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Douglas Girod becomes KU’s 18th chancellor amid excitement and challenges
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t is going to be a year of learning on the University of Kansas campus — and not just for the students. Many a Jayhawk will be trying to learn all about Douglas Girod, KU’s newest chancellor. One thing you should know is that he’s a medical doctor. I’ll leave it up to you to determine whether you should ask the new chancellor about that particular ailment or sniffle you are battling. If you are curious, though, his specialty is head and neck pain. For the past 15 years, he has led the department of head and neck surgery at the KU Medical Center. I will really leave it up to you about whether you want to broach the subject of “pains in the neck” with the new chancellor. The Journal-World will be providing coverage of Chancellor Girod throughout the year, but I hope this year’s edition of KU Today gets you started on learning more about the man who will lead KU into its next era. Inside, look for a oneon-one interview with Girod, where he opens up about subjects ranging from his time in the Navy to his current mission trips to Guatemala.
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Also inside are features on several other new faces and new places. There are new deans at the School of Business and the School of Social Welfare. The number of new buildings on campus continues to grow, as the $350 million Central District project begins to take shape. Even some long-standing elements — like the Spencer Museum of Art and Memorial Drive — are getting new looks. This year’s edition, however, wouldn’t be complete without a look back at the tenure of outgoing Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little. Gray-Little will be remembered as a groundbreaking chancellor in more ways than one. Upon her hiring in 2009, she became both the first female and the first AfricanAmerican chancellor in KU’s history. But she also will be remembered as a prodigious builder and fundraiser. During her time at KU, the university completed 50 capital improvement projects totaling $700 million, and KU Endowment completed its record-setting $1.66 billion Far Above fundraising campaign. That will be a tough act to follow, and leads to a natural question: What’s next? We’re about to learn.
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Q&A WITH THE CHANCELLOR KU’s new leader hopes to provide students with more opportunities and experiences at home and abroad.
DIGITIZING PHOG Research library’s Phog Allen collection being readied for online viewing.
T. REX DIG KU team looks to solve mysteries in third year of Montana T. rex dig.
METAMORPHOSIS Massive redevelopment project to transform KU’s Central District is marching to completion.
14 MEET THE STUDENT BODY LEADERS Transportation, safety and participation are platform goals for new leadership.
16 BUSINESS DEAN PAIGE FIELDS New dean views move into Capitol Federal Hall as an exciting opportunity for growth for business school.
20 SOCIAL WELFARE DEAN MICHELLE MOHR CARNEY KU School of Social Welfare dean ready to guide school to address social challenges.
22 DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION RASHA BAJPAI Hopes to make campus more welcoming and inclusive.
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A TIME OF TRANSITION New faces in chancellor’s office and other top administration positions.
30 GOLDWATER SCHOLARSHIPS Enthusiasm evident as winners pursue knowledge in physics and genetics.
32 LITERARY BOND KU Common Book picked to facilitate ‘courageous dialogues’ on diversity, equity.
34 NO SMOKING, NO CHEWING, NO E-CIGS KU campus planning to go completely tobacco-free, indoors and out.
36 FEBRUARY SISTERS CONTINUE TO GIVE BACK 1972 protest leads to positive changes for women on campus, and sustaining those efforts is the goal of professors’ generous gifts.
40 KU SPORTS PREVIEW Dynamic duos and their unique relationships on the field or court may hold the secret to glory-filled seasons for which fans yearn.
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50 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR BALA SUBRAMANIAM Talking up Kansas energy at KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis.
54 JAPANESE HISTORY PROFESSOR ERIC RATH KU professor explores role of food in Japan.
56 KU PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH MARYEMMA GRAHAM Eliciting a reaction from students is professor’s goal in a classroom, and giving back is her key to becoming part of a community.
60 ANI KOKOBOBO Keeping “Anna Karenina” up-to-date on the KU Campus.
68 TEAMWORK Medical center’s new health education building will put future doctors, nurses and other health professionals under one roof.
72 THE INNOVATIVE EARTH, ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT CENTER Construction nears completion on a multidisciplinary center that will create cooperative bridges between departments and literal bridges between halls.
74 NEW USES FOR SUMMERFIELD HALL Extensive renovations allow Film and Media Department to expand offerings as it moves to its on-campus home.
76 MEMORIAL DRIVE GETS A FACELIFT Lane overlooking Marvin Grove and the Campanile undergoes complete reconstruction.
78 ENLIGHTENING Following an $8 million renovation, Spencer Museum’s new design makes artwork more accessible.
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Incoming and outgoing chancellors provide perspective on top job. Student leaders take aim at student safety and more. New deans, directors and provosts promise a wealth of change for university.
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ouglas Girod, KU’s new chancellor, discusses plans for his First 100 Days on the Lawrence campus, his career as a physician and naval officer, and what keeps him going. You’re a West Coast guy. What brought you to Kansas? Girod, an Oregon native, found himself at a juncture in the mid-1990s, he recalls. After attending medical school on a Navy scholarship, Girod was living with his wife and three kids in the Bay Area, where he served as vice chairman and research director in the otolaryngology department at Oakland’s Naval Medical Center. The military was in the midst of what’s known as a rapid reduction of force, he says, and “it didn’t look like a great career opportunity to stay” after 11 of the Bay Area’s 16 military bases had shuttered in just three years. But at the Naval Medical Center, “the kind of surgery that I did was very high-end surgery that required you to be in an academic medical center,” Girod says. So, he and his family looked all over the country, he says, considering offers from Johns Hopkins and in Seattle, where Girod had completed his residency and research fellowship. “And really, between St. Louis and Denver there was nobody really doing that type of high-end reconstructive surgical oncology, so that was very appealing to us,” Girod says of KU and the opportunity to build a program here. “Susan, my wife, and we had three little kids at the time, came out with me and just fell in love with Kansas City and the area.”
Q&A WITH THE
chancellor KU’s new leader hopes to provide students with more opportunities and experiences at home and abroad.
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I’d read that you spent time on medical missions to Latin America and Africa. Could you talk about any notable work you’ve done through these missions? Through the KU Medical Center and the Lenexa-based Medical Missions Foundation, Girod and other local health professionals lead between six to nine medical missions every year around the globe, he says. The project he’s remained
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the most involved with over the years, he says, has been Guatemala, where a group of KU physicians, nurses, medical students and other practitioners performed 95 surgeries and treated 145 patients during one trip in June 2013. There are many goals associated with the missions, Girod says. “One is to help take along the services that just aren’t available there, but then to try to figure out how to do it in not only a sustainable way but also to help to elevate the infrastructure that’s there even when we’re not there so things continue to progress locally,” he says, later adding, “My focus is always trying to get to that sustainability and local support piece of trying to elevate what they’re doing locally — and not just relying on us showing up one week out of the year or whatever it is.” Since his first medical mission more nearly 15 years ago, Girod has also made an effort, he says, to bring his nowgrown children along — “I just thought it was important for them growing up in Johnson County to see what the rest of the world is like,” Girod says. His oldest, KU alumna Katelyn Girod, accompanied her dad on a mission to Mexico while still in high school. Now in her early 30s and fluent in Spanish, she works with English language learners, mostly Spanish-speaking high school students, in her job with Olathe Public Schools. Is humanitarian work, and perhaps providing more opportunities for KU students to do that kind of work, something you’d like to focus on as chancellor? “We’ve continued to grow those opportunities here really around the world for international programs, including scholarships to support students to go have these experiences,” Girod says. “Increasingly we now have people coming here, which is actually also, I think, very helpful. Not only are we helping them advance in their education, both around clinical care and research, but it actually really elevates
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our international reputation as well as we continue to build these programs.” The KU Medical Center, Girod says, remains the only U.S. institution to partner with the Chinese Ministry of Health. In spring 2017, KU Medical Center staff welcomed its fourth group of six physician leaders from across China, Girod says, to spend three months in Kansas honing their skills in professional practice. “So, we’re trying to grow that,” he says. “But I think those are just great opportunities for us to elevate our national and international reputation as an institution while creating great opportunities for our students but also our faculty who go and teach and do research projects there. It just creates a whole different level of connectivity globally.”
Between your academic duties and your work as a physician, you’re a very busy guy. What keeps you going? “I guess I’m just one of those people who sees opportunity in every situation. And I hate wasting an opportunity. That can occasionally lead to being overcommitted,” Girod admits with a laugh. “But seeing those opportunities realized is what’s most rewarding to me, whether it’s on this campus or in Lawrence or, frankly, in the community.” Do you have anything on your bucket list for your First 100 Days?
How do you feel you differ from Bernadette Gray-Little in your leadership style? “I think so many of the initiatives that she’s been able to energize and launch, particularly just in the last several years, are all the right ones,” Girod says. “And we need to continue that.” While he doesn’t see the university taking a “big left turn” with his arrival, Girod also acknowledges his leadership style as differing slightly from Gray-Little’s. “I personally like to get out and interact a lot, not just on campus but off campus as well. I’ve always had a pretty open-door policy. We’ll see how all that works,” he says, laughing. It is important for him, Girod says, to maintain clinical practice even while serving as executive vice chancellor of the KU Medical Center, work he plans to continue one day a week as KU chancellor. “Having boots on the ground, you know much more about what’s going on and how changes are impacting people and how it impacts our operations, our faculty and our students,” Girod says. “And just having some degree of knowledge of that has just really helped me as a I think about what we need to do and how to set priorities.”
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I personally like to get out and interact a lot, not just on campus but off campus as well. I’ve always had a pretty open-door policy. We’ll see how all that works.
“Obviously immersion with a pretty steep learning curve with some new constituents, and really getting to know better our assets and our opportunities there, and working with the deans and faculty to understand that,” Girod says. “But pretty early on, I would like to focus on that student experience piece.” A lot of that framework has already been put in place, Girod says, but the university should push for a more cohesive and deliberate strategy when it comes to student experience, which includes recruitment, retention and graduation rates. He doesn’t want KU to suffer the same fate as the University of MissouriColumbia, he says. As of spring 2017, Mizzou officials had predicted at least a 14-percent decline in incoming freshmen this fall, leading to the school’s smallest class in nearly 20 years. “That is devastating to a university, and I don’t think in a decade you could dig your way out of that. And it’s a great institution, it really is,” Girod says. “But that’s an area that we need to continue to really focus on.”
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Gray-Little leaves chancellor’s office with long list of achievements, a bit of advice for successor
PHOTOGRAPH LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD FILE PHOTO
Bernadette Gray-Little
Bernadette Gray-Little stepped down as chancellor of the University of Kansas this summer with a robust list of achievements during her eight years leading KU. Among the most visible is a flurry of construction, some of which is still ongoing, including KU’s $350 million Central District redevelopment project. In all, KU completed 50 capital improvement projects totaling $700 million under Gray-Little’s leadership, according to KU. Other keystones of KU’s Gray-Little era include implementing new admissions standards, launching a new undergraduate curriculum, growing the freshman class for five straight years, expanding KU’s pharmacy
and medical schools, and hiring 12 faculty of distinction as part of KU’s Foundation Distinguished Professors initiative. Many building and other initiatives were enabled or helped by KU Endowment’s record-setting $1.66 billion Far Above fundraising campaign, which began and ended during Gray-Little’s tenure. When asked what advice she would give the next KU chancellor, Gray-Little said: “Be clear what your priorities and principles are.” Those guide decisions through a complex landscape involving many stakeholders — from state legislators to the university’s thousands of individual
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employees — who “have something to say” about what KU does, she said. “Navigating that in a way that follows the principles of the university community is important,” Gray-Little said. “You have to collaborate with a lot of different groups and a lot of different entities, and you should collaborate with them and keep in mind what the university is for and where we should be heading.” What’s next for Gray-Little? She’s stepping down as chancellor but not retiring her career, she said. While all her plans aren’t yet fully formed, she plans to stay in Lawrence for the immediate future and remain involved in higher education in other ways, she said. That includes serving on the boards of the national Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and of the Online Computer Library Center global library cooperative. She said she’ll also be on a Social Science Research Council task force called “To Secure Knowledge.” She said the group will focus on threats to social science research, concerns about the availability of national research and the availability of national databases that have been “challenged” in the past year. Gray-Little, 72, became KU’s 17th chancellor in August 2009. She was the university’s first female and first AfricanAmerican chancellor. Her successor, KU Medical Center executive vice chancellor Dr. Douglas Girod, took over as chancellor in July. Upon his hiring in May, Girod said KU was on a “great trajectory.” He said his years working closely with Gray-Little would be an asset. “There is not an element of this job that, I believe, she did not excel at,” Girod said. “We owe Bernadette gratitude for that.”
