Appointments, honors and activities
• Faculty and staff honors:
- Mark Russell, a professor of animal sciences, is the 2010 recipient of the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) Eastern Regional Outstanding Teacher Award. He will receive the award during NACTA's annual conference at Penn State University in June. Russell is an equine management specialist and teaches courses on functional anatomy and animal performance, horse evaluation and judging, and an animal industry travel course, among others. He joined the Purdue faculty in 1982.
• Student honors:
- The fourth-year doctor of audiology students from Purdue's Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences placed second among 65 competing programs in the Starkey University Trivia Challenge at the annual conference of the American Academy of Audiology in San Diego in April. In honor of the students' success, Starkey awarded scholarship money to Purdue's program.
- Students from Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Environmental Science departments won an honorable mention in the EPA-People, Planet and Prosperity competition in Washington, D.C., April 23-26. The honor was for their research on reducing water consumption and pollution in the corn masa production process. The students tested the quality of masa, an important food in Latin America, after incorporating recycled water into its production. The students involved were: Kyle Probst, an agricultural and biological engineering graduate student from Bloomington, Ind.; Lindsay Birt, an agricultural and biological engineering doctoral student from Houtson; Jayne Piepenburg, an environmental sciences and creative writing junior from Palatine, Ill.; and Majdi Abou Najm, an agricultural and biological engineering post-doctoral researcher from Bchamoun, Lebanon. Martin Okos, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering, advised the group.
- Monica Elmore, a graduate student teacher and research assistant in the Department of Animal Sciences, is a 2010 recipient of the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) Graduate Student Teaching Award. She will receive the award during NACTA's annual conference at Penn State University in June. Elmore’s research specialty area is animal behavior and well being. She and fellow animal sciences student Heather White are believed to be the first Purdue graduate students to receive the NACTA award.
- Amirah Azhar's "Blue Ridge Lake" has been selected for publication in the spring 2010 issue of The Collegiate Scholar, an online publication produced by The National Society of Collegiate Scholars. Azhar is a freshman in the College of Science.
- Approximately 60 graduating seniors will be commissioned as second lieutenants and ensigns during the annual Spring Joint Commissioning for Army Naval and Air Force ROTC programs on May 14. The event will be at 11 a.m. in the South Ballroom of the Purdue Memorial Union. Maj. Gen. John Peabody, U.S. Army Division Commander, Great Lakes & Ohio River Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will be the featured speaker.