According to 2009 U.S. census data, Wyoming’s population is 93.5 percent white. Only 2.3 percent of Wyoming’s population is foreign-born, while the black population makes up an estimated 1.4 percent of the 544,270 people in Wyoming.

Athletics director Tom Burman has been a strong advocate for diversity in Wyoming Athletics, be it nationally or internationally throughout his time at Wyoming.

“I think it’s really, really important in an institution of higher education, that we try to be as diverse as possible whether it be racially diverse or culturally. We need to provide to the University of Wyoming, the city of Laramie and most importantly to the students a learning opportunity through diversity,” Burman said.

According to associate athletic director for media relations Tim Harkins, the men’s and women’s basketball teams lead the way for the number of international athletes.

Harkins said that the track, volleyball and women’s soccer programs are also strong in international diversity within the athletics department as well as women’s tennis, which is coached by Hungary native Kati Gyulai.

There are eleven international students participating in men’s athletics at Wyoming and 20 international students in women’s athletics, according to Wyoming Athletics.

Francisco Cruz is one of four members of the Cowboy basketball team who was born outside of the U.S.

Cruz, a native of Nogales, Mexico, moved to the U.S. prior to his junior year of high school and is proud to have the chance to play at the Division I level.

“It’s really cool being from Mexico. I mean, not many people from Mexico have a chance to play at the NCAA level,” Cruz said. “I think it’s pretty cool that people from France, Africa and all over the world get the chance to play basketball here [at UW].”

Burman echoed Cruz’s sentiments, pointing out the best parts about the most diverse team in Wyoming Athletics.

“You look at a basketball program like our men’s side…it’s a pretty neat mix of people. You’ve got a kid from Cody, Wyoming [Adam Waddell] playing next to Djibril Thiam from Senegal, with another French kid on the floor at the same time, a kid from Mexico and … a kid from a rough part of Ohio. You merge all those kids together and they learn how to respect each other and how to get along. When they become teammates, and it takes a little while, then it’s an incredible bond,” he said.

Burman has noticed that the department’s move towards diversity has not been entirely accepted.

“We often have African-American young men from the inner-city standing shoulder to shoulder with players from Buffalo, Wyoming [Chris Prosinski], and I think that’s great … but not everyone does. I get a lot of emails and correspondence from people in Wyoming that think that [recruiting other nationalities and ethnicities] is a waste of state resources,” Burman said.

The athletics department strives for diversity in their coaching staff as well. Burman said that while the department has no rules regarding minority hiring, they do emphasize global thinking during hiring and they advise coaches to maintain coaching staffs that match the diversity of their teams.

“There’s no place on campus that’s more diverse than our coaching staff,” Burman said. “We’ve still got a ways to go but we’ve hired more minorities in the last four or five years than we have ever.”

Email: Tom Hesse

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42 percent of the state’s 2007-08 high school graduates who attended a Wyoming college needed remedial help in college math in 2008-09, and 24 percent needed help in reading, according to the Wyoming Department of Education.   The scarier news is that most of these students earned at least a 3.0 in high school.  Luckily, educators across the state agree that the Wyoming education system needs to improve, but how do we fix the problem?

The newly elected school superintendent Cindy Hill advocates for more teacher accountability, local control, personal commitment, and test reorganization.

I agree with all of these goals.  Yes, if a teacher cannot teach, fire him.  If a test is flawed, restructure it.  If local control works, keep it.  But, these goals seem too evident.  These are the changes we are seeing throughout the country in education reform.  These are not new ideas thought up by Cindy Hill in response to an education crisis in Wyoming; these are suggestions by national policy makers in response to a national decline in education.

I am asking how we fix this problem in Wyoming. This state is unique because of its large size and secularity.  Those born in Wyoming most often stay in Wyoming, and that creates an education circle.  A voluntary survey conducted in 2007 showed that 80% of UW Education graduates stay and teach in Wyoming.

I heard recently from a friend that if a student can’t cut it as an engineer, he moves to a business major.  If he can’t hack it in the business department, he becomes a political science major, and, finally, if he fails political science, he becomes a teacher.  If this is true, we can assume that our teachers are not the best and the brightest of the state, but, instead, the slackers, idiots, crazies, and those “nice” students who generally can’t figure out what they want to do.

This is also a national phenomenon.  According to  a best jobs of 2010 survey published in the Wall Street Journal, “teacher” was placed right above “sewage plant operator” and right below “appliance repairer.”  This shows, pretty decisively, that a student needs to be either highly committed to becoming a teacher or simply has no other options.  Nobody wants to graduate from college and have the same public image as a handyman.

