IN THIS ISSUE: BROADCASTING | COMMERCE AND BUSINESS | ENGINEERING | FAA | STUDENT AFFAIRS | LAS | LIBRARY | UNIVERSITY PRESS
broadcasting
The Illinois Department on Aging has chosen WILL AM-FM-TV to receive the Governor’s Award for Excellence for work with the community on caregiving issues and for programming on television and radio about caregiving. The award will be presented Dec. 12 at the Governor’s Conference on Aging and Human Services in Chicago.
Jan Costello, communications director at the Illinois Department on Aging, said the department wanted to recognize WILL as a model for other media outlets. "We were impressed with the progressive nature of WILL’s work," she said. "WILL took the initiative to contact area agencies and discussed caregiving issues and programming with them."
commerce and business administration
Jeffrey Brown, professor of finance, will be a member of an expert panel recently appointed to study federal retirement policy. An authority on pensions, Social Security and annuitization, Brown will head the subcommittee on retirement payout policy.
The National Academy of Social Insurance recently appointed the panel of more than 20 retirement policy experts from the public and private sectors and from academe. They will focus their work on the payment of benefits from individual savings accounts under existing federal retirement policy.
The members begin their work this month and expect to release a report in early 2004. A grant from the Ford Foundation, which promotes collaboration among the nonprofit, government and business sectors, is underwriting the study.
engineering
Ronald J. Adrian, professor emeritus of theoretical and applied mechanics was elected a fellow of the World Innovation Foundation and received the International Society for Flow Visualization’s 2002 Asanuma Award. Adrian also recently was elected a fellow of the American Society for Mechanical Engineers International, and has been awarded the Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Hassan Aref, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, was elected a fellow of the World Innovation Foundation.
Robert B. Haber, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, was elected a fellow of the International Association for Computational Mechanics.
Nancy R. Sottos, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, was honored with the 2002 University of Delaware Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement, recognizing outstanding graduates of the last 20 years.
fine and applied arts
Billy Morrow Jackson, professor emeritus of art and design, and his wife, Siti Mariah Jackson, are being featured at an exhibition at the Cinema Gallery, 120 W. Main St., Urbana. The show, which runs through Nov. 22, will feature paintings in oil, acrylic and watercolor; color block prints; ceramics; and sculptures.
Robert Osterhout, professor of architecture, was the guest speaker at the world premiere of the film "Turkey: The Other Holy Land" at the Smithsonian Institution on Nov. 1. Osterhout was a consultant for the film, which explores the roots of Christianity in Turkey, and also was featured in the film. Osterhout has conducted archaeological survey, documentation and restoration of the Byzantine monuments in Turkey. He is a co-director of the Study and Restoration of the Zeyrek Camii (Monastery of Christ Pantokrator) in Istanbul, a 12th century imperial monastery that housed the tombs of the Byzantine emperors.
student affairs
The University of Illinois was recognized favorably in the "Unofficial Insider’s Guide to the 323 Most Interesting Colleges," published by Kaplan Press. The Urbana campus was mentioned on five of the publication’s lists including best academic facilities, best freshman housing, career services, highest academic standards, and "The Revenge of the Nerds" schools (a list dominated by prominent engineering schools).
liberal arts and sciences
William M. Calder III, the William Abbot Oldfather Professor of Classics at the UI, has won the Werner Heisenberg Medal. The award, named for the famous physicist, is usually given to scientists. Out of a small number of humanists winning the award, Calder is the first classicist and the first from the Urbana campus.
"West African Challenge to Empire," a book co-written by UI anthropology professor Mahir Saul, and UI alumnus Patrick Royer, was awarded the Amaury Talbot Prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. The prize is given to one book selected as "the most valuable work in African anthropology." The book, co-published by Ohio University Press and James Currey Publishing, Oxford, gives an extensive history and interpretation of a war against the French colonial administration in West Africa during World War I.
university library
The research project "Digital Emblematica" has received an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation TRANSCOOP award to support collaborative research on the digitization of emblems from the UI’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library and the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuettel. Mara Wade, UI professor of Germanic languages and literatures, and Thomas Staecker, HAB, are the joint recipients of the award that will fund travel between the two research sites, a working conference, a research stay for the UI research team at the HAB, and digitizing equipment for the HAB. The principal investigators of the project are Wade, Tom Kilton, professor and head, Modern Languages and Linguistics Library, and Beth Sandore, professor and associate university librarian for information technology planning and policy.
university press
Judith McCulloh, assistant director and executive editor of the University Press, received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association in a ceremony Oct. 15, 2002, at the association’s annual convention. The award, given for "pioneering accomplishments that have fostered bluegrass music’s image and broadened its recognition and accessibility," recognized books published in the press’s ongoing series, "Music in American Life," including Neil Rosenberg’s "Bluegrass: A History," John Wright’s "Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music," and Carl Fleischhauer and Neil Rosenberg’s "Bluegrass Odyssey: A Documentary in Pictures and Words, 1966-86."