Volume 13 | November 4, 2019

OU DEDICATES CENTER FOR QUANTUM RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

The University of Oklahoma dedicated the   OU Center for Quantum Research and Technology  on Oct. 25. The Center will put OU and Oklahoma on track to become a leader in quantum technologies. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt joined the ceremony and offered comments contextualizing the Center’s pivotal role in driving Oklahoma’s economy. Quantum technology is an emerging field with potential to transform information processing and provide economic and national security advantages to the countries that dominate it.

From left: Joseph Harroz Jr., OU Interim President; William Wallace; Joan Wilson; David Wrobel, Dean, OU College of Arts and Sciences; Norm Wilson; Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt; Phillip Gutierrez, Chair, Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy; Alberto Marino, Associate Professor of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics and Interim Director of the CQRT

“Quantum technologies are truly transformative, and we are proud that OU physicists are leading experts in this field,” said OU Interim President Joseph Harroz Jr. “With the cutting-edge resources of Lin Hall and the abundant opportunity created by the Center for Quantum Research and Technology, our students and faculty can pursue groundbreaking, life-changing research. The work done here will undoubtedly benefit future generations of Oklahomans, strengthening the state’s economic position for the 21st century. We’re thankful to the Avenir Foundation and to our partners within the State of Oklahoma leadership for making today possible.” OU plans to prepare the future workforce for this emerging field, while establishing meaningful partnerships with industry leaders. The Center will focus in areas such as quantum simulation, quantum sensing and quantum materials to enable next-generation devices. Over the next decade, quantum-based devices are anticipated to replace increasingly more of the current classical-based devices. Economists predict the global quantum-technology industry will have annual revenues of $80 billion by 2030 and $1.3 trillion by 2040.  “Establishing this Center is another example of how we are making Oklahoma a top 10 state in cutting-edge technology,” said Stitt. “Because of this new facility, our state will have the opportunity to be national leaders in groundbreaking research and bring new partnerships and jobs to the state.” CQRT is based in the newly constructed Lin Hall and will capitalize on the expertise of OU’s current Atomic, Molecular and Optical and Condensed Matter Physics groups. The Center will enable OU to pursue large federal grants and fulfill the vision of Lin Hall donors. “The Center for Quantum Research and Technology is an inspiring new home for discovery dedicated to making the University of Oklahoma a global leader in this rapidly advancing field,” said OU College of Arts and Sciences Dean David Wrobel. “The world is now witnessing the second quantum revolution and the Center will secure OU’s place at its leading edge. This new Center will enable us to develop future quantum technology and new applications, and to train students and researchers to make unprecedented advances that will positively impact society.” Lin Hall is an advanced design physics building hosting 18,000 square feet of laboratory space that meets NIST-A specifications on vibrations, temperature, humidity and electromagnetic interference. The Center is associated with the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy at OU, located in the Homer L. Dodge Physics Complex on the University’s Norman campus. A generous gift from the Avenir Foundation helped establish CQRT. Since 2005, Avenir, founded by family members of legendary OU physics professor Homer L. Dodge, has donated more than $30 million to OU. For more information on the Center, visit  http://www.ou.edu/cqrt .

MICHAEL MARKHAM NAMED ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC PROGRAMS Michael Markham has been named OU College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean for Academic Programs. Pending OU Board of Regents approval, he will begin his responsibilities Jan. 1.  "Michael’s philosophy of service leadership, building positive relationships and making evidence-based decisions make him uniquely qualified to help our faculty and students meet the challenges we face in advancing the College’s teaching mission," said Dean David Wrobel.   As Associate Dean for Academic Programs, Markham will serve as the chief liaison to the vice provost for instruction and student success and is responsible for leading all initiatives related to the College's instructional mission, including course and curriculum development, enrollment management and managing the OTIS budget.   Markham has been a faculty member of the Department of Biology at OU since 2011 and was named Case-Hooper Associate Professor of Zoology in 2015. He has been the assistant chair of the department since 2016. He earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of New Mexico in 1994 and taught at Florida International University and the University of Texas before joining OU. His research focuses on how ion channels, hormones and behavior interact in a vertebrate communication system. He has a career total of more than $3 million in federal research funds across five multi-year projects. In 2014, he received the Irene Rothbaum Outstanding Assistant Professor Award and in 2018 he was named a Sam K. Viersen Family Foundation Presidential Professor of Excellence. The College is grateful for the outstanding service of Victoria Sturtevant, who has served as Associate Dean for Academic Programs since July 2014. In January, Sturtevant will step into the position of Founding Director of the College of Arts and Sciences Center for Student Success. The Center will work to expand student opportunities for experiential learning and professional development, with a special focus on undergraduate research, study abroad, internships and service learning.

