Gov. Tim Kaine scheduled to open building, teach NewPAGE class
Gov. Tim Kaine will be in demand when he visits the Old Dominion campus the morning of Oct. 3.

First on his agenda will be a 10 a.m. talk about Virginia’s environmental initiatives to students in the NewPAGE class, followed an hour later by a ribbon-cutting to mark the opening of the renovated Technology Building and its name change to the College of Health Sciences Building.

The facility is one of four ODU buildings that received funding for renovation as a result of the state’s 2002 general obligation bond campaign, when Kaine served as lieutenant governor.

The building’s $9 million renovation, which began in 2004, has allowed the consolidation of College of Health Sciences classrooms, laboratories and offices.

Special features include a 24-station dental hygiene clinic, assessment and motion analysis labs, a human diagnostic research center, fully mediated classrooms and labs, and student study and meeting areas. Back to top

University selects advisers for football
College football coaching greats George Welsh and Dick Sheridan, who took their respective teams to 19 bowls and earned national Coach of the Year honors, will serve as advisers to Old Dominion in its development of a football program, which will kick off in 2009.

A press conference was held on campus Sept. 12 to introduce them.

Welsh, the former University of Virginia and Navy coach, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2004. He was responsible for returning Navy and Virginia to national prominence during his 28 years as a head coach.

Sheridan led the North Carolina State football team to prominence as well. He compiled a 52-29-3 record in Raleigh, which included six bowl appearances in seven seasons. Before joining N.C. State in 1986, Sheridan had a 69-33-2 mark in eight seasons at Furman University.

“We are excited about having the combined football expertise that Dick Sheridan and George Welsh provide,” said athletic director Jim Jarrett. “We look forward to their assistance as we move forward with our football program.”

Sheridan served in a similar consultant capacity for Coastal Carolina Univer-sity when the school began its I-AA football program four years ago.

At the press conference, Jarrett said the goal is to hire a football coach by December or January, which will give ODU time to recruit 2008 high school graduates. The first-year recruits will redshirt their freshman year in order to prepare for the 2009 season.

Both Sheridan and Welsh noted that they were impressed with the university’s support for football. Said Sheridan, “You have a great team of people to implement the plan. I think the potential here is tremendous.”

“Support goes a long way in how successful the football program will be,” Welsh added.

While at Navy, from 1973-81, Welsh led the Midshipmen to a 55-46-1 record and three bowl appearances before leaving as the school’s all-time winningest coach, a distinction he still holds.

His Virginia teams posted a 134-86-3 record (.608) in 19 seasons and his 85 ACC wins was a league record at the time of his retirement. Welsh completed his career 24th in Division I-A history in wins (189-131-4).

During Sheridan’s tenure at Furman, the school won six Southern Conference championships and played for the 1985 NCAA Division I-AA title.

In his first year at N.C. State, the Wolfpack went 8-2-1. His 1988 team compiled an 8-3-1 mark, defeating Iowa in the Peach Bowl. Back to top

Newsweek editor, former president of Ireland coming for lecture series
Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek magazine, will kick off the President’s Lecture Series Sept. 28 with a talk about Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 10, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, will be on campus to deliver the Waldo Family Lecture on International Relations. Both talks are free and open to the public.

Meacham, who has been called “one of the most influential editors in the news magazine business” by The New York Times, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in the Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building auditorium. The topic of his talk is “Franklin and Winston: Leader-ship Lessons for Today.”

Meacham became managing editor of Newsweek at age 29, overseeing coverage of politics, international affairs and breaking news. Now 37, he is also a bestselling author.

His book “Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship” explores the fascinating relationship between the two great leaders who led the free world to victory in World War II. His latest work, “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation,” is a New York Times bestseller.

A native of Chattanooga, Tenn., Meacham is a graduate of the University of the South.

Bagpipers from the Tidewater Pipes and Drums and students from St. Patrick Catholic school will welcome Robinson with traditional Irish music and song prior to her address at 7 p.m. Oct. 10 in Webb Center.

Robinson will speak on the topic “Human Rights in the Contemporary World.” An outspoken world leader, she was Ireland’s first female president, serving from 1990-97. She resigned the presidency four months before the end of her term of office to take up the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.

