Releases

DENTON (UNT), Texas – More than 35 million Americans live in regions threatened by Atlantic hurricanes, according to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday it expects a near normal year for hurricanes.  Hurricane season begins June 1 and runs through November 30.  NOAA forecasters are expecting 9 to 14 named storms, of which 4 to 7 could become hurricanes, including 1 to 3 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5).

Several University of North Texas experts are available to comment on hurricane related topics such as:

• hurricane preparedness
• hurricane recovery
• the economic impact of hurricanes
• the history of hurricanes

More information, including contact information, for a selection of available experts is listed below:

FEMA, emergency management and recovery efforts:

Mr. Eliot Jennings is an instructor in the Emergency Administration and Disaster Planning degree program, which is part of UNT's nationally recognized Department of Public Administration.  Jennings also is the director of UNT's Emergency Operations Center Lab, which trains students how to respond to emergencies. 

He was previously the operations and planning coordinator for Galveston County's Office of Emergency Management for 4 years.  He also served as the emergency management coordinator for the City of Galveston and later for Galveston County.  Jennings was involved in preparing for and responding to 5 federal disaster declarations during his time in Galveston. He teaches introductory emergency management classes as well as response and recovery courses.  He can discuss the steps that the Gulf Coast should take to prepare for a storm, as well as the appropriate recovery and response steps. 

• Office phone:  940-369-7844
• Cell phone:  940-395-7167
• E-mail:  Jennings@unt.edu

Long-term recovery of communities from hurricanes, response to hurricane warnings, mobile home residents and hurricanes:

Dr. Nicole Dash, UNT associate professor of sociology, says the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes shows why those who will be most vulnerable if threatened by a hurricane -- the elderly and the poor -- need to know what resources will be available from the local government. 

Dash has analyzed property tax data and census data for Miami-Dade County from 1990 to 2000 to study the recovery of communities impacted by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. She is a Florida native who was a graduate student at Florida International University in Miami when Hurricane Andrew hit. She discovered that areas with large minority populations recovered slower than areas with predominantly Caucasian populations, and African-American areas fared far worse than Hispanic areas, which were predominantly Cuban. She has published a book chapter of some of her findings in Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender and the Sociology of Disasters, published by FIU's Laboratory for Social and Behavioral Research.

Dash has also done extensive research on the aftermath of Katrina.  She was the featured guest on a 2006 KERA-FM program in Dallas that recognized the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

• Office phone:  940-565-2230
• E-mail: drnicoledash@gmail.com

This is the best way to reach Dr. Dash.  Her e-mail messages are forwarded to her phone, so if you send her your contact information she will respond as soon as possible.

Potential economic impact of hurricanes:

Dr. Benard Weinstein, director of UNT's Center for Economic Development and Research, can discuss the economic impact of a hurricane hitting the Texas coast and the economic recovery process.  Weinstein delivered a presentation titled The Economic Aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: An Assessment After One Year to the Dallas Association for Business Economics in November 2006.  In the presentation, Weinstein said that Katrina caused $250 billion in total economic loss. 

Weinstein can discuss the potential impact of hurricanes on:

• agriculture
• energy
• hospitality
• shipping and logistics
• small businesses
  
• Office phone: 940-565-4049
• Cell phone number 214-707-1834
• E-mail address:  Bernard.weinstein@unt.edu

Storm surge deposition and geologic records of hurricanes:

Dr. Harry Williams, associate professor of geography, studies the sediment left behind by hurricane storm surges to develop long-term records of hurricane strikes.

Documented hurricane records only go back to about 1850, a relatively short period of time, Williams said. But the sediments of storm surges, deposited and buried in lakes and marshes, can identify ancient hurricane deposits – up to thousands of years old. Long-term records of hurricanes can provide insight on issues such as the frequency and magnitude of prehistoric hurricanes.

After Hurricane Rita in 2005, Williams received a grant from the National Science Foundation to travel to southwest Louisiana to study the sediments deposited by the storm surge. Williams also traveled to the Houston-Galveston area to do the same following Hurricane Ike. Although it is known that hurricanes cause a great deal of coastal erosion, Williams is exploring the possibility that storm surge deposits actually contribute to the vertical growth of coastal marshes by building their surfaces higher. This could be important for preventing submergence of a marsh by rising sea level caused by global warming.

This summer Williams is continuing to survey Hurricane Ike's deposits in Texas and Louisiana and is coring the Chenier Plain in southwest Louisiana looking for ancient hurricane deposits.

