Campus News Briefs

“Blackfire” performing Thursday

“Blackfire,” a Native American punk rock group, will be performing Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center Ballroom. Tickets are $5 for the public and $3 with a student ID. “Sand,” a local rock group, will be opening for them.

Get booked – ’tis the season University Libraries at Utah State University has begun a fund raising campaign to assist library programs. The “Libraries Make a Difference” phonathon campaign kicked off on Nov. 12 and will continues through January 2002. USU students staff phone banks in Old Main and are calling parents of current students and previous donors. Parents will be asked to donate the cost of two books – $120. The average cost of an academic book is $60. Journal subscriptions average $430 and electronic databases cost from $50 to thousands of dollars. During the past three years, parents and family members of students have contributed almost $200,000 to help purchase these resources at USU. These contributions help provide the best library service possible to the students of USU. Individual support such as that received through the phonathon is essential for the continued growth and improvement of the USU Libraries.

Students prepare for launch of shuttle experiments Students from Shoshone-Bannock and Moscow High Schools in Idaho and Box Elder High School in Utah are preparing for the launch of their experiments of the space shuttle Thursday at 8:05 a.m. (EST) from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The students are participants in NASA’s Get Away Special (GAS) program at Utah State University. They have been working on projects for more than a year, and a group of 22 students with chaperones will be going to Florida to witness the launch. The Shoshone-Bannock team is doing an experiment called “Fun with Urine.” It is designed to recycle urine by extracting water and urea using a mineral called zeolite. The Box Elder High School team has prepared a nucleic boiling experiment using six chemicals found in the human body. The GAS program was initiated about 20 years ago and the upcoming launch will be the university’s 12th payload to fly with a shuttle.

USU professor receives international business communication award Charlotte Thralls, an professor in the department of English at Utah State University, was recently named the 2001 Outstanding Researcher by the Association of Business Communication (ABC). The award, given annually to one member of the organization, recognizes a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the field of business communication. The organization’s award is based on the scholar’s cumulative scholarly record, including the heuristic value, overall quality and significance of research to the field. In naming Thrall the Outstanding Researcher, the organization cited her publications in a range of refereed journals; her editorial work in the co-founding of The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, one of the premier refereed journals in professional communication; and her edited book, a collection of essays which received the National Council of Teachers of English research award for Best Collection in Technical and Scientific Communication. Thralls received the Outstanding Researcher Award in early November at ABC’s national conference in San Diego. As the award recipient, she will deliver the plenary talk at next year’s national conference in Cincinnati. Thralls joined the USU faculty this year with her husband, Thomas Kent, who is the dean of Graduate Studies. Both were formally on the faculty of Iowa State University.