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Fine Arts Week kicks off with “The Wiz” An Important Message for the TSU Community from Dr. Edward Patten, University Physician Health officials inform TSU of meningitis cases Meningitis preventative antibiotic hours extended
Many people knew that pirates flew under black flags, but did you know that many pirates were as black as the flags they flew? Recognition of the black man’s role in the maritime world of pirates has been slow to enter America’s perception of its past, until now. MORE
Texas Southern University Presidential Search Committee announces selection process Academic Search of Washington, D.C., has been selected as the national search firm to assist in the process of identifying and screening candidates for the next president of Texas Southern University (TSU). The appointment was announced following a meeting of the 16-member TSU Presidential Search Committee. MORE
Pacifica Radio donates rare historical recordings to Texas Southern University Collection includes recordings of James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry MORE
For a complete list of rare historical recordings click here.
TSU appoints J. Timothy Boddie, Jr. Interim President Brigadier General J. Timothy Boddie, Jr. (Ret. USAF), was appointed interim president of Texas Southern University (TSU), November 27, 2006 by J. Paul Johnson, Chair of the TSU Board of Regents, during a special board meeting. MORE
Business students gain exposure to the corporate world at Fortune 500 company Advance screening of "Holla" Nov. 24 Student Government Association Town Hall Meeting Professors discuss government at conference Conference to address childhood obesity
Science and Technology Enhancement Program (STEP)
Texas Southern University Board of Regents approve presidential search committee Texas Southern University Board of Regents approved a presidential search committee at its Nov. 3, 2006 board meeting. MORE
Minority undergraduate students from across the country will showcase their research Nov. 10-12 at a conference hosted by the Houston-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation at Texas Southern University. The 2006 National Conference, held at Texas Southern University’s state-of-art Science Center, will feature 1995 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Mario J. Molina as the keynote speaker; research oral presentations; student and faculty panel discussions; tours of TSU’s research programs; and opportunities for participants to meet with industry representatives and National Science Foundation officials. The public is invited to view the research posters and attend oral presentations. MORE
Dr. Mario J. Molina Backgrounder
A stroll a
In March 2006, researchers from Texas Southern University and Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health and Social Sciences jointly won support for a project designed to contribute to the reduction of the burden of malaria in the East African nation of Tanzania. The leaders of the project are Drs. Gregory H. Maddox, Andrea Shelton, and Andrew James from TSU and Professor L. T. Leshabari and Dr. Donath Tarimo of MUCHS. Dr. Sheryl McCurdy of the University of Texas Houston School of Public Health serves as an advisor to the project. MORE
The Department of Transportation Studies in the College of Science and Technology at Texas Southern University (TSU) selected DriveSafety’s DS-600c with Q-Motion (tm) as a research tool to help improve urban traffic and air quality issues. MORE
Texas Southern University Student Government Association President Clare Bailey recently participated in the 2006 session of the Nissan Student Government Leadership Program held on the historic campus of Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss. MORE
Poll shows African-American Houstonians leery of disaster preparedness Most African Americans are worried about how the city of Houston will cope with a disaster according to a new poll conducted by the Political Science Department at Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan/Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs. Eighty-three percent of those surveyed said the city is “somewhat” or “poorly prepared” to handle disaster-related emergencies. Fifty-five percent believe the government uses disasters as an excuse to remove poor and minority people from their neighborhoods to redevelop those areas for the wealthy. Fully 56 percent said they don’t trust the government to tell the truth about disasters. If a hurricane struck, nearly eight out of 10 African Americans said they would count on God to protect them from harm. Almost nine of out 10 believe that God would provide for them if they lost their home or resources during a storm. “These findings are not totally surprising,” said Karen Callaghan, a political science professor at TSU’s Barbara Jordan/ Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs. “African Americans are intensely religious, ranking God as more important in their lives than any other ethnic or national group. Faith—or a strong reliance on God and his ability to deliver and save—replaces faith in government for many African Americans.” The list-based random telephone survey of 404 African American residents in Houston, which took place in late April, also showed concern about the clarity of disaster-related messages. Forty-five percent of those interviewed said warning messages were “too technical” for the average person to understand, and 53 percent said they were “too confusing.” Percentage agreement decreased as level of education increased for the confusing message question only. The poll, which is called “The 2006 Houston Survey of African Americans,” covered other issues including race relations, schools and neighborhoods, public safety, immigration, and politics. Race Relations: On a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 indicates race relations in Houston are failing miserably and 100 means