Karen Doss, administrative associate in the College of Education and Health Sciences, has received the February 2012 Employee Excellence Award.  Karen has worked at the University of Evansville since August 2003.  In addition to her duties in the College of Education and Health Sciences, Karen also works late afternoons in the Office of the Registrar.

Those nominating Karen praised her for her hard work, sunny disposition and calm, professional manner.

“Karen personifies excellence in all she does,” noted one. “She is guided by an ethic of service to others in working with the University community as well as the external community. She is an extraordinary professional and a quiet and effective ambassador for the University of Evansville.”

Another added that “Karen is an outstanding candidate for the Monthly Employee Excellence Award. She is a pleasure to work with and maintains a calm and professional atmosphere in Dean Penland's office. She is always upbeat and happy and she works hard to ensure the smooth operation of the CEHS. Her kind mannerisms make her very approachable by faculty, staff, and students, and she keeps a clear vision of what needs to be done to complete each task in a competent and efficient way.”

“Karen works in the late afternoons in the Office of the Registrar. The mood of the office lifts every day when she arrives. She has such a positive attitude and takes initiative for her responsibilities as well as anything else that she sees needs to be done. She is the utmost professional when dealing with students and co-workers.”
 

Two faculty ensembles, the Shepard Brass Quintet and the Harlaxton Quintet, will present this week’s Faculty Recital in Wheeler Concert Hall on Tuesday evening, January 31, at 7:30 p.m.  The Shepard Brass Quintet comprises Professor Timothy Zifer and Assistant Professor Timothy Groulx (trumpets), Consortium Instructor Jonas Thoms (French horn), Assistant Professor Kenneth Steinsultz (trombone), and Neil Parsons (bass trombone), while the Harlaxton Quintet includes Consortium Instructor Shauna Thompson (flute), Consortium Instructor Elizabeth Robertson (oboe), Department of Music Chair and Associate Professor Thomas Josenhans (clarinet), Professor Emeritus Edwin Lacy (bassoon), and Consortium Instructor Jonas Thoms (French horn).  The concert will feature works from the 17th-century English composer Giles Farnaby and modern works by American composers Paul Nagle and Samuel Zyman, Russian composer Victor Ewald, and French composer Jean Francaix.  The concert is free and open to the public.

The Department of Music will welcome the internationally recognized vocal ensemble Anonymous 4 to campus for a lecture-demonstration in Wheeler Concert Hall this Sunday afternoon, February 5, at 12:45 p.m.  Renowned for their unearthly vocal blend and virtuosic ensemble singing, the four women of Anonymous 4 combine historical scholarship with contemporary performance intuition to create their magical sound. Celebrating their 25th anniversary during the 2011-12 season, the ensemble has performed on major concert series and at festivals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, and they have released over 20 albums during those 25 years. Anonymous 4 has appeared on a wide range of radio and television programs, including NPR's All Things Considered, Performance Today and Weekend Edition, MPR's St. Paul Sunday, WETA's Millennium of Music, Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and ZDF's Ersteklassich! (Germany). The ensemble has been featured on A&E's Breakfast with the Arts, CBS Sunday Morning, and Australian ABC's Access All Areas, as well as on Discovery Health Channel and Fox News Channel.  The UE lecture-demonstration is free and open to the public.

Anonymous 4, an internationally acclaimed vocal quartet specializing in medieval music, will perform a guest recital and lecture at 12:45 p.m. Sunday, February 5 in Wheeler Concert Hall (not 1:30 p.m. as previously scheduled). The event is free and open to the public.

Renowned for their unearthly vocal blend and virtuosic ensemble singing, the members of Anonymous 4 (Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek) combine historical scholarship with contemporary performance intuition to create their magical sound. Celebrating their 25th anniversary during the 2011-12 season, the ensemble has performed on major concert series and at festivals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

“The winning qualities of this perennially popular a cappella group … are still strong,” wrote New York Times music reviewer Vivien Schweitzer after seeing the group perform last October. “Their impressive vocal blend, purity of tone, and distinctive individual voices, which have helped them sell almost two million copies of their albums on the Harmonia Mundi label, were beautifully highlighted.”

