Karen Mercer, vice president for business affairs, is resigning from Cornell College effective Aug. 31. A national search to find Mercer’s successor will begin early this summer. In the interim, Mercer’s duties will be shared by Special Assistant to the President and Interim Vice President for Enrollment Jim Brown and Controller Lois Mulbrook. Brown will assume the business services functions while Mulbrook will assume the chief financial ones.
James Martin, professor of music at Cornell College, has been awarded a $25,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a course designed to study an enduring question. Martin’s course will examine the relationship between tradition and innovation.
Cornell College Registrar Jonna Higgins-Freese’s poem “The Scars” won the inaugural poetry contest for The Examined Life, a literary journal published by the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.
Rhawn Denniston, professor of geology at Cornell College, has won a $30,000 grant to study stalagmites for evidence of long-term climate change.
Ocie A. Trimble, the most successful running coach in Cornell College history, passed away Monday at the Solon Care Center. He was 81.
Kirilka Stavreva, an English and creative writing professor at Cornell College, collected and edited a cluster of 11 articles—including one she wrote herself—about multidisciplinary approaches to teaching Dante for the Winter 2013 edition of the journal Pedagogy.
Soprano Lisa Hearne, professor of music, and Joyce Strabala, instructor of piano, will give a recital on Tuesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m. in Ringer Recital Hall of Armstrong Hall at Cornell College. The program includes Hermit Songs by Samuel Barber, The Promised Land, a new work of American spirituals by Gwyneth Walker, art songs in French and German, and songs from musical theater.
Ken Morris, director of Intercultural Life at Cornell College, will be one of the inaugural Diversity Focus Fellows. Morris, who has worked at Cornell for six years, will run a community website and blog about the African-American community in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City corridor.
Charles Vernoff, who taught religion at Cornell College from 1978 until 2006, died March 11 at his home in West Hollywood, Calif. He was 71. Vernoff was named emeritus professor of religion at his retirement.
He was best known for his courses Mysticism East and West, The History and Theology of the Holocaust, and Contemporary Jewish Literature, and as a scholar and outstanding classroom teacher.
Melinda Green, associate professor of psychology at Cornell College, has been appointed to the Iowa Board of Psychology. The board evaluates the qualifications of applicants for licensure and grants licenses to those who qualify, establishes rules and regulations to ensure the integrity and competence of licensed psychologists and investigates complaints for unprofessional conduct.