Since Paxton Lynch took over quarterback duty in 2013, the Memphis Tigers have had a remarkably stable stretch at football’s most important position. Lynch didn’t miss a game in three seasons. He was followed by Riley Ferguson, who played in all 26 games over his two seasons (2016-17) as a Tiger. Then Brady White made 39 consecutive starts from 2018 through the 2020 campaign. All of which made last Friday’s contest at UCF … disorienting.
With freshman Seth Henigan sidelined by a right-shoulder injury (suffered in the Tigers’ win over Navy on October 14th), sophomore Peter Parrish took the field to lead the Memphis offense. How disorienting was the Parrish start? Rewind to August, during the Tigers’ preseason camp, and you’d find the LSU transfer fourth on the QB depth chart, behind not only Henigan, but also Arizona transfer Grant Gunnell and redshirt freshman Keilon Brown. Injuries and circumstance (Brown transferred) conspired, leading to a 24-7 loss to the Knights that dropped Memphis to 4-4 on the season.
Parrish had his moments in Orlando. He offered a threat running the ball that Henigan can’t match. He led the Tigers with 60 rushing yards, despite yardage lost on six sacks counting against his total. Parrish completed 31 of 48 passes, but averaged only 4.5 yards per attempt. Most damaging to the Tiger attack, he was unable to find Calvin Austin down field, subtracting one of the country’s most dynamic “chunk play” artists from the Memphis arsenal. (Austin caught seven passes but for only 44 yards.) A pair of second-half deflected interceptions erased chances for the Tigers to reduce their deficit on the scoreboard, or perhaps even steal a win.
Henigan’s injury is classified as “day-to-day,” and he has two full weeks to heal before the Tigers return to play (November 6th at the Liberty Bowl, against SMU). That throwing shoulder is suddenly the most important joint in the Tiger football program. Memphis fans spent the first half of the season marveling at the future Henigan has as a Tiger signal-caller. Turns out it’s Henigan’s present that is pivotal.
• When watching a football game, our eyes tend to follow the ball. From the snap into the quarterback’s hands, to a running back perhaps, or through the air toward a receiver. Defy this instinct when the Tiger defense is on the field and follow Memphis linebacker J.J. Russell (number 23) and/or safety Quindell Johnson (15). This tandem of tacklers is having an extraordinary season. They each have instincts for ending a play that I’m not convinced can be taught. Russell leads the American Athletic Conference with 86 tackles (53 of them solo) and Johnson is second with 73 (47 solo). They’ll be playing in the NFL in the near future. Keep your eyes on them while you can.
• Memphis is part of an exclusive club, one of only five FBS football programs to have won at least eight games every year since 2014. You’ve hard of the other four: Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, and Oklahoma. To make it eight straight seasons, the Tigers must win their final four regular-season games (against SMU, East Carolina, Houston, and Tulane), or win three of them and then win a bowl game. It’s an unlikely scenario for a team that’s lost four of its last five games, but should be prime motivation for a program that feels snubbed by the Big 12’s recent expansion. (The “Power 5” league is absorbing UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston … but not Memphis.) It will be interesting to count the attendance when SMU visits the first week in November, almost precisely two years after the epic Tiger win with ESPN’s GameDay crew in town. What a difference two years can make.
Daudi "Da Vegan Guru" McLean (Credit: Guru's City Vegan)
What do Cedric the Entertainer, Angela Simmons, and the Green Bay Packers all have in common? Maybe not much, but they’re all fans of the vegan cuisine whipped up by celebrity chef and restaurateur Daudi McLean.
Known as “Da Vegan Guru,” McLean is soon bringing his talents to Memphis with a new restaurant, Guru’s City Vegan. The full-service restaurant, to be located at 509 S. Highland, is slated to have a soft opening in November. City Vegan will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and also have a juice and smoothie bar.
GVC Mac & Cheese (Credit: Guru’s City Vegan)
A former New York City firefighter and music producer, McLean switched to a vegan diet to lose weight and quickly pivoted to becoming a professional chef, having served celebrity clients for more than 30 years now. He owns several restaurants around the country, has catered for films and TV shows, and helped with a “Happy Living Thanksgiving” event for Nickelodeon. Guru’s City Vegan will be his first Memphis location.
