wpengine, Author at TCU Magazine

Blog posts from Antarctica

February 23, 2016 12:58 pm Leave a Comment

Members of the ANSMET team blogged about their expedition to find meteorites in Antarctica. Here are a few excerpts from TCU assistant professor of Geology Rhiannon Mayne’s blog posts:

Dec. 12, 2010
Time in McMurdo is a cruel master. When we first arrived there was so much to do that just making a phone call home required timing things with military precision … or for me it meant getting up extra early and crossing my fingers that I was able to communicate with my husband even though my brain was still really asleep in the dorm.”

Dec. 15, 2010
As I type this (which is less like typing and more like negotiating with this keyboard), Inge and I are warm in our tent preparing for our second night. Inge is trying to find order in the chaos we have already created and appears to be winning. We had a ‘how to find a meteorite’ lesson today and have already found six! Very exciting. We are ready for a full search day tomorrow.

Dec. 19, 2010
I could never be accused of being a lover of the cold. On Thanksgiving morning we had our first winter frost in Fort Worth, and I could be observed shivering in the back garden, desperately trying to convince our dogs that it was time for them to come in. My husband lovingly pointed out that, in fact, it would likely be 50-degrees colder some days in Antarctica. I had nothing to throw at him at the time apart from my best disapproving woman’s glare. The fact is, he was quite right. It gets bloomin’ cold here. I find myself developing unnaturally warm and fuzzy feelings towards the articles that keep me warm. This mostly involves articles of clothing. So imagine my horror when my little down jacket was torn. It was a situation no Stephen King novel could ever capture.

Dec. 24, 2010
Yesterday, the wind was howling around camp and so we were tent bound. This was seen as an opportunity for bathing, cribbage lessons, Scrabble games, knitting and general laziness. There was much tent hopping and general socialization. I also managed the cliché of catching a cold in Antarctica, so there was much sneezing as well.
Today, the boys headed out on their trusty steeds early while us girls (with a cold and a case of Ski-Doo hand between us) stayed in camp. This meant that the task of thawing the turkey for Christmas dinner tomorrow fell on us.

Jan. 6, 2011
As I began to write this, Inge was wondering how to defrost the Clif Bar she claimed she could kill me with (I am hoping it was not an actual threat). Throughout my agonies of typing, she combined the Clif Bar (carrot-cake flavour) with hot water, soy milk powder, grits, and raisins. She claims it was enjoyable. Perhaps my next blog should be about food!

Jan. 10, 2011
A few weeks back, I was reading a book that has passed through many ANSMET hands. It is about a woman who takes a job as a chef in a remote Antarctic location for a season. As I sat and read it one morning, nice and cozy in my tent, I found myself marveling at where this woman was, how amazing her experiences were, and how lucky she was. It was only when I left the tent that I remembered that the same applied to me, that I too was in Antarctica in a remote location — and collecting meteorites is way cooler than being a chef (in my opinion). ?
At the end of ANSMET, there will be memories of the lack of “facilities,” the joy of clean clothes after a week, and the cold. But these memories will be overshadowed by others: The silence that seems to surround me as I leave the tent, the view from Mt. Ward stretching for miles, the chattering sound of my Ski-Doo on the ice, the joy on finding my first meteorite and every other one after it, the friendship found amongst new people, and my big smile as my first foot touched the Antarctic continent.

Related story:
Gallery of photos from Antarctica
Rocks at the bottom of the world

On the Web:
More info on ANSMET and diaries from the expedition

Breaking tradition

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For the last three years, Leah Richardson has spent her spring break in a lush tropical locale, but she wasn’t simply hitting the beach to work on her tan.

She has been working in the Nicaraguan village of Tepeyac where she and other TCU students learned about the region’s history and culture while also surveying local needs, providing health care and forging life-changing friendships.

“I definitely enjoy going back every year,” says Richardson, a rising senior majoring in political science. “It’s enabled me to really have a connection with the people. That’s important because we’re not simply coming in for that week and never seeing them again.”

Richardson is one of the scores of TCU students who are spending their spring break giving back to others through university-sponsored service-learning opportunities. It’s a new twist for the mid-semester break traditionally associated with beer bongs and bikini contests.

The trend is reflected in the growing number of alternative spring break programs nationwide. Break Away, an organization that trains and helps colleges promote alternative spring break programs nationwide estimates 72,000 college students participated in an alternative spring break programs this year.

Students say it’s a no-brainer.

