Free and open to the public, the panel discussion begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Toyota Auditorium at Baker Center.

The panel discussion will be led by Glenn Reynolds, law professor and creator of Instapundit.com. He will provide an overview of the Fourth Amendment and then launch into the discussion about privacy and transparency.

Other panelists are:

• Suzi Allard, associate professor of information sciences, who will discuss the impact on her field of information science.
• Michael W. Berry, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Center for Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning, who will discuss data mining.
• Brandon Prins, professor of political science, who will discuss these issues from a global and national security perspective.

From 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., the Baker Center Ambassadors will take a copy of the Constitution to the Pedestrian Walkway and invite students to sign it. They also will have a copy in the center’s rotunda that students can sign from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. They will be handing out pocket-size copies of the Constitution.

C O N T A C T :

Nissa Dahlin-Brown (865-974-8681, nissa@utk.edu)

Former Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana will deliver the Ashe Lecture on August 27, and journalist and author Tom Brokaw will give the Baker Distinguished Lecture on November 13.

The center will highlight its first decade of work with an exhibit and reception in the Baker Center Rotunda on September 4.

“This is an exciting time for the Baker Center,” Director Matt Murray said. “Senator Baker, who celebrates his eighty-eighth birthday on November 15, wanted to create a place where the campus and community could learn more about major issues facing our country.

“He also envisioned a place where students and faculty could nurture a ‘think tank’ atmosphere and become a source of expertise in the national discussion. We’ve made great strides toward that goal, and we’re excited as we plan the center’s future, focusing especially on energy and environmental issues, governance, and global security.”

Here’s the fall lineup. Events are free and open to the public unless other noted:

August 27—1:30 p.m., Baker Center Toyota Auditorium—Lugar will present Ashe Lecture.

August 29—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—Joshua Fu, UT associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, will talk about modeling in climate change as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

September 4—4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Tenth anniversary reception will be held in the Baker Center Rotunda.

September 17—5:30 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—Constitution Day panel discussion will feature several UT faculty members: Suzie Allard, associate professor of information sciences; Michael Berry, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Center for Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning; Brandon Prins, associate professor of political science; and Glenn Reynolds, law professor.

September 26—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., 416 Dougherty Engineering Building—Jim Shortie, a professor at Penn State University, will talk about agricultural and environmental economics as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

October 12—10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Toyota Auditorium—Working in collaboration with UT and city officials, students will develop suggestions for a parking policy for the future renovated Cumberland Strip. Check bakercenter.utk.edu for more information about how to participate.

October 24—6:00 to 7:30 p.m, Toyota Auditorium—Panelists from several universities will discuss emerging challenges to global security.

October 24—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—J.B. Ruhl, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law at Vanderbilt University, will talk about environmental law as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

November 6—12:40 to 2:10 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—2013 Women’s Leadership Summit. The topic will be “Sustainable Quality of Life.” Co-sponsored by UT Center for Sustainable Business and Development.

November 13—1:30 p.m., University Center Auditorium—Tom Brokaw will give the Baker Distinguished Lecture. A Patrons Lunch will be held prior to the lecture. Cost is $250 per person and reservations are required. The free public lecture will be held at 1:30 p.m. in University Center Auditorium, 1502 Cumberland Avenue.

November 14—3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Toyota Auditorium—Bruce McCarl, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas A & M University, will talk about biofuels and climate change as part of the Baker Forum on Energy and the Environment.

Established in 2003, the Baker Center seeks to further the public’s knowledge of the US government and public policy and to encourage civil leadership and public service. The center sponsors programs to encourage informed discussion, with a special focus on engaging young people in policy issues and public service.

For more information about the Baker Center, visit bakercenter.utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Nissa Dahlin-Brown (865-974-8681, nissa@utk.edu)

Ayres Hall

Gordon Burghardt has received a research fellowship from Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry for the spring semester of 2014. The fellowship will allow him to pursue his research full-time. His research project, “Ritual, Play, and Animals as Formative Factors in Religious Experience and Moral Action,” focuses on snake handling in religious rituals.

