AUSTIN, Texas—The Donald D. Harrington Fellows of The University of Texas at Austin will present a research symposium at 4 p.m., April 6 at the Amarillo Club in Amarillo.
The symposium is free and open to the public.
Two Harrington Faculty Fellows, Dr. Jeffrey Brock and Dr. Frank Gavin, and 10 of the 43 Harrington Graduate Student Fellows will be among the delegation of visitors from the university.
The group will be accompanied by Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, president of The University of Texas at Austin, and other university officials, including Executive Vice President and Provost Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Vice President for Research Juan Sanchez, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Victoria Rodriguez, Associate Graduate Dean John Dollard, and Harrington Fellows Coordinator Chris Marcin.
Sybil Harrington established the Harrington Fellowships to support gifted and ambitious scholars as a tribute to her husband, Don. The Donald D. Harrington Fellows Program supports young faculty and graduate students who have proven academic records of success and ingenuity.
“These scholars are helping the university to realize the Harrington vision of a highly educated, more culturally engaged Texas," said Faulkner. "Their scholarship is innovative, provocative, often at the leading edge of research and discovery. We believe that the work they are doing on our campus will transform the world in which we live."
Brock, of the Department of Mathematics, will present a talk about navigating in non-Euclidean geometry or “why you should never play golf in hyperbolic space.” Gavin, of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, will talk about how the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson crafted its non-proliferation policy in the wake of China’s detonation of an atomic device, and how those policies are relevant to today’s debates over weapons of mass destruction and rogue states.
Graduate Fellows Lauren Apter, Jeremy Brown and Tracie Harrison also will present to the audience. Apter, of the Department of History, will discuss the last years of British rule in Palestine.
Brown, of the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, will present a talk on potential applications of a technique that uses genetic samples to answer questions about how species have evolved. Harrison, of the School of Nursing, will discuss her dissertation research, which is focused on women over the age of 55 who developed a physical impairment related to paralytic polio at or before the age of 13 years.
The other graduate fellows attending the symposium and the departments they represent will be Tracy Bucholz, Chemical Engineering; Hao Cen, Curriculum and Instruction; Eric Katerman, Mathematics; Frances Ramos, History; Kristin Savicki, Educational Psychology; Sarah Warren, Latin American Studies; and Jennifer Winchel, Accounting.
The Don and Sybil Harrington Foundation will host a tour of the Panhandle Plains Museum, lunch at the Amarillo Country Club and a tour of the Harrington House before the afternoon symposium.
The Harrington Fellows Program hosted similar events in Amarillo in April 2002 and May 2003.
For more information contact: Christine W. Marcin, Harrington Fellows Program, 512-232-7597, or Robert D. Meckel, Office of Public Affairs, 512-475-7847.