According to CBS’s moneywatch.com, education majors across the nation graduate with the highest GPAs of any other major.  I don’t think that this is because education majors are so much smarter than the math, chemistry, and physics majors, but, instead, the education classes are much easier.  Many students take education courses to boost their GPAs in order to be accepted into more difficult programs, such as business.

Wyoming teachers with whom I have spoken hope to continue on to become principals and administrators in Wyoming.  Many of them will do online graduate programs from some unheard of college.  These “graduate” programs are geared for teachers who need something cheap and easy and, consequently, offer quick degrees that carry little in terms of real academia.  So, we are left with the worst students becoming education majors; education majors becoming teachers in Wyoming; teachers participating in easy graduate programs and becoming administrators and principals.

This has wide reaching implications for the state and for Cindy Hill’s theory of teacher accountability.  Teacher accountability only works if those who are evaluating the teachers are better learned than the teachers.  However, administrators, principals, and even State superintendent Cindy Hill were all educated by the University of Wyoming’s education department.  Does this mean that we have not, in fact, put our children’s future in the hands of the best qualified for the job, but instead those people who couldn’t make it in any other field?

I say yes.  We have, unwittingly, failed as a state and as a nation.  Teaching is one of the hardest jobs in this country.  Yet, we make our education program the joke of the university.  Change the program and make it more difficult.  We need to see students that can’t cut it in the education department become business majors, instead of the other way around.

This is easiest in a state like Wyoming.  I mean, 80% of education graduates go on to teach in the state. This means that if we make a conscious effort to be the best, most highly educated state in the nation, we could go a long way by simply changing the education department.  Require an entrance exam, a year of residency, tough classes and even tougher professors.  Bring in the best teachers and administrators from across the nation to show that teaching is not about curriculums, rubrics or lesson plans.  

If our teachers are the best writers, readers, mathematicians in the state, high schools will improve.  In time, the state will improve as more businesses are started or come to Wyoming in response to the better education and smarter graduates.

Until we change the program, Wyoming high school students will be taught by mediocre and unmotivated teachers.  Students will then enter college with little preparation in math and writing and will take remedial courses.  The brightest, most hardworking students will become lawyers, doctors, accountants, and scientists.  The worst students…well… they will become teachers.

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The department will perform three different shows this semester, and two of the shows host their auditions this week.

All students are welcome to audition, according to department chair Leigh Selting. Information can be found on the call board located outside the theatre and dance office inside the Fine Arts Building.

Monday night auditions were held for “Books on Tape,” a comedy written and directed by UW professor William Missouri Downs.

Theatre and dance student Noelia Antweiler preformed in Downs’ play “Seagulls and a Cherry Tree” last year and is prepared for this round of auditioning. “I definitely spend a lot of time alone so I can practice and prepare,” Antweiler said.

Antweiler also prepares by meeting with her scene partner and being physically and vocally ready for the audition.

Those who auditioned for “Books on Tape” will find out Tuesday if they received the part.

Auditions for “Chicago” will start Wednesday. The musical will be directed by Selting, conducted by Michael Griffith and vocally conducted by Patrick Newell.

Wednesday will consist of the singing audition, and Thursday will be dancing and singing. Callbacks can be expected on Friday.

Anyone interested in auditioning for “Chicago” can find information about the required songs by going to the theatre and dance office, Selting said.

UW student Corey Winfield will also be auditioning for both shows this semester. “It’s always good to have something ready, be it a monologue or a song. Always have something in your head that’s ready to go,” Winfield said. “That way you’re not tripping or stumbling over your words, even if it’s a spur of the moment ‘read this’-type audition.”

“Chicago” has been preformed on Broadway and has won six Tony Awards, two Olivier Awards and a Grammy award.

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The article, “Plasticity of animal genome architecture unmasked by rapid evolution of pelagic tunicate,” discussed the group’s recent work, which achieved the successful sequencing of the entire genome sequence of a kind of tunicate known as Oikopleura dioca.

The successful sequencing of the Oikopleura dioca is important because of the evolutionary turnover of duplicate genes within the organism. Tunicates are a group of underwater saclike filter feeders that are found mostly on the ocean floor.

“Gene duplication is a fundamental process enabling the evolution of new molecular functions, as species diverge in evolution, and potentially also as cancer cells evolve. Understanding the dynamics of, and constraints on, duplicate genes is important to understanding functional differences between genomes,” David Liberles, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, said.  

