Appointments, honors and activities

October 3, 2014  


Faculty and staff honors:

- Jill Suitor, professor of sociology, is the 2014 recipient of the Distinguished Career Contribution to Gerontology Award from the Gerontological Society of America. The society is the nation's largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging. The honor is awarded to an individual whose theoretical contributions have helped bring about a new synthesis and perspective or have yielded original and elegant research designs addressing a significant problem in the literature. The award presentation will take place at the society's 67th annual scientific meeting in November in Washington, D.C. Suitor, also a faculty associate of Purdue's Center on Aging and the Life Course, focuses on the effects of status transitions on interpersonal relations, particularly between parents and adult children. She has studied how parental favoritism with adult children can affect well-being and quality of life issues. More information is available online.

- Purdue faculty, students and an alumna won several awards on Wednesday (Oct. 2) during the Women and Hi Tech Leading Light Awards program, which took place at the Indiana Roof Ballroom in Indianapolis. The awards are given to "honor women of achievement in science, education and technology." Purdue recipients include:

* Outstanding Educator Award in Science, Technology or Engineering to Brenda Capobianco, associate professor of science education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

* Risk-Taker award to Alyssa Panitch, professor of biomedical engineering.

* Women and Hi Tech Scholarships of $5,000 each to Emily Erickson, a bachelor's degree student in biochemistry, and Elcin Icten, a doctoral student in chemical engineering.

* Purdue University scholarship of $1,000 to Glenda Hernandez, who is majoring in mechanical engineering.

* Rising Star award to Amanda Haapala, an astrodynamics doctoral candidate with a minor in aerospace systems.

* Outstanding Achievement in Science, Technology or Engineering award to alumna Carla Yerkes, senior research scientist in Dow AgroSciences' Discovery Research Group.

- Kenneth F. Ferraro, distinguished professor of sociology, is the 2014 winner of the Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association. The award honors a scholar in the field of aging and the life course who has shown exceptional achievement in research, theory or policy analysis to advance knowledge of aging and the life course. Ferraro is the director of Purdue's Center on Aging and the Life Course, and he is the author of more than 100 refereed journal articles related to health, aging, and inequality.

- Karen Yehle, an associate professor of nursing, received the 2014 Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. This award recognizes excellence and innovation in the teaching of nursing at association member schools by faculty with more than five years of teaching experience. Yehle's research focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning and self-care in patients with heart failure. More information is available online.

- Melinda Zook, professor of history, received the prize for the Best Book on women and gender for the year 2013 from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. The book is titled "Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660-1714," and was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Zook was acknowledged by the selection committee for her "ambition, accessibility, and significance of your lively, engaging, and deeply researched investigation of women's political activism in Restoration England. They were impressed as well by how your work thoughtfully articulates its major critical the poignancy of working with fragments to recover the voices and political engagements interventions while acknowledging of Stuart women who often covered their own tracks." Zook also is director of the History Honors Program and Director of Religious Studies program.

- Randy Hountz has been named director at Purdue Healthcare Advisors, a Purdue University engagement initiative that supports the health care industry. Hountz has worked at Purdue since 2006. As principal adviser, he led PHA's health IT and security service lines. He also directed the Purdue Regional Extension Center's effort to bring more than 2,300 Indiana physicians and nurse practitioners into compliance with standards for electronic health records systems. As director, Hountz will oversee PHA's programs and services.

- Jeffrey Rhoads, a Purdue associate professor of mechanical engineering, has been selected to receive the 2014 ASME C. D. Mote Jr., Early Career Award, which is presented to an early career recipient who demonstrates research excellence in the field of vibration and acoustics by the ASME Technical Committee on Sound and Vibration. He also was recently featured in a "20 Under 40" series in the American Society for Engineering Education's Prism magazine.

- Noll Campbell, research assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice, was recently selected to receive the Tony and Mary Hulman Health Achievement Award in the field of Geriatrics and Gerontology. The awards are co-sponsored by the Indiana Public Health Foundation, an independent, public not-for-profit health institute dedicated to promote and protect the health the individual through education, research and resource management, to achieve a higher quality of life, a healthy environment, and to foster greater knowledge of public health.  Noll will receive the award later this month at a banquet in Indianapolis.

- Nancy Pelaez, an associate professor of biological sciences, has been awarded a grant from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Pelaez will lecture and conduct education research at the University of Applied Sciences FH campus, Vienna, in Austria for the 2015 academic year. The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Pelaez will work with faculty in biotechnology and molecular biology to foster students' curiosity, questioning and experience with the scientific process. More information is available at https://www.bio.purdue.edu/bionews/?p=2332

Student honors:

- Mechanical engineering graduate student Daniel Woods has earned first place in the INCE Classic Papers in Noise Control Engineering Competition. His presentation was titled: Overview of Dr. L. L. Beranek's 2006 paper on the Analysis of Sabine and Eyring Equations and Their Application to Concert Hall Audience and Chair Absorption. He and mechanical engineering graduate student Jacob Miller earned first place in the Student Paper Competition at the 26th Conference on Mechanical Vibration and Noise held in conjunction with IDETC/CIE 2014: The 2014 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences.

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