Appointments, honors and activities
• Faculty and staff honors:
- The National Academy of Sciences has named Laurie Iten, an associate professor of biological sciences, and Stephanie Gardner, a continuing lecturer in biological sciences, as National Academies Education Fellows in the Life Sciences for the 2011-2012 academic year. Iten and Gardner were honored for their participation in the 2011 National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology. Teams from 16 research universities worked together at the summer institute to develop a series of "teachable tidbits" that they will implement and assess in a course during the coming academic year. Each team also will implement a mentoring seminar to enable graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to mentor undergraduate students in the research laboratory.
• Student honors:
- A team of Purdue University students taking an aircraft design course won second place in NASA's Environmentally Responsible (Green) Aviation College Student Challenge, which invited students to propose ideas and designs for future aircraft that use less fuel, produce less harmful emissions, and make less noise. William A. Crossley, a professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, taught the course. "Team Paradigm" consisted of students Steve McCabe, Steven Adams, Paul Davis, Zack Means, Mizuki Wada, Zherui Guo, Farah Abdullah, Askar Yessurkepov and Noor Emir Anuar. Their aircraft concept "P6CAF-IncAR" would carry 256 passengers. Another Purdue team, "Team Employable," tied for third place for their 224-seat "Night Panther" concept, sharing the prize with students from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Team Employable consisted of students Laura Managan, Michael Yankel, Nick Stallings, Tim Luckey, Alan Pomp, Katie Vollmayer, Brian Hartel, Ashley Prather, and Aamod Samuel.