By Racquel Joseph

When night falls on Friday, August 27, about 6,500 students will rush into the doors of the McLane Student Life Center and marvel at its transformation. In place of the normal crowd milling around in workout gear will be thousands of students exploring organizations, intramurals, and entertainment.

The McLane Student Life Center, commonly known as the SLC (pronounced slick), was completed in 1999. “Late Night at the SLC” has been a first-week-of-school tradition at Baylor since 2001. According to Jeff Walter of Campus Recreation, the event was originally designed as a showcase for the recreational facilities of the SLC itself. The first year, around 2,000 students attended. A few years after, the student organization fair was added through a partnership with Student Activities and attendance doubled. The result is an event that threatens to outgrow the building. Walter describes it as a loud, crowded, interactive, over-the-top three hours that will give students one more reason to be glad they chose Baylor.

More than 100 tables will line the walls, one for each of the 130 organizations represented. Many organizations use the fair as an opportunity to publicize their major events for the semester and recruit new members.

The first intramural game of dodgeball will be in the SLC gym. The racquetball courts will hold dance classes, mini-bingo halls, carnival booths, and mini-golf courses. Students can climb the rock wall and enjoy free food and Dr. Pepper. The latest addition to the tradition will be a live performance by worship band Dutton on the SLC’s outside courts.

The primary goal of “Late Night at the SLC” is to get students interested in campus involvement. The sheer scale of opportunities featured at Late Night gives students the confidence to know that their interests are represented in the spectrum of student organizations and campus recreation.

Late Night at the SLC is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. – 12 a.m.

By Claire Moncla

Welcome Week is just around the corner, and Baylor’s New Student Programs department is busy preparing events and activities for the incoming Class of 2014. The fun begins on August 19 with move in during the day. That evening, new students and parents can mingle with the Baylor family during the president’s picnic on Burleson Quadrangle.

The next three days are packed full of activity and interaction as freshmen attend the academic convocation, a spirit rally, and a service agency and church fair. Karen Hall ’05, coordinator of New Student Programs (NSP), is excited about these events. “I was involved with Welcome Week as a Baylor student and have helped out every year since then,” she said. “My favorite part is seeing the new students make connections and become a part of the Baylor family.”

One unique feature of Welcome Week is small groups.  According to Houston junior Daniel Haddad—who is a member of Baylor’s Chamber of Commerce and an intern for NSP—putting these small groups together is a lot of work. Current students must apply to be small group leaders and go through an interview process. If they make it, Haddad and other NSP staff members pair the leaders together and assign sixteen to twenty freshmen to the partners.  “The students are divided into groups based on their University 1000 section,” Hall said. University 1000 is a six-week new student course where freshmen discuss academics and values with a Baylor staff member. Small groups meet throughout Welcome Week and attend events together.

One party small groups will attend is Big Event, where freshmen can dance, hear a live band, and enjoy free food. The Baylor Activities Council plans and runs the event for NSP. “This year’s theme is ‘Neon Lights,’” Haddad said. “They will be turning the Ferrell Center into a huge black-light dance party.”

The Baylor family has not always welcomed its incoming students with church fairs and dance parties. Over the years, Baylor’s Welcome Week has included other traditions. Begun in 1946, Welcome Week was originally called the Pre-School Retreat. It was sponsored by the Baptist Student Union and held annually at Latham Springs Camp and Retreat Center in Aquilla. Students took bus rides into the country to stay in camp lodges and worship at an outdoor tabernacle. The freshmen assembled on a cliff top for vesper services, listened to inspirational speakers during the worship program, and gathered in the evenings around campfires.

In 1978, the university merged its orientation programs with the Pre-School Retreat to form Welcome Week. Beginning in 1979, upperclassmen annually welcomed freshmen on campus and participated with them in a field day, pep rally, and church camp.

Although Welcome Week festivities have changed, the love of tradition has remained. One such Baylor tradition is the Candlelight Ceremony. “Freshmen join with small group leaders and spend time worshipping with spiritual life leader Ryan Richardson,” Haddad explained. “It is amazing to see so many people from different backgrounds all praising God together in the Ferrell Center.” After the service, students take their candles—and like a trail of fire—file out to the Baylor Marina to spend time with their small groups.

