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CARSON BALL AND NISHIT GARG HONORED AS OUTSTANDING SENIORS
Sixteen students at the University of Oklahoma were recently honored as Outstanding Seniors for their achievements in scholarship, honors, awards, leadership and service. The OU College of Arts and Sciences is proud to announce that this year we had the rare distinction of having the Overall Outstanding Senior for the university in addition to the Outstanding Senior in our college.
The awards are presented each fall by Sooner Parents, and the group was recognized at an awards ceremony during which OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. and representatives from OU colleges presented each recipient their award. This year, Carson Ball (Collinsville, Oklahoma) was named the Overall Outstanding Senior and Nishit Garg (Tulsa) was selected as the Outstanding Senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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INVEST IN OU STUDENTS
Throughout the semester, the college has shared the stories of Ania, Aubrie and Brian, three of our current students who have continued to pursue their degree thanks to the generosity of those who provided scholarship support.
Students like Ania, Aubrie and Brian need your support now more than ever! Will you invest in our students through the Arts and Sciences Scholarship fund today?
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The college developed a website to share the stories of these students and you can learn more by visiting link.ou.edu/casimpact. You can also hear from these students in the videos to the left.
For many students scholarships not only provide extra help during challenging times, they also allow students to focus and thrive at OU. Your gift has the power to forever change the life of a student and contribute to their success.
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FACULTY AND DEPARTMENT NEWS |
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Associate professor of Chinese literature Ping Zhu’s co-edited volume, Maoist Laughter (Hong Kong University Press, 2019), has been selected for the American Libraries Association [ALA] Choice Outstanding Academic Titles list for 2020. Every year in the December issue, in print and online, Choice publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that were reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles reviewed by Choice and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community. The list is quite selective: it contains approximately 10% of some 6,000 works reviewed in Choice each year
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Professor Emeritus Dan Swan's recent book, Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage, was recognized at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association with the 2020 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award. The book was also recognized during the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society with an honorable mention for the Wayland D. Hand Prize given for the best book combining historical and folkloristic methods and materials.
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Assistant professor of sociology Samuel Perry and his coauthor Andrew L. Whitehead were recently honored with an Award of Merit by Christian Today for their book Taking American Back For God. Drawing on multiple sources of national survey data as well as in-depth interviews, Perry and Whitehead document how Christian nationalism shapes what Americans think about who they are as a people, what their future should look like, and how they should get there. Americans' stance toward Christian nationalism provides powerful insight into what they think about immigration, Islam, gun control, police shootings, atheists, gender roles, and many other political issues – very much including who they want in the White House. Taking America Back for God is a guide to one of the most important – and least understood – forces shaping American politics.
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Caroline T. Schroeder, professor of classics and letters, published Children and Family in Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism. This is the first book-length study of children in one of the birthplaces of early Christian monasticism, Egypt. Although composed of men and women who had renounced sex and family, the monasteries of late antiquity raised children, educated them and expected them to carry on their monastic lineage and legacies into the future. Children within monasteries existed in a liminal space, simultaneously vulnerable to the whims and abuses of adults and also cherished as potential future monastic prodigies. Schroeder examines diverse sources - letters, rules, saints' lives, art and documentary evidence - to probe these paradoxes. In doing so, she demonstrates how early Egyptian monasteries provided an intergenerational continuity of social, cultural and economic capital while also contesting the traditional family's claims to these forms of social continuity.
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SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK HOLDS SYMPOSIUM
In November, Christine Miller and Chie Noyori-Corbett from the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work and representatives from Ritsumeikan University Graduate School of Human Science in Japan held a two-day symposium on Social Service Responses to Disaster and Public Health Emergency in United States and Japan.
Presenters from both the United States and Japan discussed the responses to disaster and public health emergencies, especially COVID-19. By having different perspectives from two countries, participants were able to compare and contrast diverse approaches to the common issues the global world has experienced.
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SUPPORT OPEN PUBLISHING
Effective January 2021, the University Libraries is participating in two exciting developments related to open publishing:
Cambridge University Press Read and Publish Agreement
Read & Publish is a transformative agreement, helping to shift library spending from subscription-based reading toward open access publishing. OU authors who publish in Cambridge University Press journals will have the ability to make their work open access at no additional charge. The agreement will be in effect through January 2021 - December 2023.
