Still Blowin’ in the Wind
This fall, Wichita State University throttles up for the 60th anniversary of the Walter H. Beech Memorial Wind Tunnel. Carmen Hytche, WSU's director of community relations and special events, says there’s a wide range of activities planned for October — from private receptions for wind tunnel VIPs to public events featuring tunnel tours and demonstrations. The research facility, which at its inception was the largest wind tunnel of its kind in the Midwest, has gone through a number of changes over the years.
Hurricane Ike Swamps Lab
Hurricane Ike’s stormy ire shut down Cisco System’s global center in Houston, causing the center to re-rout its workload through WSU’s Cisco laboratory — swamping lab students with an influx of work. Cisco is the leading supplier of Internet networking equipment and network management, and WSU’s Cisco lab is the only one of its kind among universities, providing students global, hands-on experience. WSU secured the partnership with the computer firm in 2005, providing the university with an initial $2 million in salaries and equipment to run the technology research center on campus.
Ravi Pendse, WSU's associate provost and chief information officer, secured the contract and now oversees the lab. He and the 100 students who work in shifts to operate the lab volunteered to accept the extra work. They normally work on network problems within North America, but have extended their support to as far as South Africa and the Philippines. “How many times do you get the chance to help out during a hurricane from Wichita, Kansas?” Pendse says.
Candid Candidates
The YouTube-ification of politics is upping the pressure on 2008 presidential candidates, says Amy Mattson Lauters, a pop culture and communications expert at Wichita State.
While the Internet has affected elections before, she reports that what’s different about this one is the availability of video: “Technology has advanced
in the last several years so that now we can see streaming video online, and not everyone has to have special equipment in order to make that happen.”
Thus, Lauters says, nearly anything a candidate says or does — the good,
the bad and the ugly — now has the potential of being viewed by millions on YouTube.
Urban Service: On the PA Front
Richard Muma, chair of public health sciences and physician assistant professor in WSU’s College of Health Professions, has received a three-year, $515,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration to focus on PA urban workforce issues. “The WSU PA program has focused attention for many years on deploying graduates to rural areas,” Muma says, “and now plans to add a focus in urban, underserved areas.”
He points out that “Wichita-Sedgwick County, the largest metropolitan area in Kansas, experiences many challenges in providing adequate health care to all individuals. Community assessments have identified socioeconomic barriers and several geographic areas of Wichita with perceived barriers to adequate health care.”
Thus, access to health care will be studied in Muma’s project in an effort to better understand what the right mix — and positioning — of providers should be to care for local indigent individuals. Three local community health centers will also participate in the grant project: Hunter Health Clinic, the Center for Health and Wellness and Healthy Options for Planeview.
Security Matters
Victor Isakov, a WSU mathematics and statistics professor for nearly 20 years, has been awarded a three-year, $450,000 grant from the National Geospatial Agency to conduct research for the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s a good opportunity for us, for WSU,” Isakov says. “It’s big, national, and it’s good for our students.”
It was the math professor’s project Innovative Mathematical Methods for Gravimetric and Magnetometric Prospecting that resulted in the grant. The proposal was submitted last year into a highly competitive national pool. The research is part of an effort to investigate, measure and develop approaches and algorithms — a sequence of instructions typically used for computations and data processing — to interpret the potential of Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields to help determine the location and shape of underground cavities and passageways.
The grant was just one of several NGA awards to support research in selected areas of geospatial science that are considered critical to U.S. national security and industry. The NGA is a part of the Homeland Security Department. In addition to initial funding, as many as two one-year extensions are possible with a value of up to $150,000 a year. Assisting in the research are three wsu mathematics and statistics professors: Alexandre Boukhgueim, Alan Elcrat and Thomas DeLillo; and one professor from Michigan State University. A Wichita State grad student will also be selected to join the effort.
Mr. Rogers’ Slow
Wichita State audiology professor Ray Hull says the secret to getting children to truly listen isn’t speaking up — it’s slowing down.
That’s because, Hull explains, the average adult talks at a rate of nearly 170 words per minute, while the average 5- to 7-year-old processes speech at a rate of 120 words per minute. When adults slow down, kids can listen with greater ease and understanding.
Hull isn’t keeping this secret for better communication a secret, either. He’s been a guest on a segment of NBC’s Today show, and his research shows up regularly in national publications, from scholarly journals to the New York Times and Prevention magazine.
Hull says he thinks there would be fewer cases of learning disabilities, hearing problems and behavior problems if adults who work with children would simply slow their rate of speaking. So how slow should we speak to kids? Think: Mr. Rogers. “There’s a reason children were so captivated and mesmerized by Mr. Rogers,” Hull says. “He may have been one of the only adults many children were able to understand.”
The late Fred Rogers, of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” kept children’s attention, Hull believes, because he practiced speaking at a rate of about 124 words a minute. The pace may sound uncomfortably slow to adults, but to children used to hearing only bits of sentences or garbled phrases, it is sheer relief.
“In young children, the central nervous system has to mature just like the rest of them, and it does so slowly, over time,” Hull says. By the way, the average high school student processes speech at a rate of about 140 to 145 words per minute, still slower than most adults speak.
Eight Wonders of Kansas
The Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection, part of the Ulrich Museum of Art collection at Wichita State, is up for consideration as one of the Eight Wonders of Kansas Art.
The outdoor sculpture collection, which is noted as one of the most significant collections on any U.S. college campus, boasts 75 monumental works spread across the 330-acre WSU campus. Over the course of 34 years, museum professionals — most notably Martin Bush, for whom the collection is named — judiciously obtained exemplary work by Henry Moore, Joan Miró, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Hepworth, Auguste Rodin and Luis Jimenez.
In 2004 the museum commissioned internationally known sculptor Andy Goldsworthy to create “Wichita Arch,” made of more than 40 tons of Flint Hills limestone. The collection’s newest addition, by nationally recognized sculptor and Wichita native Tom Otterness, will be installed in late October.