Perhaps Welcome Week is not so different from past retreats that seem antiquated when compared to today’s campus activities and big events. Instead of traveling dusty roads to a remote camp and worshipping under the stars, Baylor students now walk solemnly across campus with candles—clutched in thousands of hands—held up to the dark sky.

By Racquel Joseph

Long before freshman orientation, some students’ first exposure to Baylor’s campus is at summer camp. By the end of this summer, almost forty groups will have set up camp across campus. Some are university-sponsored, some are independent, but every camp draws young people for instruction, growth, and fun. Baylor has plenty for students and parents to choose from, and all campers get a chance to explore, stay in dorms, and, often, work with Baylor faculty.

One of the larger camps, Baylor’s All-State Choral Camp, ran from July 6-10 this year. The camp’s director, Dr. Lynne Gackle, greeted close to 300 students for this year’s program.

“We offer individual voice lessons and sight-reading. We really focus on music literacy, something no one else does,” Gackle said.

The camp is intended to prepare students for the auditions for the Texas All-State Choir. Participants’ days are packed with about six hours of singing. Faculty members in the voice department support the camp by giving individual voice lessons where they can sometimes discover their future students.

“[The camp] attracts the brightest and best to Baylor music,” Gackle said.

Some of the campers yet to arrive on campus will be attending the Baylor Debate Workshop or the Baylor Soccer Advanced Academy. According to its current director, Dr. Matt Gerber, Baylor’s summer debate program has been around since the late sixties. The workshop is longer than most summer programs. Gerber calls it “an immersive two-week session.” According to Gerber, the workshop gives Baylor an opportunity “to recruit for the debate program…and give back to the high school debate program.” The cherry on top? Many of the students who attend the workshop enroll at Baylor even if they are not recruited for debate.

It’s a similar story at the Baylor Soccer Advanced Academy, a girls-only camp. Baylor’s associate head soccer coach Paul Dobson says it’s a trend for players to attend camp where they hope to go to school. Other attractions include the small size of the camp and the fact that head coach Marci Dobson is a former U.S. national team player.

“The information that she can provide is really invaluable to girls who want to play at that same level,” Paul Dobson said.

The camp is now in its third summer, and a boys’ camp is already in the works.

Besides young campers, Baylor also attracts a wide range of people through conferences. The Alleluia Worship Conference will be on campus July 27-30, marking its ninth summer at Baylor. Sponsored by the Center for Church Music at Baylor, the conference allows guests to hear from clinicians like Michael Burkhardt and Marva Dawn on being a modern organist, and obstacles and ideas in modern worship. Attendees generally include music ministers, choir teachers, and entire praise bands.

Summer camps help to introduce new generations to the beauty and uniqueness of Baylor’s campus. In their ability to uncover talent and keep a summer vacation interesting, they are invaluable.

By Claire Moncla

The Perfect Major: Studying science in college was not a hard decision for Katie Johns ’10, a Houston resident. “I’ve always liked learning about how things work, especially the human body,” she said. Johns said she picked neuroscience because it combined two other sciences she likes: psychology and biology. “Neuroscience combines the two [psychology and biology] to study the nervous system and determine the cellular mechanisms behind human behavior,” Johns said. “I like to understand why people do what they do, so neuroscience was the perfect major for me.”

Award Winner: Along with Rachel Zamzow ’10, Johns was the winner of an award for outstanding research in neuroscience last semester. And like Zamzow, Johns took on a large-scale project. For her senior project, Johns joined psychology graduate student Alex Grizzell’s research on impulsivity. “We investigated a possible brain mechanism behind impulsive behavior in rats,” she said. Johns used a rat to understand similar brain behavior in humans. “An animal model is necessary because currently, no other models can mimic the complex interactions that occur in the brain during emotional behaviors like impulsivity,” she explained.

Importance: Impulsivity is a significant behavior to study because it is a core component of several human psychiatric disorders. Johns listed drug addiction, impulsive aggression, bipolar disorder, and ADHD as some of the disorders that contain impulsivity. “A better understanding of the brain mechanisms involved could lead to better clinical treatments for these disorders,” she said.

Blast from the Past: Johns and Grizzell built their project on past research. Johns said that previous studies have shown that low levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin are associated with many types of impulsive behavior. Now that they had a possible cause for impulsive behavior, they needed to figure out exactly what brain areas are involved.

