Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• Many, many thanks to those of you who responded to my call for names of professors who have left the university.

I heard from graduate students, people inside and outside the university and even a former faculty member himself.

Here’s some of what I learned:

• Philip Schrodt, a former political science professor, wrote to me and said he’d left for Pennsylvania State University. His salary is about a third higher there, and he’s got much more access to the kind of technology he needs to do his research.

Over the past 10 years, Schrodt told me, the political science department has had a number of professors leave for other universities, including Leo Villalon, to the University of Florida; Paul d’Anieri, also to Florida (where he is serving as the liberal arts and sciences dean); Lorraine Bayard de Volo, to the University of Colorado at Boulder; Catherine Weaver, to the University of Texas-Austin; Juliet Kaarbo, to the University of Edinburgh; and Fiona Yap, who will be leaving in 10 months for Australian National University.

I learned Yap was leaving after calling her phone to verify the information Schrodt gave me. She told me, yes, she was leaving, and added that her salary would be doubling after she took her new position.

All of those professors, Schrodt said, either had tenure or achieved it shortly after leaving KU.

• A source in the philosophy department said that department just lost associate professor Teresa Robertson this summer to the University of California at Santa Barbara. Robertson is a former professor of mine who had the strangest grading system I ever saw, but that’s another story. Kevan Edwards, an untenured assistant professor, in the department for two years, also left KU for Syracuse University a couple of years ago.

• Another source pointed out two KU professors who had previously left for the private sector, including KU law professor and former Lawrence mayor Barkley Clark, who now works at Stinson, Morrison, Hecker in Washington; and Donald Brownstein, a former philosophy professor who struck it rich as a CEO of an investment firm. I’ve written about him before.

• One Heard on the Hill fan, Daniel Stockli, an associate professor of geology, had written to me a while ago, and he mentioned he was leaving for a position at the University of Texas-Austin.

So there’s a sampling of the kinds of folks who are leaving. I’m sure there are many more (and feel free to keep sending me some names, if you’d care to). I mentioned to Schrodt that — other than Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little’s example of the departure of Yang Zhang, a bioinformatics professor — most of the people I’ve heard about seemed to be in the humanities and social sciences. That didn’t necessarily surprise Schrodt, who told me that he’s heard KU described as “a world-class university in the biological sciences, with a so-so liberal arts college sort of tagging along.”

I’m sure several folks might take issue with that, so — by all means — let me know. And if there are indeed faculty folks fleeing in the hard sciences, I’d be interested to hear about them, too.

Salary isn’t the only reason these folks make a move — others move for spousal accommodations, better leadership posts, more research opportunities and a whole host of other things. But it’s interesting to get a sense of who’s leaving the nest here in Jayhawk-land.

• Wade Garrison, digital services librarian, proved just how awesome he really is by not only responding to my call for him to submit a tip yesterday (and providing good information on top of that), he busted out Microsoft Word, and typed up a little summary of what he wanted to say, so I don’t have to.

So, take it away, Wade.

“LJWorld readers may have visited the Natural History Museum on campus and heard about their large collection of bird specimens, but they may not know that KU Libraries has one of the best collections of rare materials on birds in the United States. I currently have the privilege of being the project manager on a grant of over $70,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to make some of these collections available to the public.

“KU Libraries spends a significant portion of energy working on the fundamentals of linking up students and faculty with the information they need or cultivating an atmosphere, quiet spaces and group study spaces, for learning. However increasingly KU Libraries are redirecting their energy used to provide information in new ways. One of them includes our team working to digitize our collection of rare materials on birds by John Gould. Gould was an important natural historian during the time of Charles Darwin. Gould, along with a team of artists, created a beautiful series of lithographic prints brought to life by watercolor. Housed and curated in Spencer Research Library, KU Libraries has over 50 volumes of these prints and over 2000 original sketches and watercolors by Gould’s team of artists. The collection is an interesting blend of science and fine art representing species from all over the world.

“Like Gould’s team of artists and network of scientific contacts, our team of librarians, archivists, and conservators each bring unique skills and expertise to this project. Providing these collections online is a lot different than simply uploading photos to Flickr or Facebook. A lot of work goes into making them both easy to browse for the public and ensuring that they are useful to scholars. The Gould Collection will be available online for the people of Lawrence and the whole world by the fall of 2012.”

• You too, can be awesome like Wade. Don’t wait for me to call your name out of a directory. Just submit your tips to Heard on the Hill at ahyland@ljworld.com.