WSU Today: Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Required Training

Mandatory faculty and staff Title IX training due April 7

Faculty and staff at Wichita State University are required to complete mandatory training on preventing harassment and discrimination. The deadline has been extended to Friday, April 7.

This prevention training, which is led through WSU’s Office of Institutional Compliance, is not only important in making our campus a welcoming and equitable environment, but it’s also important for Title IX compliance. If you have completed your training, thank you for helping us make real progress in making our campus safe, inclusive and equitable.

Featured Stories

Wichita State film students edit like pros at Shocker Studios

Wichita State senior Alyssa Pfeifer took an elective film class in high school as a break from academics she considered more stressful. It didn’t take long for film to become her passion. She made short films, entered competitions, and experimented with cameras and lighting on music videos.

Now at WSU’s Shocker Studios, students like Pfeifer have even more opportunities to hone their skills with a state-of-the-art, 700-square-foot editing suite for their video projects. The studio features theater lighting and seating, a 4K digital cinema compliant projector and a 200-inch screen. Students work on PCs and Mac Studios. It is equipped with DaVinci Resolve Color Panels, and keyboards are hot-keyed for Adobe Premiere Pro and/or DaVinci Resolve.

News

Rhatigan Student Center to close Sunday

The Rhatigan Student Center will be closed on Sunday, April 9. Regular hours will resume on Monday, April 10.

Find the regular operating hours for the RSC

Art history senior, Josh Cornett, selected to present research at national conference

Josh Cornett, a senior double majoring in art history and accounting, has been selected to present his paper “Shifting Sympathies: Thomas Nast’s Indian Cartoons in Post-Civil War America,” on Thursday, April 6 at the Pop Culture Association 2023 National Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Cornett is currently the curatorial intern at the Ulrich Museum of Art and is primarily interested in the cultural exchange between indigenous groups and colonizing groups. While performing research in preparation for the Ulrich’s 2022 exhibition “Myths of the West: Narrating Stories of the Land and People through Wichita Art Collections,” Cornett found himself gathering an abundance of research about the German-born American political cartoonist Thomas Nast, as four of his works were displayed in the show, and Cornett went on to construct his paper from this research.

Cornett made the decision to submit his piece to the conference with encouragement from Brittany Lockard, associate professor of art history in the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries.

New faculty award presented from Department of Women’s, Ethnicity and Intersectional Studies

The Department of Women’s, Ethnicity and Intersectional Studies (WEIS) in the Fairmount College is accepting applications for the Carol Konek Legacy Award. This is a new annual award open to tenured, tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty who teach or cross-list courses in WEIS. Applications are due by April 7.

Funds will be used for projects that allow faculty to become more involved in their studies, research and professions through leadership development and education projects, or allow individual members to attend a conference that relates to their work. The annual award is $1,000.

No individual will be excluded from consideration on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origins, political affiliation, pregnancy status, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or status as a veteran.

For more information, contact Robin Henry, interim chair of WEIS, at robin.henry@wichita.edu.

Find out more about the award and submit an application

Place academic year end orders with RSC Engraving

Departments planning for academic year end awards and gifts should place their orders now with RSC Engraving, located inside the Shocker Sports Grill & Lanes in the lower level of the Rhatigan Student Center.

RSC Engraving provides personalized products and gifts, offering customers thousands of choices for plaques, awards, name badges and more.

Don’t delay as most items take seven to 10 days to complete. For more information, visit the RSC Engraving homepage, call 316-978-3479 or email rsc.engraving@wichita.edu.

Kansas Space Grant Consortium accepting proposals for program

The Teacher Workshop Program, part of the NASA Kansas Space Grant Consortium, supports the development and implementation of STEM educator workshops. NASA is especially interested in helping teachers bring NASA-relevant material and content into middle-school classrooms.

Multiple awards between $15,000 and $50,000 each are anticipated. Proposers must identify a 50 cent commitment for every NASA dollar requested (use of federal matching funds is not allowed). The majority of activity should be planned for between June 2023 and March 2024. Follow-up activities, such as reporting and program evaluations, can take place within three months following a workshop.

For more information, email nasainkansas@wichita.edu or visit the KSGC homepage.

Events

Distinguished visiting writer, Melinda Moustakis, will give fiction reading

Attend the next part of the Writing Now/Reading Now series for a reading by WSU’s 2023 distinguished visiting writer, Melinda Moustakis, at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 6 in the Beren Gallery of the Ulrich Museum of Art. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m. Writing Now/Reading Now is cosponsored by the Department of English, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Watermark Books & Café and the Ulrich Museum.

