Milestones

Merve Basdogan, a research assistant for IU’s Mosaic Initiative, recently won the 2020 Global Citizen Award given by the IU Office of International Services. The theme of the competition was "Staying connected through the change," and she designed a three-minute video to explain her experiences at IU during the lockdown. Watch the video.

David Lee Goldberg, a user support specialist, and his wife celebrated the first birthday of their firstborn, Ruby Rose Goldberg, on Dec. 11. He wrote, “It has been a challenging year raising an infant during the pandemic. However, a silver-lining has been being able to see her develop every day while working from home.  

“While it is unfortunate that we can’t have the family all together, we have still been keeping family traditions alive. We had a Thanksgiving feast, gave her a birthday party, and will be celebrating Christmas and Chanukah with our small family bubble and having lots of FaceTime and Zoom calls with Ruby’s grandparents, uncles and cousins. Ruby is a very happy baby who loves life, laughing, and playing, and is always smiling and bringing joy to our lives.”

Next-level adorable. Very cute baby, Ruby is. Yeesssssss.

 “I have a new hobby!” wrote Lesley Grider, of Enterprise Student Systems. “I got a sewing machine as an early Christmas gift and have been making tote bags out of chicken, goat, and horse feed bags. The material is really durable. I sell the bags for $10 or give them as gifts.” If you’re interested in purchasing, reach out to her personal email: hoosierstamper@gmail.com. 

Getting crafty. Here's a sampling of Grider's feed bag handiwork.

Maria Morris, IT Communications Office, is teaching the children well. She founded the group Friends of Phoebe (named for her daughter) to foster community service among kids aged 7 to 10. For the holidays, the kids sewed ornaments to sell at the annual Bloomington Holiday Market to support New Hope for Families of Bloomington. The ornaments were a smashing success—and the group donated $900 to New Hope this year.

Giving back feels good. Morris and the Friends of Phoebe group present their donation to New Hope.

Beth Lynn Nolen, senior IT education specialist, has been named program chair of the 2022 ACM SIGUCCS (Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services) conference, taking place in San Diego. In this role, Nolen will be responsible for putting together the conference program, including reviewing presentation proposals, selecting plenary speakers, and building the schedule of events for the conference.

Nolen previously served on the ACM SIGUCCS planning committee as the publications chair for the 2019 and 2020/21 conferences.

Meet the program chair. Congrats to Beth Nolen on her new SIGUCCS responsibilities.

There are two reasons to congratulate Jennifer Schopf, Ph.D, director of international networks: She was recently elected secretary of the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation, and was also elected to the XSEDE Advisory Board.