OU CELEBRATES NAMING OF MATH DEPARTMENT IN HONOR OF TRANSFORMATIONAL GIFT

Earlier this semester, the college celebrated a historic gift from longtime supporters David and Judi Proctor that will transform the future of our university and the future of our Department of Mathematics. OU will receive an extraordinary estate gift from the Proctors that will ensure our excellence continues to be affordable, attainable and accessible for students from all backgrounds. The Proctors’ gift includes a $7 million irrevocable contribution to the Department of Mathematics in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences. In appreciation of this gift and its potential to transform STEM education university-wide, the OU Board of Regents has approved the naming of the department to the David and Judi Proctor Department of Mathematics. The college thanks the Proctors for their deep commitment to the success of our students, which underscores their belief that an OU education can change lives forever. READ MORE ABOUT THIS TRANSFORMATIONAL GIFT

OU LAUNCHES HISTORIC $2 BILLION ‘LEAD ON’ FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN

The University of Oklahoma announced the public phase of the largest philanthropic campaign in the history of Oklahoma higher education, enabling the university to fully deliver on its promise of changing lives and launching a new era of excellence at OU. With a historic goal of raising $2 billion “Lead On: The University of Oklahoma’s Campaign for the Future” supports OU’s core traditions of providing an unparalleled, affordable education; generating real-world impact through pathbreaking research and innovation; delivering world-class health care across the state; and creating a welcoming place for learning and belonging. All three of OU’s campuses are positioned to benefit from the campaign, which will provide wide-reaching support for students, faculty and programs across the university. LEARN MORE ABOUT SUPPORTING THE DODGE FAMILY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 

REGENTS' ALUMNI AWARD RECIPIENTS HONORED

The college congratulates the 2022 Regents’ Alumni Award winners who were recognized at a ceremony during Homecoming Weekend. Since 1987, alumni and friends who have made a distinctive impact on OU through their exceptional achievements, service and transformational support have been honored. Award recipients best represent a spirit of community and commitment to excellence demonstrating the university’s highest values. This year's recipients include Stacey Dales, Chun Lin and Paula A. Johnson from the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences.

SAVE THE DATE - WINTER CONVOCATION

The college will recognize the academic achievements of our students at the upcoming 2022 Winter Convocation. The ceremony is set for  7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16, at Lloyd Noble Center. Please encourage families, friends and community members to join in this momentous celebration and remind students to check their email for information from the college about the event.

FACULTY AND DEPARTMENT NEWS

The college congratulates Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book The Love Song of W.E.B. Du Bois, a multi-generational epic that chronicles the journey of one American family from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. Since 2006, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize has honored writers whose works use the power of literature to foster peace, social justice and global understanding. After receiving the prize, Jeffers said, “When I became a writer - or I should say, when I accepted the fact that I’d always been a writer – I sought to balance a claimed calmness in my spirit with an acknowledgement of history, but history is not always a site of peace. A balancing – a peaceful journey – seemed an impossible task, like reversing gravity – floating up instead of falling – or putting blood back into a vein. I have trod this writer’s path for many more years than I haven’t, and I believe that peace equals naming. A litany of ancestors and chosen kin, an utterance, the tonal truth of what occurred, when few want to accept or even know the past. This is peace, even when the present or past isn’t joyful. This is peace: a knowing that my voice equals thunder, only because I am speaking an urged echo." Jeffers’ book has garnered numerous honors, including the First Novelist’s Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Congratulations to associate professor Waleed F. Mahdi, who has been elected as President of the Arab American Studies Association for a two-year term starting in November 2023 (preceded by a year-long term as President-Elect). The AASA is a premier association of scholars and other persons interested in the study of Arab American history, ethnicity, culture, literature, art, music, politics, religion, sociology and other aspects of the Arab American experience.

Yale recently welcomed Janet Ward as a 2022-23 American Council on Education Fellow who is spending time on the Yale campus throughout the full academic year. She is affiliated with the Office of International Affairs where she is working with Yale’s leadership on initiatives related to the ongoing Belonging at Yale action plan, with a focus on the humanities and how diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts intersect with the university’s global strategy. Yale President Peter Salovey said, “I am delighted Professor Ward will join us at Yale for the ACE leadership program. Through the fellowship, she will gain skills and perspectives that will benefit OU, while also helping to enhance Yale’s operations by sharing ideas based on her extensive experience in higher education.” Ward is the Brammer Presidential Professor of History and Faculty Fellow for Strategic Initiatives in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, where she has served as founding Faculty Director of the Arts and Humanities Forum and as Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Partnerships. She concludes her term as President of the German Studies Association at the end of this year. READ MORE

Traci Brynne Voyles, associate professor and chair of women’s and gender studies and the director of the Center for Social Justice, was awarded the Caughey Western History Prize for her book The Settlers Sea: California’s Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism. The award, presented by the Western History Association, is given annually to the most distinguished book on the American West. In this testament to history, Voyles examines how settler colonialism restructures physical environments in ways that further Indigenous dispossession, racial capitalism and degradation of the natural world. In addition, Voyles’s book has been recognized by The Nation for “helping us understand the limits of the United States’ ability to conquer and control the landscape.” 

