Volume 6 | May 7, 2018
ANNOUNCEMENTS
MAKE PLANS TO CELEBRATE AT CONVOCATION
The College of Arts and Sciences will hold its Spring Convocation ceremony at 9 a.m., Saturday, May 12, at the Lloyd Noble Center. Graduates and faculty are asked to arrive by 8 a.m. The ceremony will last approximately 90 minutes. Come celebrate the achievements of more than 2,000 students from the college who will graduate this semester!
JEANETTE DAVIDSON HONORED BY DIVERSE: ISSUES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 
I n honor of Women’s History Month,  Diverse  published its seventh annual special report recognizing the contributions of women to higher education.   Jeanette Davidson , professor of African and African-American Studies, was one of 25 women highlighted for making a difference in society by tackling some of higher education’s toughest challenges, exhibiting extraordinary leadership skills and making a difference in their respective communities. Davidson has taught at OU for 20 years and was director of African and African American Studies for 15 years. Scott Kirker from the OU Daily wrote about Davidson's achievement, and a dinner was held at Benvenuti's in April to celebrate the many accomplishments of Jeanette Davidson.
CHICKASAW NATION MAKES GIFT TO OU NATIVE NATIONS CENTER
OU Native Nations Center, a hub for community engagement and research that connects students, faculty and tribal communities with the university’s exceptional resources, has been established through a gift from the Chickasaw Nation. The Native American Studies Department hosted an open house and reception in recognition of the Native Nations Center endowment and the newly remodeled Native Nations Center on April 26.
CARL ALBERT AWARD WINNER NAMED
 Alexander Nongard is the recipient of the 2018 Carl Albert Award , presented each year to the outstanding senior in the OU College of Arts and Sciences. He will graduate  cum laude  with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics and with a graduate certificate in geospatial technologies with distinction. Upon graduation, Nongard intends to return to Tulsa to work in civil service and eventually run for office.
MATTHEW PETERS NAMED GOLDWATER SCHOLAR
Honors student Matthew Peters has been named a 2018 Goldwater Scholar , placing OU in the top ranks of universities nationally with 53 Goldwater Scholars since the competition began in 1991. Peters, a junior pursuing dual degrees in physics and mathematics, is from Purcell, Oklahoma. He works with John Wisniewski, OU President's Associates Presidential Professor and assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences, to research stars with circumstellar disks.
ANNUAL RECEPTION HELD TO THANK STAFF
The College of Arts and Sciences celebrated 227 staff members at its annual Staff Reception. We congratulate our three Dean’s Staff Award winners . The purpose of this award is to recognize staff members in the departments and programs within the college for their outstanding job performance.  The award winners for 2018 are  Kristin Stokes  (Department of Health and Exercise Science),  Michelle Kelley  (Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology) and  Tami Kinsey  (Department of Economics). The college also recognized the hard work and dedication of the staff members celebrating anniversaries.
Kristin Stokes
Michelle Kelley
Tami Kinsey
2018 COLLEGE OUTSTANDING ADVISORS NAMED
Please join the college in congratulating Sarah Olzawski and Megan Haley on being named the Dean’s Outstanding Academic Advisors for 2018 .The purpose of this award is to recognize college advisors who have demonstrated the qualities associated with outstanding academic advising. The college values the role of all academic advisors. Each award recipient will receive $500 and have their name inscribed on a plaque in the Hobson Academic Services office. 
Ben Keppel, Sarah Olzawski , Jane Wickersham, Jamie Hart
Rhonda Dean-Kyncl, Megan Haley,
 Eric Day, Scott Gronlund, Victoria Willis
NATIVE CROSSROADS FILM FESTIVAL A SUCCESS
The sixth annual Native Crossroads Film Festival continued its tradition of promoting American Indian culture through film. The theme surrounding this year's festival was "Rhythms." The event featured documentaries, music videos, films and more that emphasized Native American impact on entertainment. For three days in April, film lovers enjoyed soaring strings, pounding drums and some of the most innovative works in Indigenous cinema. Native Crossroads was sponsored by the OU Department of Film and Media Studies and the OU Department of Native American Studies. It was made possible by the generous support of the Chickasaw Nation, OU College of Arts and Sciences, OU Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost and the Norman Arts Council. 
EARTH MONTH CONTINUES GROWTH IN THIRD YEAR
Thank you to all EarthMonth@OU2018 attendees, sponsors and overall contributors, as well as the OU Environmental Science Program for hosting the third annual celebration of Earth Month®. The month-long series of campus and public events focused on local and global environmental concerns. This year, the city of Norman approved a proclamation declaring March 22 - April 22 as EarthMonth@OU2018. The month had many highlights, including Gregory Hitzhusen's public lecture on " Born Again Environmentalism: How Religion Can Turn Creation Care into an American Virtue.”
FACULTY RECOGNITION
FACULTY HONORED AT 2018 TRIBUTE
