Ƶ

Skip to main content

News

Main Content
news roundup
  • Share

From the College World Series to full accreditation for the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, and from 100-degree heat to remote work, TCU and its faculty and alumni are in the news.  

INSTITUTIONAL


June 27, 2023
The Dallas Morning News 
Each July, two chamber music festivals, Basically Beethoven in Dallas and the Mimir Chamber Music Festival in Fort Worth, assemble musicians for enterprising programs. Curt Thompson was a violin professor at TCU when he and a friend started Mimir 25 years ago. Each summer, still at TCU, it brings together excellent musicians from major orchestras, chamber ensembles and conservatory faculties to put on a series of public concerts.


June 26, 2023
Yahoo News
The I-20 Wildlife Preserve will enlarge its outdoor classroom after welcoming seven Midland high school students into its new Conservation Job Corps program, which will allow students to obtain hands-on experience in conservation, restoration, education and research before entering college. As part of the program, students will travel to the San Antonio Zoo. There, they'll meet up with zoo biologists who have been working with TCU on a grow-and-release program for the horned lizard.


June 22, 2023
The Dallas Morning News 
The Ƶ A&M University System is building a new campus in the heart of Fort Worth’s downtown. “We welcome Ƶ A&M to Fort Worth and anticipate a synergy between our institutions that comes from collaboration in higher education,” Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr. said in a statement. The university values “the opportunities to combine our efforts with our Aggie friends for lasting economic impact that will benefit our city and the entire region.”


June 21, 2023 
Sportskeeda 
հ䱫’s success in college sports, including their recent achievements in the College Football Playoffs and their progress in the College World Series, has brought attention to their mascot, the Horned Frog. According to the TCU Admissions website, “The answer goes way back to 1897, when the yearbook staff of the then-named AddRan Christian University was looking to name its annual. Football began at the university the year before, and legend has it that the football field was covered in the small-but-mighty horned lizards.”


June 15, 2023
Fort Worth Star-Telegram 
After a year full of firsts for the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine, TCU gets one more. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education awarded the school with full accreditation, signifying it as a medical program leading to an M.D. that meets quality standards since it opened in 2019. “This has been a tremendous opportunity to establish a unique and innovative medical school in the most remarkable community in the country,” said Dr. Stuart D. Flynn, founding dean. “The amazing individuals at Ƶ Christian University and the School of Medicine embraced a mission to transform medical education to advance patient care. Our goal has always been to inspire our students to be the kind of physicians that you would want caring for you. And our students have worked very hard to get here and they will be the leaders of health care moving forward.”


June 7, 2023
Becker's Hospital Review 
The physician shortage in the U.S. is common knowledge. Why don't more donors put their money toward tuition for people to become physicians? It happens. Every once in a while, an anonymous donor makes the decision to fund full tuition for an entire medical school class. In 2022, an anonymous donation to the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU funded the full tuition for the third year of education for the 60-person class of 2024. 


June 7, 2023
Fort Worth Magazine 
The latest mural featuring notable Horned Frog alumni in honor of հ䱫’s 150th anniversary was just unveiled in Chicago. The new mural features four alumni who are making a difference by practicing both the empathy and skill they learned in their pre-health, nursing and M.D. educations at TCU. The honorees include Dr. McKenna Chalman, Dr. Courtney Sullivan, Dr. Brandon Zsigray and Emma Joy, RN. “We’re honored to celebrate these four outstanding alumni in Chicago in addition to all the Horned Frogs who are making an impact as doctors, nurses, clinicians, and researchers,” said TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr. “Our medical school and nursing and pre-health programs lead the way for the future of health care education curriculum and training.”


June 2, 2023
The Dallas Morning News
“As our first class of new physicians from the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Ƶ Christian University walked across the stage to receive their diplomas, they stepped into a new world of medicine,” wrote Dr. Stuart D. Flynn, founding dean, in a recent op-ed. “These 52 students were the inaugural class and landed excellent residency spots across Ƶ and throughout the country. We’ve taken medical education to new levels, changing the way students learn and focusing on where the transformational advances in medicine will occur. We’ve partnered with health care systems Baylor, Scott & White and Ƶ Health Resources to create a breathtakingly exciting 260 new graduate slots in North Ƶ by 2028. And we will continue to expand these training programs, adding a robust pipeline to address the growing physician shortage in Ƶ.”

