This year's event featured a record 54 participants presenting on topics from Anthropology to Women's Studies.  The posters were judged by teams of faculty.  Concurrently, students who entered science and engineering posters in the Symposium were considered for an award from Sigma Xi.

 
Monetary prizes were awarded to Symposium winners:

  

First Prize: Irene Gichungeh, Department of Public Policy
Faculty sponsor: Dr. Ae-Sook Kim
Do nonprofit nursing homes perform better than for-profit nursing homes? Empirical evidence in Indiana

Second Prize: Jessica Schein, Department of Biology
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. George Mourad
The nucleobase cation symporter 1 of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and that of the evolutionarily distant Arabidopsis thaliana display parallel function and establish a plant-specific solute transport profile

Third Prize: Elizabeth Tobin (Jenkins), Department of Psychology
Faculty Sponsor: Michelle Drouin
Sexting: A New Route to Sexual Coercion?

The winner of the People's Choice award was selected by Symposium visitors:

 
People's Choice Award: Nicholas Lawrence, Department of Marketing/Management
Faculty sponsor: Dr. Nichaya Suntornpithug
Department stores: organizational culture, customer survey and employee empowerment

The awards presentation included remarks by Chancellor Vicky L. Carwein, Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Steven T. Sarratore, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, Engagement, and Sponsored Programs
Jihad Albayyari.

The student posters will be available for viewing on Opus, IPFW's open-access repository.  Inclusion in Opus will provide students a permanent site for their work and a stable URL to use on resumes and applications.

  

At the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries conference this month, IPFW librarian Brandon Bowen presented the ten most popular apps from the U.S. Government.  Here are the best choices for the iPad - and they're all free!
 
 NASA: This robust app is a veritable NASA library, with information about current and past missions, more than 11,000 images, on-demand and live streaming videos, orbit and satellite trackers, and more.  
 
U.S.P.S. Mobile: Find a Post Office, calculate shipping prices, schedule pickups, hold your mail, and track packages with this easy-to-use app. It's simpler than usps.com and quicker than visiting the post office in person.
 
The White House: The official White House app brings news and media from the West Wing, including  photo and video archives and live streams of significant events.  The White House blog includes historical information and commentary, while the Briefing Room section includes the latest press releases.
 
First Aid by the American Red Cross: A fantastic resource for learning about first aid or referencing help for emergencies, this app includes simple, illustrated instructions for common first-aid scenarios, safety tips and videos, interactive quizzes, and full integration with 9-1-1 in case you need to reach a paramedic.

  

The documents that make up important parts of America's history can be difficult to find.  For example, if you were interested in reading the text of the Virginia Plan, or really wanted to see what the Check for the Purchase of Alaska looked like, where would you go?  An excellent place to find documents like these is ourdocuments.gov, a cooperative effort by the National Records and Archives Administration, the USA Freedom Corps, and National History Day. Here researchers can view high-quality scans and transcripts, as well as read the historical background on each item.

There are 100 milestone documents available at ourdocuments.gov, which are easily navigable.  The materials are in chronological order from the Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and all, "have helped shape the national character," of the United States.  Besides the features that are essential for researchers, like the high-quality photos and transcripts, another useful aspect is the Tools for Educators, which provides resources on using the documents in the classroom (or the library).  The Related Sources also pulls together online resources that vary from other teaching websites to the Library of Congress' American Memory Collection.  Though it may appear to be geared towards students in the K-12 age range, ourdocuments.gov has something for every U.S. documents researcher.