CAS News

Serving as a department head is hard work. Some faculty members would rather spend their time focused on their classes and research than performing administrative duties, which can be both frustrating and thankless at times. But Dr. Rebecca Brienen enjoyed the opportunities she had over the past 6½ years to make a difference while leading the Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History.

That made it logical for her to jump at the opportunity to become the College of Arts and Sciences’ associate dean of personnel and faculty development. She began that role full-time on Feb. 1.

Kayla Dunn has been selected as a finalist for the 2020 Truman Scholarship, the premier graduate scholarship for aspiring public leaders in the U.S. The Honors College junior majoring in multimedia journalism and Spanish will participate in a regional interview March 11 in Denver before the winners are announced April 15.

Joining Dunn as a finalist is her fellow Stillwater High School graduate Adrienne Blakey, a Ferguson College of Agriculture junior pursuing dual degrees in plant and soil science with a concentration in agronomic business, as well as agricultural communications.

“I bit his hand,” said Dan Wilguess, D.D.S., who then explained why his first dental visit as a little boy went so wrong. “I’m the youngest of three boys, and it didn’t occur to anyone to tell me that this man was going to reach into my mouth. Part of what drew me to dentistry was that no one, child or adult, should be afraid of a dentist.”

When Wilguess enrolled at OSU in 1990, he thought he would follow his father’s path and become a CPA. John Wilguess, Ph.D., taught for 28 years in what is now the Spears School of Business.

David Kersnar, head of the Department of Theatre, is a founding ensemble member of the Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company and has performed, designed, written, instructed and directed with the company since it was founded in 1988. He joins Lonna Freshley to talk about the options students have in both studies and careers in theatre.

Linda Watson, an Oklahoma State University professor in the Department of Plant Biology, Ecology, and Evolution, is one of five female scientists who have produced a comprehensive analysis of genomic-scale data to understand the historical biogeography of the Asteraceae, also known as the sunflower or daisy family. 

Watson, president of the Botanical Society of America, became interested in researching the diversity of the sunflower family when she was in graduate school. And throughout her career she has continued to study what is the largest family of flowering plants, and one that contains important crops, medicinal plants, garden ornamentals and weeds. 

At first glance, dance and science have nothing to do with one another. Yet Alannah Templon of Wichita, Kansas, has found ways to combine them.

“I have always loved dance and have always loved science,” she said. “Those are my two passions. One is more fun where the other I will make a career out of.”

The McKnight Center for the Performing Arts is collaborating with Carnegie Hall, the world-renowned musical institution, to engage Stillwater students with orchestral repertoire through hands-on music curriculum.

Throughout the school year, Stillwater Public School students have had the opportunity to learn how to sing and play a musical instrument in their classrooms through Link Up: The Orchestra Sings, a Carnegie Hall program. Their learning will culminate in two concerts with the Enid Symphony Orchestra at The McKnight Center. They will be March 25 after originally being postponed on Feb. 5 due to inclement weather.

The Oklahoma State University Symphony Orchestra is one of two groups chosen to perform at the 2020 College Orchestra Directors Association National Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Some 300 groups represented by the College Orchestra Directors Association auditioned for this year’s event Feb. 6-8.

Symphony Director Dr. Thomas Taylor Dickey said he is proud to represent OSU’s flourishing music program and strives to showcase works by underrepresented composers. 

For Dr. Sabiha Parveen, it wasn’t so much a question of what she’d study, but rather how she’d go about it. 

“I have always been fascinated by the human brain and how we function as humans,” she said. “I had read about audiology and speech-language pathology in an educational magazine when I was in high school and was really inspired by the scope of the field.”