Highlights from BYU Colleges

Family Home and Social Sciences

• Syracuse University School of Information professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley spoke to BYU students on March 2 about the effect of social media in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Her analysis showed Clinton was more active on social media, with 8,741 messages compared to Trump’s 6,134. The study also found that despite Trump’s attention-grabbing insults, Clinton employed social media to attack Trump with more subtlety at nearly twice the rate of Trump.

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

• Last year, the Ira A. Fulton College received $1.3 million more in external funding than it has received in the last decade. In 2016, the college received a total of $14,168,116 in external funding to support research, accounting for 43 percent of BYU’s total research funding.

  

• BYU’s Cybersecurity Team placed first in the Rocky Mountain Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition for the second year in a row. The gender-balanced team believes its diversity helped the team win. The team will compete for the national title on April 13-15 in San Antonio, Texas.

David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies

• Mark Z. Christensen of Assumption College will give a lecture titled “Genesis, Apocalypse and the Maya: How the Colonial Maya Created and Destroyed the World in the Teabo Manuscript” on April 5 at noon in room 238 of the Harold R. Clark building. Christensen’s research covers religion in colonial Latin America.
• The Environmental Lecture Series will continue on April 7 at 3 p.m. in room 238 of the Clark Building with Joe Bennion and Lee Udall speaking about their work as independent artists.

Marriott School of Management

• Jacob Sheffield took first in this year’s Student Entrepreneur of the Year competition held March 6 by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. Sheffield was awarded $11,000 for KLOS, his business that makes durable guitars out of wood and carbon fiber. Tayler Tanner came in second, winning $5,000 for his company Bookroo, which delivers monthly subscriptions of children’s books to subscribers’ homes. Zach Estiva took third, winning $2,500 for his teeth whitening company, Dentium Club. The winners were chosen from 40 applicants.

  

• A team of BYU students won first place in the Milgard CSR Case Competition in Seattle on March 24 despite a timing error during their presentation. The team — Mallory Reese, Thomas Stone, Erika Mahterian and Camden Robinson — took home $1,000 each in prize money.

David O. McKay School of Education

•  Economics professor MacLeans Geo-Jaja was awarded the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to travel to Nigeria for research on economics and development. Geo-Jaja also recently co-authored a book on the effects of globalization on education.

College of Humanities

• Gail King, senior librarian for Asian and Near Eastern Studies, gave a lecture about Catholic Chinese women in the 17th century at a presentation for the S. Lyman Tyler Faculty Professionalism Award Lectureship on March 2.

College of Life Sciences

• The BYU Landscape team won first place at the 41st annual National Collegiate Landscape Competition held March 17 on the BYU campus.

College of Fine Arts and Communications

• LDS Philanthropies donor liaison Jennifer Amott has been reassigned to manage the President’s Leadership Council and to fundraise for the Harold B. Lee Library. Starting in April, Damien Bard will take Amott’s position as the LDS Philanthropies liaison for the College of Fine Arts and Communications.

College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences

• BYU alumna Cui Tao was awarded the Presidential Early Career Aware for Scientists and Engineers by President Barack Obama before he left office in January. Tao graduated from BYU with master’s and doctorate degrees in computer science, and is now an associate professor in the Health School of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas.

J. Reuben Clark Law School

• University of Virginia law professor Anne Coughlin spoke in the annual Hafen Distinguished Lecture on March 8. She discussed probable cause and its effects, challenging students to question the standard of probable cause, especially when police use it to employ deadly force.

• BYU alumna Michelle Bushman spoke to students about water law on March 15 at an Environment, Energy and Resources Society event. She is currently legal counsel for the Western States Water Council.

Religious Education

• The Wheatley Institution hosted the second semiannual “Reason for Hope: Responding to a Secular World” conference on March 24. Professors JB Haws and Jim Faulconer spoke, along with Camille Williams and Sheri Dew.

Harold B. Lee Library

• University Librarian Jennifer Paustenbaugh recently released a letter announcing the library’s decision to cancel some academic journals has been pushed back for another two to three years. In the meantime, Paustenbaugh said the library will continue to look for long-term solutions.