FEBRUARY/MARCH 2001
COMPRESSION
SHORT TAKES ON BIG SUBJECTS
Missing in Action
Michael Scott Speicher, a 1980 Florida State graduate who was shot down on the first night of the Gulf War, may not be dead, the President and the U.S. Navy announced in January.
President Clinton said Jan. 12 that he did not want to raise false hopes, but he intended to find out if Speicher is alive and get him back if he is.
``We have some information that leads us to believe that he might be alive and we hope and pray he is,'' Clinton said. ``But we have already begun working to try to determine whether, in fact, he's alive; if he is, where he is and how we can get him out, and we're going to do everything we can to get him out.''
Speicher, who was 33 at the time, was shot down in an F-18 fighter Jan. 16, 1991, in an air-to-air battle with an Iraqi fighter. He was the first American lost in the war and the last still unaccounted for.
He was officially listed as killed in action until January, when the Navy announced a change in his status to missing in action.
Clinton and navy officials said there is some evidence that Speicher may not have died in the plane crash. But they said they have no evidence that he is still alive.
He earned a degree in business administration at FSU in 1980 and then enlisted in the Navy. At FSU he met his wife, Joanne, of Fort Lauderdale, and they have two children. She has remarried.
FSU named its $2 million tennis center, which opened in 1993, the Scott Speicher Tennis Center.
Student life
The new Student Life Building, at the corner of Park Avenue and Wildwood Drive, has a 380-seat high-tech movie theater, a Cyber Cafe, an eatery called Java Blues and meeting and office space for student and campus organizations.
The 55,000-square-foot structure is the centerpiece of a future student life quad that will include a group of residence halls and academic buildings stretching across nine acres near the center of campus.
Maglab gets a raise
The National Science Found-ation has renewed - and in-creased - its financial support of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. NSF has awarded $117.5 million for the next five years, $31 million more than the previous grant.
"We have spent the past decade developing the preeminent center for magnet-related research in the world, said Jack Crow, director of the Maglab. "We look forward to a new decade of exploring exciting new science frontiers and technology opportunities."
The lab - a joint operation of FSU, the University of Florida and the Los Alamos National Labora-tory in New Mexico - is one of only nine of its kind in the world developing high-powered magnets that are used in medical and high-tech research.
Last year, the Maglab acquired a $16-million magnet equivalent to 1 million times the Earth's magnetic field.
The lab is expected to expand its research from physics into biology, environmental science and chemistry, and add staff and replace aging equipment.
Smoking urges
Smoking urges distract workers from their jobs, but only briefly, according to research by the Zwaan lab at FSU's psychology department.
Smoking urges arise when a veteran smoker wants a cigarette, but can't have one.
Rolf Zwaan and his students have conducted studies in which everyday cognitive functions, such as reading comprehension, are performed less accurately when people are fighting a smoking urge. Smoking urges make demands on attention and, as a result, less attention can be devoted to the task at hand.
Most recently, Carol Madden, a graduate student in Zwaan's lab, and Zwaan have conducted a study which showed that smoking urges not only affect reading comprehension accuracy, but also accuracy on mental arithmetic tasks.
But the study also showed that the negative impact of smoking
urges seems to last only a few minutes.
"While it is disconcerting that smoking urges are able to
effect such noticeable decrements in performance, it is reassuring
that these effects are relatively short-lived," Madden said.
Great human questions
Florida State professors are preparing to help high school
teachers teach the "great human questions."
With the help of a $10,000 grant from The National Endowment
for the Humanities, Rickards High School in Tallahas-see and
FSU professors are developing a course for ninth graders focusing
on three universal conflicts: good vs. evil, love vs. hate and
freedom vs. responsibility. The students will examine those questions
in major works of literature, music and art.
"Our students need to be exposed to ideas, cultures and people that they would ordinarily never encounter," said Rickards teacher Elisa Scherff, who is a doctoral candidate at FSU. "I am delighted to invite these visiting scholars to Rickards High School to help create and develop such a program."
FSU Associate Professor of Philosophy Peter Dalton was picked as the lead scholar by the NEH. The other scholars-in-residence are Dario Jose Almarza, Victoria MacDonald and Robert Gutierrez, all professors in FSU's College of Education.
Police complaints
FSU is working with the Police Complaint Center in Tallahassee and the NAACP to make it easier to file complaints about abusive police behavior.
"When complaints aren't filed, police come to believe they're above the law," said Diop Kamau, executive director of the complaint center. "They're em-boldened to be physically abusive."
Kamau said the cooperative effort is being developed through FSU's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Citizens may be helped to file complaints at more than 70 NAACP branch offices. The paperwork will be faxed to the police station where the officer works. More serious offenses, involving potential civil rights violations, will be forwarded to the U.S. Justice Department.
The complaints then will be compiled in a national computer database for research purposes.
Torch awards
Florida State's faculty last fall honored four non-faculty
friends for exceptional support of the university's academic
programs.
The Faculty Senate gave Torch Awards to Robert Johnson, the university's
former vice president for research; David Smith, a family practice
doctor in Jay, Fla., who graduated from FSU's Program in Medical
Science; long-time football and golf coach Don Veller, who has
made generous gifts to FSU sports; and Jeff Shaara, author of
widely acclaimed historical novels.
New visitor center
A new FSU Visitor Center opened in October in the University Center.
The Visitor Center has a formal lounge, a video presentation room and offices. It serves as the base for Visitor Services, which employs student ambassadors and provides tours and information to more than 22,000 visitors annually.
Michael M. Petty, a 1999 FSU alumnus and former university ambassador, donated the furnishings for the new center in memory of his grandmother, Edith Malone Fisher.
Is wired learning better?
Wiring the schools may mean students are learning more.
"There is nothing that says technology will improve student
achievement, but we believe that it does because it meets so
many different learning styles," Cindy Bowman, an education
professor at Florida State University, told the Washington Post
last fall.
Bowman teaches her students how to create WebQuests, research projects that are designed to make students think creatively about "real world" problems, then propose and argue for solutions.
"What gets students' attention is something really glitzy and crazy on the computer screen," Bowman said.
Education technology specialists suggest that students who may learn more using the Internet include "visual learners," average students, disabled ones, students not fully proficient in English and shy ones who shrink from joining classroom discussion.
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