PLOS Community Action Publishing (CAP)
This “collective action” business model equitably distributes the cost of open access publishing among institutions rather than charging individual authors. OU authors will be able to publish in PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine at no additional charge. The Libraries plans to participate throughout the PLOS CAP pilot period, January 2021 - December 2023.
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NEW STUDY FINDS OU RESEARCH WELL CITED, IMPACTFUL
According to a recent study published in the journal PLOS Biology, 188 University of Oklahoma researchers, including many from the College of Arts and Sciences, are listed as among the most influential researchers in the world. The study was led by Stanford University professor John Loannidis and analyzed the career-long impacts of researchers globally across a broad range of disciplines. The resulting list features the top 100,000 impactful researchers.
Additionally, Jizhong Zhou, the director of the OU Institute for Environmental Genomics and George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, was also listed among the top 0.1%, of the world’s researchers by the research analytics company, Web of Science. Their 2020 list of highly cited researchers include those most frequently cited over the last decade, fewer than 6,200 scholars across 21 research fields. READ MORE
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OU RESEARCHERS MAKE DISCOVERY IN OAXACA, MEXICO
For more than a century, researchers studying Monte Albán in Oaxaca, Mexico, had no idea that just centimeters beneath their feet lay a hidden building that could change the world’s understanding of this ancient capital. Archaeologists from the University of Oklahoma recently pinpointed the location of a buried building about 30 centimeters beneath the surface of the Main Plaza at Monte Albán — one of the first cities to develop in all of pre-Hispanic Mexico. The team used three geophysical prospection techniques — ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistance and gradiometry — to locate the square structure, which is estimated at 18 meters on a side and with stone walls more than a meter thick. OU researchers are the first to employ gradiometry and electrical resistivity at the site. The hidden building appears to resemble stone temples of a similar size from Monte Alban that were excavated by Mexican archaeologists in the 1930s. Evidence from these temples indicate they were used for religious practices, including burning incense, making offerings and ritual bloodletting, said Marc Levine, associate curator of archaeology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences. Researchers continue to analyze data from the new building to see if they can detect other features, like stairways, columns, tunnels or associated offerings.
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OU RESEARCHERS INVESTIGATE THE EQUITY OF FACULTY EVALUATIONS
The Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships on the OU Norman campus recently funded 11 short-term projects that position OU faculty and their collaborators to effectively compete for significant external funding opportunities related to the impact of social inequities on knowledge creation and dissemination. Keri Kornelson, a professor in the Department of Mathematics, and Megan Elwood Madden, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, lead a project that aims to improve the equity of OU faculty evaluations on the OU Norman campus. The resulting work will inform a proposal for additional funding by the National Science Foundation. READ MORE
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OU RESEARCH EXPLORES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NITROGEN AND CARBON DIOXIDE IN GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
A University of Oklahoma-led interdisciplinary study on a decade-long experiment (1997-2009) at the University of Minnesota found that lower nitrogen levels in soil promoted release of carbon dioxide from soils under high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and could therefore contribute to furthering rising atmospheric greenhouse gases and climate change. “Soil microorganisms help extract carbon from non-living sources and make the carbon available to living organisms and play an important role in influencing future climate and carbon cycle feedbacks,” said Jizhong Zhou, the OU director for the Institute for Environmental Genomics, a George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, and an adjunct professor in the Gallogly College of Engineering. READ MORE
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OU-LED STUDY FOCUSES ON EVOLUTIONARY DETERMINISM AND CONVERGENCE IN MARINE FISHES
The stickleback is a well-studied system in freshwater lakes, but the evolution of convergent morphotypes that occupy different positions in the water column in marine environments is less clear. An international group of scientists led by researchers at the University of Oklahoma decided to test the extent to which independent transitions from bottom to midwater habitats in marine fish species from different oceanic basins resulted in the recurrent evolution of body shape morphologies, comparable to those documented in sticklebacks. The motivation for this study was based on the book, Wonderful Life (ca. 1989), by noted Harvard University paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould. The OU-led study, "Evolutionary determinism and convergence associated with water-column transition in marine fish," which was published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and facilitated by funding from the National Science Foundation, was guided by researchers at OU, including Ricardo Betancur-R, assistant professor of biology, and Dahiana Arcila, assistant professor of biology and assistant curator at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, along with biology postdoctoral student Melissa Rincon-Sandoval and biology graduate students Emanuell Duarte-Ribeiro and Aintzane Santaquiteria. READ MORE
