CONTENTS

WSU researchers measure the declining diversity of mussels in Kansas' Walnut River - a telltale sign of pollution.

Hal Davis '72 has acted, sung and (even) danced on many of our nation's premier stages -- his way.

This spring, Eric Wedge dons Cleveland Indians colors and steps up to the plate as the youngest club manager in the majors.

WuShock in the Rockies? Dear The Shocker: As a volunteer at Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, Colo., I noticed one of the rock formations in the park looks intriguingly like WuShock. I decided I had to share this find with fellow Shockers. As a lifetime member of the wsu Alumni Association, I decided, Where better than The Shocker? I have enclosed my best picture of his likeness. Can you see it? Best regards, Rick Wright ’63 Colorado Springs, Colo. Shocker Football Dear Ed...

Shockers everywhere, at events long ago to happenings just the other day, always have something interesting to say.

This year marks the 47th Annual WSU Alumni Association Award ceremony, at which six stellar Shockers will be recognized for their many and diverse accomplishments.

Shockers dared the deep, dark Blair Wu woods for a frightfully fun night in support of higher education at Wichita State.

?Sam Ramey '68, Richard "Bud" Markley '82 and Steve Hedden, WSU dean of fine arts, get together during a Lyric Opera of Chicago event. Taking a breather during flag football action Sept. 27 between YAC and SAA teams are, from left, Kale Kroupa '98, Darin Dredge '97 and Erin King '99. Sheryl Wohlford '82 and Kaye Monk-Morgan '93/96 enjoy the Oct. 1 Shocker Honors Scholar Banquet....

The events of the last year-and-a-half have created some unique situations in our national and state economies. Endowments of all kinds have been hit hard with lower than expected returns — and those in higher education are no exception. As I write this message, our state government officials are wrestling with a huge budget shortfall, a gap of about $1 billion over the next 18 months. Times are tough, but with the right leadership we will make it through. Here at wsu, President Don Beggs...

As the year 2003 gets under way in earnest, I’d like to take this opportunity to review a few of the alumni association’s major events of 2002 — and invite you to join us for our 2003 alumni activities. On Oct. 26, we celebrated our Shocker pride at the 23rd Annual Shocker Auction, which this year was themed The Blair Wu Project. Steve Onken and Bryan Frye, the co-chairs of the project, deserve much of the praise for this event’s success in raising more than $130,000 in...

ARIZONA Shocker Open Tue., Mar. 18; 7:30 a.m. — Arizona Shocker Open, Dobson Ranch Golf Course, Mesa, Ariz. Vic Heckart '62 and other Phoenix-area alumni invite alumni and supporters to tee off with fellow Shockers at this annual tournament, which will be played on greens twice voted "Best Public Golf Course." The $65 per person tournament entry fee includes breakfast, lunch, green fees, cart and prizes. For details, please contact Bobby: (888) 316-2586; bobby.gandu@wichita...

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS Work-Based Learning Business is booming in WSU's Office of Cooperative Education and Work-Based Learning. Connie Dietz, director of the Cooperative Education Intern Program, reports that work-based learning "is a real selling point for WSU. Several parents have told me their children want to attend WSU so they can take advantage of this opportunity." Participating students (about 40 percent of applicants) intern with groups as diverse as Disney in Orlando, Fla.,...

Craig Miner ’66/67, Wichita State’s Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, has written the first new Kansas state history book to be published in more than 25 years.

A gift from an anonymous donor provides funding for the restoration of Wichita State's acclaimed outdoor sculpture collection.

Ode Beauty is true pain — and all this you need to know: that fading as the day, that fading as the sun, truth foretells its death in telling, beauty at the winning, having won. The Children's Choir Does Karaoke God Rap and claps out of time, swaying awkwardly, chanting incomprehensibly. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was Latin. Perhaps it was an over-developed sense of humiliation that drove me from it early, the side-effect of the scrutiny of being younge...

UNTITLED Textured vase, 2002 10" x 6" x 28" Esau Adrian Freeman WSU student Esau Freeman's approach to art could be described as loose. "A lot of the work I do has very little direction at the start," he says. "The evolution of the work is a product of the thought and circumstances that occur during the formation process. I think every creation should be its own unique entity, and I won't make the same thing twice." After graduating from high scho...

"THIRD PHASE" Acrylic, collage, crayon, objects on panel, 2002 24" x 31.5" x .75" Marc Bosworth '92 Marc Bosworth came to WSU to study printmaking. Active in showing his work around the region, this co-founder of the Famous Dead Artists also had eight of his collage paintings included in a July 2002 exhibition of new and emerging artists at Seattle's D'Adamo/Woltz Gallery. "My work," he explains, "deals primarily with ideas about gender r...

A Collector's Passion: John "Jack" Morgan '37 has donated 112 stunningly beautiful pieces of Pueblo pottery to WSU, enhancing the university's Native American collection housed in the Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology. Morgan's passion for collecting pottery of the Pueblo Indians was sparked in the winter of 1981-82 during a visit to the gallery of Charles Eagle Plume in Colorado.

Verne Harnish has been a front-runner in the economic fast lane for two decades and counting. The "Growth Guru" columnist for Fortune and a frequent writer for Fortune Small Business magazines, he was ranked last year among the latter's "Top Ten Minds in Small Business." He has hobnobbed with the entrepreneurial likes of Steven Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Mark Cuban and Julie Brice. And his new book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, is generating lots of buzz. As...

