Baseball team to host NCAA Regional

The NCAA announced today that the TCU baseball team will be one of the 16 regional site hosts for this coming weekend's NCAA Regionals, which are slated to begin Friday. The No. 10 Horned Frogs have never hosted a regionals or been a No. 1 seed. They accomplish both with today's announcement. It will be the sixth consecutive appearance in the postseason for the program.

Each regional field features four teams, playing a double-elimination format. Paired with the Frogs is Wright State of the Horizon League as the No. 4 seed, whom TCU will face Friday night at 7. In the early game, No. 2 seed Texas A&M will face No. 3 seed Oregon State.

The Frogs (36-16) entered last weekend ranked as high as No. 10 and currently have a Ratings Percentage Index of eight, both program bests. With a 15-5 record, the Frogs won their fourth straight regular season conference title.

Nursing student saves life at 30,000 feet

A post-finals vacation in Las Vegas turned into a life-saving event for TCU nursing student Leah Joslin this week.

The 21-year-old rising senior, shown here in her purple TCU Nursing scrubs in the school's lab, was on a flight back to DFW when another passenger suffered a medical emergency, losing consciousness.

Joslin jumped up to help, pushing a passenger sitting on the aisle out of the way.

The man’s lips turned blue, a sign Joslin recognized that he was oxygen deprived. She asked the flight crew for oxygen, a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff and started administering the oxygen and taking his vital signs. Within about 10 seconds, she detected a faint pulse that grew stronger.

“We finally did get a blood pressure reading that was within normal range,” she said.

The passenger and his wife were Italian and did not speak English, but after she revived him, she was able to stabilize him by mimicking what she wanted him to do. Joslin stayed with the man and his wife until the plane landed and paramedics arrived.

"He was so cute. He kept apologizing to me profusely," Joslin told WBAP-AM. "As I left, his wife took my hand, kissed it and said, 'grazie.'"

Her quick-thinking heroics also made the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and KTVT Channel 11 news.

“I feel proud of my education,” she told Channel 11. “I feel like, wow, I really do know something.”

Joslin followed a practice taught to everyone in the nursing program, Glen Raup, TCU assistant professor told the Star-Telegram. You respond to a medical emergency by initially evaluating airway, breathing and circulation problems, and then looking for other difficulties the person might be having, Raup said.

"Nurses are trained to assess the situation and then intervene when appropriate as based on their training," Raup said. "You hope that when it comes time to apply those skills that nurses will step up, as was the case with Leah."

Joslin is pursuing a double major: nursing and writing with a minor in religion.

Her career goals include working in a trauma intensive care unit, helping babies born premature, and participating in research dealing with genetic diseases such as autism and Down syndrome.

But she isn't the first Frog to respond during a recent in-flight emergency.

Kate Lunati of Atlanta, Ga., was returning from a mission trip to Central America when she helped start an IV for a young woman who was suffering from severe dehydration.

In an article written by TCU student writer Rachael Carranza, Lunati described how "my faculty had warned that we were now prepared to assist on airplanes on the rare occasion that there was no one else available."

"The experience on that flight inspired me to discover myself," she added. "It was tangible, and I could feel it move through me, erasing doubt and instilling confidence."

Graduation stories

Today, the university holds its Spring 2009 Commencement ceremonies. A total of 1,417 students are expected to graduate during split ceremonies, at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. in Daniel-Meyer Coliseum.

The morning event will consist of 664 candidates receiving degrees from the Neeley School of Business, College of Education, College of Science & Engineering and the master of liberal arts graduate program. The 753 students who will graduate in the afternoon represent AddRan College of Liberal Arts, College of Communication, College of Fine Arts, and Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences. Brite Divinity School will graduate 26 students during the afternoon ceremony.

Meanwhile:
- The class of 1959 will be in attendance, celebrating the 50th anniversary of their graduation. Fifty years ago, they received misprinted diplomas with the wrong date on them.

- For the first time in TCU history, the university will award quadruple degrees to one student (English, French, political science and fashion merchandising).

- The first Doctor of Nursing Practice class of 23 students earn diplomas.

- The Office of Web Management provided streaming video of both ceremonies for the first time.

- One man from the class of 1959 and his graddaughter from the class of 2009 are in the same commencement ceremony.

TCU Virtual Experience

The campus tour has always been, perhaps, the influential moment for students and parents considering TCU.