The Facts: Seizures are seen when neurons in the brain are hyperexcitable or firing too easily and too frequently. John and Grizzell’s idea was that impulsive behavior was a result of hyperexcitable neurons below the level required to see seizures. So they developed two hypotheses to test in rats, the first involving low serotonin levels and the second involving the administration of an anticonvulsant used to counter seizures.

The Results: “The results of the study didn’t support the first hypothesis, but it did show the trends that we expected for the second hypothesis,” Johns said. “Our results suggest that patients with impulse control problems may benefit from treatment with phenytoin or other antiepileptic drugs.”

Extracurricular: Johns’ spectrum of interest is greater than science and research; she described herself as more than your classic nerd. “I think of myself as a nerdy jock,” specified Johns, who enjoys playing basketball. She was also a part of the Baylor Neuroscience Society and Nu Rho Psi, the neuroscience honor society. Both involve discussion and presentation on hot topics and current research in neuroscience. “Both organizations also work together on service projects like Steppin’ Out and volunteer at a local Alzheimer’s care center,” Johns said.

Making a Difference: Johns said she wanted to conduct research on impulsivity because she wanted to make a difference. Now that her Baylor research days are over, she wants to continue making a difference in higher education. In August, Johns will begin medical school at the University of Texas at Houston studying clinical science and neurology.

Click here to read Faith In Science, the companion piece to Impulse Control.

The summer 2010 issue of the Baylor Line gives insight into the important cancer research Baylor professors are conducting. But what about students and alumni? There are many different kinds of research done at Baylor, and many undergraduate students have taken part in these research projects. Read on to discover more about Baylor research and the people involved.

Faith in Science
By Claire Moncla

“If you believe God created every human the way they are, is it ethical to cure people with autism and change their lifestyle dramatically?”

When a committee member asked Rachel Kressin Zamzow ’10 this question at her honors thesis defense, she knew what to say.

“I said, ‘here’s what I do know: I know that God’s sovereign, and I know he’s good. People who have autism have autism because he wanted it to be that way,’” Zamzow told the committee member. “‘I also believe that we’re given callings, purposes, and minds of certain intellect to solve problems we have on earth,’” she elaborated. “‘The ultimate goal in our lives shouldn’t be to cure autism; it should be to glorify God. But if you can glorify him through doing something science-related, it’s all the better.”

Zamzow’s belief in the importance of her research spurred her to academic achievement at Baylor: she won an award for outstanding research in neuroscience her last semester. As part of the honors program, Zamzow had to complete an honors thesis and defend it before a committee. She chose to do her thesis project with mentor Dr. Bradley Keele on autism research.

Why autism? Zamzow said she had three main reasons. “I’m really fascinated with the field,” she said. “There are lots of hypotheses and lots of theories, but nothing has been confirmed as a cause.”

She also had an experience that piqued her interest. Zamzow took a clinical psychology class in which she worked with an autistic student from a local school. “Interacting with him daily was fascinating because I was trying to see what in his brain was causing his behavior to be that way,” she said.

Zamzow’s mentor had also done smaller projects heading in the direction of autism research, so the path was set for her—but it wasn’t easy. “It was a substantially sized project,” Zamzow said. “We spent so much time and resources on it.”

Zamzow’s first step was to pick a specific topic in autism to study. She chose to research prenatal stress as a possible factor in autism. In order to study a disease or disorder that doesn’t have a cure, Zamzow had to create the effects of autism in an animal so she could study those effects. Zamzow said many researchers typically use rodents because they are easily acquirable and have similar brain anatomy and function to humans.

In humans, the three core symptoms of autism are communication deficit, social deficit, and repetitive motion. In order to test for these symptoms, Zamzow had to find symptoms in rats that were what she calls “translational”— or equivalent to the three core symptoms.

Rats’ primary form of communication is olfactory, so to test for the communication deficit equivalency in rats, she gave two groups of rats—one group unstressed and the other prenatally stressed—familiar and unfamiliar smells on swabs and documented their reactions to the scents. “We hypothesized that the prenatally stressed rats would be less interested in smelling the swab with the stranger smells,” Zamzow said.

To test for social deficit, she put an unfamiliar rat in the cages of the unstressed and prenatally stressed rats, and measured how much time both sets spent on the unfamiliar rat’s side of the cage and on the opposite side.

