The highest seats in the house, pictured above, have been moved closer to the court by 40 feet, and the sidelines have been straightened out so the seats are closer than in Hofheinz. The midcourt sideline seats in the Hofheinz Pavilion were around 30 feet away from the court. Andres Chio | The Cougar

The Cougars men’s basketball team will play their first game in the Fertitta Center on Dec. 1 against the 2017 PAC-12 regular season champions, the Oregon Ducks.

The game will be the first leg of a home-and-home series, and the Cougars will travel north next season to face the Ducks again.

The first women’s game will be on Dec. 5 against Texas A&M, said Chris Pezman, Vice President for Athletics.

Pezman said the arena will open a month ahead of schedule due to the efforts of the construction teams.

Senior Associate AD for Capital Projects, T.J. Meagher, led the media on a tour of the new facility and said bringing the building up to modern code was a huge undertaking.

The facility had to triple the number of women’s bathrooms and double the number of men’s bathrooms, just to name one of the notable upgrades to the facility, said Meagher.

The new facility will feature new locker rooms, club seating areas, media rooms and a tunnel that will light up red as the players march through to the court.

Head coach Kelvin Sampson thanked Tilman Fertitta for being a huge supporter of the new stadium and making ideas of renovation into actions.

Last season, the Cougars played at Texas Southern’s arena a mile away from campus. For some games in the season, Cougar fans were equaled in number by fans of the opposing teams.

But as the season went on, the UH faithful came out to support, something Sampson credits to winning.

“As the season progressed, we created our home court advantage and people came to see us. It just shows you, if you win they’ll come. They’re not going to come unless you win,” Sampson said.

This season, with marquee opponents like LSU, Rice, Wichita State and Cincinnati coming to town, Sampson wants the new arena to be a Cougar stronghold.

“I’ll know that our program has arrived to see us play and not the people we’re playing against,” said Sampson. “We’re going to get this thing going where we open those doors and people fill this beautiful, beautiful arena; they’re coming to watch the Cougars.”

400 student seats at the Fertitta Center will be on the sidelines with another section on the end for overflow. pic.twitter.com/abeauUgyXk

— Andres Chio (@ChioAndres) June 25, 2018

The student sections will be composed of 400 front-row bleacher seats and a full section on one of the ends in the 7,100 capacity arena.

“The most important entity that fills up a basketball arena or football stadium is the students. We can count on them, and we got to get our students in the habit of coming here to watch our basketball team,” Sampson said. He also thanked fans for making the trek to TSU to watch last season.

Construction crews will start putting down the new seats in July, and the stadium should be finished in November, said Meagher.

The University also released a 3D map of the new arena that lets potential ticket buyers get an idea of the view their seat would have.

The full basketball schedule will be released in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more details.

sports@thedailycougar.com

—
“Cougars to open Fertitta Center against Oregon” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar

Meet Cal’s new athletic director: Q&A with Jim Knowlton

Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons

Editor’s note: The following is a Q&A between The Daily Californian’s sports editors and Jim Knowlton, Cal’s new athletic director. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Daily Californian: What did you learn at Air Force, from mentalities to strategies, that you are looking to bring to Cal?

Jim Knowlton: You know, I think the great thing is, in the business of athletics, we’re all really trying to provide a developmental four- or five-year experience for student athletes. And so at Air Force, I was able to put some really good systems in place.

And what I’m doing … in my first 90 days is looking at the systems we already have in place here and then determining, “Wow, that works just as good or better.” And then there’s others where I’m going to look at them and say, “Have we thought of? Could we?” You know, whether it’s … team captain training or whether it’s, you know, some involvement with … our Student-Athlete Advisory Council.

So I’m really looking at, “What do we do now?” — because it’s hard for me to say, “I’m going to bring all this great stuff,” and find out we were already doing great stuff and I don’t need to do that because we already found a better way to do it here at Cal. So I think it’s hard for me to say what I’ll bring until I really get a handle on what we’re doing right now.

