GREENVILLE, S.C.—Furman University was well represented at the 2008 InnoVision Technology Awards held recently in Greenville, winning both the Innovation in Education award and the prestigious Hall of Fame Award.

The InnoVision Technology Awards program, founded in 1999 by Deloitte LLP, recognizes and honors Upstate businesses, individuals and organizations that have demonstrated significant advancements in the areas of innovation and technological progress.

The awards were presented in five categories: Technology Development, Technology Application, Innovation in Education, Small Enterprise and Community Service. In addition to the Hall of Fame Award, the Dr. Charles Townes Individual Achievement Award and the Young Innovators Awards were also presented.

The Furman Classics Department received the 2008 Hall of Fame Award, which is given for an extraordinary accomplishment in innovation and the development or application of technology in any category. The award recognized the work of Furman classics professor Christopher Blackwell, who helped make three ancient manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad available digitally for students and scholars to study online. The manuscripts, which date from A.D. 950, are so highly restricted that fewer than 20 scholars have been able to study them over the past 150 years.

There have only been three Hall of Fame awards presented over the 10-year history of the Innovision Awards, and Furman has won two of them. Michelin was the other winner.

Furman’s Chemistry Department also received the Innovation in Education Award for its work in creating a high quality e-textbook for a bioorganic chemistry course in which no textbook existed. Using a free wiki engine, a piece of server software that allows users to create and edit content, professors Brian Goess and Greg Springsteen created a platform through which students could write, referee and modify an e-textbook with as little faculty input as possible.

To see videos about the award winners in each category, visit the Innovision website.

For more information, contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107.

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12/12/2008

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