Robinson is the founder and executive director of the pro-human rights organization Ethical Globalization Initiative, housed in Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She serves as an adviser to the institute, teaching in the international and public affairs department, and is a senior research scholar at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute.

The Waldo Family Lecture Series, established in 1985, has brought renowned speakers from government, foreign affairs, journalism, education and public service to the campus. Back to top

Pothen team wins $7 million grant
BY JIM RAPER

Researchers at Old Dominion have won a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop new software for scientific problem solving on the next generation of high-performance computers.

The funding, secured by a multi-institutional team led by Alex Pothen, professor of computer science, will establish a DOE Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) institute at the university. It will be called Combinatorial Scientific Computing and Petascale Simulations (CSCAPES, pronounced “seascapes”) Institute.

Pothen is the grant’s principal investigator. His collaborators come from ODU, Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, Ohio State University and Colorado State University.

ODU will administer the five-year grant, and its share of the funding will be about $2 million. Other ODU investigators for the grant, both of whom are in computer science, are Florin Dobrian and Assefaw Gebremedhin.

DOE made simultaneous announcements Sept. 7 of four SciDAC institutes dedicated to computational science. In addition to ODU’s, the institutes are at Carnegie Mellon University, the Univer-sity of Southern California and the University of California, Davis.

News of the grant to ODU was hailed by administrators as a major milestone in the university’s quest to be a leading research institution.

“Dr. Pothen's brilliant scientific work coupled with his leadership in organizing a multi-university collaboration has resulted in a truly significant grant,” said President Roseann Runte. “We are proud of his accomplishments and look foward to continued success.”

Richard Gregory, dean of the College of Sciences, said the reputation of research universities “is built upon competitive funding of this type that shows you are of world-class caliber.” He said Pothen “is proving that he is among the best there is in fundamental computational science.”

Pothen said the CSCAPES Institute will accelerate the development and deployment of fundamental enabling technologies in high-performance computing. The institute will train students, hold workshops and engage in projects with other SciDAC research groups.

The DOE’s SciDAC program focuses on developing computational models in many areas of science and engineering, including accelerator physics, climate modeling, life sciences and materials science.

In physics, more powerful computers are expected to more accurately interpret data from atom-smashing experiments, and to shed new light on the fundamental building blocks of matter. The ODU nuclear physics experimental research group has been funded by DOE for more than a decade, and the $1.7 million grant it received last year for fundamental studies was one of the largest of its kind. Most of the experiments of the ODU nuclear physics group are conducted at DOE’s Jefferson Lab in Newport News.

Mohammad Karim, vice president for research, noted that the institute will leverage the National LambdaRail bandwidth asset recently acquired by ODU, Jefferson Lab, and other research institutions and entities in southeastern Virginia. The special Internet link connects ODU with computing powerhouses throughout the country.

“Professor Pothen and his research colleagues from other institutions and several DOE laboratories will be using hundreds of thousands of processors and complex memory hierarchies in ways that were never possible before,” Karim said. “They will be running these machines to solve some of the toughest multiscale or multiphase problems in the sciences.” Back to top

U.S. Marine Band to give free concert Oct. 3
Old Dominion and the Navy League of Hampton Roads will host the “President’s Own” United States Marine Band at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3, at the Ted Constant Convocation Center.

Established by an Act of Congress in 1798, the Marine Band is America’s oldest professional musical organization. The primary mission of the band is to provide music for the president and the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Marine Band made its White House debut on New Year’s Day, 1801, in a performance for President John Adams. In March of that year, the band performed for the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, and has performed at every presidential inauguration since.

Free tickets for the event (limit of four per person) may be obtained at the Constant Center box office, or from the Navy League of Hampton Roads by calling 486-7654. Ticket holders must be seated by 7:15 p.m. Back to top

ODU named among best in Southeastern U.S.
For the third time in four years, Old Dominion has been named one of “The Best Southeastern Colleges” by The Princeton Review in its annual guide.

The book constitutes a portion of Princeton Review’s best regional guidebooks, which collectively include profiles of more than 600 institutions. The Southeastern edition showcases the top 146 schools in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee.