FACULTY


June 27, 2023 
Fort Worth Star-Telegram 
When a school voucher proposal backed by the governor died at the end of the legislative session, Abbott suggested he plans to call lawmakers back for a special session on the issue later this year. “I think that probably the telephone lines and the text messages and emails are just buzzing all over Austin trying to put together a coalition of people who might be willing to support Gov. Abbott on those issues — but they’re not going to support it without having some side payments involved,” said Jim Riddlesperger, political science professor.


June 26, 2023 
WFAA-TV
Triple-digit heat will likely be with us this summer in DFW. Dr. JoAnna Leuck, associate dean of curriculum at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, specializes in emergency medicine and said textbooks say concern starts when heat is over 90 degrees for three days in a row. A week above 100 can be deadly. “We have just seen an influx of everything from mild dehydration that just needs some IV fluids to really critically ill patients that it’s the heat that really caused their illness,” she said. “We’re worried that this is going to continue.”

 


June 26, 2023
Meer 
Conduit Gallery is honored to announce a solo exhibition of paintings by Dallas-based artist Michael Frank Blair. Blair’s work is concerned with the materiality of imagery and space specifically, making work that is not reducible to the concerns of representation or illustrative imagery. Blair notes of his paintings, “They, all in their own ways, leverage style against material, material against composition, depth against surface, and order against play, to create surfaces that reframe the facts and illusions of pictorial space in a fresh way.” Blair has taught Art Criticism and Theory at TCU since 2013.


June 26, 2023
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
There are worries among some that as the climate in Tarrant County government becomes more political, the next county administrator chosen by the commissioners may be handpicked or partisan. And experts who spoke with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram say finding a replacement may be a tough task for the commissioner’s court given that changing environment. “There are a number of people who might otherwise be a candidate for these kinds of positions that are not going to want to walk into kind of a partisan atmosphere where they’re going to make half of their bosses mad whenever they do anything,” said Jim Riddlesperger, political science professor.


June 23, 2023
mije.org
The 2023 Maynard 200 Fellowship is partnering with the Bob Schieffer College of Communication. Its opening reception includes an address by Uche Onyebadi, chair of the journalism department. The first full training day featured opening remarks by Dean Kristie Bunton. Long-standing TCU faculty member Jean Marie Brown, associate professor of professional practice and director of student media journalism, has also been instrumental in welcoming the Maynard 200 Fellowship. Under Brown’s tutelage, the Fault Lines® methodology has also been applied to in-depth community reporting by students. “Hosting the Maynard 200 professional development training program further demonstrates our profound commitment toward upholding the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Onyebadi said.


June 23, 2023 
Houston Chronicle
The University of Houston and three other state institutions could become the beneficiaries next year of a nearly $4 billion investment fund – a major financing asset that supporters hope will place more Ƶ schools in the company of nationally esteemed universities. Christine Hall, program coordinator of հ䱫’s master of education program in higher education leadership, said the law affirms Ƶ' commitment to the growth of its universities. “I really feel like higher education has been and is at a crossroads with public perception,” Hall said. “A move like this shows that, for Ƶ, higher education is a public good.”


June 14, 2023 
US Black Engineer & IT Magazine 
Brandon J. Manning, associate professor of Black literature and culture, walked with Opal Lee on the first federally recognized Juneteenth day two summers ago. Afterward, Manning nominated Lee for an honorary doctorate from TCU, where she received a standing ovation. Manning’s research focuses on contemporary African American literary and cultural studies and popular culture, and he has published several essays in journals and edited collections, as well as co-edited a special issue of The Black Scholar.


June 14, 2023
KRLD
TCU political science professor Jim Riddlesperger joined the KRLD Newsline to discuss former President Trump’s presidential run, in light of his recent indictment. “This is a very interesting case because there’s two things at once. We’ve got a legal case going on, which constitutional scholars tell us is a pretty strong legal case, but then of course … we have a political issue as well.”