SAVE THE DATE - WINTER CONVOCATION The College will recognize the academic achievements of our students at the upcoming 2019 Winter Convocation .  The ceremony will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13,  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. SAVE THE DATE March 6, 2020 - KALEIDOSCOPE EVENING The College's banquet, designed to honor our distinguished alumni, will be held at the Sam Noble Museum on March 6. The evening begins with a reception at 6 p.m., followed by dinner at 6:45. Distinguished alumni award recipients will present public lectures on Thursday, March 5. Additional information about the events will be released at a later date.

COLLEGE SPOTLIGHT COURSON FAMILY BISON RESEARCH CENTER ESTABLISHED

A bison research center featuring one of the largest collections of artifacts showing human/bison interaction in North America over a span of decades has been established at the University of Oklahoma. The Courson Family Bison Research Center , which will be housed within the Oklahoma Archeological Survey, is named in honor of the Harold Courson Family of Perryton, Texas, for their continuous support of the archaeological investigation of bison kill sites within Oklahoma. All of the excavations were directed by survey archaeologist Leland Bement between 1992 and 2019. The CFBRC includes state-of-the-art retractable storage units, a layout lab and an internet-accessible computer hub with a searchable digital database, all of which will be accessible to researchers for study. “Lee has been working on human and bison interaction in the Western Oklahoma for almost 30 years,” said Amanda Regnier, Director of the Oklahoma Archeological Survey. “Several years ago, he realized this is an important collection because it spans such a time and includes all ages. This is among the biggest collections that exist in North America and contains rare specimens not found elsewhere.” The Courson Family Bison Research Center is a biological archive of bison remains recovered from large-scale bison kill sites in western Oklahoma. The kill sites span 11,000 years, including Clovis, Folsom, Late Paleoindian, Late Archaic and the hide hunters of the 1880s. The collection has enormous research potential for investigating past bison use by humans and changes in bison populations through time. The collection includes over 50,000 bison bones representing well over 800 bison.   CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THE COURSON FAMILY BISON RESEARCH CENTER

FACULTY AND STAFF ACCOMPLISHMENTS

George Henderson, University of Oklahoma educator and activist, donated the largest gift of materials by an African-American scholar to the Western History Collections archives in OU’s history. In 1967, Henderson became OU’s third full-time African American faculty member on the Norman campus. In 1969, he became the Sylvan N. Goldman Professor of Human Relations, Education and Sociology. Later he was appointed to three other distinguished professorships: David Ross Boyd Professor, Regents’ Professor and Kerr-McGee Presidential Professor. After he became the Goldman Professor, he founded the Department of Human Relations in the College of Arts and Sciences and served as its chairman for 20 years. From 1996 to 2000, he served as Dean of the College of Liberal Studies. He was the first African American in Oklahoma to hold a distinguished professorship; the first African American at OU to create a degree-granting department; and the first African American dean of a degree-granting college on the Norman campus. Although he retired from the University in 2006, he still teaches on a part-time basis.

Dorscine S. Littles , Professor Emeritus, Department of Human Relations has been named as as an honoree for this year's  Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame . The 26th annual induction ceremony and banquet will be held Nov. 4 in the Nigh University Center at the University of Central Oklahoma. Each year since 1994, the Oklahoma Higher Education Heritage Society has recognized individuals, living and deceased, whose achievement and leadership in scholarship, teaching, research, administration, staff support, outreach and public service have brought honor and distinction to higher education in our state by inducting them into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.

Gordon Uno , David Ross Boyd Professor of Botany, has been chosen as a Fulbright Specialist to the University of Pretoria, South Africa. A grant from the Fulbright Program will allow him to work with UP faculty to revise their Plant Biology program, collaborate on the development of curricular materials and to help them with equity and inclusion related to the huge influx of students, post-apartheid. These collaborative activities at UP will begin this fall and continue through the summer of 2020.

The University of Oklahoma has joined the National Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine , an organization founded in 2007 that helps make their member institutions’ collections and scholarly resources more broadly available for global research. It promotes public and academic understanding, awards fellowships for researchers, produces public and academic events, and provides online resources for teaching, learning and research. Students and faculty at OU will now be able to participate in the Consortium’s fellowship program, which funds research projects that make use of archives within the members’ collections.