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Matthew Cooper, assistant professor of psychology, has received a $200,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to identify neural mechanisms that mediate stress resilience. Cooper and his team will investigate the mechanisms by which previous social experience, such as the formation of dominance relationships, protects individuals against future stressful events. The research team’s goal is to discover novel targets for the treatment of stress-related mental illness. They will use Syrian hamsters in their study because most hamsters respond to social defeat stress with increased fear and anxiety. The study will be conducted over two years.

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Melanie Eldridge, research assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to carry out a research project in Brazil for the fall term of 2013. Eldridge will be studying ecotoxicology of silver nanoparticles on zebrafish and helping to establish a molecular biology lab in Limeira, Brazil, at the University of Campinas.

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Scott Frey, professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant for the fall term of 2013. He will study the adverse environmental, health, and socio-economic consequences of pesticide use under export-focused rice production in Vietnam. In addition to his research, Frey will lecture at the Vietnam National University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City on issues related to the environment and development. Frey is currently working on a book examining how and why hazardous products and wastes are displaced to the peripheral zones of the world economy.

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Rebecca Klenk, lecturer in Interdisciplinary Programs and affiliated faculty with the Department of Anthropology and the Disaster, Displacement, and Human Rights Program, has been awarded a Fulbright grant for the spring term of 2014. She will lecture and work with graduate students in the anthropology department at the University of Delhi. Along with teaching, she will develop new research on global educational restructuring and collaborate with colleagues in India to plan a project on community experiences of, and educational responses to, Himalayan climate change.

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Carole Myers, assistant professor of nursing, spoke to the Tennessee House of Representatives Health Committee and the Senate Health and Welfare Committee last month about the transformation of health care. She specifically spoke about the role of advanced practice nurse practitioners. Myers is the chairman of the Tennessee Nurses Association Government Affairs Committee.

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Dean Karen M. Sowers has been elected as a Distinguished Scholar Fellow in the National Academies of Practice. Distinguished practitioners, scholars, and policy fellows are elected by their peers from ten different health professions including dentistry, medicine, nursing, optometry, osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, podiatric medicine, psychology, social work, and veterinary medicine. The induction ceremony will be held next month.

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Kemper Talley, a graduate student in the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, will expand his computational physics portfolio this summer when he attends the ten-week Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), beginning in June. Talley will receive a generous fellowship from LANL to attend and is one of twenty-four students accepted to the program following a competitive selection process. He is a member of the inaugural class of the Bredesen Center and works with Physics Professor Witek Nazarewicz. Among this year’s workshop topics are turbulence modeling, algorithms for shock hydrodynamics, and energy minimization for nuclear fission. To read more, visit the Department of Physics and Astronomy website.

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Carol Tenopir, School of Information Sciences Chancellor’s Professor, along with associate professor Suzie Allard and doctoral student Ben Birch, have published a comprehensive white paper, “Academic Libraries and Research Data Services: Current Practices and Plans for the Future.” This research was conducted in conjunction with the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The publication may be viewed on the ALA website (pdf).

The grants were announced by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as two of the thirty-two Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grants totaling $10.3 million.

Bharat Mehra and Vandana Singh of UT’s School of Information Sciences (SIS) received a $478,258 grant for the continuation of the school’s Information Technology Rural Librarian Master’s Scholarship Program Phase II (ITRL2), which offers scholarships to thirteen rural librarians in the Appalachian region of the US, enabling them to earn master’s degrees in information sciences.

Mehra said the program is important in promoting information literacy in areas of the country that struggle with basic needs.

“With this grant, we can continue to help these librarians to better serve their rural, impoverished communities. Libraries are vital, local institutions that can help boost educational attainment and information literacy, which are critical to reducing poverty and unemployment.”

UT’s community partners in the scholarship program include the Clinch Powell Regional Library, the Fort Loudoun Regional Library, the Sevier County Public Library, and the Watauga Regional Library.