It was an outstanding year for the College of Arts and Sciences at the 2018 Faculty Tribute . OU celebrated the great achievements of its talented faculty through a variety of awards and recognitions. The Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost coordinated awards with other administrative offices and the event was hosted by the OU Board of Regents and President David L. Boren. This year, the college had a combined 24 faculty members win awards, including eight new presidential professorships.
ALEXANDER HOLMES RECEIVES OU LIBRARIES OPEN EDUCATION AWARD
Alexander Holmes (Regents Professor of Economics) received OU Libraries first Open Education Award for his adoption of open educational resources and advancement of open education initiatives. Holmes’ work improving and authoring an open access "Introductory Business Statistics" textbook, through a collaboration with OpenStax, will make this content freely and widely accessible to students across the globe.
SCOTT JOHNSON SELECTED FOR PRESTIGIOUS GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP
Congratulations to Scott Johnson (associate professor of Classics and Letters) on being named a  recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship , a national award honoring scholars, artists and scientists who are selected on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Johnson, who is a historian of late antique literature and culture, was selected in the field of intellectual and cultural history based on his cultural biography of the language of Syriac, the first book of its kind in English.
JULIE MILLER-CRIBBS RECOGNIZED AS ONE OF 10 WOMEN OF THE YEAR
The Tulsa Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women and YWCA Tulsa recently honored Julie Miller-Cribbs as one of ten Women of the Year for their efforts to create a better community. Miller-Cribbs, director and Oklahoma Medicaid Endowed Professor in Mental Health for OU’s Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work, was selected because she embodies YWCA’s mission to eliminate racism and empower women. 
FACULTY NOTES
Eli Bridge (adjunct assistant professor, Oklahoma Biological Survey), Jill Hicks-Keeton (assistant professor, religious studies) and Deborah Moore-Russo (First-Year Math Director) were selected as Risser Innovative Teaching Fellows for 2018-19. This is a richly deserved affirmation of their stellar work as teacher-scholars. The Paul G. Risser Innovative Teaching Fellowship provides funding and support to OU faculty to transition an existing or new undergraduate course into an outstanding example of an innovative, team-based active learning class. The primary goal of this program is to build and enhance a community of faculty who are passionate about active learning and exploring new pedagogies. 
Eli Bridge
Jill Hicks-Keeton
Deborah Moore-Russo
Four faculty members were awarded the Norman Campus Vice President for Research Award for Exceptional Achievements in Research and Creative Activity. Chuanbin Mao (professor, chemistry and biochemistry) received this award for his election as a Royal Society of Chemistry Fellow, which qualifies under the election as a National Society Fellow tier. Both Indrajeet Sharma (assistant professor, chemistry and biochemistry) and Ying Wang (assistant professor, mathematics) received this award for being the recipients of an NSF CAREER Award, which qualifies under the prestigious tier. Helen Zgurskaya (professor, chemistry and biochemistry) received this award for a research grant from The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which qualifies under the major external funding tier.
Donna Nelson (professor, chemistry and biochemistry) received a Certificate of Recognition from the Oklahoma House of Representatives for her work as the president of the American Chemical Society from 2015 to 2017. 
OU's Industrial-Organizational Psychology doctoral program recently received high marks. The Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology released its rankings, which show OU's I-O program at sixth and second out of 53 in research productivity overall and per faculty, respectively, as indexed by total research journals as well as interdisciplinary publications. We appreciate the hard work of the faculty shown from left to right Shane Connelly , Eric Day, Lori Snyder and Mike Mumford . At the individual level, the report showed that Mumford is the second-ranked I-O Psychologist overall.
Associate Professor of Biology Christian Lemon was elected by his colleagues to serve as treasurer/chair of finance for the Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) for a three-year term. AChemS is the primary U.S. and international professional society for taste, smell and flavor neuroscience research. 
The Oklahoma Biological Survey was recognized by OU's Environmental Concerns Committee as an Environmental Stewardship award winner. Beginning in 2017, the Environmental Concerns Committee (ECC) began recognizing members of the campus community for their environmental stewardship efforts, including responsible use and protection of the natural environment through conservation and sustainable practices. Pictured from left to right are Burr Millsap (Associate Vice President for Purchasing and Printing Services and Chair of the ECC), Lara Souza (Director, OBS), Jeff Kelly (previous Director, OBS and Director, Corix Plains Institute) and Alexander Nongard (Secretary, ECC).
RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHMENTS
$150,000 - OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

