Lindsey & Asp

VIDEO: Kevin King, 1:40

The University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication staff realizes that a college student is in need of more than research papers and multiple choice exams. Hands-on experience is critical for a students learning and preparedness for future jobs and careers. Joe Foote, Dean of Gaylord College, with the help of Dr. Shari Veil and professor David Tarpenning, has created Lindsey + Asp - the active advertising and public relations agency inside Gaylord that is run by the students themselves.

Lindsey + Asp provides students with the opportunity to create actual campaigns for several local businesses and organizations. “Lindsey + Asp is a unique type of experiential learning,” said David Tarpenning, the advertising advisor for Lindsey + Asp. “There are educational aspects to it, but it’s also a business.” According to Tarpenning, Lindsey + Asp billed more than $25,000 last year.

Lindsey + Asp has a creative team and media team that handle creative and media accounts, in addition to clients. Junior advertising major Tim Ketcher is on the creative team that is currently working on a campaign for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. “For me, Lindsey + Asp is all about good people to work with, strong ideas with research to back it up, and then watching us execute it better than anyone else,” he says.

The state-of-the-art facility offers everything students need to create the campaigns for their clients and gain sufficient hands-on experience before entering the corporate world. Some of the clients of Lindsey + Asp students include American Airlines, Habitat For Humanity and the Norman Police Department. In Septemeber 2011, Lindsey + Asp landed its largest contract yet of $77,500 with the Office of Strategic Communication for the U.S. Army Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill.

Lindsey + Asp is a very unique aspect of the Gaylord College that gives students precious experience with real-life businesses, and it expects a lot from its students. The motto says it all: “We are the new communicators. Today’s media are our playgrounds. We are creating relevance in an otherwise cluttered world. We are the knowledge and the know-how, but also the pomp and panache, and everything in between. We are the bridge between you and your audience.” The University of Oklahoma is taking experience to a new level with Lindsey + Asp.

Greek Students' Role in a Rebuilding Program

The University of Oklahoma men’s basketball team possessed the best player in the country in 2009. Blake Griffin was an All American and the first overall draft pick in the NBA draft. Since his departure, the Sooners basketball program has been abysmal. Two losing seasons later, they are hoping to bound back and reflect the team they used to be – the team that reached the Elite Eight round of the NCAA tournament. New head coach Lon Kruger’s plan of rebuilding a team starts with generating excitement on campus to encourage ticket sales. Student participation is crucial to the atmosphere of a basketball game. All groups of students are important, but the Greek system, whose members are the heart of campus participation, may be the key.
Many fraternities are getting the opportunity to attend basketball practices.Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity attended the Sooners practice most recently - last week. The students had the privilege of taking a tour of the locker room and facilities, watching the entire practice and shooting hoops with the players afterward. “I love Coach Kruger’s idea of allowing students to go to practices,” said Carson Rock, a junior member of Sigma Phi Epsilon. “It was really cool to be able to see everything that goes on during practice, not to mention getting to shoot around with the players after. I’ve never gotten to do anything like that before.” Rock is one of the many fraternity students who have attended practice this semester.

Coach Kruger has done his best to get fans and students involved with the program since he arrived on campus in April. These open practices are a very personal way for students to get to know Kruger and the players, and they seem to be proving successful in generating buzz around campus with students, Greek and non-Greek alike. The hope around Norman is that the excitement of the study body leads to ticket sales, which can ultimately help lead to success on the basketball court once again.

Kelsey's Story

Journalism students from the University of Oklahoma listened eagerly to special guests Cherokee Ballard and Britten Follett in Gaylord college of Journalism and Mass Communication Wednesday. The two ex-television reporters spoke with heavy hearts about Kelsey Briggs, the abused toddler who was the subject of the book they co-wrote. They also described their personal television careers to the students and the nature of the business.

Ballard and Follett’s book, Who Killed Kelsey?, is aimed to tell Kelsey’s story and fight child abuse in the state of Oklahoma. The title is such because it has yet to be proven without doubt who the murderer was. However, Ballard and Follett have their suspicions.

Kelsey was an abused two-year-old child who was murdered in October 2005. During the two years of her life, she had frequent scrapes and bruises throughout her body and suffered from a broken collar bone and two broken legs. She was killed from being hit in the stomach. Her mother, Raye Dawn Smith, and her step-father, Michael Porter, were both home at the time of the incident. Her father was overseas serving in the military.

