Did You Know...?

For the 27th consecutive year, Wright State's National Model United Nations team continued its tradition of bringing home top honors from the National Model UN Conference in New York City. Representing India, Wright State won a first place award for top position paper and a third place award for honorable delegation.

Erin Elizabeth McConnell, a student in the Boonshoft School of Medicine, received her second consecutive first place award for poetry in the annual Creative Arts contest sponsored by the American Medical Student Association. Her poem Pool Days, which tells a story of childhood fun in the swimming pool, was published in The New Physician, a publication for future physicians' creative expressions.

Sean Graves, a Wright State student majoring in political science and philosophy, is the fall 2005 recipient of a Business Software Alliance scholarship. Each year, only three such scholarships are awarded nationally. During his internship with the Washington, D.C. public relations and lobbying firm of Palumbo and Cerrell Inc., Graves is working on intellectual property rights advocacy for creative works such as music, motion pictures and computer software.

Wright State's innovative First-Year Experience program is one of 13 such programs in the nation selected for the Foundations of Excelence in the First College Year project. The University College has served approximately 13,000 new Wright State students since its creation in 1999. Since then, the first-year retention rate has increased from 67 percent to 73 percent.

In 2005, for the third year in a row, undergraduate and graduate teams of students from the Raj Soin College of Business won top honors among 40 participating colleges and universities at the 21st annual National Case Competition sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Management. Wright State's Ethics Bowl team finished fifth among 40 universities competing in the National Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. This marked the fifth consecutive year for the Wright State team to finish in the top ten. They won the event in 2002.

Wright State is a leader in the number of graduates who live and work in Ohio, contributing to the growth of the state's economy. Fully two-thirds of its more than 75,000 graduates live in Ohio, with nearly half staying in the Miami Valley.

A team of Wright State students finished fourth out of 23 teams from the United States and around the world in the Aero Design East competition in Orlando, Fla. The competition challenges students to design, fabricate and test a radio-controlled aircraft that can take off and land while carrying the maximum cargo.

Nick Verina, a Wright State musical theatre student and Megan Midkiff, a 2001 Wright State graduate, are the first two winners of a national award from the Actors' Equity Assocation. The awards are presented to one male and female performer each year who have demonstrated outstanding ability in musical theatre.

Christian Duhamel, a Wright State senior majoring in acting and musical theatre, was one of eight students from around the nation selected for a fellowship from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Duhamel was recognized for his original musical, Reinventing Romance. He was invited to attend workshops and productions at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The men's swimming and diving team won its third straight Horizon League championship and its sixth since 1996 at the 2005 Horizon League Championships in Brown Deer, Wisc. The women's team finished second and has finished first or second in the conference for 14 consecutive years.

Christian Duhamel, a senior majoring in musical theatre, won the national student directing award from the Society for Stage Directors and Choreographers as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Duhamel wrote and directed Reinventing Romance: A Chamber Musical in Two Acts.

Senior Brynne Tilley has been named the top nursing student in the Eastern Region of the United States ROTC Cadet Command. Tilley was selected from among students at 140 colleges in the eastern half of the nation. The battalion commander for approximately 100 students in the Wright State program, Tilley is ranked 92nd out of 3,000 Army ROTC cadets in the nation.