I earned my surname!

Evo Blogs

Please check out my Evolution class' latest blog entries below! They have done a fantastic job of relating their service-learning projects to class material (their textbook is pictured above) and peer-reviewed literature.

Event tomorrow night!

Tomorrow night at 7:00 at the Writer's Place (3607 Pennsylvania Ave in Kansas City, MO), one of our own professors, Xanath Caraza, will be reading some of her original works! She is one of the many outstanding members of our Foreign Languages Department and she provides such a rich element of language and literature for the Rockhurst and local communities. Please join us tomorrow night to show your support for Professor Caraza!

Un-BELIZE-able pictures

To see all of Dave's pictures of our Belize trip, as well as pic's of the other service trips and centennial events, click here!

Un-BELIZE-able!

That was the theme for our alternative spring break service trip to Belize last week. It was truly incredible: the people, the wildlife, the landscape, the service, and especially our phenomenal RU students. Our charge was to prepare and lay the cement foundation for a chapel in Dolores, a small Mayan village of about 450 people in SW Belize. The Rockhurst group (Fr. Gregg Grovenberg, Dave von Fintel, myself and 17 fantastic students) and the local people worked together like pro's, even in extreme heat and intense sun, to meet our objective. We met lots of wonderful people along the way and were made to feel at home by our hosts and the villagers. The group is pictured here, fresh off the plane in Belize City, still clean and happy. Though we didn't exactly stay clean for the entirety of the trip, we most certainly did remain happy and positive the whole week. I am so proud of our group for their optimism and inspiration, their hard work, and their ability to go with the flow (this is a particularly invaluable skill in Central America!). We look forward to sharing more of our experiences with the RU community and thereby keeping our time in Belize alive within our hearts and minds.

Honors Blogs

Two of my fantastic Evolution students this semester are members of the Honors Program at Rockhurst, and have decided to conduct an Honors Option in my class. One of them, Caitlin, has chosen to explore the evolution of sex and sexual selection in humans while the other, Melissa, will be investigating the Intelligent Design/Creationism movement and its proponents' thoughts on evolution. [The book cover shown is that of a book discussing the Dover, Pennsylvania, decision about teaching Intelligent Design in the Science classroom.] Each of them is maintaining a blog (linked below under Evolution Service Learning Projects), to which they add entries concerning their research each week. They are off to a great start, so please check them out! While you're clicking on links under that heading, please also look at the Evolution groups' service-learning blogs. They have recently conducted and posted their interviews of experts on their chosen research topic and they are quite interesting and informative.

Rockhurst Centennial

Yesterday Dr. Wills and I took a short break and walked over to Massman to attend the kick-off of the Rockhurst University Centennial celebration. We each bought t-shirts (pictured) and talked with the students and faculty who were there. This is an exciting time for our campus! Please check out the RU Centennial page celebrating our first 100 years.

Evolution Service-Learning blogs up and running

Today my Evolution students have officially kicked off their Service-Learning projects! Each group of three students will contribute to a grid-computing project that focuses the collective processing power of millions of PCs on finding causes and cures for disease. Each group is maintaining a blog about their particular grid-computing topic (links below) so be sure to check them out to learn more!

First Class Day!

Happy first day of class! I am looking so forward to interacting with students again. The winter break is a great time to get some extra work done, but it's so desolate up here! I can't wait to see campus bustling with students and other members of the Rockhurst community again. I hope the students are as excited to come back as I am. I suppose I'll find out soon enough, as I teach Evolution at 9:00 this morning and Anatomy & Physiology at 11.
On a side note, I just received my copy of the journal containing my research team's most recent publication (December 2009). The cover is pictured here and you can flip through some sample pages at the International Reptile Conservation Foundation website if you're interested.

The other cats

Just to be fair to the other four cats in the house, I thought I should post another picture. It is rare that they are ever all in the same room, so this picture represents an almost miraculous event. And they were all actually looking at the camera! [I know it seems like I'm one of those crazy cat ladies but I'm convinced that the title only applies if you live alone; so I think that Aric's presence in the house somehow absolves me that label.] Anyway, all 5 of them are rescues and either came from shelters or sensed that we were suckers and showed up on our porch. In the back (from left to right) are Ali, Edwina (she came to us missing her back, passenger-side leg), and Joe. In the front are Blackavar (named for a character in Watership Down) and Angelo (from the previous post).