MOUNT VERNON – Danielle Bowen, a Cornell College junior from Orion, Ill., has received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate award for students interested in the fields of science, mathematics and engineering.

The award covers expenses for college tuition, fees, books and room and board, up to $7,500. Scholars are nominated by their professors and ultimately chosen based on their academic excellence; virtually all plan to obtain doctorates. There were 323 Goldwater Scholars from across the United States named for the 2006-2007 academic year.

Bowen, a double major in mathematics and biology, intends to pursue a doctorate in statistical genetics and conduct research in mapping loci that are contributors to fatal human diseases. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa; president of the Cornell Mathematics Society; treasurer of Tri-Beta, the biology honor society; a member of Geology Club and Biology Reading Group; a tutor for the math department and a peer consultant for the Writing Studio.

“Danielle’s study of mathematics, statistics and computer science will contribute greatly to her ability to do meaningful research in the biological sciences. This renaissance approach will be the trend in first-rate scientific education and research in the coming years,” said Tony deLaubenfels, professor of computer science and mathematics. He is Cornell’s Goldwater Scholarship faculty representative.

Recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 63 Rhodes Scholarships (five of the 32 awarded in the United States in 2006), 80 Marshall Awards (eight of the 40 awarded in the United States in 2006) and numerous other distinguished fellowships.

The Goldwater Scholarship honoring Sen. Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. Of the 2006-2007 recipients, 182 are men, 141 are women; 32 are mathematics majors, 234 are science majors, 47 are majoring in engineering and 10 are computer science-related majors; many have dual majors in a variety of mathematics, science, engineering and computer disciplines.

MOUNT VERNON — Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Attorney in Iowa who has spent nearly five years finding and prosecuting suspects in the 1994 Rwanda genocide that left hundreds of thousands dead, will speak at Cornell College on Monday, April 10.

Rapp’s lecture, “Lessons From Rwanda,” is at 11 a.m. in Shaw Lounge in The Commons. Admission is free.

Rapp is chief of prosecutions for the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The Tanzania-based tribunal was set up to try chief suspects in the 1994 genocide, when members of Rwanda’s majority ethnic group, the Hutu, went on a rampage against the minority Tutsi. The attacks followed the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana in a plane crash. Habyarimana, a Hutu, had wanted to install a transitional government in Rwanda and include a Tutsi-dominated rebel group. Hutu extremists were incensed at this plan.

Over nearly 100 days, between 500,000 and 1 million people were slaughtered, many trapped in churches, slain with machetes, shot or burned alive. Millions fled the country.

Rapp prosecuted three media executives who helped incite the country’s extremist militia as well as broadcast the whereabouts of Tutsi sympathizers. The three-year “media trial” concluded in 2003 and set precedent for other cases going before the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Rapp, formerly of Cedar Falls, was U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa from 1993 to 2001. Prior to that he was an attorney in Waterloo, served as a Staff Director and Counsel at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and was a member of the Iowa Legislature.

Rapp’s Cornell visit is sponsored by the politics department and the Lecture, Artists, Cultural Events Consortium.

MOUNT VERNON – A group of 25 Cornell College students, faculty and staff departs Friday morning for Louisiana, where they will spend their spring break working at a relief center in Chalmette, outside of New Orleans, distributing clothing and food and meeting residents whose lives were disrupted by last summer’s hurricanes.

“I got involved with this Alternative Spring Break trip because I wanted to help the hurricane victims in any way I could,” said Emily Decker, a junior from Monticello and one of 22 students going on the trip.

“We may encounter people who are frustrated for a variety of reasons: government involvement, losing their home, losing loved ones and just being overwhelmed with the situation as a whole. Whether we are able to provide more instrumental or emotional support, I hope that we can make an impact while we are down there,” Decker said.

Cornell’s spring break runs March 30 to April 9. On April 29 at Cornell’s 10th annual Student Symposium, several students from the trip are scheduled to give presentations on their experience.

Since September, Cornell’s assistance to the Gulf Coast region includes over $1,500 to relief agencies, more than 800 hours of service to the MidAmerica Housing Partnership to prepare apartments in Cedar Rapids for displaced residents and donated luggage transported to Louisiana shelters by students in a French class that attended a Cajun music festival in Lafayette, La., in September.

