Thursday, March 28, 2024
OSU names 3 professors President’s Fellows Faculty Research Award recipients Abby Cage OSU News Drs. John O’Hara, Bruce Noden and Laleh Tahsini were named recipients of Oklahoma State University’s 2024 President’s Fellows Faculty Research Award during the Annual Researchers Reception on Tuesday in the Student Union Ballroom. Facilitated by OSU President Kayse Shrum and the President’s Fellows Organization, this local grant program supports important and impactful faculty research. It’s a one-time $20,000 award to be expended on the project proposed by faculty with updates given to the President’s Fellows Organization through 2025. “These grants are funded by donors to the university who then decide to give the president funds that can be used for whatever the president believes is of the highest importance and greatest need,” said Dr. Kenneth Sewell, OSU vice president for research. At the reception, Dr. Shrum congratulated and thanked the fellows as well as other researchers for all their work with the university over the past year. “We are obtaining grants to help us achieve the vision to be a preeminent land-grant university,” Shrum said. “And we spend a lot of time determining the key areas that OSU has strength that intersect with some of society’s greatest challenges. We are not only impacting classrooms or labs but also the wellbeing of society, extending through our state and our world.” Award Recipients O’Hara — associate professor and PSO/Albrecht Naeter Professor in Electrical Engineering — researches the use of novel terahertz and optical systems for the realization of 6G communications; optical and RF/optical hybrid
OSU News
OSU named Drs. John O’Hara, Bruce Noden and Laleh Tahsini were named recipients of Oklahoma State University’s 2024 President’s Fellows Faculty Research Award during the Annual Researchers Reception on Tuesday. sensing and communication; IoT (internet of things); artificial electromagnetic materials; and STEM outreach to rural communities. O’Hara’s proposal is to create the first 6G channel emulator that will be used by future engineers to design real
world networks. “I am very excited and pleased to be selected for the President’s Fellows Faculty Research Award,” O’Hara said in a release. “It is a great honor, personally, of course. But it also represents the fruit of the strong investments our
department and college have made to enable impactful research. My students and I are very excited to use this opportunity to push forward the wireless communication technologies that the whole world may adopt in the next 5-10 years.” See Recipients on 5
Think like an auditor OSU professors propose applying audit standards to everyday decisions Jeff Hopper OSU News The amount of information that is available at our fingertips is mind-boggling. From the dates of the FrancoPrussian War to which dog breed has a certain temperament, how we ingest that information and decipher which can be considered valid or be used as evidence in a decision can be overwhelming. Oklahoma State University’s Dr. Audrey Gramling and a team of her colleagues, however, have proposed that we may all be better served if we think like auditors. The School of Accounting professor believes that an auditing standard, recently adopted by the Auditing Standards Board, establishing the Audit Evidence Framework as a tool for auditors to evaluate information to be used as audit evidence, can be applied to a myriad of other applications in our everyday lives. “This framework gives auditors a standard decision model that can help guide them through determining whether information can be used as evidence,” Gramling said. “However, that framework can be used for numer-
ous other decision-making opportunities. For instance, when buying a car, what information should we use from what sources when making that important decision? This framework offers a way to help evaluate that information.” The AEF stresses the importance of relevance and reliability when considering whether information should be used as evidence in the decision-making process or ignoring it as unnecessary or irrelevant. The decision-making framework also recognizes the presence of biases in information and the information evaluator. It reiterates the importance of taking those biases into consideration when determining the viability of information as evidence. “This process for making decisions isn’t necessarily new to auditors,” Gramling said. “However, the AEF is a vetted, decision-making framework that has proven useful to auditors. We simply wanted to remind others that when dealing with information, whether from a wide variety of sources or a singular source, this framework could be a useful tool in evaluating that information.” See Standards on 8
Luisa Clausen
Colorado Springs. Taking a step away from routine can help with creativity.
Staying in touch with creativity Luisa Clausen Editor-in-Chief Is creativity supposed to come easy? For years, I thought I was not a creative person. After all, I don’t draw, I don’t paint. I’m not artsy. But does that mean I am not creative?
That question always belonged to my subconscious. Until a professor told me “Creativity is not something you are born with, it is something you work on. You develop it. You insist on it.” My life was never the same after that. Creativity is something you can work on. But how? As a college student, most of the time I close myself in a
room to finish everything I have to do. Homework, work, scholarship applications, and so on. And more often than not, I catch myself thinking I have writer’s block. I get frustrated and I re-think all of my life choices. “I am not creative.” I think. “I shouldn’t be a writer.” I make myself believe. But then, something happens. See Creativity on 6