OU PROFESSOR COLLABORATES WITH STUDENTS FOR NEWLY PUBLISHED BOOK  

In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind collaboration, OU professor of classic and letters Andrew Porwancher has co-authored a major newly launched book on U.S. legal and constitutional history with three of his former undergraduate students. The Prophet of Harvard Law draws from untouched archival sources to reveal the origins of the legal world we inhabit today. The book focuses on Harvard Law professor James Bradley Thayer, who shaped generations of students from 1874-1902. His devoted protégés included future Supreme Court justices, appellate judges and law school deans. The legal giants of the Progressive Era — Holmes, Brandeis and Hand, to name only three — came under Thayer’s tutelage in their formative years. This September, the book was published by the University Press of Kansas, which is considered one of the nation’s elite publishers of legal history. Additionally, the book appeared in Kansas’s premier book series, “American Political Thought,” which is home to much of today’s cutting-edge scholarship. READ FULL STORY

MEET KAITLYN ARMON

Meet Kaitlyn Armon, one of the newest members of the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, who has been serving as the director of the Student Success Center since August. Armon has a variety of responsibilities that center around connecting students to resources, from making sure students have the support they need and that they feel heard, to connecting them with careers, internships or undergraduate research opportunities. The Student Success Center helps to keep people engaged in the community, as well as provide them with a sense of direction and purpose.

Armon was born in New Hampshire but moving frequently has been a way of life for her. Her father serves as a U.S. Marine, so throughout her childhood she has lived in many places, including California, Tennessee and even Japan. She eventually settled in South Carolina and attended Coastal Carolina University, where she received her master’s degree in liberal studies with a focus in communication. She worked there for four years, but because of her love for traveling and exploring new places, she decided it was time for a change. Choosing the University of Oklahoma was an easy decision for Armon, who has always been an OU football fan, and her husband, Kyle, a native of Owasso, grew up attending the games with his parents, both of whom are OU alumni. The fun environment on campus and the chance to live closer to her family solidified her decision.

Armon has worked in the areas of veterans’ services, academic advising, admissions and student success. Her biggest career goal is to know “a little bit about a lot,” so students don’t get shuffled around from person to person. She has always known that she wanted to be an educator, but didn’t quite know what that looked like or how to get there. As a first-generation college student living across the country from her family, she initially had no guidance and changed her major seven times. She eventually found a good mentor who encouraged her to participate in a master’s program, which led her to work in higher education.

”Since no one stepped in for me until it was almost too late, I want to be that support for the students I serve. I experienced first-hand how impactful the right support can be. Once my mentor Dr. Kyle Holody provided that support and guidance, the world changed for me. Every student deserves to experience that type of support and guidance.”

Excited to get further into her first semester as at OU, Armon is currently working on ways to better communicate opportunities to students. She is planning on enhancing the social media presence for the Student Success Center, as well as creating a booklet of explanations and learning opportunities for students.

Armon credits her strong work ethic to her mom. "My mom has always been there to support me and uplift me, and I am so grateful for her and her impact on my life. I love getting to see her do something she is passionate about in her job as an HR manager, and now I get to support her and her dreams."

In her free time, Armon enjoys hiking and hanging out with her husband and their two pets: Hazel the dog and Lyla the calico cat. She is currently reading the Bridgerton series and just started binging The Vampire Diaries. She says being a military kid shaped who she is today and led her to her love of different cultures and travel. She is extremely extroverted and loves meeting new people.

Her biggest piece of advice to new staff members is to “get out and talk to new people. It helps you feel like part of the OU family. The more you do it, the more you realize you are a part of something bigger.”

WHAT CAN FURBEARERS PAST AND PRESENT TEACH US ABOUT FUTURE CONSERVATION EFFORTS?

