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 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

As a “creative academic” Baylor film professor Christopher Hansen takes a different approach to publishing his research and work. While academics in other fields publish books, articles, or scientific findings, Hansen produces feature-length films.


Hanson’s first major film was the “mockumentary” The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah, shot in Waco. The Proper Care and Feeding follows a man who feels he is a regional-type messiah—not the Messiah—as he makes plans to announce his holiness in a town-wide rally.


Now an associate professor and director of the film and digital media division at Baylor, Hansen managed to climb the professional ladder while giving students the experience of working on the set of a real film, a unique take on the common practice of undergraduates partnering in faculty research. Hansen described The Proper Care and Feeding as “more of an experiment.” With lessons learned under his belt, he began filming his next feature, Endings, in the summer of 2008. Shot in the five weeks of a summer school session, Endings is now making the rounds on the film festival circuit.

Endings features Hansen’s daughter, Emma, in a lead role. Hansen says he purposely wrote a part for a pre-teen girl. By keeping the family involved, he hoped to keep things simpler than they were for his tenure project. “I’m not a full-time filmmaker,” Hansen said. “I’m a professor; I have a wife and four kids. My time is at a premium.”

It is easy to see why movie making can be hard on a family. “A three or four minute-long scene, depending, can take a ten-hour day, or two,” Hansen explained. Each angle takes lighting adjustment and new camera placement. Actors speak the same lines of dialogue dozens of times to create one gripping scene.

And Endings was made to be a gripping drama. The story follows three people—a cancer-stricken woman, a drug addicted man, and a young girl—as they confront the reality of death. “It’s about the way people deal with death,” Hansen says. “Some know its coming sooner than others.” The film also addresses the role of family. Each of the characters has various issues with their family and, because they cannot go it alone, they band together.


Hansen said that writing, producing, casting, and completing an independent film is the beginning of an uphill battle. “The road for these films is getting harder and harder. A film is technically independent if it has no distribution deal,” Hansen explained. When it comes time to submit to festivals, he says, “we’re not all on the same playing field.”

But the exposure of his films beyond Central Texas is generating what he calls “momentum.”  So far, that momentum has earned him recognition for his work and a possible TV deal for The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah. He is currently writing a new film and is hoping to start filming next summer.

Chris Hansen’s opinions on filmmaking in Texas can be found on his blog, “Making Movies in Flyover Country.”

By Racquel Joseph

Dallas senior Jenny Abamu is a Baylor pre-law student with a major in international studies and minors in economics and Arabic. She has a passion for discovering the world and wants to work in foreign service and diplomacy. This past spring, Jenny visited Nigeria, completed a semester at the American University in Cairo, and spent her spring break in London.

As she explored Africa, Jenny took hundreds of pictures and created edited video clips. She established a Facebook group called “T.I.A.: This is Africa” where she posted her point of view.

“I kind of wanted to show people what Africa actually is,” Abamu explained.  “I wanted to make the people more human. Everyone has the National Geographic images in their heads, but it’s more than that,” she said.

Before Jenny had even stepped off the plane in Nigeria, she had her first crisis on the African continent. Her American passport had been filched from an overhead compartment while her Nigerian passport was left untouched. “With a Nigerian passport, you can’t go anywhere but West Africa without a visa. With an American passport, you can go anywhere,” Abamu explained.

The episode sums up the reason Jenny was in Nigeria in the first place. Her parents emigrated from Nigeria in their late teens, and Jenny was returning to discover her roots. “I was trying to understand, especially in this part of my life, where my parents came from,” Abamu said.

She also took the opportunity to spend her winter break among extended family before heading to Cairo for school. Jenny finally met the family that her parents had been helping to support from the U.S. her entire life. Family members came from all over the city and region to greet their cousin or niece with open arms and kindness.

In Nigeria, she found that everyone worked all the time. Leisure activities were rare. While she loved the strong community bonds, she saw why people would take an opportunity to migrate away from their home.

