Year: 2013

Meeting the operators of IBM in Italy, taking a cablecar up a mountain in Innsbruck, walking through the Euronext stock exchange in Paris and discussing business with Lloyd’s of London — all in three weeks for six hours of course credit.

From June to July, two Baylor faculty members are leading Baylor students in the European Business Seminar. It is a study abroad program focusing on the business practices of several international companies in Europe.

“We are not sitting in classrooms in Europe. We are visiting companies,” said Richard Easley, the director of the program. “You are getting access to people that you would never have access to, typically, unless you were in that particular industry.”

Expanding your world-view can be difficult, but the Global Community Living and Learning Center approaches it in an unconventional way.

The Global LLC program was started in 2008 by Janet Norden, a lecturer in the Spanish department. Along with a group of students, she came up with an idea to expand global education and language-immersion skills.

Students who are a part of the program have a target language that they want to learn, and then they can choose to be placed in a full-immersion suite.

It’s not very often two 20-year-old students own a million-dollar company.

Waco junior Yaseen Waqar and Plano junior Rayyan Islam are the co-founders of www.LuxuryLites.com, an electronic cigarette and hookah site.

In the last seven months, their company has made $1.7 million in sales with a profit of more than $320,000.

he leader of a legislative effort to link higher education funds to graduation rates said Wednesday there seems to be some quiet resistance from major universities that have publicly endorsed the idea.

Republican Dan Branch of Dallas, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, told a news conference that while the major university systems have endorsed the idea publicly, “they seem to be sending emissaries in to the folks on subcommittees and trying to put the brakes on things.”

“We need to identify where the tension seems to be,” Branch said.

The Baylor Bears went into Morgantown on Wednesday and earned a 65-62 win over West Virginia. It was Baylor’s first-ever trip to Morgantown, and the win snapped its three-game losing streak.

“Road wins are always great,” head coach Scott Drew told ESPN Radio after the game. “Any Big 12 win is obviously nice, especially when you are at this time of year. This time of year every game is so big and so critical. We are really proud of how our team responded.”

Freshman center Isaiah Austin led the Bears with 21 points, six rebounds and two blocks. Senior guard Pierre Jackson contributed 15 points, six rebounds and five assists. Senior guard A.J. Walton scored some clutch baskets to give the Bears much-needed momentum down the stretch. Walton finished with 10 points and two rebounds.

The No. 22 Baylor Lady Bears softball team has been getting better every tournament, improving upon the little things before competition gets harder. Everyone is expected to perform at a high level, but the freshman class has surprised many people.

The upperclassmen and returning players continue to do their job.

Senior centerfielder Kathy Shelton has a .404 batting average and has 10 runs, 23 hits and nine RBIs this season.

Eight years ago, a former clown of the Ringling Bros. Circus opened the doors to a unique theater with live, family-friendly stage comedy in Central Texas.

After Saturday, those doors will close.

Grainger Esch, an alumnus of Duke University and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, is the artistic director and co-founder of the Silver Spur Theater in Salado, a town inside Bell County, 50 miles south of Waco.

The men’s tennis team is coming off of a come-from-behind 4-3 win over the Florida Gators on Saturday.

“We’re pleased,” head coach Matt Knoll said. “It’s tough to play there. We’ve struggled down there for years and I thought the guys did a great job of battling from beginning to [the] end and finding a way to win.”

After clinching the doubles point, the Bears were down early with straight-set losses from sophomores Tony Lupieri and Diego Galeano.

Some of Baylor’s best singers will display their golden pipes for the community.

The Baylor Bella Voce choir will perform at 7:30 p.m. today in Roxy Grove Hall. The concert is free and open to the public.

The choir of 34 female singers will perform a concert titled “By, For, and About Women.”

There seems to be a general dislike of independent voters who vote party lines, based on ideas that those who vote party lines are uninformed, follow the crowd or are lazy.

Perhaps that reasoning is based on more than just their party labels, however.

Independent voters are generally not associated with a party of their own, though “independent voters” is slowly growing into its own party.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing “Born Yesterday,” an intellectual comedy directed by Jessi Hampton at the Baylor Department of Theatre Arts.

The play was written by Garson Kanin and first performed in 1946. Set in Washington, D.C., it follows the story of Billie Dawn, mistress of the rough junkyard tycoon Harry Brock. She is taken advantage of by Brock’s bribery and corruption, completely unaware of the consequences of his actions.

The play documents Billie’s education in the realms of politics and history as she learns to understand Brock’s unethical actions while discovering the beauty of a democratic system. Becoming politically informed allows her to stand up against the injustice in politics.

When you purchase something, it becomes yours. You own it, and you should be able to do with it what you wish.

This sounds pretty simple, but the government is struggling with this concept.

The law of the land in the United States says that unlocking your cell phone is illegal. This means that a phone purchased from, say, Verizon cannot be unlocked and used on AT&T’s network.

Greg (@gregdevries3000) and Daniel (@D_Hill80) discuss Baylor hoops, the Big 12 tournament, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Alex Smith trade, and Baylor baseball. Follow the show (@DFTBPodcast) and like our Facebook page.