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Student Body Leaders Transportation, safety and participation are platform goals for new leadership.
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University of Kansas Student Body President Mady Womack, Leawood, right, and Student Body Vice President Mattie Carter, Overland Park, stand outside Spooner Hall.
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ll students come to the University of Kansas to learn, but surveys indicate that the majority of people who experience sexual taking part in campus government has taught Student Body violence still don’t report it, and that the new reporting program aims to President Mady Womack another lesson. make reporting easier. “I think what I really learned is that on campus you have a real ability “Consent education is a huge piece of the puzzle, but how do we and power to make change at the university,” Womack said. “Change that work on reforming our institution to better meet what survivors need?” outlasts you and that can make it better for every Jayhawk that goes here.” Womack said. “This system that we’ve been looking at is designed by Womack, a senior from Overland Park majoring in economics, said survivors for survivors.” much of that lesson came last year when she served as student senate The third goal is to increase participation and diversity within government relations director under Student Body President Stephonn student government by creating a freshman internship program. Alcorn. She said it was that realization and the desire to improve the Womack said she wants to consider how Student Senate measures experiences of KU students that motivated her to run for student body up when it comes to the wider campus conversation on diversity and president herself. equity. She said to address the issue, involvement needs to start as In general, Womack said the way she tries soon as students arrive on campus. to bring about such changes is by looking at “The broader problem is we have a how the university prepares students for the lack of sustained, successful freshman next step in their lives through both personal involvement in Student Senate,” Womack and professional development. said. “So finding a way to just bring more “I’ve had a great experience at KU, and if freshmen into the process.” I can find a way to help make other peoples’ Carter also has another endeavor on experiences better and more aligned then her agenda: to go through the 200-plus page that’s a huge accomplishment,” Womack said. Student Senate Rules and Regulations. Carter That effort includes specific initiatives, with said the document contains inconsistencies and a focus on improving student safety. Womack outdated rules that are no longer applicable, and Student Body Vice President Mattie Carter, which have led to confusion. a senior from Kansas City, Mo., majoring in “I think it will make next year run a lot journalism and political science, laid out three smoother, and that will help make sure that our goals as part of their platform: modifying platform can be implemented,” Carter said. transportation options, improving reporting for Because Student Senate is the body that sexual assault, and increasing participation and allocates required campus fees (subject diversity within student government. to approval from the chancellor), Carter Womack and Carter ran with the OneKU noted that savings from the transportation coalition and beat out three other duos that changes could be directed to other needs. campaigned to lead the student body. Womack Carter said she thinks an area that could use and Carter have both served as student senators additional attention is mental health, including and worked together previously. Carter said addressing suicide. though she didn’t necessarily set out to be “I don’t want to attend a school where student body vice president, their experience in that’s a problem, where people reach the point the Senate had prepared them for the job. where they want to take their lives,” Carter —MATTIE CARTER “When it came around for people to be said. “And I think making sure that we’re able to run, there was a very short list of doing everything we can to address mental people who could actually do that job, and I health needs on campus is important.” was lucky enough to be one of them,” Carter Where the potential savings in student said. “And Mady and I have worked together in the past and so that’s fees would be directed isn’t yet determined, but overall, Womack said kind of how that came about.” it’s about making sure all students are able to carve out a space for Regarding transportation, the goal is to finalize a partnership with themselves while they are at KU. the ride-sharing company Uber. Womack said the plan is to transition “We all fundamentally want the same thing as students,” Womack the current Saferide program at KU into an Uber partnership, which she said. “We want to get a degree that betters our life and takes us where said will provide better service for a lower cost to their campus fees. we want to go, and in the meantime feel like we have a place to belong “That’s the future of what students want,” Womack said. “You don’t wait at the university. A place to kind of call our own.” 45 minutes for a Saferide if you’re in a bad situation, you call an Uber and you get out of there. So providing students with a transportation method that better serves them and has the ability to save students money.” To improve reporting of sexual assault, the goal is to initiate Project ROCHELLE VALVERDE @RochelleVerde Callisto, a sexual assault reporting technology. Womack noted that KU
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When it came around for people to be able to run, there was a very short list of people who could actually do that job, and I was lucky enough to be one of them.
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Paige Fields New dean views move into Capitol Federal Hall as an exciting opportunity for growth for business school.
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OPPOSITE Paige Fields, dean of the Trinity University School of Business, gives a presentation at Capitol Federal Hall on the campus of the University of Kansas. Fields is now the new dean of the KU School of Business.
apitol Federal Hall — the new building that houses the University of Kansas School of Business — is palatial, but it is not an actual palace. If it were, though, Paige Fields knows what she would do. She would make sure you and everybody else knew how to balance their checkbooks. “If I were king of the world, I would have every high school student in the country have a personal finance course,” Fields said. “There is nothing more useful.” Fields, of course, is not king of the world. She has to settle for being the new dean of the KU business school, which, come to find out, has some royal-like perks these days. The biggest is Capitol Federal Hall. It has nearly 170,000 square feet of state-ofthe-art technology, classrooms, research labs and collaboration space. Although years of planning went into its 2016 opening, it really will be Fields and her team who figure out what happens inside the grand space now. “This is just such an excellent place to be,” said Fields, who in May was hired as dean after having led the school of business at Trinity University in San Antonio. “Because of the new building, you have the chance to decide what goes in it. This is really a golden moment to come into a school as dean. There is so much opportunity for growth and innovation.” Fields wants to make sure that some of that growth and innovation finds its way outside of the walls of the new business school building. That’s where Fields has her mind on checkbooks again. I know what you are thinking: Deans always have their minds
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on checkbooks, as in how they get their hands on those of donors. But Fields is genuine in her desire to help others balance theirs. The business school has done work in the area of promoting financial literacy. She wants to learn more about what the school is already doing and discuss how it can do more to help ordinary Kansans better understand financial topics that likely will impact their daily lives. “That idea of a ‘numbers sense’ center has the potential to reach far outside the university,” Fields said. There are other programs that also excite Fields. She said the KU business school is well-positioned to become one of the leaders in the emerging field of business analytics. She said KU’s business analytics program already is recognized as the leader in a multistate area. She thinks there is potential to grow the program. “It is an area where there is an enormous employment gap,” Fields said. “There is a real need there, but nobody to do the work.” Fields also highlighted the business school’s center for ethics in business, its study abroad program and its career services organization, among others. But to get a full sense of the business school’s —PAIGE FIELDS strengths and weaknesses, she said she wants to dive into a strategic planning process for the school. Having the resources that come with the new Capitol Federal Hall will make it an exciting process, but also one that can go awry if not managed properly. “There is a lot that can happen, but it needs to happen in a controlled way,” she said. “Controlled growth and innovation — that will be the key.”
If I were king of the world, I would have every high school student in the country have a personal finance course. There is nothing more useful.
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Fields, 55, said she is thrilled to have the chance to help chart the future at KU. For years, it appeared that she had found her home in her native Texas. For 18 years she was at Texas A&M, where she did significant research on corporate finance, corporate governance and banking. For the last five years she was at Trinity University, a small but well-heeled private liberal arts school in San Antonio. She served the last two years as dean of the university’s business school. Certainly she was aware of KU and the reputation of its business school, but there was somebody else in her house who had the school even more top of mind. Her husband, Michael Wilkins, is a noted accounting professor. He had been to Lawrence and the KU campus several times for accounting conferences. “He’s always been impressed with Lawrence and KU,” Fields said. “He’s been talking about moving to KU for a long time. So, I definitely was getting encouraged on the home front.” Fields also didn’t have to look far on the Trinity campus to find someone who could provide insight about being a Jayhawk. Danny Anderson is the president of Trinity University. Prior to that job, Anderson was the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at KU. With encouragement from several sources, Fields reached out to the recruiting firm that was conducting the dean search for KU. That firm did what recruiting firms often do: It encouraged her to apply for not only the KU job, but several other dean openings across the country. Fields’ response may provide a glimpse into her personality. “I told them the only one I wanted to apply for was the Kansas job,” Fields said. “I don’t want to go play the field. I wouldn’t date you if I didn’t want to marry you. But I also don’t want to let a good opportunity pass by. Kansas was just too good of an opportunity.”
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ABOVE A classroom at Capitol Federal Hall. OPPOSITE The new University of Kansas School of Business, Capitol Federal Hall.
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Unique indoor display of over 120 antique and vintage Christmas Trees.
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Michelle Mohr Carney KU School of Social Welfare dean ready to guide school to address social challenges.
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or the new dean of the many social problems, hard times for University of Kansas School folks, social and economic injustice,” of Social Welfare, it was the Carney said. “When you come at it forward momentum of the school that through a strengths perspective, it’s made her want to come to KU. just a positive reframing.” Michelle Mohr Carney, former Carney was one of four finalists professor and director of Arizona for the position who visited campus in State’s School of Social Work, said April to give public presentations. the KU School of Social Welfare’s Former KU School of Social reputation is outstanding and its Welfare Dean Paul Smokowski faculty members are having an impact announced his resignation in March in the field. 2016 after student diversity protests “Not only do they seem to be really personally targeted him. Professor of great teachers and Social Welfare very involved in Steve Kapp the community, served as the but they’re also school’s interim creating high dean. Smokowski impact research remains a and pushing social professor at KU. work knowledge Carney has forward,” Carney been director of said. “I was just Arizona State’s real impressed with School of Social the place all the work since way around.” 2014, overseeing KU’s School expansion of of Social Welfare degree program is ranked among offerings, the top 20 public enrollment programs in the increases and the nation. It is also the development of only Kansas social two new research welfare program to centers, according offer degrees at the to KU. Previously, bachelor’s, master’s she worked at and doctoral levels, the University of —MICHELLE according to KU. Georgia for 10 MOHR CARNEY Carney’s years in faculty research focuses and leadership on intimate roles. From 1998 partner violence, to 2004, she was at-risk youths, community practices, at the University of South Carolina. leadership development, and As dean of KU’s School of Social collaboration and conflict resolution. Welfare, Carney said she sees her Carney, who officially joined KU’s role as helping the school advance its faculty in July, also said she thinks the vision and mission to educate students school seems to fit really well with and further the profession. her social work perspective. She “In academia, it’s basically noted that KU has a reputation as teaching, research and service, so one of the leaders of strengths-based we really focus on that holy trinity,” social work practice. Carney said. “And I really see KU “Social work can be such a School of Social Welfare as being able complex profession dealing with so to excel in all three areas.”
When you come at (social work) through a strengths perspective, it’s just a positive reframing.
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Carney received her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in social work from The Ohio State University and a master’s of science in social administration from Case Western Reserve University. Carney also said that schools of social work need to look at their impact on social problems, especially how they are preparing their students to address the 12 Grand Challenges of social work. Those include issues like homelessness, social isolation and over-incarceration. “Schools of social work around the
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nation are thinking how can they make their impact,” Carney said. “In terms of how we prepare our students to work in the future to address these challenges and then how do we conduct research that ameliorates these problems.” In addition to her role at KU, Carney said she is also looking forward to calling Lawrence home. “It’s a really lovely college town,” Carney said. “... Here in Phoenix at ASU, I’m downtown, so I’m in an urban setting, and it was nice to get back to the college feel of a town.”
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Michelle Mohr Carney, professor and director of the School of Social Work at Arizona State gives a presentation at the Kansas Union. She is now the dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas.
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DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
Rusha Bajpai
Hopes to make campus more welcoming and inclusive.
