Stories

This year marks the 20th annual Michael and Sally McCracken Student Research Symposium (SRS) for the College of Science & Engineering. SRS, held on April 28 from 11:30 a.m.–3:45 p.m., offers a professional, yet relaxed environment for students to present their research and mingle with various departments.

Most people hear “Ranch Management Program” and think exclusively of cowboys and cattle. However, TCU’s College of Science & Engineering Ranch Management Program is far from restrictive. The diverse and comprehensive curriculum covers everything from soil and water conservation to animal feeding and finance. Alumni are involved in various fields, such as law, grocery management, finance, and pharmaceutical sales.

Zoranna Jones, assistant dean for student support in the College of Science & Engineering, has been elected president of NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. This distinction is not only a tribute by her peers but also a significant professional recognition of Jones’ excellence in the field of academic advising.

CSE faculty and students traveled to Pittsburgh in November to present in the North American meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), with two works receiving awards.

ChatGPT is artificial intelligence that writes for you, which can include letters, song lyrics, research papers, recipes, poems, essays, outlines, even software code. Despite its clunky name (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), within five days of its launch, more than a million people were using it. Dr. Liran Ma, TCU computer science professor, explains the potential opportunities and challenges with this new-age language generation model.

Narrative Medicine is an approach to health care that prioritizes the stories of patients, seeking to foster narrative competence among practitioners. Mathew Crawford, instructor in TCU’s Pre-Health Professions Institute, explains why this skill is central to holistic patient care in most medical contexts.

The Pre-Health Professions Institute hosted a holiday party for Cancer Care Services to support local patients and their families on Dec. 4 in the BLUU. Pre-Health students volunteered to greet guests and act as Santa's helpers. The first 20 families to arrive received gift bundles, and guests enjoyed hot chocolate, snacks, crafts, pictures with Santa, custom balloon art, face painting and a special visit from SuperFrog.

Sarah Hill, psychology professor, explains that while most industries are affected by economic downturns, the cosmetic industry is not one of them. This phenomenon has been named the "lipstick effect." Hill discusses why people spend more money on a class of non-essential goods when they have less disposable income.

Rhiannon Mayne, chair of Meteoritics and Planetary Science and curator for the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery at TCU, in collaboration with Native Earth | Native Sky (NENS), was awarded a grant for her Native Lands (NaLa) program. NENS aims to offer a better understanding of and stimulate interest in STEM programs that incorporate Native American stories and voices by developing holistic curriculum that interweave Native American stories and language with STEM principles.