The UE Wind Ensemble will present its Winter Concert in Neu Chapel this Tuesday, February 25, at 7:30 p.m. Assistant Professor of Low Brass and Director of Bands Ken Steinsultz will lead the ensemble in a performance of works from the Romantic and Modern eras. Highlights will include a performance of Richard Wagner’s Trauersinfonie, a piece penned in honor of German composer Carl Maria von Weber that consists of transcriptions of various numbers from Weber’s opera, Euryanthe. Consortium Instructor of Oboe Dr. Elizabeth Robertson will also join the ensemble for a performance of Spanish composer Ferrer Ferran’s El Bosque Mágico. The concert is free and open to the public.

Department of Music students Chelsea Masolak (trumpet) and Sara Graham (flute) will offer a joint Senior Recital in Wheeler Concert Hall this Sunday, March 2, at 1:00 p.m. Chelsea is a student of Professor Timothy Zifer, and Sara is a student of Consortium Instructor Cara Dailey. This event will be followed by the Senior Recital of violinist Kaitlin Emmert, a student of Professor Carol Dallinger. The recitals are in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Music in Music Therapy degree and are free and open to the public.
 

Would you like to see the Evansville Icemen play against the Cincinnati Cyclones on February 28? Student Detours will be selling discounted goal seat tickets on Tuesday, February 25 and Wednesday, February 26 from Noon to 1 PM in Ridgway Univrersity Center. Tickets will sell for $14 each. Don't miss out on this sweet deal!
 

Commencement Central for May graduates is being held on Tuesday, February 25 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. outside the UE Bookstore. ALL May graduates should attend either of these dates. It only takes a few minutes to finalize your graduation plans. You will meet with the Registrar's Office, Alumni Affairs, Career Services and the Bookstore. This is a one stop easy event. You will also be able to purchase your cap and gown and/or order graduation announcements. Please mark these dates on your calendar and be sure to attend!

Take part in the UE campus scavenger hunt on Tuesday, February 25. Every 2 hours starting at 8am @UEYoungAlum will tweet a clue about a space on campus named for a donor. In that space will be a Philanthropy Week Star with how much that space cost and the donor the spaced is named for. Visit that space and take photo and tweet back to @UEYoungAlum using #DoGood4UE. Prizes will be awarded throughout the day to participants.

Celebrate MESCON MONDAY every Monday in March by wearing your MESCON t-shirt from previous MESCONs. MESCON, the University of Evansville’s Math, Engineering, and Science CONference, is a unique undergraduate research conference that provides a vehicle for undergraduate students to participate in a research conference with a focus on math, engineering and science. The conference continues to grow, attracting over 100 undergraduate participants from multiple universities and colleges across the tri-state. MESCON offers prize money for the best presentations/papers. This year’s conference will be Saturday, March 29. The keynote speaker for this year’s conference is Dr. Robert Gallucci, who will be speaking on “Larger Truths of an R&D Career.” More information regarding MESCON can be found at the website: http://csserver.evansville.edu/mescon. If you have participated in previous MESCONs, please join us in supporting MESCON by wearing your MESCON t-shirts every Monday in March.

On Thursday, February 27 at 5 p.m. in the Writing Center - learn to incorporate vivid language into your introductions and conclusions, and learn how outlining can help organize your thoughts and make writing your essays easier. Whether you’re writing a research paper or just want to make your writing more compelling in general, it’s all about detail and organization!

An Institute Speaker Series event with Paul Jones ’71, Executive Chairman, A.O. Smith Corporation, will be co-hosted by the Schroeder School of Business and the College of Engineering and Computer Science on Tuesday, March 4.  Jones will speak on Doing Business in China and India, a CEO’s Perspective at a student forum in the Ridgway University Center Room 252 on Tuesday, March 4 from 2:45 – 3:45 p.m.  This event will count towards the ACES Passport Program for business majors.

