The University of Kansas

Allan J. Cigler, professor of political science and government, participated in a debate on campaign finance reform on Feb. 8 at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Cigler contributed to the book Financing the 2000 Election and answered questions about the book and other issues. The book convenes leading political scientists to analyze the 2000 elections and provides a unique resource.

Bill Fuerst, dean of the School of Business, recently participated on a judging panel for the Sprint Innovation Award. The award is given to companies that use Sprint technology in innovative ways to grow or improve their businesses. This year’s award was given to Mytoolstore.com, a Web-based tool company based in Las Vegas. The panel of judges included business administrators, consultants and university administrators.

Chu-tsing Li, J.H. Murphy professor emeritus of art history, has published the second volume of his major work, A History of Modern Chinese Painting. The publication was done jointly with Qingli Wan, a KU alumnus and professor of art history at the University of Hong Kong. The first volume, covering 1840-1911, was published two years ago. The present volume, presenting information from 1912 through 1949, came out last month. Both volumes are on display in the bookcase in the Department of Art History hallway on the second floor of the Spencer Museum of Art. A third volume covering the past 50 years is in production.

Michael C. Roberts, director of the clinical child psychology program, has been elected to chair the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology for the next two years. The organization consists of more than 160 training programs in clinical psychology in the United States and Canada.

Jim LaPoint, associate professor in health, sport and exercise sciences, has been named Kansas Official of the Year in boys’ soccer by the National Federation Officials Association. The NFO annually recognizes officials from across the country for their exemplary work with young people.

Fiona McLaughlin, assistant professor of linguistics and African studies, presented a paper titled "Some theoretical consequences of phonological agreement in Wolof: Parallels between reduplication and agreement" at an international colloquium on linguistic theory and subsaharan languages Feb. 6-8 in Paris.

Steve Randtke, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, recently organized the annual Environmental Engineering Conference. The department and KU Continuing Education are hosts of this conference each year.

The Center for Latin American Studies received $15,000 for field research grants from the Tinker Foundation for the 2001 calendar year. The chancellor’s office, CLAS, the Graduate School and KU Center for Research provided matching funds, making the total $30,000. Tinker Research Grants provided funding for 26 graduate students of various disciplines to conduct research in 15 countries of Central and South America, the Caribbean and Spain.

Paul Laird, associate professor of music and dance, has published a detailed list of 450 international jazz festivals and a number of articles on individual jazz festivals in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (Macmillan 2001). Laird also did the jazz festival coverage for the first edition of the dictionary in 1988.

Sherrie Tucker, assistant professor of American studies, was the invited guest of the Humanities Research Institute “Placing Popular Music” group at University of California, Irvine, on Feb. 25. She participated in a dialogue on oral history methodology in popular music research.

Jeffrey Beavers, telecommunica-tions engineer for Networking and Telecommunications Services, was recently named to a working subcommittee of BICSI, a not-for-profit telecommunications association. BICSI is a world-wide resource for technical publications, training, conferences, and registration programs for low-voltage cabling distribution design and installation, and has more than 20,000 members residing in 85 nations. Beavers was named to the Panel 500 Technical Information and Methods Committee on Residential Cabling.

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