Gregory Barz, associate professor of ethnomusicology, has been named a Franklin Fellow in Global Citizenship for 2015 and will take up residency in Lugano, Switzerland, for the month of June.
Katherine Y. Brown, an occupational therapist with Vanderbilt Home Care Services, has been elected co-chair of the Tennessee American Heart Association Advocacy Subcommittee. Brown’s work with the AHA includes serving as a regional faculty member, CPR instructor and an active member of the AHA Speaker’s Bureau. She also is the 2014 recipient of Vanderbilt’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award for spearheading the first annual Roberta Baines Wheeler Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Day held at Vanderbilt in 2013. This year’s event, scheduled for Nov. 15, will include a 5K walk on the Vanderbilt campus and a health fair.
Jeff Davis, a financial manager in Vanderbilt’s treasury office, completed the Bear 100-Mile Endurance Run, an ultramarathon through the Wasatch and Bear River mountain ranges of Utah and Idaho, Sept. 26-27. Davis ran the 99.7-mile race in 28 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds.
Earl E. Fitz, professor of Portuguese, Spanish and comparative literature, has been awarded the inaugural prize for best essay from the International Association of Inter-American Studies (Asociacion Internacional de Estudios Interamericanos). Awarded by an international jury, the prize was for his article “Native American Literature and its Place in the Inter-American Project,” which appeared as the lead essay in a special issue on the topic of hemispheric indigenous studies in Comparative American Studies: An International Journal.
Edward Friedman, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish and professor of comparative literature, gave four invited lectures at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in May 2014. Three of the talks were in the Department of English on topics related to contemporary theater in the United States: “Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and the Roots of American Drama,” “Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles and New Paradigms for American Theater” and “Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out and Identity on the American Stage.” The fourth talk, for students in the doctoral program in comparative literature, was on a neoclassical play of the early 19th century: “El sí de las niñas y la educación del público” (“El sí de las niñas and the Education of the Audience”).
Vaughan Jones, Stevenson Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, has been elected a vice president of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union. He will serve a four-year term beginning January 2015. IMU is an international nongovernmental and nonprofit scientific organization whose purpose is promoting international cooperation in mathematics.
Odie Lindsey, senior lecturer in medicine, health and society, has been included in The Best American Short Stories 2014 for his short story “Evie M,” originally appearing in Iowa Review. This year’s compilation is edited by author Jennifer Egan and also includes works by Joshua Ferris, T.C. Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates.
Natalia Lynch, a freshman in the College of Arts and Science, has been named the 2014 Military Youth of the Year by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Lynch, a member of Wiesbaden Youth Center in Wiesbaden, Germany, will receive a $20,000 scholarship and serve as BGCA’s official youth advocate for military teens across the United States and abroad.
Nicole Perry, a first-year doctoral student in biomedical sciences, is one of eight Mortar Board National Foundation Fellows for 2014-15. The fellowships assist Mortar Board members in financing their graduate studies and are awarded based on a demonstrated record of academic excellence, strong recommendation, scholarship promise and Mortar Board involvement.
Ethan Self, a third-year doctoral student in chemical engineering, has received a Rise Fellowship from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the German national agency for the support of international academic cooperation. Self traveled to Darmstadt, Germany, in June to work for six months at Merck KGaA.
William Turner, professor of human and organizational development and Betts Chair, delivered the keynote address at the Second International Forum on Marriage and Family Therapy in Beijing, China. The title of his presentation was “The Hallmarks of Optimal Psychosocial Efficacy (HOPE) Project: Using Positive Family Therapy Theories and Techniques to Create Change in Multi-Level Systems.” The conference was sponsored by Beijing Normal University and Peking University.
David Williams II, vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletics director, has been reappointed as chair of the NCAA’s Infractions Appeals Committee for a three-year term. The committee hears appeals from schools or individuals who are not satisfied with decisions handed down by the NCAA Infractions Committee.