Category: Kudos

Students in grades 6-12 recently participated in a design contest for a CubeSat mission patch—part of a NASA grant project that includes Dr. Nickolas Solomey’s research on solar neutrinos. Patch design entries included themes and elements to represent Wichita State, NASA and particle physics. The runners-up and winning design were chosen by Solomey and his team of graduate students working on the solar neutrino project.

Winning designer: Rylee Salts, Topeka High School

Runners-up :

• Aaralyn Spencer, Altamont Grade School
• Samantha Chestnut, Topeka High School
• Cora Ambrose, Topeka High School
• Elly Han, Altamont Grade School

This design contest was in partnership with the Ad Astra Kansas Foundation. The winning design will be used as the patch for the NASA mission.

Dr. Jenny Pearson, Wichita State professor of sociology, has been elected president of the Midwest Sociological Society. The society is a nonprofit, regional, professional society dedicated to building community among sociologists and to advancing sociological knowledge, teaching and practice for social scientific purposes and social betterment. A number of Wichita State University faculty and students attend the conference and present their research each year.

Pearson will serve a four-year term in April as president elect-elect; followed by president-elect and program chair; president; and immediate past president. She previously served as the Kansas state director and the co-founder and chair of the MSS LGBTQ+ Task Force, collaboratively working toward making the organization and annual conference more inclusive for LGBTQ+ members.

For December 2021, Wichita State’s CARE Team had an increase of 59.16% through the academic year of Aug. 1 through Dec. 31, 2021. There was also a 32.26% increase when comparing December 2020 and December 2021.

January had an increase of 64.97% for the  academic year of Aug. 1, 2021, through Jan. 3. This included a 138.1% increase when comparing January 2021 and 2022.

The CARE Team exists to support students through difficulty by connecting them with the resources and help they need to succeed academically and personally.

While State Upward Bound Math-Science (UBMS) program at WSU focuses on preparing students for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers, their students also have a creative side. Recently, four Wichita State UBMS participants were published in the Mikrokomos program. Nayeli Villalobos and Setarah Soureshjani; Alissa Brown and Kenly Nicolas-Estrada, UBMS alumni, submitted writing samples they developed during their summer 2021 creative writing class. The class was taught by Robert Yates Wichita State graduate instructor.

Mikrokosmos is the literary journal of WSU’s Master of Fine Arts program. It accepts written non-fiction and fiction submissions from all students and alumni at WSU. UBMS participants would like to thank Mikrokomos for the opportunity they gave to these youth leaders to express their voices.

For more information about the essays, please contact derrick.veasey@wichita.edu.

Usha Haley, W. Frank Barton Distinguished Chair in International Business and professor of management, completed an article for a medical journal on misapplications of statistical data and techniques to make recommendations to fix this issue. The research indicates that 80% of medical doctors do not understand the assumptions underlying the statistics that they quoted. Fortune (Education) also recently quoted Haley on her research.

The Office of Academic Affairs has announced the new members of the Emeriti Faculty. Please congratulate the following:

• Cathy L. Moore-Jansen, associate professor emerita of University Libraries
• Philip L. Hersch, professor emeritus of economics

Emeritus status is an honorary designation conferred upon retirees in recognition of their contributions and accomplishments over their years of service to the University.

Abigail Devereaux, assistant professor of economics and Institute for the Study of Economic Growth research fellow at Wichita State’s Barton School of Business, was recently named a Public Choice and Public Policy Project fellow by the American Institute for Economic Research.

“Congratulations to all 21 individuals chosen as Public Choice and Public Policy Project fellows,” said Ted Bolema, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth. “We all stand to benefit from their work. I’m especially excited to see the contributions of Abigail Devereaux. Her research and innovative thought leadership, as well as her numerous professional contributions, make her uniquely qualified for this exciting new AIER project.”

The Public Choice and Public Policy Project was established Dec. 21, 2021, and is modeled on the success of the Sound Money Project. The project creates a network of scholars that will offer regular commentary and in-depth analysis on public policy using the tools of Public Choice Economics. The innovative scholars who make up this project seek to understand the reality of government decision-making and the consequences those decisions have on the lives of everyone in society and to suggest alternatives to the romantic political notions that often dominate policy discussions.

“I am honored to be named as a fellow of the Public Choice and Public Policy Project,” said Devereaux. “Public choice is a subfield of economics that applies economic theory to the political world. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics, won for her work in public choice. We’re just starting to introduce public choice concepts in our economics pedagogy at Wichita State. I cover it in my Principles of Microeconomics course and much more extensively in my Economies in Transition course. I look forward to advancing Public Choice Economics alongside these incredibly talented, capable and accomplished scholars.”

A member of the Barton School’s faculty since 2020, Devereaux is a frequently published scholar on the topics of Game Theory, Complexity and Computability Theory, Theory of Entangled Political Economy, Combinatorial Growth Theory and Systems Theory. She has published in the Journal of Institutional Economics, The American Economist, Review of Austrian Economics, Cosmos and Taxis and Journal of Private Enterprise.

She is also recognized as an effective classroom instructor and mentor as an assistant professor of Economics at the Barton School. Devereaux has earned several distinctions in her career and is also a founding member of the Entangled Political Economy Research Network, a research fellow at the Independent Institute and a faculty affiliate at the Ostrom Workshop. In 2021, Devereaux and her co-author Dr. Linan Peng received the Elinor Ostrom Award for their work on China’s Social Credit System.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col Larry Burks Sr., director for the Military and Veteran Center at Wichita State, received recognition for his military service and his work with the greater Wichita community at two  Martin Luther King Jr. Day (MLK) community celebrations Jan. 17.

The African Americans Renewing Interest in Spirituals Ensemble Ensemble (ARISE) recognized Burks with their Sankofa Award honoring his military service and his volunteer work and activism.

The Greater Wichita Ministerial League honored Burks with their Spirit of Unity Award recipient, which is awarded to individuals who participate in making the local community a better place while representing the vision and dreams of MLK.

Three first-year educators from Wichita State were recently recognized by the Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) for their outstanding teaching skills through the 2022 Kansas Horizon Award program.

The Kansas Horizon Award program, sponsored by KSDE, gives all school districts in the state an opportunity to nominate one elementary and one secondary teacher for the award. To be eligible for the award, teachers must have completed their first year of teaching and have performed in such a way as to distinguish themselves as outstanding.

The following WSU educators were recognized by KSDE for 2022:

• Kynnedy Myers: Myers graduated from WSU’s Teacher Apprentice Program (TAP) in 2020 and teaches at Ewalt Elementary School, Augusta USD 402.
• Emily Crawford: Crawford will graduate from TAP in spring 2022 and teaches at Northridge Elementary School, Newton USD 373. Crawford has been teaching in the classroom on the limited apprentice license TAP candidates receive through the program.
• Nicole Menard teaches at Buhler High School, Buhler USD 313, and is a 2020 graduate of WSU’s English Education program.

TAP is an online bachelor of arts in early childhood education and elementary education at WSU. The program prepares candidates for licensure as a Kansas teacher with a flexible program of study, specially designed for paraeducators to earn their bachelor of arts in Early Childhood Unified/elementary Education so that they can become the classroom teacher of record in a shortened time.

Inside Higher Education recently published an opinion essay by Dr. Keith Pickus, vice president for corporate and foundation relations, Wichita State University Foundation about the similarities between managing professional employees and teaching university students. Pickus, who recently returned to a full-time faculty role after serving in various campus administration roles for 19 years, penned the essay after teaching this past spring.