This is Cornell’s fifth annual Alternative Spring Break trip. Previous groups have traveled to Lexington, Va., and Birmingham, Ala., to build Habitat for Humanity houses, Nashville, Tenn., to work at a homeless shelter, and Radford, Va., to assist low-income children.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will host a sports medicine symposium Tuesday, March 28, featuring Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz, Hawkeye center Brian Ferentz and Dr. Larry Dorr, a Cornell and University of Iowa medical school graduate who is featured on the ABC reality series “Miracle Workers.”

“What is Sports Medicine? A TEAM Perspective” is at 11 a.m. in Kimmel Theatre of Youngker Hall. The symposium will examine sports medicine’s effect on the success of athletes and sports programs from the perspective of a coach, an athlete, an athletic trainer and a team doctor. Besides Kirk Ferentz and Brian Ferentz, the program will feature from the University of Iowa Dr. Ned Amendola, director of sports medicine, and Paul Federici, director of athletic training. The event is open to the public; admission is free.

Dorr, a world leader in joint replacement surgery, will moderate a panel discussion and direct an audience Q&A after the presentations. He is featured on the ABC reality series “Miracle Workers” in a segment scheduled to air tonight (March 20). The show tells how a professional dancer, once hobbled with severe arthritis, returned to the stage six weeks after Dorr performed bilateral hip surgery.

Dorr is founder of the California-based Dorr Institute for Arthritis Research and Education Foundation. In 1994 he started Operation Walk, an international mission in which operating teams travel to developing countries to perform knee and hip replacements and teach native doctors how to perform the operations. Four Cornell students joined the team on trips last year to El Salvador and China, and four more students are scheduled to travel with Operation Walk this year to Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Dorr received the 2005 Humanitarian Award from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons for his work with Operation Walk. He received Cornell’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2003 and currently serves on the college’s board of trustees.

The sports medicine symposium is sponsored by Dimensions: The Center for the Science and Culture of Healthcare, a new program at Cornell that provides a unique undergraduate education for aspiring health care professionals.

MOUNT VERNON — Sarah Weddington, the attorney who argued the winning side in the Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion in 1973, will be the keynote speaker at the Third Annual Feminist Symposium sponsored by the Women’s Action Group at Cornell College on Saturday, March 18.

Her lecture, “Reproductive Rights: The Current Political Climate and Controversy,” is at 3:30 p.m. on the Orange Carpet in The Commons. A reception will follow in Hedges Conference Room. Admission is free to the lecture and other symposium activities, which take place in The Commons from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Weddington represented plaintiff Norma McCorvey – known as “Jane Roe” – in the landmark abortion rights case before the Supreme Court. Her 1992 best-seller, “A Question of Choice,” recounted her life and involvement in the case.

Currently a speaker, writer and teacher, Weddington has been a longtime advocate for women. In 1972, she became the first woman from Austin elected to the 150-member Texas House of Representatives, and served three terms. In 1977, she was the first woman to hold the title of General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture where she supervised more than 200 lawyers. From 1978 to 1981, she served as assistant to President Jimmy Carter, directing the administration’s work on women’s issues and leadership outreach. From 1983 to 1985, she was the first female director of the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations.

The Feminist Symposium will feature presentations on feminist research throughout the day, plus a book signing by Mary Vermillion from noon to 1 p.m. at the Cornell Bookstore. Author of the Mara Gilgannon mystery series, Vermillion will read excerpts from her just-released book, “Murder by Mascot,” during one of the presentation slots. She is an associate professor of English at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids. Her first novel, “Death by Discount,” portrays Wal-Mart’s impact on small-town America.

MOUNT VERNON — Student members of the Womyn’s Action Group (WAG) at Cornell College searched for a conference geared toward college-age women, with speakers addressing topics including spirituality, body image, activism, sexual orientation and women’s health care. When the conference didn’t exist, they created their own. Read More…

MOUNT VERNON — “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare’s timeless tale of lovers, nymphs, fairies, actors and aristocrats, takes the stage at Cornell College beginning Wednesday, March 15, at 8 p.m.