Before November’s soft launch, McLean will treat Memphians at several pop-ups around the city, the first of which will take place at Grind City Brewery at 4 p.m. Saturday, October 16th. Plates will cost $15, with extra sides available for an additional $5. Diners can pick multiple courses per plate, including entrees such as city ribs, GVC fried chicken, and surf city shrimp; or mac & cheese, candied yams, black eyed peas, or grandma’s greens on the side.
Vegan golden beer-battered fried fish and shrimp. (Credit: Guru’s City Vegan)
University of Memphis faculty won a record-setting $50.2 million in research awards in the last fiscal year.
The new total beat last year’s record of $40.7 million, up 23.2 percent. Research award dollars have risen steadily at U of M since 2018.
Credit: University of Memphis
Back then, about 20 percent of the school’s faculty were responsible for 75 percent of research proposals. In the 2021 fiscal year, 38 percent of the faculty brought in 75 percent of the research awards.
In 2018, U of M began a strategy to increase research awards. The new push hopes to earn the school Carnegie R1 status, the highest rank among institutes of higher education.
Federal grants have been the fastest-growing category in the U of M research mix. These grants have grown by 80 percent since 2019, up from $20 million to just over $35 million this year.
Credit: University of Memphis
The top three federal contractors of U of M research last year were the National Science Foundation ($8.9 million), National Institutes of Health ($6.5 million), and the U.S. Department of Education ($5.1 million).
“We must celebrate the hard work of our research faculty across campus,” said Jasbir Dhaliwal, U of M executive vice president for research and innovation. “Federal research awards are nationally competitive so these achievements are truly remarkable. Our efforts to build a cutting-edge research culture are starting to pay off and this bodes well for the future.”
Credit: University of Memphis
State-funded dollars rose here by 150 percent since last year. This figure was pushed largely by $5.6 million in grants from the Tennessee Department of Transportation. However, $4.9 million of that money was invested last year in the Keep Tennessee Beautiful program housed at the U of M. It was the single largest grant given to any U of M researcher in 2021.
To read more about the grants, check the school’s report here.
• QB Young.It’s virtually impossible for a college football program to start two quarterbacks with a larger disparity in experience than the Memphis Tigers did in finishing the 2020 season and starting the 2021 campaign. Brady White started the 2020 Montgomery Bowl as a Ph.D.(!) candidate at the U of M, completing his sixth season as a college player. Fast forward eight months, and Seth Henigan — last Saturday night at the Liberty Bowl — became the first true freshman to start at quarterback in a Memphis season opener. Henigan, folks, was in middle school when White first suited up for Arizona State (in 2015).
“I don’t even know if Seth shaves yet,” said Tiger coach Ryan Silverfield after Henigan completed 19 of 32 passes for 265 yards in the win over Nicholls. “He did a fantastic job. He had plenty of reps with the first team [during training camp] and the team rallied behind him. We’re pleased with his effort. He’s a winner, and he’s so smart. He’s a coach’s son. All those intangibles … he’s a smooth character.” With Arizona transfer Grant Gunnell undergoing further evaluation for an injury, Henigan will be the man for Memphis this Saturday at Arkansas State and for the foreseeable future.
• Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma … and Memphis. These are the only five FBS programs to currently own seven straight seasons with at least eight wins. Read that group again. Four programs that are annually in the hunt for the College Football Playoff (which began after the 2014 season, when the Tigers’ current streak started), and the University of Memphis, a program that won a total of five games over three seasons from 2009 to 2011.
Yes, there are qualifiers. Memphis doesn’t compete in the SEC (or the ACC, or the Big 12). Ohio State would have a problem with the stat, as the Buckeyes only played eight games last year (and went 7-1, losing only to Alabama in the national championship game). But numbers don’t lie, and all the Tigers can do is beat the opponents on their schedule, primarily those in the American Athletic Conference. It’s an unprecedented stretch of winning football in these parts and has taken place under the direction now of three head coaches. Dare we suggest a winning culture has grown in and around the Liberty Bowl and the Murphy Athletic Complex? Going on eight years, the answer is a resounding yes.