PETER HANCOCK @ljwpqhancock
kutoday.com
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PHOTOGRAPH LJW FILE PHOTO
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he University of Kansas has long prided itself as being a campus that embraces diversity among its students and faculty. But in recent years, that self-image has come under challenge from student groups that say the campus is not as welcoming and inclusive as it could be. That’s something Senior Rusha Bajpai hopes to improve as the Student Senate’s new director of diversity and inclusion. “It’s been something that has been on the agenda here, but more with the Trump administration as well,” she said during a recent phone interview. “Those kinds of issues with immigration and things like that have been on the forefront this year, I believe.” Bajpai was born in Calcutta, India, but has lived in Kansas since the age of 4 when her parents moved here. For students of color, she said, the climate on campus has room for improvement. “I think overall, it’s not like explicit animosity toward minorities,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s to that scale. But definitely there are racial undertones. You’ll hear words similar to a racial slur being said to somebody, or something happening here and there. So even if something isn’t happening to me personally, it’s that knowledge that something could be happening.” Bajpai said her main goal as diversity and inclusion director is to make sure that underrepresented groups know their voices are being heard. “Some things that we would like to do would be to reach out more to these underrepresented and minority groups, and that entails actually being present at their meetings, having a more open dialog about what they would like to see happening on campus,” Bajpai said.
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A Time of Transition New faces in chancellor’s office and other top administrative positions.
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o new face at the University of Kansas this year will be as prominent as the chancellor’s. But there are several other highranking KU administrative positions with new occupants. Dr. Douglas Girod, formerly executive vice chancellor of the KU Medical Center, was named the university’s 18th chancellor in May. He began his duties in a new role in July. Here are some of the other top faculty leaders and other administrators coming aboard for the 2017-18 school year. SCHOOL OF BUSINESS DEAN L. Paige Fields Fields is former dean of business at Trinity University in San Antonio. Previously she was at Texas A&M University. SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WELFARE DEAN Michelle Mohr Carney Carney was professor and director of Arizona State’s School of Social Work. KU STUDENT HOUSING DIRECTOR Sarah Waters Waters previously was director of residence life at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She is a Leavenworth native.
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
VICE PROVOST FOR DIVERSITY AND EQUITY Jennifer Hamer Hamer, who has been at KU since 2012, is a professor in the departments of American studies and African and African-American studies. Though the university has had a lower-ranking diversity official since 2005, KU created the position of vice provost for diversity and equity in 2011, and the role and the issues it’s designed to improve gained additional attention following recent years of campus diversity activism.
SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep
VICE PROVOST FOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT J. Christopher Brown Brown is a professor with joint appointments in KU’s department of geography and atmospheric science and the Environmental Studies Program, of which he also is director. The vice provost for faculty development oversees faculty recruitment and professional growth of existing KU faculty. SENIOR VICE PROVOST FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS Stuart Day Day is an associate professor of Spanish and former director of faculty programs in KU’s Office of International Programs. He has been in the position on an interim basis for more than a year before being named permanently. OPEN POSITIONS The following administrative roles were recently vacated, though replacements have not been named as of early summer. EXECUTIVE VICE CHANCELLOR OF KU MEDICAL CENTER With Girod’s promotion to chancellor, KU will need to find a new top administrator for the medical center. VICE CHANCELLOR FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS The position oversees KU’s government relations, strategic communications, marketing, media relations and major event management. Tim Caboni left KU this summer to become president of Western Kentucky University. CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER The position, previously held by Bob Lim, oversees KU Information Technology.
OPPOSITE Prospective University of Kansas students walk past the Kansas Union while on a walking tour of the campus.
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events. occasion. happenings.
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
A historic collection comes of age. Uncomfortable race issues addressed through reading. Scholarship winners experience real life. University takes aim at smoking. Professors give back in memory of 1972 protest. A preview of sports glory to come.
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Digitizing Phog Research library’s Phog Allen collection being readied for online viewing.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, KENNETH SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY, KU
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t was one of those “aha” moments that bring archivists joy. Buried within the boxes of the Forrest “Phog” Allen collection at the University of Kansas at the Spencer Research Library was a letter the legendary Jayhawk basketball coach wrote to a 14-year-old boy, said Rebecca Schulte, KU archivist. “One of the letters we found when we started working on this project was a letter Phog had written to Bob Dole — Mr. Bobby Dole,” she said. “I contacted the Dole Institute archivist, and they were quite thrilled. They made a copy of it for their collection.” Allen’s son, Mitt, was a pharmacist who took a position at the Russell, Kan. drug store upon graduation at KU, where a young Jayhawk basketball fan named Bob Dole worked. The younger Allen arranged for his father to write his young friend, Schulte explained. “One of comments Phog Allen put in the letter to Bobby was that he would go far and that he might even see him in the ‘Who’s Who’ someday,” she said. “I don’t know if he wrote that to every 14-year-old, but he did to Dole.” The project Schulte referred to will make the letter accessible to a much wider audience sometime in the near future. That correspondence and the other 66,000 items in the Phog Allen collection are to be digitized and made available online, said LeAnn Meyer, communications director for KU Libraries. The $30,000 to $50,000 process is being undertaken after a number of large donors stepped up during a KU Endowment capital campaign for the effort last spring, she said. “I think naturally there is a lot of interest in the history and legacy of basketball at the university,” she said. “The archives are proud to be home of those items. Given the size the collect and interest in Phog, that was kind of the starting point. And just as a way to make it
accessible to current KU students, alumni and researchers worldwide, it was a good fit.” There’s a lot of material because of Allen’s long and varied involvement with the university from his student days from 1904 to 1909 to his coaching career as the Jayhawk basketball coach for 39 years, football coach in 1920, baseball coach in 1941 and 1942, and athletic director from 1919 to 1939. Through all that time, one of Allen’s habits helped build the collection, Meyer and Schulte said. “He was a huge correspondent,” Meyer said. “There are letters to and from fans, letters to his players who were in World War II, correspondence with the Olympics, correspondence with the NCAA tournament. We have everything from photos to his sketches of the dimensions of the back broad or the arc. Playbooks — you name it, we have it. We have recordings, both audio and visual. It really runs the spectrum.” There’s even material of a derivative game of basketball called Goal-Hi that the entrepreneurial Allen invented. It was a game with a single basket on a pole that could be played on confined schoolyards or playgrounds, Schulte said. Unfortunately for its inventor, the game didn’t catch on. Schulte said Spencer Research Library fields frequent requests to view the approximately 30 boxes of material in the collection from interested fans, KU students doing research and researchers looking for source material on Allen, the history of basketball, the NCAA and the Olympics. Allen was instrumental in making basketball a part of the Olympics in 1936 and coached the American team in 1952. “Even people who are not interested in sports would find the collection very useful,” she said. “World War II is very well represented, so historians who are interested in the war
would also find the collection to be of use. Also for families who are doing research on their grandfathers, not only could we provide a photo of the person as a basketball player, but we may be able to produce correspondence between the player and Phog Allen.” The collection has already moved beyond the Spencer Research Library, Meyer said. Materials from the collection, a life-size cutout of Phog Allen and the 1952 NCAA national title plaque have been taken on the road as part of a traveling exhibit, she said. “Thanks to the campaign, we’ve been able to take several of the items on the road to visit alumni nationally,” she said. “We currently have a traveling exhibit that features several items from the collection, again letters, photos and various ephemeral that can visit various cities so alumni can see the kinds of things that are located in the archives. It’s great to take those items on the road, but just as exciting to say ‘these items and thousands more will be available at your fingertips online because of the digitalization process.’” The actual digitalization of the collection hasn’t yet started, Schulte said. “What we are doing right now is conservation work, repairing pieces of paper,” she said. “Some are in pretty fragile condition, so the book conservator is doing repairs ahead of our digital effort. Then in the processing department, the materials are looked at and refoldered.” Making the collection available online will help with its preservation by reducing the numbers of times items would be handled, Schulte said. There’s no timeline for when the digitalization will be completed, nor has it been determined just how it will be accessed, Schulte said. There would be links to the collection on the Spencer Research Library and KU’s homepages, she said.
ELVYN JONES @ElvynJ
OPPOSITE Phog Allen portrait, 1928.
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Goldwater Scholarships Enthusiasm evident as winners pursue knowledge in physics and genetics.
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eading a book on science before her teenage years, Eilish Gibson discovered neutrinos. The subatomic particles have almost no mass and they’re everywhere, shooting through organisms and elements at every instant, said Gibson, who now studies physics at the University of Kansas. They impact everything and everybody, and they instantly piqued her interest. Similarly, about that time, Gibson discovered the classics: Virgil’s Aeneid, Roman history and, of course, poetry. “I’ve got a soft spot for Roman poetry,” she laughs. And while cynics might have their doubts, the classics, just like the neutrinos, have every day applications, Gibson insists. They help her communicate, which is especially important in the sciences, and the history shapes her view of the world.
Eilish Gibson
“What’s most striking is it’s all exactly the same. A lot of what makes us human is the same over the last 2,000 years,” she said. “There are a lot of similarities to what’s going on now.” Currently Gibson is spending her summer in Geneva, Switzerland, experimenting at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. But soon she’ll return to finish her undergraduate degree, majoring in physics and classical antiquities. This spring, Gibson and another student, Marilyn Barragan, won Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, which are the premier undergraduate awards recognizing excellence in science, engineering and math. Both women come from the area. Gibson was raised in Perry, though she attended school at Lawrence’s Bishop Seabury Academy. Barragan was born in Los Angeles and raised in Olathe.
CONRAD SWANSON
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From an early age Barragan said she had an interest in the natural sciences. As a first generation student, though, she wasn’t sure how far away from her parents she wanted to be at first. “I always kinda knew I’d go to KU because it was really close to home,” she said. “My parents didn’t go to college and they were really concerned about my trajectory, and KU is close.” Barragan recalls watching an online video about a mixture of three-dimensional printing and bioengineering where a scientist recreated a pair of kidneys. “I was really moved by his work and thought I wanted to be a part of that,” she said. Even in high school Barragan said she studied in a bioengineering lab, but since she started college she’s gone off in a bit of a different direction. “I still have a lot of doubts in exactly
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY MARILYN BARRAGAN AND EILISH GIBSON
Marilyn Barragan
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what kind of career I see myself pursuing,” she said. “But it’s also exciting because it’s like a blank slate.” Now, Barragan said she’s particularly interested in genetics, especially relating to different types of immunities to diseases. She’s spending time this summer at Harvard University where she’ll study muscle stem cell differentiation, then she’ll return to KU to finish her degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. Ultimately the plan is to go to graduate school. Both Gibson and Barragan said they applied for the Goldwater Scholarship after their professors and mentors encouraged them to do so. Neither was sure how it was going to turn out. “I wasn’t really expecting to win and when I found out I was shocked and extremely proud and happy that they had recognized my efforts,” Barragan said. “When I told my parents they said ‘we always knew you would win it,’” she added with a laugh. “They have a lot more faith in my goals than I do. And it was an important moment for them because they knew how hard I had worked since the beginning.” Gibson is quick to rattle off the date and time the scholarship’s results were announced: March 31 at 11 a.m. She was too nervous to check her email before then, she was afraid to jinx herself. When she learned of her newly awarded scholarship her first reaction was disbelief. Then a sense of appreciation that her hard work had paid off. “There was a lot of work that went in behind the scenes to go in to making sure I was a strong applicant,” she said. “And on the practical side I think it opens up my options for grad school.” One of Gibson’s professors, Distinguished Professor Alice Bean, said she is one of the program’s many intelligent students. One thing that sets Gibson apart is her second major of classical antiquities. The physics department is full of students who have second areas of study. Music is a common subject, but the classics are a bit less common, Bean said. That area is one that should help Gibson communicate her findings, something the scientific community often struggles with. “A liberal arts degree is very important,” she said. “Science has actually solved a lot of things, but unfortunately people don’t know about it. ... We don’t communicate as well as we should.” Bean said it’s always exciting when a student in the physics department wins a Goldwater Scholarship, and Gibson’s win was no exception. “We’ve enjoyed Eilish, she’s always been great, she does fantastic work and she’s got a bright future,” she said. Neither Gibson nor Barragan know where they’d like to go for their graduate degrees yet. Both say they’re considering their options.
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A Literary Bond KU Common Book picked to facilitate ‘courageous dialogues’ on diversity, equity.
SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep
kutoday.com
s the University of Kansas Common Book selection committee put it, “‘Citizen: An American Lyric’ by Claudia Rankine could not be a more relevant selection for the 2017-18 KU Common Book ... to further facilitate the ongoing courageous dialogues that we need.” “Citizen” was announced in the spring as the common book for the upcoming school year. Incoming freshmen and transfer students receive a copy of the book, and related events and discussions — highlighted by an author talk by Rankine Sept. 7 at the Lied Center — begin as soon as they arrive on campus. A number of classes also will use the book in their curriculums. The choice of “Citizen” is envisioned to build on the foundation created by the university’s 2016-17 Common Book, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.” “It’s about social justice or social injustice; it’s about citizenship and who gets to claim that and identify themselves or be identified as citizens; it’s about belonging,” Howard Graham, associate director for academic programs in KU’s Office of First-Year Experience, told the Journal-World. “And those things are important on this campus. They’re
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important in this state, and they’re important nationally.” The book recounts “mounting racial aggression” in 21st century life and media, according to the publisher. Chronicled encounters range from “slips of the tongue” to “intentional offensives.” “By reading ‘Citizen,’ new students will become part of important conversations at KU about how we decrease and eliminate microaggressions and help one another to thrive,” Sarah CrawfordParker, assistant vice provost for the first-year experience, said in a statement. Another notable point about “Citizen”: Critics have described it as “genre-bending,” as Rankine mixes prose, poetry and images from contemporary artists. It’s won literary awards in categories including criticism and poetry, and was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award, among other honors. KU COMMON BOOK EVENTS Author Claudia Rankine is scheduled to deliver the 2017-18 KU Common Book talk at 7 p.m. Sept. 7 at the Lied Center, 1600 Stewart Drive. Details about more public KU Common Book events can be found at firstyear.ku.edu.
2017
OFFICIAL 2017
IT WAS AN AMAZING DAY.
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Voorhees Allison Marie Voorhees and Remington James Miller were married at two in the afternoon on June 3, 2017 at St. John the Evangelist in Lawrence, Kansas. Officiating was Fr. Barnabas. The bride is the daughter of Jim and Amy Voorhees of Shawnee, Kansas. The groom is the son of Brad and Cathy Miller of Claflin, Kansas. The ceremony took place in a church just off the campus of the University of Kansas where Remington and Allison met and fell in love. In a completely full church, guests admired the alter set with two large arrangements of white hydrangeas accented with fragrant garden roses in shades of pink. Escorted by her father, and given away in marriage by her parents, the bride wore a stunning Emily Hart lace mermaid gown with full bottom. Her bouquet was full of garden roses and calla lilies with emphasis of pink and touches of white and taupe adorned with the Bride’s rosary and bound with light ivory ribbon. The bride was attended by her maid of honor and sister, Courtney Voorhees, and bridesmaids Ashley Dietz, Kiley Bauer, Laura Miller, Bailee Miller, Baylee Clifton, Sarah Voorhees, Julia Merlo, Kaitlyn Benjamin, Bri Hanson, Erin Elmore, Chelsea Zillner, and Kelsey Strube. The bridesmaids wore floor-length gray cross shoulder dresses and held bouquets of garden roses and hydrangeas. Braden and Bryce Miller, brothers of the groom, served as the best men. Tom Voorhees, Michael Latinis, Trent Musgrove, Benn Kirmer, Karl Miller, Matthew Morrison, Will Kerdolf and Tanner Strube served as the groomsmen.
Miller
Following the ceremony guests traveled to The Oread Hotel where they were invited to the rooftop of the hotel. Guests enjoyed drinks and appetizers with a full view of KU’s campus. Immediately following the cocktail hour the guests were invited downstairs to the Hancock Ballroom for dinner, drinks and dancing. The venue stunned the guests with each table set with various floral decorations made and decorated by Jennifer’s Flowers and Events of Lenexa, Kansas. The arrangements, both large and small, gave a unique setting to each table. The bride and groom cut their cake and sipped champagne out of personalized Jayhawk champagne glasses. Toasts were given by the maid of honor, best men, and father of the bride, while guests enjoyed a slice of cake from It’s a Sweet Treat Day Bakery of Tonganoxie, Kansas. Once guests finished eating, the party began with the traditional Grand March, which brought everyone to the dance floor to enjoy a night of dancing along to the band KC Flo. The couple is able to forever enjoy memories of their special day captured by their cinematographers Kashmir Wedding Films and their photographer Tracy Routh. Kimmy Klipsch of Kate & Company coordinated the beautiful ceremony and reception. For their honeymoon, the bride and groom traveled to French Polynesia where they spent a ten wonderful days at The Hilton Moorea Lagoon Resort and The St. Regis Resort in Bora Bora.
Submit your announcement online at www.kansasweddingsmagazine.com/wedding-register or email us questions at info@kansasweddingsmagazine.com
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No smoking, No chewing, No e-cigs KU campus planning to go completely tobacco-free, indoors and out.
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SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep
he ability to smoke and chew tobacco at the University of Kansas is getting closer to being snuffed out. The KU Lawrence campus plans to go not just smoke-free, but completely tobacco-free — indoors and out — beginning in fall 2018. In the coming year, the Tobacco Free KU initiative includes education and informational events to get the word out to the Lawrence campus community, KU spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said. The tobacco-banning policy has been drafted and can be found online at tobaccofree.ku.edu. “It’s important to provide a healthier and more respectful environment for our students, staff and faculty, as well as anyone who visits campus,” Barcomb-Peterson said. “KU is far from alone in going tobacco-free. This change puts us among the 1,400-plus schools across the nation that have already done so.” She added, “Universities are recognizing that these policies help counteract the negative health and environmental effects of tobacco use.” Currently, cigarette smokers, electronic cigarette users and tobacco users can do so on campus but must go outside and get at least 20 feet away from buildings, according to the university’s existing policy. Smoking, electronic cigarettes and tobacco use are all prohibited in Memorial Stadium, the Kansas Memorial Unions, the Adams Alumni Center, and the facilities of the KU Center for Research Inc., the policy says. Smoking and electronic cigarettes are banned in campus housing, but use of chewing tobacco and snuff is allowed for student residents in facilities operated by Student Housing. The Tobacco Free KU initiative has been in the works for several years — at one time, the target implementation date was fall of 2015. But planners said more time has been needed to adjust the draft policy, seek buy-in from campus entities and increase awareness.
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February Sisters CONTINUE TO GIVE BACK
1972 protest leads to positive changes for women on campus, and sustaining those efforts is the goal of professors’ generous gifts.
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or 13 hours in February 1972, a cohort And in the years that followed, of 30 women occupied KU’s East Stokstad, along with English professor and Asian Studies building located at fellow February Sister Elizabeth Schultz, 1322 Louisiana St. This group known as the would continue in her efforts to make February Sisters, seeking more equitable KU a better place. In March 2017, a year conditions for women at KU, remained after Stokstad’s death at age 87, her estate in the building gifted $1.1 million until university toward the Spencer administration Museum of Art and agreed to give them other areas of art an audience and until history study at protestors felt they the university. It had made their point was the latest of publicly. several donations The radical by Stokstad, a act led to distinguished several demands professor emerita being realized, of art history and among them the former Spencer establishment of Museum director, the Hilltop Day whose lifetime and Care Center in 1972, estate donations to the development KU total more than of a women’s $2.3 million. studies department “There’s no —ELIZABETH SCHULTZ and major in question about the 1972, access to fact that Marilyn contraceptive pills would be profoundly and gynecological delighted to see the services through Student Health Services changes at the Spencer,” said Schultz, 81, starting in 1972, and the appointment of now a professor emerita at KU. “She would Marilyn Stokstad in 1972 as the first female love the new study room. She would love the associate dean of what was then called the way in which the museum has opened itself College of Arts and Sciences. up to the campus. She would, I think, be so
There’s nothing more wonderful than having the sense that, through a gift, you can make change.
JOANNA HLAVACEK
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
@HlavacekJoanna
OPPOSITE Elizabeth Schultz, a professor emerita of English at the University of Kansas, is providing $1.5 million for the Herman Melville Distinguished Professorship in the Department of English.
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appreciative of the new lighting and the new floors that are now in the museum.” The Spencer Museum re-opened last fall after the completion of $8 million renovations, headed by Saralyn Reece Hardy, the museum’s Marilyn Stokstad director. Stokstad’s lead gift in 2012 (bolstered earlier this year with an additional $300,000 gift from her estate) helped establish the directorship, only the third named position established by a woman and named for a woman in the university’s history. Last summer, Schultz followed in her late colleague’s footsteps by contributing a large gift of her own, a $1.5 commitment toward the establishment of a permanent Herman Melville Distinguished Professorship in the KU English department. Schultz, known as one of the world’s foremost scholars on Melville and “Moby-Dick,” hopes the gift will ensure the study of Melville and his contemporaries for years to come. After a “very intense and global search,” Schultz said, KU’s first Herman Melville professor, Randall Fuller of the University of Tulsa, will begin teaching at KU in the
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fall. The course will focus on John Brown in American literature, said Schultz, who wanted to remain “hands off” in the search process for the professorship. Still, the professorship is very much a point of pride for Schultz, who taught at KU from 1967 until her retirement in 2001. “There’s nothing more exciting,” Schultz said of “making things happen” through philanthropy. “There’s nothing more wonderful than having the sense that, through a gift, you can make change.” As an ally who aided the 20 women and their four children occupying the East Asian Studies building back in February 1972, Schultz considers herself a February Sister. But, she demurs, the truly “important February Sisters were the really radical women who were also in the house.” Schultz brought hot food to the protestors inside the building, she said, while Stokstad acted as a liaison between her Sisters and thenchancellor E. Laurence Chalmers. Since then, Schultz said, the status of
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women on the KU campus has improved “leaps and bounds ahead of where we were” when she first arrived in Lawrence in 1967. She’s proud, she said, to follow in the tradition of female donors like Stokstad and the late Elizabeth M. Watkins, known as the “Fairy Godmother” of KU. Watkins’ many gifts to the university and Lawrence community began in 1926 with the opening of Watkins Scholarship Hall, a cooperative dormitory for women. Shultz is happy to see more women in leadership positions at the university, including departing chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, who became the university’s first female chancellor (as well as the first AfricanAmerican chancellor) in 2009. “Women have always, always done the hard work at KU of being secretaries and assistants, and they continue to do that, but I think they are also in much more powerful positions as well,” Schultz said. “We hold up half the sky, so we should be holding up half of KU, too,” she said. “My guess is that I think we do.”
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Phoenix Award winner Marilyn Stokstad is pictured at her home in 2014. kutoday.com
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KU Sports Preview Dynamic duos and their unique relationships on the field or court may hold the secret to glory-filled seasons for which fans yearn.
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very sports team at Kansas has at least one dynamic duo worthy of attention. Here is a quick look at tandems to enjoy watching during the 2017-18 school year:
TOM KEEGAN PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
@ElvynJ Kansas wide receiver Steven Sims Jr. (11) gets near the end zone after a catch late in the fourth quarter during a 2016 game at Memorial Stadium.
FOOTBALL Daylon Charlot and Steven Sims The forgettable 2012 Kansas football season featured one memorable statistic, no matter how hard everyone might try to forget it. The Jayhawks (1-11) went the entire season without getting a single touchdown reception from a wide receiver. That won’t happen this season. It will be difficult for opponents to go an entire half of a game without letting a Kansas receiver into the end zone, thanks to the presence of Sims, a junior, and Charlot, a sophomore in his first season playing for Kansas after transferring from Alabama. Sims set Kansas decade highs in receptions (72), receiving yards (859) and touchdowns (seven) last season, numbers that should all grow because the Jayhawks are expected to have more consistent play at quarterback. Peyton Bender, a transfer from Itawamba Community College in Mississippi, and Carter Stanley, KU’s late-season starter in 2016, came out of spring football still battling for the job. Charlot left Alabama after playing sparingly as a freshman, even though the nation’s most accomplished college football coach, Nick Saban, put on the full-court press
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to try to keep him. Charlot showed why he was worthy of such attention by having a strong spring game that included a circus catch near the sideline and a touchdown reception. Kansas football fans haven’t been this excited about a receiver tandem since Dezmon Briscoe and Kerry Meier were hauling in Todd Reesing’s passes. VOLLEYBALL Ainise Havili and Kelsie Payne This pair of two-time All-Americans plans to finish their standout careers in the best possible way, by winning a national championship at Sprint Center in Kansas City, site of the Final Four. Payne is a two-time first-team AllAmerican outside hitter. A setter, Havili earned first-team All-American honors as a sophomore, third-team as a junior. Their contrasting styles bring out the best in each other and the rest of the team. Setters who know just where to put the ball for hitters live to play with long, strong leapers gifted with accurate, overpowering shots across the net. Players gifted at piling up kills dream about playing with setters who know just when and where to get them the ball. By their sophomore seasons, Havili, the facilitator, and Payne, the finisher, already had developed such good chemistry that they led the Jayhawks all the way to their first Final Four appearance in school history. They’re aiming for that and more in their final season.
