Christopher S. Peebles, Indiana University professor emeritus of anthropology, has been awarded the Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion by IU President Michael McRobbie. Recognized for his prominent achievement and dedicated service, Peebles is a distinguished expert on the ancient past whose contributions to IU's high tech present and future also are recognized with this honor.

Indiana University School of Optometry associate dean and professor Dr. Joseph A. Bonanno has been named to the 12-member National Advisory Eye Council.

David E. Clemmer, the Robert and Marjorie Mann Chair of Chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Tracy M. Sonneborn Award at IU, and Lisa Pratt, IU professor of geological sciences and the inaugural IU Provost's Professor, will be recognized at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 8 (Thursday), in the Indiana Memorial Union's Frangipani Room. Clemmer will present the Sonneborn Lecture, "Measurements for the Masses," shortly after 5 p.m. The lecture and a reception afterward are free and open to the public.

Dean A. Shepherd, the Randall L. Tobias Chair of Entrepreneurial Leadership and professor of entrepreneurship at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, has been appointed editor-in-chief of The Journal of Business Venturing.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded more than $140,000 through the prestigious Sawyer Seminars to Indiana University faculty members. The award supports a year-long seminar series titled "Rupture and Flow: The Circulation of Technoscientific Facts and Objects."

The Indiana University Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs announced today (June 23) the appointment of Anne P. Massey as associate vice provost for faculty and academic affairs at IU Bloomington. Massey is the dean's research professor and professor of information systems at the IU Kelley School of Business.

The National Academy of Education has selected an Indiana University School of Education assistant professor as a 2009-2010 Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. Melissa Gresalfi, a counseling and educational psychology assistant professor, is among the 20 researchers selected from a pool of more than 150 applicants.

Five teams of IU researchers are the recipients of more than $230,000 in internal grants that are designed to provide start-up funding for innovative research addressing critical cybersecurity needs. The grants were awarded by the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research (CACR), part of the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University.

Edwin C. Marshall, vice president for diversity, equity and multicultural affairs and professor of optometry at Indiana University, will be inducted into the National Optometry Hall of Fame in recognition of his contributions to his profession. He is the fourth optometrist with IU ties to be selected for the honor.

IU Bloomington selects faculty members each year with distinguished leadership ability to participate in the Academic Leadership Program (ALP), sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. This year's ALP Fellows are Joyce Alexander, Martin McCrory, Jane McLeod and Sara C. Pryor.

Seven Indiana University Bloomington faculty have received 2009 Summer Instructional Development Fellowships from the offices of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs to develop specialized and innovative courses. They are Sonya Atalay in anthropology; Colleen Ryan-Scheutz and Kelly Sax in French and Italian; Beth Samuelson in literacy, language and culture education; Kalpana Shankar in informatics; Kay Connelly in computer science; and Rex Sprouse in Germanic studies and second language studies.

David H. Weaver, the Roy W. Howard Professor in journalism and mass communication research in the School of Journalism at Indiana University Bloomington, has been named the Distinguished Faculty Research Lecturer for 2009.

Indiana University will honor distinguished teaching of its faculty as part of a celebration to mark its founding 189 years ago on Jan. 20, 1820. IU President Michael McRobbie will preside over the Founders Day teaching awards presentation, scheduled for Friday (March 27) at 5:30 p.m. in the Indiana Memorial Union's Alumni Hall. The Indiana University String Quartet will provide a musical prelude.

A newly-arrived mathematician to Indiana University has been named among 118 young scientists, economists and mathematicians as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. Ciprian Demeter, 33, will receive a $50,000 research grant from the Sloan Foundation, which since 1955 has made awards to young researchers having gone on to win a cumulative 38 Nobel Prizes and 14 Fields Medals, considered the highest honor in mathematics.

Indiana University Professor of Computer Science Paul Purdom has been named to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) list of distinguished scientists.

Two new teaching awards related to sustainability and environmental literacy -- the Sustainability Course Development Fellowships and the Sustainability and Environmental Literacy Leadership Award -- have been awarded to IU Bloomington faculty by the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs.

IU Informatics professor Alex Vespignani has been elected to fellowship in the American Physical Society, the preeminent organization of physicists in the United States. Vespignani was honored for his contribution to the statistical physics of complex networks, in particular his seminal work on the spreading of viruses in real networks, according to the citation from the American Physical Society.

Indiana University folklore professor Richard Bauman has studied the acts of speaking and of silence as communicative modes among 16th century Quakers and Medieval Icelanders. He's also taken a keen ear to coon dog traders in East Texas and researching practical jokesters. Bauman recently was presented with the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award by the American Folklore Society.

Born and raised in Bloomington, Meg Cabot majored in fine arts at IU and worked as an illustrator for years before taking a chance on a writing career. Years of rejection later, Cabot won a contract with St. Martin's Press, through which she eventually published The Princess Diaries, the young-adult novel that would spawn a book and film series and alter the course of her career. Cabot will be honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award at the 2008 College of Arts and Sciences Annual Recognition Banquet on Friday, Nov. 7.

The American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration has selected Stephen A. Wolter, executive director of the Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, as a 2008 fellow.

Students at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business again have given top marks to its faculty, facilities and overall classroom experience in a new Princeton Review survey.

The 2008-09 Horizons of Knowledge Lecture series kicks off Wednesday, September 24 with "A Warsaw Story: Polish-Jewish Relations in the First World War" by Robert Blobaum from West Virginia University. The lecture will be at 5:00 p.m. in the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU) Faculty Room of the University Club. Sponsors of the talk are the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, Polish Studies Center, Department of History and Russian and East European Institute.

The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature has selected Bloomington resident Scott Russell Sanders, a distinguished professor of creative writing at Indiana University's College of Arts and Sciences, to receive the 2009 Mark Twain Award for his "distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature." Previous winners include Toni Morrison, Ray Bradbury, Jim Harrison, William Maxwell, Wright Morris, Harriet Monroe, Gwendolyn Brooks and Jonis Agee. The award ceremony will take place at the society's annual meeting in East Lansing, Mich., on May 8, 2009, and will feature a panel devoted to Sanders' work.

Four Indiana University Bloomington faculty members have been awarded a $150,000 grant to develop a model interdisciplinary approach that prepares graduate students to be reflective practitioners who base their teaching on appropriate learning theory and revise it based on evidence of student learning.

Indiana University Bloomington biologists Thomas Kaufman and Michael Wade were elected this week to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, respectively. The elections are among the highest honors American scientists can receive. Wade will officially be inducted into the American Academy at a ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., on Oct. 11. Kaufman will be inducted into the National Academy at the organization's next annual meeting (April 2009) in Washington, D.C.