The next few weeks are bringing a flurry of events.
Dear Students,
Some big science news this past week was the announcements of the Nobel Prizes, including prizes in chemistry, physics, and physiology/medicine. The announcements reminded me of the incredible scholarship of our faculty, including Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, members elected to the National Academy of Sciences or Engineering, Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipients of the National Medal of Science, the President's Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (including this year's Prof. Brent Waters in CS), the Abel Prize in Mathematics, and two winners of the Wolf Prize. Many were recognized this week in the Co-Op's Hamilton Book Award Ceremony for their scholarship. Each week the CNS home page highlights faculty whose discoveries include finding the Higgs boson, learning the genetic code of brain tumors, or developing robots with life-like behavior. Coming to a College like ours opens a host of opportunities, internship, or laboratory experiences which I hope you all will participate in during your time here -- it's what distinguishes an undergraduate degree from the College of Natural Sciences.
CNS FAMILY DAY: Please join us for the CNS Family Day event, part of the Texas Parent's Family Weekend. Parents, family and students are all invited! Our CNS event is held Saturday, October 27th, 9am-12pm, at the Texas Memorial Museum (east side of campus). One of our faculty, Professor George Shubeita, and a CNS student, Da'Marcus Baymon, will speak around 9:30am. Most departments will have booths or a table with interactive and information, and the Physics Circus will perform around 10am. A light breakfast will be served. For questions, please contact Holly Hunt at hmhunt@austin.utexas.edu.
IT'S TIME TO REGISTER FOR SPRING 2013 SEMESTER: Registration for Spring, 2013 begins on October 29, 2012 and ends November 9, 2012. Your registration access time is based on your last name and the courses you’ve completed (classes in progress don’t count.). You can find your specific registration times by checking online. Please contact your advising center soon to arrange an advising appointment, and be sure to submit an online advising worksheet. You should start studying the spring, 2013 course schedule. I know you all are still thinking about midterms, papers to write, and the narrow victory in the football game, but it's time to pay attention to this. You all have it much better than what I remember at my alma mater, where we got our slot for registration by standing in line -- first come first served. Back then, many of us slept out on the Quad for one or two nights to get the "choice classes." Fortunately, today we have the internet.
HOLLOWAY AWARDS: The Texas Exes announce that nominations are now being accepted for the 2013 Jean Holloway Award for Excellence in Teaching. You can help recognize an outstanding Liberal Arts or Natural Sciences professor who has had a genuine influence on the educational experience of university students by nominating a professor at: https://texasexes.org/form/holloway.asp. Nomination Deadline: Friday, Oct. 26 at 5:00 pm. The purpose of this award is to recognize a professor who demonstrates the ability to impart knowledge and challenge students. The $4,500 award is given annually to a professor from the College of Liberal Arts or the College of Natural Sciences. This award is student nominated and selected.
Best of luck in the coming week,
Sacha Kopp
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education,
College of Natural Sciences
PS: In other nerd news, this was the week that Felix Baumgartner broke a record for being the fastest human traveling without propulsion from a machine, when he jumped in to free fall from a balloon at 128,000 feet. This is a pretty wild way to measure the gravitational constant "little g," and exceeds the record set by Captain Joseph Kittinger, who jumped from 102,000ft in 1960. Just beware, these are the kinds of things that end up on tests in introductory physics courses.
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