- Dr. Jeff Vickers, assistant professor of music/saxophone, was awarded an “Encore” grant over the summer by the American Composers’ Forum. The “Encore” grant program helps subsidize the performance of new music by emerging young composers. It also serves to foster new relationships between performers and composers, who apply jointly, with the subsidy going directly to performance costs for selected pieces. Vickers’ application was approved for performances of John Leszczynski’s “Obsidian Butterfly.” He plans to present the first of three required performances at the U.S. Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium in January.Also, at the end of July, Vickers participated in the 46th Estoril Music Festival in Estoril, Portugal, as an invited guest of composer Christian Lauba. Discussion led to an extremely valuable week of collaboration, and at the end, Vickers was invited to perform one of Lauba’s pieces (“XYL – Balafon 2”) at the close of the mastercourse. For further information, including an online diary of events and video/pictures, please access http://saxvickers.wordpress.com.
- Over the summer, Dr. Charles Young, assistant professor of history, political science, and geography, was flown to the Little White House in Key West, Fla., to give a talk at the conference “The Legacy of Harry S. Truman in East Asia: Japan, China, and the Two Koreas.”
- Dr. Linda Tucker, associate professor of English, was invited to Seattle by the Praxis Community Book Club which had chosen her book “Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture” as one of the texts on its reading list. The August 4th event was titled “Meet Me at the Crossroads: Conversations Across the Color Line.” Using her book as the starting point, Tucker facilitated a discussion of the significance of dialogue across communities as a vehicle for reconciliation.
- Dr. Ganna Lyubartseva, assistant professor of chemistry, has recently co-authored an article which has been accepted for publication. The article, “Dichloridobis(3,4,5-trimethyl-1H-pyrazole-N2)cobalt(II),” will be published in the journal Acta Crystallographica.”
- Jeremy Langley, assistant to the president for special projects and university editor, recently completed the Leadership Magnolia program. Leadership Magnolia participants are chosen for a nine-month leadership training program consisting of eight full-day sessions normally held on the third Thursday of each month and one overnight trip. Each class also completes a group community service project. Monthly sessions combine forums, tours, dialogue, and interaction between speakers and participants. Subjects include government, quality of life, education, health care, economy, human services, industry technology, and community heritage. The mission of the program is to improve the quality of life in the community by developing leaders who will recognize, address, and find solutions to critical issues.
- Shelley Keith, website coordinator, served as conference chair for the first Arkansas Regional Higher Education Web Professionals event held July 23 at the Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. This event served more than 80 web professionals from dozens of schools in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee and included presentations on topics ranging from analytics to project management to usability. The conference committee was comprised of web staff from UALR, the University of Central Arkansas, Arkansas Tech University, and Aaron Street, director of communications, at SAU.
