IU trustees have approved plans for a new science building to house Bloomington campus neuroscientists, biogeochemists, environmental scientists and other life science researchers. Trustees also approved plans for new IUB student housing, slated to replace the Ashton Hall complex.

Visit the Polis Center in this issue’s “Think Tank” column. The IUPUI-based center collects data critical to community development. “We take technology invented for engineers and make it applicable to the humanities and social sciences,” says the center’s director, David Bodenhamer

Plan to attend the annual commemoration at IU Bloomington’s Assembly Hall. The university will mark its 185th birthday by bestowing teaching awards to its noted faculty from throughout the state.

A $348,441 NEH grant is paving the way for IU and Harvard researchers to preserve rare sound recordings. Music of Iraqi Jews in Israel, music from pre-Taliban Afghanistan and African-American protest songs from the 1920s-1940s will serve as test cases for new digital preservation techniques.

Bob Mucci, a driving force behind IU Northwest’s anthropology program, shares his thoughts on the 80th anniversary of the Scopes trial and why the debate over evolution remains a hot topic. Debating aside, recent finds in Ethiopia have scientists in Bloomington researching fossil evidence of the earliest hominids.

The Indiana Center for Rehabilitation Sciences and Engineering Research is working to improve veterans’ quality of life, attracting $1 million from the U.S. Dept. of Defense. Specifically, the Indianapolis-based center’s research will focus efforts on military and veteran amputees.

“Unity in the Spirit of Diversity” is the theme for the upcoming Africana Festival at IUB. At IU Northwest, Ken Coopwood is setting diversity goals for 2005, and Jean Upshaw will be featured on a program about the Civil Rights Movement tomorrow on the History Channel.