Rosan Mitola and Amanda Melilli (both Libraries), along with former Libraries employee Amy Hunsaker, gave a pre-conference workshop titled "If You Built It, They Will Come ... and Succeed: Developing a Co-Curricular Workshop Series to Add Value to the Student Employee Experience" at the 2015 Association of College & Research Libraries…

P. Jane Hafen (English) and Patrice Hollrah (Writing Center) are members of the American Indian Alliance (AIA) who attended the Native American Literature Symposium (NALS) in Albuquerque in March. As Clan Mothers of NALS, they help to organize the symposium, arrange the book and vendor exhibit, confer literary awards, present papers, and mentor…

John Bowers (English) delivered the keynote presentation "Tolkien at Merton College" to the annual meeting of the Merton College Charitable Corporation convened at the Brooklyn Law School in April. He appeared at the invitation of the host, Nick Allard, dean of the Brooklyn Law School. Among the dignitaries present was the warden of Oxford's…

Erin Rinto (Libraries) participated in a panel at the 2015 Association of College & Research Libraries Conference titled "Integrating Information Literacy Into the Core Curriculum: Creating Sustainable Models," which discussed the integration of critical thinking and inquiry into general education programs.

Bing Zhang (Physics & Astronomy) received a $400,000 research grant from NASA's Astrophysics Theory Program. The grant is to support his research group in developing novel theoretical models of relativistic astrophysical jets in the magnetically dominated regime. The models will use a relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) code and conduct…

The UNLV Jazz Program took home several awards at the 2015 Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival in March. UNLV Jazz Ensemble I, conducted by Dave Loeb and Nathan Tanouye, received second place in the College Big Band Division, competing among some of the finest university jazz ensembles in the nation. The UNLV Latin Jazz Ensemble, directed by…

Cyndi Shein (Libraries) received the inaugural Best General Interest Article Award from the Journal of Western Archives (JWA) for her article "From Accession to Access: A Born-Digital Materials Case Study." This award honors the article published in the journal during the previous year that the JWA review board has determined to be most innovative…

Jordan Watkins (Graduate College) is the recipient of the Outstanding Dissertation Award. He is pursuing a doctoral degree in history. His dissertation is titled "Slavery, Sacred Texts, and the Antebellum Confrontation with History."

Nicole Thomas (Music) has been accepted to the Houston Grand Opera Young Artist Academy for summer 2015. A mezzo-soprano, she was accepted from a highly completive field of more than 1,000 singers. Singers are chosen by videotaped audition and recommendation only. The first UNLV student to be accepted into this program, she also was Nevada's first…