Grain & Chaff

Comcast-Spectacor Ventures president Peter Luukko (center) is presented the Harold J. VanderZwaag Distinguished Alumnus Award by Carol A. Barr, acting head of the Sport Management Program, and Thomas O'Brien, dean of the Isenberg School of Management, on Jan. 12 at the First Union Center in Philadelphia. Luukko, who graduated in 1984, was recognized for his professional excellence and outstanding achievement in the sports industry and his dedication to the Sport Management Program.

Language arts

Nancy Hall, a doctoral candidate and instructor in Linguistics, was a guest lecturer at an English department colloquium at the University of Haifa, Israel on Jan. 7. A specialist in phonology, the science of speech sounds, Hall talked about what she terms "vowel intrusion," cases in which a native speaker clearly hears a vowel, but non-native speakers don't and think there is no syllable.

Waves of the future

Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor in Operations Management and director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks in the Isenberg School of Management, has been invited to speak at the "Transforming Enterprise: The First International Conference on the Economic and Social Implications of Information Technology" to be held Jan. 27-28 at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Nagurney's paper and presentation are titled "Supernetworks: Paradoxes, Challenges, and New Opportunities." The papers presented at the conference will be published by the MIT Press.

The last professional

Colleagues of the late Judy Toyama (see obituary, page 9) may remember that among her many roles on campus, she was the Faculty Senate representative of the Professional Association of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (PAUMA), the governance unit that preceded unionization in 1989. Despite the union vote, it took a few years for the senate to withdraw its official recognition of PAUMA, so Toyama dutifully attended all meetings, calling "no report," until the association faded into history.

Top shelf

History professor Leonard Richards will discuss his book, "Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle," on Sunday, Jan. 25 at 1:30 p.m. at the Springfield Armory National Historical Site in Springfield. A book-signing will follow Richards' talk.

Remembering MLK

Professor John Bracey of Afro-American Studies, and professor Barbara J. Love, who chairs the Department of Student Development and Pupil Personnel Services in the School of Education, were guest speakers at Amherst's commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Jan. 20.