Two McNair scholars selected as 2011 Elvis J. Stahr award recipients

Isak Nti Asare

The University Graduate School would like to congratulate two of our McNair Scholars, Isak Nti Asare and Esther Uduehi who were selected as the 2011 Elvis J. Stahr award recipients.

Isak Nti Asare is a linguistics, political science, and African studies major, with an African languages minor.  In addition to being a McNair Scholar, he is also a Wells Scholar and a Hudson/Holland Scholar.   Isak is awaiting graduate school acceptances, but so far was accepted to Indiana University Bloomington (Ph.D. program in political science) with a McNair Fellowship and is on the short list for Harvard.

Esther Uduehi

Esther Uduehi is a biochemistry, mathematics major, with a Spanish minor.   In addition to being a McNair Scholar, she also participated in the STARS program.   Esther is a Rhodes fellow and will be studying Chemistry at Oxford (England) in the fall.

The Elvis J. Stahr Distinguished Senior Award was established in 1966 by Stahr, IU's 12th president. The annual award honors three to five seniors who have excelled academically while serving as active student leaders. The names of the recipients are added to a permanent plaque that hangs in the Indiana Memorial Union.

Learn more about the Ronald E McNair Scholars Program:
http://mcnair.indiana.edu

North Carolina A&T joins IU and 11 other historically black colleges and universities in STEM effort

Lagina Williams, of Xavier University of Louisiana, performs an experiment in 2008. North Carolina A&T State University has joined Xavier and 10 other historically black colleges and universities in the initiative.

March 7, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- North Carolina A&T State University has joined with Indiana University and 11 historically black colleges and universities in a partnership aimed at increasing the number of African Americans pursuing careers as researchers and scholars in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.
Lab photo

Lagina Williams, of Xavier University of Louisiana, performs an experiment in 2008. North Carolina A&T State University has joined Xavier and 10 other historically black colleges and universities in the initiative.

Since 2007 the partnership has provided high-achieving African American students from HBCU institutions with opportunities and mentoring to help them find and succeed in graduate-level research programs in the STEM disciplines.

IU President Michael A. McRobbie recently signed a memorandum of agreement with North Carolina A&T State University President Harold Martin that will open participation to selected individuals from that institution's 10,500-student body.

"We welcome our colleagues at North Carolina A&T State University into this important undertaking," McRobbie said. "By expanding our partnerships with our historically black colleges and universities, Indiana University is making good on its long-standing commitment to encouraging and helping students from under-represented minorities to pursue a graduate education in the STEM disciplines."

"We are very excited about this new strategic collaboration that will provide students from North Carolina A&T State University as well as other historically black colleges and universities a competitive edge in this global society as they pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)," said Harold L. Martin Sr., chancellor of North Carolina A&T.

Each summer, undergraduate students from HBCU institutions have participated in a Summer Scholars Institute and conducted research in the laboratories of faculty mentors at IU Bloomington and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). They then present their research at the annual Summer Research Opportunities Program of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).

North Carolina A&T University joins other partner institutions Alabama A&M, Clark Atlanta, Hampton, Jackson State, Langston, Morgan State, North Carolina Central and Tennessee State universities, as well as Bennett College for Women, Morehouse College and Xavier University of Louisiana.

Edwin Marshall, IU vice president for diversity, equity and multicultural affairs, said the Greensboro, N.C.-based, university is a good fit because of its own STEM activities. For example, several of its students already have participated informally with IU-HBCU STEM summer programs and have been on campus for other similar activities.

Marshall said the initiative's ultimate goal is to increase the number of black faculty and academic researchers traditionally underrepresented in the STEM disciplines, who also serve as mentors and role models for others.
Michael McRobbie

"According to a recent survey by the Bayer Corp., a lot of students have been deterred from pursuing careers within the STEM disciplines by their faculty and others within their academic pipeline, not because the student showed a poor acumen or was performing poorly in class, but because of non-validated information suggesting that they do something else," Marshall said. "I don't think this is done intentionally to keep students out, but a lot of faculty might think they are doing the student a favor by guiding them to areas that are a little softer."

