From building a brand to evaluating the presidential debate and dealing with the current COVID-19 variant, TCU and its faculty and alumni are in the news.
June 27, 2024
Fort Worth Report
Merianne Kimmel Roth has built her marketing career by finding unique ways to share the big ideas of iconic
Fort Worth companies and institutions. TCU, JPS Health Network, RadioShack, Visit
Fort Worth, Pier 1 Imports and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art occupy lines
on her resume. Following a nationwide search, Roth, an associate vice chancellor at
TCU, was promoted to vice chancellor of marketing and communication in June. “You
should not only have the skills but also the confidence and empathy to lead,” said
Roth, who earned a degree this year from the Executive MBA program at TCU. “I love
big, complex organizations. I like building systems that work to support purpose,”
said Roth, who sees marketing as a combination of storytelling, engagement and building
a shared mission.
June 23, 2024
Fort Worth Report
Colleges and universities around Tarrant County are working on solutions to the shortage
of nurses. At TCU’s Pre-Health Professions Institute, enrollment has doubled over the past 10 years, and the university plans to introduce
a public health major.
June 17, 2024
FoodService Director
The National Association of College and University Food Services recently unveiled
the gold, silver and bronze winners of its 2024 Loyal E. Horton Dining, Nutrition
and Sustainability Awards. For the Wellness and Nutrition Program of the Year award,
the gold winners included TCU. TCU also earned a silver award for Catering Special Event of the Year and a gold
in the Outreach and Education Program of the Year.
June 17, 2024
The Dallas Morning News
It was as a very mature sounding artist that Kholodenko returned to Fort Worth for
a solo recital at this summer’s PianoӣƵAPP International Festival and Academy at TCU.
Founded and still directed by piano professor Tamás Ungár and now in its 44th year, the annual festival presents recitals by important pianists,
many of whom double as faculty for educational programs for young pianists up to age
28, piano teachers and amateur players. In addition to private and class sessions,
participants compete for chances to perform with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
Formerly held in TCU’s PepsiCo Recital Hall, this year’s recitals have moved to the
more spacious — sonically as well as physically — Van Cliburn Concert Hall at TCU.
FACULTY
June 27, 2024
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump criticized each other’s handling
of the economy at the presidential debate, including mention of the national debt.
“It’s just not really a problem,” said economics professor John Harvey. “That’s come up as an issue that’s about to destroy our country ever since I can
remember.” He noted that the Biden administration’s economic stimulus payments to
help Americans power through the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the economy. “We just made
it up on a keyboard,” Harvey said. “And that’s what the government does, and people
find this terrifying, but it’s what the government does all the time.”
June 22, 2024
Inside Political Science
An age-old question (literally): do our representatives actually represent us? Keith Gaddie, a political science professor, discussed electoral age limits. “When you think about
it, there’s an experience problem, especially in the U.S. Senate,” Gaddie said. “It’s
something like 70% of U.S. senators were born before 1960, so the contemporary human
experience is very different. These Baby Boomers in particular have been in these
positions of power for a very long time, and I think there’s a real desire to kind
of nudge them out of the way and make room for the generation that comes after ours.”
June 21, 204
Healthline.com
While heat and summer go hand in hand, research and experts indicate that rising temperatures
and health risks do, too. “It is easy in the summer to be distracted by lots of fun
outdoor activities, but heat can impact your health and make you very ill, especially
if you are not paying attention to signs from your body or are at extremes of age,”
said Dr. Jo Anna Leuck, associate dean of educational affairs at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.
“There are easy ways to prevent this impact, so it is important to understand the
dangers of heat and how to avoid them.”
June 19, 2024
AP News
Some of the atmosphere in the public and media that has swirled around the professional
women’s league since the season started last month has been less fun time and more
culture war, with rookie Caitlin Clark as the unwilling eye of the storm. That a young
white woman is being put in the central role, with Black and brown women relegated
to supporting characters, is about as old and familiar a trope as exists in a country
with as troubled a racial history as the United States, said Frederick Gooding Jr., associate professor of African American studies. “It’s not so much about the visibility of Clark,” he said. “It also speaks to the
invisibility of Black females and how difficult it is for Black females to obtain
that same type” of attention.
June 18, 2024
Yahoo! News
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that COVID test
positivity rates and emergency room visits are steadily rising, especially along both
coasts. The culprit: the FLiRT variants. According to Dr. Nikhil Bhayani, assistant professor in the department of internal medicine at the Burnett School
of Medicine at TCU, one variant in particular is gaining steam right now: KP.3. It’s
currently responsible for roughly 25% of cases.
June 18, 2024
360West Magazine
How easy is it to give away $100,000? Not very, Ron Pitcock’s class, Nature of Giving, finds year after year. The dean of the John V. Roach Honors
College said the students’ struggle with where to donate the money epitomized what
he wanted them to understand: If raising money is difficult, what about giving it
away? “It’s incredibly difficult to do,” Pitcock tells the group.
June 18, 2024
The Real Deal
Prologis, one of the titans of industrial real estate and an active investor in ӣƵAPP,
is pushing forward a type of renewable energy technology that could have long-term
implications on the industry. Tom Seng, assistant professor of professional practice in energy finance, noted that the state’s
battery storage capacity has doubled in the past year, from about 3,000 megawatts
to 6,500 megawatts. Batteries, which charge overnight, offer a ready supply of power
during peak times and can be economically beneficial, as stored energy can be sold
at higher prices during peak demand.