From humble beginnings in a small mid-western town to leader of a successful global company, Paul Jones will share the story of his leadership journey as he remade A.O. Smith Corporation and successfully took its value proposition of innovation to two of the largest emerging economies on the globe.  The forum is free and open to the entire campus community; those interested in attending are encouraged to RSVP here.

Jones joined A.O. Smith in January 2004 as president and COO.  Prior to this, he held executive positions at U.S. Can Company, Greenfield Industries Inc., and General Electric where he successfully progressed through the ranks for 19 years.   Jones graduated from the University of Evansville with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering in 1971 and serves on the University Board of Trustees.
 

All members of the campus and local community are encouraged to attend I-House: China. I-House features a different international student each week sharing their story of life in their country. Attendees will learn about culture, lifestyle, food, and so much more. Bring your friends to enjoy the presentation this Wednesday at 7pm on the 2nd floor of Ridgway University Center in the Class of 1959 Gallery.

Over Spring Break three AT students are headed to Haiti where they will be serving at several orphanages throughout the week and distributing clothes, food, and medical supplies! Clothing donations are always greatly appreciated, and what do college students have more of than t-shirts!? We've all got that t-shirt drawer, likely overflowing and this could be your head start on spring cleaning! We will have a donation table set up in Ridgway University Center sponsored by AT Club!

Table times are:
Feb. 27 from 4-8 pm
Feb. 28 from 10 am-1 pm and 5-8 pm

Contact an AT major if you have questions!
 

FYS is currently accepting applications for teaching interns for Fall 2014. FYS 499 is a 3 credit hour teaching internship that will provide select students the opportunity to assist in the instruction of First-Year Seminar courses.

Teaching Interns (TIs) will work under the supervision of FYS faculty, working closely with them in and out of the classroom. TIs will attend FYS classes and model good academic behavior, help to facilitate discussion, work one-on-one with students on writing, and serve as a peer mentor and tutor to FYS students and a liaison between FYS faculty and students.

Interested students should contact Dr. Valerie Stein at vs9@evansville.edu for more information and an application.

The UE Bookstore will be starting the return process of unsold books soon. If you still need a textbook for the term please stop by the Bookstore and purchase it. If for some reason you need a book but can't purchase it at this time the Bookstore will be happy to hold a textbook for you for a period of time. Please contact the Bookstore if you need this done or if you have any questions.

Applications for the nomination of SGA president, vice president, senior trustee, and Academic Fund Board chairperson are open now until March 7th at 5:00 PM. Applications are available in the Center for Student Engagement. Email questions to Shaun Sizemore at ss485.

Senior Emmy Ogawa and freshman Mandy Feagans presented their research at the 4th annual meeting of the Indiana Physiological Society on February 22. Emmy, a biology major, presented her poster on acoustic behavior in geckos, research conducted at UE with Dr. Gordon (Biology). Mandy is a neuroscience major who's work was conducted as part of a summer internship at Eli Lilly and investigated the role of the neuropeptide orexin in addictive behaviors. Both presentations were well received.

The University of Evansville Jazz Ensemble I, under the direction of Dr. Timothy Zifer, participated in the prestigious Elmhurst College Jazz Festival this past weekend, and three members of the ensemble were awarded certificates of “Outstanding Recognition” for their roles in the ensemble’s performance. Congratulations to Meghan Pund (Outstanding Improvised Saxophone Solo), Andrew Beasley (Outstanding Drum Set Performance), and Max Engleman (Outstanding Improvised Guitar Solo), and to the entire ensemble for being invited to attend and perform!

Last Friday, Assistant Professor of Sociology Timothy L. O’Brien gave an invited presentation at Indiana University’s annual Public Sociology Forum, which focused on the role of social science in the law. O’Brien’s talk “The Use of Expert Witnesses in Courts,” examined different ways in which expert testimony is presented during litigation and the variety of barriers expert witnesses face to gaining entry into courts.

Anthony F. Beavers, Professor of Philosophy, will present a talk, "Epistemic Information Reductionism and Its Impact on American Higher Education," as part of the Sixth International Workshop on the Philosophy of Information to be held at Duke University this May.

