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Missouri Western State University, 4525 Downs Drive, St. Joseph, MO 64507, 816-271- 4200 |
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Click any link for these stories: Western to Honor Alumni, Friends at Awards Banquet NOW There's an App for That: Western Students Develop iPhone Applications Lost & Found: If you have lost any items, please come to SU 228 to claim them. You may be required to describe the item. Click on
Guidelines for Tower Topics: Tower Topics submissions should state time, date, place, sponsor, title of event, name of speaker's and admission fees. Send complete information to the Public Relations and Marketing office (Leah Spratt Hall, Room 207). The deadline for all entries is 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, for the next week's issue. Tower Topics will be online weekly during the fall and spring semester. For more information call 271-4124. Student Editor:
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Week of Sept. 10 - 18, 2010 |
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Friday, Sept. 17:
Saturday, Sept. 18:
Sunday, Sept. 19
Monday, Sept. 20
Tuesday, Sept. 21
Wednesday, Sept. 22
Thursday, Sept. 23
Friday, Sept. 24
Saturday, Sept. 25
Adventure League fund-raising event, 10
a.m.-5p.m., Drake Field
The Adventure League is a non-competitive sports and recreation league
for children and adults with significant disabilities. Volunteers are
needed to help with the various events that will happen throughout the
day. All of the funds raised during this event will go towards building
the very first fully accessible tree house in the state of Missouri. The
"Tree House for Everyone" will be built somewhere in the St. Joseph
Community and will provide the tree house experience for everyone
regardless of age, ability or disability. The tree house will also be
used as an outdoor classroom and it will be available to reserve for
family picnics, birthday parties, etc. For anyone interested in
volunteering, everyone will be meeting in front of Eder Hall at 9:30
a.m. The Adventure League is sponsored in part by the members of Alpha
Delta Alpha. Alpha Delta Alpha is a student organization at MWSU that is
dedicated to improving campus accessibility for people with
disabilities.
Wendy's Hall of Fame Induction Brunch, 11 a.m., Fulkerson Center
$20 per person, call athletics at 271-4481 for more information.
Griffon Volleyball vs. Missouri Southern, 2 p.m., Joplin, Mo.
Griffon Football vs. Pittsburg State University, 6:20 p.m., Spratt
Memorial Stadium
Griffon Soccer vs. University Central Missouri, 7 p.m., at Warrensburg,
Mo. |
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NOW There's an App for That: Western Students Develop iPhone Applications Western students in a computer science course this summer competed for cash prizes while learning a new skill and helping a local hospital make communication easier for their doctors.
Noah Hendrix of St. Joseph won first place with his app, “Survey Says.” Hendrix is a computer science major at the University of Kansas, but his sister attends Western and saw a flyer for the summer class. “I was interested in learning something new, and KU doesn’t offer a class like that,” Hendrix said. The app created by Hendrix allows people to create and distribute surveys and watch the responses arrive in real time on their iPhone. A speaker can ask questions of an audience and monitor their responses during the presentation. Survey Says is now offered as a free product in Apple’s App Store and Hendrix says several hundred people have downloaded it. “This is a really cool application,” Dr. Boyce said. “It’s simple and straightforward.” He said if presenters ask a sensitive question (asking how many have engaged in a risky behavior, for example), audience members can respond privately on their iPhone, giving the presenter immediate results. The second prize was won by a team of Nick Burtner, Ricky Brown and Levi Neely for “DocTalk,” which allows physicians to page, voice mail or text message on a closed application so that patient privacy is not compromised. The team is working with Heartland to finish the app, which Burtner said isn’t really appropriate for the App Store because it requires a specific server set-up. Burtner, a computer science major from St. Joseph, said he was always interested in learning app development, and had worked for Sprint in an application development project group. Brown and Neely are both full-time employees in Western’s Instructional Media Center. Cindy Wells, manager of instructional design services, encouraged them to take the class so they could possibly develop some apps for Western. All agreed the cash prize was a good motivator. Student motivation was important, said Dr. Baoqiang Yan, assistant professor of computer science and the instructor, because in an eight-week class it wasn’t possible for him to cover everything. The class epitomized Western’s mission of applied learning, with students taking what they learned in the classroom and applying it in a real-world case. “I tried to cover the basics, but the students had to learn a lot on their own,” Dr. Yan said. Western would like to offer the class again, said Dr. Yan, and Dr. Boyce said he would like to do it again next year. The students agree they’d like to see Western continue to offer the class. “I hope they’ll do another similar program in the future, even without the case part,” Burtner said. “It was a very good and interesting class.” |
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For rent: 2410 Francis. Two bedroom very nice upstairs apt., laundry hook-ups, refrig. & stove incl. $525 + utilities. 816-244-6138 or holtzfiv@stjoelive.com. Free trampoline. You move it, it's yours. Cell phone 816-262-7123 or home 816-279-7274. |
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Wanted: Your want ads! You
are welcome to submit ads to the Western ADvantage each week.
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Redmond
(left) is a vice president of membership services for the St. Joseph Area
Chamber of Commerce. She graduated with a degree in speech communication
with an emphasis in public relations. Before joining the Chamber in 2005
Redmond was a regional account manager for Pryor Resources, Inc. in
Overland Park Kan., and worked for Woody Bibens and Associates in St.
Joseph as the tradeshow and educational manager for the Western Nursery
and Landscape Association.
Pearson
(left) graduated with a Spanish major and general business minor. He
currently lives in Atlanta and is the owner of SPII, working as a
diversity and leadership speaker, author and speaker coach. The majority
of his audiences are university students, staff or administrators. He has
spoken all over the country, in Canada, Mexico and the British Virgin
Islands, conducting workshops and making keynote addresses at conferences
and conventions. He spoke at Western's new student orientation this fall
and a Global Women's Leadership Summit on campus last spring.
The
students created new applications, or apps, for Apple’s iPhone. Dr. Joe
Boyce is chief medical information officer at Heartland Health. All
doctors at Heartland have iPhones, Dr. Boyce said, and he wanted to see
how that technology could make communication easier. He contacted Western
with a list of eight possible apps, and the hospital agreed to provide
cash prizes for the best entries.