“I was able to talk and laugh with friends, learn about an important issue and help others,” says Liz Schmitt, who was the student leader for Homelessness in Tarrant County, an alternative spring break sponsored by TCU’s Center of Community Involvement & Service-Learning.

Alternative breaks started catching on the in 1990s as universities began looking for positive ways to connect with the local, national and international communities. Unlike other types of “voluntourism,” where volunteers spend a week in a given location performing needed chores and services, TCU’s alternative breaks emphasize a deeper connection.

“It’s an opportunity that really gives teeth to our mission of educating students to be responsible leaders in the global community,” says John Singleton, director of the Office of International Services, which teams up with the TCU Campus Catholic Community to offer the Nicaragua trip.

He says the TCU team doesn’t simply go into the village and begin offering up their ideas of how to fix things, but instead works to understand the people, their culture, history and challenges.

“We don’t want to be that stereotype of the Americans coming in and telling people how to run things,” Singleton adds. He says because the TCU team has been going to Tepeyac for the past four years, students, faculty and staff participants have been able to build and maintain deep relationships with the villagers as they work together.

This spring, students were divided into separate tracks based on their majors, including education, health services, sustainability and community building. In the morning, the groups split up to gather information and serve the local community in various ways. In the evening, they came back together to discuss what they learned.

Jennifer Kinney ’11, who majored in Spanish and French with a minor in education, worked in the education track, interviewing teachers and students at both the village school and a nearby university.

“I was really lucky because I spoke the language,” she says. “I got to know the teachers and a couple of the guys who took us around all week and told us about the village’s history and culture. I had the best of both worlds — I got to learn about their education system and the people in general.”

The TCU team learned that local students had their books and other materials stolen by thieves, who broke in after class, so the Horned Frogs helped build a stone wall to protect the school. As they began stacking the massive stones, they were suddenly joined by villagers of all ages.

“It really was a community effort and we were part of the community,” Singleton adds.

Participating in a service-learning trip can have lasting impacts. Research has shown that students who take part in alternative spring breaks are more likely to vote and perform community service after they return home.

Rosangela Boyd, director of TCU’s Center for Community Involvement & Service-Learning, says service-learning can be related to a specific course or be part of the student experience through residential life, career development or other student groups.

For the last seven years, Boyd’s office has teamed with Habitat For Humanity to offer a spring break service-learning opportunity. The location of the trip has varied, with students helping select a project from Habitat’s multiple options.

This spring, nine TCU students went to Habitat’s headquarters in Americus, Ga., where they built homes as well as toured Habitat’s Global Village.

“It features Habitat houses from around the world,” says Mary Kathleen Baldwin ’03, assistant director of the Center for Community Involvement & Service-Learning. “So you walk into a life-sized house just as it would be constructed in Africa, South America, or another part of the world.”

Boyd says they want to get more students involved in life-long community service. “The hope is that if they’re not already connected, they’ll get connected to Habitat or some other kind of program related to housing, poverty or a social issue that speaks to them.”

Boyd’s office used to sponsor trips to Mexico, but travel restrictions due to violence in that country have forced them to search for options. A few years ago, she was attending a national conference and heard another university talk about its immersion trip, where they took students around the local community to really get to know and understand local needs and issues.

Back on campus, she and staffers worked to adopt the approach for Fort Worth.

“We knew some students stay behind for spring break and not all students here know a lot about Fort Worth and all the neighborhoods.”

The first year they offered a three-day program that allowed students so do as much or as little as they wanted. But this year, Melissa Gruver, coordinator for community engagement, teamed with James Petrovich, assistant professor of social work who has researched and worked with the local homeless population, to offer a more intense experience — a week learning about the homeless in Fort Worth.

Students went through some of the same experiences a homeless person would, including getting the identification cards that are required to access certain services. They also served, and stood in line to eat, at shelters and churches in town. On the final night of the week, they slept outside in a park.

“For liability reasons, we were locked inside the park, so we didn’t actually sleep side by side with homeless people,” Schmitt says.

The students also met with city leaders heading the local task force on the homeless, including a face-to-face with Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief. They also planted flowers at the downtown YWCA’s shelter and preschool.

But for Schmitt, one of the most rewarding aspects of the experience was getting to know the people who live on the city’s streets and who shuffle between its shelters. She and other students spent a day with residents of an area tent village, where they helped one couple plant a garden.

“I think one of the things I realized is just how much they need someone who will listen to them,” Schmitt says. “They are used to people just looking the other way.”

The experience has strengthened Schmitt’s desire to pursue a career in social work. Now she encourages other students to sign up for alternative spring breaks.