Janet Ward  (Professor, History) recently gave a talk at TEDxOU on the “’Mother of Exiles’: The Statue of Liberty and the Legacy of the Holocaust.” Ward’s talk explores how Emma Lazarus’ New Colossus poem about the Statue of Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles” has come to be associated with the statue’s purpose – many might say, with this country's purpose. Ward discusses how – despite the failure of U.S. immigration policy to adequately respond to asylum-seekers attempting to escape Nazism – the Statue of Liberty’s torch became known as an icon of refuge.

The Board of Directors of The Interfaith Alliance unanimously voted to award Charles Kimball , Presidential Professor and Director of Religious Studies, with the Harley Venters Humanitarian Award for his unswerving dedication to improving the lives of others and building interfaith understanding and respect through his teaching, outreach and outstanding publications. Kimball was awarded the honor at the 2019 Annual Dinner of the Interfaith Alliance on Oct. 24.

Amanda Regnier, Director of the Oklahoma Archeological Survey, and affiliated faculty Scott W. Hammerstedt and Sheila Bobalik Savage have authored The Ritual Landscape of Late Precontact Eastern Oklahoma: Archaeology from the WPA Era until Today . The volume revisits and updates Works Progress Administration-funded archaeological research on key Oklahoma mound sites. As part of Great Depression relief projects started in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored massive archaeological projects across Oklahoma. The WPA crews excavated eight mound sites and dozens of nonmound residential sites in the Arkansas River Valley that date between AD 1000 and 1450. These sites are considered the westernmost representations of Mississippian culture in the Southeast. The results of these excavations were documented in field journals and photographs prepared by the field supervisors and submitted in a series of quarterly reports to WPA headquarters. These reports contain a wealth of unpublished information summarizing excavations at the mound sites and residential sites, including mound profiles, burial descriptions, house maps, artifact tables and artifact sketches. Of the excavated mound sites, results from only one, Spiro, have been extensively studied and synthesized in academic literature. The seven additional WPA-excavated mound sites, Norman, Hughes, Brackett, Eufaula, Skidgel, Reed and Lillie Creek, are known to archaeologists outside of Oklahoma only as unlabeled points on maps of mound sites in the Southeast. The Ritual Landscape of Late Precontact Eastern Oklahoma curates and contextualizes the results of the WPA excavations, showing how they inform archaeological understanding of Mississippian occupation in the Arkansas Valley. Regnier, Hammerstedt and Savage also relate the history and experiences of practicing archaeology in the 1930s, incorporating colorful excerpts from field journals of the young, inexperienced archaeologists. Finally, the authors update current knowledge of mound and nonmound sites in the region, providing an excellent example of historical archaeology.

Jill Edy and Patrick Meirick , associate professors in the Department of Communication, have published A Nation Fragmented, The Public Agenda in the Information Age, which documents how public interests fractured as the mass media of the 20 th century gave way to the information society of the 21 st . Between 1975, when three major networks still dominated television and the vast majority of Americans received a daily paper, and 2014, when most Americans had a Facebook account and could receive nearly 200 cable channels, the public’s policy priorities have become less and less clear. Today, even in moments of national crisis, the public agenda lacks the focus it had in the mass media era. The book examines how television news contributes to spreading public concern more evenly over more issues. It also explores the democratic consequences of a more diverse public agenda. When the public agenda is more fragmented, Congress is less responsive to it. This could be because the long and relatively evenly weighted list of public concerns overwhelms policymaking institutions, but it could also indicate that a fractured public liberates public officials to pursue their own agendas without much regard for the public’s. Edy and Meirick presented a keynote address about their book at the Broadcast Education Association 2019 Super-Regional Conference in Boulder, Colo., on Oct. 12.

Ryan Bisel (Professor, Department of Communication) and Michael Kramer (Chair and Professor, Department of Communication) have published Cases in Organizational Communication: A Lifespan Approach , the first collection of its kind that is designed to complement a textbook (the editors'  Organizational Communication: A Lifespan Approach , OUP, 2016). Bringing concepts to life by engaging readers' minds, memories and emotions, this volume provides students and instructors with a wealth of opportunities to see, hear and feel how communication can and does shape organizations and the experiences of people within them.

