NSF honors MSU faculty with $1.6 million

NSF honors MSU faculty with $1.6 million Four Montana State University professors received awards from the National Science Foundation for their contributions to research, education and outreach. The awards total $1.6 million and cover salaries for three years, research expenses and graduate student work. Linda Young, agricultural economics/ economics, and Sarah Codd, engineering, received Advance Fellowships. Young's award amounted to $379,000 and Codd's to $387,000. The Advance program is designed to help women in science and engineering develop competitive and sustainable research programs. James Becker and Joe Seymour, both from engineering, received Faculty Early Career Development awards. Each amounted to $400,000. The early career program recognizes faculty who are likely to become academic leaders.

MSU student, Nobel laureates gather in Germany

For the second year in a row, an MSU doctoral student was chosen to join an annual gathering of Nobel Prize winners in Lindau, Germany. Karl Sebby left June 26 and spent a week with Nobel laureates and 400 of the world's top graduate students in chemistry, physics, physiology and medicine. Sebby is working toward his Ph.D. in chemistry and is part of MSU's Center for Bio-inspired Nanomaterials. He was nominated for the Nobel experience by David Singel, associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry. Katie Reardon, a doctoral student in environmental microbiology, attended last year's gathering. The experience was wonderful and changed her approach to research, Reardon said. Grad student wins national fellowship Johnathon Holroyd, an MSU graduate student from Bend, Ore., received a $16,000 fellowship that sent him to a national laboratory this school year. One of eight people in the country who won an Advanced Light Source Doctoral Fellowship, Holroyd is in California at ALS, a division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Holroyd will use synchrotron radiation to study magnetic thin-film structures. He will also assist researchers from MSU and around the world who come to the laboratory to use its equipment. Scientists choose the X-ray energy that best analyzes their materials and then take measurements of how the materials scatter and absorb these X-rays. Holroyd's research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

Core 2.0

MSU's new curriculum, called Core 2.0, was rolled out fall semester. The set of fundamental courses advance writing, diversity and critical thinking, according to MSU's vice provost for undergraduate education Greg Young. Each student enrolling in the new curriculum will have the opportunity to conduct a research and/or a creative experience of his or her own. This hands-on experience for every student sets MSU apart from other schools, Young said.

Montana girls performed at World's Fair

One hundred years ago, 10 Montana Indian girls moved to St. Louis and performed at the 1904 World's Fair. The fair featured performers from around the world, but many were considered living exhibits who could illustrate lessons about the supposed progress of the world from "savagery" to "civilization," said Robert Rydell, an MSU historian who specializes in the study of American cultural history. Rydell was asked to discuss world fairs in general and provide context for the other speakers during a spring conference at MSU. The conference was devoted to American Indian issues similar to those faced by a stellar team of basketball players from the Fort Shaw Indian boarding school near Great Falls.