"As we have seen with the students coming here, there is often a tendency to underestimate what they can do and contribute," he said, adding that involvement of IU faculty partners with the STEM Initiative has caused them to "become some of our biggest supporters."

"If we can increase the number of faculty in the STEM disciplines who come from similar backgrounds, and who can reflect on their own paths to achievement, it will help lead to more students following in their footsteps."

Of the 61 scholars who have participated in the IU-HBCU STEM Initiative, 25 of the 40 who have graduated so far have enrolled in master's and Ph.D. programs around the country, including at IU. In 2008 one of the students who participated during the first year enrolled at IU as a doctoral student in neuroscience and received support from the Herbert Presidential Fellows Program.

In April, IU President McRobbie and North Carolina A&T President Martin will host the CEOs of the IU-HBCU partner institutions on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University to discuss the future direction for the consortium, which could include even more student scholars, new research collaborations involving students and perhaps faculty exchanges. About 70 faculty members and administrators were involved in the original planning process

Marshall said the IU-HBCU STEM Initiative also has helped IU to identify other activities at IU Bloomington and IUPUI and tie in those programs to the STEM Initiative.

"We're developing a nexus of activity with the STEM Summer Scholars program just being one component," he said. "Many of the current ideas and concepts around collaboration might not have existed but for what we've seen happen the last four years.

"Understanding comes with conversation, so when you have students and faculty from different backgrounds and perspectives working side-by-side in a laboratory setting over the course of eight weeks, there's greater understanding and appreciation of each other," Marshall said. "The more that we can do to bring various cultures together, the better we are able to advance understanding, not just around STEM, but many other social issues as well."

More information about the IU-HBCU STEM Initiative is available at http://www.stem.indiana.edu/.

NRC Plans to Release Revised Doctoral-Program Rankings Soon

By David Glenn
March 6, 2011

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The National Research Council will "shortly" release a revised version of its enormous database on American doctoral education, the project's leaders said here Friday during a conference on the past and future of doctoral-program assessment. In at least a few cases, the officials said, the revisions will significantly change certain programs' rankings.

After the NRC's long-delayed report was released last September, scholars in some fields—notably computer science —said they saw serious errors in the data.

In response to such concerns, the NRC invited programs to formally submit any problems or mistakes they had detected. Of the nearly 5,000 programs in the study, 453 submitted such letters before the November deadline, said the project's staff director, Charlotte V. Kuh, during Friday's meeting.

Read the entire article..
http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Plans-to-Release-Revised/126631/

IU School of Education graduate student awarded prestigious Wells Fellowship

For more information, see the original release:
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/17643.html?emailID=17643

Julie Frye

March 7, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University Graduate School has awarded Julie Frye, PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction at the IU School of Education, with the 2011-12 Wells Graduate Fellowship.

The fellowship is an award provided for by the estate of longtime IU president and University Chancellor Herman B Wells. The $33,000 award goes to a doctoral or M.F.A student who demonstrates the qualities of Chancellor Wells: leadership abilities, academic excellence, character, social consciousness, and generosity of spirit.

Frye has exhibited those qualities through her work as a school librarian, a university instructor, and a graduate student. In 2003, shortly after the latest in a series of religious wars that killed more than 1,200 in Kaduna, Nigeria, Frye traveled alone to the city to help rebuild the destroyed library. In her first semester as a public school librarian, she opposed and stopped the removal of a book from the shelves that one teacher and a principal deemed "offensive." During her master's work (MS'02 from the IU School of Library and Information Science in Indianapolis), she created a curriculum designed to engage disinterested readers that incorporated snorkeling and rock-climbing and resulted in the assigned books flying off the shelves.

"Julie Frye is a one-woman stimulus package when it comes to her leadership style," wrote Mary Nine, social studies teacher and department leader at Edgewood Intermediate School in Indianapolis, in her recommendation letter. "She lifted up her teaching colleagues and challenged them to learn new skills, try new initiatives and transform student learning."

The chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction wrote in his recommendation that Frye's journey to a war-torn part of Nigeria embodied Wells' call for students to devote themselves to institutions worthy of their best. "Julie, in her usual tenacious and passionate way, chose to be the first international volunteer to help reestablish a library in Kaduna," wrote Jesse Goodman. "Only someone with Julie's strong character and devotion to social justice would have the courage and resolve to be involved in such a project."

Frye has served as a visiting lecturer at IUPUI for the School of Library and Information Science, the School of Liberal Arts, and University College since 2000, and has impressed faculty and students alike. "Julie has been a true beacon of brilliant light in our first-year seminar program," wrote David Sabol, academic coordinator for Learning Communities for University College. Sabol added that Frye's work produced some of the most amazing results he had ever seen from entering students. "Julie's positive energy and competence is readily sensed by students," he said.

The award will go toward helping Frye complete her dissertation. She intends to focus on the professional socialization of new school librarians. "I'm generally interested in what's happening in schools," Frye said. "As an instructor in the School of Library and Information Science, I'm always thinking about how we can prepare our students for the school environment. So that genuine curiosity and the desire to help those first few years to not be so rocky in the transition process -- that's what has led me to the topic."

Frye becomes the third recipient of the Wells Fellowship with ties to the School of Education in the last three years. Oren Pizmony-Levy, a PhD double major in education policy studies and sociology was awarded the Wells Fellowship for 2010-11; Payal Shaw, comparative education PhD candidate, earned the award in 2009-10. Frye earned her undergraduate degree in secondary English from the IU School of Education in 2000.

"It is because of students like these that the School of Education enjoys such a wonderful national and international reputation," said Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of the School. "No wonder we are ranked among the best graduate schools of education in the world."

Frye said the award has made her think back on a chance conversation she had with Chancellor Wells' retired secretary who raved about Wells' attributes. "And I thought, I need to know more about this man," Frye said. "I really connected to his story because of his advocacy for libraries and for intellectual freedom. I feel like it's just such a great honor to be named the recipient of this fellowship."

Graduate Student of the Month: Ratan Suri

Ratan Suri
Telecommunications
March 2011

Doctoral Candidate Ratnadeep Venkata Suri (Ratan) is from Hyderabad, India, and like many of his hometown counterparts, he began his academic career in the sciences. He is lucky, he said, because despite a culture focused on professional sciences and technology, he was able to pursue his interests and become a graduate student at Indiana University in the department of telecommunications.

Hyderabad serves as a major hub for the information technology industry in India, supports a variety of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and is host to India’s second-largest film industry. It also has the distinction of hosting Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and entrepreneur Bill Gates.

Suri was always a good writer and although he had an interest in television production, he said where he is from in India, good students are expected to go into engineering and medical science programs.

“I think coming from an intellectual environment did help a lot because my parents were very keen to push us to do what we wanted rather than what everyone else around me was doing. So I went to a school in India that had a television production focus and that was a launching point for me to realize that I was better at that than what I had been doing in my undergrad, which was molecular biology—a complete switch.”

At first Suri chose another school for his degree, but soon realized that the breadth of research in the telecommunications department at IU would better support his research vision to examine how communications technologies influence society.

“But my dissertation is quite different from what other researchers in a telecommunications department might do,” he said. “It’s an ethnographic study of what happens when a community of geographers and historians use a particular or unique technology for historical research. For example, how does that community grapple with a new technology and how does it affect historical scholarship?”

For his dissertation, Suri is looking at three major case studies of how GIS influences historical research. The first study looks at the development of railroads in San Francisco and the surrounding areas and how that influenced agricultural practices and movement of people and goods. The second study examines how the dust bowl has been studied historically and how that history changes when seen through the lens of geographical information systems (GIS). The third is a case study on the holocaust.

“It’s a group of researchers from England, New Zealand, and the United States interested in WWII and European history, who got together to study different aspects of holocaust from a geographical perspective. They used GIS for their research. My dissertation is looking at how they study history…How is this scholarship changing historical research?” Suri said.

Essentially, Suri is combining mass media and information science with a new media perspective in order to take an interdisciplinary look at these issues.