June 14, 2023 
Nature 
Normal brain functioning emerges from a complex interplay among regions forming networks. In epilepsy, these networks are disrupted causing seizures. Highly connected nodes in these networks are epilepsy surgery targets. Here, we assess whether functional connectivity using intracranial electroencephalography can quantify brain regions epileptogenicity and predict surgical outcome in children with drug resistant epilepsy. Among the authors, Christos Papadelis, professor at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.


June 13, 2023 
PaperCity Magazine
The Fort Worth Opera is ushering in a new director this year. Angela Turner Wilson is taking the lead as the opera’s general and artistic director, promising an array of artistic programming this season. Excitement is building towards Fort Worth Opera’s highly anticipated return to the stage at Bass Performance Hall in part because of Turner Wilson’s growing influence. Turner Wilson is not just an opera fan. She has had a career as a critically acclaimed soprano and more than a decade of experience in education at TCU. Now she takes the reins at the acclaimed opera company in her hometown ― the oldest, continually running opera company in Ƶ.


June 13, 2023 
The Dallas Morning News 
In early May, ERCOT projected that Texans’ lights should stay on this summer — barring any extreme scenarios. Brownouts could be caused by a combination of hundred-degree temperatures, outages at fossil fuel plants and low outputs from wind and solar farms. Tom Seng of հ䱫’s Ralph Lowe Energy Institute feels optimistic about the summer, based on ERCOT’s Summer Weather Readiness Report. “They believe they can handle a peak this summertime,” he said. “I believe the data supports that.”


June 13, 2023 
360 West Magazine
Suki John, a 64-year-old choreographer and dance professor at TCU, describes her family’s history as “the oldest story she knows.” Her mother, Vera John-Steiner, survived the Holocaust. As a child, John sensed her mother had endured something significant, but more than anything, she remembers her resilience. “My mother’s stories were really about human connection,” John said. “She talked about how people held each other up to get through it.” More than three decades after first presenting her mother’s story in a choreodrama, Sh’ma: A Story of Survival, John converted Sh’ma to a feature-length film during the COVID-19 pandemic. She previewed it in Fort Worth this year, is working on a New York preview, and is seeking a distributor to organize an official premiere. She also is raising money to edit a shorter version she can take into schools for workshops.


June 6, 2023 
Christian Science Monitor
The 38-count indictment of former President Donald Trump and an aide alleges obstruction and mishandling of classified materials, including documents concerning nuclear programs and potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies. Trump’s competitors are in an unprecedented and difficult situation, said Keith Gaddie, Al and Dawn Hoffman Chair of the American Ideal. On one hand, they need him to be gone if any of them is to win the nomination. On the other, they probably need to run on a platform similar to his to become the nominee. “One thing we shouldn’t be doing in analyzing this environment is looking to history for analogs, because they’re just not going to serve us,” he said.


June 6, 2023 
Business Insider
Domestic goddess Martha Stewart is jumping on the anti-remote work bandwagon. “You can't possibly get everything done working three days a week in the office and two days remotely,” she told Footwear News in a recent interview. A remote work vs return-to-office war has been brewing for years between employees and employers. “It's already an ugly war, and it's unfortunate,” Abbie Shipp, professor of management, said. 


June 5, 2023 
Physician's Weekly
A recent study aimed to evaluate the impact of a multidisciplinary pulmonary embolism response team on the management and outcomes of patients with acute pulmonary embolism. Authors include Nicole Russell and Dennis Gable, both from the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. The primary outcome measures were in-hospital mortality, major bleeding events defined by the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, and utilization of catheter-directed interventions.


June 5, 2023 
Fox 4 News
The idea of smart shopping takes on new meaning as artificial intelligence exerts greater influence on businesses and how we buy. “The way artificial intelligence is set up is really to be able to profile customers from the business’ standpoint or from the marketing standpoint,” said Elijah Clark, marketing instructor.

