Hanging out a new shingle

As the new director of the Neeley School’s Entrepreneurship Center, David Minor ’80 hopes to show would-be entrepreneurs the art of the deal. Minor cut his first business contract as a landscaper, which would make him a millionaire 15 years later, with his grandmother. “It was her lawn mower, and she said I could mow anyone’s lawn as long as I mowed hers for free.” David and his wife Terri live in Fort Worth and have two sons, David and Matthew.

One small step…

Engineering students team up with NASA to take their education up, up and away. Students come to TCU in search of higher education, but three engineering seniors took that notion to extremes this past summer.

Students Ryan Coles, Roberto Hernandez and Isaac Varner were one of only 32 undergraduate teams who conducted zero-gravity experiments this past summer as part of NASA’s 1999 Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program.

To achieve “weightlessness” while still in the Earth’s atmosphere, NASA flies a KC-135 aircraft through 40 parabolas — quickly climbing to 33,000 feet and then diving to 24,000. Students have 25 seconds of zero-gravity at the top of the maneuver to conduct experiments, and 25 seconds of double-gravity at the bottom to reset their instruments. (The aircraft has also been used for motion pictures such as Apollo 13.)

The TCU threesome traveled to Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in early August for two weeks of physicals and motion-sickness training before boarding the two-hour roller coaster-like flight over the Gulf of Mexico. The team’s experiment aimed to verify the viscosity (or thickness) of a known liquid, in this case glycerol. A zero-gravity environment allows viscosity to be tested without using containers for the liquid, which would hamper the outcome. The students assembled a structure that emitted two opposing drops of the liquid and then incrementally inched the two together. A high-speed digital camera recorded how long the two drops took to merge into one.

“I think it gave us a finer appreciation for what NASA is doing,” Coles said. “We had to make sure that we could do everything without gravity.”At one point, the experiment’s motor that moved the drops together seized and was repaired by the students as they fought intermittent battles between the forces of gravity and weightlessness.

“Getting to experience weightlessness is something that very few people get a chance to do,”said Engineering Prof. Andre Mazzoleni, the team’s faculty advisor, half-lamenting that faculty were not allowed on board. “Also, it was a chance to participate in a research project from start to finish. The students wrote the proposal, designed and executed the experiment, and now they’re analyzing the data and will present it at a technical conference. This was just a really neat thing for them to do.”

Frog food

Top foods at today’s Main…

1) French fries
2) Salad (make your own from salad bar)
3) Display cooking
4) Vegetable of the day
5) Chicken strips
6) Bulk candy (at Staples store)
7) Bagels
8) Biscuits and gravy
9) Individual cereal box
10) Grilled chicken sandwich
11) Hamburgers

Students want it their way. One-choice lunches of the past have been replaced by a smorgasboard of selections at TCU, including a cyber cafe, complete with Internet accessed computers (above), for those just passing through. Made-to-order meals cooked in front of the customer seems to be a national trend and explains why “display cooking” ranked number three, said Dining Services General Manager David Ripple. With a different menu every day — Oriental or Mexican food bars, ribs or brisket and the trimmings, sizzling salads topped with hot meats and cajun or creole fare — cooks prepare entrees in individual servings while students watch. In addition, omelets sell like, uh, hotcakes, on the weekends.

When good speakers happen to good people

Rabbi Harold Kushner tells two packed TCU crowds to take fewer guilt trips.

Christian clergy were the first to pick up Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People for their congregants, making it a best seller in 1991.

That’s when Kushner realized his message had relevance not only for Jews, but for Christians as well. “At a certain level of human experience we transcend all those denominational levels,” Kushner said.

Kushner’s address illustrated what the year-old Jewish Studies Program at TCU is all about, said Brite Divinity Dean Leo Perdue.

“Jewish Studies will help students recognize the contributions the Jewish faith and scholarship has made historically, but also the diversity and contributions that the living, breathing Jewish culture is making today,” Perdue said.

