THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
NEWS
3A
CAMPUS
Donors spruce up campus landmark
Danforth Chapel gets new additions after seven-month renovation
Photos by Jon Goering/KANSAN
BY ERIN SOMMER
esommer@kansan.com
ABOVE, Danforth Chapel is planned to be re-dedicated at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in a donor recognition ceremony. Construction on the chapel ended earlier this month. New landscaping was one of the biggest renovations.
Linda Stewart sat in Danfortn Chapel more than three years ago at her grandson's wedding.
"There was no place for the weddin party to go." Stewart said.
"It's such a wonderful place, but such an awkward place, I thought," Stewart said. She said attending the wedding convinced her that the chapel needed to be updated.
She said that the chapel had no place for the bride to dress, no hallway for the bride to stand in before walking down the aisle and the organ took up too much room in the chapel.
"I sat there and thought, 'Wouldn't it be fun to update this?'" Stewart said.
Stewart and her husband, John Stewart III, a University alumnus, were among the donors who contributed to updating the chapel. The renovated chapel will be re-dedicated tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. in a donor recognition ceremony. The chapel was originally dedicated in 1946 and named for William Danforth. The ceremony is invitation-only, but an open house for the public will follow at 3:30 p.m.
RIGHT, the chapel received a new bride's room and new floors among other additions. The first wedding since the renovations was held at the chapel last weekend.
Lisa Scheller, senior editor for the University Endowment Association, said that the construction began in March and cost about $900,000. The construction ended this month and the first wedding since the renovations was held at the chapel last weekend.
Scheller said the construction was funded entirely through private donations.
Stewart said she and her family were involved in deciding what
to update. Big renovations include the addition of a bridal room, new flooring, a heating and cooling system and new landscaping. Stewart said her family would continue to be involved in maintaining the landscaping.
Rueben Perez, director of the Student Involvement and Leadership Center, said that no weddings were displaced because of the renovations because the SILC, which schedules events for the chapel, planned ahead
Perez said that in addition to weddings, the chapel is also often used for club meetings and greek
initiation ceremonies.
Anyone interested in reserving the chapel should contact the Student Involvement and Leadership Center at (785) 864-4861.
Edited by Jeff Briscoe
SPEAKER
Journalist tells of extraordinary people
Bob Dotson explores every walk of life
BY JEFF DETERS
jdeters@kansan.com
"What makes me happy is going out and meeting people and doing stories," Dotson said. "It's not a bad way to dedicate
Bob Dotson is a storyteller, in more than 30 years as a journalist, Dotson has traveled the globe telling the stories of people who might seem ordinary but are in many ways extraordinary.
way to dedicate your life."
Dotson, a correspondent for NBC News and host of the series "American Story with Bob Dotson," can be seen on the "Today Show"
Dotson
and "NBC Nightly News." He is also writer and host of "Bob Dotson America" on the Travel Channel, Dotson, a 1968 graduate of the School of Journalism, has won numerous awards during his career. Dotson is the featured speaker at Editors Day on Saturday in Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The event begins at 1:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Dotson has traveled to all 50 states. He has told stories as far ranging as an 18-year-old boy from Westport, Mass., where neighbors came together to help him buy a farm, to brothers who searched to end a 65-year-old mystery: the location of their father's sunken World War II submarine near Kiska Island,
Alaska. The U.S. Navy never found the ship. The Japanese never found the ship. But the brothers did. They used sonar and other high-tech equipment and paid for it on their own dime.
At the University, Dotson originally wanted to become a lawyer but found he enjoyed journalism much more. He worked as a news director and reporter for KANU-FM, the University's radio station at the time.
Bruce Linton, former journalism professor and head of the radio/television/film department at the time, got to know Dotson quite well.
"We saw he had a lot of potential and was a very good writer." Linton said. "And obviously today, he's still a very good writer."
Ann Brill, dean of the School of Journalism, said at the heart of telling a good story was creativity and serving as a voice for people.
"People like Bob Dotson deserve our respect for the stories that he does tell," she said.
"I think basically what has guided me through my career is I have a willingness to say yes most of the time, and a lot of curiosity to go and find America," Dotson said.
SCIENCE
In the future Dotson said he wanted to continue doing what he has done for the past three decades.
- Edited by Ashlee Kieler
World does revolve around Lawrence Panel discussion about geography reveals it is no longer a priority for schools
BY DYLAN SANDS dsands@kansan.com
Jon Goering/KANSAN
Brian McLendon, center, engineering director at Google, goes over the panel discussion with Jerome Dobson, KU professor of geography, from left, Greg Hurd, host of TV show "River City Weekly," and Alexander Murphy, professor of geography at the University of Oregon, on Thursday night at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics. McLendon grew up in Lawrence and was the co-founder of Google Earth.
Lawrence is the center of the world, according to Google Earth. Perhaps that is because the cofounder of engineering for the satellite mapping company is a KU alumnus. Brian McClendon returned to the Earth's center last night to join two professors in making a case for what they called a largely forgotten field: geography.
McClendon joined Jerry Dobson, professor of geography at the University of Kansas, and Alexander Murphy, professor of geography at the University of Oregon, in presenting "World Hot Spots: What Google Earth and Geography Tell Us About War, Peace and Politics" at the Dole Institute on Thursday.
The presentation started off with jokes surrounding Miss Teen South Carolina's response to a question concerning the inability of many U.S. children to locate the United States on a map. The three speakers said that her now-infamous reply, in which she said many people in the United States could not afford maps, cited a cause for alarm.
"It is not just our beauty contestants that have these problems," Dobson said. "We face a society in which national leaders don't understand fundamental geography."
Dobson said that of the top-20 private universities in the United States, only two have geography departments.
"There is an old oke," said Dobson. "What is the most common first name for a high school geography teacher? The answer is coach."
Many universities stopped making geography a priority after World War II. He said that the lack of geographical knowledge led to misconceptions of the world and misguided foreign policy decisions.
"For the past 60 years, we've had more quagmires than victories," Dobson said. "This coincides with the American purge of geography. We're playing a game of blind man's bluff."
Alexander Murphy said part of the problem was the way people viewed the field of geography. He said most people thought of it only as a way to locate states and capitals.
"When you say the word 'geography,' it connotes lists of memorization facts," he said. "There are a lot of other things that have come to the fore such as locations of oil resources and infrastructure."
Brian McClendon said he hoped the availability of Google Earth software would help people embrace and fully understand geography.
"The problem with geography is communication," McClendon said. "The President of the United States is not a technical person, most people aren't. If you show him a presentation that goes over his head, it's gone. If you can keep it simple, he has a chance to understand."
The speakers said that current U.S. foreign policy complications in the Middle East had to do with geographical ignorance in national leaders. All three agreed that universities needed to better promote geography so that future generations could avoid blunders when examining borders and demographics. They stressed the need for everyone to understand not only locations of physical borders but religious and cultural borders as well.
"Geography is to space what history is to time," said Dobson. "War is God's way of teaching geography."
Edited by Amelia Freidline
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