• The current First Tennessee bank cards must not be used after you have received your new BOA card. The new BOA card can be used immediately.
• The current First Tennessee bank card will soon be canceled and will no longer work after Monday, February 13.
• First Tennessee bank cards must be turned in upon picking up the new BOA cards. New cardholder agreements will be signed at this time.
• If you are picking up a card for the first time and not turning in an old card, you will be required to take the procurement card questionnaire. Access the questionnaire here. For Knoxville and university-wide administration employees, the questionnaire must be taken in the Treasurer’s Office when you pick up the card.
• If your current card number is used for a recurring charge, please notify the vendor immediately upon receiving your new card and provide them with the new number.
• Your current card number may be registered with some websites where you make frequent purchases—such as Staples, FedEx, and Fisher Scientific. You will need to make the appropriate changes with these sites as well.

If your default account number begins with E01, R01, E17, or R17, you can pick up your card at 301 Andy Holt Tower. For more information call 974-3086.

If your default account number does not begin with one of the codes listed above, you will be notified by your campus coordinator.

Coordinators for individual campuses/units are:

• Chattanooga – Charles Scott
• Graduate School of Medicine – Debbie Brown
• AG Extension – Tim Fawver
• AG Experiment – Melinda Jones
• Vet School – Tonya Kenley
• IPS/CTAS/MTAS – Gail White
• UTSI – Courtney Maricle
• Martin – Laura Foltz
• Memphis – Linda Crouch
• UT Foundation – Robert Harrill

A mini-parade in the Watsons’ honor ran along Phillip Fulmer Way in front of the stadium. Orange-clad UT students and employees joined others from the community in cheering as the Vol Spirit Squad and several Thanksgiving-themed hot air balloons paraded down the street. The program is set to air this Thanksgiving on ABC-TV.

Daniel Watson and two of his children exit the "Extreme Makeover" bus with actress Jenny McCarthy.

Actress Jenny McCarthy substituted for show host Ty Pennington in congratulating the family. Following the parade, the Watsons left for a week’s vacation in Florida, while their home on Robinson Road in Knoxville is being remodeled.

The family’s home also plays host to Restoration House of East Tennessee, which gives single mothers and their children a place to live while they get their lives back in order. The remodeling project will allow Restoration House to continue its mission, literally, on a sounder footing: the home’s sinking foundation will be repaired as part of the overall renovation.

For more information, visit http://abc.go.com/shows/extreme-makeover-home-edition/index.

“It is an honor to recognize these individuals for their exemplary service to the UT community,” Graham said. “Members of the UT Police Department conduct countless acts of valor, service, and benevolence throughout the year.”

Underwood

UTPD’s supervisor of the year is Lieutenant Jim Underwood. Underwood is the third shift patrol commander and has served with UTPD for nineteen years. While at UTPD, Underwood has served as lead firearms instructor. Underwood was described by nominators as one of the most approachable supervisors in the department with a contagious and admirable work ethic.

Wade

The officer of the year is Corporal Ron Wade, a first shift patrol officer and member of UTPD for sixteen years. Wade serves as a field training officer and Alcohol Diversion Program instructor for UTPD. Wade was described by nominators as professional, positive, and willing to always help.

Powell

The non-commissioned staff member of the year is Sean Powell, a community service officer for the past thirteen years. Powell was described by colleagues as committed and professional.

Emmerson

The community service award went to Corporal Mike Emerson, a second shift patrol officer. Emerson continually works on outreach programs within the university community and his church family.

Experts say household waste often increases more than 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. That means the holidays can have a negative impact on the environment.

However, there are ways to make the holidays more environmentally friendly.

“Small changes to our routines can help make the holiday season more fun and less wasteful,” said Gordie Bennett, UT Knoxville’s sustainability manager.

An informal poll of UT Knoxville faculty and staff members found some unique and easy tips for “greening” the holidays this season. Here are two more interesting sustainability-focused holiday tips from UT Knoxville’s faculty and staff:

“We are firm believers in re-gifting. We also use old paper grocery bags as wrapping paper. You can decorate it with stencils and paint, and it may end up being nicer than the gift! Also, as our tree lights fail over time, we replace them with more energy-efficient strands.” – Aly Chapman, laboratory section chief, College of Veterinary Medicine

Gordie Bennett adds: “My personal tip is to skip presents in favor of making a contribution to your loved one’s favorite charity. This reduces waste and helps make the holidays a little nicer for someone in need.”

Team Living Light stands in front of their completed house on the Washington Mall.