The approach may seem very meta, but what Suri is really doing—examining how new technologies and an increasing digital fluency in traditional research fields is changing the way research is done—is a topic of current interest as scholars increasingly embrace technology as a research tool.

For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported (http://chronicle.com/article/Social-Media-Lure-Academics/126426/) that the time-honored tradition of peer review in journals has been put into question by younger social scientists, many of whom increasingly prefer to use social-media to distribute content more broadly within their field.

“Traditionally every field has its way of doing things… and traditionally historical researchers have not used high end technology. So when historians picked up that tool [GIS], not only did their method for analyzing historical events change, but what they use for historical evidence, and how they go about teaming up to analyze that data, has changed. That puts a lot of pressure on an existing set of norms that are traditionally part of historical research,” he said.

“The field of history has been a little slow to accept this change, so there is inherent tension between the established norms and the new norms that are emerging. To be able to capture that tension gives us a greater understanding of how we can look at the influence of technology on a social system.”

The case studies used in his dissertation give Suri a particular example of what has been done with a new technology, in this case, GIS. What he is discovering is that Historical GIS is emerging as a field where historians don’t do the historical research. It is other scholars who have picked up a historical perspective.

“There are very few historians who are at the forefront of this [Historical GIS],” he said. “If look at scholarship publications and at the affiliation of the scholars, you will see that most of them are not historians.”

Examples like this show that that particular field is not conducive to a particular technology, Suri said. As a researcher, he would like to further understand how technologies are distributed throughout a society, like how the historians he is studying in his dissertation have embraced or not embraced technology. He believes understanding how technology influences a community can reveal trends in society and this is important to scholars, because the use of technology can be tied with the progress of the field.

“And a field that is steeped in tradition can sometimes be resistant to that kind of change,” he said.

Among his accomplishments, Ratan Suri has taught at Howard University on a Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship, received special mention from the principle investigator of "Holocaust Geographies" at a final presentation of the work at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and received a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Research Fellowship for the 2011-12 academic year.

Media Contacts:
Erika Lee, Director of Communications, The University Graduate School, ebigalee@indiana.edu
Angela Jones, The IU Graduate and Professional Student Organization, gpso@indiana.edu

The Graduate and Professional Student Organization and the University Graduate School would like to congratulate Ratan Suri on receiving the GPSO/UGS Recognition Award. Students selected for this award were nominated by a faculty member from within their department, and selected by the GPSO and UGS for excellence in their graduate studies at Indiana University.

IU students well represented among international fellowship and scholarship recipients

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/16926.html

Jan. 13, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Students from Indiana University Bloomington received more than 35 nationally competitive awards that sent them to study in countries around the world last summer and during the 2010-2011 academic year.

The awards are sponsored by a number of agencies including the Departments of State and Education, the National Security Education Program (NSEP), the Marshall and Rhodes programs of the United Kingdom, the American Scandinavian Foundation and the German-American Exchange Service. The majority of the grantees are pursuing research projects in a range of disciplines around the world while other awards fund participation in guided programs such as language training, academic study abroad or working as an English teaching assistant.
Brendan Faegre

Brendan Faegre (left) from the IU Jacobs School of Music works with Norwegian composer Lasse Thoresen at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.

Among the research award grantees are nine recipients of Fulbright Hays and Fulbright U.S. Student grants that are sponsored, respectively, by the Department of Education and the Department of State. Fulbright Hays grantees conduct dissertation research in countries outside of Western Europe. The destinations for this year's recipients are Mali, Russia, South Africa, Ghana and Israel. Two Fulbright U.S. Student recipients are currently conducting research in Morocco and Germany, and another will start teaching English in Argentina this month.

Research awards granted to IU students also include NSEP-sponsored Boren Fellowships to Brazil and Syria, an American Scandinavian Foundation fellowship to Norway, German-American Exchange Service awards to Germany, an American Councils award to Russia, an IREX research grant to former Yugoslavian countries and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to South Africa.

