NCHC Boston

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take 5 (yes, 5!) members of our Honors Student Association Executive Board to Boston with me for the annual National Collegiate Honors Council conference.  There were close to 2000 attendees, and 15 concurrent sessions every 45 minutes all day for three days.  We decided to divide and conquer, so we split up and tried to attend as many talks of interest as we could.  We were able to bring back tons of great ideas, some of which we hope to implement here in the Rockhurst Honors Program.  We also gave two talks (I served on a panel that discussed Honors Programs at Jesuit institutions, and two of our students (pictured) presented about their trip to Haiti and how it could be transformed into the experiential portion of an interdisciplinary honors course).  We also had to visit a few Boston landmarks like Fenway Park.

Kansas Herp Society meeting

This weekend I attended the Kansas Herpetological Society annual conference in Hays, Kansas.  The social events were held at the Sternberg Museum, an absolute gem of a natural history museum in the middle of Kansas.  On Friday evening, the Joseph T. Collins Library was dedicated and officially opened to us, along with the museum itself and the new Rattlers exhibit.  The latter housed live specimens of 19 of the 22 species of rattlesnakes in the US. It was amazing, thanks to the hard work of curators Curtis Schmidt and Travis Taggert.  The talks were held at Ft. Hays State University, and there were several that were very interesting and well-presented.  Overall it was a great weekend, but the absence of our hero and mentor, Joe Collins, was certainly conspicuous.  We all really, really missed him.

Busy semester!

This semester has been exciting and incredibly busy!  Besides work (registration for classes started yesterday!), I have been out of state a lot lately, and I had a great friend from grad school in town this weekend.  We explored some of the sites in this beautiful city and watched a lot of football and baseball.  We even visited the Royals' and Chiefs' stadiums (stadia?) because we're both huge sports fans.  We didn't take the aerial pic, though; that's from http://www.kansas-city-news.pro.  It was a great time.  Now back to work!

My new niece!

On September 4th, I became an aunt for the second time to another beautiful little girl.  My new niece, pictured here with her big sis, is doing great.  I can't wait to go see her over fall break!

Honors Welcome Dinner

Last weekend, following the first few days of classes, the Honors Student Association Executive Board and I hosted an Honors Welcome Dinner for the largest cohort of incoming honors freshmen ever!  We discussed the freshmen theme (Reflection and Discernment) in the context of their honors application essay, ate some delicious picnic food, and played lots of outdoor games at beautiful Loose Park.  Some of the festivities are pictured here.  We are looking forward to an exciting year in the Honors Program with this new group!

IHS

At the end of last month, two RU Biology students and I presented a talk at the International Herpetological Symposium in Baltimore, MD.  It was exciting to get to meet some incredible people who genuinely care about reptiles and amphibians, and to visit with several herper friends whom I only see once or twice a year.  There was a banquet and auction the last night (the picture was taken at the auction by Mike Jodrey), and the auctioneer was Ton Jones of "Auction Hunters" on Spike TV!  He rescues reptiles in his free time and, like everyone there, sincerely cares about their conservation.  And, also like the others at the symposium, he's a really cool guy!

Pictures from this summer

My niece and sister-in-law (and my brother's leg) at an Astros/Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

If only the 'Stros had won...

Obligatory brewery tour in Milwaukee with my brother and his in-laws.

Brewers game!

The All-Star Game!!!! I got to go with my brother.

One of many Royals games I've attended during what has become the Summer of Baseball.

Biology Field Trip group pic's

Each time we entered a National Park on our Biology Field Trip, we took the obligatory group picture by the sign.  In this series, you can tell that the weather was growing progressively colder and wetter as we traversed South Dakota and Wyoming.

Biology Field Trip

We are back from our AMAZING Biology Field Trip to Badlands National Park, the Black Hills, Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton National Park.  I am not the designated photographer on our trips (this time, that was left primarily to Dr. Chad Scholes and Jay Sheth), but this is my favorite of the few pictures I took.  We hiked to the top of a plateau in the Badlands to watch the sunset.  Senior student Ben Bira and I clambered to the top of two hoodoos (rock spires), which turned out to be the best seats in the house.  This is a picture of  Ben from atop my hoodoo as the sun disappears behind the mountains.

Gallery Opening

On Friday night, Drs. Baceski, Martin, Miller, and Kovich and I attended a gallery opening for Rockhurst's own Anne Austin Pearce.  The opening was at the Sherry Leedy Gallery in the Crossroads Arts District, a district that hosts an evening event on the First Friday of each month in which local artists are celebrated and their art displayed.  Anne's work is stunning and the chance to discuss the pieces with her introduced a personal element that made them even more extraordinary.  The piece pictured here is entitled "The Ride;" and though I loved all of the paintings on exhibit, I was most moved by this work.

Lucy talk

Tuesday night, some colleagues and I attended a fascinating talk at the Linda Hall Library by Dr. Donald Johanson (presentation pictured above), the Founding Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.  Dr. Johanson discovered the most famous fossil in the world, "Lucy," and thereby gained worldwide recognition as a paleoanthropologist (he made certain that we understood that paleoanthropology is in fact NOT the study of old anthropologists).  The event space was packed and we all listened intently as he described the day on which he uncovered Lucy's remains in the Tanzanian desert (November 24th, 1974, incidentally 115 years to the day after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection), and the implications of that finding.  The species to which Lucy belongs, Australopithecus afarensis, is a member of the lineage that split from the other Great Apes (like the orangutan, pictured above with my niece) and gave rise to modern humans.

Evolution blogs

Please be sure to check out the blogs from my Evolution class at the bottom of the page!

Easter break

I hope everyone had a great Easter!  I spent the break at a beach cabin in Texas with my family.  Sun, sand, 85 degrees, and my little niece playing on the beach. Sounds terrible, right? I grew up very near this area so it was nice to go back home and see some of the features of southeast Texas that I have missed.  We spent a lot of time on this beach as kids, so it's exciting to see my niece continuing this tradition. I'm glad to be back in KC, but it was a fun diversion.  Pictured is a beach cabin very similar to the one in which we stayed, back lit by an amazing sunset.

Induction Pictures

Posted are pictures of our student and faculty speakers (see previous blog entry), respectively, as well as their audience on Sunday.

Honors Freshmen Induction

The formal induction ceremony for our first-year honors students was held this past Sunday in Massman Hall on campus.  We invited the students and their families to a nice brunch to celebrate the official recognition of their status as honors students.  Our student speaker was Ms. Kayla Frey, and our faculty address was graciously given by Dr. Risa Stein (Department of Psychology). Several honors faculty members, as well as our President, Fr. Curran, were in attendance, as were most of the members of our Honors Student Association Executive Board.  I have to thank Renee McGautha, our student Eboard, and Sodexo catering service for making this a very smooth and successful event.  I will post pictures as soon as I have a chance to download them.

Honors and KCWildlands

We are now back from spring break and I realized that I never blogged about our KCWildlands work day from  the week prior!  For this work day, several community volunteers, including many of our honors students, worked to clear the fence line at Jerry Smith Park.  This park contains a remnant prairie (one of the few left in Missouri), and it's right in our backyard (just off of 135th and Holmes in south KC, MO)!  It's a very biologically diverse and beautiful area, especially in spring and summer.  Our workday, despite the fact that it was the last weekend of February, was great - sunny but just cool enough to be perfect for manual labor.  The pictures include action shots of our honors students at work, as well as a map from the KCWildlands website in case you'd like to visit this spectacular place.

AJCU Honors Conference

Last week/weekend, four Honors Student Association Executive Board members (pictured) accompanied me to New York City to attend the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities Honors Conference.  Last year, Rockhurst's Honors Program hosted this conference, and this year it was at Fordham University in the Bronx.  We gleaned a lot of ideas and inspiration, as always, from the conference itself; and we had a great time in NYC (we were at the (putatively) oldest and best pizza joint in New York in the second picture).