ALUMNI


June 27, 2023 
Fort Worth Report 
Lillian Young ’18 spent two years researching wanted runaway slave adverts. What she found was that Black history was not properly archived in history books. “I realized the descriptions that were provided were very vague, but there is a person here,” Young said. Young’s exhibition, The Problem With Archives: A Portrait is Worth Our Words, is on display at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center through July 22. During her undergraduate career, she traveled with her TCU art professor Adam Fung to Panama and Nicaragua. “She has always found places to show that intersect with the community and invite discussion,” Fung said.


June 26, 2023
Community Impact Newspaper 
Northwest ISD promoted Shanel Jones ’16 M.Ed. to become principal of Berkshire Elementary School. Jones currently serves as the assistant principal of Love Elementary School, a role she has held since 2021 when she joined the district. “Berkshire Elementary School has set a strong foundation in its first few years, and this community values a strong education system and nurturing atmosphere,” Jones said. “Our Berkshire Bears have set traditions that will last a lifetime, and I can’t wait to provide our teachers and staff with the support they need to enhance the education of our students and continue to cultivate our school community.”


June 24, 2023
Variety 
Frederic Forrest ’60, a character actor who had a memorable role in 1979’s “Apocalypse Now” and earned an Oscar nomination for “The Rose” in the same year, died June 23 in Santa Monica. He was 86. Forrest earned a degree in radio and television from TCU and later received the distinguished alumni award. He moved to Hollywood where his first screen role, in “When the Legends Die,” earned him a 1973 Golden Globe nomination for most promising newcomer.


June 22, 2023
Ƶ Monthly
In the 2023 session, the Ƶ Legislature approved the highest film incentives budget the state has ever seen. Red Sanders ’04, a TCU film graduate who opted to hang out a shingle in Fort Worth rather than move to Los Angeles, started Red Productions in 2005. In addition to producing music videos, commercials and independent films, he’s been active in the effort to get the state legislature to provide more funding for the incentives program. He related to me a story about testifying before a House committee. “The chair of that committee, who represented an area in West Ƶ, said to me, ‘I remember seeing this movie recently called Hell or High Water, which is set in my district, but I don’t remember any mountains in my district,’” Sanders said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that was shot in New Mexico, because Ƶ didn’t have the incentives to support it then.’” 


June 21, 2023
Patch 
Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Rob Baird ’09 began his music career while pursuing a ranch management degree at TCU. After countless performances in Fort Worth's well-known bar scene, Baird's career quickly picked up steam allowing him to record his debut record “Blue Eyed Angels” which included the career-changing “Fade Away.” This effort immediately launched Baird's career when he signed with Carnival Records and began releasing music that gained national attention.


June 19, 2023
The Katy News
When school bells ring for the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, some students and families in Katy ISD will have a new principal to greet them on their first day of school. The superintendent announced Genevieve Lopardo ’01, as principal of Seven Lakes Junior High. Lopardo holds a Bachelor of Music Education from TCU.


June 19, 2023
KXAS-TV (Fort Worth, TX)
The paintings that line several walls at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center show people whose stories are buried in the past – and those living now whose stories need to be heard. The exhibit is called The Problem with Archives. It's the work of TCU graduate Lillian Young ’18, a historical artist who enjoys learning from the past and discovering pockets of Black history. “I started digging deeper into archives and the further I got, I saw how Black people are portrayed in these archives historically. In keeping up with our history, we become less human and more of an object which makes sense since our nation was built with slavery,” Young said.


June 8, 2023
The Oregonian
Lawyers defending Oregon’s gun control Measure 114 have called several historians to the stand who testified on the rarity of guns capable of firing more than one round without reloading at the time the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. Brennan Rivas ’13 MA (’19 Ph.D.) has studied historical weapons regulations, testified about early gun regulations. Rivas testified about early regulations in the 1800s that prohibited bowie knives; multiple states that regulated firearm transfers by taxing their sales, restricted gunpowder or the concealed carry of weapons, and some places, such as Philadelphia, in 1713, that prohibited firing a gun “without a license.”


June 8, 2023
Kentucky Today 
More than 1,600 individuals will be serving and working with IMB missionaries in 72 countries as IMB’s NextGen teams. One team, a social media team going to Argentina, were in amazement at how God lined up their unique giftings. Kareyn Hellman ’23, just graduated from TCU with a degree in strategic communications. “I was like, ‘I can’t stay here. I have to go!’” Hellman said. “These are the people who need the gospel.” 


