Indiana University of Pennsylvania President Dr. Tony Atwater received one of the highest civilian service awards given by the United States Army at IUP's ROTC spring dining out event.
Retired Maj. Gen. Rodney Ruddock and IUP professor of Military Science Lt. Col. Sidney Zemp presented the Commander's Award for Public Service to Atwater at the event on April 24.
The award is in recognition of Atwater's “outstanding dedication to the United States Armed Forces and generous support of the IUP Warrior Battalion since his arrival in 2005 through the present,” Zemp said.
The event featured guest speaker Brig. Gen. Leslie Miller Purser, a 1980 IUP graduate and IUP's first female brigadier general. She is a military intelligence officer and the commander of the military intelligence readiness command at Fort Belvoir, Va.
IUP has approximately seventy-four cadets officially enrolled in the ROTC program and another two hundred taking part in the health and wellness sections in the Military Science Department.
IUP's May graduating class included two distinguished military graduates: Nursing major Amanda Cooper, of Williamstown, and Robert E. Cook Honors College Political Science major Patrick Zang, of Mechanicsburg. Cooper is the cadet battalion commander. Zang is president of the IUP ROTC honor fraternity, Rho Tau Chi.
A distinguished military graduate is a cadet who is in the top 20 percent of the nation's five thousand cadets academically and in the top 10 percent of IUP ROTC seniors.
IUP's ROTC graduates are serving today in more than 125 countries around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the photo: IUP President Tony Atwater, left, receives the United States Army Commander's Award for Public Service from retired Maj. Gen. Rodney Ruddock.