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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WWW.KANSAN.COM | NEWS | WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2007
PROFILE
Design student named Best of Show
Class work wins KU artist honor of publication in a national magazine
Jon Goering/KANSAN
Jon Goering/KANSAN
Amy Rottinghaus, Baileyville junior, won Best of Show for her book cover designs. Her work will be featured in the upcoming issue of Creative Quarterly magazine.
By Sam Carlson
scarlson@kansan.com
If there were a guide for young women on how to fix a toilet, Amy Rottinghaus would have it "covered."
Rottinghaus, Baileyville junior, designed three book covers for a series of "Tech Girl" do-it-yourself books as a project for a typography class.
The three covers titled, "Woman Plumber," "Female Mechanic" and
"Electrical Girl," won Best of Show in the graphic design category in the magazines competition. The covers will be featured in the upcoming issue of the national magazine Creative Quarterly.
Creative Quarterly features the work of college art and design students from across the country and Canada. Rottinghaus said her teacher mailed her work in at the end of the spring 2007 semester when Rottinghaus left for a three-week study abroad trip in Germany and Italy. When she returned she received the news that she had won.
Rottinghaus said she wanted to create something hip and fun for young women that would provide do-it-yourself help on everyday technological tasks.
"I was really surprised. Being a sophomore, you don't really expect to be able to compete with people all over the nation who are upperclassmen," she said.
The contest also gave Rottinghaus a chance to see how the design program at the University stacked up against other schools, she said.
"Competitions give us a chance to kind of critique each other without
actually being in the same classroom," she said.
Andrea Wertzberger, assistant professor of design, said Rottinghaus surpassed her expectations.
Grant to be used to study fetal interactions
Wertzberger also said that although book covers generally do well in the contest because people can easily understand them, she had no idea Rottinghaus would receive the Best in Show prize.
"It's a project beyond sophomore level," Wertzberger said.
a sign business. For the Tech Girl book covers, however, she gives some credit to the males in her family. Rottinghaus said she grew up on a farm and learned a bit from her dad and her brother, both of whom she calls "technology-savvy."
Rottinghaus said the project as well as her interest in graphic design was influenced by her family. Her sister is also a graphic design student, and her mom runs
Creative Quarterly is sent to more than 1,400 colleges and universities and reaches about 30,000 students, according to the magazine's Web site. Rottinghaus will receive a year's subscription to Creative Quarterly and its sister publication, 3x3 Magazine, as her prize.
—Edited by Ben Smith
University medical researchers received a five-year grant for $4.8 million from the National Institutes of Health to explore communication between pregnant women and their fetuses. Joan Hunt, a distinguished professor and lead researcher at the University, said it's not verbal communication that is being studied, or even music or drug interactions. Hunt said that researchers are analyzing the placenta and how the fetus interacts with the mother.
The research is a collaborative effort and is broken into three groups. Hunt's group studies proteins and molecules. The two other research groups study genetic factors and features of the immune system. Specifically, Hunt is looking at the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene, which is a molecule made by the placenta. Hunt said the HLA helps the mother's body understand it needs to carry the baby and not reject it.
"HLA programs mothers to accept baby and tells them it is good;" said Hunt, vice chancellor for biomedical research infrastructure.
Hunt said some mothers cannot make enough HLA and that is associated with reproduction problems like infertility and miscarriages. She said she hoped to help women with part of the problem by studying molecules.
Hunt said with science becoming so complicated, the collaborative effort helps researchers talk about better ways to complete what they are doing and leam from one another.
— Maggie VanBuskirk