As the year draws to a close, it is important to recognize the wide variety of IU graduate students and faculty accomplishments.
Staff Recognition
IUPUI Interim vice chancellor for graduate education, Tabitha Hardy, was awarded the NAGAP Visionary Award presented to an individual in the higher education community who has demonstrated a unique vision in the graduate enrollment management profession. The individual should be an established leader who has developed and executed innovative strategies or led bold, cutting-edge, and successful initiatives influencing their campus, university system, or the GEM community at large. She also received the Alvin S. Bynum Award given to outstanding academic mentors who have demonstrated longstanding and extraordinary commitment to the learning process.
Maria Hamilton Abegunde, founding director of the Graduate Mentoring Center, was recognized as one of the inaugural recipients of the Inclusive Excellence Award, sponsored by the Bloomington Faculty Council's Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee. This award honors faculty who contribute to the continued enhancement of a diverse campus community in accord with IU Bloomington's Statement on Diversity.
Recognized during the IUPUI 2021 Women's History Month Leadership Reception, graduate recorder Anita Sale received the Newcomer Staff award. The Office for Women and the Division of Student Affairs celebrate women-identified faculty, staff, and student leaders who exhibit leadership or exemplary performance to their unit, school, campus, colleagues, or community during a leadership reception.
Graduate Students
IUB Vishakh Iyer, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Program in Neuroscience, was awarded second place at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools 2021 regional Three Minute Thesis competition. This competition has students summarize their research in three minutes using pre-determined guidelines to improve their oral communication skills.
IUPUI Chemistry graduate student Christine Skaggs was selected for the Global Outreach Volunteer of the Year by the American Chemical Society (ACS). This award recognizes the immeasurable efforts made by volunteers from ACS local sections and international chapters to conduct outreach and teach the public about chemistry.
IUPUI honored the IUPUI Elite 50 — graduate and professional students who capture everything that makes IUPUI exceptional. Selected students demonstrated excellence beyond the classroom in campus leadership, scholarly work, and community engagement
Three IUB Miller Masters in Architecture students Spencer Wilson, Paul Johnson, and Wonsun Choi were recently shortlisted in the Bee Breeders Cambodian Remote Hideout Huts competition. This competition is part of Bee Breeders small-scale international competition series, run in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS' What is Small Scale Architecture? publication, and in collaboration with The Vine Retreat - a rural health and wellness retreat located on the south coast of Cambodia. Participants design a prototype 'hideout hut' to be adapted to multiple locations throughout The Vine Retreat's lush, mountainside site.
Graduating MFA candidate in English/creative writing Austin Araujo has accepted the prestigious Stegner Fellowship in Poetry for 2021-23 at Stanford University. Based on the candidate's creative work, the potential for growth, and the ability to contribute to and profit from writing workshops, fellows are regarded as working artists who intend to practice and perfect their craft.
History Ph.D. Charlene Fletcher was named an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow at Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. The program allows recent Ph.D.s in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to take up one-year positions at select institutions in ACLS's Research University Consortium for the 2021-22 academic year. Additionally, it supports a vanguard of scholars whose voices, perspectives, and broad visions will strengthen institutions of higher education and humanistic disciplines in the years to come.
Paul Levy Selected for 2021 Latino Faculty and Staff Graduate Student Award. This award was given to Levy for contributing to a positive campus environment, demonstrating exemplary academic and professional work, and participating in service, mentoring, and promoting diversity initiatives that enhance and support Latinos on campus.
Four graduate students were recently recognized at the Chancellor's Academic Honors Convocation, a celebration of the outstanding achievements by IUPUI faculty and students across all areas of IUPUI's mission: excellence in teaching and learning; excellence in research, scholarship, and creative activity; excellence in civic engagement; and excellence in diversity, collaboration, and best practices. The 2021 honorees include two Graduate School Chancellor's Scholars, Andy Zervos, a master's student in Liberal Arts and Andrea Tanner, a Ph.D. student in Nursing. In addition, Alisha Beard, a master's student in Liberal Arts, and Alyson Keen, a Ph.D. student in nursing, received the Sherry Queener Graduate Student Excellence Award.
Seven IUPUI students received the Women's History Month Leadership Award, which recognizes professional and graduate students who have excelled academically. They served as a role model to peers while excelling in at least one of the following areas: academic excellence, leadership, service and community engagement, advocacy, or displayed key characteristics of a leader committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These students are:
- Alexis Meriweather, Professional, Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine
- Daenique Jengelley, Graduate, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine
- Ekin Secinti, Graduate, Clinical Psychology, School of Science
- Maribel Hernandez, Graduate, Addiction Neuroscience, School of Science
- Caroline Henderzahs, Professional, School of Dentistry
- Seema Patel, Professional, Emergency Medicine/ Pediatrics, School of Medicine