Ed Cortez and Suzie Allard of SIS and Bryan Heidom and Patty Overall of the University of Arizona received a $339,593 grant for the LaSCALA (Latino Scholars Cambio Leadership Academy) program. The grant will be used to recruit and educate four Hispanic/Latino doctoral students, with the goal of placing them in faculty positions around the country.

“The Hispanic population is particularly underserved in the information and library sciences area even though they are now the largest minority in the US,” Cortez said. “The goal of the LaSCALA program is to educate the next generation of information science professors to recruit and mentor Hispanic information science students. UT’s SIS is taking a leadership role in resolving this deficiency.”

The LaSCALA program is a collaboration between UT and the University of Arizona.

Learn more about the School of Information Sciences on the school’s website.

For more information on the grants and the IMLS, the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums, visit the IMLS website.

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C O N T A C T :

Donna Silvey (865-974-2148, dsilvey@utk.edu)

Scientific data is growing in scale and complexity across all scientific disciplines, which is leading to an increased need for professionals who specialize in scientific data curation research and education. The need for professionals specifically trained in the management and curation of scientific data is growing.

In response to this need, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provided funds to develop SciData as a two-year master’s program. Eight students with science background or interest in science data and information are now being recruited. They will study information sciences with courses designed to build specialties in digital data curation and an emphasis on scientific publishing, leading to a master’s degree in information sciences.

Students are now being recruited for a two-year degree program to begin August 2012. The student award and support includes:

• tuition cost coverage;
• stipend to study and work in the Knoxville area;
• laptop computer;
• health insurance;
• travel to England in the summer of 2013 for science e-publishing study; and
• practical experiences with science agencies.

The deadline for admission submissions for the SciData program is April 27. Potential students should go to scidata.sis.utk.edu/admissions to learn more about the program and its admission requirements.

The principal investigator on SciData is Suzie Allard, associate professor and associate director of the School of Information Sciences at UT. She is joined by co-principal investigators Carol Tenopir and Peiling Wang, both professors in the program with extensive science information expertise.

SciData’s partners include IMLS, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Information International Associates, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, and the Office of Scientific and Technical Information.

The School of Information Sciences is a part of the College of Communication and Information at the University of Tennessee. SIS is recognized nationally and internationally as an interdisciplinary program of excellence in the information sciences. Graduates of the school’s programs are knowledgeable, skillful, and ethical users of information and information technology in their educational, professional, and personal endeavors. For more information, visit www.sis.utk.edu.

IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. For more information, visit www.imls.gov.

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C O N T A C T :

Donna Silvey (865-974-2148, dsilvey@utk.edu)

This event, hosted by the Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center and McClung Museum, is one the special opportunities faculty can enjoy today as the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, celebrates Faculty Appreciation Week.

Night at the Museum begins at 5 p.m. with an hors d’oeuvres reception. Participants will experience the map exhibit in a fun way and learn how to use the museum within course pedagogy.

Please RSVP to tenntlc@utk.edu or call Kelly Ellenburg at 974-3807.

This morning, the Office of Development coordinated a “thank you” breakfast for faculty and staff who donated to the Campaign for Tennessee. This invitation-only event was hosted by Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek and sponsored by Aramark.

Today’s Faculty Appreciation Week stories focus on assistant professors Russell Crook and Marianne Wannamaker from the College of Business Administration; Associate Professor Kimberly Gwinn and Assistant Professor Bryan Patterson from the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources; associate professors Suzie Allard and Michael Palenchar from the College of Communication and Information; and Associate Professor Murray Marks from the Graduate School of Medicine.

Today’s video features Tony Award-winning actor John Cullum reminiscing about one of his favorite UT faculty members.

This is Faculty Appreciation Week, a time to celebrate faculty and their teaching, research and outreach. Their work is a big part of what makes the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the great university it is.

Today’s stories and video can be found on the Tennessee Today website. You can see all of the Faculty Appreciation Week stories and videos at http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/tag/faculty-appreciation-week-2011/.