Institutions featured in the publication met criteria for academic excellence in their regions and students were interviewed anonymously, either through the Princeton Review Web site or a paper survey. The survey asked students questions about their school’s academics, campus life and student body. Back to top

ODU to host hearing on alternative energy resources
The federal perspective on alternative energy resources will be the topic of a U.S. House of Representatives Field Oversight Hearing on Sept. 18, when Old Dominion hosts Congresswoman Thelma Drake along with committee and subcommittee colleagues.

Titled “Renewable Ocean Energy: Tides, Currents and Waves,” the hearing is designed to further explore research and development initiatives into new technologies and uses of renewable and alternative fuels and energy sources, such as ocean energy. Drake believes that ocean surface currents offer an extremely attractive renewable energy solution.

Witnesses scheduled to testify before the panel include ODU’s Dave Basco, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Pat Hatcher, Batten Endowed Chair in physical sciences.

Scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon in the Hampton/Newport News Room of Webb Center, the hearing is open to the public. Back to top

Memorial fund established
A memorial fund has been created through the ODU Credit Union for Karthik Leelavinothan, the international student who died Sept. 3 in a canoeing accident at the Great Dismal Swamp in Chesapeake.

A native of India, he was a graduate student in computer science. A memorial service was held on campus Sept. 8.

Contributions may be made through the credit union’s Webb Center branch or at the main office on Hampton Boule-vard. Checks should be payable to the Karthik Leelavinothan Memorial Fund. For more information call 533-9308. Back to top

Toomey composes score for Discovery Channel film
Armed with a synthesizer, advanced digital performance software and a background in spontaneous jazz performance, an Old Dominion University music professor has composed the film score for “The Boys of H Company,” airing this month on the Discovery Channel.

The documentary, from Dominion Pictures of Virginia Beach, tells the story of the young men, ages 18-20, who stormed the beaches at Iwo Jima. The film interviews survivors, including one local resident, and shows actual footage of the fighting, which is completed by the powerful score created by John Toomey, University Professor of music.

“The Boys of H Company” will run at 1 p.m. Sept. 16 in HD on Discovery HD Theater. It was filmed in high definition and Dolby surround sound 5.1.

“In order to score a film I literally sit and watch the whole thing, minute by minute, and as the director tells me where he wants music, I begin composing on the spot,” explained Toomey. “Being a jazz performer, I'm used to creating in the moment, so that works for me.” He scored the film in Virginia Beach at Earworks Studios, where he worked with owner Robert Smith.

“My master’s-level students are learning to do what I am doing for films,” said Toomey, who teaches classes in Jazz Studies and Music Technology. “I use a digital performing sequencing program with a keyboard and when I’m finished it sounds like the music is coming from a live orchestra. I use the same program in teaching my classes at ODU.”

Toomey has also composed several soundtracks for features and documentaries for the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and NBC. Back to top

PlayTime Theatre presents “Fairly Stupid Stories”
Old Dominion University Theatre opens its 2006-07 season Oct. 13 with PlayTime Theatre’s “Fairly Stupid Stories,” collaboratively written by the company and directed by Frankie Little Hardin.

A rough-and-tumble, physically comic play, “Fairly Stupid Stories” will delight audiences of all ages. Set in 1576, the tale unfolds as a troupe of very bad actors performs an assortment of very strange and “stupid” stories for a young boy, who marvels at their nonsensical nature.

The play runs Friday to Sunday, Oct. 13-15, at The Stables Theatre. Show times are 7 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $3 for children and $5 for general admission. They may be purchased at the Arts and Letters box office in the lobby of the University Theatre or by calling 683-5305. Back to top

Online lectures workshop
The Center for Learning Technologies is offering a “Building Online Lectures” workshop from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 6 (lunch is included).

To register go to www.clt.odu.edu; for more information call 683-3172. Back to top

Modeling and simulation research gets boost from cadre of new faculty
BY JIM DEANGIO

Nearly 20 new researchers have arrived or soon will be headed to Old Dominion in support of modeling and simulation. They will teach and work in three different university colleges and at the university’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center. The researchers, who come from around the world, have expertise in a wide variety of disciplines.

“They will work in different academic departments and apply modeling, simulation and visualization tool sets to various problems,” explained Mohammad Karim, vice president for research, “but they will all work toward the goal of Old Dominion becoming a Top 100 research institution.”

