Redderson named interim director
Doug Lange, director of Facilities Services, will serve a nine-month tour of duty in Afghanistan beginning next month. Lange, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, was stationed in Kosovo in 2000.

He specializes in infrastructure construction and improvements. In Lange's absence, Jeff Redderson will serve as interim director. Redderson says Lange is likely to be stationed near Kabul.

Intranet, First Class to merge
Originally scheduled to debut in September, the Furman Intranet will now be integrated into the university's new email software, First Class.

John Roberts, director of Internal and Electronic Communication, says many of the features of the Intranet are duplicated in the new e-mail software such as the ability to post classified ads, news briefs and public announcements. Discussion boards are also featured in First Class.

"The whole purpose of the Intranet is to help consolidate internal communications, had we proceeded, the Intranet and First Class would have competed with one another," says Roberts. "After reviewing the First Class software, it seems only logical to fold the projects together."

Ryan Fisher, web development director, will be working with Rebecca Alexander during the fall to integrate the projects.

Hanks awarded research grant
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded chemistry professor Timothy Hanks a $390,000 grant to support his research in the area of nanotechnology.

Hanks, the Henry Keith and Ellen Hard Townes Professor of Chemistry at Furman, is the principal investigator for the three-year grant, which is titled "Tuning the Supramolecular Structure and Properties of Polydiacetylenes with Charge-Transfer Interactions." Nanotechnology involves the creation of materials, devices and systems through the control of matter at the atomic level.

A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, or about 1/80,000 of the diameter of a human hair. By understanding and controlling the way molecules organize into nanoscale patterns, scientists are beginning to design materials with vastly different sets of properties.

 

Allen, Hopkins-Hugh awarded fellowships
The South Carolina Arts Commission has awarded two members of the faculty 2002-03 Artist Fellowships. Gilbert Allen (English) and Diane Hopkins-Hughs (Art) were among six resident, professional artists to receive the honor.

Each fellow receives $5,000 in recognition of superior artistic merit. Allen, who joined the Furman faculty in 1977, is one of South Carolina's foremost poets. He has written three collections of poetry In Everything, Second Chances and Commandments at Eleven - and his fourth collection, Driving to Distraction, will be published in January by the Orchises Press.

His poems, stories, and essays have also appeared in The American Scholar, The Cortland Review, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Image, and The Southern Review, among others.

Hopkins-Hughs is a photographer who is currently specializing in hand-colored, gelatin silver prints. She has been adjunct professor in studio and art education at Furman since 1989, and has presented more than 30 photography workshops in Texas and Georgia.

Hopkins-Hughs has received artist project grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville, and the Georgia Council for the Arts. In 1996, she was named South Carolina Art Educator of the Year by the state's Art Education Association.