Testing for an equivalent of repetitive movement in rat behavior was a little more difficult, but Zamzow found a way. “Repetitive movement can also be translated in humans as the inability to change a routine,” she said. So she conditioned the rats to a routine and then changed the routine. Zamzow said she and her mentor hypothesized that the prenatally stressed rats would try to continue the routine more than the other group would and therefore demonstrate autistic symptoms.

Even though her results didn’t demonstrate a major break-through in an autism cure, the brains of the prenatally-stressed rats can be used in future research as a contrast in other studies. Through this project, Zamzow also found her field of future study. “I am really interested in developmental brain disorders,” she said.

Now a Baylor alumna, Zamzow is very busy. She recently married Corey Zamzow, a senior medical humanities major at Baylor, and she is applying to graduate schools. “I’m trying to decide between graduate school in neuroscience and doing research like what I did for my project. Or I might want to go to a field for science writing,” she said.

With many possible paths ahead, Zamzow is sure about two things: her passion about science and about God.  “As I learn more about science and as I learn more about my faith, I see them coming together,” she said.

Want to read more? Check out Claire’s companion story, Impulse Control.

By Racquel Joseph

University for Young People (UYP), an initiative of the Baylor School of Education’s Center for Community Learning and Enrichment, is a series of over thirty different summer classes offered for Waco-area gifted and talented students in first through twelfth grade.

Dr. Mary Witte is the current director of UYP and Project Promise, a similar program for low-income, “at-risk” students. UYP has been active for the past twenty-seven years. Courses currently offered in UYP run the gamut from “Bridge to China” with instruction in elementary Chinese and Tai Chi to “Aqua Explorers,” a course in the properties of water that includes a Kayak trip.

In “Digital Workshop,” a class taught by Baylor professor Dr. Mia Moody, students create a Facebook account, learn about online safety, and are given a crash course in producing a Flash website.  The website features a YouTube video, a biography, a photo essay, and a sample of the students’ work, whether they be poets or athletes. When class begins, Moody asks them to open up their PowerPoint presentations. Like real college students, some of them head straight to Facebook. One seventh-grader opens the local news website and scrolls through the top stories.

Some of the kids in UYP are aware of how smart they are. While eating lunch in the hallway of Castellaw Communications Center and waiting for class to begin, one kid asks another, “How am I not supposed to brag about getting a one hundred on a seventh grade math test?” He is eleven.

They propose almost-plausible scientific theories as jokes: the Earth is oval. And then they pick the theory apart, looking for shortcomings.

Rasun and Zachary, students in “Digital Workshop,” have both been in UYP for two years.
“We get to make our own stuff. It’s like ‘real life’ school,” Rasun said.
Zachary, who especially liked the a class on robotics last summer, said, “This is a school I would willingly go to every year. It’s really independent walking around campus,” he said.
“Yeah,” Rasun agreed, “people look at you like you’re the smartest kid in the world.”

Witte is justly proud of the direction of the program as well as its counterpart, Project Promise. She says classes like “The Real Game of Life,” where students simulate earning a salary and raising a family, give students “a little more appreciation for what their parents go through,” while introducing higher education. She says that the program, which currently has about 220 students enrolled, is experiencing more applicants who need financial aid. Currently, students that attend on scholarship are beneficiaries of a City of Waco grant, but Project Promise has a very high retention rate and there are only five or six openings a year.

Catelia Romero is what Witte calls a Project Promise alumna. Romero is now a sophomore at Baylor majoring in accounting and is working as Witte’s “office manager” this summer. Romero attended University for Young People for nine years, and it helped her to identify her strengths and interests, just as it is intended to do. In the “Real Game of Life” course, she discovered how much she enjoyed drawing up budgets.

“I still have my products at home,” she said.

The courses at UYP change each summer to accommodate what available teachers want to teach and what the leadership thinks students and parents will respond to. As it continues to grow, Witte hopes they can find the necessary financial support to sustain the program. After all, some of these students would like to stay until they graduate–from college.

By Racquel Joseph

When Mayborn Museum visitors enter the LEGO Castle Adventure exhibit, they should expect to be surprised by all the things that LEGOs can do. All sculptural elements of the exhibit are built of either large-scale LEGO bricks or the traditional play-at-home miniatures. The exhibit itself features two full-size LEGO suits of armor, a dragon, and an impressive throne room complete with costumes. Famous European castles are replicated in the plastic bricks accompanied by information about the realities of castle life from the points of view of cooks, stable hands, and the king and queen. In one area, topiary and castle gardens come with materials for children to build a landscape themselves. Other interactive elements include age-appropriate building areas and a chance to build a LEGO castle defense and test it with a virtual catapult.