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

LAURA-ISOBEL MCCALL DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY $24,983 - OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY CHEMICAL CARTOGRAPHY: A NOVEL APPROACH TO STUDY RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS "Where" matters in disease. Understanding the local changes in the body caused by a microbe or a tumor may be the key to unlocking new treatments. In this project, researchers will use a new approach called chemical cartography to look at the effects of the influenza virus directly in the lung, with the long-term goal of unlocking new ways to treat the flu.

L ARA SOUZA DEPARTMENT OF MICROBIOLOGY AND PLANT BIOLOGY OKLAHOMA BIOLOGICAL SURVEY $190,652 - NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION SG: IMPACTS OF LONG-TERM WARMING ON PLANT AND MICROBIAL CONTROL OF SOIL CARBON CYCLING This research leverages NSF-funded infrastructure that induced 30 years of continuous warming to understand how temperature affects plants and microorganisms and the long-term soil C turnover that they mediate. The project has global importance as rising temperatures occur in ecosystems on earth. This research will enhance ecological forecasts and predictive models of ecosystem response at the global scale. Microbial and ecosystem ecologists aim to connect shifts in plant and microbial community composition and physiology to subsequent changes in ecosystem functions such as C and nutrient cycling. Understanding long-term imprints of plant and microbial communities and associated soil C cycling under global change is paramount for predicting future global soil C stocks. For more information about this project, click here .

KARY STACKELBECK OKLAHOMA ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY $93,545 - STATE OF OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY PROGRAM Through a long-standing cooperative arrangement with the State Historic Preservation Office/ Oklahoma Historical Society, the Oklahoma Archeological Survey receives funding to support a Community Assistance Program). OAS-CAP performs a variety of duties including: 1. Review and comment on thousands of proposed development projects in Oklahoma that could impact endangered archaeological sites; 2. Assist federal and state agencies, as well as applicants for federal assistance or permits, navigate specific regulatory compliance processes; 3. Conduct site visits and initial fieldwork for selected projects;  4. Enter data into the state’s archaeological site and survey files, which are maintained at OAS; 5. Communicate with citizens who request assistance identifying artifacts or recording archaeological sites; and 6. Conduct educational outreach at various venues to improve awareness of Oklahoma’s incredible cultural heritage among school groups and other members of the public

LELAND BEMENT - OKLAHOMA ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY $34,198 - STATE OF OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PROPOSAL TO CONDUCT TESTING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN CIMARRON COUNTY, OKLAHOMA, FOR NATIONAL REGISTER ELIGIBILITY This project entails the limited excavation of three prehistoric sites in the Black Mesa region of the Oklahoma panhandle. The three sites include a small rock shelter with a habitation area within and in front of the shelter. A second site includes a tipi ring site where up to six tipis were placed on a low knoll overlooking the Cimarron River floodplain. The third site is a possible antelope hunting site where lines of low rock piles or cairns mark converging lanes to guide animals to a trap. The goal of excavations at each site include determining the age and integrity of cultural deposits to determine if the sites are eligible for National Register of Historic Places nomination. This is the latest of a string of research projects in the Black Mesa region.

BRUCE HOAGLAND OKLAHOMA BIOLOGICAL SURVEY $73,000 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, ARMY NATURAL RESOURCE TECHNICIAN FOR TINKER AIR FORCE BASE It may come as a surprise to learn that many U.S. military installations harbor healthy populations of rare species and exemplary native habitats. To assist in stewardship of these resources, the Department of Defense has partnered with universities. One example is the Natural Resources Technician program at Tinker AFB. For over 10 years, a contract with OU has employed a technician to monitor populations of the Texas horned lizard and the Oklahoma beard-tongue plant and assist in the restoration for tallgrass prairie vegetation and riparian wetlands on base. The contract was recently extended for five years and we look forward to continuing this collaboration with the Tinker Natural Resources program to help protect the unique natural heritage of Oklahoma.

MICHAEL JABLONSKI DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS $316,694 - NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION HOMOGENEOUS EINSTEIN SPACES This project revolves around the study of natural model spaces. Until a century and a half ago, the only model whose geometry was investigated was (flat) Euclidean space. However, in order to advance science and engineering, we need to use models that incorporate curvature. To this end, the principal investigator will study special model geometries called homogeneous Einstein spaces to learn more about their basic properties and work toward their classification.

