Here’s your daily 6 a.m. dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• In spotting an article in the University Daily Kansan recently that details how Student Senate undertook a new rebranding effort complete with a website and logo redesign, one thing immediately came to mind. Why not hire talented KU students to do the same thing for less cost, instead of sending the cash to a marketing firm in Topeka?

So I called Student Body President Michael Wade Smith, and put the $4,000 question to him.

“We couldn’t get any students to consider our timeline,” he said, adding that he wanted to ensure that the site was up and running as soon as possible, and certainly by the end of this semester. They did approach several students, and ran into a few other issues, too, he said, but the time constraint was the main factor.

• Greg Simpson, professor of psychology who served as KU’s interim liberal arts and sciences dean between Joseph Steinmetz and Danny Anderson, is one of five finalists to become dean of Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences, the university announced this week. Simpson is scheduled to make a campus visit later this month.

• KU’s search for a new law dean is entering its final phases. The law dean search committee forwarded its recommendations to Provost Jeff Vitter on Tuesday, said Chris Drahozal, chairman of the search committee.

Vitter will choose from among four finalists, whose names and qualifications are available on the provost’s website.

Drahozal said that, while it was out of his hands, he hoped a new dean could be named by late this year or early next year.

• Responding to yesterday’s inaugural edition of Heard on the Hill, reader Bob Augelli, an old friend of Chancellor Laurence Chalmers’ family, suggested a building that could bear Chalmers’ name. I’d heard the suggestion before, but had forgotten it until Augelli mentioned it. He graciously allowed me to reprint his suggestion in this space.

“I have the perfect spot: KU’s Art and Design Building,” Augelli wrote. “Larry Chalmers went on to become the Director of the Chicago Art Institute after he left KU so there is a natural connection to the arts, not to mention the fact that the building has no name other than: Art and Design Building.”

• Check out KU social psychology professor Omri Gillath, who’s quoted in a recent article in USA Today talking about the science behind generosity.

He’s trying to figure out whether attachment security, which the article calls “an internal sense we are worthy of love and people support us,” is a motivating factor in whether people give.

The research is funded by the University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative.

• I’m thinking of starting up the Andy Hyland Generosity Initiative. All you need to do to join is generously send me a tip for Heard on the Hill at ahyland@ljworld.com.