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).

TOMS shoes

Our cat, Angelo, is now famous! I submitted this picture of him laying on my TOMS shoes to the TOMS website and they put it on their photo wall. I love TOMS because, for each pair you buy, the company donates a pair to a child in an undeveloped nation. They're also REALLY cute and comfortable and they even have vegan options now. They visited Rockhurst campus last year because we are a university supporter of their wonderful cause. I know it may be a little late for Christmas, but they make great gifts!

Texas

I have been in Texas A LOT lately visiting my family. I did finally get to meet my brother's new girlfriend, Heather, who is wonderful (that's them in the picture). I also had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my mom, dad and grandma over the last few weeks and do some relaxing. We are officially on winter break now at Rockhurst but I have quite a bit of work to do. So it looks like I won't be back in TX for Christmas, which makes me even more grateful for the time I was able to spend there recently.