inside
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religion | 3 Students celebrate Navratri
Wednesday marks the beginning of Navratri, a nineday Hindu festival. Read more inside on page 3.
thebattalion ● wednesday,
september 28, 2011
● serving
texas a&m since 1893
● first paper free – additional copies $1 ● © 2011 student media
Evolutionary findings
thebatt.com
Baylor comes to town The Aggie volleyball team welcomes the Baylor Bears at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in Reed Arena. Visit thebatt.com for the game preview.
Softball defeats Blinn, 5-1 A&M softball took down the threetime national junior college champion Blinn Buccaneers yesterday to start the fall season. The game recap is available online at www.thebatt.com.
coming thursday
Pumped Up Kicks Currently sitting at No. 3 for Billboard’s Hot 100 music chart is Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks.” Despite a catchy chorus and upbeat overlay, the song has controversial lyrics regarding a school shooting. Pick up The Batt tomorrow to take a closer look at the song’s message.
photos by Josh McKenna — THE BATTALION
Biomedical science graduate student Colleen Fisher accomplished as an undergraduate what many researchers work toward for years: having research pubilshed by the academic journal Science.
Mammalian study lands in ‘Science’ Jessica Orwig The Battalion
F
or aspiring geneticist Colleen Fisher, the countless hours spent in the lab and in front of the computer have paid off. Last Thursday, one of the world’s most-cited academic journals, Science, published an article online in which Fisher was listed fifth of 22 authors. Resulting from collaboration primarily between Texas A&M and the University of California — Riverside, the paper details early stages of mammalian evolution and includes the largest molecular dataset of mammalian families in any research project to-date. “Ninety-nine percent of mammalian families are represented in our study,” said William
Murphy, Fisher’s former undergraduate research adviser and associate professor of veterinary integrative biosciences. Fisher began preparing data for Murphy as a sophomore biomedical sciences major. Now in her second year of a master’s program at A&M’s
Fisher displays the final product that took 22 researchers years to complete.
See Fisher on page 4
campus news
Houston, we’ve arrived in Aggieland need to be goal-oriented. You have to be focused on what you would like to achieve. What you need to do is be Astronaut delivers prepared for when an opportunity that comes along $10,000 award to student that you would like to pursue.” Austin Adams The Battalion
Tuesday, former Space Shuttle Commander Robert Laurel Crippen visited Aggieland to ignite student interest in the sciences with space stories and down-to-earth wisdom. “I believe in life,” Crippen said. “You need to be goal-oriented. You have to be focused on what you would like to achieve. Truthfully, I believe life is a lot of luck. What you need to do is be prepared for when an opportunity comes along that you would like to pursue.” Crippen, a retired Navy captain and Uni-
”You
— Former Space Shuttle Commander Robert Laurel Crippen
versity of Texas graduate, said he was well prepared to seize those opportunities. “I graduated in 1960 and at that time, nobody had flown to space.” Crippen said. “I knew back when Sputnik went up that we would soon put people up there and I wanted to fly since I was short, so I figured higher and faster was better. When I finished at that other university [in Austin], I joined the Navy to be-
come a naval aviator. I wanted to be a good pilot, and I figured if I could land on a ship, I would be pretty good.” Crippen shared some of his NASA experiences, emphasizing how a college degree opened the doors for an extraordinary career. “In 1981, things came together, and John Young and I were getting ready to fly. The younger guys behind us in line were saying,
‘Instead of Young and Crippen, it’s going to be ‘old and crippled’ by the time the STS-1 takes off.’” See Space on page 4
campus news
YMCA building rich with history Justin Mathers
COURTESY
Commissioned in 1910 through fundraising backed by what was known as the Alumni Association, now the Association of Former Students, the YMCA-Alumni Memorial Building was constructed and dedicated on February 15, 1915.
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The Battalion In March 2010, construction began on the renovation of the YMCA building on campus. The construction plans involved the demolition and reconstruction of some parts of the building and the renovation of other parts of the building. The ongoing project, located at Houston and Old Main, began with the demolition of the existing east wing and then moved ahead with the gutting of the west wing and the addition of 24,732 square feet. Prior to construction the building had been empty for five years due to structural concerns. From the beginning, the
project has progressed with great care. Nancy McCoy, class of 1981, is the principal in charge of the renovation project with Quimby McCoy Preservation Architecture. “The biggest challenge was making an addition that didn’t look out of place, but went with the historic building and the surrounding buildings on campus,” said Anne Stimmel, who created an early design draft for the renovation of the 1914 building as her final Master of Architecture degree project at the College of Architecture. The YMCA Building is one of the oldest buildings on campus and is located in the heart of the historic
Academic Quad. Although the early YMCA thrived for many years without a building, the organization became the center of campus life for the young men of A&M once the building was constructed. According to Mary Manning, assistant University archivist and digital collections coordinator, the original building was designed by Frederick Gieseke, founder of the University’s architecture college. “When he resigned, however, S.J. Fountain revised the original drawings to incorporate a more classical style,” Manning said. “And it’s not a well-known fact, but the original building also See YMCA on page 4
9/28/11 12:26 AM