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).