Kinney says her friends warned her she would be missing out on all the fun she could have hanging out with fellow seniors who traveled to Destin, Fla. for the break this year.

“I didn’t miss anything at all,” she adds. “When I got back and told them about Nicaragua, they were the ones who were jealous.”

The Office of International Services is recruiting alumni who are interested in participating in a service-learning trip this fall to the Nicaraguan village of Tepeyac. For more information, please contact Jon Singleton at j.singleton@tcu.edu or call 817.257.7292.

On the Web:
Center for Community Service & Service-Learning

A legend’s last round

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When Kris Tschetter ’87 joined Shady Oaks Country Club as a junior member during her freshman year, she knew there were some unwritten rules — including, Whatever you do, don’t bother Mr. Hogan.

She knew Ben Hogan was one of golf’s all-time greats and admired that he survived a near fatal head-on collision in 1949 to come back and win the first three major professional golf championships in 1953, a feat dubbed the Hogan Slam.

“Then I thought, this is silly, I talk to every other man here, why treat him any differently?” she said in a recent phone interview.

Soon she had graduated from saying the occasional ‘hello,’ to getting the occasional golf tip from the living legend. In her new book, Mr. Hogan The Man I Knew, Tschetter recalls how the man that others said was “curt, cold and wanted to be left alone,” grew to be her friend.
“I loved his sharp sense of humor and his compassionate heart,” she writes in the book. “We would laugh and tease each other. I can hardly remember a time at Shady Oaks that he didn’t come out to watch or hit balls with me.”

Over time, they built a friendship and occasionally would play a few holes together. She would repeatedly ask him to play a round of golf, but he’d always decline. Then on Aug. 27, 1986, he finally agreed.

She decided to invite her roommate, Kirsten Larson ’89, who she describes in the book as, “The type of person who never has a bad day, and if she does, you would never know it,” and their teammate Ellie Gibson ’89.

“Mr. Hogan had watched her hit balls a few times, and I knew she would be pretty comfortable with him (well, as comfortable as you can be playing nine holes with Ben Hogan.)”

Tschetter wasn’t sure he would show, so she didn’t tell her teammates who would be completing their foursome. The next day they grabbed their bags and hit the range.

“I hadn’t seen Mr. Hogan yet that day,” she writes. “I would put it at about 50-50 that he would make it. I think he enjoyed spending time with me, but he wasn’t comfortable being on display, especially swinging a golf club. People had certain expectations of him, and he felt it was not enough to go out and bunt a few shots down the fairway.”

Still, Tschetter was pleasantly surprised when he drove up in his golf cart and suggested playing the back nine. She turned to her startled teammates to hear Ellie say, “We’re playing with Mr. Hogan?”

“No way! Kirsten added.

“If anybody had known this was going to be Mr. Hogan’s final round, there certainly would have been more fanfare,” Tschetter writes in the book. “Instead, we simply walked to the tee. My teammates, still in shock, stood motionless with their mouths open while Mr. Hogan teed up a ball, took a couple of abbreviated practice swings, and promptly duck-hooked his first shot of the day past a line of oaks separating the 10th fairway from the driving range.

“He was 75 years old and hadn’t hit a single warm up shot,” she writes. “I guess we all thought he should never miss a fairway, but since that wasn’t reality even when he was winning championships, it was unrealistic to expect it in a casual round with us.”

On his second shot, Hogan punched the ball out of the trees to reach the fairway, then made a shot that flew just long of the green.

“I immediately felt bad for having asked him to come out,” she writes. “It looked like he was going to make double bogey or worse on his first hole.”

He got to the ball and pulled out what looked like his Equalizer, the Hogan Company name for his pitching wedge, then made a miraculous shot out of the rough that landed a foot from the cup, enabling him to bogey the hole.

“Can you believe that shot?” Ellie said.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Tschetter added. “Then Kirsten piped in with, ‘I thought I might have beat him on that hole.’ We laughed. She couldn’t be serious about wanting to beat him could she?”

It was bad enough she wasn’t playing with Hogan-branded clubs.

“Every hole we noticed Kirsten draping her towel over her irons in the impossible hope that Mr. Hogan wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t playing Hogan clubs. The funny part was, she had played with Hogan clubs her whole life, and had only recently changed to Pings,” she writes. “Ellie and I chuckled about it most of the afternoon.”

On 13, Hogan pulled up to Tschetter and asked if she thought Kirsten, who was a short hitter, would be offended if he gave her his heavy club to swing with for a couple of weeks. “He wanted to give Kirsten one of his homemade (and ahead of its time) training aids to help her increase her distance off the tee.”