Join us this week for I-House: Venezuela, hosted by student Frank Coello Sosa. Bring your friends to enjoy the presentation and complimentary cookies, this Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. on the second floor of Ridgway University Center in the Class of 1959 Gallery.

Did you know that the current U.N. statistic shows that 1 in 3 women in the world will experience sexual violence? Join us in raising awareness to end violence against women and girls all over the world. Women's Awareness and V-Day Evansville will present a free showing of Until the Violence Stops on Monday, February 6 at 7 p.m., Room 126, Hyde Hall. This hopeful and powerful documentary chronicles the story of Eve Ensler's performance piece The Vagina Monologues as it transformed into the V-Day movement and touched the lives of women in every part of the world. The viewing is free and open to the public.  

There will be a CNS meeting Wednesday in Room 75 in Schroeder Family School of Business Administration Building at 5:45 p.m. They will be discussing the upcoming semester and Dr. Becker will give a pressentation on visual implats. Everyone is inited to attend!

Heather Cook, a recent organ donation recipient, will share her story with the UE and local community on Monday, February 6.  She will walk the audience through her experience, from the first signs of health issues to the transplant and recovery process.  Information on organ donation and the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization (IOPO) will also be presented.  The presentation will be in Koch 100 at 5 p.m.  It is sponsored by the Biological Sciences Club.  All are welcome and invited to attend.  Please email Ashley Rich (ar197@evansville.edu) or Bethany Bonifield (bb157@evansville.edu) with further questions.
 

The next University of Evansville Andiron Lecture begins at 4:00 p.m. on February 1, in Eykamp 252, Ridgway University Center. A social gathering with beverages begins at 3:45 p.m.

The speaker will be Erika Taylor. Her topic will be “Eliminating racism, empowering women: The YWCA”

Taylor is the new CEO of the YWCA of Evansville, which operates a domestic violence shelter, a transition housing program for homeless women in recovery, a mentoring and after-school program for at-risk girls, and various other programs that further the YWCA’s mission of eliminating racism and empowering women. Taylor earned her JD from Indiana University and worked as a staff attorney for the City of Chicago before moving to Evansville, where she has worked in the areas of civil litigation, employment law, and human resources. When the opportunity came for her to combine her passion for community service with her leadership skills, she joined the YWCA.

The mission of the YWCA is the elimination of racism and the empowerment of women. The Evansville YWCA was founded over 100 years ago in order to provide safe and affordable housing for women who were moving to the big city from the country and outlying towns to work in the factories and mills. For decades, the YWCA remained the social hub for women in the Evansville community by providing educational and recreational classes as well as business clubs, affinity groups, and special events. Over the years, the YWCA’s programs have evolved in order to address the changing needs of women in our community. Erika will discuss the relevance of the YWCA throughout the past 100 years as well as current programming and goals for the future.

For further information, call the series coordinator M. Christine Mohn at 812-488-2585 or the College of Arts and Sciences at 812-488-2589.
 

Kappi Chi Imformative Rush Meetings are planned for Thursday, Jan. 26 at 9:00 p.m. and Feb. 1 at 9:00 p.m. Both meetings will be in Room 271, Schroeder Family School of Business Administration Building.

UE faculty, staff, students, and community are invited to attend the free (bring your lunch) Lunch & Learn session on Wednesday, February 8, from noon–12:50 p.m. in Eykamp 253, Ridgway University Center. The session will be presented by Centennial Wealth Advisory. The discussion will cover benefits and drawbacks of long-term care insurance, and cover the Indiana Long-Term Care Partnership, which allows people to keep more of their assets. Please contact Judy Caldwell at jc313@evansville.edu if you have questions. This event is sponsored by the Center for Adult Education.
 

