NEWS BRIEFS

New proposals sought for Jordan statue

After “careful consideration,” the Barbara Jordan Statue Committee — composed of students, administrators, alumni and local artists — has decided to initiate a new national search for an artist to receive the commission for the Barbara Jordan statue in the Battle Oaks area of campus, according to Sherri Sanders, director and associate dean of students. Over the next month, the committee will develop plans for this new process “working toward finding a design that can capture the presence and gravitas of Ms. Jordan,” Sanders said.

TACC’s “Lonestar” supercomputer to be one of world’s most powerful

Lonestar, the Dell supercomputer housed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), is on its way to becoming one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The Dell Linux cluster, which is being upgraded to Dell PowerEdge 1955 blade servers, will possess a peak performance of more than 55 teraflops once the system achieves full production status on Oct. 1. “TACC will now be able to provide the university and national research communities with access to a commodity compute cluster of unprecedented performance, enabling computational researchers to expand current models and begin to think about simulations previously not possible without a system of this size,” said Chris Hempel, associate director for user services at TACC.

Seeking a ‘Breaththrough’

-Photo by Christina Murrey

The Breakthrough program provides a pathway from middle school to college for low-income students who will be first-generation college graduates. The program admits students as 6th graders and makes a six-year commitment to helping them graduate from high school and enter college.  Breakthrough’s six-week summer session for rising 7th and 8th graders takes place on the UT Austin campus. Here, university student Matt Ross works on an assignment with his student, Javier Ramirez, a Breakthrough 7th grader who attends O. Henry Middle School. Ross is in his second summer at Breakthrough, teaching social studies, with an emphasis on civil rights and research skills.  When the fall semester begins, he will be entering his senior year, completing a degree in government.  After graduating, Ross hopes to go to law school. More information on Breakthrough can be found online.

Barron named dean of Jackson School of Geoscience

Eric J. Barron, dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, has been named dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences.

Eric J. Barron

Barron replaces William L. Fisher, who was instrumental in securing the major bequest that created the school. Fisher, who agreed to serve as inaugural dean while the university searched for his replacement, will remain on the faculty.

“The University of Texas at Austin has a celebrated tradition in the geosciences,” said Barron. “I look forward to the challenge of taking the Jackson School to the next level of achievement. True to the vision of its founding benefactor, the school will strive to make a lasting impact on Texas and the world.”

Barron is a distinguished professor at Penn State and former director of Penn State’s EMS Environment Institute. His research interests are in climatology, numerical modeling and Earth history.

The lure of Luminosity

-Photo byMarsha Miller

Luminocity, a semester-long investigation of the projection and reception of moving images proposed by Radio-Television-Film (RTF) Assistant Professor Samantha Krukowski, recently transformed the physical architecture of the College of Communication complex. Students and spectators engaged in determining what happens to the sides of buildings, windows, walls, alleyways or sidewalks when they become the sites for receiving moving images. The event featured site-specific installations by graduate and undergraduate students studying RTF, architecture, theatre and dance, and studio art and design. Students featured included: Jarrod Beck, Donald Corr, Alex Dupree, Keith Fraase, Heather Gregory, Nicole Kern, Shara Lange, Sarah Lipstate, Morgan Printy, Rebecca Ramirez, David Salinas, Andrea Schelly, Sam Schonzeit, Loren Seeger, Donte Shepard, Drew Smith and Jeanne Stern. Krukowski teaches experimental media in the production area of the RTF Department. Shown here is "Untitled 2006," a video by Fraase, a senior in the RTF Department.

Texas Regional Collaborative’s

-Photo by Sherre Paris

At the recent Texas Regional Collaborative’s 12th annual showcase event, Kamil Jbeily (right) executive director of Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science Teaching, discusses the critical mission of science education with University of Texas System Chancellor Mark Yudof (left), John Hofmeister, president and country chair of Shell Oil, and UT Austin President William Powers Jr. (second from right).