• Realignment reconsidered. It’s easy to be discouraged by the news from the Big 12, college football’s latest “Power 5” league to ignore Memphis in its plans to expand. (The Big 12 is losing Texas and Oklahoma, and hopes to grab BYU and three programs from the American Athletic Conference: Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston.) An AAC of leftovers after realignment would leave the U of M in a league no stronger, really, than Conference USA as it existed from 1996 to 2012. It’s hard to see that as generational growth for a program enjoying its most successful period with seven straight winning seasons and three Top-25 finishes.
But I’m not convinced realignment will be over with the Big 12 transformation. The league will go from 10 teams currently to 12 (imagine that!). But consider: The Big 10 has 14 teams (two divisions) and the SEC will inflate to 16 teams when the Longhorns and Sooners hop aboard. The ACC has 14 teams (two divisions). So why should Memphis athletic director Laird Veatch delete his Big 12 contacts? If the Big 12 expands to 14 (or 16) teams, Memphis would fit nicely. (Keep your eye on the Tiger basketball program and its growing national impact under Penny Hardaway. The Tigers would add shine to a league top-heavy with Kansas and Baylor.)
If you’re going to be independent, you might as well take advantage of the freedom to be weird. The gleefully bizarre horror comedy Chompy and the Girls lives that philosophy. The film, opening this weekend exclusively at Malco Ridgeway, came to Memphis screens by way of Marty Lang, Assistant Professor of Film & Video at the University of Memphis.
When Chompy and the Girls begins, Jackson (Christy St. John) has decided to hang herself from the ceiling fan in her crappy apartment. When that fails, she changes course and decides to finally contact her biological father Sam (Steve Marvel) who doesn’t know she exists. When they finally meet in a park to try to sort out their relationship, they see a mysterious man stretch his mouth unnaturally wide and swallow a 10-year-old girl (Seneca Paliotta) whole. Then the entity they call Chompy (Reggie Koffman) turns his attention to the newly minted daughter-father team.
Steve Marvel and Christy St. John in Chompy and the Girls.
Lang, who began teaching at U of M this year, produced Chompy with director Skye Braband. The Florida State University graduate has been producing, writing, directing, and acting for two decades. “I started off producing because I felt like that was the area of filmmaking that I could learn the fastest,” he says.
He worked with one of his former students, Sarah de Leon, at Chapman University in Orange County, California. “We did a crowdfunding campaign for post-production on a website called Seed and Spark, and we were able to raise about $30,000 to help with our visual effects,” he says. “I had a lot of relationships in California that I was able to use to help us to finish the movie and then, once it was done, I helped find the sales agent who ended up selling the film and getting the distribution deal. And now we’re actually getting it out into the world!”
Christy St. John presses her point as Jackson in Chompy and the Girls.
Chompy is driven by a positively feral performance by St. John as a punk rocker and unrepentant drug addict. “She was a real find when when we were casting,” says Lang. “She’s actually going to be on an HBO show that’s coming out pretty soon called The Sex Lives of College Girls. She’s just incredibly talented. That raw sort of anger was something that she brought that really fleshed out the character.”
Lang says he was able to give his students in film producing class a first-hand look at the little known aspect of film production. “We talked a little bit about marketing, and I was able to show the different versions of the poster that we had created for the movie and some of the social media work that we had done to get word out about our crowdfunding campaign,” he says. “As I was teaching the course, we were actually getting offers from distributors for the movie. So I would come into class and I would literally show them the offer sheet. I would take off the name of the distributor and any identifying numbers, and I would literally go through the contracts with the students so that they would know exactly what the terms were.”
On the last day of class, Lang says, “I was able to tell everybody that we had signed the deal on that last class. So it was perfect timing.”
Chompy and the Girls opens Friday, September 3rd at Malco’s Ridgeway Cinema Grill.
No college football coach has begun his career in quite the way Ryan Silverfield has at the University of Memphis. His very first experience in command on the Tiger sideline occurred on December 28, 2019, in what happens to be the biggest game in the program’s history. Having been promoted from an assistant’s position to succeed Mike Norvell (who left for Florida State after Memphis won the American Athletic Conference championship game), Silverfield — then 39 years old — led the 15th-ranked Tigers against Penn State in the Cotton Bowl, one of the four most prestigious postseason games in the land. Memphis came up short (53-39) in an exciting game, but Silverfield had his platform for the next era of the program’s growth.