DC: Who are some of your biggest inspirations and mentors that you’ve had in your life, and how do they still impact you?

JK: I think the biggest is my dad. You know, my parents were great. And my dad was just one of those model citizens who was a great leader — I learned a lot from him. You know, just his moral, ethical — just, he had that foundation, and he gave it to us.

And so he was very important, and then, you know, along the way I’ve had a bunch of different mentors who have provided different help at different points in time. Some of them were in the Army, some of them were CEOs, some of them were just friends that I met along the way, and each one of them has provided another little tool for the kit bag. You know, I guess “the kit bag of life” as you as you move along and learn.

DC: Do you have any ideas as to how you’re going to improve attendance for the smaller, less popular sports on campus?

JK: We’re working right now on marketing plans for all of our sports. You know, how do we get the word out? And we’re going to really start with football, using that as a way to mobilize and get students excited. We’ll have some pretty big announcements coming up that I think are going to get our students fired up. We want to make (it) so that our students want to go and support our different teams.

And as I said in my press conference, I’ve used food — I used pizza, I used chicken, I used a little of everything — and I think that when people go to one of these games once, they want to come back.

So really, our challenge is: Get them to go once, and then they’re going to get hooked.

“Wow, I can go support our students and watch rugby or go support beach volleyball” — whatever it is. I think our job is to make it exciting — make it a great game day experience and then once they go once, hope that we can continue to bring them back.

DC: How do you manage to keep track of the campus debt and the football program, along with everything else in the athletic department?

JK: I think what I have to do is really focus on 30 sports. But I also have to know that football drives — it’s the economic engine that drives our athletic department. And so we have to continue to get better in football. And I think we have a phenomenal coaching staff. I think coach (Justin) Wilcox is world-class, and I think we just have to continue to rally around him, keep his assistant coaches here, because he wants to win the right way. And to me, that’s really important; winning is not everything — it’s winning the right way. And at Cal, I think that’s what we expect.

So I have to balance it. It means that you don’t sleep as much as you’d like. It means you get off a plane in Oakland at 12:15 and have a meeting early the next morning, and you just have to kind of balance it all.

DC: How do you make sure that your coaches are doing a good job, keeping players safe and doing everything to abide by the expectation that you hold them to?

JK: First and foremost, it’s getting to know them and having a relationship with all the coaches. We have sports supervisors for all of our sports who act on my behalf and make sure we’re following budget.

It’s also bringing them together as a family. So it’s coaches meetings where we talk about best practices — who’s doing something really well? Some of our coaches do a great job with their newsletters, and some of our coaches do a great job on their recruiting weekends, and some of our coaches do a great job with their academic support — how they track their students.

How do we share those best practices so we don’t have one coach doing something really great and someone else not doing it as well? With a little bit of cross-pollination of this information, all of a sudden, “Wow, everyone can learn from that.” There’s not one of our coaches, and certainly the (athletic director), that knows it all. So we’re all learning, and if we can help each other, I think that’s a that’s a key way to continue to raise the bar and make sure that we have exceptional programs.

DC: You did a lot of community outreach at Air Force. Do you have any plans for something like that here in Berkeley?

JK: What I’m doing right now as I talk to coaches is getting an idea of, “What are you doing now? What kind of community service?” And what I’ve learned over many years is community service many times helps those providing as much or more than those receiving.

And if you’re at Cal, you’re blessed. When you’re going through it, sometimes you don’t feel like you’re blessed — when you’re up late at night and you’re grinding academically — but you really are blessed. I think that going out and helping others that are less fortunate, it really allows you to realize how blessed you are.

DC: Do you prefer to watch your teams from the press box or closer to the field?

JK: Even at games, I don’t get to watch as much of a game, as I’m typically talking to fans, I’m taking a look at our fan experience, I’m walking around, “Are we doing a good job atand concessions?” I go talk to fans and get their feedback.