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OU RESEARCHERS, CITY OF OKLAHOMA CITY TEAM UP TO MONITOR WASTEWATER FOR COVID-19
Researchers from the University of Oklahoma, OU Health and the City of Oklahoma City are going underground to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 in the metro area. The OU COVID-19 sewage surveillance team includes Bradley Stevenson (associate professor, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology). Twice a week, OU researchers are collecting wastewater samples from the city’s four wastewater treatment plants and 15 residential manhole sites dispersed across the city to test the sewage for COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many people infected with COVID-19 shed the virus in their waste before developing symptoms. Because of this, municipalities and universities worldwide are monitoring sewage for COVID-19, which may serve as an early indicator of potential outbreaks. OU began implementing this approach on the Norman campus earlier in the fall semester, and the same researchers are using this technique with the wastewater samples collected in Oklahoma City. READ MORE
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RESEARCHERS SEARCH FOR NEW ANTIBIOTICS
OU researchers published an opinion article in the journal Nature Chemical Biology that addresses the gap in the discovery of new antibiotics. The research team from OU is composed of Helen Zgurskaya, Valentin Rybenkov and Adam Duerfeldt, all in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, along with researchers from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Merck & Co. CONTINUE READING
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ARCHAEOLOGISTS COULD HELP BRING OTTERS BACK
Following commercial harvest in the fur trade, sea otters vanished from Oregon’s coast by 1911, but Courtney Hofman, a molecular anthropologist at OU, is among a group of researchers utilizing techniques from ancient DNA and zooarchaeology that may offer a clue to restoring them. Hofman recently visited with The New York Times about new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which suggests that the northern subspecies had long settled along the Oregon coast.
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HOW SOME SKINKS LOST THEIR LEGS AND THEN EVOLVED NEW ONES
A recent feature in the New York Times explores research led by Clark University with OU biologists Cam Siler and Elyse Freita. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found the unexpected re-evolution of a four-limbed body plan in lizards that had already evolved to be snake-like.
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$54,636 — HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER
GEROONCOLOGY PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT: FROM BENCH-TO-BEDSIDE-TO-COMMUNITY
The primary goal of this project is to integrate OU’s long-standing but independent research efforts in cancer and aging into an integrative and translational GeroOncology program. Over half of new cancer cases are diagnosed in patients over 65 years of age, resulting in age being the major risk factor for cancer. This grant allows OU to develop a novel interdisciplinary program to study the molecular underpinnings of the increased risk for cancer with age, investigate strategies to delay cancer development in the aging population, and improve care and outcomes for older patients with cancer. The three major themes are: 1) to identify, validate and modulate biological changes that drive carcinogenesis and treatment-related toxicities; 2) to balance cancer treatment efficacy and safety; and 3) to identify and address cancer-related concerns and priorities in Oklahoma communities. This project seeks to: 1) Stimulate collaborative research and strategically integrate basic science research into GeroOncology, and 2) Develop a sustainable strategic plan that incorporates Oklahoma’s diverse communities. The integration of our programs is expected to result in a premier GeroOncology program that improves the health of older people in Oklahoma.
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$749,998 — U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
QUANTUM ENHANCED FIBER SENSING FOR OIL AND GAS APPLICATIONS
Alberto Marino is the PI on this collaboration between researchers at OU, Louisiana State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The objective of this project is to develop a quantum sensing approach that is compatible with current infrastructure in the oil and gas industry and can outperform the current state-of-the-art. Researchers will achieve this goal through the converge of well-established sensing techniques in the oil and gas industry with novel and disruptive techniques that are emerging from the field of quantum technologies. More specifically, they will use quantum states of light to enhance the sensitivity of fiber optic sensors beyond the classical limit. The proposed research provides a path forward for the use of quantum-enhanced sensing for oil and gas applications and will lead to ultra-sensitive quantum sensors that have the potential to fundamentally revolutionize downhole and surface surveillance technology. Such sensors promise to open new frontiers for safe hydrocarbon exploration, production and transport. Their compatibility with current infrastructure and ability to work under real-life environmental conditions will enable the deployment of the proposed techniques to the field in the short term. As such, the proposed research could lead to one of the first commercial applications for quantum technologies that promises to lead to profound benefits to an industry that is well established and is a significant driver of the world’s economy.
