This weekend promises to be full of excitement as Wake Forest’s spring sports continue the quest for ACC and national championships.

The Demon Deacon baseball team hosts Pittsburgh at David F. Couch Ballpark tonight at 6 p.m. and Saturday at noon.

Thursday night’s 7-4 win improved the Deacons’ ACC record to 18-10, setting a record for the most conference wins in a season. In addition, senior right-hander Parker Dunshee broke the school record with his 313^th career strikeout. At 37-16, Wake Forest has assured itself of a top-four seed in next week’s ACC Tournament and could secure the No. 3 seed with one more victory over Pittsburgh.

Thursday, the men’s tennis team continued its quest for a national championship by shutting out 17-time national champion Stanford 4-0 in Athens, Ga.  at the NCAA Tennis Championships. The Deacons, the No. 1 seed, have reached the Elite Eight in men’s tennis for the first time in school history and will face ACC foe North Carolina on Saturday at 4 p.m. for the right to advance to the Final Four. The Deacs beat the Tar Heels in March in a regular-season match.

Jennifer Kupcho, a sophomore, won the NCAA Athens Regional women’s golf individual title and has started play in the NCAA Women’s Golf Championship today at Rich Harvest Farms outside of Chicago. 

Next week, Will Zalatoris will represent Wake Forest in the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship, also at Rich Harvest Farms. Zalatoris has three career individual wins and earned ACC Player of the Year honors this spring. 

Links to follow all Wake Forest teams in championship action can be found on WakeForestSports.com.

Go Deacs!

Faculty and staff can claim free tickets to watch No. 1 Wake Forest take on No. 16 Indiana in a third-round game of the NCAA Tournament. The matchup will be at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Spry Stadium, with a free festival for kids on the practice fields from 11 a.m.-noon, including a bounce house, pickup soccer games and an appearance by the Deacon.

Faculty and staff can pick up tickets at the Benson information desk from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. today and 9 a.m.-noon Wednesday with a valid WFU ID. A maximum of six tickets can be claimed per ID. Tickets are only good for Alumni Hill. Additional tickets can be purchased for the hill or bleachers on wakeforestsports.com/tickets or by calling 336.758.3322.

Faculty and staff are invited to join students in a photography contest designed to capture the beauty of Wake Forest’s campus in the fall. Recently, the campus has been recognized as the “Most Beautiful College in the Fall” and has appeared on numerous web sites as one of the top 50 most beautiful campuses overall.

To celebrate, you can share your fall campus pictures as part of the “Fall in Love with Wake Forest” competition, organized by student group The Media. To enter by the Oct. 31 deadline, email your photos to them@nullwfu.edu or share on social media using the hashtag #FALLINLOVEWFU.

All photos will be evaluated by a selection committee to select at least 25 finalists. Finalist’s photos will be exhibited in the ZSR Library, and the photo receiving the highest number of votes will be printed on a vinyl banner and hung on the Upper Quad.

Prizes:

• 1st Place: Prize worth $100 with a signed thank you card from Provost Rogan Kersh
• 2nd Place: Prize worth $50
• 3rd Place: Prize worth $20
• Other finalists will receive a prize worth $10.

The Media, a student-run digital media group, launched in September with a ceremony in Reynolda Hall’s Magnolia Room featuring Provost Rogan Kersh (’86) and Provost Emeritus Ed Wilson (’43). The Media will be working with members of campus to create digital content with a focus on using iTunesU as an academic distribution channel. The Media plans to add to the global branding of Wake Forest.

Kersh’s remarks focused on the entrepreneurial spirit of the group’s founder, sophomore William Wang, and Kersh also presented badges to the student leaders. Wilson’s remarks focused on the teacher-student relationship through history at Wake Forest, saying: “Normally students learn from teachers at Wake Forest. However, as teachers, we should also learn from them.”

Senior Addison McLamb outlined the goals of the group, and Wang spoke about the hybrid of student creativity and institutional vision from Wake Forest faculty and staff.

“With incredible support from all over the campus, we are hungry to do more in the future,” Wang said. “Our job is to ensure that Wake Forest University thrives in a mobile- and cloud-first world.”

John H. Litcher (P ’83, ’85), who taught a generation of education students how to become great teachers, died Feb. 22 after a lengthy illness. He was 75.

Litcher was also regarded for his community service and was a support team member and a past president of the Lewisville (NC) Fire Department.

A celebration of life service will be held at 2 p.m. on March 8 at Lewisville Fire Department Station 13, 9420 Shallowford Road, Lewisville, N.C.