So I’m not getting to watch as much of a game … People think, “Oh, the AD just sits down in his chair and watches the game.” I won’t be in any chair that people can all see the AD sitting there. And you know, many times I’ll go back to Pac-12 Network and watch it that night because I’ve missed a lot of the a lot of the fun part of the game.

But I think my job is really to make sure that what we put on the court is representative of Cal, but also for our fans, to make sure that the entertainment value and the fan experience are exceptional.

DC: How do you bring your perspective as a former athlete to your daily work?

JK: I think my time as a student-athlete had a huge impact on me. I mean from a developmental perspective … how to work well with others, how to compromise, how to lead sometimes, how to follow other times. All those things were great. It was sort of my other classroom — the hockey rink was another classroom for me.

I know that our student-athletes only get four years of this, and they’re just incredible years. With that in mind, everything I think about is, “Are we providing that incredible experience, that developmental experience that they’ll look back at 20 years from now and say, ‘Boy, I wouldn’t trade that for the world?’ ”

DC: Looking back a year from now, what would you want your colleagues or the Cal community to say about you and what you have accomplished?

JK: I would hope one of the things would be our family here, the athletic department, would feel like we brought the family closer together. You know, we’ve worked hard at doing some things; we’ve already started implementing some of the things that we’re going to do to bring the family together, because this is hard. It’s a hard job to be in athletics. … And so you really have to have a family to feel good about coming to work. So that would be the first thing.

I’d hope our student-athletes are seeing that we’re continuing to improve the experience for them. Certainly, we’d like to be on the national stage doing a great job.

And then I think I’d love to be able to say that we are on a path to a balanced budget that’s sustainable over the long term. I think that really is important to us, to really have a budget where every year we’re not struggling to kind of balance it, but we’ve found a way to have a healthy, strategic, long-term budget that makes sense. … We’re going to start working on a strategic plan for athletics, which we just don’t have right now, to help define what’s important.

I think if we had all of those things moving in the right direction, at least for five minutes, I’d sit back and say, “Man, I feel really good after one year.”

DC: Is there anything that people don’t know about you, or about being an athletic director, that you that you want them to know?

JK: I think the thing that, yeah, I’d love everyone to know is, I’m excited about being here.

I really think that I came from two educators — education has been a key part of all my life. I’m a professional engineer and taught civil engineering, and I think that I’m here because I really want to be. I’m here because I want to be at the No. 1 public institution in the country. I really believe in scholar-athletes, and not every school believes that, but Cal does.

And so, is it harder to find scholar-athletes when you’re recruiting? Yeah, it is. I mean, you have to be more selective; you can’t talk to everybody. There are other schools that can accept kids that we just don’t bring in here because they wouldn’t survive in the academic environment. … I feel really good that we are developing scholar-athletes who are going to leave here and are going to have a degree that’s going to set them up for a successful life.

Christie Aguilar is the sports editor. Contact her at caguilar@dailycal.org.
Alison White is the assistant sports editor. Contact her at awhite@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

It can be tough to explore Los Angeles in the middle of the school year when you constantly have the ghost of upcoming finals looming over you.

So that’s exactly what summer’s for – while some students might be returning to their hometowns, studying abroad or doing an internship in a completely new place, many of us are stuck in Westwood, with plenty of free time to explore the City of Angels. Here are the Quad’s top picks for events and places to check out throughout the LA area this summer.

Food

Students looking for some high-quality and authentic Asian and Asian-inspired foods can make the about 30-mile trek out to the San Gabriel Valley for the 626 Night Market. The market features plenty of vendors for a handful of select dates, serving some of the most innovative and delicious dishes in LA. Hungry students can grab some spicy and hearty drunken noodles or creamy, saccharine ube milkshakes while listening to the various musical artists performing.

If you’re looking for something a bit closer to campus, the open-air market Smorgasburg is a lovely Sunday brunch spot located in Downtown LA. Smorgasburg, which originated in Brooklyn and expanded to LA in 2016, offers a wide range of cuisines from French-and-Vietnamese fusion at Banh Oui to fluffy fried treats at Donut Friend and has become a hub for innovative LA food. One of my favorite dishes there is the mac ‘n’ cheese pizza, with its gooey and velveteen pasta nicely complementing the warm, crispy pizza crust.