Not quite three months later, Silverfield’s program essentially shut down as the coronavirus pandemic took hold of organized sports all over the globe. The young head coach would learn the ropes under conditions unlike any of his predecessors — or any of his competition — had experienced before.
“Who would ever have thought my first three months on the job would be the easiest,” wonders Silverfield. “It became a totally different deal [during the pandemic] than when I took the job. It was a new era for Memphis football, and I felt like we had some momentum going in. Our kids left for spring break, and we ended up having about a three-month spring break. Anytime you’re trying to get a staff together, to learn from each other and build relationships, it’s never easy. Doing it via Zoom, not being able to be around [the players] … so much of college football is about relationships. You’re dealing with 125 17- to 22-year-olds. We need to be there for them in everything we do. Our administration handled it the right way, and our kids persevered. It was a trying season, in more ways than one. The opt-outs [players choosing not to play under the pandemic restrictions], not knowing your schedule, getting tested [for Covid-19]. I’m proud of those who persevered and came out on top. Credit to all those around me. You want to forget, but I’ll always remember a season that was unique to me and everyone else.”
Senior Calvin Austin III led the Tigers in 2020 with 63 receptions for 1,063 yards (Photo: U of M Athletics)
Even with the stifling restrictions, Silverfield’s first season was a success. The Tigers went 8-3 and won the program’s first bowl game since 2014 (a victory over Florida Atlantic University in the Montgomery Bowl). But Memphis missed out on the AAC championship game for the first time in four seasons, so there’s ground to gain (or regain) in 2021.
Entering his second season, Silverfield has a closer-to-normal football atmosphere around him. (As camp opened in August, players who had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus were required to be tested for Covid-19. Near the end of the month, Silverfield said more than 80 percent of the Tiger roster has been vaccinated, with the goal being 100 percent.) And part of “normal” for college football coaches every summer is the task of addressing significant departures. Former quarterback Brady White leaves the most significant void, having won the most games (28) and passed for the most yardage (10,690) and touchdowns (90) among all signal-callers in Tiger history. Also gone are placekicker Riley Patterson (second in career scoring for the U of M with 432 points) and a trio of impact-making transfers: offensive lineman Obinna Eze (to TCU), wide receiver Tahj Washington (to USC), and defensive back T.J. Carter (to TCU).
Safety Quindell Johnson intercepted three passes in 2020 and led the AAC with 60 solo tackles (Photo: U of M Athletics)
But there is returning star power for Memphis. If you enjoy “watch lists” — those preseason projections of which players will contend for which postseason awards — you’ll need a deep breath before reciting the Tigers’ candidates: Calvin Austin III (Biletnikoff Award for outstanding receiver and Maxwell Award for most outstanding player), Sean Dykes (John Mackey Award for best tight end), Quindell Johnson (Jim Thorpe Award for best defensive back and Chuck Bednarik Award for outstanding defensive player), and Dylan Parham (Outland Trophy for best interior lineman).
These kinds of preseason nods tend to go to programs that have enjoyed seven straight winning seasons, a pair of AAC titles, and three Top-25 finishes (in 2014, ’17, and ’19). The Tigers enter the 2021 campaign on a 15-game home winning streak (fifth in the nation), the kind of utter dominance expected of blue bloods in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or Columbus, Ohio. Since 2014, the Tigers are 41-5 at the Liberty Bowl. (For perspective, Memphis has won more home games over the last seven seasons than the program did the previous 14.) So yes, expectations are high. Again.
Sean Dykes holds the Tiger career record for receptions (80) and yards (1,169) by a tight end. (Photo: U of M Athletics)
Just Watch!
There’s some irony to the watch lists, as you won’t find a Tiger among candidates for the Davey O’Brien Award, given annually to the country’s top quarterback. Having suited up Paxton Lynch (2013-15), Riley Ferguson (2016-17), and White (2018-20) over the last eight years, Memphis has found not just stability behind center, but profound, record-breaking success. Silverfield opened camp in August by declaring any one of four quarterbacks capable of continuing this unprecedented stretch: Keilon Brown (a dual-threat redshirt freshman from Zachary, Louisiana), Grant Gunnell (a junior transfer from the University of Arizona), Seth Henigan (a freshman from Denton, Texas), and Peter Parrish (a sophomore transfer from LSU).