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$25,000 — OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
A SCREENING PLATFORM FOR PAN-CORONAVIRUS ASSEMBLY MODULATORS
Anti-viral approaches for SARS-CoV-19 focus on inhibiting virus interaction with host cells or with the enzymes required to copy the virus. Our approach is different by instead interfering with the structural components needed to enclose the viral genome. By targeting the critical interactions made between proteins and potentially with the viral genome, researchers can disrupt the replication cycle. This project will build the components needed to screen compound libraries, providing an orthogonal avenue for anti-viral research strategies.
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$45,000 — STATE OF OKLAHOMA, CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
IRON CATALYZED CARBENE ANNULATIONS TO ACCESS MEDIUM-SIZED HETEROCYCLES FOR DRUG DISCOVERY
The long-term goal of this research program is to utilize iron catalyzed carbene cascade reactions for the efficient scalable synthesis of medium-sized heterocycles to explore uncharted chemical space in drug discovery. This carbene chemistry is inspired from enzymatic cascades found in Mother Nature, where multiple transformations happen simultaneously in a single reaction. The objective of this proposal is to replace expensive rhodium with earth-abundant iron as a sustainable catalyst for the identification of new drug leads. As the cost of a compound is directly related to the cost of reagents involved, the use of iron catalysts in synthetic transformations will ultimately reduce the cost of drugs, fertilizers and other commodities. Iron is the most abundant metal in Earth’ s crust (∼ 4.7 weight %) after aluminum. The iron metal, and its salts, are readily available, cheap and relatively nontoxic. Iron is also considered a metal with minimal safety concern, as 1,300-ppm residual iron is deemed acceptable in drug substances when compared with the ≤ 10 ppm prescribed for most other transition metals, including rhodium. Therefore, iron catalysis holds the promise of enabling a responsible and sustainable paradigm in drug discovery while providing potential economic advantages and safety features at the same time.
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TESTING A FEEDBACK MODEL TO IMPROVE UNDERREPRESENTED COLLEGE STUDENTS' MATH OUTCOMES
Deborah Moore-Russo and Rachel Wright (both of the Department of Mathematics) have received external funding from the National Science Foundation for their collaborative research with Lora Park and other faculty from the University at Buffalo (SUNY) to study how feedback can be used in calculus to improve students’ mathematical outcomes. The funded project aims to develop and implement specific feedback tools for instructors to use in their introductory college calculus courses. Introductory calculus was selected since it is a foundational gateway course for students intending to major in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
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The dropout rate from STEM majors is especially high among underrepresented groups – such as women, racial minorities, first-generation college students and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The underrepresentation of these students has far-reaching consequences, not only for their educational attainment and career prospects, but also in limiting the diversity of the STEM workforce and diminishing opportunities for future progress in these fields. This project focuses on feedback as a potentially transformative, relatively low-cost, instructional tool to improve the undergraduate STEM experience for college students, in general, and for underrepresented groups, in particular, building on previous research studies that examined feedback given to university students in laboratory settings
The research team will first investigate current norms, practices and experiences surrounding the provision and receipt of feedback in introductory college calculus courses. Next, they will study different types of feedback to determine which types are most beneficial for students in introductory calculus courses and whether aspects of the feedback provider and student status matter in shaping the outcomes. Key measures will include belonging in math, study habits, academic help-seeking behaviors, interest in math and persistence in math.
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$21,779 — HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER
HRSA SUBAWARD AMERICAN INDIAN SELECTIVE PROJECT
This grant is in collaboration with the OU School of Community Medicine from HRSA to participate in a work group with community medicine, social work and the Muscogee Creek Nation. Dallas Pettigrew and Julie Miller-Cribbs will contribute to medical curriculum development, conduct an environmental scan of professional schools to innovative selective/elective rotations and instructional best-practices, learning objectives, content, activities, evaluations and policies/requirements as appropriate.
