In 1969, the United States met the impossible challenge leveled by President John. F. Kennedy eight years earlier, to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. The heroism of the moment culminated in Neil Armstrong’s collection of the first lunar rocks into the Apollo 11 Lunar Sample Contingency bag. Embodying the self-sacrifice, courage, ingenuity and fortitude of an entire nation, the Lunar Contingency bag was the ultimate trophy for the winner of the space race. It was like the Lombardi trophy, the Stanley Cup, and every Olympic Gold Medal, all rolled up into one and multiplied by a thousand...and NASA lost it! This is the story of the Chicago woman who found it almost 50 years later, and her battle with NASA over a national treasure. Chris McHugh is a litigation attorney at Joseph Hollander & Craft in Kansas City. He represents clients all over the country in all types of litigation matters from criminal cases to $100 million business disputes. Chris was born and raised in Wichita. He graduated from WSU in 1997 and is still involved on campus as a member of the WSU Cohen Honors College Advisory Board.

Catalogue Description: Reviews current interventions which promote successful aging.  Theoretical bases of this work in biomedical and life-span-developmental psychology will be featured.  This course is intended for advanced students in the College of Health Professions, Liberal Arts & Sciences and Engineering.

PURPOSE: Psychosocial and biomedical factors contribute to well-being and high quality of life; successful coping with disease and disability allow preservation of a sense of purpose as we age. The goal of this class is to promote awareness and application of this knowledge to a wide variety of fields.  In addition to class reading and discussion, students will explore these concepts with a person over 65-year-of-age (with the help of the instructor), bringing firsthand experience and classroom instruction together culminating in a research paper.  For the research paper, students will be asked to focus on a particular aspect of aging that is meaningful to them and explore it in depth.  For example, students might focus on health care or wellness promotion (medical, psychological, or physical), social policy (e.g. developing housing policies), the arts (music, painting, writing or singing), technology and it’s use to create age-friendly environments, or business and finance (e.g. developing products and services to meet the needs of older adults). 

Meeting Times: MW, 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., 310 Lindquist Hall

Louis Medvene, Ph.D. is a social and community psychologist, and Professor Emeritus in the department of psychology at WSU.  Dr. Medvene has been at WSU since 1992 and became an Emeritus professor in September, 2019.  His primary interests are in social relationships and their influence on development over the course of the life-span.  He developed and first taught this class on successful aging in 2016.

Congratulations to Noell Birondo, associate professor of philosophy, who accepted an invitation to be a visiting researcher for three months during the 2020 spring semester at the Institute for Philosophical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico. Birondo will continue his research on the influence of European colonialism and specifically the European encounter with the Americas on our conception of the moral virtues. 

Neal Allen, chair of the political science department, signed on “Fix the Court,” a national advocacy group for judicial reform. The group released an open letter from scholars of Constitutional Law that calls for reform on supreme court limits. Read the article. 

Allen and three of his students were quoted in an article on KAKE. The article discusses reactions to the impeachment inquiry. Read the article. 

Wichita State University’s new President, Jay Golden, is a leading researcher in environmental sustainability and an advocate for applied learning and economic development.

Golden will become Wichita State’s 14th President in January 2020 during a period of rapid growth for the university and changes in higher education. He brings a background as a leading thinker and national leader on environmental sustainability, applied learning and economic development.

Golden was introduced to students, faculty and staff and community leaders on Thursday, Oct. 31, following his appointment by the Kansas Board of Regents. Golden is currently vice chancellor at East Carolina University, with responsibilities including developing public-private partnerships and building research campuses.

His previous faculty and administrative roles have been at two highly admired universities, Arizona State and Duke.

Read more on Jay Golden.