Students looking for a more low-key outing can take a quick trip to Abbot Kinney Boulevard for the Venice neighborhood’s “First Friday on Abbot Kinney” food truck festival. The lineup of trucks changes every month and the food is always perfectly indulgent – the last time I went, they had tater tot nachos; need I say more?

Also, don’t miss Grand Central Market – the iconic train station-turned-food hall – which offers a diverse selection of some of the best food in LA. Devour an egg sandwich from Eggslut or try some vegan ramen from Ramen Hood – pretty much everything there is worth the trip.

Arts and entertainment

It’s no secret that LA is the hub of the arts and entertainment world. But when you’ve got midterms and finals and papers coming at you nonstop, it can be tough finding the time to be entertained.

Every summer, the city of Santa Monica hosts a series of outdoor concerts on the pier. They host several trending artists – last year I saw Khalid – and the best part is that the concerts are completely free.

With the recent cancellation of FYF Fest, HARD has become the most prominent LA summer music festival. This year the festival will take place on Aug. 4-5 in Fontana, just about two hours away from UCLA. Headliners include Marshmello, Travis Scott, Dillon Francis and other mostly EDM artists, with two-day tickets currently starting at $179.

Students looking to explore cultural events can head out to the Lotus Festival in Echo Park, which takes place every year when the lotus flowers bloom there. In my opinion, it’s one of LA’s most overlooked events – especially given that it’s free. This year, the City of Los Angeles is honoring the People’s Republic of China with a weekend of food, art and entertainment. Students can visit one of the many vendors, watch Asian-inspired cultural performances and compete in dragon boat races.

Outdoor activities

Summer is the best month to spend outdoors, especially in LA where the weather is perfect and the attractions are often free.

From July 28 to Aug. 5, Vans will host the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach. Admission is free and attendees will have the opportunity to relax on the beach and watch some of the best surfers in the world compete.

If watching movies and eating good food sounds more appealing, Eat See Hear is LA’s best outdoor movie series. Hosted by Showtime, the multidate event changes locations each week. Featuring a wide range of movies, from “Lady Bird” to “The Warriors,” the festival lasts through mid-July. Attendees can stay for the movie, or go just for the food trucks and live musical performances.

Students who are more interested in delving into their spirituality may be interested in visiting the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades. Entry is free and you can join a meditation session in the Meditation Garden or just walk around the beautiful grounds. If you’ve never been, it’s definitely worth a visit.

Happy exploring!

Emory released an alert advising shelter in place on Sunday due to a reported stabbing, according to Associate Director of Media Relations Elaine Justice.

The victim of the stabbing was a woman who is not affiliated with Emory. She said she was stabbed at an off-campus location and dropped off near the baseball field at Emory, where she called 911, according to Justice.

The woman was transported to Grady Hospital. A hospital employee confirmed that the woman was in the operating room as of 8:50 p.m.

Emory Police Department (EPD) and emergency medical services reported to the scene after EPD received a call about the stabbing at 7:01 p.m.

The shelter-in-place alert for the main Atlanta campus was issued at about 7:17 p.m., citing a police emergency. The University declared an all-clear at 8:39 p.m.

Atlanta Police Department and EPD are investigating the incident.

Richard Chess contributed reporting.

UPDATE (6/24/18 at 8:34 p.m.): The article has been updated to reflect an email sent by the University.

UPDATE (6/24/18 at 8:39 p.m.): The article has been updated to reflect that the University issued an all-clear for the shelter-in-place advisory.

UPDATE (6/24/18 at 9:09 p.m.): The article has been updated to include the hospital employee’s update on the woman’s status.

UPDATE (6/24/18 at 9:30 p.m.): The article has been updated to include the victim’s statement, according to Associate Director of Media Relations Elaine Justice.