The next in the series of Crick Lectures in Cognitive and Neural Sciences is set for February 8 from 4-5 p.m. in Room 100 (Vectren Lecture Hall) in Koch Center. The speaker will be Dr. Damani N. Bryant, Department of Physiology & Pharmacology at Oregon Health & Science University. He will be discussing "Mechanisms of Sexually Dimorphic Estradiol Neuroprotection." The lecture is free and open to the public.

Biological sex has historically been one of the most overlooked aspects of Neuroscience. It has become clear in recent years that sex profoundly alters the way the brain responds to its environment. For example, the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Stroke varies as a function of sex and estrogen status. Pre-menopausal women enjoy better protection from AD and Stroke than men, implying that estrogen is neuroprotective.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) was designed to determine whether hormone replacement was beneficial to women. Surprisingly, WHI found no benefit to estrogen replacement. However, there are several caveats associated with the design of WHI that preclude the broad generalization of its findings. Misinterpretation of the WHI findings thus represents a critical barrier to advancing our understanding of estradiol’s effects in the brain, which are very complex and are not completely understood. Given the documented impact of sex on vulnerability to insult, it is reasonable to postulate that sex also modifies the brain’s response to other stimuli, such as the neuroprotective steroid 17β-estradiol (E2).

To address this issue, male and female rat neurons are cultured separately and used as an experimental model system to examine biochemical responses to E2. Male neurons show a less robust response to estradiol than female neurons. The most important question is “Why is E2 signaling sexually dimorphic?” This sex difference may be a consequence of the perinatal Testosterone surge, which “Organizes” the male brain or it may be a consequence of genetic sex (XX vs XY). Future studies will address this issue.

The Office of Admission needs current UE students who live in the residence halls to host prospective high school seniors for Road Trip February 17-19. If you are available, you can volunteer by either clicking this link, emailing Ashley Jackson (aj53@evansville.edu) or Jess Sandlin (js621@evansville.edu), or stopping by the Office of Admission (OH 104). We are planning to have a great turnout so the more volunteers, the better!
 

Do you need a little help with your math classes?  Free afternoon and evening tutoring is once again being offered by several of our qualified UE students.  All sessions are located in Room 304, Koch Center, and are offered Sunday evenings from 7:00-9:00 p.m. and Monday through Thursday from 4:00-9:00 p.m.  The only requirement is that you sign in and provide your UE student ID.

Clark Kimberling, professor of mathematics, has a chapter titled “The Wythoff Triangle and Unique Representations of Positive Integers” in Aportaciones Matemáticas, Investigación
20 (2011) 155-169, published by Sociedad Matemática Mexicana.  The chapter deals with the Wythoff array, a subject of continuing interest in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences: 
https://oeis.org/A035513  and  https://oeis.org/A166310 .
 

Western Illinois has been named the opponent for the University of Evansville in this season’s Sears BracketBusters game, it was announced Monday evening.

The Aces will square off against the Leathernecks on Saturday February 18 at the Ford Center.  Start time for the game will be announced as soon as it becomes available.

This will mark the ninth season of the BracketBusters and the eight appearance for Evansville, who has won three of its first eight games.  The Aces fell last season by a 72-47 tally at Murray State while their last win in the competition came in 2009 in the form of a 75-61 win over Miami (Ohio).

Western Illinois, a member of the Summit League, has put up a 12-8 mark thus far and has gone 6-5 in league play.  It is a solid turnaround from a season ago when WIU went 7-23.

Part of the improvement by the Leathernecks can be attributed to freshman Obi Emegano, who has averaged 14.2 points per game thus far.  Junior Terell Parks has been shooting the ball at a 64.3% clip this season, ranking in the top five in the nation.  He has hit 101 out of 157 attempts.

Evansville will look to put a halt to a two-game skid on Wednesday evening as it travels to Bradley for a 7 p.m. matchup.