[Vision2020] The UI Friday Letter

[thansen@moscow.com]

University of Idaho
Office of the President
Moscow, Idaho 83844-3151
Phone: 208-885-6365
Fax: 208-885-6558

The Friday Letter
A Newsletter for University of Idaho Alumni and Friends
April 23, 2004

Here's the latest news at the University of Idaho:

* Thirty students attending seven Idaho universities and colleges 
will spend 10 weeks this summer conducting research funded by the 
Idaho Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network. The students will 
work with some of the state's top scientists at UI, Boise State 
University and Idaho State University. "It was very competitive this 
year," said UI-based program director Mike Laskowski. "There is a 
definite interest among Idaho students in biomedical research. We 
want students to be able to conduct research at Idaho institutions 
without going out of state." The National Institutes of Health funded 
the network with an $8 million grant awarded in 2001 to UI in 
cooperation with ISU and BSU. This award supports biomedical research 
opportunities for faculty and students at the three universities. The 
Idaho BRIN Undergraduate Summer Fellowship Program provides a $5,000 
stipend to each student. The cooperative research network is now in 
its third year and is supported by the Idaho office of the Washington, 
Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho Medical Education Program.

* UI recently was named one of the 77 Best Value Colleges in America 
by the Princeton Review, and 33rd among the 100 "Most Unwired College 
Campuses" by Intel. "America's Best Value Colleges" ranks the top 77 
U.S. colleges based on data about academics, college costs and 
financial aid. Information is collected from college administrators 
and a survey of more than 100,000 current college students. The Intel 
survey reveals "a growing number of schools where students have the 
freedom to wirelessly access the Internet on notebook computers and 
stay connected whether they're in the dorm room, library or outdoors 
at the campus quad."

* UI civil engineering students took honors at the American Society of 
Civil Engineers PNW Regional Student Conference at Oregon Institute of 
Technology in Klamath Falls earlier this month. The 10 students on UI's 
steel bridge team took first place, qualifying them for national 
competition May 28-29 in Golden, Colo. They had the lowest construction 
time: four minutes and 20 seconds; the highest structural efficiency; 
and the lightest weight at 144 pounds.

* Mary Clearman Blew, professor of English, will receive the 
Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association. 
The award is the WLA's highest honor and its previous recipients include 
such literary luminaries as Pulitzer Prize winners Wallace Stegner and 
N. Scott Momaday. Professor Blew has won the prestigious Pacific North 
American Booksellers Award in two categories - in fiction, for her 
collection of stories, "Runaway;" and in nonfiction, for her collection 
of essays, "All But the Waltz."

* Two teams of UI chemical engineering students brought back three 
first-place awards and $7,500 in prize money from the Waste-management 
Education Research Consortium competition in Las Cruces, N.M. UI 
received the overall, first-place, multi-task team award among 20 
competing universities. They developed technology to reduce the costs 
associated with silicon chip manufacturing, and a method to remove from 
domestic water systems an industrial-related contaminate toxic to 
humans, which earned them the CH2MHill award for sustainability.

For more information about these items, please contact University 
Communications at (208) 885-6291 or uinews@uidaho.edu.

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