Karim has retained eight new researchers and another nine will be on board by the end of the 2006-07 academic year.

The new faculty were selected from a pool of more than 700 applicants. According to Karim, they are “the cream of the crop” and were sought by a number of choice institutions and research groups. In the end, they all chose Old Dominion, which offered them an opportunity to apply modeling, simulation and visualization to real-world problems.

“One of our new researchers is an expert at remote sensing, using satellites to study things like terrain, minerals and vegetation,” said Karim. “Whether a researcher’s background is this or civil engineering or biochemistry, we will challenge them all to see how they might use modeling and simulation and visualization to solve the transportation dilemma, apply best practices in the areas of port logistics and supply chain, and address health concerns and even economics issues.

“They are really, really good researchers. Modeling and simulation has its origins in military command and control, in communications. Our goal is to utilize these researchers’ expertise to expand this into international relations, riot and crowd behavior, weather and climate, to name just a few examples.”

In addition to conducting funded research, the new faculty will teach classes as part of the university’s goal to double its modeling and simulation enrollment at the master’s and doctoral levels. An expanded work force is necessary to address a variety of current and future projects, and has received budgetary support from Gov. Tim Kaine and members of the General Assembly.

Karim believes that the hiring of 17 top researchers connected to modeling, simulation and visualization sends a powerful message to the Hampton Roads community, as does ODU’s construction on campus of a state-of-the-art research facility, Innovation Research Park @ ODU, and new headquarters for VMASC.

“It all adds up,” he said. “It moves us forward. The new researchers will increase our body of knowledge, technical prowess, our capacity to address real-world problems, our value to Hampton Roads and Virginia. Their hiring says ‘invest in ODU research,’ because we have the capacity to grow and deliver strategic solutions.

“It sends the message that we are very serious about achieving our goal of becoming a Top 100 research institution among the nation’s public colleges and universities.”

The following researchers recently joined the university:

• Gianluca De Leo, assistant professor of medical laboratory and radiation sciences, comes to ODU from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a senior researcher in the chemistry department. He completed a postdoctorate with the School of Public Health at Saint Louis University in 2005, during which he directed the SUN Centre of Excellence, the Diabetes Educational Automated Call Center and the information technology component of the Inte-grated Advanced Information Manage-ment System. from Saint Louis University.
• Michael Fontaine, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, has more than six years’ experience as a researcher at the Texas Transportation Institute and the Virginia Transportation Research Council. He joins ODU from the VTRC, where he was senior research scientist and a visiting assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of Virginia. His research interests include the use of modeling and simulation in the areas of traffic operations, transportation safety and highway modeling.
• Julie Hao joins the mechanical engineering department as an assistant professor. She has both academic and industrial experience in conducting research in the area of BioMEMS (Biological or Biomedical MicroElectroMechanical Systems), applied theories and experimental techniques for biomechanics at the microscale (micro-biomechanics), and development of BioMEMS devices (bio-sensors and on-chip integrated transducers) with high accuracy and reliability.
• Jiang Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, completed his postdoctoral training from 2004-06 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where he developed algorithms for computer-aided colonic polyp detection. His research interests include computer-aided medical diagnosis systems, medical image processing, machine learning and signal processing for communication.
• Kathleen Lyons joins the Depart-ment of Biological Sciences and VMASC as an assistant professor following a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Syn-thesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her computing-intensive research includes studies of species- and community-level responses of Pleistocene mammals to global climate change, changes
  in macro-ecological patterns across space and time, and processes creating latitudinal gradients in species richness.
• Yuzhong Shen worked as a senior engineer with Weifang Hua-Guang Technologies in China prior to joining the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor. His research interests include visualization and computer graphics, signal and image processing, and modeling and simulation.
• Andreas Tolk, an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, was previously a senior research scientist at VMASC from 2002-06. He was vice president for Land Weapon Systems at the German company IABG, the main contractor for the German Ministry of Defense for Operations Research and Simulation applications for analyses, training and experimentation, from 1998 to 2002.
• Zia-ur Rahman arrives from the College of William and Mary, where he was a research associate professor of applied science and an adjunct assistant professor of computer science. An associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, he is currently the principal investigator on a NASA cooperative agreement, working on topics concerning enhancement and blending of multisensor data for aviation safety. He jointly holds three U.S. patents and one international patent with NASA researchers on a nonlinear image enhancement technique that has wide-ranging applications. Back to top

Book on marine sediments meets with good reviews
BY JIM RAPER

The textbook, “Geochemistry of Marine Sediments,” written by Professor David Burdige and published by Princeton University Press, debuted with excellent reviews in August.