“While I was there, there was no president,” she said. Because of the instability, Jenny went everywhere, including jogging, with a chaperone. She shot a clip of her cousin, Isaiah, clad in a button-down shirt and slacks, gamely escorting her during her 6 a.m. run.

Jenny also experienced the consequences of political instability when conflict flared between the Muslim north and Christian south. After a fight in the streets, a twenty-four-hour curfew was issued. No one was able to leave their homes without facing serious consequences. But these reminders of a nation in flux did not stop Jenny from recording raucous New Year celebrations, street soccer games, and dancing cousins.

On January 24, after an eventful time in Nigeria, Jenny flew to Cairo, where she attended classes at the American University in Cairo in the Zamalek region. While the majority of students at the university are Egyptian, all classes are taught in English. She went on adventures with other foreign exchange students who she introduces in a humorous video on T.I.A. It was her task to “document their lives” as they bonded together in the face of a completely new culture, following the guidebook Lonely Planet into adventures good and bad.

In her final video, Jenny reflects on what it meant to her to travel through Africa and England. She decided that though she may seem to be just a number, one person, she now knows she means something to people all over the world.

Currently Jenny is back in Dallas readjusting to quiet streets, stores that close before 4 a.m., and the barely-there American style of dress. She is also re-learning that business owners do not know your name and you have to drive to get anywhere.

Jenny’s Africa can be seen on the Facebook group This is Africa and on her Youtube channel. She is still updating with videos from Egyptian field trips and London.

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.”

By Racquel Joseph

For some students living on campus, final exams are not the only obstacle standing in the way of summer vacation. Even before final grades are issued, students face move-out, a time where all dorm rooms must be vacated on strict deadlines.

This year, final exams began on May 5 and ended May 11. Students had until the afternoon of May 12 to completely check out of their rooms. Dorms are then vacant until May 30, a period known as “the interim.”

The result of this interim is a housing gap. Students that plan to live in Waco over the summer for school, internships, or other employment either live on campus, where dorms open on May 30, sign new leases that begin in June, or sublease summer apartments from graduating students scrambling out of leases.

This gap forces students to either move, and move again, or store their belongings for a few weeks (in units or in car trunks) and beg to sleep on the couch of a friend who is lucky enough to have a continuous lease. However, many students and parents are missing the opportunity to avoid the hassle altogether. There are such things as “exceptions.”

Dave Kennedy, assistant director for Campus Living and Learning explains, “The majority of our spaces do close down, but North Village, The Arbors, Fairmont, and The Gables apartments residents, in either the spring or the fall, can stay over. But they must apply. Usually that’s the biggest hurdle; people don’t apply.”

The small number of exceptions requested can be chalked up to a lack of awareness. Exceptions are mentioned on the Campus Living and Learning (CL&L) website, but a phone call or two is necessary to obtain one. However, only a small percentage of students are eligible for an exception because they must live in one of those four residence halls (North Village, The Arbors, Fairmont, and The Gables) and plan to continue living on campus for the subsequent semester.

On average, the CL&L office receives calls from only about a half dozen students, asking, “What are we supposed to do in the interim?” said Kennedy. CL&L does what it can to accommodate those students, for a price. Staying for the minimester (which coincides with part of the interim) costs $372 or $219 for those staying through the summer. For both summer sessions, rooms run $1,498.

But, if students are coming from majority freshmen housing such as Collins Hall, CL&L simply does not have the space for them or the storage to store their belongings. “There is a large percentage of our students that basically live within a matter of hours from here. It’s a little inconvenient for them but most of them are planning to go home anyway,” Kennedy said. According to fall 2009 statistics, 80.9 percent of students are Texas residents.

Summer housing on campus does seem to be increasingly popular, and there is not a definite reason why as enrollment figures have remained steady for the past five years. Kennedy suggests that pesky twelve-month leases are a factor.

