Dr. Jeff Gall, Professor of History, took his JINS 369 class “Why We Fight:  World War I” to the National World War I Museum in Kansas City on April 21, 2013.  On the way to Kansas City, the class stopped at the General John J. Pershing home in Laclede, Missouri.  Pershing is a Truman alum.

Truman’s Mock Trial recently participated in the American Mock Trial Association’s Opening Round Championship Series Tournament hosted by Washington University in St. Louis.  The team was selected because of their success at the Regional Competition held in Topeka in February.

Truman’s team received an Honorable Mention with a record of 5 wins.  In addition, Ann Frydrych received the Outstanding Witness Award, and Jordan Kientzy received the Outstanding Attorney Award. 

Congratulations!

From left to right:  Dr. Steven Smith, Audrey Rabenberg, Rosie Swingle, Cody Hagan, Ann Frydrych, Bri Zavadil, Jordan Kientzy, and Isaac Straub

You are cordially invited to attend a special reception honoring

DR. PATRICIA BURTON

as she retires from Truman

Thursday, March 21, 2013

2:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Activities Room Student Union

Remarks at 3:00 p.m.

Out of 1,000 college radio stations across the country, the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System awarded KTRM, Truman’s campus radio station, with two of its highest distinctions for “Best Station Manager” and “Best Program Director”.

Senior Geoffrey Woehlk was awarded “Best Station Manager” and junior Brooke Giddens was awarded “Best Program Director”.  Other national finalists for management awards included Dr. Mark Smith for “Outstanding Advisor”, senior Eric Hallam for “Best Production Director”, and Giddens and junior Grace Salerno for “Best Promotions Directors”.

KTRM also had several finalists in content categories.  Woehlk and senior Alexandria Witt were finalists for “Best News Interview”, Woehlk and senior Julie Quinn for “Best Community News”, Giddens for “Best Station/Promotional Event”, Giddens and junior Becky Smith for “Best Use of Social Media”, and Giddens for “Best Celebrities/Artists Interview”.  KTRM was also a finalist for “Best Website”.

Giddens had the most finalist nominations of any female west of the Mississippi River, was the fifth-most-nominated woman overall in the IBS this year, and was the only nominee to be a finalist in two different management categories. 

KTRM was the only Missouri school to be a finalist, and had the most finalists of any school west of the Mississippi River.  KTRM has a rich hitory of statewide awards, but this marks the first time the station has entered this national contest.  IBS is home to more than 1,000 broadcast stations nationwide, comprising 90 percent of all affiliated student-run stations.  Stations compete across 33 categories and all finalists receive a Golden Microphone Award.  For more information about the awards and the IBS, visit:  ibsradio.org

Dr. Jason Beckfield, originally from Joplin, Missouri, and a 1998 Truman graduate with a major in Sociology/Anthropology, has been promoted to Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

Dr. Beckfield, a native of Joplin, Missouri, got his introduction to sociology at Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman).  He took a memorable survey course taught by Jack Mitchell.  “He was extremely intimidating,” Beckfield said.  “He was a big man–gruff, severe, and a compelling lecturer.”   Intensive seminars in classic and comtemporary social theory gave Beckfield an exceptional grounding for the Ph.D. program at Indiana University.

Beckfield spent one of his seven doctoral years helping his adviser, Professor Art Alderson, complete an intensive social network analysis of selected cities around the world.  “It was a very important moment in graduate school,” said Beckfield.  “It completely changed the way I thought about globalization.”

Social network analysis is the complex, data-driven study of how nodes (individuals) and ties (relationships) relate to one another.  Conceptually, this key analytical tool dates to the 1930s, but it only took off in the ’90s, when computing power could finally cope with massive data sets.  Beckfield is a fan of the technique’s fluid intersections with physics, neuroscience, statistics, and other disciplines.

The complex equations and fulsome quantitative data of social network analysis underlie his chief reserach:  regionalization initiatives like the European Union (EU).  Entities like the EU are increasingly common–new economic, political, and social hybrids of national and global ties.  Beckfield wonders if the EU create patterns of inequality?  It’s all so new, Beckfield calls regional unions like the EU “supranational entities” that are “completely fascinating socity-building experiments.”