To kick off the exhibit, which runs until September 5, the museum hosted a Waco-area LEGO building contest. Rebecca Nall, changing exhibits manager, said that the four or five other venues that have hosted the Castle Adventure exhibit held similar contests. But, she said, the Mayborn Museum wanted to keep it more local by asking entries to focus on Central Texas landmarks or a favorite part of the Mayborn Museum. The museum reviewed almost thirty entries.

Ann Garrett, exhibits coordinator, was on the committee that chose the six most visually interesting, original, and recognizable entries. “We didn’t have age parameters or anything like that. We wanted to make it as broad-reaching as possible so anybody and everybody would feel free to enter,” Garrett said. The six winners that were selected by the committee are currently displayed within the exhibit. The other participants are featured in a slide show.

In conjunction with the LEGO exhibit, there is a display of steel medieval armor on loan from the Higgins Armory Museum. It includes swords, helmets, breastplates, and a ceremonial children’s suit of armor.

Every Wednesday from June 16 until August 18, the museum will offer a special admission price of $5 and have special activities along the theme of “Myths and Legends” from the Middle Ages.

The Baylor Alumni Association would like to extend a warm welcome to President Ken Starr on his first official day at Baylor University. A native Texan, Starr is the fourteenth president in Baylor’s history.

To celebrate the occasion, the university held a Tuesday afternoon picnic on the steps of Pat Neff Hall, where Starr greeted faculty, staff, and students. Those in attendance enjoyed Dr Pepper floats, lemonade, and a variety of picnic goodies.

“Greeting a new president is a meaningful occasion in the life of any university, and we want to welcome President Starr and his family on their first day,” said Jeff Kilgore, vice president and CEO of the Baylor Alumni Association. “In its 165-year history, Baylor has welcomed only thirteen new presidents, and the BAA wants to recognize this significant day for the Starr family and our alma mater as we wish Baylor and the new president our very best.”

Every year the Baylor chapter of Phi Beta Kappa presents the Albaugh Lecture, a lecture series generously endowed by Mrs. Oma Buchanan Albaugh in memory of her late husband, Roy B. Albaugh, a Waco business and civic leader from 1920 until his death in 1964. The purpose of the Albaugh Lecture is to bring a nationally renowned scholar, artist, or thinker to the campus of Baylor for the benefit of both the university community as well as the Waco community at large. Past speakers have included notable members of the arts, politics, and the sciences, such as Stephen J. Gould, Leon Kass, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and John Updike. The goal of this event is to sponsor a speaker who epitomizes the kind of excellence regarding the life of the mind that characterizes both Phi Beta Kappa and Baylor University, a person who is not just knowledgeable but somehow wise.  That is one of the reasons why Phi Beta Kappa is partial to those speakers who are not only distinguished in their field but who can engage or affect other disciplines as well, for wisdom both integrates and surpasses academic specialization even as it profits from it.

This year’s speaker easily fits all of these criteria. Richard Wilbur is possibly America’s greatest living poet. He published his first poem when he was eight years old; he is 89 now and shows no sign of slowing down. Mr. Wilbur, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, has composed several volumes of poetry, won the Pulitzer prize twice, translated the plays of Molière and Racine, written several children’s books, and even worked with Leonard Bernstein to create the lyrics for the musical Candide. His work has, as the Washington Post puts it, an “enviable variety” which is “suffused with an astonishing verbal music and a compacted thoughtfulness that invite sustained reflection.” Mr. Wilbur’s presentation for us is entitled “An Evening with Richard Wilbur” and is guaranteed to be a success, for it will consist of him reciting some of his poems and talking about them. This is a rare opportunity to hear a first-rate poet decipher his own art.

The Albaugh Lecture will be held on Tuesday, March 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the Barfield Drawing Room on Baylor’s campus, and is free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, February 23, Waco received up to four inches of snow. At Baylor, students were released early and enjoyed the entire day building snowmen and dodging snowballs. For a complete look at the alumni association’s snow day pictures, please visit our Facebook page.

If you have snow day pictures you would like to share with us, please contact our communications coordinator at: Julie@BaylorAlumniAssociation.com