Former journalist Carie Dann '83 fights fires in Colorado. The avid sportswoman also has run about a dozen marathons, including the Boston Marathon and the Pikes Peak Marathon.

Professor Emeritus George Platt, who is often referred to as Wichita State's unofficial historian, has uncovered an early university mystery. Maybe you can unravel the enigma of this mystery woman.

Aaron Hogg, a 6-6 junior guard shown here in action against Western Illinois, netted 26 points in WSU's come-back win over SMSU. For the first time since 1996 Wichita State led off Missouri Valley Conference action with a 3-0 record, defeating the Panthers of Northern Iowa, 79-55, on Jan. 4; the Sycamores of Indiana State, 71-55, on Jan. 7; and the Southwest Missouri State Bears in a 67-63 come-back win on Jan. 11 at the Kansas Coliseum. "That was one heck of a game," WSU head...

Cristina and Joe Palacioz, who've been avid supporters of Shocker track and field for a decade, have an added reason for enthusiasm: their son John competes on the team. While Joe Palacioz '71/76 probably possessed the drive and determination to develop into a successful runner, he lacked one very important quality: speed. "But," he notes with a chuckle, "I was pretty fast for a lineman." Even so, Palacioz can spin a fine yarn about a memorable spring afternoon wh...

WSU's Koya Webb is the defending champion in the heptathlon. The sports world is full of coaches who try to lower expectations during the preseason, so WSU coach Steve Rainbolt's optimistic outlook for his men's track and field team is refreshing. "We're really excited," he says. "We feel like we're the team to beat in the Missouri Valley. This could be one of the best teams there's ever been at Wichita State." Rainbolt has reason for such high ex...

Too Much to Handle Wichita State's Angela Buckner, above, has been too much for opposing teams to handle. To cite two examples: Buckner scored 18 points in the Shockers' 67-63 win over Drake on Jan. 12, and she led all players with 15 rebounds in WSU's defeat of the defending Missouri Valley Conference champions, Creighton, 74-73, on Jan. 10. Her athletic feats are even more impressive when set in context: the Shockers trailed the Creighton Bluejays 44-29 at half time before chargi...

Comings, goings, appointments, retirements, honors, accolades and other personal alumni news. Former students are designated by fs. Members of the Wichita State University Alumni Association are identified by an asterisk (*). Membership dues support this magazine, as well as many other programs and services that support higher education at Wichita State. Warren J. Cortner '46, econ, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot in World War II who also served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, has retired fr...

Vashti E. (Crutcher) Lewis ’71, educator and pioneer in the Wichita civil rights movement, was among the first African-American women to teach at Wichita State. While working toward a bachelor’s degree in biology at Friends University, she led sit-ins at area theaters and other businesses to protest discriminatory business practices. In 1969, she began working on a master’s degree in English at Wichita State. She taught at WSU from 1969 until 1977, focusing on English and Afric...

The youngest of four brothers, artist Thomas “Bart” Ewonus fs ’94 learned early on how to fend for himself, a talent that came in handy years later when in the late 1970s and a student at Wichita State he faced hostile audiences as the singer for Wichita’s first punk rock bands: The Censors, The Lemurs and The Bradfords. “A lot of the music in Wichita wouldn’t have happened without [his] fearlessness,” Ewonus’ longtime friend Henry Nelson told The...

These Wichita State University alumni and friends leave lasting legacies.

I have a bit of stock in State Farm Funds, and some months back I received two identical proxies for the same account. That was unusual so I wrote the president of the company, Ed Rust Jr., enclosing the extra copy. It was the first time I had written the president of a company; I don't believe that stuff about going to the top, but the problem raised seemed serious, and this was my father's company. When I say "my father's company" I don't mean he owned it or had much...

Willa S. McLean '33 has packed a lot of living into 100 years — and counting. Leaving her hometown of Larned, Kan., shortly after graduating high school, McLean made her way to Wilberforce University in Ohio, where she studied for two years before returning to Kansas to attend the University of Wichita. While at wu, she founded the city chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and went on to hold every office within the organization. An education graduate, McLean taught in the Wichi...

Published last fall by Holiday House, Grasslands is Debra Seely's first novel for young adults. Set in Kansas during the 1880s, the novel covers the life and times of 13-year-old Thomas. Influenced by such Great Plains authors as Willa Cather, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Mari Sandoz, Seely '97 was wellread in terms of place and time when she began writing Grasslands while a graduate student at WSU. And she had the added benefit of her own family history: Thomas is based on her great-grandf...

?It was fall 1957 when Bana Kartasasmita '62, then a college sophomore and recipient of a Smith-Mundt scholarship to study in the United States, arrived in Wichita, a place he knew about only in the vaguest of ways. He remembers being surprised by the Kansas cold and struck by the friendliness of the people. He was, he says, the first Indonesian to attend the University of Wichita. Then, the population of international students was not what it is today, although Kartasasmita points out ther...

7MaryWu? Jodie Musser '95 has completed CHiPs training in Santa Barbara, Calif. (For those too young to have seen Eric Estrada's TV series from way back when: CHiPs equals California Highway Patrol.) Musser, whose bachelor's degree is in electronic communications, is now trained in an array of patrol duties, including crash investigation, weapons use and physical methods of arrest. No word on whether her trainers also divulged the secret of how to look cool in mirrored sunglasses....