Moustakis’s story collection, “Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories,” is set in the rugged landscape where she was born, and received the Flannery O’Connor Award and a five Under 35 selection by the National Book Foundation. Her forthcoming novel, “Homestead,” has been called a “stunning debut” by Booklist, given a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and been praised as follows by New York Times bestselling author Jess Walter, “Moustakis’s writing is so good, so precise, so strong, and so deeply felt that it immediately creates a sense of time and place.”

Asian Student Conference to host assembly event April 7

Wichita State’s Asian Student Conference (ASC) presents its annual ASC Assembly starting 6 p.m. Friday, April 7 in the CAC Theater. The assembly is a multicultural variety show that ASC hosts every spring to showcase different talents within the community. The doors open at 5:30 p.m.

This is also ASC’s last major event of the school year, so it encourages attendees to invite their friends and family to watch the performers spring into competition.

Since this is a competition, a prize will be given to the top three performers chosen by a panel of judges. First place receives $300, second place receives $200 and third place receives $100.

For questions, reach out to ASC’s event coordinators Megan Ta or Amanda Phanivong at asc.shockers@gmail.com.

AI Interest Group invites faculty, staff to meeting

The AI Interest Group is hosting its initial meeting from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 12 in 264 Rhatigan Student Center, Spencer Room. The meeting is open to any and all faculty and staff interested in conversations about AI and its impact on instruction. This will be the first in a series of sessions.

The topic for the first session will be “Talking to students about AI” and will discuss syllabus recommendations, assignment and exercise ideas, and more.

Future topics for this group will include AI and the instructor’s work, AI and creativity, AI and intellectual property, and more.

Learn more about the AI Interest Group

AHINSA Invites community to Holi party

Join AHINSA for a colorful celebration of Holi starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 15 in front of Hubbard Hall. The party will be a vibrant and lively affair, filled with music, games, refreshments and plenty of colors. Entry to the party is just $5, and attendees will get to experience the joy and energy of the beloved Indian festival in the company of like-minded individuals.

Read more of AHINSA Invites community to Holi party

Register for 2023 Tilford Symposium

Join the 2023 Tilford Symposium on April 25 and April 26 in the Eugene M. Hughes Metropolitan Complex. This year’s theme, “Building resilience and community: Prioritizing mental health, well-being, and inclusive allyship,” is presented by the Office of the Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer and funded by the Student Government Association.

This one-of-a-kind conference brings together industry leaders and influencers to discuss crucial issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion and mental health. Honoring the legacy of Dr. Tilford, a champion of inclusive excellence in education.

Registration is open to all faculty, staff, students, industry partners and community members at no additional charge. Don’t miss the opportunity to be inspired by brilliant individuals, gain valuable insights into diversity and inclusion challenges, participate in critical conversations to enhance an organization’s culture, and identify strategies to recruit and retain talent.

The symposium features a tentative schedule of events including a meet and greet, keynote address, breakout sessions, panel discussions and lunch table topics.

Learn more and register for the symposium

Public health sciences co-presents mini film fest showing of ‘Supernova’

The Department of Public Health Sciences (PHS) is co-hosting a series of film fests for the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) Big Read: Wichita alongside the Wichita Public Library and Tallgrass Film Association. The next event is a screening of the movie, “Supernova” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 6 in the Advanced Learning Library, 711 W. 2nd St. N.

Food and popcorn sponsors are Wichita Medical Research and Education Foundation and Proud of Wichita, The LGBT Chamber of Commerce. After the screening, join a discussion of the film at The Monarch at 579 W. Douglas Ave. with guest moderator Robert Miller from CAREpitch and PHS. Food and beverage discounts are offered with a ticket stub.

Each week will feature a new film that, like “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” by Roz Chast, the book chosen for this year’s NEA Big Read: Wichita, explores caregiving and the universal challenges experienced as one cares for someone with a chronic illness, injury, medical trauma or nearing end of life.

Order tickets to the screening at no charge

Kudos

Dr. Terrance Figy quoted in article about Open OnDemand

One of the methods that Wichita State students use to connect to BeoShock High Performance Computing (HPC), a powerful computing system designed to process large amounts of data or complex simulations, is by using a web browser, and Open OnDemand is the software engine that makes this possible. In April 2020, just as BeoShock HPC was getting off the ground and attracting its first users, WSU system administrators set up Open OnDemand.

During a recent talk given by the developers of Open OnDemand, Dr. Terrance Figy, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, praised them for putting together a tool that came in a the right time during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the reasons Figy worked hard on moving BeoShock HPC forward, with help from the system administrators from Kanas State University and WSU’s Information Technology Services, was to ensure students still had access to it at home, especially when the data analytics degree programs were getting started.

Read the article Dr. Terrance Figy was quoted in