The post Stabbing Report Causes Emory Shelter-in-Place Alert appeared first on The Emory Wheel.

Our time in college takes place at an intersection of many factors that challenge spirituality. A laundry list of new priorities, past religious baggage and new people and ideas can create barriers for students. Regular meditation might sound nice, but in the midst of maintaining a GPA and a social life, it hardly takes precedence.

Data from the Pew Research Center shows a trend: Young people are moving away from the religious practices of their parents. This trend away from tradition doesn’t necessarily reflect a departure from spirituality, however. This leaves a large group of students with spiritual inclinations searching for ways to express and explore them.

Regardless of where you’re at in this search — learning, wandering, deconstructing, resolved against religion or apathetic — you’re not alone. And this search for spirituality may be more important and beneficial than you think.

For individuals, the health benefits of spiritual practices like prayer and meditation are well-documented. Practicing these regularly can reduce stress, while boosting self-awareness and gratitude. On a college campus where students face stress, sleep-deprivation and constant comparison, practices such as prayer and meditation can be invaluable tools for combating negativity and leading a more healthy lifestyle. A Washington Post article even describes how, increasingly, agnostics and atheists are advocating for spiritual practices in their lives.

Travis Hollman, a history senior, has experienced the benefits of spirituality. His spiritual journey may be familiar to many students. Growing up, various extended family members were devoted to religion. He and his mom might go to church if they wanted to, but also enjoyed sleeping in on Sundays.

“I kinda had to figure it out more naturally, more organically.” To do this, he said he drew from many resources — from religious texts to the natural world.

Since coming to UT, Travis says his spiritual journey has evolved and challenged him not to judge others at face value. “Everybody has a public image that they present. Then there’s a private image that they don’t really like to talk about … Everybody has that depth.”

This recognition of others is something Brad Fuerst sees as linked with spirituality. Brad is the pastor of Lutheran Campus Ministry, which serves the Austin area. Once a week, he sits on West Mall with his friendly dog, Grati, and a sign reading “Let’s talk about anything.” In stark contrast to our friend with the red table, King James Bible and microphone, he strives to be nonintrusive and unassuming. Over his years of campus ministry, he has talked to hundreds of students about spirituality through these “outdoor office hours.”

He describes students’ spiritual journey as a Google search. Conversations with him might provide students with one result in this search. “I think in general, the linear way of coming about meaning has been replaced by a more piecemeal way of deriving meaning,” Brad says.

But he doesn’t see this search for meaning as an aimless or even purely individual endeavor. In regards to spirituality, he asks: “What is it doing? Is it drawing you further into your own self or your own self absorption? Or is it moving you out and creating connection and community and commonwealth? That there, to me, is my litmus test for a healthy spirituality.” So spirituality not only benefits us individually, but can engage us in something bigger.

Neither Travis nor Brad talked theoretically about the material versus the immaterial, with regard to spirituality. To them, spirituality more importantly provides a way to relate to themselves, the world and the people around them.

So whether from a mosque, a temple, a church, nature, the classroom or a yoga mat, perhaps it is essential that we regularly practice engaging something beyond ourselves. It may even benefit not only us as individuals but as a UT community and beyond.

Jacob is a English senior from Dallas.

Every four years, raucous crowds gather around stadiums and bars around the world to watch an event that’s often deemed to be the acme of sports worldwide: the FIFA World Cup. This spectacle assembles the best nations from six different, specified continental zones where a qualifying tournament is held to decide which soccer squads are best suited to compete in the international competition to determine which nation has the competitive edge in arguably the most ubiquitous sport today. However, while people enjoy the spectacle of the athletic marvels and incredible wizardry of the talents that hail from our diverse globe, they often forget what makes the World Cup so great.