Competition begins today for Team Living Light, UT’s student team competing in the Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon. Our students have assembled their state-of-the-art house on the Washington Mall in Washington, D.C.

Public tours begin today along with 10 decathlon contests that judge design, sustainability, efficiency, appeal, and cost-effectiveness, among other factors. You can follow the team throughout the competition by visiting their blog at http://livinglightutk.com/blog. You can also follow the team on Twitter and Facebook.

UT’s team faces tough competition from Ohio State, Purdue, the University of Illinois, and groups representing universities in Florida, New Zealand, China, Belgium, and Canada.

You can help Team Living Light by voting for them in the People’s Choice category. Online voting begins at 8:00 a.m. Friday, September 23, at http://www.solardecathlon.gov. Voting will remain open until 7:00 p.m. Friday, September 30.

This is a reminder of the October 1 deadline for ordering reading materials for your spring courses. In 2007 the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law designed to control textbook costs at Tennessee public colleges and universities. The book order deadlines of April 1 for fall semester, October 1 for spring semester, and February 1 for summer school need to be observed by all faculty members to meet legislative requirements.

The spirit behind the law is a good one: we all know that the cost of the materials we assign our students impacts their ability to succeed in college. This is why all of us already consider carefully the cost of books when crafting our required reading lists.

The University of Tennessee Bookstore works hard to meet its obligation of being a full-service provider of course materials for our students. The UT bookstore is particularly important for scholarship students who often depend on it as the only place that can accept their financial aid in a timely fashion and get books to them before the start of classes. To speed the process, the UT Bookstore added the Online Faculty Adoption feature on their website. Faculty and department coordinators can submit book requests electronically saving time and paper. The bookstore will continue to accept book requests via hand delivery, campus mail, and fax, but encourages faculty to use the online method by visiting http://web.utk.edu/~bkstore/?p=adoption and following the instructions.

Some students find lower prices online, in used bookstores, etc. Some faculty members encourage them to do so. If you will be encouraging your students not buy form the bookstore, please note that on your book orders. The bookstore tries to stock the correct number of books, but it can lose money when the number of students purchasing at the bookstore is significantly lower than in past semesters. We need your help in accurately predicting orders and reducing waste costs so that we can keep cost to students as low as possible.

The legislation further states that textbooks, when the publisher provides them for free, be placed on library reserve or in a place of easy student access. I especially encourage you to donate these examination copies to the Black Cultural Center’s Book Loan Program. Doing so will help us fulfill the letter of the law, but far more importantly it will help us meet the needs of students who find the cost of textbook purchases prohibitive.

Please deliver the books directly to the Black Cultural Center, or contact Tanisha Jenkins at 865-974-6861 or tjenkins@utk.edu for alternative arrangements.

For more information on the UT Bookstore’s Online Faculty Adoption program, contact Abbie Shellist at 974-1048 or ashellis@utk.edu.

Thank you in advance for placing your book orders before October 1 and for considering providing your examination copies to the Black Cultural Center.

The hour-long panel discussion, which begins at 5:30 p.m., will be held in the Alumni Memorial Building auditorium.

Life of the Mind is a common reading experience that gives first-year students their initial taste of academic life at UT Knoxville. This year, for the first time, Life of the Mind is part of FYS 100, a zero-credit, pass-fail course for all first-year students.

This year’s book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, an award-winning science writer. It’s the story of an African-American woman whose cervical cancer cells, taken during a biopsy and cultured without her knowledge or permission in the 1950s, have been integral in developing the polio vaccine, unlocking secrets of cancer and viruses, helping understand the effects of the atom bomb, and contributing to the development of in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. The cells are known as HeLa, a name derived from the initial letters of her first and last names.

Four panel discussions related to the book have been planned, and students must attend at least one to fulfill FYS 100 requirements.

The first panel discussion, held on August 18, drew more than 549 students. More than 900 students have RSVP’d for the second panel.

The September 8 panel will focus on legality and ethics in research. It will be moderated by Glenn Graber, professor of philosophy and chair of UT’s Institutional Review Board, a role which requires him to be well-versed in biomedical ethics, ethics in health care, religion and professional ethics, the ethics of cloning and suicide, and the allocation of health-care resources. A UT faculty member for 40 years, Graber has taught several thousand undergraduates, hundreds of graduates, and chaired dozens of theses and dissertations.

