Education
Open Textbooks: Educational inquiry, measurement, and evaluation doctoral student TJ Bliss (BS ’06) is now an Open Education Resources (OER) Fellow for the International Association for K–12 Online Learning. The competitive appointment involves Bliss in state and federal policies related to OER.
Brian Mazzeo
Engineering and Technology
Singin’ in the Rain: Testing bridges may be as easy as listening to how they sound in the rain. Engineering professors Brian A. Mazzeo and W. Spencer Guthrie are the first to describe the use of water-droplet acoustics to diagnose bridges’ structural integrity. Their findings are published in Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation International.
Family, Home, and Social Sciences
Religion and Education: Church-going teens are 40 percent more likely to graduate from high school and 70 percent more likely to enroll in college than their non-religious peers, says BYU sociology professor Lance D. Erickson (BS ’99, MS ’01), lead author on the study, which was published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Fine Arts and Communications
Mormon Dilemma: The Department of Communications’ second Mormon Media Studies Symposium, now a biennial event, featured David E. Campbell (BA ’96), a political science professor at Notre Dame, who spoke on “The Mormon Dilemma: The Pros and Cons of Being a Peculiar People.” Find more presentation abstracts at more.byu.edu/mormon.
Kennedy Center
Unfortunate Brother: The Beyond the Border film series, a collaboration between Combat Films & Research and the Kennedy Center, premiered its ninth documentary, Unfortunate Brother: Korea’s Unification Dilemma, on the HDNet World Report channel. Political science professor Eric A. Hyer (BA ’79) and professor of Korean Mark A. Peterson (BA ’71) assisted in developing the film’s story.
Humanities
The Languages of Business: The College of Humanities teamed with the Marriott School to create the new minor in global business and literacy. The 21-credit minor combines basic business, business-language, and culture courses in civilization and literature in 11 different languages and can accommodate more languages as needed.
Law School
Digital Memo: The law school, recently ranked 34th by Business Insider, has created an iPad app for its magazine, Clark Memorandum. The latest issue features a graduation address given by fed-
eral judge Thomas B. Griffith (BA ’78) on becoming a good apple.
Life Sciences
Junk DNA: Working with the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project, exercise science major Elliot E. Winters (BS ’12) and molecular biology professor Steven M. Johnson (BS ’94) helped debunk the idea that 95 percent of human DNA is useless. In actuality, 80 percent of DNA plays an important role. Their findings are published in Genome Research.
Marriott School
Econ for Rec Majors: Recreation management and youth leadership got a shorter title—now just recreation management—and an updated curriculum requiring the same prerequisite classes (accounting, finance, marketing, econ) as other Marriott School programs. Within rec management, the leisure-services emphasis is now called experience-industry management.
Nursing
National League Nurse: Nursing professor Barbara L. Mandleco (PhD ’91) was inducted into the National League for Nursing’s Academy of Nursing Education as a distinguished nurse educator. Mandleco is the editor and author of Pediatric Nursing: Caring for Children and Their Families, a textbook in its third edition.
Emily Bates
Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Genetic Discovery: Biochemistry professor Emily A. Bates and her students have pinpointed how a genetic disorder leads to birth defects like cleft palate and missing teeth. Their study, published in Development, shows that a blocked ion channel interrupts an important signal to a cell’s nucleus. Without that signal a cell may develop incorrectly.
Religious Education
Missionary Work: The Religious Studies Center’s new book Go Ye into All the World explores the development of the modern missionary system—which relies on continuing revelation—from the Restoration to today. Fred E. Woods (BS ’81, MA ’85), a Church history professor, and Reid L. Neilson (BA ’96, MA ’01, MBA ’02), managing director of the Church History Department for the Church, edited the book.
