In the spotlight
The motorcycle accident of Brandon Wright brought no shortage of media attention to USU’s campus. John DeVilbiss, the university’s creative team lead, said 800-plus media hits came to the office throughout the month of September. Such hits included CNN’s carrying of footage of nearly a dozen students, faculty and construction workers lifting a BMW to clear Wright from the scene, an Ellen DeGeneres interview with eight of the rescuers, and a Piers Morgan video interview with several of the rescuers.
This was not the first time a large media spotlight has focused its lens on the university.
Just this past spring physics students arranged to have 20,000 bouncy balls dropped from a helicopter, which set a world record, according to the research conducted by the USU chapter of the Society of Physics Students.
USU fell into the spotlight when Sigma Nu fraternity rush Michael Starks died from alcohol poisoning just three years ago, after an alleged hazing incident involving the Chi Omega sorority.
A Sept. 26, 2005, van crash took the lives of eight agriculture students and an instructor, which gained coverage in newspapers along the West coast.
But, USU’s “15 minutes of fame” are certainly not limited to recent years, either. Then Vice President Gerald Ford’s 1974 commencement address while his son Jack attended USU garnered attention. And actor and entertainer Bob Hope made USU one of five visits on his ‘Bob Hope goes to College’ tour in 1983.
The list goes on.
Recently, Professor Randy Lewis, a member of USU’s science and technology initiative USTAR, was the subject of CNN and NOVA reports concerning his current research on a blend of spider silk and goats’ milk being converted into military devices stronger than steel — including bulletproof skin, parachute cables and artificial bones for wounded soldiers.
“The media is great, so people can understand (the research),” Lewis said. “There’s naturally something intriguing about protein in the milk, but it’s important to describe it so that people can understand. Maybe they won’t have all the details behind how you do it, but at least they can know it’s fascinating material.”
Mary Cleave brought attention to USU with her studies here, in Logan. Cleave, who graduated with a master’s in engineering in 1975 and with a doctorate in 1980, deployed the Magellan Venus exploration spacecraft — the first planetary probe deployed from a space shuttle — in 1989, following her first Atlantis mission four years earlier. Cleave recently retired as a NASA administrator.
“It was a welcome thing for me to have the university be represented at Cape Canaveral,” Cleave said, of the national media attention that graced the Florida launching pad. Cleave said USU representatives were handing out lollipops with the familiar Block A to media and NASA crew ,alike, confusing the many Texas A&M alumni who worked at the station. Texas A&M shares a mascot name with USU.
Of course, various athletic accomplishments in Logan have brought the school its share of notice. Eight NCAA Tournament runs in the past 12 men’s basketball seasons have epitomized what it means for an athletic department to be what athletic director Scott Barnes describes as the “university’s front porch.”
While not the most important room in the house, it is certainly the most visible, and with it comes a high responsibility to represent the university well. Barnes said it is difficult for a sport like men’s basketball to garner attention during the regular season, because hardly any big-name schools want to come to the Spectrum to play, “and we’ve contacted basically everybody,” Barnes said.
The school’s fan base and its ever-growing notoriety across the country helps the school to get noticed on the hardwood, even before March arrives.
Last season, “Wild” Bill Sproat and the crew in Section F of the Spectrum helped Utah State basketball become a top 10 nationally trending Twitter topic, as the team played at home against Nevada, Feb. 2.
“We had Wichita State’s coach come here a couple years ago and tell us that he thought that his school had an enthusiastic fan base,” Barnes said. “Then he said he needed to go to his conference and let them know they were AAA level compared to what he saw (at the Spectrum).”
Barnes was quick to describe how USU Athletics have represented, on a large scale, nationally in the classroom, too. In July, the school was recognized as having one of the most efficient athletic departments in the nation, as it placed fourth for the Excellence in Management Cup, presented by Texas A&M’s Laboratory for the Study of Intercollegiate Athletics.
USU won the national championship in 2009 and finished third nationally in 2010.
As for the bouncy ball drop last year, Doug Ball said he was pleased with the attention the event gathered. It raked in reporters from not just The Salt Lake Tribune and The Herald Journal, but also saw its story run on TIME and CBS.
“It was exciting, I had no idea it would spread that far,” Ball said, who added that the College Science Council, who collaborated with the Society of Physics Students to organize the event, has since doubled its membership. “It helped our group in achieving their goal of reaching out to the community and saying that physics is an absolute blast.”
Last month, the event was featured on the front cover of the Society of Physics Students Observer, a magazine with a national audience.
“It’s probably not politically correct to say, but the U. and the Y. are sucking most of the attention from Salt Lake City media outlets,” he said. “As far as the university’s concerned, we have a leg on that stool, (too).”
– rhett.wilkinson@aggiemail.usu.edu