He missed a six-foot putt coming back up the hill to bogey the hole, and Larson missed her birdie putt, but since he was one-over-par through four holes, she still felt like she had a chance to beat him.

But at 15, she hit a rough patch, driving the ball in the trees on the right side of the fairway. He made birdie and she fell three shots behind.

Even though he bogeyed the next hole, giving Larson a slim chance at coming from behind, it wasn’t meant to be. On 17, he pulled out his 5-wood to hit another jaw-dropping shot.

“Even though he was hitting a shot from an uphill lie, he made a balanced swing and the ball shot off the face like it had been fired from a gun,” Tschetter writes. “It started at the edge of the bunker and faded right at the flag, a shot all of us knew was going to be close before it landed.”

Even though Larson’s chance to beat the golfing legend was over, she couldn’t stop praising what was one of the finest approach shots she had ever seen.

“I know people have said that he could go an entire round without saying a word, but that was not the case with us,” Tschetter writes. “As we played, he complimented us when we hit good shots, and by the time we had played a few holes, he had made us all feel comfortable enough to relax and chat easily.”

Hogan ended up shooting par on the nine holes, an amazing feat given his age and the fact that he hadn’t played a round of golf in years.

After the round, he asked them all to join him for a drink.

”Since none of us knew this was going to be the last nine holes he would ever play, our celebration consisted of Diet Dr Pepper for us and a vodka martini with olive for him, which hopefully relieved the obvious pain in his knee.”

“I thanked him again for joining me and my teammates, then I went back out to practice and Mr. Hogan went to his table in the men’s grill. And just like that, his final round ended with a quiet goodbye.”

From the book Mr. Hogan, The Man I Knew by Kris Tschetter with Steven Eubanks. ($22.50 Gotham Books, available at most major booksellers.)

Related story:
Q&A with Kris Tschetter ’87

Mother Nurture: Renee Peterson Trudeau ’88

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During her freshman year at TCU, Renee Peterson Trudeau ’88 was trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. One thing seemed clear.

“I wanted to help people,” she says. “I thought about majoring in sociology and becoming a social worker.”

But her heart and creativity urged her to follow another interest — writing. So she ended up with a double major in journalism with an advertising and public relations emphasis, and English with a creative-writing emphasis.

Now Trudeau is combining her writing and marketing skills and her professional career in public relations and career coaching with her longtime passion for helping others — namely women who feel overwhelmed by the demands of modern-day motherhood.

“Because we’re multitasking so much we really don’t have a lot of opportunities to have a deeper dialogue,” she says. “You’re on the playground or you’re at a birthday party, you’re going here and there and you really don’t have a lot of time for anything other than surface-level conversations.”

But Trudeau is helping to change that. As an author and workshop facilitator, she’s helping women learn to live “from the inside out.” In other words, listen more to their own needs and desires so they can do a better job helping others.

It started in 2002 with the birth of son Jonah, just as she was growing a new business offering strategic career coaching.

“Having Jonah really rocked my world,” Peterson says over coffee and croissants at an eatery in Austin, where she lives with her son and husband, John.

“I was in the middle of balancing this business and having a baby and I was craving an opportunity to have a deeper dialogue about what I was feeling,” she says. “I wanted to explore issues around life balance and self care. How in the world do you care for yourself while still caring for a child?”

She went looking for books for insight, and while she found volumes of parenting titles on issues such as breast feeding and starting a playgroup, nothing was out there for mothers looking for balance and a way to stay connected to who you are in the midst of parenting.

Even though she felt swamped, she decided to reach out to other moms going through the same thing and advertised for members to join a support group.

“I said we’re going to meet for a year and every month we would explore an in-depth issue like ‘reconnecting with who you are,’ or ‘building a support network,’ ‘getting comfortable with asking for and receiving help’ or ‘unleashing your creativity’ and I hoped to find 20 women committed to doing it.”

The 20 spaces filled in 72 hours.

Trudeau knew she was on to something. She saw how members of the group were passing along their exercises to others so she decided, despite all the other chores on her to-do list, she had to add one more: write a book.

“I never really had that burning desire to write a book, but I had a passion to get my message out,” she says. “I was sitting at a coffee shop in Austin, thinking if I were to write a book, what would the title be? Three or four minutes later, I’d written out the title and 12 chapter titles. I felt like I was really tapping into something bigger than me.”

The book, The Mother’s Guide to Self Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-balance Your Life (Balanced Living Press, 2008) has not only touched thousands of readers but landed Trudeau on the pages of Family Circle, U.S. News & World Report, Parenting and Working Mother magazines.

