Appointments, honors and activities

• Faculty and staff honors:

- Michael Morrison, associate professor of history, has been elected president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. The society focuses on exploring American history between 1776 and 1861 to foster the study of the early republican period. Morrison received his doctorate from the University of Michigan and has taught at Purdue for 25 years. He teaches courses on society, culture and rock 'n' roll, along with politics of pop culture and specializes in 19th century U.S. and American political history. He has authored and co-authored several books including "Slavery and the American West." He also served as co-editor of the Journal of the Early Republic. Morrison has been recognized for his teaching with the College of Liberal Arts Teaching Excellence Award and Purdue University's Charles B. Murphy Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 1998, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching named him Indiana Professor of the Year.

- Robert Kenley, an associate professor of engineering practice, has received a Fellows Award from the International Council on Systems Engineering. He was one of two researchers recognized in July for their "significant contributions to systems engineering." Specifically, Kenley was honored for advancing the application of analytic methods and statistical modeling techniques in systems design and analysis. He focuses on education and research in the science of systems fundamentals and over the past 30 years has proved his skills in industry, academia and government as a practitioner, consultant and researcher in systems engineering. He is a member of the Purdue Systems Collaboratory and has worked at Lockheed Missiles and Space, the Idaho National Laboratory, and the MIT Lean Advancement Initiative. He also has been actively involved with INCOSE, which is dedicated to advancing the state of the art and practice in systems engineering. He holds master's and doctoral degrees from Stanford University in engineering-economic systems, a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and a master's degree in statistics from Purdue.

• Alumni honors:

- The University of Hawai'i Foundation has named Dale Spenner director of estate and gift planning. Spenner joined the foundation in 2015 as associate director of estate and gift planning. Previously, he was the director of planned giving at the Culver Educational Foundation in Indiana for over 10 years. He also has served as president for six companies in five different industries. Spenner earned a Bachelor Science degree and a Master of Science in Management degree from Purdue.