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MEN’S BASKETBALL Devonté Graham and Malik Newman Graham enters his third season as a starter but his first without Frank Mason III, who became the first player in Kansas history to win all three major national-player-of-theyear awards. Graham played off the ball more with Mason on the court. His role shifts to primary ballhandler for his final season. A 6-foot-3 shooting guard armed with explosive quickness, leaping ability and a soft 3-point shooting touch, Newman was ranked by Rivals.com as the eighth-best prospect in the nation coming out of high school. The talented transfer from Mississippi State decided he would rather play for Bill Self than Ben Howland and spent last season as a practice player for Kansas. Self said he will be surprised if Newman does not join Graham as an all-conference guard. Graham, who as a sophomore outplayed national player of the year Buddy Hield of Oklahoma in a road game, enters the season as a strong candidate for national honors.
Kansas infielder James Cosentino (9) throws out a runner during the second inning of an early 2017 outing.
OPPOSITE (clockwise from top left) Kansas infielder Rudy Karre (42) tries to run out a dropped ball during the first inning of an early 2017 game. Team Jayhawks receiver Daylon Charlot roars after scoring what proved to be the winning touchdown during the fourth quarter of the 2017 Spring Game at Memorial Stadium. Kansas guard Devonte’ Graham (4) puts up a shot over Oklahoma State guard Brandon Averette (0) during the second half of a March 2017 game at Gallagher-Iba Arena. Blue Team guard Malik Newman gets in for a bucket past Red Team defenders Mario Chalmers, left, and Keith Langford during a scrimmage at the Horejsi Family Athletics Center. Kansas guard Jessica Washington (3) puts up a shot over two defenders in the lane in the Jayhawks game against the Missouri State Lady Bears in November 2016 at Allen Fieldhouse. Kansas guard Kylee Kopatich (33) has a shot smothered by TCU center Carol Willie (55) during the first half of a 2016 game at Allen Fieldhouse.
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WOMEN’S BASKETBALL Jessica Washington and Kylee Kopatich Washington is so fast and so quick that she routinely makes defenses collapse. Sometimes the collapse happens too late and she puts up a shot herself. At other times, she needs a safe place to send the basketball. Washington makes an ideal teammate for a shooter, and that’s where Kopatich enters the equation. In leading Kansas in scoring (17.1 points per game) and assists (2.8), Washington made 61 3-pointers of her own and set up Kopatich for many of her 53 treys. Each year, Kopatich becomes a little stronger, which enables her to extend her range, and a little more accustomed to the speed of the game, which improves her shot selection and enables her to get off shots more quickly. Given that, it’s reasonable to expect that her 3-point shooting accuracy will make as big a leap forward as it did from her freshman to sophomore season. Compared to her freshman season, Kopatich made eight more 3-pointers on four fewer attempts last season, enabling her shooting
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percentage to increase from .263 to .317. If she can repeat that improvement, making eight more shots on four fewer attempts, her 3-point percentage would jump to .374, a figure that last season would have placed her 12th in the conference. Washington proved to be all that her advance billing boasted, but too often she had too little help and had to take on too much of the scoring load. Improved play from the post and more accurate outside shooting from Kopatich could enable Washington to do more by taking on less. Kopatich shot .838 from the free-throw line, an indication her shooting touch is plenty soft. BASEBALL Rudy Karre and James Cosentino Rule 6.08(b) in the official rules of baseball deals with a batter being touched by a pitched baseball. The rule stipulates that the batter must make an effort to avoid being hit by the pitch. Feigning such effort is an art form perfected only by the toughest, most fearless hitters. Baseball coaches gain respect for hitters who are adept at “wearing” pitches they could have avoided with a little more effort. It’s a painful way to get on base, but nobody keeps track of players’ pain. Statisticians do track on-base percentages, however, and Karre’s is on the high side (.416) because he “wears” a lot of baseballs. Karre, KU’s leadoff hitter and second baseman, was hit by 27 pitches last season, a stunning number considering Kansas played just 58 games. He ranked second in the nation in HBP and made spectacular catches in center field. Cosentino, a similarly in-your-face baseball player, followed Karre in the batting order and played second base so well that if coach Ritch Price needs to move Cosentino to shortstop, he’ll feel comfortable doing so. Even better at football than baseball, Cosentino set the St. Thomas Aquinas High School single-season record for rushing yards (1,298). Karre and Cosentino set the table and the tone for Kansas, which will need to do a better job of driving in runs than a year ago in order to reach the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2014.
PHOTOGRAPHS (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) LJW FILE PHOTO, NICK KRUG (4), LJW FILE PHOTO (2)
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T. Rex Dig KU team looks to solve mysteries in third year of Montana T. rex dig.
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OPPOSITE Paleontologist David Burnham gives a tour of a lab at KU’s Dyche Hall where he and his students have organized many small bone fragments of a T. rex.
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ossil digs have one similarity to a soldier’s wartime experience, University of Kansas paleontologist David Burnham said. Both are filled with hours of routine, tedious labor punctuated with the periods of intensity. As he prepared this spring to lead a team in June back to the remote Montana dig site, Burnham anticipated at least the start of this year’s dig would be exciting. “We’re going to try to get more of that T. rex,” he said. “We found a large bone at the edge of the quarry just before we had to go home last summer. We always find the best stuff right before we go home. The same thing happened the year before.” This summer marked the third straight year Burnham has led a team to the remote central Montana site to recover parts of a tyrannosaurus rex fossil. The word team in this case defines an ever-changing cadre of volunteers of KU students and those fascinated with paleontology who participate in parts of the four- to six-week digs, he said.
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The T. rex Burnham and his team uncovered lived 66.5 million years ago. That date is one of the things that make the bones distinctive. “That’s the earliest known T. rex,” Burnham said. “That formation holds T. rex bones just a couple million years after their evolution. They are more common later in geologic history.” Two other unique features of the animal are that it appears to be a relatively young female and gravid, Burnham said. One of his students was very interested in the T. rex’s age, Burnham said. From the length of the animal’s long bones it was known it wasn’t full grown but at 40-foot long from nose to tip of its tail, it was getting “right up there to full size,” he said. Discovering its age of 15 years involved cutting and examining the interior of a bone, he said. It was 13 years younger than the famous 28-yearold Sue excavated from South Dakota and now on exhibit at the Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. The bones of both animals indicate life wasn’t easy for the apex predator of its time, he said.
What Burnham and his team has uncovered in the Montana quarry is a T. rex that lived 66.5 million years ago.
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“There’s lots of injuries on this animal so far,” Burnham said. “The oldest one uncovered, Sue, had injuries all over her body.” The animals fought each other in competition for food, and a young T. rex even had to survive a threat from its own kind, Burnham said. “We know they were cannibalistic,” he said. “You have the big, bad T. rex eating babies.” To date, the KU team has excavated an about 20-foot by 30-foot hole and has discovered a good percentage of the T. rex’s bones, including most of the back legs and hips, Burnham said. What’s missing is most of the back, ribs, skull and the upper jaw, which Burnham said he’d love to find. Another significant find would be the front arms and claws, which with their smaller bones are rarely recovered, he said. “Only five have ever been found,” he said. “The first they found they swore it couldn’t be a T. rex because it was too small.” One of the bones uncovered appears to have excess calcium associated with egg development, indicating the young female T. rex was gravid, Burnham said. Tests are being done to confirm that, he said. The T. rex is not the only dinosaur the team has discovered at the site. They’ve also found a torosaurus, Burnham said. Finding the dinosaur similar to the large triple-horned vegetarian triceratops is significant in its own right and may help solve the puzzle of whether the torosaurus is more than just similar to a triceratops, he said. “It’s an exciting find,” he said. “It might not be full grown. It’s an interesting story.
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There is a debate that the torosaurus is an immature triceratops. To settle the argument, we need to find the right bone to cut and determine its age.” The KU excavators have found the dinosaur’s shield and most of the skull, Burnham said. They will excavate farther back into the debris field to attempt to uncover more bones of both animals. Although the fossil field is now on top of a butte that the team has to scale to conclude its’ daily four-wheel drive commutes from Jordan, at the time of the dinosaurs’ deaths, the site was near a river or stream making its way to ancient lowlands, Burnham said. That gives a possible clue about how the two dinosaurs met their ends, Burnham said. With no sign of injuries suggesting the T. rex died violently, it’s possible it died of thirst after making its way to a dried watering hole, he said. “They may have both died at the water hole if the story ends up being true,” he said. The trip was financed through a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign last spring, said Jennifer Humphrey, director of external of affairs for the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. It raised the $14,500 needed for the summer dig and additional funds that will help clean the bones and display them in KU Natural History Museum, she said. Cliff Atkins and John Weltman, the parents of KU dig team member Kyle Atkins-Weltman, contributed $10,000 of that amount, she said. To date, the T. rex fossil doesn’t have a name like the famous Sue. “We’re got things mulling around,” Burnham said. “It’s above my pay grade.”
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
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CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR
Bala Subramaniam Talking up Kansas energy at KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis.
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CONRAD SWANSON OPPOSITE Bala Subramaniam, University of Kansas distinguished professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, at home in the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis labs.
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
ou might call Bala Subramaniam a professor of the inevitable. Eventually this planet’s fossil fuels will be depleted. Similarly, generations of mass production and emissions are already impacting our global climate and the issue is only getting worse. Subramaniam, the Dan F. Servey Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Kansas, works every day to find ways to maximize what’s left of fossil fuels and other limited resources. He also searches for ways to supplement those processes, replacing old techniques with newer, sustainable ones. In short, Subramaniam runs KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis, off the intersection of Bob Billings Parkway and Wakarusa Drive. Considering the nature of his work, Subramaniam insists that Kansas is the place to be, a location more strategically positioned for success than anywhere else in the world. “Kansas is in the Top 10 for production of biomass, wind energy, gas and oil,” he said. “I don’t think any other state can make that claim.” The aspect of his job dealing with limited resources—like gas and oil—partially translates to maximizing efficiencies, however small. When crude oil is processed about 90 percent is used to make transportation fuels, while the other 10 percent is used in making chemicals, Subramaniam said. That 10 percent, however, accounts for two-thirds of the oil’s value. In the CEBC labs, Subramaniam is happy to explain the current projects. He does so with great vigor, proud of the team’s work. The lab holds several fume hoods, each with protective glass fronts. All the same Subramaniam wears his pair of safety goggles, making sure to lead by example, even when no other researchers are present. “I wouldn’t want to get caught by my students without them,” he laughs.
