Eric Townsend

An organization that helps universities across North Carolina develop an ethos of volunteerism and service among students has awarded Mary Morrison, director of the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement at Elon University, its 2011 Civic Engagement Professional of the Year Award.

With the growing number of Spanish-speaking patients who visit emergency rooms and doctors’ offices across the country, medical professionals often confront language barriers that can hinder treatment. Public health researchers have taken note, and a new introductory Spanish textbook authored by Elon University professor Ernest Lunsford takes aim at the problem.

Elon University students started a fundraising drive this week to aid victims of the March earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. The same students are gathering messages of support from the community that will be translated into Japanese and delivered abroad to survivors whose lives have been upended by the natural disasters.

Assistant professor Prudence Layne presented at the 35th annual National Council for Black Studies conference held March 16-19 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Advances in stem cell research have given medical researchers even more hope that organs such as kidneys and livers grown outside the body will in the next few years be an option to help patients awaiting transplants, according to a world-renowned researcher and surgeon who lectured March 26 at Elon University as the keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the North Carolina Academy of Science.

Dozens of Elon University students are taking part in Alternative Break service trips this month to destinations across the United States, the Caribbean and in France. The programs were organized by the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement, the Truitt Center for Religious & Spiritual Life, and the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.

Elon University’s Teaching Fellows hosted a panel discussion on March 10 where past students shared their professional pathways and explained how they had achieved their places of leadership.

Elon University welcomes this week hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students from 23 colleges and universities for a four-day dance festival that includes classes, workshops, panels and performances, all centered around the theme of the intersection of dance, theater and multimedia.

Elon University has collected more than 36,000 pounds of material in the first five weeks of the national RecycleMania 2011 contest and is currently in 9th place in North Carolina for the total amount saved from landfills.