The research on the Oikopleura dioca gene sequence coincided with ongoing work in the Statistics Department by associate professor in the department, Snehalata Huzurbazar’s, who was seeking ways to improve models for gene duplicates.

Ph.D. students Anke Konrad, molecular biology, and Sarabdeep Singh, statistics student, were two other contributors to the research, according to a UW news release. Liberles said that he and his colleagues have been working on this specific area of research for a number of years. 

“Research in my group characterizing the fates of duplicated genes began in 2003 with the work of former postdoctoral researcher Nick Braun, and has continued with two graduated Ph.D. students, Shruti Rastogi and Tim Hughes,” he said. “The modeling framework used in the study began with a paper published with Tim Hughes in Journal of Molecular Evolution in 2007.”

Liberles also said other groups at University of Wyoming involved in genome sequencing projects include Alex Buerkle [in botany] on a pine species and Naomi Ward [in molecular biology], who has been involved in multiple bacterial genome sequencing projects.”

Liberles’ involvement with Daniel Chourrout (of University of Bergen, Norway) was his first venture into a large scale-sequencing project. 

“We have recently become involved with Webb Miller [of Penn State University] on another large scale sequencing project to characterize gene duplication comparatively in primate species,” he added.

The genome sequencing project was an international collaborative effort involving research groups in Europe, Canada, Japan, the Universities of Wyoming, Iowa and Oregon and the National Institutes of Health.

Email: Bob Kubichek 

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Graduate students, on top of taking and teaching classes, must form a thesis that is worked on for the better part of their program.

The Department of History faculty are coming together this week to help second year graduate students during the History Graduate Student Showcase Tuesday from 3:10 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the History Building Room 155.

“The showcase will highlight three of the Department of History’s graduate students who have made significant strides in their original research projects for their master’s thesis,” JoAnna Poblete-Cross, the organizer of this event and chair of the Events and Colloquium Committee in the Department of History, said.

Three students will be participating: Jacqueline Antonovich, Robert Lang and Xinyuan Mao.

Antonovich’s graduate work focuses on U.S. history, and she specializes in women’s history. Her presentation is on “Female Juvenile Delinquency in Progressive-Era Colorado; Western Perspectives on Gender Deviancy.”

Lang’s graduate work has centered around U.S. history with a specialization in American Indian history. 

“Western Battle/Massacre Sites and the Development of American Memory,” is Lang’s presentation title.

Mao has chosen to focus on Chinese history. She will be presenting on “The Ethnic Minority Policy in the Republic Period in China.”

“The most difficult thing is trying to work a paper that will be over twenty pages into a concise ten page paper. I’ve had to consider what is most important to present, what I feel most comfortable presenting and how to inform the audience [of] other information I intend to include in future work on this topic,” Lang said.

All three of these students have devoted massive amounts of time into this presentation. 

Graduate students in the history department generally work with two members of the faculty and one member outside the department. 

This event allows them to have valuable feedback the would not otherwise get. 

This is also a great opportunity for undergraduate students to experience a part of graduate school.

Each student has condensed their current thesis work to around 10 pages in order to provide a 10 to 20 minute presentation. 

“Most conferences try to group presenters into panels based off of the topic of the papers. That way, presenters and the audience can see what other people with similar interests are working on. For the colloquium, we only have three presenters, so we were all put on the same panel,” Lang said. 

“The colloquium allows the professors to see what we are doing as well.  It also benefits the graduate students because it gives us the opportunity to hear valuable feedback from other professors that we might not get otherwise,” Lang said.

The commentator for this panel will be professor Robert Dewey, who teaches and researches British, European and Pacific histories.

“Research in archives is one of the most exciting aspects of the practice of history. Come and check out the variety of stories and approaches that researchers use to write history. Refreshments will also be provided,” Poblete-Cross said.

Email: Davis Bonner 

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Last week in the Fine Arts Concert Hall, OIAG presented the world première of their opera entitled “Rats, Rats and more Rats or … How Stinky Italian Cheese Saved the Day!” for grade school children from the Laramie area.

OIAG is centered on performing for grades K-5 and travels to grade schools throughout the state to teach, through music, children lessons about being themselves and being kind to one another. 

So far, OIAG has performed for more than 7,000 children throughout Wyoming and South Dakota.

“I also wanted to introduce opera in a fun and energetic way.  After all, they are our future audiences. A lot of the small, rural schools or the less fortunate schools in larger towns never have the opportunity to see a production like OIAG,” Larry Hensel, the director of OIAG said. 