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That’s just the way Subramaniam is, said James In fact, the demand for plastics is estimated to Blakemore, assistant professor in the Department double by the year 2050, he said. of Chemistry. Along those lines, Subramaniam is also looking “He’s wonderful, he’s level headed, he’s a great for ways to use leftover compounds from chemical communicator, he’s kind, and he is very willing to reactions used in the creation of plastics or synthetic support young people,” Blakemore said. “Those fibers. One of those reactions produces something called people could be his students, me as an assistant lignin, which is often burned off. Rather than wasting professor or young researchers in the center the lignin, Subramaniam and his team are looking into he runs.” ways to derive a compound called vanillin, which is a Nothing in science happens in a vacuum, both lucrative product used anywhere in the food industry to Blakemore and Subramaniam agree. It’s all a team the pharmaceutical industry. effort, with each person contributing. On the other end of the spectrum, Subramaniam Blakemore began working recalled the planet’s finite at KU in 2016 and quickly resources, like crude oil. He noted learned of Subramaniam’s that at some point the wells will penchant for collaboration, run dry and humans will need which only strengthens his new ways of creating plastics and work, he said. This is especially synthetics. Or, rather, they’ll need true in the CEBC, which to find a substitute using plantcombines both chemistry and based biomass. That category engineering. can include nearly any type of “The Catalysis Center is agricultural produce imaginable. really one of a very few centers In Kansas some that come to mind of its kind in the country and are corn, wheat and soybeans. certainly is on the cutting edge,” “All of them are going to Blakemore said. “It’s a cross eventually deplete,” he said. disciplinary perspective, which “We better learn how to make can be very useful.” everyday products from that One project, Subramaniam plant-based biomass.” explains, is examining ways Such work has attracted to make the refining process the attention of a number of more efficient. Streamlining the businesses like the Archer process for the 10 percent used Daniels Midland Co., a food to make chemicals can yield processing and commodities big results. trading company from If they can make a new, more Chicago, that set up shop next efficient process work in the lab, to the CEBC labs in 2011, —BALA SUBRAMANIAM they should be able to scale it Subramaniam said. up to size and apply that work to Each of his many facets of whichever industry fits. research presents its own set of Even small gains can turn issues. In fact, Subramaniam calls into major progress, Subramaniam said. Because the overarching goal behind each project the “Grand the chemical production industry is so lucrative new Challenge,” something to strive for. And it will be processes can quickly subsidize themselves. something he works on at KU for some time to come. Chemicals derived from oil can be transformed “If we just look at the exponential growth for into plastics, synthetic fibers and more, he said. demand for materials and see the depleting resources, “And all of us use water bottles, shampoos, it cannot be business as usual,” he said. “The current synthetic fibers, so on and so forth. And demand is generation has a responsibility to make sure we’re only increasing,” Subramaniam said. using our natural resources responsibly.”
Kansas is in the top ten for production of biomass, wind energy, gas and oil. I don’t think any other state can make that claim.
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JAPANESE HISTORY
Eric Rath KU professor explores role of food in Japan. Japan also takes great pride in its Michelinstarred restaurants — the Tokyo food scene has been awarded more Michelin stars than any other city on earth, Rath says. And gastronomy has long been part of Japan’s foreign policy, made official in 2013 with “Washoku,” traditional Japanese cuisine, being added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. “So, from daily life to Japanese foreign policy, food is very prominent,” Rath says. But Rath has also pondered the question, “How do people think about cuisine before there was the concept of a nation?” That query led to Rath’s first book on Japanese cuisine, 2010’s “Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan.” His latest book, last fall’s “Japan’s Cuisines: Food, Place and Identity,” Rath says, was an exploration of the contemporary Japanese culinary scene, both on a local and national level. For one article published last year, Rath examined the historical context of food in early modern-era East Asian paintings and in Japanese life generally. This included “Kumano Mandala,” which features food offerings as a component of both liberation and damnation in the afterlife. “What I find fascinating, and what I think is something that is distinct about Japanese food, is the ability of food in a religious context to signify many different things,” Rath says, adding, “If we think, for example, about Japanese religious practices, many of them have involved food being offered to Buddha or various deities.” That food, after being offered to the deities, is then “taken back,” Rath says, and consumed by humans, thus becoming something else entirely.
OPPOSITE University of Kansas professor of history Eric Rath, who specializes in premodern Japanese cultural history, in his KU office .
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“The idea that food can be more than just food, is something I find fascinating about Japanese culture,” he says of the symbolism behind Japan’s culinary traditions. But those traditions — Rath is careful in his use of the word — are also seen by some in the Japanese food community as being at risk of disappearing in an increasingly globalized world. In Kyoto, where Rath worked in a restaurant while writing his dissertation, the owners of the city’s high-class eateries “take great pride in preserving this kind of Kyoto cooking,” he says. That way of thinking, as admirable as it is, Rath says, also “keeps people outside.” “Japanese culture, broadly speaking, is very hierarchical, and there are a lot of people who have a stake in maintaining these hierarchies. There’s a negative side to that, you know — it’s futile,” he says. “On one hand, it preserves that tradition, but on the other hand, it’s elitist.” For better or worse, Japan is becoming an increasingly smaller and less isolated place. But the Japanese have borrowed from other cultures for centuries, Rath notes. Even his beloved sushi — or rather, the concept of fermenting fish in the days before refrigeration — originated in Southeast Asia several centuries ago, eventually spreading to China and then Japan. In his “History of Sushi” class, which he plans to teach this year as a Toyota Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Rath encourages his students to view Japanese food culture through the lens of arguably its most popular export. “Sushi has very ancient roots as a way of preserving food, but now it’s gone global. Now you can buy sushi in the basement of Wescoe,” he says. “There’s a lot to cover there. There’s a lot to study, too.”
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PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
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ric Rath can trace his interest in Japanese cuisine all the way back to the John Hughes classics of the 1980s. Rath, now a professor of history at the University of Kansas, was a teenager when he saw “The Breakfast Club” for the first time. “There’s that iconic scene where Molly Ringwald opens up the lunchbox, and everyone gawks at her and says, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that treat?’ and she declares, ‘Sushi!’” Rath recalls of the scene in which Ringwald’s character, in a move truly ahead-of-her-time, snacks during detention. Now, roughly 30 years later, Rath’s students can pick up California rolls and other Japanese-American sushi selections between classes at the Kansas Union. As ubiquitous as Japanese cuisine — or some westernized version of it — has become in the United States, Rath says he remains fascinated by the history of food in Japanese culture. As a professor, Rath specializes in pre-modern Japanese cultural history, with research ranging from traditional Japanese performing arts to the symbolic meanings of Japanese culinary practices. His courses at KU have covered the origins of sushi, as well as the history of sake and beer brewing in Japan. The country, he says, retains a close relationship with food unlike anything in the United States. Gastronomy permeates Japanese popular culture, appearing in competition shows (“Iron Chef” originated in Japan in 1993, more than 10 years before an American version first hit airwaves) and programs showcasing local eateries and specialties, as well as gracing the pages of comic books and other media.
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The idea that food can be more than just food, is something I find fascinating about Japanese culture. —ERIC RATH
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KU PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
Maryemma Graham Eliciting a reaction from students is professor’s goal in a classroom, and giving back is her key to becoming part of a community.
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hether a story is fact or fiction students back then, though that rule may doesn’t impact the amount have been an unofficial one, Graham said. of truth it has to share, “You’d apply to be admitted, but who Maryemma Graham says. The thoughts, the could say why you were being turned down,” emotions, the relationships, fabricated or she said. not, all had to come from something real. It was only through ASU’s public “Stories are about programs, in whichever living, stories are about department they might life, they’re about be held, that Graham conflict. Stories tell could take part in the the truth,” she said. university’s educational “There’s an elemental opportunities, she said. truth in those stories.” Those experiences For nearly two helped shape her views decades, Graham, a on teaching and her distinguished professor career’s focus. in the University Teachers can invite of Kansas’ English anybody to learn, help Department, has taught communities grow and at the school. In that broaden the world of time, she’s found ways academia, Graham said. to be more of a pillar “Teaching gives you of the local community access, you can parlay rather than just a a career into all these professor. other things,” she said. Her motivation Graham’s style —MARYEMMA GRAHAM for reaching beyond has even helped her the walls of Wescoe students, like Doretha Hall come from Williams, who studied Graham’s upbringing in with her for more than a segregated Augusta, 10 years, to think outside Ga., she said. the box. “The only time I could go to things was Now, Williams works for the National at a college,” she said. “So the relationship Museum of African American History and that you have with the public matters a lot.” Culture in Washington D.C. Augusta is home to Paine College—a “(Graham) really allowed for me to historically black school—and Augusta State really grasp ahold of what I like to do in University, which would not admit black academia and learn how to maximize it in the
PHOTOGRAPH LJW FILE PHOTO
Teaching gives you access, you can parlay a career into all these other things.
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work that I do,” she said. “She really paved the way for graduate students that would come up and say ‘I love academia but would like to work at a museum or library or in urban development.’ She really allowed us to think outside the campus.” In expanding her own role to the outside world, Graham has been a part of many different projects, many of which have been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her career has spanned from Chicago to Oxford, Miss., and from Boston to Lawrence. At KU, Graham said she grew tired of people telling her significant works of African American literature didn’t exist before a certain author or year. For every Richard Wright or James Baldwin there are dozens of unknown writers with legitimate experiences to share. Often publishers would only focus on one writer’s work or one specific genre and that’s what they would push to the public. However, that process quickly begins to feed on itself and disengage from what the spirit of the times actually was. So many stories are lost. “For a long time you could only have one writer at a time, and you had to slay the dragon before you could receive the attention you deserved,” she said. To combat this, Graham founded KU’s Project on the History of Black Writing. With a handful of students working as staff, Graham said her project has built the largest digital collection of African American literature in the world. The process is part research, part writing, part publishing and part exploration. The group has helped to revitalize expatriate writers like Allen Polite, who left the United States for Sweden in the 1960s and whose work might otherwise not be known if the group had not partnered with his widow, Helene Polite, who wanted to expose her late husband’s writing to his native country. The project helped to reprint Polite’s works and distribute them in the United States. Graham has also used her work to help boost the careers of authors who aren’t spoken of enough, authors like Margaret Walker who wrote “Jubilee” in 1966.
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Many think Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” which was published in 1987, was the first book to take on the perspective of an African American slave woman, Graham said. But Walker pioneered that territory 20 years earlier. Currently Graham is working on a biography of Walker. The end goal, of course, is to start a conversation, Graham said. Whether it’s in a book club or a classroom, these books, stories and experiences are meant to be shared and discussed. Even in the classroom, Graham said she doesn’t necessarily shoot for her students to like a book. Rather she’s going for a reaction. Any kind of reaction. She wants her students to say, “I didn’t know there was a story like that out there.” The technique is effective, Williams said, because it forces students to leave their comfort zones. “When you phrase it in that way, where you need a reaction, it does make you speak beyond your biases or your experiences in life, beyond any limited mentality you may have,” she said. “Because when you have a reaction, to something you need to explain the reaction how it effected you or didn’t. It forces your mind to either call out either your biases or limitations and speak beyond those.” However as concealed carry becomes legal on KU’s campus, Graham said she no longer wishes to teach in a classroom. She strongly disapproves of the new laws and feels teaching in a classroom would make her complicit, should anything disastrous happen. Rather, Graham said she’ll scale back her work at KU. There won’t be any classroom lessons, but she’ll still be helping with grant proposals and with her ongoing projects or committees. After working for so long, Graham said she feels its her responsibility to contribute, especially as someone who has had the experiences and opportunities so many others have not. “You see yourself as a representative,” she said. “I’m representing everybody else who doesn’t have an opportunity like this so I damn well better give back what I’m given.”
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Ani Kokobobo Keeping “Anna Karenina” up-to-date on the KU campus.