Also this week, visit the Faculty “shout out” page to send your own thank you message to a favorite faculty member or read what others have written: http://www.utk.edu/faculty/appreciation/shout-out/.

Here are the special events planned for the rest of Faculty Appreciation Week:

Wednesday, Feb. 16

Faculty/staff celebration at Vols vs. S.C., 7 p.m. Thompson-Boling Arena. Faculty and staff can get $7 tickets by visiting http://www.uttix.com. Click on “Vols Tix” and then choose “Promotional Code.” Log in with UTEMPLOYEE. Complete the order. There is a $1.25 processing fee.

Thursday, Feb. 17

Interactive Faculty Luncheon, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Crest Room, University Center. The Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center and the Provost’s office are sponsoring this luncheon, which will feature TLC Director David Schumann discussing “Co-creation of Value in the Classroom: Building Partnerships that Enhance Student Learning.” Please RSVP to lsilvers@utk.edu.

Faculty/staff celebration at Lady Vols vs. S.C., 7 p.m. Thompson-Boling Arena. Faculty and staff can get $7 tickets by visiting http://www.uttix.com. Click on “Lady Vols Tix” and then choose “Promotional Code.” Log in with UTEMPLOYEE. Complete the order. There is a $1.25 processing fee.

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely, (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

Suzie Allard

Coach. Listener. Teacher.

Suzie Allard considers all of those roles as part of her job as associate professor and assistant director of the college’s School of Information Sciences.

“I see myself as a coach in the classroom, helping people discover their interests and their vision for the future and then helping them to build the knowledge base and acquire the skill set they need in order to achieve it, whether it’s in academia or in public libraries,” she said.

Imparting knowledge to her students is, of course, a vital part of what she does, Allard said, but it’s not a one-way street.

“I think teaching is a collaborative process. While I instruct students in areas related to my subject knowledge, the students also bring important things to the table so that, if we’re open to listening, we learn from them as well.”

Beyond the classroom, Allard does student academic advising and assists students with their research.

Before coming to UT Knoxville, Allard taught undergraduates at the University of Kentucky while earning her doctorate. Now she works with graduate students, some of whom are working toward their doctorates and other master’s candidates who are working toward professional careers. Many of the school’s graduates go on to work in the nation’s top public and academic libraries, as well as in a variety of information-intensive environments such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Michael Palenchar

You never know what problems you can encounter in public relations.

“One of the first media calls that I took as an entry-level practitioner was from a major-market, news-talk radio station,” said Michael Palenchar, an associate professor in the college’s School of Advertising and Public Relations and managing director of the Risk, Health and Crisis Communication Research Unit at UT.

Palenchar was working for a national nonprofit organization, and one of its prominent board members had just been shot during an on-air interview. Within minutes of the shooting, a reporter from the station where the shooting occurred was calling, wanting a response from Palenchar’s organization.

“I had no idea what to say. I was thinking, ‘Are we on the record? What did my journalism professors tell me to do in this situation? Did we ever talk about this kind of situation?’ But I gathered my composure, called my boss and legal, quickly constructed a response for the media, and hurried down to the station to assess the situation. At the end of the day I just had to solve the problem.” It all worked out, according to Palenchar. “The board member recovered, the media coverage was accurate, and no harm was done to the reputation of the organization.”

Palenchar said he now works to help public relations students do a better job of communicating in this challenging, complex and risky world.

Palenchar said it is critically important for his students to understand and be able to react to new and existing threats and potential crises.

“The work we do in public relations — and specifically in risk and crisis communication — has a daily impact on our society, so it’s my job to help students understand how important this work is to their local communities,” he said.

Palenchar worked in public relations for the oil and natural gas industry while earning his master’s and doctoral degrees and continues to consult with private industry and government agencies on risk communication, issues management and social media during a crisis.

The classroom, Palenchar said, is a place where learning and the mistakes that go along with learning are OK.