MARC LEVINE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY ASSOCIATE CURATOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY, SAM NOBLE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY $90,000 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE 2019 SAM NOBLE OKLAHOMA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY NAGPRA DOCUMENTATION/CONSULTATION GRANT This grant will support work on collections at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History that are subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Passed in 1990, NAGPRA is a federal law establishing the rights of Native American tribes and their lineal descendants to claim the remains of their ancestors, associated funerary objects, sacred objects and other objects of cultural patrimony from federally funded museums and institutions. This is the fifth consecutive NAGPRA grant awarded to Associate Curator of Archaeology Marc Levine and Collections Manager Susan Fishman-Armstrong.

BRADLEY STEVENSON - MICROBIOLOGY $530,000 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, AIR FORCE DEVELOPMENT OF MOLECULAR-BASED DETECTION AND BIOFILM MITIGATION PRACTICES TO MINIMIZE CORROSION OF METAL SURFACES IN FUEL SYSTEMS Bradley Stevenson and his research team received a grant from the Department of Defense to continue their work studying microbiologically influenced corrosion in tanks storing and dispensing ultra-low sulfur diesel and B20 biodiesel (20% biodiesel, 80% ULSD). They have been working with the DoD and Air Force Research Laboratories to diagnose the source of microbial contamination, linking it to increased rates of MIC. This funding supports the development of new monitoring technologies and studying the effect and efficacy of mitigation approaches. This research will benefit the DoD as well as commercial transportation industries worldwide.

JOHN WISNIEWSKI DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY $244,471 - NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION CONFIRMING AND CHARACTERIZING TRANSITING EXOPLANETS AROUND BRIGHT STARS WITH ULTRA-PRECISE GROUND-BASED PHOTOMETRY The continuing discovery and characterization of thousands of transiting planets around other stars has revolutionized the understanding of the prevalence, fundamental properties and distribution of small (sub-Neptunian to Earth-size) exoplanets. However, maximizing the scientific yield of NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions and enabling future studies of the atmospheres of some of the most promising planets requires a series of intensive follow-up observations. These follow-up observations are necessary to confirm that the transits arise from planets and not astrophysical false-positives, to refine ephemerides, and to better characterize planetary properties. Funded by seed grants via the Research Corp.'s Scialog program and the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation, the team composed of researchers from Penn State (Suvrath Mahadevan), Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Leslie Hebb), and OU (John Wisniewski) has pioneered the use of custom-fabricated, beam-shaping diffusers on ground-based telescopes. They have demonstrated that the photometric performance of diffuser-aided photometry rivals or exceeds that produced by space-based missions, at a fraction of the cost. Their newly funded NSF project strongly leverages use of OU’s institutional access to the Apache Point Observatory 3.5m telescope in Sunspot, New Mexico, which is equipped with this efficient, cost-effective and unique observational capability. They will conduct a comprehensive ground-based program to identify, confirm and characterize candidate sub-Neptunian to Earth-size planets around bright stars. Their work will accurately define planetary demographics and help to identify and characterize the individual planets most suitable for future atmospheric studies.

MAX FORESTER DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS $42,000 - SIMONS FOUNDATION QUASIMORPHISMS, GEOMETRY AND GROUP THEORY This award supports research in geometric group theory and related topics. One of the most fundamental approaches to studying mathematical objects is to exploit their symmetries. This applies both to geometric objects as well as more abstract structures. The modern notion of symmetry can be encoded in an object called the fundamental group. In geometric group theory, one studies such groups using geometric and topological methods.

The Carl Albert Center Director of N.E.W. Leadership and Civic Engagement, Lauren Schueler , was awarded a $24,645 grant from the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition to partner with Oklahoma Campus Compact to host a voting summit for college students and administrators in Oklahoma. The purpose of this summit is to promote civic engagement and impart institutional knowledge to campus leaders of 38 colleges and universities in one of the least civically active states for college students in the nation. The summit will include panels on the voter registration process and unique laws and processes related to voting in Oklahoma, best practices for voter education and examples of programming, and creation and use of campus plans. In addition to voting practitioners and activists, the summit will bring in county and state officials to talk about how universities and community colleges can best work with their public servants. The summit will take place in the summer of 2020.

An OU-led study demonstrated the potential of the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite to measure and track chlorophyll fluorescence and photosynthesis of tropical forests in the Amazon. The study, “TROPOMI reveals dry-season increase of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence in the Amazon forest,” was published by the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States Journal . The paper was led by graduate student Russell Doughty, who is a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology in the Department Microbiology and Plant Biology. Professor Xiangming Xiao  in the Earth Observation and Modeling Facility, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, coordinated this research activity.

