| Alumni Community Update |
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Visit the Briggs Online Alumni Community to see this month's features:
- Monthly Briggs Quiz
- New Periodic Element named after Dr. Spees?
- Holmes renovates Sparty Store
- In Memoriam -Remembering our deceased faculty, alumni & friends.
There are over 120 alumni already registered on the new Briggs Alumni Online Community!
Register today and see what your fellow Briggsies are doing.
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Greetings!
The New Briggs Online Alumni Community is growing every day and is the place to:
- See the latest College news
- Find other Briggsies
- Locate alumni services
- Set-up your alumni profile
- Monthly brainteaser
Check it out! Register now at:
As always, we love hearing from our alumni and friends. Send your comments, stories, news and pictures to mckean@msu.edu.
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| Briggs Celebrates Spring Commencements |
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 Lyman Briggs College recently celebrated the graduation of 174 new Briggs alumni in the Class of 2008. This class included: 3 MSU Outstanding Seniors, 63 Honors College students, 26 graduating with High Honors (3.82 GPA), and 37 with Honors (3.55 GPA).
Commencement Photos |
| Announcing the Dr. Ronald C. Hamelink Scholarship in Mathematics |
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| LBC is proud to announce that the Dr. Ronald C. Hamelink Scholarship in Mathematics will be awarded beginning in the fall of 2008. This award was made possible because of the generous contributions of alumni and friends of Dr. Hamelink. This scholarship was first established at the time of Dr. Hamelink's retirement in 2003, but has only recently achieved its funding goal. Operating as an endowment, the Scholarship will provide a perpetual source of funding.
This Scholarship is important because it will support students with financial need and is one of only 3 scholarships available to Briggs students. Attention to creating new Briggs scholarships is one of the benefits of our new college status and the opening of the Office for Development & Alumni Relations.
 Dr. Ronald Hamelink is one of the founding faculty members of Lyman Briggs College. As MSU's first student to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, he set an example for success that carried over into his career as an educator. He has touched the lives of countless Lyman Briggs students since its inception in 1967.
Dr. Hamelink now lives in the East Lansing area where he continues his hobby of raising alpacas. LBC is proud to honor him with this scholarship.
If you would like to add your contribution to the Dr. Hamelink's Scholarship please contact Dan McKean, Director of Development & Alumni Relations at 517-353-4869, or email: mckean@msu.edu.
Please specify the Dr. Ron Hamelink Math Scholarship. |
| Briggs Student Justin Lockwood Has Paper Published in New MSU Peer-Review Journal |
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 Justin Lockwood's article, "The Polio Vaccine: Conspiracy and Resistance in the Kano State of Nigeria", was reviewed by a board of three undergraduate and two graduate students and published in the journal Articulate.
The Abstract to Justin's article reads: "Medical patients worldwide have significant doubts about the care they receive that are often centered on cross-cultural distrust and misinformation. To understand the difficulties in applying international healthcare in such circumstances, this paper focuses on how the people of Kano, Nigeria have boycotted the implementation of the polio vaccine. In the Kano state, efforts at polio immunization have been impeded by beliefs that the vaccine can cause HIV/AIDS, cancer, or infertility. These misconceptions of the vaccine have been exacerbated by statements from religious leaders and strengthened by isolated failures of the vaccine. Fears of the vaccine have not been unique to Nigeria, and have in fact occurred in the U.S. when the vaccine was first created. In order to achieve complete eradication of polio in Kano, it is necessary to fully educate patients about the safety and benefits of the vaccination in order to gain their trust, as has been implemented by the World Health Organization's Global Polio Initiative."
Articulate is an undergraduate scholarly journal that publishes academic papers and writings online and in-print on issues in international development and healthcare in Africa. Articulate is a sub-division and publication of SCOUT BANANA Inc. and seeks to educate, motivate, and activate the public about its mission, vision, and the healthcare crisis in Africa. The journal provides a forum for students to contribute to, as well as make, the debates in international development. Articulate believes that undergraduate students are a vital, untapped force to bring new ideas, perspectives, and concepts into the development dialogue. Their goal is to spark, share, and spread knowledge for the sake of innovative change now."
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| Professor Aaron McCright Named Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences |
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 Lyman Briggs College HPS professor Aaron M. McCright was recently named as a Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences for his sociological analysis of the political dynamics of climate change in the United States. According to the U.S. Kavli Frontiers of Science website, Fellows are "some 100 of the best and brightest of young American scientists" who are "selected from a pool of young researchers (under 45) who have made significant contributions to science." As part of this honor, Dr. McCright was an invited participant at the 19th Annual Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium for the National Academy of Sciences in Irvine, California on November 8-10, 2007.
Dr. McCright began this research agenda during the spring of 1997. Searching for a master's thesis topic, he became interested in some of the messages about global warming coming out of prominent conservative think tanks. In particular, he was struck by how these important organizations in the American conservative movement enlisted the services of a handful of climate change contrarians-those few scientists aligned with the fossil fuels industry who publicly challenged the reality of global warming. "I was fascinated at how vigorously these conservative think tanks attacked the international scientific community," says Dr. McCright. Drawing upon literatures in environmental sociology, political sociology, sociology of science, and social movements scholarship, he systematically examined how the American conservative movement mobilized to challenged the legitimacy of global warming as a social problem. He has published several works on his climate change research to date.
This spring semester, Dr. McCright served as a panel member at a "Focus the Nation" Community Forum on climate change at the end of January 2008. With Stan Kaplowitz in the Department of Sociology, he is conducting research to identify how different persuasion techniques affect Americans' support for different climate policies. At the end of May 2008, Dr. McCright will participate in a climate change workshop at the National Science Foundation to discuss priorities for federal funding for sociological research on climate change. Later in the summer, Dr. McCright will complete a new manuscript on the American conservative movement's success in undermining climate change science and policy for a special issue of an international social science journal. More on Dr. McCright | |
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