Gazette - PAID Subscriptions

Art Show Emporia High School What People Say Page 5 Royals Predictions Page 7 EGW APRIL 9 AND 10, 2016 V V V PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1895 WWW.EMPORIAGAZETTE.COM V V V YEAR BUILT: 1999 SQUARE FEET: 320 LOT SIZE: .32 acre BEDROOMS: Loft bedroom BATHROOMS: 1 AMENITIES: washer/dryer TINY PLACES IN LARGE SPACES RENT: $500-600 ing between 100 and 400 square feet, although the tiny house featured on Fixer Upper was 700 square feet. Shawn and Jessica Taylor of If you watch Home and Garden Television odds are you may have Cottonwood Falls are the owners of a tiny home in watched one of their tiny house televi- “It’s okay, there is not a Elmdale. Although they chose to rent sion shows.  HGTV currently has six lot to clean but there are the home instead of different shows run- two of us and two dogs live in it, the home has been a good inning that celebrate and it’s cramped.” vestment for them. people downsizing The Taylor’s tiny their living space.  JENNIFER BLOCK, house is only 320 While different current tenant square feet. It has people have differa loft bedroom and ent ideas of what a tiny house is, some are on wheels one bathroom. It also has a small, while some are built on solid land, RV-size stackable washer and the concept is the same across the dryer.  The Taylors purchased the board — living small. The Tiny Life, a social movement of people trying to downsize their living Please see Spaces, Page 3 space, defines a tiny house as beBy Cathryne Scharton [email protected] ALDERMAN’S UNDERGRAD RESEARCH SELECTED FOR AWARD Special to the Gazette A paper on cancer research done by Emporia State University junior Christopher Alderman has been chosen to receive a Great Plains Honors Council Dennis Boe Award next month at the group’s annual conference. He also will present his paper, “The in vitro and in vivo effects of MicroRNA-15a on human malignant melanoma and the newly discovered target gene of microRNA15a,” during the conference. The Great Plains region includes Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. He is one of six students who will receive cash prizes and plaques that accompany the award. Alderman, who is from Emporia majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology, is a student in the Honors College that replaced the honors program at Emporia State in 2014. He is the second Emporia State student to receive the Dennis Boe Award, established in 2008 by the Great Plains Honors Council. “Chris is an absolutely outstanding student,” said Gary Wyatt, associate provost and Honors College director. “The award is very, very competitive, very difficult to win. ... His paper was phenomenal, so he’s very deserving of this award. Kudos to him and the faculty members that worked with him.” The shift from a program to a formal College division has enabled undergraduate students to work one-on-one with professors and to conduct research at a level traditionally reserved for graduate PHOTO COURTESY OF DUSTIN MICHELSON/EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY Emporia State University junior Christopher Alderman, right, presents his research poster to U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and ESU President Allison Garrett during the senator’s visit to campus March 22. students, Alderman said. “It’s really top-notch, and we’re really riding the same wave as some of the other big research institutions,” he said, explaining that the Honors College has equipment, resources and materials the honors program could not provide. “We have 24/7 access with really nice facilities.” The university made a conscious decision, based on research, to upgrade the honors program to Honors College status as an investment in students’ education and to provide resources and experiences they otherwise would not have. Good Evening “To be blunt, we are allocating resources to make that possible, and we have dedicated faculty enabling that to happen,” Wyatt said. “If a university really wants students to reach their potential, it really needs to provide those kinds of opportunities.” Unlike the honors program, the Honors College also offers more enhanced honors courses, small scholarships and increased opportunities for travel for professional meetings and additional studies, plus to civic leadership training through faculty and the Kansas Leadership Center. Research has shown that those types of high-impact practices also contribute to greater retention of students and greater graduation rates and success afterwards, Wyatt said. For Alderman, being part of the Honors College coupled with winning the Boe competition strengthens his ability to reach a dual doctoral degree goal he set when as a teen he learned his grandfather had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had been overwhelmed by the certainty of his grandfather’s outcome, while simultaneously realizing that modern medicine had allowed his glassblowing teacher at Emporia High School, Alan Keck, to survive lung cancer. That awareness, and another EHS teacher who piqued his interest in biology, anatomy and physiology, made him determined to become both an M.D. and a Ph.D. “I was fascinated by it because it saved one of my favorite teachers and allowed him to teach these kids in the high school,” Alderman said. With Dr. Eric Yang, chair of the ESU biological sciences department, as lead mentor, Alderman plunged into research a few weeks into his freshman year at Emporia State. “He’s highly motivated and selfinitiating,” Yang said. Alderman explored options beyond traditional chemotherapy that, in the past, has killed too many cells in addition to the cancerous ones, and carried side effects that sometimes were worse than the cancer itself. “Targeted therapy” 6VV