“I started OIAG because I wanted to give our students the opportunity to see the power that a live musical and theatrical production can have on young audiences,” 

For the members of the cast, performing shows is its own reward.

“I chose to do OIAG because I love to sing and it sounded like such a blast to get an opportunity to sing for children. I just love to see the children’s faces when we perform. OIAG is fantastico,” castmember Jennifer Erickson said.

This opera was written by Hensel and has music adapted from Giaoachino Rossini’s operas and includes familiar tunes such as the “Barber of Seville.”

“I can’t seem to find anything that fulfills our needs of a larger cast, really, really good music, and a shorter production (35-40 minutes).  So I started to write and arrange my own, using music that’s in the public domain,” Hensel said.  

The group wears Chuck Taylor All Star hi-top sneakers.

The current show is about a group of street rats and a pair of house cats who are unhappy with their lot in life and wish for a change.

They encounter a mysterious gypsy woman, who offers to magically switch their situations. They also meet the gypsy’s sidekick: a happy, stinky Italian cheese.

The group gets their wish; the cats become rats and the rats turn into cats, much to their delight. However, after a time they wish for their old ways. Later in the story, one of the cats is kidnapped, taken to the stinky sewer and ultimately rescued by the entire troop. 

In the end, the group learns from the cheese that it is all right to be yourself and to be content with your life the way it is. 

The costumes and sets for the production are created for OIAG by the Department of Theatre and Dance and add an extra element of the theatre to the performance.

“I couldn’t do these productions without the remarkable, remarkable work of professor Lee Hodgson in the Department of Theatre and Dance.  His costumes are always incredible, and perfect, and help to tell our story in a vivid and visual way,” Hensel said.

Email the author: dbowman6@uwyo.edu 

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The dedication will take place in west Laramie today.

“As there are several of these microbes that are natural in the Wyoming environment, the facility will allow us to do our routine, diagnostic and research into better cures, vaccines, and things like that,” Frank Galey, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said.

Examples of diseases that are seen naturally in Wyoming’s wildlife and livestock include brucellosis, rabbit fever and the plague.

The facility will allow targeted research on animal diseases deemed important to Wyoming that is not currently possible with existing, less-complex facilities.

“If someone has an animal that might have one of these diseases, they need to send it to a laboratory to get it diagnosed, and, previously, UW was very restricted in this ability,” Galey, who also heads the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Team established by Freudenthal in 2004, said.

Previously in Wyoming, the state had to turn these cases over to the federal government, but now, according to Galey, UW can work with these cases in-house.

Galey stated that it really makes sense to be doing this research here in Wyoming, as UW has one of best teams when it comes to brucellosis.

Since the Department of Homeland Security was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research with these diseases can only be conducted in BSL-3 laboratories.

According to Galey, the facility allows all research to be preformed safely with many built-in redundancy safety measures to the laboratory.

The main department that will be using the facility is the Department of Veterinarian Sciences, along with individuals associated with the Department of Molecular Biology.

Galey said that the facility will allow UW and the state to provide a better service to the citizens of Wyoming. 

The facility will also benefit UW faculty who do their research on these microbes and the graduate students who support them.

The new BSL-3 laboratory is unique with only a few operational facilities like it across the United States.

Scheduled speakers at the ceremony include Gov. Dave Freudenthal, UW President Tom Buchanan, UW Board of Trustees chairman Jim Neiman and Galey, followed by a reception and tour of the facility. 

Support for the laboratory came from numerous groups, including the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association, Gov. Freudenthal and the Wyoming State Legislature, Galey said.

Groundbreaking for the facility was last June. 

The 20,000 square-foot addition contains a 1,280 square-foot BSL-3 lab, a 2,600 square-foot BSL-2 lab, plus other work rooms.

The 5,860 square-foot renovation of the existing Department of Veterinary Sciences building, which houses the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory, includes modifications of the existing BSL-2 lab and conference and administrative offices.

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The dedication will take place in west Laramie today.

“As there are several of these microbes that are natural in the Wyoming environment, the facility will allow us to do our routine, diagnostic and research into better cures, vaccines, and things like that,” Frank Galey, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said.

Examples of diseases that are seen naturally in Wyoming’s wildlife and livestock include brucellosis, rabbit fever and the plague.

The facility will allow targeted research on animal diseases deemed important to Wyoming that is not currently possible with existing, less-complex facilities.