The idea of globalization helps us understand grand patterns, said Beckfield.  But it is more accurate to think of the world as a place of multiplying supranational regions:  densely woven networks of social, economic, and political ties that exceed national boundaries.  The world is not the globalized “flat world” popularized by writer Thomas Friedman, said Beckfield.  “The metaphor I like better–it’s not my own–is that the world is ‘spiky,’ increasingly fragmented and increasingly unequal.”

from an article by Corydon Ireland in the Harvard Gazette

The Local Records Preservation Program offers a field trip every semester for the interns. The trip consists of a tour of the State Archives, a division of the Secretary of State’s office, located in the Kirkpatrick State Information Center in Jefferson City.  It has turned out to be not only instructional, but also a lot of fun. 

The tour started in the conservation lab, the only such public lab in the state.  Here state conservators showed the interns how paper documents requiring in-depth personal attention and care are treated, from literally being given a bath to chemical cleaning and repair.  Some of the state’s most valuable documents have received treatment here, including those from the Dred Scott case.  From the lab we journeyed to the micrographics department where the interns were able to see not only how the circuit case files they have spent the semester processing will be microfilmed, but also digitized, and what the images will look like once placed on the Secretary of State website. 

A tour of the micrographics vault followed.  Located under street level and completely lined in stainless steel panels, this room stores thousands of reels of original silver halide microfilm under specific and rigid environmental conditions, enabling them to last 500 years with little to no degradation.  The interns also viewed the main storage stacks of the State Archives, where the majority of the Archives’ holdings are kept, as well as the research reading room and adjoining microfilm viewing room.  These two areas are staffed by trained archivists and are open to the public for research opportunities.  The field trip was capped off with a visit to Central Dairy before hitting the road to return to Kirksville.

From left: Mary McIntosh, Field Archivist and Project Coordinator at Truman; interns Racheal Kissee, Will LaChance, Katelyn Johnson, Caitlin O’Leary; John Dougan, State Archivist; and intern Candice Alcaraz.  The girls are holding the first four boxes of Shelby County circuit court case files, dating from 1835, processed, indexed, and ready to be microfilmed and digitized by the State Archives.

A psychology student team won an award for Outstanding Presentation during their session at the Missouri Undergraduate Psychology Conference, held Nov. 9-10, at Westminster College in Fulton, MO.  The students are Sarah Jo David, Erin Schroeder, and Kayla Maassen, and they were mentored by Dr. Teresa Heckert.  The project was “Workplace Forgiveness: A Preliminary Model.”

 Other presentations by Truman psychology students included… 

“Language Deficits following Traumatic Brain Injury:  A Meta-analysis” by Kayla Maassen and Crystal Stonebarger, mentored by Dr. Jeffrey Vittengl.

“Effects of Word List Content on Source Attributions using the DSM Paradigm” by Kerry Lee and Kelsey Spalding, mentored by Dr. Robert Tigner.

“Student Engagement, Personality, Positive and Negative Affect, and Subjective Well-being in College Students” by Sarah Jo David and David Schultz, mentored by Dr. Michele Breault.

Presiding Circuit Judge Russell E. Steele swore in four new Adair County CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) volunteers on November 7.  CASA volunteers are trained citizens who are appointed by a judge to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in court.  

Front left are Jennifer Walston; Stacey Pugh, Justice Systems major; Erin Meier, Biology/SOAN double major; and Katherine Kennison, SOAN major.  Back left are Sandy Slocum, Executive Director, Friends of CASA; Lynn Van Dolah, Friends of CASA president; Jill Williams, Friends of CASA; Andrea Hampton; Presiding Circuit Judge Russell E. Steele;  Dr. Philip Slocum, Missouri CASA Association board president; and Philip McIntosh, Guardian Ad Litem.

Dr. Daniel Mandell, Professor of History, is currently participating in a research fellowship for 2012-2013 from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, one of the oldest research libraries in the U.S.  He will also be a visiting scholar at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, one of the world’s foremost centers for theoretical science and humanities research. 

Dr. Mandell’s project, which began with his Truman sabbatical in 2007, is a study of changing concepts of equality in America.  He recently gave two presentations in conjunction with this fellowship.