June 18, 2024
Verywell Health
New research suggests people with obesity who take semaglutide, commonly known by
the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, have a 16% lower rate of developing osteoarthritis.
“This gives the medical community another important piece of data to support the multi-organ
system positive effects that we’re seeing with these GLP-1 receptor agonists,” Dr. Mohanakrishnan Sathyamoorthy, chair of internal medicine at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, said. “We already
know that this drug has potentially very positive and beneficial effects for cardiovascular
health. We know it has an impact on the underlying disease state of diabetes. But
now there’s another piece of evidence in a completely disparate, unrelated organ system,
showing that it has a benefit for joints too.”
ALUMNI
June 26, 2024
Fort Worth Report
When a group of artists couldn’t find affordable studio space after graduate school,
they decided to start one of their own. In addition to helping artists, the Fort Worth
nonprofit also addresses another need: food insecurity. Easyside, housed in a former
dry-cleaning facility on East Lancaster Avenue, offers studio space, a workshop equipped
with tools and a community pantry every other Friday. “When we were in grad school,
we didn’t talk about starting a nonprofit. We were just kind of looking at … models
that currently exist in the DFW area, and really, there aren’t very many artist-run
spaces,” Corrie Thompson ’22 MFA, one of four co-founders, said. Food distribution might not seem like an obvious
pairing with a gallery and studio space, but helping bring resources to the community
rather than extracting them away was important for the co-founders.
June 25, 2024
Education Week
English learners who are also identified as students with disabilities experience
unique needs in K-12 schools — and their teachers need specialized, interdisciplinary
training, experts say. At Education Week’s K-12 Essentials Forum focusing on innovative
approaches to special education, Lizdelia Piñón ’21 Ed.D., an emergent bilingual education associate for the ӣƵAPP-based advocacy nonprofit
Intercultural Development Research Association, shared insights on what kind of teacher
training best serves dual-identified students. “It has to be this cohesive idea,”
Piñón said. “It’s an integrated training that equips our teachers with the skills
and the knowledge that they need to effectively support our dual-identified English
learners with disabilities.”
June 14, 2024
Desert Sun
Want to put a smile on a child’s face as they head back to school in August? Consider
donating to Shoes for Students, an annual fundraising initiative by The Foundation
for PSUSD. Families with limited income often have to make hard choices about how
they spend their resources — and oftentimes footwear falls below other basic needs
like food. But according to an innovative study led by Dr. Sam Sayed M.D. ’24, a new pair of shoes can favorably impact a child’s self-confidence, academics and
social engagement. And for a kid, confidence and inclusion are everything. Sayed studied
the effect that receiving a new pair of athletic shoes had on underprivileged youth,
and after a few weeks, 100% of the children in the study said they felt more confident
and had stronger beliefs in their ability to overcome challenges.
ATHLETICS
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June 30, 2024
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
In the near feature, revenue sharing with athletes will be a new reality in college
athletics. TCU just became one of the latest schools to announce it was committed
to the future model. Jeremiah Donati, director of intercollegiate athletics, provided an update on how the Horned Frogs plan to navigate the changing landscape
in the aftermath of the settlement of the House v. NCAA class action lawsuit. “We
are very excited to announce that we will fully participate at the maximum level in
this permissible revenue sharing plan with our student-athletes,” Donati said in a
letter posted on the university’s website. “Along with this, we will be prepared for
the challenges and opportunities it will bring. Many questions, however, do remain
and we will need time to work out many details. For example, how and when we distribute
that revenue remains unclear at the moment.”
June 28, 2024
Associated Press
Jeremiah Donati, director of intercollegiate athletics at TCU, said that the private Big 12 school
is all in on the maximum amount of revenue — expected to be more than $20 million
a year — that will be allowed to be shared with student-athletes under a $2.8 billion
antitrust settlement proposal agreed to earlier this year by the NCAA and the nation’s
biggest conferences. “All this will combine to provide a new collegiate athletics
model and industry reset that comes with a significant permissive expense projected
to be over $20 million annually,” Donati wrote. He then wrote that TCU would “fully
participate at the maximum level allowed” when revenue sharing with student-athletes
goes into effect, which will be no earlier than the fall of 2025.
June 17, 2024
NBCDFW
When football head coach Sonny Dykes leads his Horned Frogs onto the field in August, they’ll be sporting a new look.
TCU Football released a video and several photos on its social media platforms Monday
morning showing three new uniforms and helmet combinations from Nike that’ll be used
on the field this season. The minimalist uniforms are not without at least one unique
element, a “Carter Boys” patch is stitched onto the back collar. It’s an apparent
homage to Amon G. Carter Stadium and the Carter Boys show on ESPN+. The white, purple
and black helmets match the uniforms, but the team will also use a chrome version.
All the helmets appear to use the traditional arched TCU logo on the sides.
June 16, 2024
The Sporting News
TCU’s football history was front and center on ESPN’s list of the 30 most influential
college football teams of all time. TCU didn’t just get one team on the list — it
got two — with its undefeated 2010 team coached by Gary Patterson coming in at No. 29 and its 1935 team that went 12-1 under Dutch Meyer coming in at No. 14. TCU is only two seasons removed from a surprise run to the
College Football Playoff national championship game under current head coach Sonny Dykes.