WFU in the news: Sept. 18-24, 2023

FEATURED NEWS

$5M gift from the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation advances environment and sustainability efforts
By Cheryl V. Walker | Wake Forest News
With a leadership gift from the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, Wake Forest University will substantially expand its work to answer the world’s most pressing environmental and sustainability questions. Wake Forest’s Center for the Environment, Energy and Sustainability (CEES) will become the Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. The $5 million gift will support research, education and outreach through collaboration within the University and with partners around the globe. “World-changing impact starts with a world-changing vision,” said President Susan R. Wente. – 9/25/2023

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

EPA is not part of Biden’s climate corps. Why?
By Kevin Bogardus, Emma Dumain | E&E News
Stan Meiburg, who served 39 years at EPA, including as acting deputy assistant administrator during the Obama administration, said he was “slightly, but not existentially” surprised that his former agency was not part of the American Climate Corps. “The places where these climate corps people may be deployed is where these agencies have real assets on the ground — properties, wildlife refuges, parks, national forests, conservation areas,” he said. Meiburg is the executive director of the newly renamed Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. – 9/21/2023

Much is mined with mercury
By Fabian Federl, Jack Nicas, Ian Cheibub | The New York Times
“Mercury, for better or worse, is a very simple technology, used for the better part of 2,000 years,” said Luis Fernandez, a Wake Forest University professor who has studied small-scale gold mining. “You can learn how to be a miner in 15 minutes, and you get pretty good results. Gold mining “is an economic pressure valve for poorer countries,” he said. Fernandez is executive director of Wake Forest’s Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA). – 9/22/2023

Video games like ‘Starfield’ are creating a new generation of classical music fans
By Aaron Harding | Fast Company
Aaron Harding, music professor and director of the University Orchestra, writes: A 2018 poll conducted by the U.K.’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra found that more young people are exposed to classical music through video games than through attending live performances. The increasing complexity of video games means composers are once again pushing boundaries through expanded sound palettes. Many modern game titles incorporate symphonic music needed to provide the emotional and atmospheric underpinning of the game experience. – 9/19/2023

What is work-life balance, really?
By Julie Loffredi | Arizona Daily Star
If you want to learn about what “work-life balance” really means, ask Wendy Casper. Wendy teamed up with business professor Julie Holliday Wayne to understand what balance really is. Their research found that to be balanced we need to be involved and effective and feel good about the roles we really care about, whereas those roles we care little about won’t really impact our sense of balance. Bottom line: it’s about what matters most. – 9/22/2023

The last gun I shot
By Rachel Monroe | The New Yorker
In this weekend essay, author Rachel Monroe references work by sociologist and gun culture expert David Yamane. “One of Yamane’s main points was that, for many Americans, guns are normal—neither instruments of righteous retribution, like some on the right like to imagine, nor harbingers of societal collapse, like some on the left believe. Millions of Americans live with firearms, and most of them don’t kill themselves or anyone else,” she writes. – 9/23/2023

How trauma can become a catalyst for personal growth
By Beth DeCarbo | The Wall Street Journal
While many people show resilience after adversity, not everyone experiences post-traumatic growth, said psychology professor Eranda Jayawickreme. “A lot of studies track people after they have gone through a traumatic event.… If you go through a negative event like a divorce, there’s a long time spent reflecting” on what went wrong and how you could have been a better spouse. So any positive changes stemming from the divorce may take longer to show up. – 9/23/2023

Customer sues McDonald’s for spilling hot coffee — and this isn’t the first time
By Maria Paul, María Luisa Paúl | Terra
There was evidence of at least 700 reports of burns and coffee temperatures that could cause serious injuries in just a matter of seconds, and the person was widely criticized in the court of public opinion, said communication professor John Llewellyn. “It became an issue of women, coffee and millions of dollars, and then people took that as a license to say that the courts are crazy and the plaintiffs are greedy,” he said. “But what was missing from this entire equation was the context behind the verdict, which was erased from the news.” – 9/24/2023

LOCAL

‘It’s straining the imagination’: N.C. Democrats don’t support linking Medicaid expansion to gaming
By Richard Craver | Winston-Salem Journal
The tight-knotting of Medicaid expansion with proposals of four new casinos and statewide video gaming terminals appears to have little support among state House and Senate Democrats. “The remaining questions are whether there will be enough votes to pass the separate bill containing gambling expansion, Medicaid expansion, and a number of earmarks for particular spending projects,” said politics professor John Dinan. – 9/20/2023

WAKE FOREST NEWS

Wake Forest student wins prestigious NASA Research Grant
By Keri Brown | Wake Forest News
With the help of NASA, Wake Forest physics graduate student David Carchipulla-Morales will dig deeper to learn more about how the energy and water exchange processes at work in tropical forests. NASA space agency recently awarded him the prestigious Future Investigators NASA Earth and Space Science Technology (FINESST) grant. Only about 100 proposals were selected for the grant out of nearly a thousand applications. – 9/19/2023

WFU Theatre opens 2023-24 season with ‘Witness for the Prosecution’
By Kim McGrath | Wake Forest News
Wake Forest University Theatre is launching its 2023-24 season with Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution.“ The play, directed by theatre professor Sharon Andrews, opens on the Tedford Stage in Scales Fine Arts Center on Friday, Sept. 22. Leonard Vole, a young man admittedly strapped for money, is accused of murdering a wealthy older woman. – 9/20/2023