Despite nursing an injury through much of training camp, Gunnell fits the picture — and brings the most experience — for Saturday’s opener at the Liberty Bowl. [Editor’s note: Silverfield had not named the starter at press time.] Based on his size (6’6”, 228 lbs.), Gunnell fits the prototype for a drop-back gunslinger, the kind Memphis has gotten used to over the last decade. As for credentials, Gunnell shattered state records as a high school player in Houston, passing for 16,108 yards and 195 touchdowns over four years. In his two seasons at Arizona, Gunnell played in 12 games, completed 66 percent of his passes and connected for 15 touchdowns (with only three interceptions).
“First and foremost, it’s intelligence and accuracy,” says Silverfield, in emphasizing the qualities he wants to see from his quarterback on a weekly basis. “He needs to display leadership and arm strength and be athletic enough to get you out of trouble. Can he handle the offense? Is he a quick thinker, able to process information?”
Silverfield chuckles when asked if the Tiger offense will remain a run-first attack. “I’m an offensive-line guy,” he says. “We’ll base it on personnel. Brady White was a great drop-back passer, so there were times when we had to lean on the pass. We’ve also had NFL-caliber running backs recently, so it made sense to run first. A lot of it is what the defense gives us.”
In Austin and Dykes, the Memphis quarterback — whoever he might be — will have a pair of veteran game-breakers to target. A former walk-on from Harding Academy of Memphis, Austin caught 63 passes for 1,063 yards and 11 touchdowns in 2020, filling the void left by Damonte Coxie, who opted out early in the season. Dykes hauled in 47 passes for 581 yards and seven touchdowns and already owns the Tiger career records for catches (80) and receiving yards (1,169) by a tight end. The top returning ball-carrier is Rodrigues “Dreke” Clark (561 yards last year), but Marquavius Weaver (from Bartlett High School), Kylan Watkins (Whitehaven), Cameron Fleming, and Brandon Thomas give the running back position every bit as much depth — or question marks — as quarterback. “We started seven different running backs last year,” notes Silverfield. “Probably not where you want to be, but our bell cow [Kenneth Gainwell] opted out five days before the first game. We’ve got to figure out who that guy is [this season].”
High Expectations for Tiger Talent
The Tigers have become one of the top-scoring programs in the country, with averages (points per game) the last five seasons of 38.8, 45.5, 42.9, 40.4, and 31.0. Conversely, the Memphis defense has allowed its share of points, with averages (since 2016) of 28.8, 32.5, 31.9, 26.4, and 27.9 last season under first-year defensive coordinator Mike MacIntyre. A pair of ugly losses at Cincinnati (49-10) and Tulane (35-21) exposed the Tiger defense in ways that even a prolific offense couldn’t hide. This year’s defense will be led by a pair of preseason all-conference selections, first-team lineman Morris Joseph (seven quarterback sacks in 2020) and second-team safety Quindell Johnson. As a sophomore last season, Johnson led the AAC with 60 solo tackles, pulled down three interceptions, forced two fumbles, and recovered another.
“Quindell is an extremely smart football player,” says MacIntyre. “He can cap the defense and see what’s going on with the offenses [we face]. Not only does he have the ability to make plays on interceptions, but running the alley, making checks, and just his great football savvy.”
As high as the expectations have become for the Tigers here in the Mid-South, the program has drifted back into a middle tier when measured nationally. Only one AAC team (Cincinnati) cracked the AP’s preseason Top 25, Memphis not so much as receiving a vote. As for their conference standing, the Tigers are projected to finish fifth in the AAC by media pollsters, behind the Bearcats, UCF, SMU, and Houston.
Silverfield takes the stance of a coach with many more years behind him when it comes to such prognosticating, or circling games on the Tiger schedule. No one has won (or lost) a game yet, so paper standings in August mean zilch. And yes, he’s circled a game on the Memphis schedule: the opener this Saturday against Nicholls State. (September 18th might be highlighted on a few Memphis refrigerators. Mississippi State visits the Liberty Bowl for the first time since 2011. The Tigers haven’t beaten the Bulldogs since 1993 and not since 1988 on their home turf.)
“This is a winning program now,” stresses Silverfield. “The city embraces Memphis Tiger football. The love for the players grows, year in and year out. It’s what makes this place unique. Our players appreciate the support they get from the city. We know what a home-field advantage we have.”
