Wacky Wal-Mart adventure puts media spotlight on Drake student Skyler Bartles was chatting with his advisor, Carol Spaulding-Kruse, associate professor of English, one day when an idea popped into his head. He wondered just how long a person could live inside a 24-hour Wal-Mart Superstore. A sophomore from Harvard, Neb., Bartles figured that Wal-Mart was so large that a person could effectively live inside one of the monster stores. Spaulding-Kruse said somebody ought to try that. So Bartles did. Over spring break, he spent 41 consecutive hours inside Wal-Mart, watching movies in electronics section, eating at the Subway store and dozing on lawn furniture and wandering inside the Windsor Heights outpost of the Wal-Mart empire. News of the experiment landed Bartles on the front page of the Des Moines Register today and made him an instant national media darling. Calls flowed into Drake's media relations department from MSNBC, "Good Morning America" and "The Late Show with David Letterman." Bartles' cell phone mailbox was jammed with messages, as was his e-mail inbox. The performance is free and open Drake students, faculty and staff. In addition to performing, Smith will give away some free tickets to "The Lion King" at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines. Smith was born in Mansfield, Ohio, and raised in Santa Monica, Calif. Before touring in "The Lion King," he toured nationally in "Miss Saigon" in the role of John. He also played the role of Matt in the Los Angeles Co.'s production of "Bare" and has appeared in several TV shows, including "American Dreams," "State of Grace," "Soul Food" and the soap opera "Port Charles." He is a self-taught musician, producer and worship leader. His most recent recording is titled "The Chronicles of Wallace Smith," which includes songs such as "I Live to Worship," "Brand New" and "You." The annual Physics Olympics, hosted by Drake University, will not - repeat not - feature any snowboarders falling on their rumps while showboating or petty infighting among speed skaters. There will, however, be competition to put the Nagano games to shame - plus lasers. The annual showcase of area high school brainpower and scientific know how is set for Wednesday, March 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Parents Hall, in the upper level of Olmsted Center. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by Drake University's School of Education and the Heartland Area Education Agency. This year's event features a new competition: the optical slalom. Participants will manipulate a laser beam by bouncing it off five plane mirrors so that the reflected beam hits a specified target. The winner will be based on the judges' measurement of the shortest radial distance from the center of the target. Team and individual winners from 15 central Iowa high schools will receive ribbons and advance to the state competition, which is set for April 29 at Drake. Tickets are $20 per person, although students will be admitted free with a Drake ID. Tickets may be purchased at the door or through the Drake Fine Arts Box Office at x3841. Proceeds will support Drake's Music Department. Milnes, a baritone who has retired from singing, also will conduct a master class for Drake voice students from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. March 30 in Sheslow Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public. Milnes, who has more than 70 recordings on major labels, has worked extensively with young singers, leading master classes at the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools in New York, at major universities throughout the country and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He teaches at Northwestern University, where he is the John Evans professor of music and voice. He is the author of "American Aria: From Farm Boy to Opera Star," which begins with his childhood on a dairy farm outside Chicago and his first performances as a choir boy in his mother's church. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in music from Drake in 1957 and a master's degree from Drake in 1958, then pursued graduate studies at Northwestern University. In 1965 Milnes joined the Metropolitan Opera, where he has been honored with 16 new productions, seven opening nights and 10 national telecasts. He also has performed at all of the great opera capitals of the world. The second annual Faculty Tech Series begins at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, in the Carnegie Hall Learning Lab. Brad Meyer, associate professor of management, and Sandra Patton-Imani, assistant professor of American studies, will discuss projects they each developed during last summer's technology workshop that involve the use of video in the classroom. As part of her presentation Patton-Imani will show her film "Performing Gender: A Petite Essay Film." Those who attend three workshops will receive a USB headset-microphone suitable for narrating PowerPoint or creating a podcast. Attendees of three sessions will also be eligible for a drawing for an electronic photo album, which can be viewed at http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/7997/. Academic Computing and the Center for Digital Technology sponsored this series with assistance from Cowles Library. Her speech, titled "If I Had a Hammer: Empowering the Peacemakers," is free and open to the public. The event, sponsored by Drake's Center for Global Citizenship, will start at 7 p.m. in Bulldog Theater on the lower level of Olmsted Center. Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 to bring together Arab and Israeli teenagers in an effort to reverse the legacy of hatred by nurturing lasting friendships that become the basis for mutual understanding and respect. Since then, Seeds of Peace has expanded programming to include young people from South Asia, Cyprus and the Balkans. The group's leadership network encompasses more than 2,500 teenagers from four conflict regions. For more information about Seeds of Peace, visit Vibeke Petersen, associate professor of women's studies, will examine cultural of social aspects of German science fiction in a lecture titled "The Wretched of the Earth? Children and Nation in German Science Fiction," set for 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Medbury Hall Honors Lounge, Friday, March 31. Long interested in the Weimar period in Germany, Petersen has written extensively on German cinema and literature, women and, most recently, science fiction. She teaches courses in cultural studies and women's studies. In this presentation she examines children in German sci-fi novels, where they figure frequently and, in fact, are often given extraordinary agency. Living in near- or post-apocalyptic societies, such imagined future children form communities for their own protection and are often depicted as savvy, albeit fragile, survivors. In this talk, Petersen proposes various ways to understand such figuration, including the possibility that children are the only citizens who can build a nation that does not resonate with Germany's horrific Nazi past. She asks whether such futuristic novels respond to this such that children represent innocence, affording an unsullied strength necessary for the society of tomorrow. The talk is part of the spring Drake Center for the Humanities Colloquium Series. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Joseph Schneider at x2158 or Drake is seeking the hairiest, most wrinkled and slobbering of beauty contestants for the 27th annual Beautiful Bulldog Contest. The canine showdown will kick off Drake Relays Festival Week on Monday, April 24, at Nollen Plaza in downtown Des Moines. The first 50 bulldogs to register will vie for the honor of being Drake's mascot for the 97th running of the Drake Relays April 27-29. A panel will judge contestants beginning at 11 a.m. with the pageant scheduled for noon. Mercifully, there will be no swimsuit competition or singing. In the event of rain or bad weather, the event will move to the Drake Fieldhouse. The winning Bulldog will serve as the official mascot for the Drake Relays and appear in the Drake Relays Parade. On Saturday of the Relays, the Beautiful Bulldog will officially preside over the Relays and will be introduced during the races. Did you know … Photos of last year's Beautiful Bulldog contest winner were featured in newspapers, Web sites and on television stations in 23 countries worldwide last year. Ivanisevic, who was named one of the Top 100 Young Innovators in the world by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in Bulldog Theater in Olmsted Center. Her speech, titled "Fabrication and Characterization of Biological and Chemical Architectures," is free and open to the public as is the reception that follows. In addition to her speech, Ivanisevic will meet informally with Drake students at a pizza luncheon at noon Wednesday, April 5, in the resource room in Fitch Hall. The 31-year-old Ivanisevic used a technique similar to metal working to create a scaffold-like pattern on the surface of a pig's retina that ultimately create conditions that could promote the growth of transplanted healthy cells to treat age-related macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is an incurable eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness for people 55 years old and older in the United States, affecting more than 10 million Americans. Retinal pigment epithelial cells deliver nutrients to the retina and remove waste products. Macular degeneration is caused by a deterioration of these cells. Rapp will discuss his experiences and the state of international law in a lecture titled "International Criminal Justice: The Case of the Rwanda Genocide." The speech is set for 3 p.m., Thursday, April 6, in room 213 of Cartwright Hall. The event is free and open to the public. An average of 8,000 people were killed a day during the Rwandan uprising in 1994, when members of Rwanda's majority ethnic group, the Hutu, began a systematic campaign to wipe out the minority. Hundreds of thousands were slain with machetes, shot, raped and burned alive. Millions of people fled the country. As chief of prosecutions for the head of the United Nations' International War Crimes Tribunal of Rwanda, Rapp is coordinating at least 40 more trials, assisting in international efforts to find suspects hiding abroad, and teaching what he's learned practicing a largely uncharted area of international law over the last four years. In 2003, Rapp successfully prosecuted media executives who helped incite the Rwanda's extremist militia as well as broadcast the whereabouts of Tutsi sympathizers - a conviction that scholars say sets important precedent for future cases before the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague in the Netherlands. Chipperfield, of David Chipperfield Architects of London, England, partnered with Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunk, an award-winning design firm in Des Moines, to shape Des Moines' new Central Library building at 1000 Grand Ave. The building is set to open to the public on April 8. Chipperfield Architects has won more than 20 national and international competitions and awards for design excellence. Chipperfield is an experienced lecturer who has taught architecture in Europe and the United States. In 2004, he was appointed to the Order of the British Empire for services to architecture. The Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible by a gift from Melva and the late Martin Bucksbaum, former chairman and president of General Growth Corp. and longtime member of Drake's governing board. Legal scholars from across the nation will examine the U.S. Supreme Court's role in social change at the annual Drake University Law School Constitutional Law Symposium set for Saturday, April 8, with activities beginning at 8 a.m. in the Constitutional Law Center, Cartwright Hall. The Supreme Court has issued socially significant decisions since the country's founding. "Brown v. Board of Education," for example, desegregated schools in the South and paved the way for the Civil Rights movement. The high court has rendered important rulings in areas including abortion, gay rights, affirmative action and the like. For years, the political left therefore saw the Supreme Court, and the judiciary generally, as a primary protector of rights and liberties. During this time, the political right often criticized the Supreme Court as being activist and unprincipled. More recently, some on the left have asserted that courts cannot bring about meaningful social change. Meanwhile some on the right have focused their efforts on petitioning the courts to restore economic liberties and broaden freedom of religion. With issues such as gay marriage, abortion and the Pledge of Allegiance on the horizon, the controversy over the Supreme Court's role will not end any time soon. This symposium will explore diverse views of the role that courts can play in social change. Topics and presenters are listed below. For more information and registration, contact Ginnie Nevins at (515) 271-2988 or Drake students recently filled 30 boxes with a total of 602 books collected during a book drive sponsored by the Drake chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America. The books have been donated to the Iowa Department of Corrections to provide inmates with educational literature that assists in their rehabilitation. Drake students, faculty, staff and members of the Central Iowa chapter of the Public Relations Society of America contributed to the book drive. "We are very grateful for all the generous donations," said Tiffany Shaheen, president of Drake's PRSSA chapter. Spring brings a fresh crop of new student leaders to Drake student government. Here's a look at top student officers for 2006-07: |
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