Epistemic Information Reductionism (EIR) is the contemporary cultural understanding of knowledge as information and, thus, teaching and learning as information exchange. Adopting this definition, cognitive categories such as pondering, musing, reflecting, relating, contemplating, interpreting, evaluating, and even deciding are defined out of the educational enterprise or at least relegated to the background as a mere means for arriving at information with little attention paid to the value of thinking (as thoughtfulness in the pursuit of wisdom), and the formation of conscience and judgment concerning when and how one should act in the world.

Having established this, Beavers will turn his attention to the internal political framework of the American academy and address it in the context of a culture that is slowly commodifying information and, thus, turning universities into institutions of "knowledge production" and "information transfer." Keeping in line with this commodified model, metrics are demanded to determine how much information has been gleaned by students in order to judge the quality of a university's product. This in turn sets up a model for assessment that is forced into fields it does not fit and that largely renders discrete a continuous range of human activity for measurement and evaluation, separating for example categories like "understanding one's place in the world" from "appreciating complexity," and so forth.

A second outcome of EIR is that it implicitly redefines the professorate 1) as a system of quasi-administrators (bureaucrats as opposed to domain experts), on the one hand, who spend an increasing amount of time on paperwork in exchange for student contact time and the largely-underestimated task of keeping up in their respective fields against the backdrop of an exponentially developing cognitive landscape, and 2) as commodities themselves for information transfer to be bought and sold off as the market dictates.

The chief implication that Beavers will address in this talk is the transformation of the university and the professorate away from its previous mission of creating not only capable workers, but also thoughtful, engaged and moral citizens, into vocational schools designed to serve an economic model suited to business and, simultaneously, to create students who are less capable of questioning this model. During the course of the talk, Beavers will harken back to Plato's analogy between health and education to show that the emerging picture of higher education painted here is quite real. As the commodification of information and information brokering come to define the academy, Beavers will argue that it is following a trajectory similar to that of the health industry in the United States which has emerged as it has on the basis of an accepted and largely unquestioned commodification of health itself.

Beavers' concerns about Epistemic Information Reductionism echo concerns about Axiological Information Reductionism addressed in presentations recently given at Northern Kentucky University, the University of South Carolina and, later in March, at the University of Western Australia. For video of his Future Knowledge Interview at USC, please see http://vimeo.com/86414108; for his talk on the Threat of Ethical Nihilism also delivered at USC, please see http://vimeo.com/86414109.

Last weekend Assistant Professor of Philosophy Derek Jones presented "Locating the Self-Organized Agent: From Autonomy to Embedded Normativity" at the 2014 Midsouth Philosophy conference at Rhodes College and "Mental Illness and our Sense of Agency" at the 10th PGSA Conference on Mental Illness and Power at the University of Memphis.

Computer science major Jawad AlDhalemi was awarded the James M. Hall Jr. 2013 Outstanding Engineering Student award. He was selected by the Dean of the College of Engineering & Computer Science as the most outstanding student at junior class standing based on scholastic achievement, extra-curricular activities, character, responsibility, attitude and potential for professional growth. Congratulations Jawad!

Dr. Edward Bujak, Senior Lecturer in British Studies and History, will be giving a paper titled “Gentleman of the Air: The Royal Flying Corps and the English Country House Estate” at the 12th Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference on the Country House and the Great War, at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 8-10 May 2014. 

Dr. David Green, Senior Lecturer in British Studies and History, is co-convening this year’s Harlaxton Medieval Symposium on “The Plantagenet Empire, 1259-1453” with Prof. Mark Ormrod (University of York) and Dr. Peter Crooks (Trinity College, Dublin). The conference will take place 15-18 July 2014 and a program with registration details can be found at http://harlaxton.org.uk/the-plantagenet-empire/

The Harlaxton Medieval Symposium is in its 30th year at Harlaxton Manor.  It draws leading scholars in Medieval studies from Britain, Europe, and the United States.  Proceedings of the Symposium are published annually by Paul Watkins Publishing.  Examples of previous topics include "The Medieval Merchant," "The Yorkist Age," "Signs and Symbols," "Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Britain," etc.
 