Panelists include:

• Dr. Paul Erwin, director of the Department of Public Health at the University of Tennessee. Erwin is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and public health and preventive medicine and also has a master’s degree and doctorate in public health. Prior to coming to UT in 2007, he worked with the Tennessee Department of Health for sixteen years, the last twelve years of those as director of the East Tennessee Regional Health Office.
• Catherine Crawley, communications coordinator for NIMBioS, the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, an organization promoting interdisciplinary approaches to research. She is key organizer of the “Research Experience for Veterinary Students” program that gives undergraduates majoring in math, biology, veterinary science, and related fields the chance to work with UT professors during the summer on various research projects.
• Annette Mendola, a lecturer in the department of philosophy, specializing in bioethics and clinical ethics. Prior to graduate school, she worked in the inpatient psychiatric division of a small county hospital in upstate New York, an experience which sparked her interest in bioethics, especially clinical ethics and mental health ethics. Today she is an active member of the Ethics Committee at UT Medical Center and teaches ethics classes for Medical Explorations, a pre-health program at UTMC. Her teaching interests include clinical ethics education, feminism, and all areas of practical ethics.
• Brenda Lawson, a compliance officer and administrator of the Institutional Review Board that regulates all research activities involving human subjects on the UT Knoxville Campus.

The third panel, on September 20, will be linked to the fiftieth anniversary of African-American undergraduates being admitted to UT. It will focus on how people with diverse backgrounds have made important contributions to the advancement of diversity and inclusivity on campus. Moderated by Rita Geier, senior fellow at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and associate to the chancellor, the panel will include Charles Houston, chair of the fiftieth anniversary committee; Amadou Sall, lecturer in Africana Studies; and Loida Velazquez, Hispanic community leader.

The final panel discussion will be held on October 18. It will focus on UT research and how undergraduates can get involved. Moderated by Mark Littmann, professor of journalism and electronic media, the panel will include Sharon Pound from the Office of Research and a number of undergraduates, some who are actively involved in HeLa cell research.

—

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Dave Schumann

The North Star Award is the highest recognition and honor given by the Global Leadership Scholars (GLS) honors program in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Business Administration. Recipients of the North Star Award demonstrate extraordinary leadership, commitment, and service to the GLS program.

Schumann and Pierce co-developed the college’s Global Leadership Scholars Honors program and launched it in 2008.

Fred Pierce

“Schumann and Pierce have no idea how much of an impact they have made in each of our lives,” said Jonathan Emkes, GLS in the May 2011 graduating class. “They invested countless hours in each of us, helped us reach our full potential, and prepared us for our futures. Because of them, we are better students, better leaders, but, most importantly, better human beings. The foundation and legacy they established will continue to influence future Global Leadership Scholars classes for many years to come.”

The name “North Star” was selected for this award because of the North Star’s unique characteristics and qualities that are easily transferable to “leadership within a global context.” For example, the North Star’s light is very bright and highly visible among other stars. Recipients of the GLS North Star Award demonstrate unquestionable leadership that distinguishes them as a “leader among leaders.”

The North Star’s position has long been relied upon for global and celestial navigation. Similarly, leaders have been relied upon to steer groups of people, projects, and operations. Effective and successful leaders have the highest of aspirations and will stretch and strain to reach the apex of their goals. They are not satisfied with the status quo or being second best. Instead, North Star leaders carefully craft an action plan that will strategically and efficiently lead them on their leadership journey to their chosen destination.

Recipients of the GLS North Star Award provide incredible leadership role models of self-reflection and direction.

Akiki, from the University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI), won first place in the Masters Division at the 2011 Southeastern Regional Student Conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

More than two hundred delegates from thirteen universities in the Southeastern Region attended the conference, held in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on April 4–5.

Akiki’s paper, “New Framework for Modeling the Bidirectional Vortex Engine Flowfield with Arbitrary Injection,” was coauthored by his advisor, Joseph Majdalani. The paper introduces a groundbreaking framework for modeling cyclone-like motions with arbitrary injection patterns inside a simulated, swirl-dominated, vortex rocket engine. Despite its importance to the modeling of trapped vortex engines, the same work may be extended to meteorological and industrial applications such as the modeling of hurricanes, twisters, cyclone furnaces that feed coal in a spiral manner into a combustion chamber, and centrifugal flow separators, which separates water from particles.

The award was presented by George F. Sowers, vice president of business development for United Launch Alliance, and Alan Lowrey, AIAA Southeastern regional director.

Akiki is from Kesrouan, Lebanon, and received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Notre Dame University, Louaize. He joined UTSI in 2009 where he is pursuing a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.