“If someone has an animal that might have one of these diseases, they need to send it to a laboratory to get it diagnosed, and, previously, UW was very restricted in this ability,” Galey, who also heads the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Team established by Freudenthal in 2004, said.

Previously in Wyoming, the state had to turn these cases over to the federal government, but now, according to Galey, UW can work with these cases in-house.

Galey stated that it really makes sense to be doing this research here in Wyoming, as UW has one of best teams when it comes to brucellosis.

Since the Department of Homeland Security was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research with these diseases can only be conducted in BSL-3 laboratories.

According to Galey, the facility allows all research to be preformed safely with many built-in redundancy safety measures to the laboratory.

The main department that will be using the facility is the Department of Veterinarian Sciences, along with individuals associated with the Department of Molecular Biology.

Galey said that the facility will allow UW and the state to provide a better service to the citizens of Wyoming. 

The facility will also benefit UW faculty who do their research on these microbes and the graduate students who support them.

The new BSL-3 laboratory is unique with only a few operational facilities like it across the United States.

Scheduled speakers at the ceremony include Gov. Dave Freudenthal, UW President Tom Buchanan, UW Board of Trustees chairman Jim Neiman and Galey, followed by a reception and tour of the facility. 

Support for the laboratory came from numerous groups, including the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association, Gov. Freudenthal and the Wyoming State Legislature, Galey said.

Groundbreaking for the facility was last June. 

The 20,000 square-foot addition contains a 1,280 square-foot BSL-3 lab, a 2,600 square-foot BSL-2 lab, plus other work rooms.

The 5,860 square-foot renovation of the existing Department of Veterinary Sciences building, which houses the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory, includes modifications of the existing BSL-2 lab and conference and administrative offices.

Email: Max D’Onofrio 

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“Coming from a scientist and instructor, understanding GIS is about both the systems and the underlying ideas. GIS is a division of study that has grown tremendously and will continue to be an important application to many professions and fields of study,” Steven Prager, associate professor in the Department of Geography at UW, said.

GIS is a set of tools used by a broad range of professions including those in geography, natural resource management, marketing, rangeland management and dynamics, geo-demographics and transportation. 

Meecham’s speech will focus on mapping Yellowstone National Park and Oregon and how GIS functions as a blend of traditional map technology and the digital technology that it has grown into.

GIS is both science and technology combined, and is being used all over the world. It has grown increasingly popular.

The university offers classes for students interested in GIS.

“Here on campus, students of any major can acquire a concentration, or minor in GIS, or they can major in it through the Department of Geography,” he said. “GIS can compliment many majors on campus, and is strongest when coupled with another subject.”

One of the university’s resources concerning GIS is the Wyoming Geographic Information Systems Center.

WYGISC is a campus support center to help students and faculty with applied research and service. It provides outreach to the state as well as professional training.

“The center gives resources such as technical advice on how to best access and use GIS, providing data to create maps and special analysis, and training in software, internships, and practical experience,” Jeffrey D. Hamerlinck, director of WYGISC, said.

More information about GIS can be acquired through WYGISC forums or by contacting the UW Department of Geography.

Email: Cali Cravens 

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The UW program also received recognition for its research publication, which the review ranked as first in the nation.

Department Chair Jason Shogren attributed the success of the department to the small size of the program and the specific nature of its research. 

When asked what set the UW program apart, Shogren credited his predecessors with building a successful model for the department.  

“In the mid -1970s, Professors Bill Morgon, Ralph d’Arge and Tom Crocker set a goal that the department should focus on one primary research area: Applied microeconomics,” Shogren said. “The idea was to specialize and create an environment to promote synergies across professors and students.”

Shogren explained that the core principles are to be small in design and to focus on strength.

The research conducted by the department has focused on five central issues, which have a direct relevance to Wyoming’s economic development.

“… how to manage financial risks in markets and non-market choices, evaluating risks to human and environmental health, integrating better economics with biology/ecology and other social sciences, how to develop a cost-effective mix of non-renewable and renewable energy, and how to promote economic development and social order without environmental degradation,” Shogren said.

Shogren added that the future implications of the research at the university are three fold. 

“First, the department will continue to produce new Masters and PhDs who will be leaders in applied economics,” he said. “Many of these students will help set the national agenda for how society can provide more environmental protection at less costs to society. 

He added that their faculty will continue to advise decision makers around the globe on economics and new policy options in the field. 

Finally, he said that their current work will attract students and other scholars to Wyoming.

The National Research Council releases its review of PhD programs once every decade.

Email the author: rkubichek@uwyo.edu 

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