Ballard and Follett are both prestigious names in the television reporting industry. Ballard has spent 25 years in television news and has worked as a professor of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma. She won the Staff Peabody Award and a Regional Emmy Award for her work covering the Oklahoma City Bombing, and was named Oklahoma’s 2008 Woman of the Year.

Follett travels across the country telling Kelsey’s story to students, in addition to the book. She recently entered the corporate world after spending five years as a news reporter for KOKH Fox 25. She is the winner of an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award, as well as six state and regional broadcasting awards.
Ballard and Follett have set up a website, www.whokilledkelsey.com, which provides biographies on themselves and Kelsey, and presents the opportunity to purchase the book and other wkk? merchandise.

U-Sing 2011

Singing, dancing and exaggerated smiling faces. These are the characteristics required of students participating in one of the surprisingly-largest student events at the University of Oklahoma. One week after the Habitat For Humanity event Shack-a-thon was over, the OU Greek system competed amongst each other once again in the annual event U-Sing - an event full of fun and great memories, and plagued with heartbreak. The show dates were November 3rd, 4th and 5th.

The first-place winners of U-Sing 2011 were the Delta Delta Delta sorority and Delta Tau Delta fraternity, whose theme was A Bugs Life (based on the Disney movie.) The Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity came in second place with a theme entitled Revenge of the Nerds. Rounding out the placing was the Gamma Phi Beta sorority and Beta Theta Pi fraternity’s show, A League of Their Own, which took third place.

U-Sing is an annual event put on by the Campus Activities Council (CAC) where Fraternities and Sororities that have teamed up with each other put on a show consisting of acting, singing, dancing – the whole nine yards. Each show has a specific theme. The groups begin practicing choreography at the very beginning of the semester and continue practicing until the days of the shows. The groups perform one show each of the three days. Judges are present to judge each show daily, and make a final decision on the last day ranking first, second and third place.

After months of hard work and preparation, placing in U-Sing provides a satisfaction that makes the effort worthwhile. However, a sour taste is left in the mouths of those not awarded. “We really felt like we were going to place this year,” said Ben Becker, a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He was one of the directors for Sig Ep’s joint show with the sorority Pi Beta Phi. “We thought we had a particularly strong acapella part of our show. We were definitely not expecting this, but everything is at the discretion of the judges.”

U-Sing is a big deal, to say the least. It demands hours of participants’ and directors’ time throughout the Fall semester and weighs considerably into the formula for the President’s Trophy. The President’s trophy is the award given by the University of Oklahoma’s President David Boren once a year to the school’s ‘outstanding fraternity.’ The formula for the coveted award consists of a mix of placing in U-Sing and the Homecoming Dance, grades, activity in community service projects and more. In the upcoming weeks, fraternities will be asking sororities to partner with them for next year’s U-Sing show; some hoping to repeat this year’s success, others hoping to correct their mistakes and redeem themselves.

Shack-a-thon

The University of Oklahoma’s student body seems to be constantly involved and active. From the Big Event in April to various philanthropies throughout the year, OU students (Greek and non-Greek alike) continue to serve the community they live in for four years while in school. The Greek students are particularly known for being involved in philanthropies and fund-raising events, such as Shack-a-thon, which begins Tuesday, October 25 and goes through Wednesday, October 26, may be the largest of the sort.

Shack-a-thon is an annual event at the University of Oklahoma that raises money for the Cleveland County Habitat For Humanity. All money raised is used to support struggling families in the Norman area. Fraternities and sororities team up with each other and build a “shack” creatively composed of cardboard boxes, wood and any other materials they can make fit together. The students begin building Tuesday morning and keep watch of their shacks overnight. Wednesday, they sit outside of them on the University of Oklahoma’s south oval lawn and ask other students walking by to pitch in some change.

“The hours are long and it takes a lot out of you, but its well worth it in the end,” said Dustin Gallup, an OU student who is involved in the human relations department of Habitat For Humanity. “This is my first year working for Habitat, but so far this is the most significant event for us that I’ve seen, as far as student participation.”

Anyone who is interested in the Cleveland County Habitat For Humanity and the other events they support can visit cchfh.org or contact Tracy Curtis, Director of Operations at tracy@cchfh.org.

