Lara Luetkehans has been selected as dean of Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s College of Education and Educational Technology. She will begin her work at IUP on July 1.

Communications Media students led by Professor Luis Almeida won a top prize for their video game proposal at the Education Without Borders conference in Dubai, March 26–28. The IUP proposal—for an educational video game called “HERO 1” to teach the English language and American culture to Arab students—was one of only 32 papers the EWB organizers selected for conference presentation out of approximately 3,600 submissions worldwide. Their paper went on to win first place in the “New Media and Mobile Learning” category.

The 19th Annual Research Appreciation Week takes place April 1–5, showcasing in one of the most exciting academic events of the year the innovation and scope of research that IUP faculty and students conduct universitywide.

The Cyber Catch Scholarship Program will award 40 scholarships to IUP students who haven't decided on a major but show an interest in computer science with a concentration in information assurance. It also will award funds to 16 students transferring from area community colleges into the Information Assurance Program.

Mathematics professors John Chrispell and Ed Donley are bringing classes in high-performance computing to IUP this spring that will allow students to learn how state-of-the-art numerical simulations—involving hundreds of thousands of equations—are conducted.

Rebecca Beadling, a junior majoring in chemistry and biology, won the 2012 Chung Soo Yoo Award for outstanding graduate-level research at the annual Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference, held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator National Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif.

The IUP Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program has received continued funding from the U.S. Department of Education. Total funding for the program over the next five years is expected to be more than $1.14 million. IUP is one of two institutions in Pennsylvania and 151 nationally to have been awarded funding.