Donn W. Parson, professor of communication studies, won the George Ziegelmueller Award for a lifetime of service as a teacher and coach of debate, presented by the organizing body of the National Debate Tournament. The award is presented yearly to “a faculty member who has distinguished himself or herself in the communication process while coaching teams to competitive success at the NDT.”

Betty H. Bunce, courtesy assistant professor of speech, language and hearing and director of the Language Acquisition Preschool, and a colleague from the University of Virginia recently provided a two-day workshop to teachers from several Head Start programs in Virginia.

Amy Cummins, a lecturer in English, presented “Education and Female Schoolteachers in the 1850s Novels of Mary Jane Holmes” Sept. 26 at the second International Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers in Fort Worth, Texas.

Tony Rosenthal, associate professor of history, published “Urban Networks, Global Processes and the Construction of Public Life in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires” in the September Journal of Urban History.

Pok Chi Lau, associate professor of design, wrote Dreams of the Golden Mountain, which was a runner-up in the nonfiction category in this year’s William Rockhill Nelson Awards.

Sue Popkess-Vawter, professor of nursing, received the 2003 Jean Johnson Research Development Award along with a gift of $1,500, which is designed to enhance the research efforts of faculty members in KU’s School of Nursing. Popkess-Vawter is studying weight management and practices as a weight management clinical nurse specialist.

Diane Nielsen, associate professor of teaching and leadership, and Barbara Luetke-Stahlman, former KU professor of deaf education, published “The Contribution of Phonological Awareness and Receptive and Expressive English to the Reading Ability of Deaf Students with Varying Degrees of Exposure to Accurate English” in the fall issue of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education.

Michele Kessler, associate director and staff attorney of Legal Services for Students, recently was selected to participate in the 2003-04 Franklin County, Kansas, Leadership Program, sponsored by the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce.

James Tramill, associate research professor in the Institute for Educational Research and Public Service, recently was notified by the U.S. Department of Education that a proposal he wrote in collaboration with the Seward County Historical Society and the Liberal Public Schools will receive a $570,000 grant award.

Kim Templeton, MD, associate professor of orthopedic surgery at the KU School of Medicine, recently was elected to active membership in the prestigious American Orthopedic Association. She is the second female orthopedic surgeon to be accepted into the AOA’s membership during its 116-year history.

Ric Steele, assistant professor of psychology, chaired a symposium on “Treatment for Pediatric Obesity: What Works, and for Whom?” Aug. 10 at the American Psychological Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada.

Jeff Olafsen, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, gave an invited talk on “Granular Engineering of Pits for Prey Capture by Antlions” Sept. 23 at the State University of New York-Buffalo. The talk covered recent published work he’s done with Don Steeples and Catherine Loudon.

Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy, presented the physics colloquium at Case Western Reserve University titled “Did a Gamma-Ray Burst Initiate the Late Ordovician Extinction?” He also presented the lecture “Origin and Fate of the Universe” Oct. 19 at McPherson College.

M.V. Medvedev, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, presented the invited review talk “Radiation Processes in GRBs” at a September conference on gamma-ray bursts, “GRB 2003,” in Santa Fe, N.M.

Nancy Baym, associate professor of communication studies, was named president of the Association of Internet Researchers at its fourth annual meeting in Toronto Oct. 16-19. She will serve until 2005.