It’s also led other moms across America and also Germany, Canada and Mexico to form personal renewal groups modeled on her book and to attend retreats focused on reclaiming and rebalancing their lives.

Those unable to start or join a group can listen to her monthly “Live Inside Out” tele-classes available on her website, www.reneetrudeau.com. She also has a Live Inside Out community on Facebook with more than a thousand followers, and a newsletter that goes out to 12,000 subscribers.

“I get very inspired when I see the women who come to our retreats and workshops and participate in our groups,” she says. “Their eyes light up and they begin to awaken and say, ‘I’m worth it, I can begin to create what I want, say no to others, draw some boundaries and say yes to myself.’ ”

Trudeau, who is now working on a book about everyday spirituality, comes from a family she describes as “truth-seekers.” Her parents both graduated from TCU in 1962 (Frances “Kit” Peterson and Juliana Harrison). While her father became a doctor, her mother left medicine to support him as a teacher. She later went to nursing school and became a medical educator.

In the 1970s, Trudeau’s father left his private practice in San Antonio to move the family to Northern California. Renée, the oldest of seven, says her parents were in search of a more laid-back lifestyle.

“We started doing the whole simplify-your-life thing before it was popular,” she says. “We rode horses to school, did yoga and lived a much simpler life.”

When it came time to attend college, Trudeau knew she wanted a more personal, intimate experience than most major state schools would offer. She chose her parents alma mater — TCU.

“The small class experience at TCU was so meaningful,” she says. “My family was going through a lot at the time and I wasn’t getting a whole lot of attention from them. Knowing I could talk to all my professors, I had easy access to them and got a lot of support from them, that small class experience was so powerful.”

She also credits her professors for giving her practical, hands-on experience and access to multiple internships that laid the groundwork for her successful career in communications and her ultimate goal of starting her own consulting firm.

Her list of accomplishments in marketing and public relations includes managing the national advertising/public relations account for Whole Foods Market; developing public-service campaigns for national nonprofit organizations; and securing national media coverage for clients on CNN, the “CBS Evening News,” The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Geographic, People and other national news outlets.

Listening to her inner desire to help people, she eventually switched from helping market products to helping professionals market themselves, becoming a career coach and launching the firm Career Strategists in 2000. Soon after, she became a mother and formed her first support group focusing on self-care.

In 2007, Trudeau launched Renée Trudeau & Associates, a coaching/consulting firm dedicated exclusively to helping people achieve more balanced living. In addition to serving as the president of both her companies, promoting her books, training Personal Renewal Group Facilitators and leading retreats, she conducts work/life balance workshops for corporate clients such as IBM, Dell Computer Corporation, State Farm Insurance, Shell Oil and Samsung.

“I feel really blessed,” she says. “It’s all been such a blessing and it happened because I said yes to that first book — that was the key to all that’s unfolding now. I love it. I love seeing how it’s touching others.”

On the Web:
www.reneetrudeau.com

Getting real

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With reality television shows dominating the airwaves, it was only a matter of time before they came to campus.

This past semester, the department of Film Television and Digital Media (FTDM) opted to create the reality television show “Top Grad” as its large spring project. The cast spotlighted 11 students all vying for the title ‘Top Grad” and a prize package that included $2,000.

Richard Allen, professor of FTDM, said the department has staged large productions in the past, including the television pilot “Fork in the Road” in 2008 and soap opera “Southern Comforts” in 2006, and so when it came to choosing the next genre, doing a reality shows seemed like a natural fit.

“We have so many alums working on reality shows now and we thought they could come back and teach the students what to do,” said Allen. “The other plus is that reality shows don’t cost as much to do and if, you look on television, they’re everywhere.”

He said more than 80 students worked on all aspects of creating, producing and promoting the show, which aired on TCU Channel 20 and online at topgradtv.com.

Students in Allen’s Video III class, along with those in Audio III taught by Andy Haskett, formed the nucleolus of the production team, with some assistance from the Directing and Media Law classes.

Julie Harrison, a junior FTDM major, took on the duties of executive producer. She was able to get insiders tips from Kate Simonides Wilke ’01, who is a senior producer of the reality show “Cupcake Wars” on The Food Network.

“Kate came in and did a workshop and based on that Julie set up the basis of the show, its structure and production schedule,” Allen said.

The show’s contestants had to complete a variety of challenges taken from the pages of popular reality shows such as “Project Runway,” “Top Chef” and “Survivor.” The challenges were organized to showcase various colleges at the university, from fine arts to business and communication.