SWITCHGRASS AND SORGHUM BIOMASS OPTIMIZATION FOR STAGED THERMAL CONVERSION TO BIOFUELS

A collaboration between Laura Bartley (PI), OU chemical engineer Lance Lobban (coPI), and scientists at Texas A&M and Montana State, the goal of this project is to improve the efficiency of biofuel production from plant material using two approaches. The project will use gene editing to alter the bioenergy crop, switchgrass, to improve the yield and separation of thermal biofuels. It will also experiment with combining biochemical and thermochemical conversion approaches. 
$390,000 - NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

CARRER: STEREOSELECTIVE CARBENE CASCADE CYCLIZATIONS

Indrajeet Sharma is developing new synthetic methods for the construction of the types of bioactive molecules that are frequently used in efforts to identify drug leads for the treatment of cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders. The research seeks to develop cascade reactions that take advantage of a sequence of carefully timed steps to convert inexpensive, readily accessible compounds into higher-value, complex molecules.
To accomplish this, the Sharma group is developing new reaction protocols that involve the use of more than one metal at a time. This research is expected to have broad application in the fields of chemical synthesis, medicinal chemistry and therapeutics development. Sharma is also pioneering an outreach program, the Synergistic Catalytic Cycle for Education Excellence (SC2E2), that provides crucial hands-on science education for underrepresented students in the state of Oklahoma. 
$60,000 - CONSOLIDATED NUCLEAR SECURITY

EVALUATION OF NEXRAD RADAR AS A TOOL FOR MONITORING FLAGSHIP POLLINATORS/MONARCH BUTTERFLIES

Migratory insects, such as monarch butterflies, have a key function as pollinators in many ecosystems. There is concern about long-term declines in populations of these pollinators and the consequences for the pollination services they provide. Large-scale monitoring of these migratory populations is challenging and costly. Through this partnership with Consolidated Nuclear Security, an OU graduate student and postdoctoral fellow will evaluate the use of weather radar data for long-term, large-scale monitoring of populations of migratory insect pollinators. If successful, the project would lead to an efficient system for monitoring the distribution and abundance of these key pollinator species.

$997,831 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE

QUANTIFYING AND QUALIFYING THE INFLUENCE OF STANDARD LABORATORY PROCEDURES ON AGED, DEGRADED AND LOW COPY NUMBER DNA

The objective of this research is to evaluate and develop methods that show promise to increase the net yield of DNA and its purity. These include: (1) evaluating DNA loss during its extraction and purification against standards, (2) exploring means to mitigate DNA loss and/or further damage to the molecules in the standards, and (3) further improving and/or development of novel methods to remove PCR inhibitors from DNA elutes and/or subdue their influences within the forensic workflow. Moreover, there are still a number of poorly understood aspects of how aged, degraded, and/or LCN DNA behaves during routine laboratory methods and, critically, whether some or all of those behaviors truly differ from that of modern contaminating DNA. Moreover, there are hypotheses that newly observed damage patterns from ancient & endogenous DNA molecules are consistent and, thus, predictable. If these hypotheses are accurate, presumably there would be measurably different expectations for the behavior of – and damage accrued in modern exogenous contaminating DNA due to the reduced time since creation and deposition of the biological material. To be clear, if the damage patterns observed in contaminating DNA mirror those routinely observed in authentic aged and degraded DNA, then damage patterns cannot be a used as a reliable means by which to discriminate between contaminating and endogenous DNA. 
STUDY REVEALS TRENDS OF U.S. SURFACE WATER BODY
A research study, led by professor Xiangming Xiao (microbiology and plant biology), reveals the divergent trends of open surface water bodies in the contiguous United States from 1984 to 2016, specifically, a decreasing trend in the water-poor states and an increasing trend in the water-rich states. Surface water resources are critical for public water supply, industry, agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem services.
$15,412 - SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE, NPSTSCI

LINKING THE JET, INNER DISK, AND OUTER DISK OF HD 163296

This program will use contemporaneous multi-wavelength observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, Very Large Array and Apache Point Observatory to diagnose the jet, inner disk and outer disk regions of the forming star HD163296. HD163296 is still in the formation process of becoming a star and is surrounded by a geometrically flattened circumstellar disk of gas and dust. This gas and dust both serves to funnel matter onto the forming star and serves as the birth material for newly forming planets. The observations will enable researchers to diagnose the interplay between the accretion of material onto the central protostar and the geometry and illumination of the system's inner and outer disks.
DEADLINES AND FEATURED EVENTS


May 11
College of Arts and Sciences Spring Doctoral Reception, 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m., Dale Hall Tower, Ninth Floor.

May 11
University of Oklahoma Commencement Ceremony, 7 p.m., The Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

May 12
College of Arts and Sciences Spring Convocation, 9 a.m., Lloyd Noble Center.

July 13
Sabbatical leave applications for Spring 2019 only or Spring 2019 and Fall 2019 (two-semester sabbatical) due from departments to Dean's office.

August 20
Fall 2018 classes begin at the University of Oklahoma.