Evolution class blogs

Please be sure to check out my Evolution class' group blogs at the bottom of the page!  Each group is involved in a grid-computing endeavor to help understand, treat and cure a focal disease.  They then post the results of their research on their group's blog (linked below).

First Honors event of the semester!

Last Wednesday night, George Ferguson (Helzberg School of Management) talked with our honors students about the opportunity to participate in the Mensch Management Summer Program on campus.  I would strongly encourage any of our non-business major students to take part in this program, during which time participants have the chance to glean a practical and functional understanding of business that can later be applied to their chosen career field.  For more info, please visit the link above or email George at george.ferguson@rockhurst.edu.

Expanding Your Horizons

On Friday evening, one of my fantastic students (and python enthusiast), Nicole, and I took our respective ball pythons, Monty and Slinky, to Science City at Union Station to introduce them to approximately 45 middle-school girls.  This program, called "Expanding Your Horizons," is sponsored by Science Pioneers and is aimed at getting girls interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields.  Our session, "Introduction to Herpetology," was just one of many workshops offered that evening.  As you can see from the photo, the girls just adored Monty.  Then again, how could you not?

Joe Collins

This week has been difficult.   Not because classes have started but because the herpetological community lost one of its greatest and most influential contributors, Mr. Joe Collins, this past weekend.  This is truly sad news and he will be missed tremendously by so many.  I am just so glad that many of my students were able to meet this herp legend over the last few years and I am proud to have known him.  I have pasted the CNAH announcement below, as well as a picture from the KC Star article about his life.

IN MEMORIAM: JOSEPH THOMAS COLLINS (1939 - 2012)

Thursday 19 January 2012: Lawrence, Kansas - CNAH NEWS RELEASE The Center for North American Herpetology Lawrence, Kansas http://www.cnah.org

19 January 2012

It is with very heavy hearts that we report the passing of The Center for North American Herpetology Co-founder and Director Joseph T. Collins.  Joe Collins suffered a massive coronary attack and died on 14 January 2012 in Florida.  He and his wife Suzanne were on their annual herpetofaunal expedition to the Florida panhandle and St. George Island.  Joe was 72 years old.

Like so many of us, Joe turned a childhood passion into a lifelong career.  His accomplishments are too vast for this brief note, and his influence on the lives of past, present, and future herpetologists is immeasurable.  His comical subject lines for many of the daily CNAH notes announcements are a testament to Joe's quick-witted sense of humor.  They will certainly be missed.

Plans for a memorial service have not yet been made.  Details will be released in future announcements as they are received.  To say that Joe will be sorely missed is an understatement.  CNAH, The Kansas Herpetological Society, and the herpetological community in general have lost a great scientist, a bold leader, and a true friend.  Rest in Peace Joe.

The Board of Directors of The Center for North American Herpetology would like to extend its deepest sympathies to Joe's loving wife Suzanne and to all of Joe's family and friends.

 

KCFS

This evening, Dr. Evans and I, along with at least one dedicated student, will be attending a lecture about the evolution of altruism.  This is a hot and controversial concept in evolutionary biology, and is thus a great topic of discussion for the Kansas Citizens for Science's "Science Cafe" this evening. I look forward to hearing Dr. Decelles' take on this topic and how it relates to that of renowned sociobiologist E.O. Wilson.  All of the details of the event are described in the first link above, and it is open to the public.  Please join us if you're free this evening!

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year!  I hope it has started off splendidly.  I am in my office doing a little prep work for classes this spring, including perusing potential texts for our Biology Field Trip course.  Dr. Scholes and I will be taking a road trip with about a dozen students from here to Yellowstone National Park, stopping at points of interest in between.  Thus far, we are leaning toward Yellowstone: A Visitor's Companion, which is a must-have for anyone who will be traveling to Yellowstone.  In class this spring we will ask students to lead discussions about topics in the book, including everything from the anthropology of the region to controversial issues surrounding the reintroduction of wolves to the park; and then we will embark on the trip in mid-May to see these things for ourselves.