• E-mail: harryf.williams@unt.edu
• Office phone: 940-565-3317
• Home phone: 940-484-4584

DENTON (UNT), Texas --  The University of North Texas earned the Best School Award for the second consecutive year -- and the third time in five years -- at the 5th Annual National Student Show and Conference sponsored by the Dallas Society of Visual Communications. UNT students in the communication design program in the College of Visual Arts and Design also brought home individual awards and scholarships, totaling more than $11,000.

The April competition attracted 3,500 entries from colleges and universities in 28 states. The $1,000 Best School Award went to the university whose students exhibited the highest quality of overall work.

The Dallas Society of Visual Communications has more than 900 members and is the largest local club of visual communications professionals in the nation.

The UNT students and their respective awards are:

• Ashaun Epps received the $2,000 Jump Start Portfolio award
• Stu Taylor received the $3,000 Dick Sloan Portfolio award
• Sean Leonard received the Padgett Portfolio award, which includes an all-expense paid trip to the How International Design Conference in Austin

"Best Use Of" Awards

• Sharon Lee received the $1,500 Best Use of Type award
• Sean Leonard received the $1,000 Best Use of Imagery award
• Patrick Snodgrass received the $1,000 Best Use of Packaging award
• Sharon Lee received the $250 award from judge Rex Peteet for her International Paper Annual Report

Best in Category Awards, $150 each

• Patrick Snodgrass was awarded in the packaging category  
• Barrett Fry was awarded in the annual report category
• Sean Leonard was awarded in the advertising campaign category
• Jason Perez was awarded in the advertising public service campaign category
• Zach Hale was awarded in the illustration category
• Sean Leonard, art director for the project, and journalism student Dave Cox, copy writer for the project, were both awarded in the total campaign category  

On June 3 and 4, 1989, several hundred civilians were shot and killed by the Chinese army during a military operation to crush a democratic protest in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The demonstrators, mostly students, had occupied the square peacefully for seven weeks, refusing to move until their demands for democratic reform were met. The bloody end to the protests lessened the concept of political liberalization in Communist countries that was popular in the late 1980s.

Dr. Harold Tanner, University of North Texas associate professor of history and an expert on the People's Republic of China, is available to discuss the impact of the Tiananmen Square massacre on China today. He is the author of a number of books and articles on Chinese policing, criminal justice and modern Chinese military history. His most recent book, China: A History, presents a broad overview of the history of the country from Neolithic times through the present.

Tanner says the students' democracy movement, which began April 15, 1989, came at a time of economic stress, popular dissatisfaction with economic reform and with the Communist Party leadership, anger over blatant corruption, and "frustration at the lack of legitimate, democratic channels for the expression and redress of grievances."

"The movement surely changed the lives of the participants and their families, often in tragic ways. But for China as a whole, in the longer term, the most obvious changes have been that the Communist Party and Chinese government, having learned the lessons of 1989, have taken steps to strengthen patriotic education in China's schools, colleges, and universities," he says.

The government has also trained its police forces in non-lethal techniques of crowd and riot control and continued to prevent the establishment of any truly independent religious, labor, or political organizations, Tanner says.

"In essence, as they considered their own experience in 1989, the fall of socialism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, China's leaders learned that the best strategy for preserving the Leninist one-party state was to continue to combine sustained, market-driven economic growth with strict political controls," he says. "So far, the Communist Party's social control policies, coupled with sustained economic growth and with the Party's ability to present itself as an effective protector and promoter of China's national sovereignty and respect in the international arena have preserved a high degree of social and political stability."

A sustained economic downturn in China, he says, might undermine the Party's position.

"In that case, popular protest movements might bring up the events of the spring of 1989 as a point of reference. But until such a situation develops, if it develops at all, the events of 1989 will continue to fade from memory as younger generations, who do not learn about or share the concerns of the students of 1989, move through the schools and the workplaces, develop their own dreams for the future of their country and pursue their own careers," Tanner says.

Tanner first visited China in 1984 and lived in Beijing for three years during the late 1980s and early 1990s while studying at the Beijing Languages Institute and at Beijing University. He has traveled extensively in China and regularly teaches courses on all aspects of Chinese history, ancient to modern, and on U.S.-China diplomatic relations.

Tanner may be reached by e-mail at htanner@unt.edu or by cell phone at 940-206-6316.