Exercise is a necessity for good health – it helps your body stay fit as well as fight diseases. Anyone interested in how exercise affects the body may like the field of Exercise Physiology. Exercise Physiology is the field of study regarding exercise and its effects on the body. Exercise Physiologists are health professionals who study the body’s responses to different types of stress, such as exercise. These professionals use their knowledge to help people through phase I and II of cardiac rehabilitation, train athletes to enhance performance and to do research on various subjects. Dr. Beck, who graduated with his Masters and PH.D at the University of Nebraska and now works at the University of Oklahoma explains that every Exercise Physiologist has a different niche that they specialize in. The Exercise Physiology department at the University of Oklahoma specializes in focusing on what he calls “motor control strategy.” Using a surface EMG, the Exercise Physiologists record the signals the brain sends to a muscle when the subject contracts his or her bicep. “We examine the signals that are picked up with sensors, which tell a lot about how the person’s brain is motivating the muscle,” Beck said.
As for training athletes, Beck suggests large, multi-joint exercises using dumbbells. “There is very little carryover from training a single joint to training multiple joints,” he explains.
Matthew Stock is a graduate student of Exercise Physiology at the University of Oklahoma and currently conducts research alongside Dr. Beck and the other Exercise Physiologists. He explains that he and his colleagues analyze some people who have their eyes open, and some who have their eyes shut. “Studies have shown that the way people contract their bicep varies depending on whether their eyes are opened or closed,” he said.
The EPs (Exercise Physiologists) examine the results of their research, and then write a research paper that is submitted to other professionals in the industry. The goal is to get the research paper published in a scientific journal. The professionals ‘peer review’ the research paper and provide feedback. If the paper is accepted, it is published in the journal.
The Exercise Physiology department at the University of Oklahoma continues to conduct research in the specialization of how the brain motivates muscle contractions by subjects who either have their eyes open or closed. Mr. Stock expects to graduate this May. Anyone interested in being a subject for a study should contact Matthew Stock at mattstock@ou.edu or visit Collums, near the Everest Training Center on the University of Oklahoma campus.



VIDEO: Kevin King, 1:26

Jews and Muslims in the Middle East

Guest speakers are great learning experiences and opportunities for students to hear real-world information from credible sources. Every Wednesday in Gittinger Hall, the University of Oklahoma has Just For Lunch lectures, which is a program that hosts lectures by guest speakers. On Wednesday September 7, the guest speaker had a lot of interesting information on the history of the relationship between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East. He has traveled to many places to give speeches, and in fact, was headed to Britain in the next few days after this lecture for a television interview with the British media. At this particular event, he began with his lecture, which described the Jews’ relationship with the Muslims and some of the events that led to their separation, and then allowed questions towards the end.
In his lecture, the speaker began by clarifying to us that Jews and Muslims have parted ways in a very physical sense. He informed us that there used to be over 1 million Jews living in the Muslim world, and that only about 5% are left from a century ago.
Jews did not have much economic freedom in pre-modern Europe. They were limited to jobs such as tax collectors, innkeepers, etc. However, that was not the case in the Muslim world. Nevertheless, the Jews began to look for something better, something outside the traditional Muslim social system. They were eventually able to have European privileges; they were protected subjects. Furthermore, these privileges increased in the 18th and 19th centuries. By 1900, they had 26,000 pupils attending schools, and Muslims viewed this western education with suspicion and hostility.
The lecture concluded stating that there has in fact been a parting of the ways between Jews and Muslims, but the destiny of both groups is bound up – they will converge again. This was an interesting way to end the lecture because it left it open-ended to have the audience thinking.
There people of all ages at this event, which makes one think that this subject interests all different types of people. Joe Jankowsky came to hear this speaker with his wife for the first time. He said he came because he is interested in the subject. “This lecture gives us new knowledge of the situation, and it is very topical,” he said.
“The world is a very tenuous place for Jewish faith,” says Valarie Harshaw, one of the people who helped put on the event. “Israel is caught in the middle of a scary conflict, and it is important to get an idea of who the Jews are.” She said she helped put on this particular Just For Lunch lecture to help students understand the Middle East conflict. “As someone who has been a Christian their whole life, Jews have always been ‘out there’, not close to home,” she said. She wants to see them become more politically involved as well.
Just For Lunch lectures are held on the first Wednesday of every month. Next month’s lecture will be from a rabbi from Oklahoma City about Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism.