Inside Clemson

Inside NOW: Report ranks CU faculty salaries higher; presidential search; new IPTAY leader named

Scroll down to read the following articles:

1. Report ranks CU faculty salaries higher than some peer institutions
2. Presidential search gets under way
3. Clemson names new IPTAY leader
4. Clemson researcher helps discover “missing link” of black holes
5. Atelier InSite: A marriage of art and mortar
6. Clemson wins Carolinas recycling award
7. Registration open for 2013 First Friday parade
8. April Safe Tiger Mug winner named
9. PARKING/TRANSIT: Parking closures this week


1. Report ranks CU faculty salaries higher than some peer institutions

https://blogs.clemson.edu/inside-clemson/inside-news/report-ranks-cu-faculty-salaries-higher-than-some-peer-institutions/

Clemson University’s faculty salaries outrank those at a number of its peer institutions, according to a recent report published by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Survey data indicated that the average faculty salaries for assistant, associate and full professors at Clemson University are now higher than those at Virginia Tech, the University of Georgia, University of Florida, Texas A&M, Iowa State University, and the University of South Carolina. Clemson exceeds North Carolina State University, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Arizona State University in two of the three ranks.

Clemson developed a compensation plan as part of the 2020 Road Map goal to recruit and retain top people and bring faculty salaries in line with the market.

Each year, the AAUP compiles salary and benefits data for full-time faculty from colleges and universities across the country.

Access the report at http://www.aaup.org/report/heres-news-annual-report-economic-status-profession-2012-13,

2. Presidential search gets under way

https://blogs.clemson.edu/inside-clemson/inside-news/presidential-search-gets-under-way/

The search committee charged with finding the 15th president of Clemson University held its organizational meeting Monday, officially launching the process to find a successor to President Jim Barker.

David Wilkins, chairman of the Board of Trustees, charged the committee with the following: The hiring of a President for the University is the most important job the Board of Trustees will undertake. This Search Committee is charged to be deliberate, be thorough, be inclusive, seek input from all core Clemson constituent groups as faculty, staff, students and alumni, and to proceed with a purpose. Please recommend to the full Board no more than five, but not less than three, top quality candidates for their consideration. These candidates should be forwarded to the Board in an unranked manner as it will be the full Board’s responsibility to hire Clemson’s next president.

In a related action after the meeting, Wilkins appointed Faculty Senate President Kelly Smith to the committee as an ex-officio member.

“We welcome the addition of Dr. Smith as a member of the search committee and believe the action taken by Chairman Wilkins recognizes the unique role of the faculty in university governance,” said search committee chair Smyth McKissick. “We look forward to working with Dr. Smith and feel he will bring great value to the deliberations. While other groups will not be directly represented on the committee, processes to engage other Clemson constituents, including students, staff and alumni, are being developed.”

Clemson names new IPTAY leader

http://www.clemsontigers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=28500&ATCLID=207402260

One of the nation’s oldest and most successful athletic booster organizations has a new leader. Clemson University and IPTAY have named Davis C. Babb, associate athletics director for development and associate vice chancellor for university advancement at Texas Christian University, to be the new chief executive officer of IPTAY.

Since 1999, under Babb’s leadership, TCU has raised more than $250 million in gifts and commitments for 25 new and renovated athletics facilities, endowed and annual scholarships and special projects. With Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Chris Del Conte and Head Football Coach Gary Patterson, he led the athletics department’s campaign to secure more than $143 million to renovate the university’s football stadium – the largest fund-raising project in TCU history.

“I want to thank President Barker, IPTAY Board President Charles Dalton, Director of Athletics Dan Radakovich and the search committee for offering me this opportunity to join the IPTAY and Clemson community,” Babb said. “IPTAY has been at the forefront of intercollegiate athletic fund-raising for many years, and I look forward to joining the team of dedicated professionals to continue to raise the needed support for scholarships, academic services, facility improvements and other athletic department initiatives.”

Charles Dalton, president of the IPTAY Board of Directors, said, “After a national search we are thrilled to name Babb as IPTAY’s new CEO.  His success raising funds for capital projects was particularly attractive to us, but he also demonstrated an understanding of IPTAY’s longstanding success with annual giving.  I was equally impressed with his professional approach to building and managing a strong team. That combination of fundraising focus and leadership capability will take Clemson athletics to the next level of competitiveness.”

Babb previously served TCU as associate athletic director for external affairs and interim athletics director – positions that involved projects to increase corporate revenue and ticket sales, serving as liaison to the alumni association, and supervising media relations, marketing and promotions.

Prior to coming to TCU he was athletics director at the Virginia Military Institute and previously coached the Furman University women’s tennis team for two years.

“I am excited about Davis Babb bringing his fund raising experience to IPTAY,” said Dan Radakovich, director of athletics. “A strong partnership between IPTAY and Clemson athletics is vital for our long-term success. I look forward to working with Davis in any way possible to achieve all of our goals for Clemson.”

After going through corporate restructuring this year that strengthened IPTAY’s ability to raise funds for Clemson athletics, the university and IPTAY conducted a national search that led to Babb’s selection as IPTAY’s first CEO.

Begun in 1934 to give the Clemson athletic program the support it needed, IPTAY is now one of the most successful athletic fundraising organizations. IPTAY donors provide millions of dollars in scholarships for student-athletes and non-athletes alike. It also has provided substantial support for programs and facilities that help Clemson Athletics stay competitive in collegiate sports.

Clemson researcher helps discover “missing link” of black holes

https://blogs.clemson.edu/discovery/2013/01/14/clemson-researcher-helps-discover-%E2%80%9Cmissing-link%E2%80%9D-of-black-holes/

The discovery of a bingeing black hole that is expelling powerful beams of material has shed new light on some of the brightest X-ray sources seen in other galaxies, according to new research led by Durham University with contributions from Clemson researcher Dieter Hartmann.

Hartmann’s role in this particular project was to assist by surveying the central regions of Messier 31 with two orbiting X-ray observatories, the XMM-Newton and Chandra. His contributions to this particular paper focused on discussions of the theory of accreting black holes and the production of relativistic jets in these systems.

Using these orbiting X-ray telescopes, a large international team of astronomers watched as the X-ray emission from the black hole in our nearest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda – more than 2 million light years away – brightened and faded over the course of six months.

The study, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, shows what happens when black holes feast rapidly on the material stripped from a companion star.

Astronomers have spent years debating whether these are black holes just a few times the mass of the Sun which are gorging themselves on gas from an orbiting star, or whether they are more massive black holes eating more sedately.

Black holes in our own Milky Way galaxy are very rarely seen to binge, but when they do, they also launch very powerful beams of material called jets, which are blasted outwards at close to the speed of light, and can be tracked using sensitive radio telescopes.

The team saw an extremely bright radio wave emission that dropped by a half in just 30 minutes. Despite the large distance to Andromeda, the absence of dust and gas in that direction allows an unhindered view of the feast, giving scientists key new insights into how jets are produced by a binging black hole.

Radio waves were discovered from the ultraluminous X-ray source, which shows that these are just normal, everyday black holes and that the region producing radio waves is extremely small in size, no further across than the distance between Jupiter and the Sun.

Atelier InSite: A marriage of art and mortar

https://blogs.clemson.edu/creative-services/students/2013/atelier-insite-a-marriage-of-art-and-mortar/?fs

Art in itself is reflective of the depth and breadth of the human condition. Marry art with an inanimate object like a building, and it can tell its own story and set the tone for collaboration within its walls.

Such is the goal for Atelier InSite, a Creative Inquiry program that focuses on the implementation of public artwork at Clemson University. This student-driven initiative encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration and provides hands-on opportunities for students to conduct research on the nature of public art, investigate the design build process, conduct site analysis and identify site locations for artwork.

Led by Clemson professors David Detrich, Joey Manson and Denise Woodward-Detrich, this initiative got its start more than a decade ago when university funds were set aside in support of the Art Partnership Program, a collaborative effort among the Office of the President, the Department of Art and other academic units on campus. The program solicits and commissions the creation of site-specific works of art, which are permanently featured at various campus locations.

Birth of a Creative Inquiry program
Clemson’s design guidelines for current and future campus projects stipulate, “All capital development projects that are anticipated to exceed two million dollars will consider the benefits of public art and will apply 1/2 of 1 percent of the construction budget for such work.”

Last year, Detrich and his team were invited to a planning session for Clemson’s new $50 million, 100,000-square-foot life sciences facility project. The team was asked to make recommendations about the introduction of art into the facility design. As part of the pitch, the team proposed student participation by way of a Creative Inquiry class, which is Clemson’s undergraduate research program.

“We want to establish a new model for how other universities can implement art,” Detrich explained. “To encourage student participation and engagement, we recommended that the project be implemented through Creative Inquiry and that it be by students, for students.”

By students for students
In August 2012, the Atelier InSite Creative Inquiry program was approved, and Detrich and his team went to work to recruit both art and life sciences students and create a strategy focused on a central theme of research. In addition to implementing artwork for the new building, they were also given the charge to help dedicate the new life sciences facility in a unique way that reflects sciences and the arts.

