Office of University Communications
Missouri State In The News
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Dr. Dennis V. Hickey, director of Missouri State's graduate program in international affairs and professor of political science, is currently serving as a Fulbright exchange professor at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. He published an op-ed piece, "Time to stop playing China card," in the April 29, 2008 edition of The China Daily. A portion of the piece is below:
The time has arrived for American politicians to refrain from the practice of "bashing" China as a means to secure votes. They would be well advised to remember that Washington needs Beijing's cooperation to cope with a wide range of pressing global problems, including terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation, health issues, dwindling energy supplies and the continuing crises on the Korean Peninsula, to name just a few.
To be sure, China is very important strategically to the US. But there is more at stake here. One suspects that some politicians have no inkling of the significance that the Olympic Games hold for the ordinary Chinese people.
University students are enthusiastically volunteering to serve as guides and help make the Games a success. Shop keepers and taxi drivers are practicing foreign languages in the hope they will make visitors feel more welcome. Homes and businesses are being spruced up. And everyone here shares the common perception that politics should be kept separate from sporting events.
To call for a boycott of any part of the Olympic Games is not only irresponsible, it's an insult to the Chinese people.
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Dr. Drew A. Bennett, chancellor at Missouri State University-West Plains, published an op-ed piece, "Community colleges deserve philanthropic funds, " in the April 18, 2008 edition of the The Kansas City Star. A portion of the piece is below:
The cure for cancer and the answer to the energy crisis may lie in the Ozarks with two potential college students, not yet ready for a four-year college. Not only are these students denied the opportunity to attend a selective school because they are unable to meet admission criteria, they would certainly fail if placed in a four-year institution without the preparation available at two-year schools.
If we don’t help these students get started as freshmen and support their progress, we lose the chance to make the world a better place.
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Dr. Sheryl Brahnam, associate professor of computer information systems, was featured during the Feb. 21 CBS Evening News segment "Treating Pain in Tiny Patients." She had the opportunity to discuss and share results of her research on neonatal facial pain detection systems.
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The Missouri State Promise Scholarship was referenced in the Feb. 20 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article "Student loans to become grants for many" about Washington University's new grant program. A portion of the article is below:
In December, Harvard announced it would spend $20 million more on financial aid and would move dramatically to help students from middle and upper middle incomes as well. Yale has pledged to spend $24 million more in financial aid.
Last year, Missouri State University in Springfield came up with the Missouri State Promise, which gives its neediest students a free ride, plus $800 a year for books. The income threshold for that program is much lower, however, set at the poverty level, which ranges from $9,800 for an individual to $23,400 for a family of five.
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Dr. George Connor, associate professor and acting head of the political science department, was quoted in the Feb. 4, 2008 Philadelphia Inquirer article "In picking presidents, Missouri has missed once since 1900." A portion of the article is below:
The state is a mix of the Northern Plains - up next to Iowa - and the Deep South, the Ozarks region bordering Arkansas. It has two big urban centers, Kansas City, western in character, and St. Louis, considered an eastern enclave. Both cities have large African American populations and suburban swing voters.
Overall, Missouri has about the same mix of urban and rural residents as the nation as a whole; the same percentage of unionized workers; the same percentage of African Americans. And so on. People like to say that you are in the 'real' America here. 'It's not quite a one-to-one correlation, but if a candidate can win statewide here, he or she appeals to a wide variety of the electorate in the U.S. as a whole,' said George Connor, a political scientist at Missouri State University in Springfield.
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Dr. Dennis Schmitt, professor of agriculture and animal science expert , was featured in the Jan. 7, 2008 Associated Press article "Woodland Park Zoo elephant inseminated." A portion of the article is below:
Seattle, Wash. -- Comforted by buckets of fresh cantaloupe, apples and carrots, the Woodland Park Zoo's 29-year-old Asian elephant, Chai, was artificially inseminated over the weekend.
Zoo officials said they performed the 20-minute procedure with the help of a leading expert in elephant reproductive physiology, Dr. Dennis Schmitt, professor of animal science at Missouri State University.
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Dr. Dennis V. Hickey, director of the graduate program in international affairs and professor of political science, interviewed Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian. As a result, Hickey published an op-ed piece in the Jan. 6, 2008 edition of the Chicago Tribune. A portion of the piece is below:
Taiwan and mainland China have been separated since Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) government retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Taiwan is now a multiparty democracy led by President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a party that favors "self-determination" for the island.
On Oct. 15, Hu Jintao, China's president, opened the 17th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress by calling for a "peace agreement" with Taiwan. That move represents the latest in a series of "soft measures" intended to court key constituencies within Taiwanese society. Some suspect these changes are superficial, given that China has accelerated the campaign to isolate Taiwan in the global community and has deployed almost 1,000 ballistic missiles directly opposite the island. But others disagree.
In a recent interview, excerpted below, President Chen discussed China's policy toward Taiwan.
Q: Some say China's policies toward Taiwan are changing. What is your interpretation?
A: The nature of the CCP and its basic policy toward Taiwan never changes. It has one objective -- to annex Taiwan. The strategies have one goal -- to downgrade, localize, marginalize, undermine and delegitimize Taiwan's government and sovereignty.
Some say China's "soft policies" are getting "softer," while its "hard policies" are getting "harder." The real point is that "the hard is getting harder." We see the soft policies as sugar-coated poison. Many are deceived by this superficial change. China wants to annex Taiwan no matter which party is in power in Taipei. The only difference is that some Chinese leaders are more straightforward, while others know how to disguise their ambitions.