Starting today, that quintessential look around the quad now can have guests in their pajamas. Admission has launched the TCU Virtual Experience, a digital trek around the buildings, programs and people that make Horned Frog Country unlike any other.

The site features an 11-minute overview of the university with 14 stops around campus. Users can skip to any section at any time, watching just the parts they want, or watch the full tour. The site also has six high-definition videos of different parts of the TCU experience, such as student life, academics and athletics.

More than a dozen students, some of whom graduate on Saturday, share personal accounts of their lives as Horned Frogs.

www.experience.tcu.edu
Read what the Office of Admission thinks about the Experience on the magazine Web site:
http://www.magazine.tcu.edu/OnCampus/Article.aspx?ArticleId=30.

- Rick

Frog Drummer on Letterman

You can catch the drummer Jordan Richardson '03 on all three major TV networks this week.

Jordan sharpened his skills as a drummer in the TCU Jazz Band from 1999-2003.
That work translated into a dream profession: drummer for the hot new rock band Ben Harper and Relentless 7.

Relentless 7 plays tonight on CBS’s Late Night with David Letterman.

The group performs tomorrow night on the ABC’s Michael J. Fox special "Adventures of an Incurable Optimist" and NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
The Relentless 7 “White Lies for Dark Times” album was released Monday in stores and on iTunes.
Check out Relentless 7 by clicking on over to www.relentless7.com.

Golfer on a winning streak

She doesn't just beat the likes of Michelle Wei and Annika Sorenstam. She doesn't just have a pro golf career that has surpassed $3 million in earnings.


And golfing great Angela Stanford '00 didn't just take home the Frog O'Fame award at Saturday night's Alumni Awards banquet.


TCU Athletic Director Danny Morrison also handed Stanford the Carolyn Dixon Award Honorary Award for Distinguished Service to Girls and Women in Sport in front of the crowd of about 160 at the Brown-Lupton University Union.

The honor, named after the late long-time TCU associate athletic director, goes to a woman who helps support female athletes. The Carolyn Dixon award was established in 2006.

Stanford is a generous donor to TCU scholarship programs and recently she gave a new, customized van to the women's golf team, said Davis Babb, associate athletic director.

"She's just a giver," Babb says.

In November, Stanford's Let Your Light Shine tournament in Fort Worth not only raised $62,000 for Fort Worth charities but it also included a junior clinic and a chance for the public to golf with LPGA pros and the TCU women's golf team.


Her TCU coach Angie Ravaioli-Larkin says Stanford is one of the best athletes in the world and one who still "bleeds purple."

No swine flu cases reported at TCU

While the Fort Worth Independent School District has announced closings, TCU officials said yesterday that there are no reported swine flu cases on its campus. The university's Brown-Lupton Health Center is working with the Tarrant County Health Department, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organziation, to monitor cases in the area. As of yesterday, there were 16 confirmed cases in the state of Texas and 10 probable cases in Tarrant County.

Yesterday was the last day of classes for the semester. Today and Friday are dead days. Exam week begins Monday. Campus members are encouraged to follow good hygiene methods, including thorough hand-washing, using alcohol-based hand cleaners and properly discarding used facial tissues.

Tarrant District Attorney Tim Curry '61 dead at 70

Tarrant County District Attorney Tim Curry ’61 died early Friday morning. Curry, one of the longest serving district attorneys in Texas history, was elected to the post in 1972 and was still in office, although he had been diagnosed with lung cancer last year. He never lost an election. He was 70.

The office he led was large. The district attorney’s office, with a staff of 320 people, has a conviction rate of 90 percent.

Read more about his amazing career in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1336994.html.

New opportunity for TCU research in Costa Rica

TCU's Institute for Environmental Studies has a new opportunity to use a research facility located in a Costa Rican cloud forest for academic research. In 2006, TCU students wrote a Vision In Action proposal for a permanent biological research station at San Ramon, Costa Rica. The San Ramon Tropical Research Station is now being used to conduct long-term studies in biological and ecological research.

See a video overview of the project on TCU's YouTube page.

Read cover story on the project from The TCU Magazine's Winter 2008 issue.

AARP president addresses aging trends

AARP President Jennie Chin-Hansen spoke about "Current Realities and Future Trends in Population Aging" last night during the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences' Hogstel Symposium. Also sponsoring the event were JPS Hospital and TCU's Center for Healthy Aging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4D8pys9gCw