Appointments, honors and activities

• Faculty and staff honors:

- R. Douglas Hurt, professor and head of Purdue's Department of History, gave the keynote address at the 48th annual Dakota Conference on History, Literature, Art and Archeology on April 22 at Augustana University. The title of his talk was "The Northern Great Plains Livestock Industry during World War II." The conference was commemorating the 75th anniversary of World War II, and the conference theme was "World War II Comes to the Northern Great Plains."

• Notables:

- Purdue University recently received the 2016 Chelsea Santucci Greenovation Award from Kimberly-Clark Professional for diverting more than 3,200 pounds of nonhazardous laboratory waste from landfills over the past year. Suzy Gustafson, manager of the Chemistry Procurement Center, accepted the award on behalf of Purdue. The laboratory gloves that were recycled as part of Purdue's participation in the RightCycle by Kimberly-Clark Professional program were converted into raw materials which can be used to make eco-friendly products.

- Krannert Women in Management partnered with Purdue Foundry to create a Women in Technology Innovation module. The inaugural class attracted undergraduate students Jennifer Martinez, Lauren Rourk and Christine Rasquinha. Purdue faculty focused on exploration of product commercialization. Mentors included Amanda Thompson, Mark Cisneros, Brittany Collins and Tere Carvahal.  Students worked through questions about protecting the innovation (copyrights, patents), moving from idea to application, and potential conflicts of interest while learning about Purdue Foundry resources Launchbox, iCorps, and SBIR funding.  A full-semester version of the class is planned for the fall.

• Student honors:

- The Department of Political Science and the Brian Lamb School of Communication are appointing two inaugural C-SPAN Archives Fellows to conduct research using the archives this summer. Elizabeth Wulbrecht, a master's student in political science, is doing a study on how mental health issues are framed in Congress. She is analyzing discussions of mental health in congressional discourse over several decades using the archives. Delaney Harness, a master's student in the Brian Lamb School of Communication, will be researching the telecommunications policy of the 1970s that privatized domestic communication satellites that gave rise to early cable networks such as C-SPAN. Both students will be working with Robert Browning, associate professor of communication and political science, and director of the C-SPAN Archives.

- Six Purdue students scheduled to graduate later this month have joined Teach For America. The six, along with their hometowns and subjects they will be teaching, are Rachel Aker, Dallas, math; Brandon Denning, Dallas, science; Shaina Geml, Detroit, elementary; My-Lan Le, Indianapolis, elementary special education; Jennifer Losby, Indianapolis, math; and Kelsey Stummer, Denver, elementary. Teach For America is a national nonprofit working to expand educational opportunity for low-income students. Corps members commit to teach for two years in high-need urban or rural public schools.