Faculty Mavericks
Adonis Rose, Born to Drum
Adonis Rose relocated from New Orleans to Arlington following Hurricane Katrina. The Crescent City’s loss has become UT Arlington’s gain.
A visiting professor of music, the renowned jazz drummer has played with some of the world’s most esteemed jazz artists, from nine-time Grammy-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis to three-time Grammy-winning entertainer Harry Connick Jr. Rose recently created and played the drum arrangement for Spike Lee’s HBO documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.
Rose didn’t become a drummer by accident. His father and grandfather were both drummers, and his dad gave Adonis his first drum set when he was 2 years old.
“My father was instructed by his dad to have me play the drums,” he explained. “After seeing something I did, my grandfather told my father, ‘That boy is a drummer!’ So, I started learning my snare drum rudiments at age 2.”
He has four solo recordings and has performed on more than 50 recordings overall. He has recorded with saxophonist Donald Harrison, pianist Peter Martin, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, vocalist Phillip Manuel and trumpeter/keyboardist Irvin Mayfield.
He is also working to establish an exchange program between UT Arlington and Duke University.
Rose performed with the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, which he founded in 2005, at Arlington’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in January. He was commissioned to write an original piece, which he and the orchestra debuted at the celebration.
J.C. Chiao, Sensing a Solution
Quite often these days, the defense industry or Homeland Security come calling on electrical engineering Associate Professor J.C. Chiao for his specialty, radio frequency identification (RFID). Think tiny, wireless, battery-free sensors able to give readings almost instantaneously. Great for military uses, perhaps weapons detection.
But while Dr. Chiao welcomes all kinds of applications, he’s especially excited about RFID in the lifesaving business. He and psychology Associate Professor Yuan Bo Peng, who is also a medical doctor specializing in pain study and neuroactivities, have received a National Science Foundation grant to study pain inhibition by wireless neurostimulation.
“The implications of RFIDs for this kind of use are enormous,” Chiao said. “They include treatment for diseases as varied as Parkinson’s tremor control, migraines, cancer and chemotherapy nerve damage pain, or any of hundreds of conditions involving chronic pain and the depression that often comes with it.”
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Benito Huerta, Artistic rewards
“Art is about risk. But for those who believe in their talent, their ideas and persist in being an artist, it is a rewarding lifestyle.”
Benito Huerta has had the kind of long, substantiated career that burgeoning artists crave. His work is in exhibitions, museums and corporate collections in Texas and throughout the nation. He received the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art’s 2002 Artist Legend of the Year Award. In 2007, “Soundings: Benito Huerta, 1992-2005,” a 13-year survey of his work, was relocated from the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi to the El Paso Museum of Art. And travelers in Skylink’s International Terminal at DFW International Airport can now see Huerto’s work interpreted as two terrazzo floor designs, each measuring 30 feet x 300 feet.
Associate professor in the Art and Art History Department, Huerta oversees various artistic projects. He is the director of The Gallery at UT Arlington, as well as the co-founder and director emeritus of the contemporary art journal ArtLies. He has done everything from public art, sculpture, artists’ books, ceramics, painting, drawing, prints and writing.
Myrtle Bell: Differences Enrich Organizations
Myrtle Bell’s particular research interests are under-studied aspects of diversity, including acceptance of persons with disabilities and relationships between age, obesity, appearance, and organizational outcomes. She has investigated the effects of battering and violence on women’s employment, merging diversity and human resource research.
November 19, 2007: Dr. Myrtle Bell, UT Arlington associate professor of management, received the Mary McLeod Bethune Award from the Arlington chapter of the NAACP last week. Rita Sibert, president of the local chapter, said the award is one of several the local chapter gives each year. “We felt Dr. Bell exemplifies what we, at the NAACP, believe is best in education,” Sibert said. Mary McLeod Bethune was a leading Civil Rights leader and educator of her time. She helped start Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls (now Bethune-Cookman College) in 1904. In addition to Dr. Bell’s award, UT Arlington student Khonje T. Eleanor received the Benjamin Elijah Mays Heritage Award for Academic Excellence. Dr. Mays also was a Civil Rights leader and former president of Morehouse College. One of his students was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.