Instead of a typical ribbon-cutting that marks the opening of a building, students created a sculpture of a plasmid. Used in the study of molecular biology and genetics, a plasmid is a DNA molecule that is engineered to include desired genes. In a process called transformation, the circular plasmid is introduced into a cell where change is wanted and the plasmid effective brings about that change.

“Because the life sciences facility is designed for an open exchange of research among different areas, the plasmid is a symbol of collaboration among those entities,” Detrich said.

Pairing students from diverse disciplines can be challenging. But the process of investigating and understanding unique thought can result in holistic perspectives. Detrich and his team leveraged that by creating “get-acquainted sessions” in which art students presented a “What is art?” program to their life sciences peers. In return, the life sciences students presented “What is life sciences?” to their art student counterparts.

“It was a good exercise to get the students from different academic areas working together,” Detrich said.

So that everyone was on the same page, students devised a glossary of terms that were common to both the arts and life sciences areas and wrote a mission statement and guiding principles.

The students together researched site-specific art, participated in building tours and made recommendations regarding the placement of art in the new facility. The recommendations will become actual works of art in the building and currently appear as placeholders in the form of question marks. The question marks contain images that represent a blend of art and the sciences.

The Atelier InSite Creative Inquiry program will soon focus on the Watt Family Innovation Center and the Lee III building, which recently won a national award for design achievement from the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

“The hope is that students who sign up for a Creative Inquiry come back the next year,” Detrich said. “Because of the success of this interdisciplinary collaboration, every student who participated came back. They now see art as being important to their university experience. It’s a physical, tangible part of the legacy they are leaving behind. That’s what empowers them and keeps them interested.”

To learn more about Clemson University’s public art program, Atelier InSite, visit www.atelierinsite.com.

Clemson wins Carolinas recycling award

https://blogs.clemson.edu/inside-clemson/inside-news/clemson-university-wins-carolinas-recycling-award/

Clemson University has been awarded the Outstanding Composting or Organics Recycling Program of the Carolinas by the Carolina Recycling Association (CRA).  This is the first time Clemson University’s Recycling Department has been recognized with this award.

The award is given each year to a North or South Carolina-based business, government agency, school, organization, or large scale facility that has designed and implemented a composting or organics-recycling program.

Clemson incorporated the topic of recycling into its Creative Inquiry (CI) program and offered multiple CI classes to research composting issues – everything from compost facility layout design to alternative composting formulas and a variety of curing methods.

Last year Clemson composted 35 tons of food waste from the university’s dining halls. This academic year, that number is expected to double. Clemson-produced compost is used at the campus organic gardens and at the South Carolina Botanical Gardens.

The award was presented at the CRA’s annual awards banquet on April 10.

Registration open for 2013 First Friday parade

https://blogs.clemson.edu/inside-clemson/inside-news/registration-open-for-2013-first-friday-parade/

Be a part of one of Clemson’s oldest traditions! Registration is now open for the 2013 First Friday Parade to be held August 30. Groups or departments that are interested may participate in the parade by electing to enter a float, drive a vehicle, or walk in the parade.

The theme for this year’s parade is “Spirit of the Southland.” Inspired by Tiger Rag, the song that shakes the Southland, this year’s parade is centered on Clemson’s spirit, culture, and traditions.

Online parade registration can be found at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHZnUnEySDlfdjZrVDZsVEEzbGtwQmc6MQ#gid=0.

For more information or questions, email Central Spirit at cufirstfriday@gmail.com.

April Safe Tiger Mug winner named

http://www.clemson.edu/administration/risk/safe-tiger.html

April winner:  Tony Penna – Associate Professor of Theatre

PARKING/TRANSIT: Parking closures this week

https://blogs.clemson.edu/inside-clemson/inside-news/parkingtransit-parking-closures-this-week/

Parking at Brooks Center: White spaces reserved Wednesday, April 24

Wednesday, April 24, the white spaces in C-11 will be reserved in the morning for Clemson University Percussion Ensemble and Steel Band, a Eskridge Tri-Art Series presentation. The performance begins at 9:30 a.m. and spaces will be released after the performance has begun. For more information, please visit http://www.clemson.edu/Brooks/events/triart.php.

Upcoming events

CU at The Ball Pit  April 24-26

President’s Commission on the Status of Black Faculty and Staff Open Forum  April 26

Botanical Gardens Plant Sale  April 27

Free ACT/SAT DeMystifier Workshop  April 27

Clemson CyberInstitute Brown Bag session: Algorithmic approaches for epilepsy and autism detection  April 30