June 8, 2023
Fort Worth Report 
Katie Kelly ’18 still remembers the moment she decided she wanted to devote her career to music. Now a classically trained trumpet player, she was playing in her eighth-grade honors band in Memphis, Tennessee, when after the performance the crowd stood up, applauding with big smiles. Inspiring people through art makes her feel the same way. “Being able to bring people in and invite people online and in real life, through social … (to) our concerts, is the real-life embodiment of that for me,” Kelly said.  After earning a master’s degree in music – trumpet performance from TCU, Kelly started working for the Fort Worth Symphony in 2017. She now works as the senior manager of communications.  

ATHLETICS


June 22, 2023
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
After some scaling back and re-tooling, one of the most famous sports stories in Fort Worth’s history will soon be a Hollywood motion picture. “You Gotta Believe,” about the 2002 Fort Worth Westside All-Star baseball team that reached the Little League World Series, is currently being filmed. In the game, Fort Worth Westside pitcher Walker Kelly ’12, who would go on to play for TCU, struckout 21 batters. 


June 22, 2023
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The bottom of the ninth inning during հ䱫’s College World Series’ 3-2 loss to Florida was a microcosm of their baseball season. TCU, behind solid pitching from Kole Klecker and Ben Abeldt, kept the Gators’ NCAA home run leading offense quiet, but the Horned Frogs could only get one run themselves. “When we got swept by West Virginia, we had a decision to make in the course of where this season was going to go,” said TCU coach Kirk Saarloos. “I think as a unit we just came together and we played TCU brand of baseball. And there’s nothing that can really compete with that. And just from that point on, it’s just been awesome just watching this team develop and the friendships that we’ve all had. It’s the tightest group that I’ve ever been a part of. And just been a phenomenal group.”


June 15, 2023
The Dallas Morning News
Only a couple of days after being swept in a three-game series at West Virginia in late April to extend their season-long losing streak to five games — “Definitely a pretty low point,” record-setting slugger Brayden Taylor said — the Frogs trailed in the eighth inning at home against Dallas Baptist before Bowen’s big blast. Then, as freshman Karson Bowen bounced toward home plate and then into the TCU dugout after his go-ahead grand slam, head coach Kirk Saarloos saw something the Horned Frogs really needed at that time. “Relief is the thing I saw,” Saarloos said. “All the credit goes to our players, because they got into a position of ‘Man, it’s not fun losing.’ They kind of looked at one another and held each other accountable, but stayed together,” Saarloos said. “It’s very easy to fracture and go different ways when things aren’t going great.”


June 15, 2023
Ƶ Monthly
TCU is back in the College World Series for the first time since 2017 with a team that one opposing coach describes as a “wrecking crew.” TCU was 23–20 at the end of April, a month that provided second-year head coach Kirk Saarloos with a Ph.D. in adversity. “I’d never been through a harder season in my life,” he said. “We knew we were a better team. We just weren’t playing like it. To keep our guys believing in the fact that we were just around the corner from playing really good baseball—it’s tough to do sometimes.”


June 14, 2023
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
TCU fans turned out in the sweltering heat Wednesday to cheer on the baseball team as they departed campus for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. The Horned Frogs are making their sixth trip to the World Series, their first since 2017. Caroline Bredthauer came out with her son. “We just wanted to come out and support this baseball team, they’ve had an amazing end of the season and just wanted to show them how much the community, alumni and the families here in Fort Worth support them.” Bredthauer and her husband are TCU alumni and are ecstatic about հ䱫’s success across all sports.


June 6, 2023 
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The 150th year of the university may be the finest in the history of the school. Certainly it was the finest in the history of its athletic department. TCU will host Indiana State in an NCAA baseball Super Regional; the winner of the best-of-three series goes to Omaha for the College Baseball World Series. “It was so cool to see them go to the national championship game and go all the way,” former TCU defensive end and current Dallas Cowboy Ben Banogu said this week. “I would not have bet my game check they would have been there at the beginning of the year.”

Tag IconIn The News