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f you can’t imagine what the titular character of “Anna Karenina” might have in common with Kim Kardashian, perhaps it’s time to revisit Leo Tolstoy’s classic 19th-century novel. “Every time I re-enter this text, I’m confronted with past readings and past selves that I have to wade through and determine, ‘How do I read this now? What does this mean to me right now?’” says Ani Kokobobo, an assistant professor in KU’s department of Slavic languages and literatures. Drawing comparisons between Tolstoy’s tragic heroine and the 21st-century reality star, Kokobobo says, was one of several approaches she and co-editor Emma Lieber employed in 2016’s “Anna Karenina for the Twenty-First Century: An Imprint of the Tolstoy Studies Journal.” Kokobobo, who estimates she’s read “Anna Karenina” at least eight times, admits the serialized novel’s “not a page-turner.” But it’s also a classic, and surprisingly relatable to today’s college students, she says. In “Anna Karenina for the Twenty-First Century,” Kokobobo and Lieber examined more than 20 film and TV adaptations of Tolstoy’s book. A large portion of their research focused on Joe Wright’s 2012 film starring Keira Knightley as the doomed aristocrat. The movie, set primarily in a decaying Russian theater, employs all sorts of “interesting effects,” Kokobobo says, allowing her to build connections between the emphasis on appearance and staging in both Anna Karenina’s world and contemporary American culture. “She becomes really obsessed,” Kokobobo says of Anna’s ever-present desire to be desired. “She’s beautiful throughout the novel, but in the beginning she’s beautiful in this very natural way, and over time her beauty becomes very constructed. She’s very invested in the kinds of dresses she wears, and she becomes this almost doll-like creature.” In many ways, Kokobobo says, Anna’s obsession isn’t all that different from the doctored Instagram images and carefully curated Facebook pages in today’s society. But, just as Anna’s pursuit of male attention ultimately leads to her tragic end, social media also has the power to isolate us more than connect us. “She’s deeply isolated in the novel, just because of her status as an adulterous woman,” Kokobobo says of Anna, whose affair with the
wealthy Count Vronsky casts her out of society, fueling her depression and ultimate suicide. Kokobobo teaches “Anna Karenina” twice each semester, she says. And just about every time, she tries to approach the 19th-century novel a bit differently. After the 2016 election, for example, Kokobobo and her students explored the concept of women “having it all.” After Anna’s affair, she’s no longer the object of male desire she once strove to be. She’s also shunned from her former social circle, and her credibility as a mother is virtually destroyed after her affair becomes public. Her only friend and “resource,” at the very end, is morphine. And then, of course, she throws herself under a moving train. Reflecting on Hillary Clinton’s loss, “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, the woman always loses,’” Kokobobo says. “The woman always end up under a train in some way.” Tolstoy’s book, she says, isn’t just about Anna. It’s also the story of Levin, a wealthy landowner and aristocrat who suffers his own existential crisis throughout the novel. However, while Levin ultimately finds salvation in his new family and simple country life, Anna isn’t so lucky. “This was sort of the driving question when teaching the novel: How is it that the guy gets saved, and the woman doesn’t?” Kokobobo says. “The question driving my teaching that year was, Why is that? What is it about this life that allows him to survive, and what is it about her life that doesn’t?” —ANI KOKOBOBO Ultimately, she says, in both 19thcentury Russia and today, “men can get away with things that women can’t get away with.” Her students, she says, recognize that ongoing “double standard,” and have explored it further in assignments about the status of female inmates in the American prison system, discussions surrounding reproductive rights and how female desire is perceived in contemporary society. The parallels drawn between Anna and Levin, for example, are in no way accidental, Kokobobo says. When teaching “Anna Karenina,” Kokobobo frequently reminds her students that “everything means something in this book.” “Everything has a meaning, beyond just recreating reality,” she says. “I think what’s interesting about this book is that it really allows the reader to draw a lot of interesting answers and conclusions.”
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
Everything has a meaning, beyond just recreating reality.
JOANNA HLAVACEK @HlavacekJoanna
OPPOSITE Ani Kokobobo, an assistant professor in the department of Slavic Languages and Literature, is pictured with a photograph of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, the author of “Anna Karenina.”
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PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
KU is in the middle of one of its biggest building booms ever. Peek inside some of the university’s brand new facilities. See plans for others under construction or being transformed through major renovations.
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Metamorphosis Massive redevelopment project to transform KU’s Central District is marching to completion.
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irt — acres and acres of it. That, and quite a lot of heavy machinery lumbering around on top
completion in summer 2018. A sprawling new student apartment complex also has taken shape, and should have students moving in for of it. the 2018-19 school year. A year ago, there wasn’t much more “We are essentially doing a decade’s to the University of Kansas’ $350 million worth of construction in about three years, Central District which has created a redevelopment heavy workload and project area. Work some tight timelines on what outgoing for our entire team,” KU Chancellor Gray-Little said in Bernadette Gray-Little a project update called “the largest published earlier this and most complex year. “But I think we development project all realize this is a KU has undertaken once-in-a-generation in nearly a century” opportunity to was only a few fundamentally months underway, transform the and most of what was university, and as happening involved a result, we have tearing down rather approached this than building up. project with incredible Now, just passion.” a year later, the KU now is calling transformation of the the old, original part of Central District may campus on the Hill its not be complete, but “North District,” and it’s fully visible. the research-heavy A new residence part of campus across —BERNADETTE GRAY-LITTLE hall and dining center Iowa Street the “West is already complete, District.” with students ready The Central to move in for the fall District is located 2017 semester. A new parking garage and new between the two, in the area bounded by 19th, roads also are finished. Iowa and 15th streets and Naismith Drive. The new Integrated Science Building Redevelopment work is taking place in the and the adjacent new Central District student center of that, between Daisy Hill and Allen union are fully framed and slated for full Fieldhouse and along 19th Street.
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
We are essentially doing a decade’s worth of construction in about three years, which has created a heavy workload and some tight timelines for our entire team.
SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep OPPOSITE The Central District at the University of Kansas.
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The Central District has — or soon will have — all the components of a community within itself. There are residence halls, academic buildings, athletics facilities, the student union, a full public cafeteria in the new DeBruce Center and the student recreation center and Watkins Health Center nearby. The new director of KU Student Housing, Sarah Waters, called the Central District housing options and surrounding community “exciting.” “Because we can offer more options for greater privacy levels, including private bedrooms and bathrooms, it means more students will choose to live on campus throughout their university career. And because research shows that students who live on campus tend to get better grades and graduate on time, we’re setting up students for success,” Waters said. “Combining that with a new dining hall and easy access to key new academic buildings will make the Central District a first-choice destination for students to live and learn together for many years while attending KU.” Plans for the Central District were laid under Gray-Little’s leadership, as was much of the construction work. Incoming KU Chancellor Douglas Girod will usher the project to completion. Gray-Little said the Central District ranked among KU’s most important achievements during her eight-year tenure as chancellor, and one that furthers KU’s mission. “For our students, the district means new ways of interacting with instructors and classmates, close integration of their undergraduate studies with research activity, and new ways to enjoy their time outside the classroom,” she said. “More broadly, the Central District will benefit our entire university by helping us recruit new scholars, pursue new funding opportunities, foster technology-based startups and enhance the visibility of KU nationally.” CENTRAL DISTRICT KEY BUILDING LIST • PARKING GARAGE — Completed spring 2017. Connected to the Integrated Science Building and Central District Student Union. Budgeted at $20 million.
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• DOWNS HALL — New residence hall and dining center completed summer 2017. Located behind Oliver Hall; the dining center connects Oliver Hall and the new residence hall. Features 545 beds and suite-style living. Budgeted at $49 million. • BURGE UNION — New student union scheduled for completion summer 2018. Located near where the old Burge Union once stood and connected to the new Integrated Science Building. Features 33,000 square feet, a conference area and space for KU Legal Services for Students, the Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center, the Emily Taylor Center for Women and Gender Equity, a reflection space, a lactation room and a coffee shop and convenience store. Budgeted at $13 million. • INTEGRATED SCIENCE BUILDING — Scheduled for completion July 2018. A keystone of the redevelopment project leaders say is badly needed to bring KU’s aging science facilities up to date. Features 280,000 square feet of space for teaching, learning and interdisciplinary research in chemistry, medicinal chemistry, physics, molecular biosciences and related fields. Budgeted at $117 million. • STOUFFER PLACE APARTMENTS — New apartment facility scheduled for completion July 2018, located along 19th Street where former Stouffer Place buildings were razed. Features 708 beds across a north and a south building. Each unit will have two bedrooms and two bathrooms, or four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Budgeted at $58 million. • CENTRAL UTILITY PLANT — Scheduled for completion summer 2018. Budgeted at $15 million. Other buildings constructed in the area in the past few years that are not part of the $350 million redevelopment package include the Earth, Energy and Environment Center (EEEC), the Learned Engineering Expansion Phase 2 (LEEP2), the DeBruce Center, McCarthy Hall apartments near Allen Fieldhouse, and Oswald and Self residence halls on Daisy Hill.
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PHOTOGRAPH SARA SHEPHERD
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Teamwork Medical center’s new health education building will put future doctors, nurses and other health professionals under one roof.
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igh-tech mannequins programmed to simulate everything from having a heart attack to giving birth. Live actors with scripts to help students practice interacting with patients. These are some of the tools health professionals of the future are using at the University of Kansas Medical Center, according to Dr. Robert Simari, executive dean of the KU School of Medicine. That hands-on, interdisciplinary approach to education is going to the next level, thanks to the medical center’s new Health Education Building. “It’s going to allow students to interact in so many more meaningful ways, and to tender into the team approach to health care from their first days on campus,” Simari said. The $75 million, sevenstory Health Education Building is located at 39th Street and Rainbow Boulevard, on the KU Medical Center campus in Kansas City, Kan. It was scheduled to open to students in late July. The building is considered an “iconic facility that will become the face of the KU Medical Center campus,” according to KU. It will be the primary teaching facility of the three schools on KU’s medical center campus: the School of Medicine, School of Nursing and the School of Health Professions. Many classes being
held in other medical center buildings will move into the new one. The 170,000-square-foot facility features 47 classrooms, 32 clinical and simulation labs, and “community life” areas for students, said Kay Hawes, the medical center’s associate director of news and media relations. The building also will include retail and office space. The building’s signature space will be the Zamierowski Institute for Experiential Learning — thousands of square feet designed for interaction between disciplines and the use of medical simulation technology. The Health Education Building’s simulation space will join the Zamierowski Institute’s initial simulation facility that opened in 2015 in Sudler Hall, quadrupling the institute’s overall size, Simari said. Simari said part of the new simulation space will be put to use immediately, with part “shelled-in” for later completion. Likewise, he said, a number of new medical mannequins are being added now with more planned to be added once the full space is completed. Simari said the opening of the Health Education Building corresponds with a shift to a new curriculum. The new curriculum will be active and “much more hands-on,” including a big decrease in the
The building is considered an “iconic facility that will become the face of the KU Medical Center campus.”
SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep
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New hospital building to accept patients soon; expansion already underway
Hold that crane. A new building at the University of Kansas Health System campus in Kansas City, Kan., is actually undergoing an expansion before it’s even finished. The hospital is nearing completion of the $350 million, 13-floor Cambridge North Tower at 39th and Cambridge streets, just northeast of the existing hospital buildings. The building will house specialized surgical services for oncology, neurosciences and otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat). Construction is expected to be complete midfall, with the first patients being accepted in late 2017, said Dennis McCulloch, KU Health System director of public and government relations.
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When first announced in 2014, the tower was going to be a seven-story building with the option to construct four more floors in the future. In January 2016, the Hospital Authority Board decided to start building those extra floors right away. Once finished, one of the four floors will be immediately prepared for patients while the other three will be “shelled-in” for future finishing. “Our patient volume has been so strong the initially planned building will be full as soon as it opens,” KU Health System president Bob Page said in a hospital announcement. “So, we are going to keep the construction crane on site after the building opens and continue building the four additional floors.”
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CAMBRIDGE NORTH TOWER BY THE NUMBERS The new building will add:
124 BEDS 28 intensive care and 96 acute 11 operating rooms 500,000 total square feet 100 physicians on staff 600 health care jobs
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PHOTOGRAPH (FROM LEFT) SARA SHEPHERD, LJW FILE PHOTO, SARA SHEPHERD
LEFT From left Douglas A. Girod, then executive vice chancellor of KU Medical Center, then KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback visit during a ceremonial groundbreaking in 2015 at the University of Kansas Medical Center for its $75 million Health Education Building, which will serve as the primary teaching facility for the KU schools of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions. Amenities include significant simulation space and flexible, state-of-theart learning space to support interprofessional education, a competencybased medical school curriculum and other new models of teaching.
number of hours spent sitting in lectures, Simari said. He said another tenet of the new curriculum is that it will be competency based, requiring students to demonstrate their abilities. Funding for the Health Education Building is from multiple sources: $25 million from the state, $21 million in bonds from the medical center and the remainder from private donations — including a $25 million lead gift from the Hall Family Foundation, of Kansas City, Mo., according to the medical center. David Zamierowski, a retired plastic surgeon and founder of the Wound Care Centers of Kansas City, and his wife, Marilyn Zamierowski, Overland Park, made a lead gift for the building’s simulation equipment and facilities. Speaking at the Health Education Building’s groundbreaking ceremony in 2015, Zamierowski said he first saw simulation training while teaching at area nursing schools on a volunteer basis after his retirement in 2003. He said he and his wife were inspired by the vision that every medical center graduate will have been trained to the point of competency before ever approaching a patient. In his private practice career, Zamierowski himself said that every procedure he tried for the first time, starting in medical school back in the 1960s, involved a real person under his knife. “In the back of my mind, I always knew there had to be a better way,” Zamierowski said. “When I first saw simulation, I knew this was the answer.”
