Steve McCauley joined WFAA-TV in March 2000 as executive weather producer and Midday weather anchor.  He maintains the weather computer as well as designing the on-air graphics and animations used on WFAAA weather broadcasts.  Steve also anchors the weekend weathercasts in addition to providing special weather coverage during severe thunderstorms and tornado outbreaks.

Steve previously worked for TV weather departments in Lubbock and Amarillo.  His forecasts also have been heard on several radio stations throughout the Texas Panhandle and South Plains, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

Before entering the broadcast industry, Steve served as chief project forecaster and radar operator for cloud seeding experiments in the Concho Valley area around San Angelo.  He also owns and operates a private meteorological consulting company.

Steve received his bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric Physics from Purdue University and his master’s degree in Atmospheric Science from Texas Tech.  As former captain of the Texas Tech Tornado Intercept Team, Steve can sometimes be found out on the prairies in pursuit of Nature’s most violent of storms, and he shares his photos and video with the viewers during his weathercasts.

Website: www.wfaa.com/smccauley

Dr. Carol Reynolds is a uniquely talented and much sought-after speaker for general audiences. She delivers the pre-concert lectures "Windnotes" for the renowned Dallas Wind Symphony. The DWS website says about her, "This is not your typical, snore-inducing pre-concert lecture. Windnotes with Dr. Carol is like an impassioned sermon combining history, music theory, and behind-the-scenes dirt on the pieces and composers featured in the evening's program." She also frequently lectures for such other arts organizations as the Dallas Symphony, the Tulsa Symphony, the Dallas Opera, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Kimball Museum, and has served as the Principal Lecturer of the Van Cliburn Series.  Never dull or superficial, Carol brings to her audiences a unique mix of humor, substance, and skilled piano performance to make the arts more accessible and meaningful to all.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Carol Reynolds was Associate Professor of Music History at the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She obtained an MA in piano performance and a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her primary field of expertise lies in Russian music and culture, the oratorio, and Russian vocal music.  She pursued her graduate studies at the [then] Leningrad Conservatory of Music and has developed particular expertise concerning the inter-relationship of German and Russian art, music, and history.  Carol has led arts tours to Russia, Austria, Germany, San Francisco, and Broadway on behalf of several arts organizations.

Her enthusiasm and boundless energy give tour participants an unforgettable experience.She makes her home on a farm near Bowie, Texas, where, with her husband and teenage daughter, she raises La Mancha goats and soaks up the rich cultural heritage of rural America. She maintains a second residence in Weimar, Germany – the home of Goethe, Schiller, Bach, and Liszt, and the focal point of much of Europe’s artistic heritage.

See Professor Carol's website: www.professorcarol.com/index.htm

The Wind works hard for us, but it also works in us. It not only can propel wind turbines and generate wind music, it can also shape a culture like West Texas. It can create a land of vast horizons and inhospitable climate and a people with a spirit of independence and endurance.

On September 29th, English Professor Mark Busby returns to Chautauqua from the Center for the Study of the Southwest in San Marcos to give us a glimpse of the wind through Texas literature.

Dr. Busby will highlight these Texas writers as they look at the wind:

• John Graves, Texas' most famous nature writer. Mark Busby has a new book about John Graves, John Graves, Writer, published by University of Texas Press.
• preeminent West Texas poet. Walter McDonald, especially from his collection of poems, Whatever the Wind Delivers: Celebrating West Texas and the Near Southwest
• Dorothy Scarborough’s 1928 novel The Wind, about a West Texas woman who is driven crazy by the incessant wind. It was made into a silent film.

Dr. Busby will be assisted by members of the Waxahachie Community Theater, as the actors help present this Texas poetry and prose and give their own voices to the writings about the wind.

Dr. Busby, a native of Ennis, Texas, is Director of the Southwest Regional Humanities Center and the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University-San Marcos, where he also serves as Professor of English. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1977, and his BA and MA from Texas A&M University Commerce. He taught at Texas A&M University, Indiana University-Purdue University, the U.S. Army Adjutant General School, and the University of Colorado.

Besides his recent book on John Graves, he is author or editor of:  From Texas to the World and Back: Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter (2001); the novel Fort Benning Blues (2001); Larry McMurtry and the West: An Ambivalent Relationship (1995); New Growth/2: Short Stories of Contemporary Texas (1993); Ralph Ellison (1991); The Frontier Experience and the American Dream (1989).

At our 2003 Chautauqua, Dr. Busby brought us an intriguing look at the life and works of Katherine Anne Porter in his program, “Katherine Anne Porter and Texas: Ambivalence Deep as the Bone”.

Websites for Mark Busby:
John Graves, Writer
Southwest Regional Humanities Center
Center for the Study of the Southwest

Ken Starcher will bring his extensive experience with wind power and wind turbines from West Texas to the Chautauqua Assembly on 9/29/07. Ken has earned two degrees from West Texas A&M University, a B.S. in Physics (1980) and a M.S. in Engineering Technology (1995). Ken has worked at the Alternative Energy Institute since 1977, when AEI began operation as an outgrowth of work begun under the Physics Department, at then West Texas State University.

The main focus of Ken’s time and effort has been; maintenance and operation of wind turbines at the AEI/Wind Test Center, operation of the Renewable Energy Demonstration Project (Solar Building), and coordination of all AEI wind/solar data sites scattered throughout Texas and New Mexico. As Director of AEI he continues the focus of data collection, turbine testing, information dissemination, consulting and teaching/training as AEI has promoted in the past 20 years.

Ken is in charge of all the undergraduate workers at AEI, an instructor for visiting foreign interns (Germany, France, Jordan and Inner Mongolia), a part time teacher at the University (Engineering Technology), and has served as an instructor at wind energy seminars in the US, China, Brazil and South Africa.

Ken has had experience in installing and operating more than 65 renewable systems from less than 1 kilowatt to 300 kilowatts

Websites:
Ken Starcher
Alternative Energy Institute

Dallas Wind Symphony Brings Sousa Back to Chautauqua!