After each challenge, contestants faced a panel of judges, including journalism adjunct professor Punch Shaw and senior broadcast journalism major Katie Love, as well as two guest judges from the college of that week’s challenge.

“The two permanent judges are really looking at how well you represent TCU and the TCU ideal that we would like,” Harrison said. “And the other two judges are representing how well you effectively showcase the major and follow the criteria well.”

Of course, there was the familiar reality show twist thrown in at the end — when the final three had to work in tandem with former contestants who had been voted off.

The three finalists — Kelsey Bond, a senior advertising and public relations major; Corinne Hodges, asenior theatre major, and David Crouch, a senior FTDM major —faced the final the challenge of designing a marketing campaign for one of the show’s sponsors — Schloztky’s, Smoothie King or the Rock Bottom Bar and Grill.

Bond’s advertising and marketing experience paid off and she was able to win the title Top Grad.

“I’m so scared to graduate and enter the real world, but I’ve left my legacy at TCU,” Bond said in the final episode titled “Graduation Day.”

Allen said he was amazed by the dedicated work of the students, calling them “the most egoless group I have ever worked with.”

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to repeat this success,” he said. “We’ll take a year or two off and maybe do it again. The good thing about a reality show is you can come in with a new cast every season.”

On the Web:
To see all the episodes of Top Grad plus behind the scenes extras, go to topgradtv.com.
Meet the winner Kelsey Bond

Fashion rules

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Shows like “Project Runway” and “America’s Next Top Model” reveal the behind-the-scene work that goes into making fashion appear effortless.

But 36 students who enrolled in one of Merchandising and Textiles Associate Professor Patricia Warrington’s classes got their own hands-on experience, thanks to a unique partnership with Neiman Marcus.

The upscale retailer’s Fort Worth public relations coordinator Aaron Wolfe ’09, contacted the Design, Merchandising and Textiles department late last year about involving students in a fashion show spotlighting hot spring looks and designing store windows focused on the latest trends.

Warrington thought it was a natural fit for students in her Promotion Principles class, which is being renamed Fashion Communications.

“It covers everything from advertising, public relations, direct marketing, social media and visual merchandising,” she said. “It also encompasses window displays as well as on the selling floor; it’s applicable over many types of retail settings.”

The big fashion shows in industry capitals such as New York, Paris and Milan are typically staged by designers targeting retailers to sell their products. In the case of the Neiman Marcus Fort Worth event, the focus was on appealing to consumers looking to incorporate the newest looks into their wardrobes.

“The students learned that while the fashion show may be entertaining, it’s really about selling the merchandise,” Warrington says.
Students had to incorporate top trends for spring as identified by Neiman Marcus Fashion Director Ken Downing into the show, which was staged in March at the Ridgmar Mall store.

“They did story boards and created PowerPoint slides to show their theme for their segment of the show,” Warrington said.

Dividing into teams, students also selected models, pulled merchandise and, on the day of the show, selected accessories. Some teams were charged with creating window displays.

At the last minute, teams had to grapple with issues such as dress and shoe sizes being a bit off, and had to frantically search for replacements just before show time. Warrington said such real-world experience is invaluable.

“We can sit in a fashion show and or we can actually go out there and do it,” Warrington added. “It’s a lot more complicated and doesn’t flow as smoothly as you might think.”

Ryan Murray, a business major, said it was exciting to work on something from beginning to end, even if he didn’t get to see the finished product.

“Unfortunately, I was busy making sure the male models had all the looks on in the right order and was unable to watch most of the show,” he said. “It looked great from what I could see though.”

Running the numbers

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When it’s fourth and short in a tight game, seasoned football coaches rely on their years of experience to make the call.

Mathematicians get out their calculators.

In 2002, California economist David Romer created a sensation when he crunched the numbers from more than 700 NFL games to determine the statistical probability of teams making it on fourth down. He found was that by relying on their gut, many coaches probably played it too safe. Just looking at the numbers, he found coaches were better off going for it most of the time.

Based on the probability stats, Romer found that offenses should go for it anywhere inside the 6-yard line, and even on the team’s own side of the field, coaches should go for it if the distance is 2 yards or shorter.

Efton Park, professor of mathematics, thought the study could provide fodder for an interesting discussion.

“I love math and I love football, so I thought why not bring them together,” he says.

Park’s wife Rhonda Hatcher, associate professor of mathematics, sits on the TCU Athletic Council where she got to know head coach Gary Patterson. She suggested bringing in the coach to discuss whether Romer’s theory added up.

