Education
Education Amid Crises: Education professor Steven J. Hite (BS ’80) is working with UNESCO to study education in developing countries in the wake of financial crises.
Engineering and Technology
Go, Go Racers: Working with student teams from around the globe, BYU engineering students developed high-end remote control cars that were judged by reps from GM and Siemens. Seismic Structures: BYU civil engineering students placed 6th at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition.
Family, Home, and Social Sciences
Troubled Teens: Sociology faculty Bert O. Burraston (BS ’91) and Stephen J. Bahr (BS ’68) and organizational leadership professor David J. Cherrington (BS ’66) found that only 54 percent of participants who completed the Real Victory courses for juvenile probationers were rearrested in the following year, compared to 90 percent of troubled teens without the program. The study was published in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. Family Fellow: The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) named family life professor Jeffry H. Larson (BS ’71) one of five 2010 NCFR fellows.
Marilyn Berrett
Fine Arts and Communications
Top 5: The publication PRWeek ranked BYU’s public relations program in the nation’s top five for the second year in a row. Dance Chair: Dance professor Marilyn Wagstaff Berrett (MA ’84) is now chair of the Department of Dance.
Humanities
Translating Lincoln: Linguistics students translated brochures for Abraham Lincoln’s historic home in Springfield, Ill., into four languages. Black Velvet: The New York Times interviewed English professor Eric A. Eliason (BA ’92) about his new book, Black Velvet Art. TLS Approves: The Times Literary Supplement, one of the world’s leading literary reviews, praised philosophy professor Daniel W. Graham’s (MA ’75) recent book, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy.
Kennedy Center
Middle Eastern Unrest: A panel of BYU faculty experts discussed “What’s Next? Tunisia, Egypt, and the Future of the Middle East” in an event sponsored by the Kennedy Center in February. Watch the discussion at kennedy.byu.edu/archive.
Law School
Revised Rankings: In a February New Yorker article, author Malcolm Gladwell questioned common law school–ranking criteria and wrote that if value for the dollar were added to the metrics, BYU would rank second in the nation.
Life Sciences
Top Accreditation: The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum received accreditation from the American Association of Museums, the highest national recognition a museum can achieve. The honor extends the museum’s accreditation for another 15 years.
Marriott School
Model Businesses: BYU’s first Business Model Competition received student entries from around the world and awarded nearly $50,000 to the top four teams, three of which were from BYU. Unethical Employees: Employees who love and want to please their company may be more likely to behave unethically to help their employers, according to a recent study by John B. Bingham, assistant professor of organizational behavior. The study was published in theJournal of Applied Psychology.
Nursing
Presidential Citation: Associate professor Kent D. Blad (MS ’99) received the Presidential Citation from the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Learning to Lead: Assistant professor Barbara A. Heise was selected to participate in the National League for Nursing’s prestigious training program, LEAD.
Richard Watt
Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Purple Power: Assistant professor Richard K. Watt (BS ’93) and his students developed a mimic of photosynthesis that uses light to extract electrons from citric acid and transfers those electrons to gold through a common protein; the reaction turned gold to the color purple, allowing the researchers to visualize the transfer of energy. Their research is published in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. Snatching the Sloan: Math professor Jessica S. Purcell is the second professor to receive the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship while at BYU.
Religious Education
Science and Religion: The new book Converging Paths to Truth, a collection of lectures edited by physics professor J. Ward Moody (BS ’80) and research associate professor of ancient scripture Michael D. Rhodes (BA ’70), seeks to reconcile religious truths and scientific knowledge.