The World Cup is more than soccer. It constitutes a time and place where diverse cultures can share an umbrella in the form of sport — with soccer acting as a medium to bring the world together in times of peace or tumult. The influence of the event itself is almost unparalleled in sports. According to FIFA, nearly 3.2 billion people tuned into the latest World Cup in 2014. Those numbers constituted nearly half of the entire world’s population. It would then seem reasonable to view the World Cup as arguably one of the most spectacular as well as influential events historically as such an enormous viewership literally spans across the world. But, the World Cup is about much more than soccer — it’s often about politics.

Just as Hitler did when Germany hosted the World Cup in 1936, it appears that Russia is slated to use their position as the host of this year’s competition to bolster their image. This comes amidst rumors and speculation about Russia’s spies as well as their tensing relations with Britain — a nation which also happens to have one of the most formidable football teams in the world. This platform would thence provide Putin the opportunity to better portray Russia favorably in order to garner public and international support, and this would consequently serve as a major political tool. Cases of such politics in the World Cup are regularly occurring, particularly due to the far-reaching viewership of the competition.

Due to how global the Cup is, viewers are often forced to watch it on their computers or television. This allows room for media manipulation and propaganda which can be easily and subtly spread in Russia’s broadcasts. That, combined with the international media deals tasked with broadcasting the event worldwide, will allow Russia to benefit financially. This only hints at the surface of the event’s politics.

The participating countries are also strongly influenced, particularly pertaining to stereotypes and nationalism — with nationalism often converting into chauvinism and fair-sport turning violent. Such has become increasingly evident in international sports today, further delineating the politics of the event, as these violent actions often stem from the said excessive chauvinism as well as occasional contempt for other nations that may originate from historical conflicts. This would lead to political tumult domestically from the sport, with support turning into rebellion, as we have already witnessed in a myriad of locations across Europe since the inception of the event. These are but a few forms that politics manifest in the world’s globalized sporting event. Thus, with so many different forms of politics evident at the World Cup, it will be interesting to see how the various political ideologies manifest in this year’s event.

j.cho@ustudentmedia.com

@TheChrony

The post Cho: The Politics of the World Cup appeared first on Daily Utah Chronicle.

Attendees gather to watch the first hot air balloon launch of the day at roughly 5:45 a.m. The festival balloons launch early in order to avoid winds that occur later in the day. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Hot air balloons fly when the air trapped inside the balloon is heated up by a burner, which causes the air inside the envelope to be less dense and lighter than the air outside. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

The balloon called ‘Carried Away’ glows as flames emerge from the burner. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

A crew helps prepare ‘Carried Away’ for takeoff. Hot air balloons are classified as a type of aircraft just like helicopters and airplanes are. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

The envelope of the ‘Re/Max’ balloon is attached to the basket and stretched out onto the ground before being filled with air. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

The first balloon of the festival rises with dawn. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

‘Carried Away’ is the first balloon to take to the sky and holds the flag for the national anthem.  The balloon’s pilot, Fred Dinkler, previously flew as an Attack Helicopter Commander in the United States Marine Corps for a decade. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Three balloons line up to take off. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

A balloon’s burner heats the air inside the envelope and allows the pilot to control the rate of ascent and descent. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

‘Terry Mouse’ takes to the sky. Adults and children alike took notice to the balloon’s resemblance of “Jerry” from the cartoon ‘Tom and Jerry.’ Across the way, The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Festival attendees watch the morning sky for balloons. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

A young boy wears headphones to muffle the startling sound made when a balloon’s burner ignites. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

The crew of ‘Fallen Angels’ waves as the balloon takes off. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Festival attendees watch the morning sky for balloons. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Festival attendees watch the morning sky for balloons. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

‘Firenze’ clears the treetops as it floats into the distant horizon. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

A good boy receives attention. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Balloons have been associated with the Wonder Bread brand since 1921. The well-known sliced bread’s name came to be when Taggart Baking Company VP Elmer Cline was struck by a sense of “wonder” while watching the hot air balloons at the International Balloon Race at the Indianapolis Speedway. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

A balloon’s fuel supply is contained in the basket. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Wonder Bread pilot Chris Sabia demonstrates use of a hot air balloon’s burner. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

As winds begin to pick up, the last few balloons must come down. The 34th annual Festival of Balloons takes place in Tigard, Ore. on June 23, 2018. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

follow Sarah Northrop on Instagram: @sartakespics

The post Photos: 2018 Festival of Balloons raises wonder to Oregon skies appeared first on Emerald Media.

