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

• KU has announced the honorees for the 2011 Men of Merit calendar.

Fifteen students, faculty and staff have been recognized this year on the calendar.

The fact that we have a “Men of Merit” calendar at all is an interesting story in the first place.

The Emily Taylor Women’s Resource Center released its “Women of Distinction” calendar in 2003 at least partially because of another popular calendar at the time.

The “Women of KU” calendar was more into titillation than triumph and featured photos of KU students wearing somewhat less than they typically would. I have no idea if that calendar is even still around.

After the Women of Distinction calendar got going for awhile, then-KU football player Gary Green thought that men shouldn’t be left out, and the women’s center thought that was a pretty good idea.

So the Men of Merit calendar was born. This year’s honorees include:

Four graduating seniors: Alejandro Jonathan Sabillion, Lawrence; Alex R. Earles, Assaria and Salina; Kory C. Kirkegaard, Topeka; and Jason Paul Kingman, Topeka.

Five other students: Richard A. Ross, a junior from Gleview, Ill.; Kameron DePaul Mack, a junior from Wichita; Eric A. Sader, a second-year law student and master’s student from Lawrence; Shane A. Henry, a master’s student from Kingman; and Tyrel R. Reed, a fall 2010 graduate from Burlington.

And six faculty and staff members: Frank DeSalvo, associate vice provost for Student Success; Curtis Marsh, program director for KU Info and the Learning Studio; Aaron Quisenberry, associate director for the Student Involvement and Leadership Center; Bill Tuttle, professor emeritus of American studies; Glen W. White, professor of applied behavioral science; and John G. Younger, professor of classics and chair of women, gender and sexuality studies.

• The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an interesting list of how many schools across the country have increased internal spending on research only to see their federal dollars received ranking drop.

You’ll need a subscription to see the whole list, but because I’m a nice sort of guy, I’ll go ahead and tell you what they found from KU.

In 1999 (using inflation-adjusted dollars), KU spent $47 million internally on research. Ten years later, that figure grew by 66 percent, to $78.1 million.

And — unlike some other schools — KU moved up a bit in the federal dollars received rankings, to 81st in 2009 from 83rd in 1999.

It was interesting to look at the list and see the difference in the schools that spent tons of institutional money on research — the University of Wisconsin at Madison spent $283 million — and some that spent not so much.

Six schools surveyed — including Florida A&M, Howard and a little school in Massachusetts named Harvard — didn’t spend any finance any research at all using institutional money.

• Federal research dollar rankings are important for several reasons, not the least of which is that they’re important to the Association of American Universities, which recently booted Nebraska from their ranks.

I’ve written a lot about that (maybe too much), but before I leave the topic completely, I wanted to share one of the sillier suggestions for why Nebraska got booted.

Namely, that two former presidents of the University of Texas hold top posts in the AAU, and that Nebraska and Texas don’t like each other on the football field, and, well… maybe they just got upset that Nebraska left the Big 12, so they decided to give them the heave-ho from the AAU.

I saw that theory posited in this Omaha World-Herald article that actually gets KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little’s take on the topic. The whole process seemed to me to be quite silly.

This idea seemed to come from readers of the paper, one of whom felt it was “so obvious, it’s sickening.”

It’s not just me who thinks that idea is silly. Just ask AAU spokesman Barry Toiv, which the reporter did.

“In all of this, throughout this entire event, that’s the silliest idea I ever heard,” he told the World-Herald.

Gray-Little, for her part, had this to say, which struck me as quite sensible.

“This is nothing to do with athletics or athletics conferences,” she said. “The Big 12 and the Big Ten are athletic conferences. The decision and voting in the AAU is not related to which conference you belong to.”

It is good for silliness, though. And I do enjoy me some good silliness.

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