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Dr. Leslie Baynes, assistant professor of religious studies, published an op-ed piece, "His Dark Material: The Unsubtle Atheism of Philip Pullman's Books, " in the Dec. 14, 2007 edition of the The Wall Street Journal. A portion of the piece is below:
Although the series is a fantasy set in multiple worlds, there is no doubt that Mr. Pullman, a self-described atheist, targets Christianity--and particularly a rather thinly disguised Catholic Church--in these children's books. While the movie has excised some of the antireligious themes of the first book, the name of the most evil institution in its narrative universe remains "the Magisterium." Some moviegoers won't recognize this term, but the Magisterium is the teaching authority of the church, led by the pope. In the movie, one of the leaders in the Magisterium, the beautiful but vicious Mrs. Coulter, is played by Nicole Kidman.
Controversy began to build with the publication of the three books in 1996, 1997 and 2000. But it has taken the release of a major motion picture to bring the dispute to the attention of a wider audience. "Atheism for kids" is how the Catholic League describes the books. Mr. Pullman in turn calls his detractors "nitwits." Then comes the controversy about the controversy. Sniffs Laura Miller in the Los Angeles Times: "You have to wonder how much actual reading goes on in the sort of household that welcomes e-mails denouncing 'The Golden Compass,' anyway."
So is the ferment about "His Dark Materials" just Harry Potter vs. Fundamentalists redux, a clash that generates heat but no light? Probably not.
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Dr. Chris Barnhart, professor of biology, was featured in a Nov. 15, 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, "Bigger mussels for Missouri rivers." A portion of the article is below:
This summer, a team of state and federal scientists from Missouri built a device for mussels that simulates a natural stream flow. The device helped scientists grow bigger mussels at a research pond near Columbia, Mo., and at the Kansas City Zoo.
Without the device, scientists could grow the mussels only to be about as big as a grain of rice. Now, some mussels have a diameter of about 4 inches when they're released.
Mussels act as tiny water filters and can screen some pollutants out of rivers and streams. They also are an important food source for raccoons, otters, some birds and fish. Mussels act as tiny water filters and can screen some pollutants out of rivers and streams. They also are an important food source for raccoons, otters, some birds and fish. 'We call them the canary in the coal mine, and they really are,' said Chris Barnhart, a mussel expert from Missouri State University. 'If they're gone, it could be an indicator of poor water quality.' Barnhart estimates that he and biologists from the Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have released more than 3 million mussels since 1999, including the federally endangered scaleshell and pink mucket.***
Dr. Chris Barnhart, professor of biology, was featured in a Nov. 12, 2007 Kansas City Star article, "Zoo shows off some mussels in research." A portion of the article is below:
Some science-serving creatures at the Kansas City Zoo have exotic names, such as pink heelsplitter and fatmucket.
But they're natives and a local conservation breakthrough.
Biologists this past summer for the first time were able to raise native mussels in captivity from pinhead size to cookie size.
Such research will help restore endangered mussels and boost efforts to use other native mussels in water quality research, said Chris Barnhart, a mussel expert and a professor at Missouri State University in Springfield.
"These are fascinating creatures," Barnhart said. "You don't have to go to the rain forest to find cool stuff."
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Dr. John Schmalzbauer, associate professor of religious studies, published an op-ed piece, "Big Shots, Born Again," in the Oct. 18, 2007 edition of The Wall Street Journal. A portion of the piece is below:
Once upon a time, a Protestant elite ruled America. Its members were not just any Protestants, though. They came almost exclusively from the "main line," a phrase borrowed from the affluent suburbs lining the Pennsylvania Railroad west of Philadelphia. Mainline Protestantism -- encompassing the Episcopal Church, the Congregationalists and other liberal denominations -- was far more than a cluster of churches. According to the historian William Hutchison, it "was a personal network" comprising "familial, social, and old-school-tie relationships," including such clans as the Rockefellers and the Niebuhrs. It helped to build such progressive institutions as the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary. It was also capable of great bigotry, barring Catholics and Jews from its social clubs and law firms.
In "The Protestant Establishment," E. Digby Baltzell chronicled the "growth and decay" of the WASP aristocracy, describing its patrician families, elite boarding schools and Ivy League universities and noting their waning influence. Writing in 1964, Baltzell saw the election of John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, as a hopeful sign. And, indeed, later researchers documented the opening of the elite to Catholics and Jews.
Missing from most accounts of America's diversifying establishment is any discussion of what happened to the other Protestants -- the fundamentalists and evangelicals outside the mainline. A few attained positions of power in midcentury America, but for decades most could be found near the bottom of the economic ladder in the South and Midwest. The victims of class and regional prejudices, these born-again believers had been christened the "gaping primates from the upland valleys" by H.L. Mencken. He wasn't alone is taking such a view.
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. Buoyed by the upward mobility of postwar America, a critical mass of evangelicals made it into the elite.
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Dr. Keith Payne, head of the defense and strategic studies department, was featured in a July 18, 2007 Defense News article, "Nuclear Terrorism Bigger Threat Than Missiles: Ex-U.S. Defense Chief," following his testimony to the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces. A portion of the article is below:
Keith Payne of Missouri State University, said the United States must develop better intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities in order to maintain the deterrence value of nuclear weapons.
“When deterrence is our goal, there is no substitute for understanding the specific how’s and why’s of opponents’ decision making,” he said.
Payne said the often-heard assertion that terrorists are undeterrable “is mistaken.” They may be deterrable if U.S. intelligence is good enough to tell when and how deterrence will work.
Payne also stressed the value of maintaining the U.S. “nuclear umbrella.” Because the United States has a robust nuclear capability, allies like Japan have decided to remain non-nuclear. And that has been important to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, he said.
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