“I challenge my students to think beyond themselves and their experiences. This is about facilitating student learning, which includes learning to think critically, opening up to issues of diversity and to different ways of solving problems,” he said.

“At the end of the day, public relations is about helping organizations solve problems, so I try to get my students ready to be well-rounded, critically-thinking problem solvers.”

She’s not racking up miles on her car, though. She’s merely logging hours on her computer.

Waugh is among the growing number of students completing their advanced degrees at UT Knoxville via distance education.

The growth of UT Knoxville’s distance education program in the past 10 years has been dramatic. In the 2000-2001 academic year, there were 514 enrollments in distance education; in 2008-2009, there were 2,613. And this fall’s enrollment is up 328 over last fall. (The size is measured in enrollment, rather than students, because one student could be taking multiple classes.)

Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said he sees distance education as one way of expanding access to the university.

“We are a land-grant institution and we have a mission to serve all of the residents of Tennessee,” Cheek said. “Distance education helps us fulfill that mission.”

It also advances several of the strategic priorities he’s set for the UT Knoxville campus, including enhancing the educational experience for students and expanding outreach services.

Why is distance education becoming more popular?

George Hoemann, assistant dean for distance education and independent study, said the increase in online learning can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the increase in nontraditional students who want to pursue college degrees, the technology of high-speed Internet and the increase in home computer ownership. But the biggest factor, Hoemann believes, is convenience.

“Convenience is not a dirty word,” he said, “as long as convenience is coupled with quality.”

Distance education evolution

Hoemann has watched distance education evolve at UT Knoxville.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in history, Hoemann went to work as a research historian, coming to UT Knoxville in 1988 as associate editor of the Andrew Jackson Papers Project. When he decided to get his master’s degree in library science, he quit his job and attended UT Knoxville full-time for two years. After graduating he was recruited to manage continuing education — and later distance education — for the School of Information Sciences.

Distance education has been around at UT Knoxville for 20 years or more, Hoemann said. Over the years, it has involved paper-based “correspondence course,” videotapes that were shipped to students and “satellite campuses” where students gathered to hear faculty members lecture in person or via teleconference. Today, most distance education courses are offered online.

The School of Information Sciences, which offers the largest number of courses through distance education and currently has 155 people enrolled in those courses, is a good example of how distance education has changed over the years. The school began its distance education program in 1996 using video instruction at four sites in Virginia (Charlottesville, Roanoke, Falls Church and Virginia Beach) and four sites across Tennessee (Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga and Kingsport). Students would have to travel to one of those satellite classrooms, where they would participate in a live video conference. Exams were taken at the remote site and were mailed to Knoxville.

If the technology failed, a videotape of the lecture would be mailed to the students.

The School of Information Sciences offered its first complete course over the Internet in 1999 and, in 2000, admitted the first cohort of students into a fully Web-based distance education degree program.

Today, across UT Knoxville, 21 programs that lead to a degree or certificate are offered via distance education and, at present, all but one is at the graduate level. The undergraduate program is one that registered nurses take as they seek to earn their BSN, although there are ongoing discussions about adding more undergraduate-level programming to the distance education lineup.

“Distance education is not for everyone and not for every program,” Hoemann said, although he said technology may evolve to the point that anything may be possible — if faculty and students are comfortable with it.

At UT Knoxville, degree programs and courses offered via distance education are the same as the degree programs on campus, taught by the same faculty and governed by the same academic standards and regulations.

‘New-fashioned way’

In many respects, Waugh is the classic online student.

She’s 47, works full-time and is working on a degree to help her advance in her career.

“This is not my first rodeo,” Waugh said, adding that she earned her first master’s degree, in medical ethics, “the old-fashioned way”: She commuted to the University of Virginia.

The master’s degree she’s working on now, because it builds on what she’s already doing, is perfect for her to do online. In fact, she said, “I’m best served if working because my employment experience augments my educational experience.”

Waugh is hoping the specialized training this new degree provides will help her fulfill her dream of becoming a consumer health librarian. Her goal is to start her own business or work in a cancer center.