The performance is in Kimmel Theatre of Youngker Hall, with additional engagements Thursday through Saturday, March 16-18, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m.

Directed by Ron Clark, Cornell artist-in-residence and co-artistic director of Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, the Cornell production takes place in an eastern European gypsy encampment during the mid-19th century. Clark says the setting adds cultural and musical richness to the play, in which mistaken identities, magical transformation and lyrical prose tell the story of one magical evening in the woods.

“One reason I would set a Shakespeare play outside of its own time is to help connect the play to the audience, so the setting makes it seem more likely and relevant,” he says.

For Riverside’s annual summer Shakespeare Festival, Clark has used early 19th-century Italy as the setting for “Much Ado About Nothing.” And festival director Mark Hunter, an assistant professor of theatre and communications studies at Cornell, has placed “Romeo and Juliet” in modern-day Jerusalem.

Admission to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is $8 for adults and $5 for students, seniors and youth. Admission is free to Cornell students, faculty and staff. Reserve tickets at (319) 895-4293.

MOUNT VERNON — Frutti Musicali, a chamber ensemble from Indiana University’s Early Music Institute, will perform “An Evening of Baroque Chamber Music” on Sunday, March 12, at 7 p.m. in King Chapel at Cornell College. Admission is free.

The ensemble will perform on period instruments and play works by Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier and Jan Dismas Zelenka.

The performers are students or recent graduates of the Early Music Institute, including Go Yamamoto on violin, who graduated from Cornell in 2002 with a degree in music performance and is a doctoral student in Baroque violin. Other members of the ensemble are Lucia Alves Melo, traverso and recorder; Sung Lee, oboe; Kelsey Schilling and Elizabeth Hardy, bassoon; and Jennifer Streeter, harpsichord.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College soprano Lisa Hearne will present a faculty recital Tuesday, March 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Ringer Recital Studio of Armstrong Hall at Cornell.

Admission is free.

The recital will feature songs by American composer Richard Wilson on the poetry of humorist Phyllis McGinley, including a set called “Three Painters: Marc Chagall, Grandma Moses, and Jackson Pollock.”

“Snake,” by American Jake Heggie from his cycle “Eve-Song,” chronicles the Garden of Eden story, and tells the tale of “the downfall of humanity in a three-minute art song.”

The program includes selections from Benjamin Britten’s “Irish Melodies” on poetry by Thomas Moore, featuring an improvisation on “The Last Rose of Summer.”

Other pieces include lieder by Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn, songs by Camille Saint-Saens and an aria from the opera “Les Huguenots” by Giacomo Meyerbeer.

Hearne, associate professor of music, is the department chair, director of choral music and voice area head at Cornell. This is her ninth faculty recital since joining the college in 1992. She will be accompanied by Lynda Hakken, college organist and a member of Cornell’s piano faculty.

This performance was rescheduled from an earlier date.

MOUNT VERNON - A memorial service for David Lyon, professor emeritus of biology, will be held Saturday, March 25, at 1:30 p.m. in King Chapel.

Obituary published in The Sun

MOUNT VERNON - The college is deeply saddened to report the death of David Lyon, professor emeritus of biology. David died Monday, Feb. 20, in the Bahamas, where he was volunteering with Term 6 biology classes. Biology professors Craig Tepper and Bob Black, geology professor Ben Greenstein, and sociology and anthropology professor Alfrieta Monagan are teaching courses in the Bahamas this term; they are working with their students to help them deal with this situation. The classes are scheduled to leave the Bahamas on Friday, Feb. 24, for their return to campus Saturday, Feb. 25. Cornell’s counseling services are available to all students who feel they need assistance at this time, and the Employee Assistance Program is available for faculty and staff.

David taught at Cornell from 1965 to 1998. His love of birds lured him to mountains in Mexico and Arizona to study wintering hummingbirds and to fields in Nebraska and Iowa to observe ringneck pheasants. Thousands of students have studied and traveled with him.

The college extends its prayers and condolences to David’s family, friends, and colleagues at this difficult time. Further announcements will be made as arrangements for services are finalized.

“Birds’ best friend,” a profile of David Lyon, was published in the Cornell Report, summer 1998, upon his retirement.