Purdue Notebook

August 19, 2005

Campus activities

– A joint workshop between the Discovery Park centers for cyberinfrastructure and the environment will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday (Aug. 22) in Stewart Center, Room 322. Talks will emphasize current or potential linkages between these centers on topics such as simulation; sensor networks; monitoring and managing environmental issues; data mining; visualization; real-time data analysis and integration; environmental science education; decision-making; science gateways, grids and hubs; and the technologies that enable these activities. To attend as a presenter or participant, please respond to Rose Filley (rfilley@purdue.edu). Morning talks will be followed by a catered lunch from noon to 1 p.m. After lunch the group will break into working groups.

Faculty and staff honors

– Wallace Tyner, professor of agricultural economics, received the Distinguished Policy Contribution Award at the national meeting of the American Agricultural Economics Association in Providence, R.I. Tyner received this award for his work with the Moroccan Ministry of Agriculture over the past 20 years, culminating in his recent role as the lead economic consultant to the Moroccan agriculture ministry throughout trade negotiations on the Morocco-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which was signed in June 2004.

Alumni honors

– William H. Gerstenmaier, who earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue in 1977, has been named associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced the appointment earlier in August. Gerstenmaier has been program manager of the International Space Station Office at Johnson Space Center since 2002. He also earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Toledo, Ohio, in 1981. In 1993 he completed coursework at Purdue for a doctorate in dynamics and control, with a minor in propulsion.

– Rebecca Meisenbach, who graduated with a doctoral degree from the Department of Communication in 2004, received the 2005 John Grenzebach Award for Outstanding Research in Philanthropy for Educational Advancement. This award is one of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education's 2005 Writing Awards, which recognize research and writing in the educational advancement of alumni relations, communications and development. Meisenbach, who is now an assistant professor of communication arts at Concord University in Athens, W. Va., worked with communication professors Josh Boyd and Patrice Buzzanell on her dissertation, titled "Framing Fund Raising: A Poststructuralist Analysis of Higher Education Fund Raisers' Work and Identities."

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