Megan Woods, assistant property manager for Aspen Square Management, says that the office often gets calls this time of year concerning summer subleases. “Right now, this time of year, a lot of our residents are graduating and their leases aren’t up until August. It’s pretty common that residents need to get out of leases early,” Woods said. “It’s ultimately the resident’s responsibility to find someone to take over their lease.” All leases at Aspen Square are twelve months. At each local management company, one or two properties offer ten-month leases, usually at higher rent rates. Most available leases that offer students summer housing begin on May 30, June 1, or June 6, all of which fall after the interim.

So for some students the option of subleasing for the summer is the easiest. But that can lead them to move into one place for the months of June and July and immediately relocate to another, sometimes facing the fall interim. This year, that interim spans from August 10-18.

Houston senior Felicia Turner (pictured above) planned to move into her first off-campus apartment directly following CL&L’s move-out. Unfortunately, Turner was suddenly unable to move in as planned. “I was literally homeless for about a day,” she explained. Turner eventually worked out a deal to stay in a friend’s vacant house for fifteen days as long as she paid the electricity bill. “I am being very frugal,” she said. “I still have to pay for a storage unit for all of my furniture.” Turner reports feeling very stressed about the situation, especially because she is starting an MCAT preparation class during this transitional period.

Currently, Turner’s move-in date is scheduled for June 1, the first day of her summer classes.

The Baylor Alumni Association hosted the spring 2010 Ring Ceremony on Tuesday, May 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Waco Hall. Ring sales were at an all-time high this year with 475 students purchasing rings, and over 800 people in attendance at the ceremony.

The BAA hosts the event twice each year since the university adopted the single official ring concept as the newest of the Baylor traditions in the mid-1990s, and the event was moved to Waco Hall after outgrowing the Barfield Drawing Room. During the ceremony, students are presented their rings and told the history and meaning of the more than a dozen historic symbols on the ring.

Designed by the Balfour Company in 1995, the Official Baylor Ring may only be purchased by alumni or students who have completed 75 or more hours of study. Jeff Kilgore, executive vice president of the alumni association, said, “Baylor University’s tradition encompasses 160 years, and the Baylor Ring is a tangible symbol of that heritage. For Baylor alumni, it unites our past with our present and our future.”

For a complete look at the 2010 Ring ceremony, click here.

If you were unable to attend the ceremony you may pick up your ring from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hughes-Dillard Alumni Center. Call 710-1121 for more information.

Are you ready for a party?! On April 27, the Baylor Alumni Association (BAA) will host a Senior Send-Off party for all Baylor students scheduled to graduate in May, August, or December of 2010. The festivities will be held on the front lawn of the Hughes-Dillard Alumni Center on University Parks Drive from 3-6 p.m. Festivities will include music, games, free food, and a ton of give-aways.

“Even though students graduate from Baylor, they remain forever a part of the Baylor family,” said Jan Welch Dodd ’73, the BAA assistant director of programs and awards. “This is our way of welcoming graduating seniors into the ranks of the alumni.”

The alumni association has held a senior picnic in the past, but not in about ten years. Dodd said that the revival of the tradition will provide a great way to familiarize seniors with their alumni association and the value of membership in the association.

At the Senior Send-Off, students will have a chance to sign up for a one-year free membership in the Baylor Alumni Association. The free membership is available to any graduates who sign up either at the event, by phone, online, or at the alumni office. The BAA will also provide half-price life memberships, which have been offered for several years. New graduates can get a life membership—during a limited time period—for just $500.

At the Senior Send-Off event, there will also be drawings for numerous valuable door prizes, a class ring, and a grand finale give-away of $1,000 cash prize. “Seniors do have to be present to win the $1,000 prize,” Dodd said, “so we plan to make it plenty of fun and have lots of activities so they will want to stick around and enjoy themselves.”

Tell your friends, tell your family, and join us for a day of celebration at the Senior Send-Off. For more information, contact Jan Dodd at 254-710-1204 or e-mail her at Jan Dodd.