“I knew it would be a big draw if we could get him to participate,” Park says. “He graciously agreed.”

So on April 13, Patterson and Park addressed a crowded room in the Tucker Technology Building. Park examined when it was mathematically best to punt, kick a field goal or go for a first down, depending on the line of scrimmage in a football game, all based on Romer’s research, which is explained in depth on advancednflstats.com.

After Park’s presentation, Patterson agreed that math does play a role on the sidelines.

“We use statistics all the time,” Patterson said in a story of the lecture by the TCU Daily Skiff. “Football is the same as any other business. We use computers, and we use numbers. We run [numbers] to find out if there are any advantages.”

But the coach also said other factors come into play, like the experience level of his players, the timing in the game and momentum.
“Some games you have to take more chances for an opportunity,” Patterson added.

Students said the lecture definitely had a ‘wow’ factor.

“I’m a football fan so I thought it was really interesting,” said math junior Daniel Shedd. “Anyone who watches football can tell you that making the decision on fourth down isn’t just about the math, obviously there are many other factors involved. But it was entertaining.”

Write stuff

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Writing well is a gift.

Being an exceptional writer is hard work.

That’s what best-selling author Sandra Brown ’69 (PhD ’08) told students, faculty and others gathered in April for the Department of English’s annual Creative Writing Awards.

“As far as I know, after having written 77 novels, you can only write by putting words on paper and you can only do it one word at a time,” Brown said. “It takes a lot of time. It’s easy to say what you want. It’s more difficult to decide what you’re willing to give up to get it.”

But the payoff is worth it, she added.

“Being a fiction writer is the best job I can imagine,” she said. “You spend your days playing God, you get to put a spin on untruths and make them sound true, you get to lie for a living, yet you don’t have to run for public office. It’s a terrific career, a terrific job.”

Brown has written more than 73 novels including 60 The New York Times bestsellers. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from TCU. That same year, she and her husband Michael established the Sandra Brown Excellence in Literary Fiction Scholarship (ELF) to a TCU student who demonstrates both academic excellence and significant potential as a fiction writer. The scholarship is given to a rising junior with 54 or more credit hours and provides full tuition for the junior and senior years.

“This for a literary athlete, a power forward of writing,” said English professor Dan Williams.

He noted that past recipients of the award – Kelli Trapnell and Travis Freeman – were recognized with several wins at this year’s awards. Trapnell won the Kurt Lee Hornbeck Poetry Award and the David John Ball Memorial Prize for a writing portfolio. Freeman won the Mortar Board Prize in Literary Criticism, Bill Camfield Memorial Award for Humor and Satire.

The awards ceremony concluded with the announcement of this ELF year’s winner: Bill Hamlett, a sophomore from McKinney majoring in writing and French. Hamlett also won the Siddie Joe Johnson Poetry Award.

Alex Lemon, a lecturer in the department of English, coordinated the awards and noted that this year the competition drew more submissions that the previous two years combined.

“It was a lot of really exceptional work and a lot of exceptional work was not chosen because of the richness of everything,” added Lemon.

This year’s awards had a special addition from the Amon Carter Museum, the Fort Worth museum celebrating American art. Brady Sloane, public programs manager, said the museum wanted to include a writing award for TCU students as part of its 50th anniversary celebration.

Students were invited to write a poem based on one of the works displayed in the museum’s collection.

Trapnell won for her poem inspired by the abstract work “Blips and Ifs” by Stuart Davis. Honorable mentions went to Freeman and Mary Martin.

Brown said she impressed by the writing talents evident when students read from their award-winning works during the ceremony.

“All I can say is wow I know there were a lot smart kids when I was at TCU, but let me tell you know of them were as smart as those of you who have shared with us your talent with us.

“I’m so impressed. Faculty you are to be commended. Students, young writers, aspiring writers you are to be congratulated, not only for your talent but also for the discipline that it requires to be a writer.”