When Rashid Zia ‘01 graduated from the University with degrees in both English and engineering, he could not have known that he would one day become Dean of the College. But as students return to campus for the fall semester, they will find the engineering professor and former assistant provost at the helm of Brown’s undergraduate program.

Zia succeeds former Dean of the College Maud Mandel, who will depart the University to become the next president of Williams College.

“I very much believe that we can always do more to support our students. … That’s why I was excited about this position. To have an opportunity to connect with more students,” Zia said.

Zia will become Dean of the College in time for a landmark year for the University — the 50th anniversary of its open curriculum, which was crafted by students and “transformed our institution,” Zia said. “I can think of no better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary than to engage our students today in an examination of how we might help improve the college and our curriculum,” he added.

Zia hopes the anniversary will allow him to establish a system through which students can evaluate and question the curriculum and its structure. While he is not sure what shape that system will take, he aims to work with the staff in the Dean of the College office to learn which measures have worked in the past, he said.

Provost Richard Locke P’18 praised Zia’s dedication, values and intelligence. “He’s really interested in trying to make sure that the undergraduates are really engaging and thinking about the curriculum,” he said.

Locke chaired the selection committee for Mandel’s replacement after she announced she would be leaving the University.

Locke and President Christina Paxson P’19 decided “it would be best to have an internal candidate” because they would understand Brown’s values and open curriculum, Locke said.

The selection committee, made up of administrators, faculty members, staff members and students, sent out a call for nominations for the position. The committee then worked with Mandel, senior staff in the office of the Dean of the College and the Dean of the College advisory council to create a set of criteria for the new dean.

The committee interviewed six semifinalists and chose three finalists. The finalists went through another round of interviews with the selection committee, met with Paxson individually and spoke with different stakeholder groups, including students, Locke said. Finally, the selection committee sent a memo outlining the pros and cons of each candidate to Paxson, who chose Zia as dean.

Zia had received multiple nominations from both students and faculty. “We thought ‘wow, this guy is going to be terrific,’” Locke said.

Bauer Dean Latha Ramchand will become provost at the University of Missouri. | Courtesy of University of Missouri News Bureau

Update June 22 3:21 p.m.:

Provost Paula Short announced in an email to faculty and staff that Thomas George, senior associate dean for faculty affairs at Bauer, will become interim dean.

Ramchand’s last day at the University will be August 9, according to the email.

“I thank Dean Ramchand for her dedicated service to the University of Houston,” Short said in the email.  “I will be conducting a nationwide search for the next dean, and will soon be appointing a search committee to begin the process of recruiting her successor.”

George has been a part of Bauer since 2002, beginning as a faculty member.

June 21 6:32 p.m.:

Corrections have been made to this story. 

The dean of the C.T. Bauer College of Business will leave UH in August to become provost and executive vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Missouri, according to a Mizzou news release.

Latha Ramchand joined UH as a professor in 1993 and has been dean of the college since 2011.

Ramchand was one of the finalists for the provost job at Mizzou in April, according to the Columbia Tribune.

During Ramchand’s tenure as dean, three out of four businesses in the Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship were owned by women and two thirds were minority owned, according the news release.

The Cougar has contacted University officials for more information on the timing of her departure and appointment of an interim dean.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misused the name of the Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship as “sustaining” and used an improper tense. We regret the error.

news@thedailycougar.com

—
“Bauer College dean leaving University to become Mizzou provost” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar

The stereotype of the artist has long been romanticized by western media. Artists are constantly portrayed in film, literature and television as unique risk takers who are, above all, interesting.

In comparison, the image of the engineer is dry, safe and rather boring.

