Did You Know?

• Best of show. Of the 500 artists who entered the 20th anniversary Juried Art Exhibition at the South Carolina State Museum, art professor Paul Martyka received best in show for his “Totemic Talk, 2008” seen above. It was one of two works purchased by the museum for its collection. The exhibition, which shows off 116 works, also includes works by several Winthrop professors, alumni and students, and will remain open until Sept. 7.

• Business students excel. Members of the 2008 Students in Free Enterprise Team, Granda Myers, Kim Nguyen, Christine Cruell, Ashley Lance, Julian Benn, Sam Woods and Danny Campbell, were named SIFE regional champions and represented Winthrop at the SIFE National Expo in Chicago May 13-16. Winthrop SIFE was also awarded the Discover Financial Services Award for the Northwestern High School Success Skills project and was the recipient of a university Student Life Award as the service organization with an exemplary record of service.

• Other awards to mention. Lauren Cairco, junior computer science major, was selected as one of 150 for a 2008 Google Workshop; Kyle Dukes, senior chemistry major, won an American Chemical Society Piedmont Undergraduate Research Award; Alena James, senior biology/political science major, captured the Sigma Xi/S.C. Academy of Science Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research and Outstanding Undergraduate Female Scientist Award; and volleyball senior Pohai Nu'uhiwa was one of four student-athletes who were honored by the Big South Conference with the prestigious George A. Christenberry Award for Academic Excellence. Read more about her accomplishments in the summer issue of the Winthrop Magazine.

• Sous Chef on cooking show. Lou Petrozza, an ARAMARK employee at Winthrop, demonstrates his cooking skills on “Hell’s Kitchen,” a Fox show where culinary guru Gordon Ramsey gives a brutal workout for the participants.

• Baseball deaths recorded. Dacus librarians Bob Gorman and David Weeks turned an award-winning article about baseball parks deaths into a book. Called “Death at the Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities of Players, Other Personnel and Spectators in Amateur and Professional Baseball, 1862–2007,” the book will come out this summer. Baseball, now considered a safe sport for fans to attend, once led all sports in injuries and fatalities, and by a large margin. Over the game’s long history, hundreds of players, coaches and spectators died at the ballpark, some of them in the most improbable ways.