Heard on the Hill: A guide to finding KU public censure notices; engineering students to present information learned in Brazil; graduate student involved in find that uncovers big dinosaur tracks

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

• I heard from a tipster who was a little disappointed with how KU announced its recent public censure notices against two faculty members involved in a plagiarism incident that I wrote about last week.

I didn’t hear about the public censure notices until Friday, after two different people told me about them. That tells me the news probably didn’t start circulating among the university community until later in the week.

Why might that be? Maybe it’s because folks (like me) didn’t know quite where to find such public notices. They appear in KU Today, an email newsletter published by KU’s Office of News and Media Relations. I’m a subscriber to that email, and I read it every day.

But I didn’t see the censure notices at first. I’ll show you why. Here’s Tuesday’s edition, where the notices were announced.

If you’re having trouble finding the notices too, scroll down to the bottom right corner of the page, and click on “News in Brief,” which takes you to the notices.

I didn’t see the “News in Brief” link. As you can see in Monday’s edition and Wednesday’s edition, it’s not always there, and it’s under a bunch of links that don’t change a whole lot.

But now, at least, we all know where to find the notices in the future.

• Thanks to Samantha Forbes, one of KU’s Self Engineering fellows, for sending me some information on their recent trip to Brazil.

That program is a good one — if you aren’t familiar with it, you can learn more here.

But Forbes wanted to tell me about the group’s senior capstone project this year. They chose to focus on Brazil, “for countless reasons including their booming economy and upcoming World Cup and Olympics,” she told me.

The group will be doing an upcoming lecture series on Brazil’s economic development, engineering expansion, environmental stewardship and energy management.

They also got donors to sponsor a 10-day visit to the country for 15 students and two advisers.

The first lecture, on Brazil’s economy and engineering expansion, is set for 7 p.m. Oct. 19 in the Spahr classroom on the main floor of Eaton Hall. The second lecture is at 7 p.m. Nov. 16 at the Commons in Spooner Hall. It will focus on Brazil’s environmental stewardship and energy management.

Here’s a photo of Brian Platt, a graduate research assistant in the Kansas Geological Survey, doing some research in Arkansas on some pretty spiffy dinosaur footprints.

And here’s a story that outlines a little more information about the site in southwestern Arkansas that yielded the fossilized tracks, believed to be between 120 million to 150 million years old.

The tracks are pretty large, and the researchers believe they belong to Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, which was about 15 feet tall, weighed about 8 tons and was similar in appearance to Tyrannosaurus rex, the (Arkansas) Times Record reported.

I, for one, am pretty glad those things are extinct.

• Even though it’s fall break (strange to have it on a Monday and Tuesday this year), Heard on the Hill is still chugging away. Keep submitting your tips to ahyland@ljworld.com.