Houston passes with flying colors, African Americans gave race relations an average grade of 48 percent. Only 1 out 3 African Americans thought race relations had improved over the last few years, and roughly 2 out of 3 believe the government puts the needs and interests of white Americans above those of minorities. Schools and Neighborhoods: Thirty-eight percent of respondents with children in Houston public schools rated the quality of their child’s education as good or excellent, while 55 percent said fair or poor. Among those who did not have children in public schools, 25 percent gave a rating of good or excellent while 52 percent said fair or poor. Seventy percent of the respondents said drugs in their neighborhood were a serious problem. Only 19 percent thought their neighborhood had improved as a place to live over the past several years, 34 percent said their neighborhood stayed the same, while 32 percent said it had deteriorated. Public Safety: Sixty-five percent of the respondents agreed that due to the shortage of police officers in Houston, surveillance cameras should be placed in apartment complexes and other areas of the city to help fight crime. Concerns about crime emerged in other survey responses. When African Americans were asked to name the most important problem facing the city of Houston today, crime topped the list, followed by jobs and the economy, issues of city administration (e.g., transportation, traffic, poor road conditions, urban sprawl), immigration and education. While African Americans’ focus on crime is congruent with local surveys of the general population, a substantial difference is the emphasis on the economy as the second most important problem facing the city today. Immigration: While there is obviously some concern among African Americans about illegal immigration, respondents were mixed on how to deal with the problem. Forty-one percent favored fining businesses for hiring illegal immigrants, while 42 percent opposed it. Forty-seven percent favored building walls and a radar system along the U.S.-Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants, 32 percent opposed it. Forty-seven percent favored allowing immigrants to become temporary “guest workers” in agriculture and industry, while 32 percent opposed it. Politics: Nearly half of the respondents thought Mayor Bill White was doing a “good” or “excellent” job, but only 22 percent said the same about the city council. And while 22 percent of African Americans said they trust the city council to do what’s right “always” or “most of the time,” 44 percent said they trust the city council only “sometimes,” while 14 percent said “never.” Respondents were answering questions during the time city government was facing charges of mishandling employee bonuses. Note: The survey had a sampling error rate of plus or minus 5 percent. For more information about the study, see the Study Fact Sheet (below). For information about Texas Southern, please visit TSU’s homepage at: www.tsu.edu. The 2006 Houston Survey of African Americans Study Fact Sheet This is the first of several non-partisan, scientific studies that the Department of Political Science in the Barbara Jordan/Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University will conduct annually. The survey results will be shared with the media, citizens, researchers and government officials. Our aim is to facilitate representative democracy through a better understanding of the public opinion and public policy needs of minority citizens in the city and state. Several faculty at Texas Southern University from diverse racial backgrounds participated in the design and administration of the survey including Franklin Jones, Carroll Robinson, Walter McCoy, Marva Johnson, Sean Herlihy and Karen Callaghan. Ryan Lach of InfoUSA designed the sample. Study Design. The data for this study were obtained from telephone interviews of 404 African Americans in Houston. Each interview lasted about fifteen minutes. The study was conducted in late April 2006. Trained graduate and undergraduate students in the Barbara Jordan/Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs conducted the interviews. The principal aim of the study was to provide a general understanding of African Americans’ opinions on a variety of political issues. InfoUSA, a national database marketing and data processing firm, provided the sample. Respondents were screened for race, adult status, and city residence. “First let me confirm that I am speaking with an adult of African American heritage who lives in Houston.” Up to five attempts were made for hard-to-reach respondents with callbacks staggered throughout the survey. Partial interviews of one-third or less were excluded from the analysis. InfoUSA used a proprietary name evaluation process to create the initial database. The database identified African-American ethnicities using African nationality, African tribal groups and unique African American names coupled with ZIP+4 level 2000 Census data at the block level. Confidence level codes on geocoded African-American households were created. The database included both listed and unlisted numbers. Individuals with cell phones and those on the do not call registry were excluded. The sample of numbers was randomly selected by a computer from the initial list of more than 50,220 active phone numbers citywide. Margin of Error. According to 2000 Census data, 349,779 adult African Americans reside in Houston. Computing percentages for a sample of 404 African Americans based on these data produces a 95 percent confidence limit of plus or minus 4.87 percentage points on questions where opinion is evenly split. For smaller subgroups, the margin of error is much larger. For instance, for the 218 respondents who are female, it is plus or minus 6.6 percentage points. Sample Representativeness. This study interviewed a diverse, fairly representative group of respondents within the African American community of Houston. Less