The Carl Albert Center’s Civic Engagement Fellows received a $400 mini grant to participate in a Campus Takeover for National Voter Registration Day, which occurred Sept. 24. The Center partnered with the Student Government Association, Voto Latino, Student Leftist Union and the Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature to host the day’s events. The grant was used to host tables on the south oval from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and in Bizzell Memorial Library from 7:30-9:30 p.m. with food, games and voter registration. Overall the event was very successful with 216 students registering to vote during the day. OU joined 4,083 community partners who registered over 400,000 people across the country during the one-day event.   National Voter Registration Day is a single day of coordinated media and field efforts to raise awareness of voter registration opportunities and register as many eligible voters as possible. As a nonpartisan day of action, National Voter Registration Day is endorsed by the National Association of State Election Directors, National Association of Election Officials, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission.

William Howe, a Ph.D. candidate in communications, and Ryan Bisel (Professor, Department of Communication) recently won the 2019 Saxton Applied Research award from the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research. Their study, Storytelling of Organizational Entry on Virtual Spaces: The Memorable Messages of "Awesome Stuff My Drill Sergeant Said" examined the messages military personnel share online and the themes in the stories and how viewers rated different messages. These posts serve as socialization messages for people entering the military.

ALUMNI NEWS

Official White House Photo  by Keegan Barber

Mark Bicket has been appointed to the 2019-20 class of White House Fellows. The highly regarded White House Fellowship provides professionals from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to engage in public service for one year by serving in various roles in the federal government. Created in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the White House Fellows Program was designed to give the Fellows first hand, high-level experience with the workings of the federal government and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs. The Fellowship was created as a non-partisan program and has maintained this tradition throughout both Republican and Democratic administrations. The mission of the White House Fellows Program is to encourage active citizenship and service to the nation. Throughout the year, Fellows actively participate in an education program that expands their knowledge of leadership, policy-making and contemporary issues. Community service plays a vital role in the program, and Fellows take part in service projects throughout the year.

Bicket is from Edmond, Oklahoma, and is placed at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Bicket is a board-certified physician, investigator and educator specializing in pain medicine and focusing on the opioid crisis. He previously directed the nationally recognized Pain Medicine Fellowship Program and Pain Medicine Quality and Safety at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he trained and mentored fellows, residents and medical students while treating patients in East Baltimore. His research led to the growing appreciation that surgical prescribing contributes to the broader opioid crisis, work that shaped clinical practice and influenced policy makers. He recently led Johns Hopkins in creating a new system-wide pain management policy, impacting millions of patients receiving care there every year. Bicket received a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics and a bachelor of arts degree in economics, summa cum laude, from the University of Oklahoma and an doctor of medicine and doctoral degrees in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins University. He completed anesthesiology residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he served as chief resident and pain medicine fellowship training at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

DEADLINES AND FEATURED EVENTS

Nov. 6-9 The Department of Psychology is hosting a number of events to support need-based scholarships for psychology undergraduate students. Events include a trivia contest on Nov. 6, a campus-wide scavenger hunt beginning Nov. 6 and a tailgate beginning three hours prior to kickoff on Nov. 9. All events are open to the public and all are welcome to attend. Click here for a full schedule of events and to RSVP. Nov. 8                 Deadline to enter Spring 2020 OTIS into the Teaching Load and Course Management System. Nov. 15               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. 15 Deadline to submit Presidential Dream Course proposals to the Dean’s office. Nov. 15               Deadline to submit undergraduate program modifications and undergraduate certificates (using State Regents forms) to the Dean’s office. Nov. 22              Deadline to enter graduate courses and undergraduate courses with G designation not associated with program modifications into Courseleaf.             Dec. 2                 Deadline for academic units to upload unit recommendations to promotion-only dossiers in the TPS system Dec. 3                  Fall Faculty Meeting, 3 p.m., Nielson Hall, Room TBD Dec. 3                  Fall Faculty Meeting Reception. Ellison Hall 132 Dec. 11               CASFAM luncheon, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m., Dale Hall Tower 906 Dec. 13 The College of Arts and Sciences December convocation ceremony will be held at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, at Lloyd Noble Center.  Click here for more information .

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