James C. Barnes, Robert E. Foster and Charles Hoag, all professors of music and dance, have been named American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Award recipients for 2004-05. Award winners were selected by an independent panel based on the unique prestige value of each writer’s catalog of original compositions as well as recent performances in areas not surveyed by the society.

Marilu Goodyear, vice provost for information services and CIO; Jenny Mehmedovic, IT policy and planning coordinator; Anna Hines, associate director of networking and telecommunications services; Ann Ermey, ResNet and personnel coordinator; Julie Loats, Web administrator; and Kathleen Ames-Oliver, professional development manager for human resources, presented “Personal Productivity” as part of a tutorial session at the Directors Leadership Seminar (Seminars on Academic Computing-SAC 2004 Program) in Snowmass Village, Colo., Aug. 8-11. Loats also co-led a discussion titled “Leading From the Middle: Facilitating Leadership Throughout an Organization.”

Timothy Carr, senior scientist; K. David Newell, assistant scientist; and graduate research assistants W. Matthew Brown, Troy Johnson and Jonathan Lange won the President’s Certificate for Excellence in Presentation from the Energy Minerals Division of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists for a poster, “Geological and Geochemical Factors Influencing the Emerging Coalbed Gas Play in the Cherokee and Forest City Basins in Eastern Kansas,” presented at the association’s annual meeting in Dallas in April.

Marjorie Swann, associate professor of English, and John Simmons, collection manager at the Natural History Museum, received a $45,000 implementation grant from the Museum Loan Network to fund the creation of an installation by artist Tracy Hicks in the new commons area of Spooner Hall.

David Ohle, lecturer in English, published the novel The Age of Sinatra through Soft Skull Press in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Lorene Valentine, director of rural health education and services at the School of Medicine, received the Lewis Gorin Award for Outstanding Achievement in Rural Health Care for 2003. The award was presented by the National Rural Health Association at its 27th annual conference May 28 in San Diego.

Richard Peasah, networking specialist for Networking & Telecommunications Services, received Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert certification July 20 in Research Triangle Park, N.C. CCIE certification identifies experts in end-to-end networking.

Elaine Gerbert, associate professor in East Asian languages and cultures, presented the paper “Doppelgangers and Doubles in Taisho Literature” at the l6th annual meeting of the International Society for Humor Studies in June at the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France.

John T. (Jay) Alexander, professor of history and Russian and East European Studies, presented “A Russian American Citizen of the Universe: The Adventures of Fedor Karzhavin (1745-1812)” at the VII International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia at Lutherstadt, Germany in late July. The meeting honored the retirement of its founder, Anthony Cross, professor of Slavonic studies at Cambridge University, with a collection of essays titled Russian Society and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century. Alexander contributed the essay “Catherine the Great and the Theatre.”

Rex Clark, Germanic languages and literatures, and Oliver Lubrich, professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, have been awarded a $13,000 Transcoop grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for work on a two-volume collection of documents on the literary and cultural reception of Alexander von Humboldt in the 200 years since his travels in South America. The collection will be published by Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford.

Allan Hanson, professor of anthropology, delivered the paper “Cyberspace as an Antidote to the Divisive Influence of Culture” at the Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology Aug. 17-22, in Bochum, Germany.