He can relax now and accept the congratulations of his colleagues in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, but the creation of the 600-page book was a lot harder than he thought it would be when he took on the project five years ago.

“I had my dissertation and 40 or so scientific papers I had written. I also had my lecture notes,” Burdige said, with a smile. “I naively thought that all I needed to do was to take my lecture notes and put in some more nouns and verbs.

“If I had known when I started what I knew six months into the job, I would never have taken it on. But by six months in, I was already committed.”

Burdige, whose research focus is on biogeochemical processes in estuarine and marine sediments, has garnered both praise and gratitude from colleagues who read the manuscript or reviewed advance copies of the $85 book ($68 in paperback).

“This is undoubtedly a major contribution to the field. David Burdige’s scholarship is cutting edge,” wrote manuscript reviewer Bernard P. Boudreau, who is on the oceanography faculty at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

Other reviewers called the book “a wonderfully exhaustive review spanning all aspects of marine sedimentary geochemistry” and a “much needed update” in this field of study. One text that has been widely used in the field was published in 1980, and, according to Burdige, “Although the theories in that book are still valid, we know a lot more about sediment biogeochemistry today than we did in 1980.”

Richard Murray, an earth sciences professor at Boston University, wrote that the book “is poised to become the standard text on the subject for years to come.”

Sediment biogeochemists study a complex amalgam of processes related to some of the hottest topics in the news today, such as petroleum exploration, the carbon cycle and global warming, pollution of our waters and harmful algal blooms. Burdige gets high marks from reviewers for clarity and generous background material that stimulates newcomers and experts alike.

About a year after he signed the contract with Princeton University Press to write the book, Burdige took a semester-long sabbatical, and planned to churn out most or all of the manuscript during his four months of freedom from the classroom. That did not happen. Instead, the writing inched ahead over a couple more years, with Burdige learning on the job, so to speak. “I had this notion that I should not send out chapters for comment as I finished them, that the book was too interconnected,” he said. “If I had it to do over again, I would have saved myself some time by sending out chapters along the way.”

When he did finish his first draft of the manuscript two years ago, he was not nearly so far along as he hoped to be. Princeton sent the book to three expert readers, one of whom, Boudreau, lavished attention upon the project.

“He really took it upon himself to comment on the science and to take a first pass at copy editing. In a couple of places, he made me rethink the science. The book is much better because of him,” Burdige said.

A little over a year ago, Burdige sent in the revised manuscript, and then set to the task of preparing the 130 illustrations, graphs and other figures in the book. “Again, this took more time than I thought because the graphic folks at Princeton were a bit particular about the file format of the figures,” he said. “ODU graphics people, Debbie Miller (who has since retired) and Don Emminger, were phenomenal with their help here. It is truly amazing what all it takes to complete a project like this.”

Burdige said quite a few colleagues are using the book in classes this fall, and that the publisher is promoting it currently. “Actually, word travels pretty fast in our small community (within biogeochemistry). Fortunately – and unfortunately, too – I was working on the book for so long, lots of people know about it because they had to listen to me bemoan the writing of it.” Back to top

New chair aims to remove fear factor from doctoral process
BY LISA SUHAY

LTo allay the fear or hesitation of those considering the new doctoral program in counseling, Old Dominion University’s Batten Distinguished Chair and professor of counseling intends to demystify the process.

“Oh! The stories you hear floating around out there about the horrors of the doctoral process scare graduate students off right and left,” said Theodore P. Remley Jr., the newly named chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling. “This is especially true when an institution previously did not have a doctoral program in a subject, and students can’t see the workings and successes. That’s going to change here.”