Aces fans, your men’s basketball team takes on Drake tonight in the last home game of the season for the Purple Aces. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:05 pm at the Ford Center. A shuttle bus will be available for students to ride to the Ford Center for tonight’s game. Pick-up time for the shuttle bus will be at 6:15 pm, and the pick-up location will be in front of the Carson Center off of Walnut St., just north of the Ridgway University Center. The shuttle bus will then return to the Ford Center 10-15 minutes after the conclusion of the game to take students back to campus.

All full-time faculty, staff and administration receive two complimentary tickets to tonight’s game as well as the remaining women’s basketball games on Thursday, February 27, and Saturday, March 1. These tickets can be picked up from the Carson Center Ticket Office Monday through Friday from 8:30 am until 5:00 pm by showing your UE ID.

Students also get free admission to tonight’s game with their UE IDs, and can earn Student Rewards points, which can be redeemed for great prizes, for attending tonight’s basketball game as well as all other Aces home events!

Come out support your fellow Purple Aces tonight as they take on the Bulldogs at the Ford Center!
 

Former University of Evansville Athletics Director and Coach Jim Byers was honored on Friday with the dedication of the “Jim Byers Pathway to Excellence”.

Well over 100 were in attendance including Byers’ former players, staff, friends and current UE personnel and student-athletes. The pathway connects the front of the Carson Center to the Fifth Third Basketball Practice Facility. Plaques in honor of him are placed at each entrance to the path.

Byers was shocked by the announcement, which was kept as a surprise until the event, which took place at noon on Friday.

“Overwhelmed is the best word I can use to describe my feelings,” Byers said. “I have been blessed through the years with my career of 33 years at UE. I worked with so many great staff members, coaches and student-athletes and am grateful to every one of them for what they have done for me.”

A project that has been in the making for several months was started by one of Byers’ former players – Roger Mason. Through his work and that of the UE staff, donations were garnered from over 80 people that included those who he coached and worked with throughout his career.

UE President Dr. Thomas A. Kazee spoke at the event along with Athletics Director John Stanley, Mason and Coach Marty Simmons. Following the speakers, Rev. Mark Sirnic of the Bethlehem United Church of Christ blessed the pathway. All echoed the sentiments of what Byers’ 33 years meant to the university.

“Jim was one of the first people that I met at the University when I arrived; you could see just how much he meant to everyone and we are proud to be able to honor him today,” Kazee said.

Stanley, who took over as the AD in 2007, said that Byers has played a pivotal role in assisting him whenever asked. “Jim is such an asset to myself and the University,” he said. “We are very thankful for everything he has done and are proud to dedicate this pathway.”

Byers’ career at UE began as the football coach. Between 1966 and 1977, he won 51 games, more than any other coach in program history. Beginning in 1977, he took over as the AD, a position he held until 1997. He helped in the forming of four conferences in his time as an administrator while also guiding the Purple Aces into the Missouri Valley Conference.

His leadership was never more evident than the time following the plane crash on December 13, 1977. His guidance helped to those affected by the accident to heal and rebuild the program to great heights in a short time.

Simmons commented on how much his leadership continues to be pivotal to his program to this day. “Coach Byers stops by the office every week; it is a pleasure to be able to speak with him and get his advice, his contributions to the University and athletics department are immeasurable,” Simmons stated.

One of those whom Byers gave a chance to was Jim Crews. Byers chose him to succeed Dick Walters as the head basketball coach at UE and Crews is forever grateful to the impact that Byers made on him going forward. A note from Crews was read at the dedication and perhaps no part of that better symbolizes what Byers has done for so many people.

“Even though I did not play for you, I consider you my coach,” Crews said.