Kushner told a packed Ed Landreth Auditorium that his most recent book, How Good Do We Have To Be, is about guilt. After noting that even though all religions help people feel good, when done wrong, religion can make people feel guilty and unworthy. Kushner said his crusade is to advocate a second kind of religion, “To tell people you’re good, you’re clean, you’re worthwhile.

“The lesson we ought to take from reading the Scriptures is that we can be a really wonderful person without being a perfect one. You can make some mistakes but still be one of the people that shapes the world for the better.

“This sense of our inadequacy, that we can’t measure up, drains all the pleasure and all the joy and all the hope from our lives.”

The Jewish Studies Program has four components:
— the Roslyn and Manny Rosenthal Chair for Judaic Studies (a search for a scholar to fill the seat has begun),
— the Gates of Chai Lectureship in Contemporary Judaism,
— the Jack B. Friedman Judaic Library in Honor of Barbara Friedman Rakoover,
— and a planned visiting scholars program.

Perdue said that since Brite is an ecumenical and interfaith seminary, studies of all faiths — and visits by scholars like Kushner — are an integral part of the education of the students. “We come to learn from each other,” he said, “rather than think we have all the answers.”

Assault 101

When Eileen invited Jorge to her room that October evening, she only knew she didn’t want the wonderful evening to end. She thought she knew this guy. She thought she was safe. She didn’t know that he would not listen when she said no.

Jorge raped Eileen that night in Foster Hall’s lounge. With about 60 wide-eyed people watching.

Jorge Castaneda and Eileen Trilli are two of the five members of TCU’s new Assault Prevention Theatre — which combines the talents of theatre students and the educational goals of campus police.

“I thought the theatre students could just do it better than I could standing there talking about rape and dating violence,” Crime Prevention Sgt. Connie Villela said. “It is much harder to turn off when someone is acting these things out right in front of you.”

The four students in the troupe who perform the 15-minute vignettes were trained by rape crisis counselors at the Women’s Center in Fort Worth. When the performance is over, they answer questions from the audience, still in character, Villela said.

The scripts were written by the students with help from Villela, who knows the scenarios from working in law enforcement and as a rape counselor for 10 years. The troupe plans to offer their educational skits to local high schools as well as perform around campus.

Freshman Lindsey Leigh Rich said watching the graphic scene “ripped my heart out. “I know people who have been raped,” she said. “But this kind of thing is really good because it lets those girls know there are others who have gone through this and that there are places to get help.”

Two for the records

A home movie housed in the Mary Couts Burnett Library and filmed in Fort Worth on the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination made a big media splash in October when Librarian Glenda Stevens asked the press for help finding the filmmaker. The University has had the film, depicting the Kennedys at a breakfast event, for 10 years, but until now it has not been available for public use because of copyright laws. The media blitz worked; the film was taken by a now-deceased Fort Worth businessman who gave a copy to then-Congressman Jim Wright, who donated his congressional papers to the library. The library is also the home of the Marguerite Oswald Collection, which is a collection of books and information surrounding the Kennedy assassination gathered by Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother. Additionally, TCU is the new permanent home of the Amon G. Carter papers, which contain almost 150 linear feet of personal records, scrapbooks, photos, clippings and memorabilia belonging to the late Star-Telegram publisher and philanthropist. Archival assistant Joseph Helmick (above left), who will be working closely with the collection, “tries on” one of the treasures, boots belonging to Will Rogers, a close friend of Carter.

A real art exhibit

Three of the four artists selected by the Arts Council of Fort Worth to create public sculptures in open-air studios at the Botanic Garden during the summer had TCU connections. The two-month symposium featured Cameron Schoepp ’87, now teaching sculpture at the University of Dallas; Chris Powell, art studio coordinator and sculpture instructor at TCU, and Alice Bateman, who is teaching 3D design here. Their summer works of limestone were installed at various Fort Worth locations: Shoepp’s in General Worth Square downtown, Powell’s at Capps Park and Bateman’s at Titus Paulsel Park. All the artists used power tools, like Powell above, to speed the process, but it made for a dusty two months.