• Jeanette Lancaster, Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing and Dean of the U.Va. School of Nursing, has been re-appointed to the board of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. This is Lancaster’s second full-term appointment. An active member of the AACN for 15 years, Lancaster has served on the bylaws committee, the program committee and doctoral conference subcommittee.

• Dr. W. Michael Scheld, professor of internal medicine and clinical neurosurgery at the University Health System, has been elected to a two-year term as one of 27 directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). He will also chair ABIM’s Subspecialty Board on Infectious Disease.

After a one-year term as vice president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) that began last October, Dr. Scheld will be president-elect beginning October 2001 followed by a one-year term as president of IDSA.

• John C. Herr, professor of cell biology at the School of Medicine, was awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Visiting Professorship at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The visiting professorship is one of three awarded annually by Burroughs Wellcome to Canadian universities.

• Thomas Skalak, professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Engineering School and president of the Biomeidcal Engineering Society, and Richard Price, Research Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, will receive the Gerrittsen Award from the Microcirculartory Society Inc, for their article, “The Role of Mechanical Stresses in Microvascular Remodeling,” published in the June 1996 issue of Microcirculation. The award is given to the authors of articles that have received the most citations over a five-year period. Price and Skalak were honored at the society’s annual banquet in Orlando, Fla., on March 31.

• Deborah Verstegen, professor of Policy and Finance in the Curry School of Education, has been re-elected to the Virginia Executive Committee of the American Association of University Professors at its March 24 meeting at Norfolk State University. Verstegen, who is also associate faculty in the South Asian Studies Center, works with AAUP’s committee on promotion, tenure and academic freedom.

• The University has received a citation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its efforts at pollution control through energy management. EPA secretary Christie Todd Whitman presented an Energy Star Partner of the Year award to Robert P. Dillman, chief facilities officer for Facilities Management at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on March 20. The University, which has been an Energy Star Partner since 1995, was specifically credited with using energy-efficient lighting. This award is one of the highest offered by the EPA. U.Va. has been recognized with other energy saving awards for each of the past six years.

• Dr. Paul D. Mintz, associate chair and professor of pathology as well as director of clinical laboratories and the blood bank at the Health System, testified March 22 before the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education on designating a public health service office to collect national blood supply data. Mintz, who testified as a board member of the American Association of Blood Banks, said the data collection could predict and help prevent blood shortages.

• Jann Lacoss, faculty consultant at the Teaching Resource Center, gave the keynote address at the Fourth Annual Women’s Leadership Conference at Ferrum College on March 21. Her talk focused on defining success, determining what is important in each individual’s life and giving examples of what ordinary people have done to make a difference in the world. Lacoss is also a lecturer in the Slavic Department. and was awarded one of Ferrum’s distinguished alumni awards in 1999.

• David T. Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, will deliver the keynote address on modern Spanish literature to the International Association of Hispanists meeting in New York in July. The international organization, which meets every three years, is being hosted this year at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In previous years it has met in Mexico City, Berlin, Bordeaux and Madrid. Gies’ paper, which will be delivered in Spanish, is “The Painted Word: Rococo Eroticism in the Poetry of 18th-Century Spain.”

Gies will also speak on the “The Future of Hispanism in the U.S. and Canada” at a two-day seminar on the future of teaching Spanish at the Cervantes Institute in New York City in July. Gies is one of 10 Hispanists from around the world invited to speak by the Duke and Duchess of Soria Foundation. His presentation will later be published.