PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 23, No. 8, Oct. 16, 2003

achievements A report on honors, awards, appointments and other outstanding achievements of faculty and staff members.

ACES | ALS | IGPA | LAS | SUAA | Correction |

agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
Bill Simmons, professor of natural resources and environmental sciences, was presented the Outstanding Educator of the Year Award by the Mid America CropLife Association.

The association honored Simmons and several industry, media and academic leaders at its recent annual meeting in Indianapolis.

Simmons is known for his outreach programs on water quality as it pertains to crop protection products. His research deals with crop production systems.

MACA, a non-profit industry association in 13 Midwestern states, works to address agribusiness issues important to its members.

Vijay Singh, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, was awarded the 2003 Corn Refiner’s Association Young Faculty Excellence Award.

CRA, a national trade association that represents companies that refine corn using the wet-milling process, awarded Singh a grant of $20,000 per year for three years, to be used in his research in corn wet milling.

This award recognizes innovative research in corn processing and utilization by new faculty in the first five years of their career.

“Vijay has already received three patents for developing improvements in corn processing,” said Loren Bode, head of the department of agricultural and biological engineering. “He is rapidly becoming known internationally for his work in adding value to the corn-processing industry.”

applied life studies
Weimo Zhu, professor of kinesiology, was named an active member of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education. The academy announced the recent induction of its newest members at its 73rd annual meeting. Fourteen people were named as Active Fellows of the academy during an induction ceremony Sept. 13 in Pine Mountain, Ga.

In order to be elected into membership, individuals must be nominated by a current member of the academy and must be currently engaged in professional and/or scientific work in kinesiology or physical education, and have demonstrated competence in this profession/discipline for at least 10 years.

government and public affairs
Robert Rich recently received several honors. He was named a Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement and Institutional Relations for a three-year term. Faculty and staff members and students from the office collaborate with communities, agencies, organizations, business and government to address critical societal issues and to share the university’s intellectual and cultural assets.

Rich also was named a permanent Fellow in the European Center for the Comparative Government and Public Policy. This center is funded by the Humboldt University, the Technical University and the Free University of Berlin.

In addition to his appointed positions, he was elected as vice president of the board of the Warren and Clara Cole Foundation, a health-care research foundation in Chicago.
Rich has been invited by the U.S. State Department to lecture on health law and policy, federalism and the future of the social contract during a lecture tour in Germany from Oct. 20-28. The lectures will be in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Nurenberg and Stuttgart.

liberal arts and sciences
Richard I. Gumport, associate dean of academic affairs and professor of biochemistry, recently served as co-director for a laboratory course sponsored by the U.S. National Academies and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The course was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the Institute of Biotechnology. Twelve experts from around the world taught the course and the participants were young scientists from countries of the former Soviet Union. The topic was “Molecular Interaction of Proteins and DNA.”

Richard Powers, Swanlund Professor of English at Illinois and also an Illinois Center for Advanced Study Professor, has won two more literary prizes.

Powers, the author of eight novels including his most recent, “The Time of Our Singing,” has won the 2002 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

The prize, which comes with a medal and a cash award, was established in 1980 at Longwood University, a liberal arts school in Virginia, to commemorate Dos Passos by honoring other writers in his name. Dos Passos (1896-1970) was an American novelist best known for his massive social fiction trilogy “U.S.A.”

Powers will accept his prize on Nov. 18, during a ceremony at Longwood University.
Powers also has won a Pushcart Prize for an essay he wrote that was published in Zoetrope, a literary magazine published quarterly and founded by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

The winning essay, “Literary Devices,” a story about “self-telling fiction in the digital age” that first appeared in the Winter 2002 issue of Zoetrope, will be reprinted in the anthology “Pushcart Prize XXVIII: Best of the Small Presses, 2004” (for stories written in 2002 and 2003). The 2004 edition of the Pushcart Prize will be published next month.

state universities annuitants association
Four retired faculty and staff members were elected to the State Universities Annuitants Association Executive Committee for three-year terms.

Helen Satterthwaite, former lab technician in the College of Veterinary Medicine, was unanimously elected to the administrative body of the local SUAA chapter. Elected along with her was Harold “Bill” Williamson, former associate dean of the College of Commerce and Business Administration; Robert Sprague, former professor of kinesiology and of education; and Walt Tousey, former associate provost. They join nine other retirees on the committee representing more than 7,500 UI annuitants and its 1,800 active dues-paying members in matters pertaining to enhancing and retaining retiree benefits.

correction
Information on one of the recipients of the Civil Service Employee and Dependent Scholarship was incomplete in the Sept. 18 issue. Casey Jo Flesner received one of the dependent scholarships and is the daughter of Mary Flesner, staff secretary in the department of computer science.

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