Courtney Hofman, President’s Associates Presidential Professor in the Department of Anthropology, is leading a project studying how human management schemes and Indigenous relationships influenced furbearers, specifically beaver, mink and muskrat. Hofman’s work is the focus of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The four-year study uses ancient DNA samples derived from archaeological specimens housed at the Smithsonian Institute’s Natural History Museum and among other museums, as well as samples from modern beaver, mink and muskrat provided by wildlife managers and fur-trappers, to better understand the relationship between people and these animals. The study incorporates a diverse group of collaborators, including the Smithsonian, Middlebury College, the University of Maine and tribal partners. READ MORE

LAURA-ISOBEL MCCALL (CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY)

ROBERT CICHEWICZ (CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY)

$358,862 – U.S. DEPT. OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

AN LCMS-GUIDED BIOANALYTICAL APPROACH FOR RATIONAL NATURAL PRODUCT LIBRARY DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION

The first step in drug development is usually testing a large collection of compounds ("compound libraries"). Natural products are one of the most valuable sources of new bioactive molecules, leading to valuable drugs such as artemisinin to treat malaria or the painkiller acetylsalicylic acid. Building natural product libraries is therefore a critical step in natural product-based drug development. However, until now there have been few evidence-based rules for the rational design of natural product libraries. This project will test whether metabolomics and new data analysis approaches can be used to address this issue. Results will help optimize natural product library efficiency, reducing drug development costs. This will be especially impactful for neglected or rare diseases, where costs at the initiation of drug development campaigns are often restrictive.

DEVEN CARLSON (POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS)

$137,249—RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 

“BACKLASH? SCHOOLING REASSIGNMENTS AND THE POLITICS OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION”

For three decades, the Wake County Public School System, which serves the Raleigh, North Carolina, metropolitan area, operated a policy designed to ensure a minimum degree of diversity in each of the district’s schools. This policy came to an abrupt end after the district’s 2009 school board elections, where a slate of candidates ran, and won, on a platform of abandoning the diversity initiative and moving to neighborhood-based schooling assignments. Professor Carlson will lead a project team analyzing the role that schooling reassignments — the practice of moving students from one school to another — played in the demise of WCPSS’ school diversity initiative. Specifically, the team will combine unique data detailing the geography and timing of school reassignments between 2000 and 2010 with rich, longitudinal, individual-level voting data to estimate the effect of living in an area where the district reassigned students to different schools based on voter participation in WCPSS school board elections. This innovative project will provide broad, systematic evidence on the role that key features of school desegregation plans play in shaping the politics around those plans.

JUSTIN REEDY (COMMUNICATION/INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA)

JOSEPH TRUJILLO-FALCÓN (COMMUNICATION/COOPERATIVE INSTITUTE FOR SEVERE AND HIGH-IMPACT WEATHER RESEARCH AND OPERATIONS)

KIMBERLY KLOCKOW-MCCLAIN (NOAA NATIONAL SEVERE STORMS LAB)

JOE RIPBERGER (POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS, THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA)

KODI BERRY (NOAA, NATIONAL SEVERE STORMS LAB)

$268,421— NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

A WEATHER-READY NATION PARA TODOS: EVALUATING CURRENT PRACTICES IN COMMUNICATING HAZARDOUS WEATHER RISKS TO SPANISH SPEAKERS

An interdisciplinary team of OU and NOAA researchers received an award to improve extreme weather risk communication in underserved Spanish-speaking communities in the United States. Building on previous research, the team will use a combination of fieldwork and large surveys to identify unique social vulnerabilities and explore the impact of language, culture and nation of origin on warning reception, comprehension and response among U.S. Spanish speakers. The project will culminate with recommendations to the National Weather Service on how to improve risk communication and preparedness in this rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population. 

Last year, the University of Oklahoma announced researchers were implementing an effort to strengthen families in Oklahoma by implementing the Parent-Child Assistance Program, an award-winning, evidence-informed program developed at the University of Washington School of Medicine that provides assistance to pregnant and parenting mothers struggling with addiction. Erin Maher, Ph.D., OU associate professor of sociology and associate research director for OU’s Data Institute for Societal Challenges, is a co-principal investigator leading the project, which has had some significant milestones as it prepared to begin enrollment this October. PCAP developed a partnership with OUtreach to lead the direct services portion of the project. In addition, the program has hired its first round of case managers and supervisors and leased office space in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Over the last six months, the PCAP team has been working closely with the REDCAP database developer at the Center for Child Abuse and Neglect and it is nearing finalization with trainings scheduled.