Continue reading »

In the event of severe weather that prompts a delay or closing, Wake Forest will use several methods to alert students, faculty and staff to schedule changes.

On occasion, because of snowy or icy weather conditions, Wake Forest officials have announced a decision to close the campus for the day or delay the start of classes and the opening of offices. In such cases, the University will use the following communication channels:

• The Wake Alert website at wakealert.wfu.edu.
• A headline across the top of the University home page at wfu.edu. It will link to the Wake Alert website.
• An email message to faculty, staff and students.
• A voice mail message to faculty and staff.
• A message on the University’s weather/emergency phone line (336-758-5935).
• Announcements on radio stations WFDD (88.5 FM) and WSJS (600 AM).
• Announcements on TV stations WXII, WGHP, WFMY and News 14 Carolina.

Justin Catanoso’s reporting has established him as an expert in fraud in the tobacco industry, the business economy in North Carolina, and the process of becoming a saint. Now Catanoso, a veteran journalist and director of the journalism program, is shifting his focus to raising awareness about global climate change.

Catanoso traveled with a team of climate researchers from the biology department to the remote Peruvian cloud forest this summer to witness firsthand the impacts of 21st century warming on this vital ecosystem.

He said that the experience working with Miles Silman, biology professor and director of the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and many of the world’s leading tropical biologists, who like Silman are part of the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group, helped him recognize the monumental importance of inspiring the current generation of world leaders to act on this issue now.

“The next generation could look back and say, ‘What did you do?’” Catanoso said on WFDD. “And if you didn’t do enough, was it just because you were so focused on short-term gains and your own wealth that you didn’t see that this planet was baking and baking too fast to be healthy for us in the future?”

Catanoso’s subsequent climate change coverage, supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, has appeared in prominent news outlets like National Geographic, Business Insider, WUNC, and in a five-part series on WFDD.

Congratulations to Stephen Bruce King, professor of chemistry, whose proposal entitled “New Reagents for Tracking Protein Oxidation in Cells by MS and Imaging Methods” has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number 1R33CA177461-01 and the WFU Health Sciences (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to David Carroll, professor of physics, whose proposal entitled “Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advance Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies” has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the North Carolina State University (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to Freddie Salsbury, associate professor physics, whose proposal entitled “Targeted Approach to overcoming treatment resistance in advance prostate cancer” has been funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Georgia Southern University (WFU funding agency).

The following letter is adapted from director of Research and Sponsored Programs Lori Messer’s introduction to the October issue of Research News:

Reynolda Campus research had an excellent year. For fiscal year 2013, total external support for projects exceeded $9.8 million, the second-highest amount in campus history, and that was not including five fellowships for scholarship in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The total is even more remarkable when you consider that $8.4 million, about 86 percent, comes from federal sources limited by sequestration budget cuts.

FY13 saw 22 departments and centers receive sponsored research funding, and nearly all increased its total over FY12. Health and exercise science received the most, with physics running a close second.

Faculty and staff in 32 departments and centers submitted 152 external proposals, requesting more than $38 million. Chemistry submitted the most proposals and requested the most funding.

We would like to recognize two of our former CRADLE program participants, Oana Jurchescu and Timo Thonhauser, both in physics, who received prestigious CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. WFU has received five such awards, with Patricia Dos Santos and Rebecca Alexander in chemistry and Dave Anderson in biology already gaining that distinction.

CRADLE (Creative Research Activities Development and Enrichment) is a two-year program that helps Wake Foresters develop competitive external funding proposals.

The NSF CAREER Award is a $400,000 award given to the nation’s top junior faculty members and is meant to support their research, encourage excellent teaching, mentorship and community outreach.

Another graduate of the CRADLE program, assistant professor of chemistry Lindsay Comstock-Ferguson, received her first independent federal funding. The following faculty and staff also received their first individual external grants at WFU:

Continue reading »

Congratulations to William K. Smith, professor of biology and Charles H. Babcock chair of botany, whose proposal entitled “The Impact of Saltwater Incursion on Bold Cypress (Taxodium distichum) in a Coastal Freshwater Wetland” has been funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce and North Carolina State University (WFU funding agency).

Rejeski

Marsh

Congratulations to Walter J. Rejeski, professor of health and exercise science, and Anthony P. Marsh, professor of health and exercise science, whose proposal entitled “Pepper Center Clinical Research Core” has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and WFU Health Sciences (WFU funding agency).