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The Institute of Family and Social Responsibility was awarded a $290,000 project grant that will be funded by USAID. The project establishes a public policy partnership between SPEA and the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. It begins October 2005 and will extend until September 2007. The primary goal of the program is to strengthen the institutional capacity of the HSE by enhancing its capability in applying policy analysis tools to real-life public sector problems. Another goal of the program is to conduct policy evaluations composed of teams of US and Russian faculty. Several SPEA faculty members will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian faculty and teach courses on public policy and faculty members from the HSE will come to IU as scholars in residence. The partners will build models of policy dissemination pertinent to the Russian political environment and share their findings with key stakeholders, policy makers, government officials and the public.

Karl Besel, IUK, was a guest presenter on WIOU Radio on Monday, September 12th, with regard to Indiana University Kokomo’s new certificate program in Homeland Security/Emergency Management.

Robert Dibie, SPEA’s Assistant Dean at IUK, was a guest speaker on WIOU Radio on Monday, September 19. He discussed the various degree and certificate programs offered by SPEA and emphasized the need for SPEA students to engage in service learning, internship, cross-cultural and international studies. He called on public and non-profit organizations in north-central Indiana to consider hiring SPEA students from Indiana University Kokomo. Also, the SPEA program at Indiana University Kokomo is organizing a leadership workshop for law enforcement officers in the area, as part of Dean Dibie’s commitment to further SPEA’s community engagement.

Henk Haitjema, IUB, was a co-organizer of a workshop entitled “Sustainable Approaches in Water Management, Urban Planning, and Effective and Renewable Energy Uses,” which was held September 16 and 17 on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. The workshop was sponsored by the following:

• Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs, IUPUI and IUB
• Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, IUPUI
• Purdue School of Science, IUPUI
• The Institute for Water Management and Ecotechnology (IWO), Department of Water Management, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg, Germany

SPEA has an “Agreement of Friendship and Cooperation” with the University of Magdeburg in Germany. As part of this agreement two SPEA students have spent a semester at the University in Magdeburg (most recently, Adam Baumgart-Getz, MSES) and one student from Magdeburg spent a semester at SPEA. Both students and faculty from our institutions presented at the workshop, in addition to other speakers from inside and outside the universities.

During the spring of this year (January 15 - May 15) Henk served as the "Braun/Braun Intertec Visiting Professor" at the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Minnesota. He presented several seminars for both the profession (at two different consulting firms) and the faculty (at the CE department) on groundwater flow modeling. In addition, he conducted research with two faculty members at the CE department and gave some guest lectures for undergraduate students.

Bill Jones, IUB, gave an invited talk entitled “Lake Development and Water Quality— Can They Co-Exist?” at the 8th Annual Conference of the Indiana Land Use Consortium on September 13 at the University Place Conference Center on the IUPUI campus in Indianapolis.

Sheila Suess Kennedy, IUPUI, spoke at the University of Indianapolis on Terrorism and Civil Liberties on September 15 as part of their Constitution Day program. Sheila also delivered the Keynote address at the state PFLAG (Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays) meeting on September 10.

Flynn Picardal, IUB, received a three-year, $246,552 grant from the NSF Division of Earth Sciences entitled, “Collaborative Research: Adaptive response of microbial communities and Fe biomineralization pathways to anaerobic redox cycling of Fe and N in sediments”. This grant is part of a larger $500,000 collaborative effort with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin.

Charles R. Wise, SPEA, and the Parliamentary Development Project for Ukraine (PDP) received $500,000 in the form of a cooperative agreement from the United States Agency for International Development. The PDP will focus its efforts to advance the role of parliament under Ukraine’s new Constitution and proportional system of election set to take place in January 2006. PDP staff will assist parliament in four areas including legislation to combat corruption, administrative reform, local government reform, and legislation facilitating integration into international protocols such as the World Trade Organization, Palermo Convention, and European Union. This recent cooperative agreement supplements a 4.98 million dollar, five-year agreement issued to the PDP in 2003.