Engineers in film and television wear glasses and white short sleeved button-downs. They are geeky, awkward people who stumble over their words and don’t have much of a life outside
of their work.

This profiling of engineers as boring and risk averse dweebs has been going on for as long as the broad public has known an engineer as something other than a person who operates a train. At last, however, there is a show that is subverting this stereotype, at least partially.

“Strange Angel,” a biographical series about the life of aerospace engineer Jack Parsons, premiered June 14 on CBS. Parsons, best known as one of the men responsible for the creation of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lived an unconventional and fascinating life, and the first episode of the new series portrays him as closer to the stereotype of an artist than that of an engineer.

Jack Reynor (“Transformers: Age of Extinction”) stars in the show’s central role. When the show opens, Parsons is working as a janitor at a chemical plant while collaborating with Caltech researcher Richard Onsted (Peter Mark Kendall, “The Americans”)on a side project building rockets.

Parsons has no undergraduate degree and very limited formal engineering education. It is this detail which makes Reynor’s character so unique among portrayals of engineers in film and television.

Generally, engineers are shown to succeed thanks to their superior brilliance. Unlike artists, engineers and scientists rely not on passion or creativity to succeed, but rather on math and science. When they face challenges from naysayers, they do not defend themselves and their ambitions passionately, but instead simply push up their glasses and refer back to their
calculations.

Jack Parsons, on the other hand, seems destined to succeed by the sheer magnitude of his passion, not by his technical abilities. As his partner Onsted points out, he is not even good at math.

The show’s pilot does an excellent job of emphasizing the uniqueness of Reynor’s character. Parsons is typically shown sketching rockets, not doing specific impulse calculations; his nighttime reading is a graphic novel about an ancient warrior driven by a desire to reach the moon, not
technical papers.

All of this means that Parsons really feels more like an artist than an actual engineer. Whether or not this portrayal is more accurrate than the typical stereotype of the nerdy engineer, it is undeniably refreshing.

Another compelling aspect of the pilot which the writers should develop further is the relationship between Jack Parsons and his wife Susan (Bella Heathcoate,
“Neighbors”).

Susan is conflicted over Jack’s rocket project, and she disapproves of the amount of their personal money which he dumps into it. Heathcoate’s performance is among the best in the pilot, and the tension between the couple is powerful. Jack constantly lies to Susan about the success of his rockets, setting up an interesting conflict and making Reynor’s character morally complex.

By far the most fascinating performance in the pilot is that of Rupert Friend (“The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”) as the Parsons’ eccentric neighbor Ernest Donovan.  Friend does an excellent job of highlighting Donovan’s disregard for convention without allowing the character to
become cartoonish.

The show writers masterfully introduce Donovan as a unique influence on Jack Parson’s life. Susan convinces Jack to welcome Donovan to the neighborhood against his protests that all of their neighbors are too ordinary and uninspiring for him. By juxtaposing the true personality of Friend’s character with Parsons’ expectations, the writers signal that Donovan will have a significant influence over Jack’s life.

Beyond having an intriguing and complex cast of characters, “Strange Angels” features striking and engaging visuals.

The show’s portrayal of 1930s California is stunning, from the beauty of the mountains to the vintage grandeur of  the 1920s Pasadena mansions.

Still, the best cinematography in the pilot comes in the form of brief interludes in which Parsons reads from his graphic novel about an ancient warrior fascinated by the cosmos. These sequences feature fantastic animations of the warrior’s exploits in an almost oragami-like style set to Reynor’s voice as he reads the story.

These episodes provide an entertaining if slightly transparent look at Parsons’ state of mind, and the fantastic animations provide visual variation for the viewer.

Strange Angel is a promising show with an interesting premise and a compelling set of characters. The acting in the pilot is unremarkable aside from Heathcoate and Friend’s performances, but the characters are written well enough to overcome this.

Even if the writers let things slip a bit, the life of Jack Parsons is fascinating enough to keep the series worth watching. If they can keep the high standards set by the pilot, the show could be something special.