than 4 percent of the sample included Katrina evacuees. The average respondent is a female (54 percent), with a median age of 45 to 49 years, and a median family income between $20,000 and $40,000. Census data show that 55 percent of adult African Americans in Houston are female, the median age is 45 to 49 years old, and the median family income is $30,957. Although low income respondents with a family income under $20,000 are slightly underrepresented among survey respondents (27 percent of the sample compared to 35 percent of the city population), the highest income group earning over $100,000 is close to its share of the population (6 percent compared to 4 percent in the population). Respondents are also slightly more educated than the typical African American. Twenty-one percent of the sample (25 or older) had a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 16 percent in the population. Telephone surveys often include more educated respondents than the population because the likelihood of having a telephone increases with higher levels of educational attainment. Differential cooperation rates may also play a role here. A common reason for refusing to participate in the survey was the respondent’s claim that he or she did not know much about government and politics. Interviewer Race. Respondents who are talking with interviewers from another racial or ethnic background are generally less inclined to share negative attitudes toward the government, to avoid revealing socially undesirable responses. A key advantage of this study is that it used predominantly African-American interviewers (99 percent), thus offsetting potential response bias and estimation problems created by race-of-interviewer effects that typically plague local area surveys of minority opinion. MORE
Click
here for survey questions
U.S. Census Bureau. Texas: Census 2000 demographic profile highlights. Washington, D.C.; U. S. Census Bureau; 2000.Available at http://factinfder.census.gov. -30-
The Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs and the College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences celebrated the topping out of the new building June 9 with a barbecue lunch party for all construction workers and TSU officials on the ground floor of the construction site at the corner of Tierwester and Cleburne streets. MORE Tavis Smiley interns selected
TSU gears up for another “YEP” year
A Texas Southern University summer program that helps area children master basic academics and TAKS test-taking skills is underway. MORE Coping with summer vacation While summer vacation can be relaxing times for sleeping in, eating home-cooked meals, and seeing old friends, for many students it may fall significantly short of the romanticized image. Issues that students often face are: Graduate student from COPHS selected to represent the RCMI
Program at the 56th Meeting of Nobel Laureates
Shavon Clark, a graduate student in the
TSU alum says a leader must have character
Dr. Earl Allen, a TSU alumnus and minister, told TSU students, faculty and administrators on Thursday, June 1 that character is the single most important attribute a leader must have. MORE
TSU professor returns from Ghana
Dr. Mildred Bright, assistant professor of health care administration, in the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, recently returned from working at Western Hills School of Nursing in Ghana, Africa.
Increasing access to technology
Fair funding for TSU, PV discussed at news conference
Senator Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) and Representative Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) will discuss the future of the State's investment in historically black universities Texas Southern and Prairie View A&M at a press conference at TSU on Thursday, May 25. MORE
Nissan and World Wildlife Fund award Texas Southern University student the opportunity to study global environmental issues in the U.S., abroad
Texas Southern University student Carmella Jefferson has been selected to study environmental policy-making in Washington, D.C., and to conduct environmental research in South Africa through a new Environmental Leadership Program developed by Nissan North America and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The program aims to empower young leaders on U.S. college campuses to become effective advocates for the environment. MORE Hollywood beckons young theatre actress
Miriam Glover made the cut and is an example of how hard work and dedication pays off. She graduates in August and knows exactly where she’s headed—Hollywood! Glover, a theatre major at Texas Southern University, has been accepted into University of Southern California’s (USC) prestigious master of fine arts in acting program in the School of Theatre. MORE
City of Houston taps JHJ School of Business for community block grant |
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Page last updated on Apr 10, 2007 11:44:25 AM
Black
pirates played important role in 17th, 18th century 
The U.S. National Science
Foundation (NSF) has awarded Texas Southern University a grant of $2.5 million
to increase the number and quality of graduates in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The grant is part of
cross Texas
Southern University’s campus this summer revealed a host of construction and
renovation projects in progress. Using the quiet months of summer, when student
presence on campus is at its lowest, construction crews forged ahead in
preparation for the fall semester, with many projects close to completion.
Texas
Southern University 
SOPA,
liberal arts topping out BBQ is celebrated
Texas
Southern University
Thelma
Tingle Daniels wanted to enhance her skills. So did Barbara Tappin. But what
really excited them was learning about genealogy. Since February, Daniels,
Tappin and more than 20 other senior citizens in the community have been honing
their computer skills in Texas Southern University’s Urban Learning Center.