Remley also said that a fear of taking courses in statistics and qualitative data analysis, both required for the doctorate in counseling, is another reason some students don’t consider the program. “A lot of counselors don’t like numbers,” he chuckled. “That’s alright because we’re going to get them all through it. ODU has a very competent and capable faculty, which is going to mentor and become more proficient at graduating doctoral students.”

To that end, Old Dominion has also hired Teresa Christensen, assistant professor of counselor education, who has personally helped nearly 40 doctoral students earn their degrees by assisting them in the dissertation writing process.

“I just keep students on task by setting deadlines and just not letting them stray. Anyone willing to work hard can do this,” she said. “I love to write, always have. Writing is a skill and you have to practice it to get good at it. I sort of have a system and a template that I follow and I’m pretty direct about it. I see it as sort of a collaboration.”

Like Remley, Christensen comes to ODU from the University of New Orleans, where they worked together for the past seven years.

“He’s a quantitative researcher and I’m qualitative, and we butted heads over that quite a lot in New Orleans,” she said. “That turned out to be great because we each learned a lot from each other, and his challenging me made me grow.”

Remley, who has led successful doctoral programs at both New Orleans and Mississippi State University, said, “I intend to make ODU a top name in the field for graduating doctoral students within the next three to five years.”

His plan includes seeding universities across the nation with ODU doctoral graduates, thus attracting an ever-increasing number of top-notch doctoral candidates.

According to Remley, that task is more easily accomplished at ODU than it was at his previous institution. “In New Orleans the students were mainly from families who had been there for generations and who viewed Georgia or Vermont as other planets,” he sighed. “In Norfolk, everybody’s from someplace else with the Navy and all, so it won’t be as difficult to get graduates out there into the big world to take the ODU name with them.”

Remley, who specializes in the field of suicide prevention, believes he can also save graduate students from doing-in their dreams of earning a doctorate.

“The problem right now, in any doctoral program in the United States, is that every program has different standards set by the individual professors,” he said. “Students are left guessing what the professor wants, and if you’re a good guesser you get a doctorate; if not, you could spend 10 years chasing the degree. I intend to assist professors in mentoring students to get them through in a timely and consistent fashion.”

Remley holds a doctorate in counselor education from the University of Florida and a law degree from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He is licensed as a professional counselor in Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi, and is a member of the bar in Virginia and Florida. A nationally certified counselor, Remley has chaired the counselor licensure boards in Virginia and Mississippi. He is a former executive director of the American Counseling Association.

Remley has also taught at George Mason University and Mississippi State University. Back to top

Former Lost Boy of Sudan returns from Africa trip
BY JIM RAPER

William Mayom, a 24-year-old Old Dominion student who was among the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” was reunited with his mother in Africa this summer after being separated from her for more than 18 years, thanks in large measure to campus fundraising efforts.

Mayom was among thousands of boys and young men from southern Sudan who fled a civil war in the late 1980s. His father and several siblings died when his Dinka village was raided. Mayom was just a child, but he migrated barefoot with older youths first to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, then to Kenya.

Now a pre-nursing student at ODU, Mayom was among 3,000 Lost Boys who were relocated from Kenya to the United States in 2001. He left for the states just a few months before his mother arrived in Kenya to look for him.

When Mayom passed through the portals of his extended family’s compound in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya in mid-May, he was literally smothered by relatives, the most excited of which were his mother, Elizabeth Yar, and 19-year-old brother, Abel. The scene was recorded on a video camera that had been a gift from campus supporters.

Donors in the ODU community also raised several thousand dollars to make the trip possible. The fundraising drive was coordinated by the Rev. David LaSalle of the Canterbury Center, which is affiliated with the Episcopal Church, and by Alicia Herr, a senior laboratory specialist for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

“When I saw the video of him meeting his mother, I cried,” Herr said.

“This is a wonderful thing people in America did for me,” said Mayom, who hosted a reception recently to thank his supporters and to talk about his trip, which was from May 13 to Aug. 12. He also received financial assistance for the trip from his co-workers at Sentara Bayside Hospital in Virginia Beach.

Mayom used donated money for travel and living expenses, as well as to buy clothes and other items such as watches and shoes for his extended family at the refugee camp, which includes one uncle and numerous cousins. “I also bought my mother a necklace, which she liked very much,” he said.

