Purdue Notebook

April 1, 2005

Campus activities

– Van Gosse, a historian and activist leader of United for Peace and Justice, a national coalition for peace that formed in 2002, will present "The War on Iraq and U.S. Foreign Policy" at 7:30 p.m. April 20 in the Krannert Building auditorium. Gosse, who specializes in contemporary American history and foreign policy at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, will discuss his thoughts on how and why the United States went to war in Iraq and how the U.S. occupation might be ended. Gosse has published books such as "Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left," "A Movement of Movements: The New Left in America, 1955-1975" and "The American New Left: A Brief History With Documents." In the 1990s, Gosse was an organizing director for Peace Action, a national education and advocacy organization. He also served on the editorial board of the journal Radical History Review and monitored elections in El Salvador for the Center for Democracy in the Americas. The lecture is sponsored by the Committee on Peace Studies, which oversees the peace studies minor in the Department of Political Science. For more information, contact Harry Targ, professor of political science and American studies, at (765) 494-4169, Targ@polsci.purdue.edu.

– Purdue's Delta Tau Delta Fraternity, Gamma Lambda Chapter, was recently selected for entry into the fraternity's international Court of Honor, making the local chapter one of only 19 to earn such a distinction. The Gamma Lambda Chapter was honored at the Northern Division Leadership Conference in Indianapolis. The award is given to fraternities that display excellence in internal operations, chapter finance, recruitment, alumni relations, community service, membership education and academics. Delta Tau Delta has 117 chapters in the United States with a membership of approximately 6,000 undergraduates and 140,000 alumni.

Faculty and staff honors

– The Purdue Academic Advising Association has named Nancy Kester its outstanding academic adviser and Tim Kerr its outstanding new professional for 2005. Kester has been an academic adviser in the College of Liberal Arts' Department of Health and Kinesiology since 1995. In 2002, she was promoted to associate director of the liberal arts advising office. Kerr's tenure in counseling began in 2003 in the Department of Biological Science. Kerr divides his time between advising and being in the classroom, as well as serving as an adviser for the Science Scholars and Devonshire Cooperative. He also is responsible for the Biology Resource Center where he hires, trains and oversees tutors. The awards were given at the association's annual business meeting in February.

– Purdue staff member Barbara Clark was honored at the recent YWCA Greater Lafayette Salute to Women Banquet. Clark was among seven award winners selected from an original pool of 40 outstanding area women. Award winners were selected based on personal accomplishments, impact on the community, leadership and role-modeling qualities, and their embodiment of the YWCA's vision of "peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all people." Clark, who started at Purdue as an academic adviser, currently holds three positions related to the advancement of racial and gender diversity at the university: director of the Science Diversity Office, director of the Women in Science program and special assistant to the provost. Clark also has served as outreach director of the Lafayette Crisis Center and as the sponsor of the Purdue Computer Science Women's Network. The Salute to Women awards have been given out since 1974. Major sponsors for the banquet, which took place March 1 in the Purdue Memorial Union Ballrooms, included Purdue Employee Federal Credit Union, State Farm Insurance Companies, Lafayette Savings Bank and Design Team Inc.

– James L. Mohler, a Purdue senior research scientist, will serve as conference chair during the SIGGRAPH 2005 conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques. The conference will take place in Los Angeles July 31 through Aug. 4 as part of the 32nd International Conference on Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques. The annual SIGGRAPH conference, the largest of its kind, is sponsored by ACT SIGGRAPH, the leading professional society for computer graphics and interactive techniques. More than 25,000 professionals from six continents are expected to attend SIGGRAPH 2005. The event will feature a comprehensive technical program and special events that focus on research, art, animation, games, interactivity and the Web. The conference's keynote speaker will be filmmaker and digital entertainment innovator George Lucas, who perhaps is best known as the creator of the "Star Wars" movie series. Mohler is a senior research scientist with the Informatics Group, a division of Information Technology at Purdue. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in science from Purdue.

– Dorothy C. Stratton, dean of women at Purdue between 1933 and 1942, celebrated her 106th birthday on March 24 with family and friends in her West Lafayette home. Born on March 24, 1899, in Brookfield, Mo., Stratton was the second dean of women at Purdue, having succeeded original dean Carolyn Shoemaker after Shoemaker's 20 years of service in that role. While acting as dean of women, Stratton oversaw a more than two-fold increase in female enrollment at Purdue that was brought on by her efforts to expand education and support programs for women at the university. Stratton, who studied at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, also served as a psychology professor at Purdue. She took a leave of absence from Purdue in 1942 to serve during World War II by joining the Women Appointed Volunteer Emergency Service, which later became the Naval Women's Reserve. Stratton was appointed late in 1942 as director of the Coast Guard Women's Reserve, becoming the first female officer accepted for service in the Coast Guard's history. Stratton, who eventually rose to the rank of captain, later went on to serve as director of personnel for the International Monetary Fund (1946-50) and national executive director for the Girl Scouts of America (1950-60).

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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