Silverfield learned much about himself over his rookie year — that unique rookie year — as a head coach. “As a first-year coach, you want to control everything,” he says. “Nothing kicked me in the teeth like the pandemic telling me, ‘Hey, you have very little control over everything.’ I control what I can. But every day there is going to be something, and I have to deal with it the right way, to have patience but act swiftly. I’m still gonna coach hard and hold people accountable. But when issues arise, I better be level-headed in order to figure things out.”
2021 TIGER FOOTBALL SCHEDULE • September 4 (6 p.m.) — Nicholls State • September 11 (6 p.m.) — at Arkansas State • September 18 (3 p.m.) — Mississippi State • September 25 — UTSA • October 2 (11 a.m.) — at Temple • October 9 — at Tulsa • October 14 (Thursday, 6:30 p.m.) — Navy • October 22 (Friday, 6 p.m.) — at UCF • November 6 — SMU • November 13 — East Carolina • November 19 (Friday, 8 p.m.) — at Houston • November 26 (Friday) or Nov. 27 — Tulane
Call them the “Blue Kids” or the “Big Kids,” but one of those big blue statues on the Vollintine-Evergreen Greenline was vandalized — partially burned — last week.
An eyewitness said they spotted two people near the statues last Monday morning. Investigators said an accelerant — probably lighter fluid — was used to start the fire.
Photo posted to Nextdoor by V&E Greenline
Finally Finch
“Work on the Larry Finch Plaza will be completed this fall,” tweeted University of Memphis President David Rudd. “Here’s what it’ll look like (and that’s not the statue just a place holder!).”
Posted to Twitter by David Rudd
Delta, Delta, Delta
The Memphis subreddit roasted this year’s Delta Fair, especially as the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus sweeps across the land.
“More true than ever this year,” wrote original poster u/trailsonmountains.
“Truth in advertising,” wrote u/MatttheBruinsfan. “They should have set it up in a hospital parking lot instead.”
“One of the 901 Day events is called Exposure,” said u/scd73. “Terrible choice.”
Students at the University of Memphis have started a petition to allow hybrid learning options for the 2021-2022 school year.
Hybrid classes, which allow students to decide between in person and online lectures, are beneficial for mitigating the spread of Covid-19 and for disabled students, students say.
“Students would not have to choose between their education and the health and safety of themselves or others,” the petition reads. “It is unreasonable to ask a student to risk their scholarships and stay home when sick with no protection against being penalized for absences.”
Hybrid classes will also allow quarantining students to continue course work without falling behind, the petition adds.
Some fall classes will be offered online, some will be in-person, and some hybrid. But not all classes will have an online or hybrid component.
Tom Nenon, U of M’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said Monday that “all courses for the fall semester will take place in the delivery format (online, on-ground, hybrid) that was published in the ‘Schedule of Classes.’
“Any changes your faculty member might consider must have prior written approval by the Dean and the Office of the Provost. To date, no such requests have been approved, so please plan to participate in the scheduled format.”
The petition calls for all classes to have a hybrid option, which it says won’t change anything for students who wish to attend classes in person, but will allow students to “prioritize their health over their GPA if they so desire.”
As a public university in Tennessee, the university is not able to require vaccines, according to U of M’s coronavirus communications page. However, the university is “strongly encouraging” students and staff to get vaccinated. Additionally, masks are required indoors and in places where social distancing is not possible on campus. But without a vaccination requirement and the rise of the Delta variant, students fear the return to campus will not be smooth.
“While their optimism is admirable, it is unrealistic and unsustainable,” the petition reads. “The pandemic is no longer an unprecedented time. We are aware of what we are up against and it is an opportunity for us to take steps toward being a safer campus.”
The petition had 251 signatures as of Wednesday morning.
Innovation is an occasional story series on Memphis’ continued push to the cutting edge.
Duane McKenna is a key player on a global hunt for an economic friend and threat, and his team is now armed with a $1.3 million grant to fuel the search.
McKenna is a Harvard-educated beetle expert at the University of Memphis (U of M). He teaches biology at U o M, but also founded the school’s Center for Biodiversity Research and the Agriculture and Food Tech Research Cluster on the campus.