The video shows his mother rubbing his forehead during the reunion. “I have a scar there from an accident when I was a very little boy,” Mayom said. “When she felt it and saw it, she knew it was me.”

Mayom plans to get the training he needs to become a medical professional, and his goal is to be a medical care provider in southern Sudan. Back to top

String quartet to open Diehn Series
The Borromeo String Quartet will open the season Sept. 25 for the F. Ludwig Diehn Concert Series with a performance of Lior Navok’s String Quartet No. 2 and Beethoven’s Quartet in F major Op. 18, No. 1 and Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132.

The performance will be in Chandler Recital Hall of the Diehn Fine and Performing Arts Center. Tickets may be purchased in advance or at the door.

Cited by the Boston Globe as “one of the defining experiences of civilization” and by the New York Sun as “one of New York’s best-kept secrets,” the quartet’s adventurous programming and pre-concert discussions have long distinguished it as an important source of musical enrichment for all ages.

The group has held a long-standing residency at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston and maintained an ongoing concert series at the Terni Cultural Institute in New York. The quartet is regularly invited to perform for distinguished chamber music series across the U.S. and abroad, and has appeared at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, the Orlando Festival in the Netherlands and Norway’s Stavanger Festival, among others.

The Diehn Concert Series is supported by a grant from the Diehn Fund of The Norfolk Foundation. Tickets for the performance are $15 for general admission and $10 for students with ID. Tickets may be purchased at the Arts and Letters box office in the lobby of the University Theatre or by calling 683-5305. Back to top

Proposals sought for summer research grants and multidisciplinary, multi-institutional seed funds
The Office of Research is currently accepting proposals for two intramural summer programs: the Summer Research Fellowship Program and the Summer Experience Enhancing Collaborative Research Program for 2007.

The two are primarily seed programs for faculty with new projects that have not yet been funded by other sources, but might benefit from a pilot or startup effort afforded through a summer of work.

For more information and access to all required forms, faculty should go to www.odu.edu/ao/research. Those who decide to submit a proposal should first notify the Faculty Senate office by e-mail, fsenate@odu.edu, and their respective chair and dean. Oct. 13 is the institution-wide deadline to submit proposals to the deans’ offices.

The Office of Research is also accepting proposals through Oct. 2 for one-time multidisciplinary research seed funding for 2006-07. The funding will be available for the period Jan. 1 to June 30, 2007. The total budget for a faculty team may not exceed $100,000.

Information about this program can be found at www.odu.edu/ao/research/services/multidisciplinary%20seed%20funding.htm.

Descriptions of proposed projected must be submitted electronically to Mohammad Karim, vice president for reserch, at mkarim@odu.edu. Back to top

Newsmakers
“People are notorious for underestimating the quantity and caloric content of the foods they prepare and eat themselves. Whereas it would be much harder to overindulge on the Medifast diet.” (Sheri Colberg-Ochs, associate professor of exercise science, sport, physical education and recreation)

– “Medifast’s diet disorder”
Barron’s, Sept. 4

“9/11 became part of our consumer culture ... and on the one hand, I found that difficult and disturbing. On the other hand, I saw it as part of a long tradition in our history ... as a genuine process of grieving.” (Dana Heller, professor of humanities)

– “The marketing of our tragedy: Is everything we do as a nation really because of that day?”
Hartford Courant, Sept. 3

“What those students do in the dorms affects how they do in the classroom, and vice versa. We have to work together.” (Charles Wilson, interim vice provost for undergraduate studies and dean of the University College)

– “More Va. colleges, universities working on student retention”
Associated Press Newswires, Sept. 2

Textbook costs can be reduced if institutions help students shop around. They can do this by putting all book lists on the Internet (this is now law in Virginia), by providing a Web page icon to give customers easy access to used-book sellers, by requiring their bookstores to unbundle all textbook packages, and by operating textbook rental systems. (James V. Koch, Board of Visitors professor of economics and president emeritus, in an opinion piece)

– “The economics of textbook sales”
Daily Press, Aug. 24

“It’s really something the governor and General Assembly have been pouring quite a bit of money into over the past couple of years.” (Jennifer Mullen, director of media relations)

– “R&D helps crack government market: Research work can open broader opportunities”
Washington Technology, Aug. 21
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