Firat Demir, L.J. Semrod Presidential Professor of Economics, is the principal investigator of a two-year $275,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which is being carried out in collaboration with the OU Center for Peace and Development and the Security in Context. This is the renewal and continuation of a previous grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The grant project will bring together peace, security, gender and global political economy scholars in order to reshape public debates and knowledge production on international political economy and (in)security studies. The project will work to develop capabilities for sustainable peace building and security in post-conflict environments through partnerships with organizations in Middle East and North Africa. The aim is to develop research and survey outputs to help guide methodologies and best practices for a bottom-up approach to sustainable peace building and human security in conflict and post conflict societies. The group will also cultivate international scholar networks and build the capacity of younger scholars through a series of pedagogical and public outreach activities and outputs and mentorship programs for junior scholars and graduate students.

An interview with Scott Gronlund, Roger and Sherry Teigen Presidential Professor in the Department of Psychology, was recently featured in Episode 3 of Kim Kardashian's podcast on Spotify titled “The System.” The episode, which was released on Oct. 10, depicts the criminal case from the state of Ohio that involved Kevin Keith. Keith was convicted of triple murder in 1994 and sentenced to death, but in 2010, an appeal was mounted to save his life. Gronlund wrote an amicus brief about the eyewitness evidence in this case as part of this effort. The Ohio governor stepped in and commuted Keith’s sentence to life without parole, and nearly 30 years after the crime, he remains incarcerated. Can the power-of-celebrity bring attention to Keith’s case? Listen to the podcast, which is currently the No. 1 podcast on Spotify, to hear Gronlund speak about the eyewitness evidence in this case. 

Earlier this year, the university announced a new initiative: the Dodge Family Scholars program, a financial need-based scholarship opportunity to benefit and support talented students with financial need. The college held its inaugural meeting with our first-year cohort, where leadership visited with scholars about resources and mentorship. With this initiative, the college will expand on its ongoing commitment to accessibility to education and affordability. The Dodge Family Scholars program is intended to help students reach their educational goals and assist with the costs of tuition, fees and books.

Following the release of FEMA’s first-ever National Tribal Strategy, FEMA administrator and OU alumna Deanne Criswell announced that Kelbie Kennedy will serve as the agency’s National Tribal Affairs Advocate. As the first tribal political appointee in FEMA history, Kennedy will advise the administrator and the agency on Tribal Affairs, while working to ensure that FEMA lives up to its treaty and trust responsibilities to Tribal Nations. “I am honored to be the first tribal political appointee in FEMA history and will work hard to ensure that Tribal Nations and tribal sovereignty are at the forefront of our efforts,” said Kennedy, FEMA National Tribal Affairs Advocate and Citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “Growing up on my Tribal Nation’s reservation in Southeastern Oklahoma, I learned firsthand that Tribal Nations are the first – and many times the only – line of defense when disaster strikes Indian Country. When Tribal Nations have the necessary resources and support they need, the entire community is better prepared and able to respond to disasters.” Kennedy is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and was born and raised on her Tribal Nation’s reservation in Southeast Oklahoma. She received her bachelor's in communication with a minor in Native American Studies from OU in 2012 and went on to earn her J.D. and certificate in American Indian Law in 2015.

Nov. 11 

Deadline for academic units to submit to the Dean’s office recommendations for reappointment or non-reappointment to a third year for tenure-track and ranked-renewable term faculty.

Nov. 14 

Deadline to submit Presidential Dream Course proposals to the Dean’s office.

Nov. 14

Deadline to submit undergraduate program modifications and undergraduate certificates (using State Regents forms) to the Dean’s office.

Nov. 21

Deadline to enter graduate courses and undergraduate courses with G designation not associated with program modifications into Courseleaf.   

Nov. 29

Chairs and Directors meeting, 10 a.m. 

Nov. 30 

CASFAM Staff meeting, 9 a.m. 

Nov. 30 

4:30 p.m., George Lynn Cross Hall 123

Daphna Joel, Professor, Tel-Aviv University, Author of Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain (2019) – Daphna Joel is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the School of Psychological Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University. In the past decade, she has been studying questions related to brain, sex and gender, using various analytical methods to analyze diverse datasets, from large collections of brain scans to information obtained with self-report questionnaires.

Dec. 7

7 p.m., Sam Noble Museum Kerr Auditorium

Joan Roughgarden, Professor Emerita, Stanford University, Author of Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (2004)

“Variation in Gender Expression and Sexuality: Implications for Evolutionary Theory” – Joan. Roughgarden earned a doctorate in biology from Harvard University in 1971 and taught at Stanford University beginning in 1972, attaining the rank of professor of biology and Geophysics. She has published more than 190 papers and eight books, including Evolution’s Rainbow, in 2004 that won the 2005 Stonewall Prize for nonfiction from the American Library Association. 

Dec. 16

The Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences December convocation ceremony will be held at 7 p.m. at Lloyd Noble Center.