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Program to honor KU's outstanding women

Outstanding women in the KU community will be honored at the annual Women's Recognition Program at 7:30 p.m. March 27, in the Big 12 Room, Kansas Union.

Diana Carlin, professor of communications studies, will be the keynote speaker. A reception will follow the program to congratulate recipients.

Awards will also go to female faculty and staff members. Jennifer Jordan, director of the Business Career Services Center in the School of Business, will receive the Outstanding Woman Staff Member Award. Mary Klayder, University Honors Lecturer in English, is the Outstanding Woman Educator.

Exemplary women leaders will be inducted into the KU Women's Hall of Fame.

The 2008 inductees are Elizabeth Broun, the Margaret and Terry Stent director for the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; Ann Cudd, professor of philosophy and director of women's studies; Audrey Langworthy, former state senator from Prairie Village; Maritza Machado-Williams, director of KU's Academic Programs for Excellence; and Marlesa Roney, KU vice provost for Student Success.

The 2008 Pioneer Woman Award will recognize Cora M. Downs, a school teacher and journalist, who became the first woman on the Kansas Board of Regents in 1881. She died in 1915. During her short tenure on the board, Downs and her fellow regents recommended the construction of KU's third building, Chemistry Hall. In 1896, Downs was named to the board of managers for the Kansas Pavilion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The pavilion featured Lewis Lindsay Dyche's Panorama of North American Mammals, a version of which is part of KU's Natural History Museum.

Student awards honor outstanding women in athletics, community service, the international arena and leadership and a nontraditional woman and a woman in partnership.

KU's Commission on the Status of Women and Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center sponsor the Women's Recognition Program.

TOPONYMS:

Fred Kurata, a distinguished professor and pioneer in thermodynamics research (1947-78), set up the precursor to Kurata Thermodynamics Laboratories in the old Broadcasting Hall east of the Art and Design Building. After two lab explosions in 1959, the lab was moved to a west campus building later razed to make way for the Lied Center. The present Kurata Thermodynamics Laboratories, on Crowell Drive, opened in 1990. For more, visit KU Buildings.