Students come to UNT for leadership training
Sixty-five students began their first week of summer break in Bridgeport this week to receive leadership training at the University of North Texas' first LeaderShape Institute.
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The LeaderShape Institute, sponsored by UNT's Center for Leadership and Service, is a national program developed in 1986 by Alpha Tau Omega national fraternity to improve the leadership skills of college and university students. The program's mission is to teach young adults the skills of leading others while maintaining integrity.
LeaderShape Inc. was formed as a separate not-for-profit corporation in 1988. In 1992, the corporation began offering leadership training on university and college campuses exclusively to students on those campuses. More than 60 campuses have offered LeaderShape Institutes.
This is the first year for UNT's LeaderShape Institute, which is being held through Friday at the Bridgeport Camp & Conference Center.
 
Conference to focus on technology, security
UNT's 17th annual International Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology is scheduled for May 26-29.
The conference will focus on military technology, cyber security, environmental and energy security, cultural and political implications of technology in developing nations, and religion and technology use.
The conference will take place at UNT's Environmental Education, Science and Technology Building, at 1704 W. Mulberry St. on the northwest corner of Avenue C and West Mulberry Street.
Peter W. Singer, author of the bestselling 2009 book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, will give the conference's keynote address May 27 at 5 p.m. He will discuss the ethics of merging military technologies, including unmanned drones and technologically advanced soldiers.
Wired for War made The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list during its first week of release, and was named a nonfiction book of the year by The Financial Times.
Singer is a senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Registration costs $140 for students and $250 for others.
To register or for more information and a conference schedule, visit www.cep.unt.edu/spt .
Georgia school names Jacobs as president
Bonita Jacobs, executive director of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at UNT since 2009, was named president of North Georgia College & State University by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents.
The regents said Jacobs' wealth of experience both as an executive and professor are key to the development of students and leaders.
She will be the first woman to serve as president at North Georgia, and she will succeed David Potter, who has served as president of North Georgia since January 2005. In September 2010, Potter announced his plans to retire, and a national search was launched to find his successor. Jacobs will officially begin on July 1, and will begin transitional work with administrators in the meantime.
Jacobs also is a tenured professor in counseling and higher education. From 1998 to 2009, she served as UNT's vice president for student development.
Jacobs earned both a bachelor's degree in Spanish and history as well as a master's degree in counseling from Stephen F. Austin State University. She earned her doctorate in educational administration from Texas A&M University.
 
University named to 'Green College' list
UNT is one of three universities in Texas named to the "Green College" list of environmentally responsible universities by The Princeton Review.
The company created the list in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council, which operates the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. The list features institutions of higher education that demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.
Schools were rated on a scale between 60 and 99, and only schools with a ranking of 80 or greater were featured in the 2011 edition. UNT received a score of 95. According to The Princeton Review, 69 percent of students surveyed said that having information about a school's commitment to the environment would influence their decision to apply to or attend the school.
The report commended UNT for developing a Climate Action Plan according to requirements outlined by the American College and University President's Climate Commitment. UNT has completed five of the seven tangible actions, making it the leading "green" university in Texas and placing UNT in the top 17 percent of green-compliant universities nationwide. In 2008, UNT became the first large Texas university to sign the American College and University President's Climate Commitment. The university also created the Office of Sustainability in February 2009.
In April, UNT received a $2 million grant from the State Energy Conservation Office to install three community-scale wind turbines that will feed the electrical grid that provides power to UNT's new football stadium. The stadium, which opens in September, will potentially be the first LEED platinum-certified football complex in the world. The turbines are expected to be installed by the end of the year.
Bleacher Report picks UNT band as the best
The University of North Texas Green Brigade Marching Band has been named the No. 1 "Best Damn Band in the Land" by Bleacher Report, a national sports website that compiled a list of the nation's 25 best college marching bands.
The 320-member Green Brigade Marching Band performs at various athletic events and marching competitions throughout the year and releases a CD of season highlights every two years.
The Green Brigade Marching Band is part of the UNT College of Music. The highly comprehensive programs of the College of Music enroll the largest number of music majors of any university in the country.
More than 1,600 music majors from all over the world pursue a wide variety of specializations, including classical music performance, jazz studies, music education, composition, musicology, theory and ethnomusicology.
To hear music performed by the Green Brigade, visit http://music.unt.edu/greenbrigade .
Libraries to put Civil War-era papers online
Although few significant battles were fought in Texas during the Civil War, more than 70,000 Texans served in the Confederate Army, with about 2,000 Texans joining the Union Army. Waul's Texas Legion, which was formed near present-day Brenham by Thomas Neville Waul, played a key role in the defense of Vicksburg, Miss., for the Confederate Army before most of the companies in the legion were captured in July 1863.
A detailed account of the Texans' roles in the Battle of Vicksburg is being preserved online during this year's 150th observance of the start of the Civil War, thanks to the UNT Libraries' Digital Projects Unit.
UNT Libraries received a $30,509 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the funding branch of the National Archives and Records Administration, to digitize and place eight archival collections on the Portal to Texas History, which offers more than 250,000 pages of material from archives, historical societies, small and large libraries, museums and private collections from across the state.
UNT McNair Scholar awarded NIH internship
UNT senior Adrian Cadar will study pathophysiology, or how people move, to better help patients suffering from Parkinson's disease at a highly prestigious summer internship at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. The institute is part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Cadar is majoring in biology and will graduate Saturday.
Cadar is the son of Cornel and Dina Cadar of Denton and a 2007 graduate of Ryan High School. He is a student in UNT's Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program. The federally funded program prepares undergraduate students who are the first in their families to attend college, are from economically marginalized families or are members of groups that are traditionally underrepresented in graduate education to pursue doctoral study.
Under the direction of Edward Dzialowski, associate professor of biological sciences, Cadar has been investigating the mechanisms that mediate the closure of an important fetal blood vessel in the chicken embryo model. That model may lead to a better understanding of the congenital heart defect in infants.
Last summer, Cadar attended the Intramural Research Program Summer Student Program at the National Institute on Aging in Maryland. In the fall, Cadar will pursue a doctorate at Vanderbilt University and hopes to one day specialize in cardiovascular surgery in a research-based teaching hospital.
Cadar is the recipient of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund award and was one of 20 Marshall Scholarship finalists in the five-state region.
He presented his research at the 2009 national conference of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science and at the Texas Undergraduate Research Day at the Capitol in Austin in February.