This year, he and his team won a $1.3 million grant from the federal National Science Foundaiton (NSF) to study how beetles taste and smell (chemosensation). Knowing how they find food and eat can, perhaps, allow scientists to find them more easily.
The beetles are pollinators. So, knowing where they are can aid agriculture. The beetles eat wood. So, being able to find them, McKenna said, could avoid multi-billion-dollar destruction of forest land in eastern North America.
(Credit: University of Memphis)
”We are going to learn things about the beetles that relate to how they find plants or even wood that they’re eating and how they find it,” McKenna said. “Knowing those two things, it provides us with mechanisms that facilitate control — or, in the case of invasives that come into the U.S. — an understanding of how to trap them and find where they are. This is actually very valuable because, otherwise, it’s sort of a needle in a haystack kind of thing, or looking for an animal that’s, you know, a centimeter long.”
The Asian longhorn beetle has been introduced in North America many times, McKenna said, but has been eradicated each time. These beetles are also threats to home property values, too, and were found to inhabit whole neighborhoods in places like Boston and Chicago.
The new grant spans five years. With it, McKenna will work with Stephanie Haddad, a research assistant professor in U of M’s Department of Biological Sciences. They will hire some post-graduate students to help. But those students will also get training in the methods used by McKenna and other working scientists to “themselves become educators and mentors,” McKenna said. They will all work with other scientists around the world (specifically in Australia, South America, and Europe) as these beetles are found everywhere but Antarctica.
The project has another global pursuit. McKenna’s team will also sequence the genomes of 15 beetles as part of an international effort housed at the University of California-Davis to sequence the genomes of representative groups of all life on Earth over the next 10 years.
The project could cost as much as $4.7 billion.
The Earth Biogenome Project is called a “moonshot for biology” and a way ”to help discover the remaining 80 to 90 percent of species that are currently hidden from science.” The project could cost as much as $4.7 billion but could be a “complete transformation of the scientific understanding of life on Earth and a vital new resource for global innovations in medicine, agriculture, conservation, technology, and genomics.”
Tracey Higgins and Wyatt Cenac in Barry Jenkins' debut film, Medicine for Melancholy.
Film festivals are where most filmmakers get their start. Indeed, finding fresh new voices and seeing radical new visions in a too-often bland and homogeneous filmscape is a big draw for festivals like Indie Memphis. Now, the fest is teaming up with the University of Memphis to bring three first films from directors who went on to do big things.
The Debuts screenings, May 5-6 at the Malco Summer Drive-In, are curated by University of Memphis Department of Communication and Film professor Marty Lang. The first film in the series (May 5th) is one of the most consequential first films of the 21st century. Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy screened at Indie Memphis in 2008. Set in the booming San Francisco of the Aughts, the film stars Wyatt Cenac, who went on The Daily Show fame, and Tracey Higgins, who would later appear in The Twilight Saga, as two young lovers who try to come to terms with their place in the racial and economic hierarchy of their allegedly free and egalitarian city. Jenkins went on to win Best Picture in 2016 for Moonlight; his new historical fantasy project, The Underground Railroad, drops on Amazon Prime on May 14th. The screening will be followed by a discussion led by members of the Memphis Black arts organization The Collective.
Then, on May 6th, a double feature kicks off with the debut film by Jeff Nichols. The Little Rock, Arkansas native is the brother of Lucero’s frontman Ben Nichols. His first film was Shotgun Stories, starring Michael Shannon. The 2007 film is the story of a feud between two sets of Arkansan half-brothers who find themselves in radically different circumstances, despite their blood connection. After the screening, Nichols will speak with Lang about the making of the film, and his subsequent career, which includes the Matthew McConaughey drama Mud and Loving, the story of the Virginia couple whose relationship led to the Supreme Court legalizing interracial marriage.
The second film on May 6th is Sun Don’t Shine by Amy Seimetz. The 2012 film stars Memphis filmmaker and NoBudge founder Kentucker Audley and Kate Lyn Sheil (who later went on to roles in House of Cards and High Maintenance) as a couple on a tense road trip along the Florida Gulf Coast. Seimetz went on to a prodigious acting career, as well as leading the TV series adaptation of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and directing one of 2020’s most paranoid films, She Dies Tomorrow. Lang will also interview Seimetz about beginning her career with Sun Don’t Shine.
