Highlights from BYU colleges

College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences

• The College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences welcomed its newest professor, John Holbein, this semester. Holbein earned his undergraduate degree at BYU in political science and received his Ph.D. from Duke University in public policy in 2016. His area of expertise is voting, with particular emphasis on why people vote. He is currently working on ways to increase voting, as well as writing a book about youth voting participation.

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

• BYU graduate student Scott Davies recently took home top awards at the national woodturning competition Turning To The Future. The competition was juried by students and featured items turned on a wood lathe. Davies, studying construction management, was awarded first place in the Open Category and Best of Show for his piece “Nesting Instinct,” a set of four nested bowls turned from a single piece of box elder burl. His awards come with $500 and a Jet Midi lathe. Davies’ piece “Here’s the Scoop” was also accepted into the Functional Category. Davies wasn’t the only BYU student recognized at the competition. Thirteen pieces were accepted as finalists in the post-secondary division, and five were created by BYU students. Ian Anderson, an industrial design major, received second place in the Open Category for his piece “Memory Urn”; he was also a finalist in the Open Category for his piece titled “Island Dish.” In addition, Amy Costello, a technology and engineering studies major, was a finalist in the Functional Category for her piece titled “Sunflower Serving Platter.”

• Chad Josephson, a Ph.D. student at BYU studying electrical engineering, won second place in a student paper contest this September. The contest, part of the annual International Telemetering Conference (ITC), includes graduate students from universities all across the nation. At the beginning of this year, BYU professor Michael Rice approached Josephson about entering the competition and mentored Josephson through the paper. From January to April, Josephson did an estimated 200 hours of work on his paper, titled “On the Design of a Square-Root Nyquist Pulse Shaping Filter for Aeronautical Telemetry.” The paper looked at ways to create a pulse shape that was bandwidth efficient. The project has applications in aeronautical telemetry, a field which focuses on receiving data from airborne systems. The ITC will formally recognize Josephson at the end of October when he presents his paper to the conference. As part of the award, Josephson will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Las Vegas conference and a $500 cash prize.

  

College of Fine Arts and Communications

• College of Fine Arts and Communications alumna Liz Shropshire shared her experiences helping children and teenagers from war-torn communities in an alumni lecture for Homecoming week on Oct. 5.

Shropshire graduated from BYU with a Bachelor of Arts in music composition and theory before obtaining a master’s degree in composition for the music industry from the University of California. In 1999, after hearing an NPR program about female refugees in Albania, Shropshire canceled a planned vacation to Europe to join a volunteer organization in Kosovo. Upon arrival, she began teaching music classes to children and teenagers in war-ravaged communities. Her six weeks in Albania inspired the Shropshire Music Foundation. Shropshire has expanded her work to other countries such as Northern Ireland, a country still 95 percent segregated between Catholics and Protestants. Children of both faiths play in her classes. Most recently, she brought the program to camps in Greece that house Yazidi and Syrian refugees.

College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences

• Pam Van Ry is a new professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department. Her research focuses on protein therapies for certain types of muscular dystrophy that affect children. Van Ry decided to go back to school while teaching a Young Women’s lesson on goals and education. She even wrote “Look into going to school and apply to one of the graduate programs,” in her Personal Progress book. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada in August 2014. Van Ry will continue her work on muscular dystrophy at BYU, studying how the protein galectin-1 can be synthesized and used to replace the muscular “glue” that muscular dystrophy breaks down.