The 2008 Emil Usibelli Distinguished Teaching, Research and Service award winners are Marsha Sousa, TVC, for teaching; Gerald Mohatt, IAB, for research; and John Kelley, IMS, for service.

Chancellor Steve Jones has been named the 21st president of Urbana University in Urbana, Ohio. Jones, citing his desire to be closer to family, announced in March that he planned to pursue other opportunities. Jones is slated to begin work at Urbana University July 1, 2008. His last day at UAF is expected to be in mid-June. Brian Rogers will serve as UAF’s interim chancellor.

The UA Museum of the North's mammal research collection recently cataloged an Alaska marmot as its 100,000th specimen. The collection is a valuable resource for researchers and is currently the 10th largest mammal collection in the nation.

The UAF steel bridge team took first place at the 2008 ASCE/AISC regional Student Steel Bridge competition at the American Society of Civil Engineers Pacific Northwest Conference. The team invites the campus community to a public demonstration May 9 at noon in the Great Hall. This will serve as a practice for the national competition May 23 – 24 at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla.

Yelena Matusevich, CLA, was selected for a Coolidge Fellowship from Columbia University's Association for Religion and Intellectual Life.

Jonah Lee, CEM, organized and chaired a technical session at the Society of Automotive Engineers' 2008 World Congress. Lee presented a paper, "Longitudinal Interfacial Forces of the Interaction of a Treaded Tire with Snow," that will be published in SAE Transactions.

The UA Museum of the North and the IPY Outreach Office present Polar-Palooza: Stories from a Changing Planet science extravaganza May 9 at 7 p.m. at the West Valley High School Performing Arts Center. Admission is free. For more information call 7505.

UAF's Commencement 2008 takes place May 11 at the Carlson Center. For more information visit www.uaf.edu/commencement/.

A retirement celebration for John Fellerath, director of the Center for Health and Counseling and associate vice chancellor for Student Services, will be held May 13 from 4 - 6 p.m. in Wood Center conference rooms C and D.

The Office of Information Technology hosts training opportunities throughout the year, including MS Excel 3 May 13, Roxen UAF May 15 and 28, Roxen Content Provider May 20, Roxen Page Designer May 27 and Banner Navigation May 29. For more information or to register visit www.uaf.edu/oit/training/.

The Georgeson Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale takes place May 17 from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Annual bedding plants, vegetables, house plants, perennials, trees and shrubs will be offered for sale.

The West Ridge Plaza dedication ceremony takes place May 19 at 1 p.m. at the newly refurbished Milepost Sign near the Elvey Building. The plaza area was transformed from a road and parking lots to a greenway, which includes picnic areas and space for teaching, research, study and recreation.

The UAF Staff Council is hosting Staff Appreciation Day May 22 from noon - 2 p.m. in Wood Center. The event includes a barbecue and ice cream social.

UAF Summer Sessions presents An Evening with Susan Stamberg May 27 at 7 p.m. in the Davis Concert Hall. Admission is free. Stamberg is a nationally renowned broadcast journalist and a special correspondent for National Public Radio. For more information visit www.uaf.edu/summer/events/.

UAF Summer Sessions hosts free movie nights this summer with Projecting World Cultures: Japanese, Russian and Hispanic Film Tuesdays at 6 p.m., beginning with Cuckoo May 27, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears June 3 and Pan's Labyrinth June 10; Reel History - Documenting Alaska Thursdays at 7 p.m., beginning with Aleut Story May 29 and Pioneer Family in Alaska and Alaskan Profiles: Bill Berry June 5; and Summer Sessions Cinema Mondays at 7 p.m., beginning with Aging Out June 2 and Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema June 9. All movies will be shown in Schaible Auditorium. For more information visit www.uaf.edu/summer/events/.

The Discovering Alaska lecture series, hosted by UAF Summer Sessions, takes place Wednesdays at 7 p.m. in Schaible Auditorium through Aug. 13. The series begins with Landscape Painting in the Eastern Alaska Brooks Range by David Mollett May 28 and Painting in Glacier Country by Bill Brody June 4. For more information visit www.uaf.edu/summer/events/.

The UAF Summer Music Academy takes place June 8 - 21. The academy is for students in grades 6 – 12. For more information call Linda at 7555 or visit www.uaf.edu/music/artscamp/.

UAF undergraduates Seth Chadwick, Christopher Granade and Rachel Krieg competed in the 2008 Mathematical Contest in Modeling, winning the competition's highest designation — outstanding. Only nine teams out of the 1,162 competing received the outstanding designation. The team also won the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences prize; its 62-page results paper will be published in the fall 2008 COMAP Journal. For more information visit www.uaf.edu/news/news/20080505144536.html.

Ann and Joe Tremarello gave $100,000 to the Joseph Sr. and Rose R. Tremarello Memorial Fund, which provides scholarships to UAF men’s and women’s varsity basketball team members.

Gina Tabachki and Sonny Lindner gave $13,000 to UAF’s Rudy Krejci Memorial Scholarship.

The Bernard Osher Foundation gave UAF a grant of $50,000 to fund the Osher Reentry Scholarship Program. The program helps students seeking bachelor’s degrees whose education has been interrupted for five years or more and are between the ages of 25 – 50.

The Katherine Gust Estate gave UAF more than $20,000 for the Katherine Gust Memorial Fund.

The 2007 – 2008 Dennis Demmert Award recipients are Joan Braddock, CNSM; Jacqueline Alleyne-McCants, Office of Financial Aid; Frances Bedel, CRCD; and Michael Koskey, CLA.

May 21, 2008: Applications for the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center's three-week summer High Performance Computing Faculty Camp are due. For more information contact Tom Logan at 8624 or logan@arsc.edu or visit www.arsc.edu.