Other winners announced included:

Claire Martindale ‘69
poem “Solstice”
Margie Boswell Poetry Award

Kinzi Beckham
Woman’s Wednesday Club Award for Research Paper
Environmental Writing Award

Anh Mai Pham
Sigma Tau Delta Essay Award

Ashley Hart
Harry Opperman Short Story Award

Nathaniel Pesina
Thursday Group
TCU Women Exes Award for Non-Fiction
Neil Daniel Drama Contest

Grace Palmer
C.S. Lewis Prize for Christian Literature
Nancy Evans Memorial Award for Texas Writing

Becky Boeshaar
Subversive Thought Award

Rachel Spurrier
Woman’s Wednesday Club Merit Award
Lorraine Sherley Prize for writing Portfolio

Kristi Dena
Margaret Rose Marek Memorial Multimedia Writing Award

Lorin Milotta
Lilla Thomas Award for an Interpretive of Critical Essay on Feminist Writers or Issues
Australia Tarver Award for Critical essay on Post-Colonialism or Multi-Ethnic Studies
William L. Adams Center for Writing Prize for the best essay about Rhetoric and Composition

Joel Overall
Betsy Colquitt Graduate Poetry Award

Spanish debuts new awards

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Antonio Rivarés lived on three continents, spoke at least seven languages and never missed an opportunity to teach.

He taught at TCU from 1965 to 1979, serving as a professor and chair of the department of modern languages.

Rivarés died last year, but his legacy lives on thanks to a new award recognizing outstanding scholastic achievement in the Department of Spanish and Hispanic Studies named in his honor.

“I must point out that when I asked colleagues to contemplate in whose name we should create this award, the name Antonio Rivarés popped up immediately, and it stuck, with no debate whatsoever,” said department chair Komla Aggor.

The first recipient is Bethany Lacombe, a May graduate majoring in Spanish, history and anthropology from Southlake. She studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain, for a semester and volunteered her services in several local schools teaching Spanish and English to young children.

“Despite a heavy load and competing academic requirements, Bethany has received nothing less than an A grade in every course she has taken at TCU since her freshman year,” Aggor said in presenting the award at the department’s inaugural awards day ceremony in April.

The department also presented Faculty Choice Awards for Excellence in Spanish to students who achieved overall best performance in the courses taught during the year.

Students receiving the recognition include: Jennifer Iller, Jennifer Kinney, Kathryn Dachroeden, Ashley Bolin, Caroline Throckmorton, Emma Frances Hager, Eric James Steiger, Nathan Cress, Jacob Jones, Susanne Ancona, Madeline Jean Slage, Kylie Corson
Sierra Metcalfe, Katherine Buckwalter, Jamie Klump, Eleanor Hoppe, Kelly Wolfe, Janelle Marnee Barnicle, Laura Grace Posluzny, Amna Alzghari, Matthew Castaneda, Joe Rodriguez Jr., Madison Tasker, Amanda Jordan, Sara Talley, Catherine Compton and Heather Martin.

Kylie Osterloh received special recognition for service to La Mesa Hispánica.

Adding things up

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Students who struggle with traditional classroom instruction may find it easier to learn new math concepts by working at their own pace on a computer.

That’s the approach being investigated by Lindy Crawford, the Ann Jones Endowed Chair in Special Education.

Crawford is the principal investigator of a $1.5 million federal grant studying the Math Learning Companion, a computer program that provides individual instruction for students with math learning disabilities.

The program covers math for grades 3 to 8, allowing students to go back and repeat instructions. It also has interactive support, including a dictionary of key terms, Spanish translations, hints and other options like “need more help.”

“We try to help kids with disabilities understand math and take out all the extra stuff,” Crawford says. “For example, the program reads to them so that if reading is an issue, the program takes that out for them.”

The program is currently being used in more than a dozen states, including Texas, where Crawford and research associate Lindsey Hall ’10 are closely observing it as an effective learning tool for about 30 students in public and private schools, including Starpoint School, TCU’s laboratory school serving students with learning differences.

Approximately 10 percent of the nation’s students are categorized as needing special education, including those diagnosed with autism, learning disabilities such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and physical disabilities.

The program has been in development for about eight years and is derived from another program designed to teach math to Spanish-speaking students. Crawford says the ability to fine tune instruction and allow students to go back and replay lessons make it a natural fit for those with learning differences as well.

“It really gives the student control over his learning,” Crawford says. “I’ll go into the classroom and tell kids, ‘Have you ever wanted to stop and rewind your teacher because you didn’t understand something? Well, with this, you can do that.’ They say, ‘Wow, that’s great.’ ”

So far, students are giving it rave reviews. At Starpoint, the program is being used in conjunction with regular classroom curriculum covering concepts such as rational and irrational numbers, interpreting graphs and figuring out variables.

“Normally when the teacher’s up at the desk just talking and we have a book, I tend to space out a lot because I have really bad ADHD and tend to get bored very easily,” says Starpoint student Aidan O’Shea. “But with this program it’s really exciting and, with all the pictures and words, you don’t tend to space out a lot and even if you do, you can go back and do it again.”

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