English professor wins writer's award

Rebecca Curtis, assistant professor of English, is one of six emerging American women authors to win a $10,000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award. The group will be honored Sept. 22 in New York.
Curtis, who joined the KU faculty in 2003, has published short stories in The New Yorker, Harper's and McSweeney's and in literary journals. She will use the award to support research in Armenia and eastern Turkey for her first novel. It is based on the true story of a woman who escaped the Armenian genocide of the early 1900s and later helped raise Curtis' orphaned mother.

Lied Center hires director of education
Anthea Scouffas has been named director of education at the Lied Center of Kansas. Scouffas, a graduate of Eastern Illinois University, offers the Lied Center extensive experience in arts and education.

She joins the Lied Center from Tucson, Ariz., where she was community engagement director for “UApresents” at the University of Arizona. Scouffas also was community liaison and later director of education at the University of Illinois.

Comings & goings...
• Travis Berkley has been named associate director of Network and Telecommunications Services. He had been a manager at LAN Support Services.

• Heath Peterson, director of Kansas chapter development at the Alumni Association, is the interim director of the Kansas Honors Program. He succeeds Carolyn Barnes.

• Brad Kemp, assistant director of public affairs at the Natural History Museum, has left KU to join the Kansas Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, based in Lawrence. The organization works to prevent legislative impediments from blocking stem cell research in Kansas.