Eric Townsend

John G. Currin Jr., president and chief executive officer of Alamance Regional Medical Center and ARMC Healthcare since 2005, was honored at a June 22 campus luncheon with the Frank S. Holt, Jr. Business Leadership Award, Elon University’s highest honor for business leadership.

The Elon University Board of Trustees has approved the establishment of a master of science program in physician assistant studies. The board's vote at its Oct. 22-23 fall meeting will launch Elon’s sixth graduate program.

A new undergraduate exchange program created this month between Elon University and Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey, will allow students to study abroad in a part of the world steeped with culture, history and art at a time when academic interest in the Middle East is blossoming.

Whitewater rafting, hiking, camping and rock climbing in West Virginia were on the docket this month for 64 incoming first-year students as part of Adventures in Leadership, a summer experience for rising freshmen sponsored by the Center for Leadership and Campus Recreation.

For the first time since their creations in 2008, incoming Watson and Odyssey Scholars took part this week in a specially designed orientation program that introduces the academically talented students with financial need, or no family history of college, to resources available to them as Elon University students.

From researching new chemical methods of detecting explosives, to the mathematical modeling on synapses related to epileptic seizures, Elon University students taking part in a summer research program shared their work July 22 in a series of morning presentations that showcased a variety of academic disciplines from across campus.

Issues in Political Economy, the undergraduate research journal published jointly by the economics departments at Elon University and the University of Mary Washington, recently published its 20th anniversary volume.

Elon University is one of four institutions in North Carolina awarded funding this summer from the North Carolina Preservation Consortium to help preserve library materials, manuscripts and other special collections – which, for the university, includes dozens of scrapbooks compiled by students and other campus organizations over the past century.

It’s no longer enough to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. Teachers must also emphasize “the four Cs” - critical thinking, creative problem solving, collaboration and communication, said Michelle Shearer, the 2011-12 National Teacher of the Year who addressed hundreds of North Carolina Teaching Fellows visiting Elon University for a weekend conference for college seniors throughout the state studying to be educators.

The youngest scholars spoke on the habits of highly effective teenagers, while those a year older focused on how the Elon Academy has changed their lives. The eldest of the Elon Academy students who presented to classmates, parents and educators on Friday evening? They read from the first drafts of admissions essays that will be used this fall to apply for college educations many once thought were out of reach.