She sits tall on a rock, eyes behind her famous circle-frame glasses, staring defiantly across the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks’ 9-foot bronze statue was unveiled in a ceremony Wednesday that included remarks from President Barack Obama and leaders of Congress, echoing words of her determination and legacy for the future.

“We make excuses for inaction,” Obama said, addressing the members of Congress and guests in the National Statuary Hall. “We say to ourselves, ‘It’s not my responsibility. There’s nothing I can do.’ Rosa Parks tells us there’s always something we can do.”

Two pontiffs, both wearing white, both called “pope” and living a few yards from one another, with the same key aide serving them.

The Vatican’s announcement Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI will be known as “emeritus pope” in his retirement, be called “Your Holiness” and continue to wear the white cassock associated with the papacy has fueled concerns about potential conflicts arising from the peculiar reality now facing the Catholic Church: having one reigning and one retired pope.

Benedict’s title and what he will wear have been a major source of speculation since the 85-year-old pontiff stunned the world and announced he would resign Thursday, the first pope to do so in 600 years.

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices voiced deep skepticism Wednesday about a section of a landmark civil rights law that has helped millions of Americans exercise their right to vote.

In an ominous note for supporters of the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Justice Anthony Kennedy both acknowledged the measure’s vital role in fighting discrimination and suggested that other important laws in U.S. history had run their course. “Times change,” Kennedy said during the fast-paced, 70-minute argument.

Dozers Tuesday were demolishing an aging apartment complex and a handful of old houses on Speight Avenue near the Baylor University campus, where a private group will build a multimillion-dollar student housing community that includes a seven-story parking garage.

Called the View, it will feature 257 apartment units and bedrooms for 718 occupants, in addition to features such as a swimming pool with cabana lounges, a clubhouse with social lounges, an outdoor barbecue area and Internet cafe. It is scheduled to open in fall 2014.

What could possibly go wrong?

An Australian billionaire is getting ready to build a new version of the Titanic that could set sail in late 2016.

Clive Palmer unveiled blueprints for the famously doomed ship’s namesake Tuesday at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. He said construction is scheduled to start soon in China.

Advanced breast cancer has increased slightly among young women, a 34-year analysis suggests. The disease is still uncommon among women younger than 40, and the small change has experts scratching their heads about possible reasons.

The results are potentially worrisome because young women’s tumors tend to be more aggressive than older women’s, and they’re much less likely to get routine screening for the disease.

Thursday is the last day to file your FAFSA with priority status. Those received prior to Friday will be given…

The unthinkable happened to Dr. Lai Ling Ngan, an associate professor of Christian Scriptures, on Feb. 22, 2012. She crashed and totaled her car after passing out from low glucose levels.

It was the final factor for her to decide to get a diabetic alert dog, according to Ruth Byran, a George W. Truett Theological Seminary student.

Last fall, Truett students and alumni came together to help raise money for the dog. Through fundraising and donations, they have raised $14,000 of the $27,000 necessary for the purchase of the dog.

Baylor’s Mail Services will continue to run with no changes, despite the U.S Postal Service’s announcement to end Saturday mail earlier this month.

It’s no secret that the Postal Service is in trouble. The popularity of email and a costly retirement plan from the House of Representatives have largely contributed to the Postal Service’s financial report of a record $15.9 billion net loss the last fiscal year.

In response, beginning the week of Aug. 5, the U.S. Postal Service will stop mail delivery on Saturdays.

o beyond the Baylor Bubble — that was the idea behind the Community Coffee House.

A panel of three community leaders gave a short presentation and then answered questions from both a moderator and students Tuesday in the Den of the Bill Daniel Student Center.

Ennis senior Briana Treadaway, student government’s external vice president, said she wanted students to know more about their community. Treadaway led the organization for the event.

Catholic and evangelical scholars are speaking across denominational boundaries as part of the third annual Wilken Colloquium.

The colloquium aims to unite the Christian community through open conversation about different denominational interpretations of Scripture.

“People develop friendships that result in Christian unity, despite denominational divisions,” said Dr. Thomas Hibbs, dean of the Honors College.

Welcome Week marks the start of the Baylor school year, but a program this large requires a substantial number of volunteers to lead new students, set up events and provide information.

New Student Programs will be accepting applications now until 5 p.m. on March 8.

Tripp Purks, new student programs coordinator, said Welcome Week is a great time for students to serve.

A ranking BP executive testified Tuesday that the London-based oil giant and its contractors share the responsibility for preventing blowouts like the one that killed 11 workers and spawned the nation’s worst offshore oil spill in 2010.

Lamar McKay, who was president of BP America at the time of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, became the first BP executive to testify at a federal trial intended to identify the causes of BP’s Macondo well blowout and assign percentages of blame to the companies involved.

Rig owner Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton also are defendants at trial, which opened Monday.

Scouts’ honor, merit badges and camping trips come to mind when one thinks of the Boy Scouts. At more than 100 years old, this organization is still a prominent part of American society.

In September, Dr. Byron Johnson and a team of researchers from Tufts will begin researching the effects of this organization on the health, character, and performance of boys who participate in this program.

Johnson, director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, said little research has been done on the Boy Scouts even though the organization is more than 100 years old.