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MICROBIOLOGY AND PLANT BIOLOGY
$75,000 — STATE OF OKLAHOMA, CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
GENOMIC DETERMINANTS OF TETRACYCLINE RESISTANCE IN A NON-INDUSTRIAL POPULATION
Antibiotic resistance is an emerging global public health concern. Current understanding of resistance mechanisms is primarily founded upon investigations of clinical isolates in populations with pervasive antibiotic use, leading to ascertainment bias. This project focuses on characterizing antibiotic-resistant bacteria isolated from populations naïve to therapeutic antibiotics, and will help address this bias. Specifically, this project seeks to identify potential novel resistance mechanisms that are poised to have clinical relevance.
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$73,734 — UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS CENTER FOR RESEARCH, INC.
RII TRACK-2 FEC: AQUATIC INTERMITTENCY EFFECTS ON MICROBIOMES IN STREAMS (AIMS)
AIMS is a collaborative research project that will study the effects of drying on water quality, biogeochemistry and microbiomes in streams in the Mountain West, Great Plains and Southeastern Forest regions of the United States. This is an NSF EPSCoR Track II project, led by Amy Burgin at the University of Kansas, and Daniel Allen in the Department of Biology at OU, is one of the co-PIs. This project will generate physical infrastructure for studying intermittent streams, and workforce training in collaborative science and interdisciplinary methods, and environmental "Big Data” tools.
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$245,625 — U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH
FUNGAL NATURAL PRODUCTS TARGETING ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANT MYCOPLASMA GENITALIUM
The prevalence of sexually transmitted infectious diseases is rapidly rising across the United States, as well as worldwide. One of the pathogens leading this surge in infections is Mycoplasma genitalium, which is an unusual bacterium displaying resistance to many clinically prescribed agents. This new NIH sponsored project addresses the need for new and safe drug leads that inhibit M. genitalium through a multi-PI collaborative effort between natural products researcher Robert Cichewicz at the University of Oklahoma, and microbiologist Gwen Wood at the University of Washington Department of Medicine. Cichewicz states he is “thrilled to be working with Gwen who is an expert in the biology and clinical significance of this difficult to treat infection.” With this grant, Cichewicz and Wood will utilize fungi from the University of Oklahoma Citizen Science Soil Collection to mine for new therapeutic leads that have applications toward the treatment of antibiotic-resistant forms of this growing clinical threat.
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$13,737 — SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
GO-15219 SUPER-KEPLERIAN MOTIONS IN THE AU MIC CIRCUMSTELLAR DEBRIS DISK
Spatially resolved imagery of the young, edge-on debris disk around the M-type star AU Mic taken repeatedly over the past 10 years has revealed evidence of large, coherent structures in the disk that are moving away from the star at super-Keplerian speeds, possibly escaping the system. To date, these are the only moving features seen in resolved imagery of debris disks. Researchers are using 12 orbits of Hubble Space Telescope and the STIS instrument to re-image the AU Mic scattered light disk from 0.2" (2 au) to 13" (130 au), ~8 years after the previous epoch of HST/STIS imagery. HST/STIS provides the best means to accurately diagnose the morphological and kinematic evolution of these moving features, and the best means to trace the evolution of small grains in the system.
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Jan. 15
Deadline for academic units to submit to the Dean’s office recommendations for reappointment or non-reappointment to a second year for tenure-track and ranked-renewable term faculty.
Jan. 18
Deadline to submit new undergraduate minors and changes to existing minors (using State Regent forms) to the Dean’s office.
Jan. 26
Chairs and Directors meeting, 9 a.m.
Jan. 27
CASFAM Staff meeting, 10 a.m.
Jan. 29
Sabbatical leave applications for Fall 2021 only or Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 (two-semester sabbatical) are due to the Dean’s office.
Feb. 14 (est.)
Deadline to make changes to Spring 2021 OTIS.
Feb. 15
Deadline to enter new course changes not associated with program modifications, certificates or minors into Courseleaf.
Feb. 15
Sabbatical leave reports for Fall 2020 only or Spring 2020 and Fall 2020 (two-semester sabbatical) are due to the Dean’s office.
Feb. 23
Chairs and Directors meeting, 9 a.m.
Feb. 24
CASFAM Staff meeting, 10 a.m.
Feb. 26
Deadline for academic units to submit faculty evaluations to the Dean’s office.
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If you have information or announcements for News & Updates, please submit to the College communication office.
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