She’s taken two courses per semester since the fall of 2007 and is on target to graduate in December 2009.

How it works

To go to class, Waugh logs onto her computer at 6:30 p.m. three times a week. Each night, she spends three hours of live “synchronous learning” via a software program called Centra.

Waugh and her classmates around the country and around the world — one of Waugh’s classmates is in India — watch on-screen presentations and hear their instructor lecture via the computer speakers. They are able to “raise their hands” with a mouse click and speak to each other through their computer microphone. They can even react to what’s said with “emoticons,” computer symbol faces with smiles, frowns and other expressions.

Waugh’s thesis is going to be titled “Cooperation in the Commonwealth,” and it will focus on partnerships formed between medical libraries and public libraries to provide the general public with access to cutting-edge health information. She will come to the UT Knoxville campus to defend her thesis. Other than that, the work will be done online.

Associate Professor Suzie Allard is her adviser and they converse frequently via e-mail and phone.

Allard said faculty in the School of Information Sciences usually teach at least one online class as part of their regular course load.

When they first begin online instruction, instructors have the same apprehension as students, she said.

“I wondered if I could teach without students in front of me,” Allard said. “Once you do one class, though, you get the hang of it. It’s very intuitive. It’s amazing.”

One big benefit, Allard said, is that she’s able to continue teaching even when she’s traveling. She just logs on to her computer from her hotel room and teaches like usual.

Waugh, who had to upgrade from dial-up to broadband when she started her online degree, said she’s had no problems accessing her distance education courses — except for the time her cat jumped on her lap during a class and clicked off her microphone.

“Call that ‘user error,’” she said.

But it’s not just the technology that has made Waugh’s experience so good.

“I have been blown away by the quality of instruction I have gotten from this department,” she said. “Every professor I’ve had has challenged me to think outside the box.

“I just so appreciate the convenience and the quality. You usually have to sacrifice something. But this program seems to have it all.”

For more about distance education at UT, see http://distance.utk.edu.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely, (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

The project is called DataONE, with ONE being short for Observation Network for Earth. The mission of DataONE is to enable new science and knowledge creation through universal access to data about life on earth and the environment that sustains it. Its challenge is to set up the infrastructure through which communities of researchers worldwide can share data to make new discoveries that improve life.

UT’s participants include School of Information Sciences Professors Carol Tenopir and Suzie Allard, and Bruce Wilson, who holds a joint appointment with UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Maribeth Manoff and Eleanor Read of UT Libraries; and UT research associate Mike Frame.

The principal investigator for DataONE is William Michener of the University of New Mexico. A host of other organizations — including ORNL, other universities, and coalitions of scientists, libraries and computing groups nationwide — are part of the team. Each entity will receive its own funding, with the entire DataONE project getting a total of about $20 million.

Mike Wirth, dean of the College of Communication and Information, called the project “the Star Trek of information science,” and said UT’s inclusion in it reflects the cutting-edge research in information science that’s being done on campus.

Allard, who expects to devote about a fourth of her work time to the project for the next five years, said DataONE’s challenge is to learn how scientists from many domains gather and label their data, then identify and develop tools, including software that will allow scientists to more easily access, interpret and use each other’s research. Additionally, Allard said, “DataONE’s support for collaboration between libraries, information researchers and scientists provides new strategies to answer these challenges.”

The end result, Tenopir said, will be “a framework that allows scientists to make better use of the data that’s being gathered worldwide to solve the world’s environmental problems.”

The DataONE team also will study how a vast digital data network can be kept safe and how it can be accessed into the future so scientists can continue to use the data and get credit for the work they’ve done. They also must help determine data standards, the best tools for using data, where such a data network will be kept and who is responsible for it.

The National Science Foundation plans to establish five DataNet partners or collaborations, with DataONE being one of the first two funded.

For more on the NSF DataNet project, see http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07601/nsf07601.htm.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely, (865-974-5034, ablakely@tennessee.edu)