Chris Simmons, associate vice president for federal relations at Duke University, has been selected for the board of directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. NAICU is the leading national association representing private higher education, serving as the unified voice of nearly 1,000 independent college and university presidents, and specialized, state, and regional association executives. Members of NAICU's board of directors set the association's agenda on federal higher education policy, actively encourage support of NAICU priorities and initiatives, and oversee the association's financial administration. Members serve three-year terms.

Duke undergraduate Billy Kennedy's "Make You a Man," a short story written by Kennedy last spring in Professor Christina Askounis's class, has won first place in the St. Louis Short Story competition. First prize is $5,000, the largest cash prize offered by any short story competition in the country.  

Jonathan Cohn, Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Cell Biology, was honored earlier this month in Chicago at the annual joint meeting of the American Pancreatic Association and the International Association of Pancreatology. As the 16th Frank Brooks Memorial Lecturer, Dr. Cohn presented the keynote address for the conference on the topic, "Cystic Fibrosis Gene Mutations and Pancreatic Disease." Dr. Cohn was selected for this award to recognize his research contributions studying CFTR, the protein produced by the cycstic fibrosis gene. In work from the early 1900s, his lab at Duke was the first to localize and biochemically characterize CFTR in a human tissue.

Donald Horowitz, James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science, has been appointed to the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion. The Committee, which held its inaugural meeting on November 6 in Washington, D.C., includes 15 academics and leaders of institutions and organizations who work globally in democratization, electoral system reform, constitution building and the promotion of human rights and civil society. Horowitz has written extensively on the problems of divided societies and issues related to constitution building, as well as publishing an extensive study of Islamic law and the theory of legal change. He has consulted widely on institutions and policies that might be adopted to promote democracy and reduce ethnic strife in such areas as Russia, Romania, Nigeria, Tatarstan, Fiji and Northern Ireland.

Beth Holmgren, a visiting professor in the department of Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, has been elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for 2008. 

Jonathan B. Wiener, William R. and Thomas L. Perkins Professor in the School of Law, Professor of Environmental Policy in the Nicholas School, and Professor of Public Policy Studies in the Sanford Institute, has been elected president of the Society of Risk Analysis. He will serve as president-elect for the coming year, and his term as president will begin at the SRA's annual meeting in December 2007, to be held in San Antonio, Texas. The SRA is the professional society of experts in risk analysis, addressing everything from pollution to terrorism. It currently has 2,000 members worldwide.

The Chronicle was honored in a number of categories at the National College Media Convention in St. Louis. Duke's independent daily newspaper took second place in the Best in Show category for four-year daily tabloids, which honors a single issue from the current academic year. The Chronicle submitted its Oct. 16 issue, which featured front page stories about, and campus reaction to, the "60 Minutes" episode that examined the lacrosse rape case. Senior Alen Fanaroff, Towerview editor, won first place in the features story category for "The Chronicles of Redick" in the April/May issue of Towerview. That issue also won Best in Show in the Magazine Feature-Special Audience category.

Sally Ong, Duke University senior student from Malaysia, is one of the inaugural recipients of the North Carolina Campus Compact's Community Impact Student Award. Sally is sponsored by the Public Service Department of the Malaysian government. The award will be presented at the NCCC Student Conference on Saturday, November 11, 2006 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

James Siedow, Ph.D.,  has been appointed Chair of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Education Foundation Board. Siedow, a biology professor and Vice Provost for Research at Duke University, accepted a three-year term appointment beginning October 1, 2006. The Education Foundation supports education and outreach activities that advance the knowledge of and appreciation for basic concepts and contributions of plant biology. 

A gala performance of Ariel Dorfman's  play Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark will be staged at Chelsea Piers in New York on October 6, 2006. As a part of the festivities, Ethel Kennedy will present the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Ripple of Hope Award to President William Jefferson Clinton for his commitment to a more just and peaceful world. The event will benefit the global human rights initiative, SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, a multifaceted project founded by Kerry Kennedy and Nan Richardson.

 William Collins Donahue has won the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG)/Goethe-Institute Certificate of Merit Award. He is one of nine recipients of the 2006 award for outstanding achievement in furthering the teaching of German in schools and universities of the United States. Dr. Collins is an Associate Professor of German at Duke and the author of The End of Modernism: Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe.

Alec Macaulay, Duke Circle K member and former Carolinas District Governor, was elected Circle K international president at the organization's international convention in Boston this summer. Macaulay is a senior at Duke.

Josh Gibson, production coordinator and assistant director of the Duke University Film/Video/Digital Program,  has received a Fellowship Award from the North Carolina Arts Council. Gibson teaches production courses in film and digital video, as well as supervising advanced independent study projects. He also operates a production company called Hardlight. His current project, I and I, is an experimental docudrama about the lives of Surry County residents and conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker. He resides in Durham.

Srinivas Aravamudan, Ph.D., an associate professor in the English department and author of Guru English: South Asian Religion in Cosmopolitan Contexts, and Bryan Gilliam, PhD, Frances Hill Fox Professor in Humanities (Department of Music), were awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies. As a result of the 2005-2006 fellowships competition, ACLS awarded fellowships totaling more than $5.5 million to more than 200 scholars.

Jimmy Soni, Duke University senior, from Westmont, Illinois, has been awarded a $5,000 scholarship from the Asian American Journalists Association. Soni wrote for Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle, for two years and the TowerView magazine for one year. He has recently accepted a position as a columnist for the 18-to-24 Bracket, an online journal started by three Duke alumni to highlight youth perspectives on politics.

Joshua Kinsler, a graduate student at Duke University, was selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as one of 50 outstanding research participants to attend the 2nd Lindau Meeting in Economic Sciences. The meeting, which welcomes winners of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, with take place in Lindau, Germany, August 16-19, and Kinsler will participate in activities with Nobel Laureates. The objective of the meeting is to provide an opportunity for personal interaction among leading economists and young researchers from around the world. More than 300 young researchers from 40 different countries are expected to participate in this year's event. 

Sam Hull, senior public relations specialist for the Department of Alumni Affairs and associate editor of Duke Magazine, recently attended the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Summit in New York City. Duke News ; Communication received a gold medal in the category "General News Writing;" DUHS's DukeHealthLine received a silver medal in the category "Print External Audience Tabloid" the Nicholas School got a bronze medal in the category "Year-long Special Events"; and Duke Magazine got two CASE awards: a bronze medal in the category "Best Articles of the Year"; for Bridget Booher "Sexual Assault on Campus: The Silent Epidemic," and a silver medal in the category "Visual Design in Print" for the September-October 2005 issue featuring the cover story by Robert Bliwise with Kimerly Rorschach, director of the Nasher Museum, touring the new Museum of Modern Art in New York City and discussing art and museums.