Making News

David Kunian, graduate student in the Newcomb Department of Music, received a statewide honor from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in recognition of numerous radio documentaries he has produced about New Orleans musicians and musical sites. He received the LEH 2010 Individual Achievement in Humanities Award.

Architecture professor Judith Kinnard was elected president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. She will assume duties on the association's national board of directors in July as president-elect and will become president in July 2011, for a one-year term. She also was chair of the ACSA annual meeting on March 4–7 in New Orleans.

Dr. Pierre Buekens, W. H. Watkins Professor and dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, co-authored the study, "Newborn-care Training and Perinatal Mortality in Developing Countries," published in the Feb. 21 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. According to the study, the rate of stillbirths in rural areas of six developing countries fell more than 30 percent following a basic course in newborn care for birth attendants. The National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the study.

Thea Edwards is one of 10 scientists in the newest group of Science Communication Fellows in a program sponsored by Environmental Health Sciences, publisher of Environmental Health News. Edwards will be trained in effective ways to inform journalists and general audiences about new research findings. She is a research assistant professor in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Adeline Masquelier, anthropology professor, presented a lecture, "Fashionable Muslims: Veiling, Consumer Culture, and Islamic Identity in Niger, West Africa," on March 2 at Sweet Briar College. The talk was based on her recent book, Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town.

Susann S. Lusnia, associate professor of classical studies, will be the next director of the Classical Summer School of the American Academy in Rome. The position is for summers 2011–2013.