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MORE THAN A NAME KU hospital’s new name represents mission of expansion to serve entire state The University of Kansas hospital’s new name represents what it is becoming: not just a hospital but a system. In January, the entity changed its name to the University of Kansas Health System. The new name represents the hospital’s consolidation with physicians and clinics of University of Kansas Physicians. It also includes partner relationships with Hays Medical Center, Stormont Vail in Topeka, North Kansas City Hospital, Cornerstones of Care at Marillac and KVC Behavioral Health. KU Health System announced in May that it also would partner with Nashville-based Ardent Health Services to take over St. Francis hospital in Topeka. For KU, the St. Francis deal represents the first time it has ever branched out to take ownership of another pre-existing facility. KU Health System President and CEO Bob Page said it may not be the last. “If you go back to our statutory mission, back in 1998 when (the KU Hospital Authority) got created, it really is about improving the health of Kansans,” Page said at the time the deal was announced. “We had to spend 10 years figuring out how to right our ship. Once we did that, you can see we started gradually forming a variety of partnerships. This is yet another model.” KU hospital will remain the name of the primary hospital building itself at 39th and Cambridge Street in Kansas City, Kan. KU Health System works closely with but is not a part of KU Medical Center, home to KU’s schools of medicine, nursing and health professions.
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Earth, Energy and Environment Center Construction nears completion on a multidisciplinary center that will create cooperative bridges between departments and literal bridges between halls.
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PETER HANCOCK @ljwpqhancock
PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
OPPOSITE TOP Workers descend the main stairway within Slawson Hall during a tour of the Earth, Energy and Environment Center. The center is scheduled to open on Nov. 21, 2017. OPPOSITE BOTTOM Robert Goldstein, KU distinguished professor of geology and associate dean for natural sciences and mathematics, goes over some of the details around the exterior of the Earth, Energy and Environment Center. The center is scheduled to open on Nov. 21, 2017.
eople who are new to the University of Kansas campus may be justifiably overwhelmed by all the construction taking place, most in what’s called the Central District development area. But one of the more interesting projects is located just outside that area, near 15th Street and Naismith Drive. There, on a two-acre site between Learned Hall, which houses the School of Engineering, and Lindley Hall, which houses the geology and geography departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a new facility is being developed that will literally form a bridge between those two disciplines. The new Earth, Energy and Environment Center, or EEEC, will be a multidisciplinary center that crosses all of those fields, serving as a home for both the geology department and the chemical and petroleum engineering department. Construction on the $78.5 million, 141,000-square-foot project began in August 2015 and is scheduled for completion in November, with the first classes to be held there in the spring 2018 semester. “Geology has changed,” Robert Goldstein, KU distinguished professor of geology and associate dean for natural sciences and mathematics, told the Journal-World in January, midway through the construction project. Geology, he said, now involves a lot of collaboration with other disciplines because work in that field, especially in Kansas, deals with such diverse issues as groundwater management, environmental cleanup and the impact of climate change, not to mention oil, gas and geothermal energy.
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According to KU, the EEEC will feature “auditoriums, classrooms, laboratories, and multipurpose spaces designed to foster collaboration among researchers, scientists, and students in geology, chemical and petroleum engineering, geophysics, energy, nanotechnology, and the environment.” The center will actually consist of two distinct “towers.” The north tower will be known as Ritchie Hall, named in honor of Scott and Carol Ritchie of Wichita, both KU alumni who donated $10 million to the project. The south tower, Slawson Hall, was made possible by a $16 million gift from the family of the late Donald Slawson, a 1955 KU graduate who founded an oil and gas exploration firm. Ritchie Hall will feature a 162-seat auditorium, two 65-seat classrooms and a number of smaller labs, offices and collaborative work spaces. Slawson Hall will feature a virtual reality cave that allows 3-D simulations of things such as weather patterns or oil and gas exploration; a 232-seat auditorium to be named the Beren Petroleum Center; “floating” meeting rooms; multiple large labs, faculty offices and outreach offices; and additional conference rooms with views looking toward Allen Fieldhouse. The two towers will be connected by an enclosed pedestrian bridge and an underground tunnel. Enclosed pedestrian bridges also will link the EEEC to Lindley Hall on the east and Learned Hall on the west. That bridge will span across Naismith Drive. KU officials say about half of the cost of the EEEC is being paid with private donations.
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Summerfield Hall Extensive renovations allow Film and Media Department to expand offerings as it moves to its on-campus home.
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fter a $10 million renovation, the University of Kansas is finding a host of new uses for Summerfield Hall. For more than 50 years, the building at 1300 Sunnyside Ave. served as home for the KU School of Business. But that changed last year when the business school moved into its new home in Capitol Federal Hall. Now, after a $10 million renovation, Summerfield has become home to the School of the Arts’ Film and Media Department, as well as a number of smaller university offices. The Film and Media Department officially moved into the building during the spring 2017 semester, KU officials said, as did the KU Military-Affiliated Student Center. By the time classes open for the fall semester, officials said they expect to have the Diversity and Equity office, Student Money Management Services and KU Information Technology all located in the building as well. Space was also being prepared over the summer for a computer lab for 36 students and a temporary location for Counseling and Psychological Services. Still, the biggest feature of the newly converted Summerfield is the Film and Media Department, which since the 1990s had been located off-campus at Oldfather Studios, 1621 W. Ninth St. Michael Baskett, who chairs the Film and Media Department, told the Journal-World in February, while the renovation was still ongoing, that the new building would greatly enhance the department’s offerings. “The types of work that our students can do will be greatly expanded,” he said. “This is really a great time to be studying film and media.”
Among Summerfield’s new features are: • A new and improved soundstage. The two-story room has catwalks for lighting and observing from the second level, an exterior door large enough to drive in vehicles for shoots, and moveable partitions to allow up to three projects at a time. There’s also an adjacent “green room” where performers can dress, prepare and wait for their cues. • A recording studio. • Production classrooms. • A larger computer lab and more editing bays. • And department offices and a media library. The renovation also included a complete replacement of the heating and cooling system and fire alarm system. In the future, Baskett said he hopes to develop a screening facility in the building, but that is expected to require additional outside fundraising. According to KU’s buildings directory, Summerfield was dedicated in April 1960 on a site that previously had been Sunnyside Apartments, eight World War II-era temporary buildings that were used to house married students. The building was named for Solon E. Summerfield, whose father was a law professor at KU. Summerfield earned a bachelor’s degree from KU in 1899 and a law degree in 1901, then went on to establish a hosiery company in New York City. He died in 1947. The original five-story, yellow-buff brick building was notable at the time for the glass curtain wall on its south face. It was initially designed to house what was then called the “University Computation Center,” which later became the Computer Services Facility, now located in a separate building to the east. In 1983, Summerfield expanded with a five-story addition that was funded through private donations.
Still, the biggest feature of the newly converted Summerfield is the Film and Media Department.
PETER HANCOCK @ljwpqhancock
kutoday.com
OPPOSITE Michael Baskett, associate professor and chair of the Department of Film and Media Studies, leads a tour through the Sound Stage at Summerfield Hall, during the building’s renovation. The building, which served as the former home of the School of Business, is now occupied by the Department of Film and Media Studies and other offices.
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PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
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PHOTOGRAPH NICK KRUG
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Memorial Drive Gets a Facelift Lane overlooking Marvin Grove and the Campanile undergoes complete reconstruction.
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emorial Drive — the curved lane running behind Strong Hall and past the World War II Memorial Campanile — used to have the feel of a back road, thanks to overgrown vegetation and haphazard parallel parking, that in spots featured asphalt edged with railroad ties. However, the University of Kansas is completing an estimated $6 million project to reconstruct Memorial Drive, transforming it into a manicured, drivable display case for several of the university’s key monuments. Work started at West Campus Road in summer 2016 and proceeded eastward. The university is completing one phase per summer, with Phase 2 — the center section — just wrapping up. According to KU spokeswoman Erinn BarcombPeterson, work includes replacing the roadway, sidewalks, curbs and gutters, as well as building retaining walls and relocating parking to the south side of street — that’s the uphill side, where cars won’t block the view of Marvin Grove.
SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep
Barcomb-Peterson said the project also involves adding pavilions for future memorials. One of those is slated to be the Victory Eagle bronze sculpture, presently perched on a pedestal in front of Dyche Hall. Preliminary planning is underway to relocate the Victory Eagle to a new memorial plaza within the Phase 3 reconstruction area of Memorial Drive, Barcomb-Peterson said. A shining display has always been the vision for Memorial Drive, created to complement the Campanile dedicated in 1951. KU’s Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated in 1986, and the Korean War Memorial was dedicated in 2005. According to KU’s places directory, Kansas City developer and campanile planning committee member J.C. Nichols said at the time that Memorial Drive presented “unlimited opportunity through the years for the placement of desirable memorials, locations for gifts of outdoor objects of art and other items of beautification.”
OPPOSITE Construction continues along Memorial Drive on the KU campus.
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SARA SHEPHERD @saramarieshep
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he Spencer Museum of Art is now a lighter, brighter, more accessible and more interactive space. Following a nearly $8 million renovation that closed it for a year and a half, the museum, at 1301 Mississippi St. on the University of Kansas campus, reopened in October 2016. The renovation project was honored in the spring with an international American Architecture Award. The renovations are significant enough to affect the overall feel. “New architectural features infuse the building with natural light, connecting art and nature with breathtaking views into historic Marvin Grove,” according to the American Architecture Awards project description. Once offering no views other than of the artwork within, the museum’s new design takes advantage of its own picturesque backyard with large windows on the building’s
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west side overlooking Marvin Grove and the World War II Memorial Campanile. The Spencer’s facade also has been opened up, with all-glass entry doors and a large gallery window overlooking Mississippi Street and the Kansas Union — through which passers-by can also see sculptures on display inside. Other features include: • Revamped teaching gallery and print room, which are both bigger, brighter, more accessible and more easily adaptable than before. • An open staircase and elevator from the Central Court to the galleries upstairs. Previously, upper levels were only accessible by an out-of-the-way elevator also leading to art history classrooms and museum staff offices. • More balcony views from upper-level galleries into the Central Court below.
PHOTOGRAPH LJW FILE PHOTO
Following an $8 million renovation, Spencer Museum’s new design makes artwork more accessible
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UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS • “And Still We Rise: Race, Culture, and Visual Conversations” and “Narratives of the Soul” Through Sept. 17 “And Still We Rise,” a national touring exhibition, depicts nearly four centuries of African-American history through the powerful medium of narrative quilts. Displayed in conjunction, “Narratives” features African-American story quilts from the Spencer Museum’s collection and surrounding region. • “Power Clashing: Clothing, Collage, and Contemporary Identities” Fall 2017 This exhibition explores the material and symbolic language of clothing, from the 1960s to the present. • “Terra Anima” September-October Represents soil as a living environment. Artworks are exhibited alongside scientific tools, including soil monoliths prepared by KU Soil Geomorphologist Daniel Hirmas, and organismal trace pourings prepared by KU Ichnologist Stephen Hasiotis.
• “Big Botany: Conversations with the Plant World” March 17-July 15 Exploring humankind’s deep connections and fascination with the plant kingdom through works from the Spencer’s collection, as well as a number of significant loans and commissions by living artists.
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PHOTOGRAPHS LJW FILE PHOTO
• “Civic Leader and Art Collector: Sallie Casey Thayer and an Art Museum for KU” Oct. 28-Jan. 28 Donated to KU in 1917, the extensive collection from Kansas City philanthropist Sallie Casey Thayer forms the basis of what is today the Spencer Museum of Art. This centenary exhibition celebrates her founding gift and explores her collecting practices and motivations.