Other activities of student award recipients support intensive language training or directed study programs. Eight IU students received State Department-sponsored Critical Language Scholarships during the summer of 2010. These graduate and undergraduate students traveled to countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia and India to participate in intensive study in languages critical to the United States including Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Hindi and Russian.

Other recipients of directed grants include 13 undergraduates who received Gilman and Boren Scholarships which support a semester or a full academic year of study abroad in countries outside of Western Europe.

Indiana University students are consistently represented in top competitions for scholarships to universities in the United Kingdom. William Yu was named one of 40 Marshall Scholars and is currently in his second year of study in the United Kingdom pursuing degrees at the Imperial College of London. Two IU students have also recently been named Rhodes Scholars. Mutsa Mutembwa was named a 2010 scholar and is currently at the University of Oxford, and Esther Uduehi was named a scholar for 2011.

"We honor the hard work and determination exhibited by these students and congratulate them on their accomplishments," said Patrick O'Meara, IU vice president of international affairs. "These students bring back detailed research results that advance their respective disciplines. Their extensive periods spent abroad and increased language abilities contribute to our collective efforts to better understand and interact with other cultures."

Below is a list of IU students awarded international grants from summer 2010 through the current academic year. The list is ordered alphabetically by name of award and includes name, primary course of study and destination country.

American Councils Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Award
Joanna Matuszak -- Art History, Russia

American Scandinavian Foundation
Brendan Faegre -- Music Composition, Norway

Boren Fellowships
Gregory Auclair -- Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Syria
Timothy Thompson -- Library and Information Science, Brazil

Boren Scholarships
Bethany Muncy -- East Asian Languages and Cultures, Japan
Luke Martineac -- Business, China

Critical Language Scholarships (for intensive language study during summer 2010)
Lennea Carty -- Central Eurasian Studies, Turkey (Turkish)
John Dechant -- Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Tajikistan (Persian)
Jessica Evans -- Folklore and Ethnomusicology, India (Hindi)
Jamie Johnson -- Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Egypt (Arabic)
Nicholas Kontovas -- Central Eurasian Studies, Turkey (Turkish)
Niels Lee -- History, Turkey (Turkish)
Christopher Roush -- Russian and East European Studies, Russia (Russian)
Anne Vithayathil -- History, Tajikistan (Persian)

Fulbright U.S. Student Awards
Jacqueline Cornetta -- English Teaching Assistant, Argentina
Ahmed Khanani -- Political Science, Morocco
Joel Klein -- Cultural and Intellectual History, Germany

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Awards
Jessica Hurd -- Art History, Mali
Joanna Matuszak -- Art History, Russia
Megan Musgrave -- History, Russia
Fileve Palmer -- Anthropology, South Africa
Fred Pratt -- History, Ghana
Karen Ross -- Education, Israel

German American Exchange Service Awards (DAAD)
Joo Hyung Kim -- Political Science, Germany
Sibyl Kleiner -- Sociology, Germany

Gilman Scholarships
Kayla Douglas -- African American and African Diaspora Studies, Ghana
Olivia Holloway -- Arts and Sciences, Brazil
Jamie Johnson -- Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Jordan
Justin Martinson -- Communication and Culture, Germany
Bethany Muncy -- East Asian Languages and Cultures, Japan
David Osborn -- Business, Ghana
Genevieve Postlethwait -- Journalism, China
Olivia Schmidt -- Biology, Italy
Richard Scinteie -- Communication and Culture, Spain
Emily Spiegel -- Sport Marketing and Management, South Africa
Chelsea Todd -- International Studies, Brazil

IREX Individual Advanced Research Grant
Ramajana Hidic-Demirovic -- History, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia

Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship
Fileve Palmer -- Anthropology, South Africa

"Who Am I-U?" Conference on Identity: Thurs-Fri March 4-5, 2011

Conference Website:
https://www.indiana.edu/~arc2010/2011/

The idea behind this conference is that individuals who feel their identities validated in public venues are better able to accept others’ identities, and to analyze critically the social forces and experiences that have shaped their own. We would like to transform our campus into spaces for just this kind of critical exploration and sharing among students, staff, faculty, administrators, alumni, and emeriti of all backgrounds, majority and minority.