Stories this week at WFU
WAKE FOREST STUDENTS RETURN FROM SERVICE TRIPS ABROAD — Thirty-seven Wake Forest students and six faculty and staff advisors who spent a portion of their winter recess serving the poor and disadvantaged in other countries will return to the Triad Jan. 9 and 10. The volunteers, representing three different campus groups, traveled to Calcutta, India; Alajuelita, Costa Rica; and Dalat, Vietnam. The students worked with the sick and poor, mentored children and helped with construction projects. Interviews can be arranged with students returning from these trips. Wake Forest’s international service trips are student initiated and student led. The trips began in 1994 through the efforts of a Wake Forest student who had visited India, met Mother Teresa and worked among her Missionaries of Charity.
Contact: Pam Barrett at barretpm@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237.
SPRING SEMESTER BEGINS — Wake Forest students begin returning this weekend for the start of the 2005 spring semester. Classes for undergraduates and graduate students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Divinity School begin Jan. 11. Spring classes for the Babcock Graduate School of Management and the School of Law have already started.
WAKE FOREST PHYSICS PROFESSOR WINS PRESTIGIOUS GRANT FOR SICKLE CELL RESEARCH — Daniel B. Kim-Shapiro, associate professor of physics at Wake Forest, has been awarded an Independent Scientist Career Development Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his project “Nitrite and Nitric Oxide in Sickle Cell Blood.” The award is a five-year, $518,400 grant that will allow Kim-Shapiro to continue his research into the uses of nitrite, a common salt found in the body and in foods such as hot dogs and lettuce, and nitric oxide, an important molecule made in the human body, as therapeutic agents for sickle cell and other vascular diseases. The award is given to highly regarded scientists who have ongoing, independent, peer-reviewed research support and who need a period of protected research time in order to foster their research career development. Kim-Shapiro has been investigating sickle cell and other vascular diseases for nearly a decade. In 2002, he was awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the NIH to study the effects of nitric oxide in sickle cell blood. His laboratory, in cooperation with colleagues from the NIH, the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has made important discoveries indicating that nitrite also has therapeutic potential in many vascular disorders.
Contact: Jacob McConnico, mcconnjn@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237.
FILM FORUM TO FEATURE FILM AND TV ACTOR PAT HINGLE — Wake Forest University will host a film forum centered on film and television actor Pat Hingle Jan. 15 and 16 in Benson University Center’s Pugh Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. Hingle lives in Wilmington and has been in more than 110 motion pictures and numerous television shows since the early 1950s. He played Commissioner Gordon in the last four Batman Movies. Other film and television credits include “On the Waterfront,” “Splendor in the Grass,” “The Grifters,” “The Quick and the Dead,” “The Falcon and the Snowman,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Wings” and “Cheers.” Curtis Gaston, visiting lecturer in communication, organized the forum. It is co-sponsored by the communication department and the film studies program, which debuted in the fall of 2004. Gaston’s goal is to begin a series of quarterly film forums focusing on film and documentary-film industry professionals with connections to North Carolina. Two films featuring Hingle will be screened Jan. 15 in Pugh Auditorium: “The Road to Redemption” at 2 p.m., and “Splendor in the Grass” at 4 p.m. Hingle will view and comment on selected scenes from movies featuring him at 1 p.m. Jan. 16 in Pugh Auditorium. A second screening of “Splendor in the Grass” will follow at 4 p.m., during which Hingle, Gaston and Winston-Salem Journal film critic Mark Burger will provide commentary.
Contact: Maggie Barrett, barretmb@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237.
WAKE FOREST, WSSU COMMEMORATE MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY — In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Wake Forest University and Winston-Salem State University will co-host a dinner and performance titled “Performing the Dream” on Jan. 17. The dinner will be held at 4 p.m. in the Magnolia Room in Wake Forest’s Reynolda Hall. The performance, which will include musical performances and a guest speaker, will be held in the Kenneth R. Williams Auditorium at Winston-Salem State at 7 p.m. Admission to both the dinner and performance is free.
Contact: Pam Barrett, barretpm@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237.
AS FILM ‘COACH CARTER’ HITS THEATERS, THE REAL COACH KEN CARTER DOLES OUT HARD-HITTING ADVICE AT WFU — Following the opening weekend of Paramount’s film “Coach Carter,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, former high school basketball coach Ken Carter will speak at Wake Forest at 8 p.m. Jan. 19 in Benson University Center, Room 401. Coach Carter, famous for locking his undefeated, state play-off bound basketball team out of the gym and forcing them to hit the books and “rise as a team,” will speak on “Average is Just Not Good Enough. PERIOD!” Using his own experiences at Richmond High School in Richmond, Calif., Carter believes it is possible for one person to take a stand – no matter how unpopular – to make positive changes. Tickets are $15 general admission and $10 with Wake Forest ID. Media are welcome to attend. Videotaping is permitted during the first 10 minutes of the lecture. Interviews can also be arranged.
Contact: Pam Barrett at barretpm@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237.
WAKE FOREST HOSTS 7th ANNUAL MLK BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT — The 7th Annual MLK Invitational Basketball Tournament will be held Jan. 22 in Reynolds Gymnasium on the Wake Forest campus. Intramural teams from North Carolina A&T State University, Winston-Salem State University, Johnson C. Smith University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte are scheduled to participate in the tournament. Games begin at 1 p.m. Admission is free.
Contact: Pam Barrett at barretpm@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237.
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