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The CU-Â鶹ӰԺ Alumni Association will present eight members of the university community with its highest honors during the 71st annual Alumni Awards on May 8. The awards ceremony will be held at 7 p.m. in Old Main and is free and open to the public.

A three dimensional, computerized human face that converses with hearing-impaired children using state-of-the-art speech recognition and speech generation technologies is showing students how to understand and produce spoken language. Developed with a three-year, $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant, the computer project could transform the way language is taught to hearing-impaired children, said University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ Professor Ron Cole.

On Saturday, March 17, Nikolay Malyshev, head of Russia's federal program on the application of information technologies to education, will tour high-tech classrooms at EduQuest, 1059 N. Yosemite St., Building 758, from noon to 2 p.m. on the site of the former Lowry Air Force Base.

The Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ will present a mock divorce trial between the rural and urban West on Sunday, March 25, in Denver. The program, sponsored by Common Ground - The Urban/Rural Connection, will be held from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Augustana Lutheran Church, 5000 E. Alameda Ave. in Denver. It is free and open to the public.

Lori Goodman has been appointed special scholars adviser at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ, a new position created to enhance student preparation in competing for well-known national or international scholarships such as the Rhodes, Truman, Goldwater or Marshall. The appointment was made by Michael Grant, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, and approved by CU-Â鶹ӰԺ Chancellor Richard Byyny.

Editors: The conference is open only to registered participants, but reporters and photographers are welcome to attend. Students, teachers and leaders, including astronaut and former U.S. Sen. John Glenn Jr., will gather in Denver for the 12th annual National Service Learning Conference being hosted by the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ and the Colorado Department of Education.

A seminar series on sustainable development will kick off a new initiative in "Earth Systems Engineering" by the department of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ. The first seminar, titled "Designing a Sustainable Future," by William A. Wallace, senior vice president of Ch2M Hill, will be held on Tuesday, March 20, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., in the Engineering Center at CU-Â鶹ӰԺ, Room ECCR 245. The seminar is free and open to the public.

Editors: A complete schedule is posted at: http://www.colorado.edu/law/cog . A national and international group of scholars, business leaders, diplomats and politicians will gather at the CU-Â鶹ӰԺ School of Law April 7-8 to examine the roles played by environmental non-profit, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and faith-based organizations in shaping domestic and international policy and law.

Calendar Item Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ will explore the dynamics of the solar system and the way it was shaped by millions of collisions in "Cosmic Collisions and Our Solar System," on Friday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. at the planetarium. The pre-recorded show travels back in time to the beginning of the solar system when the devastating impact of asteroids, comets and millions of chunks of floating debris reworked the surfaces of the planets.

Nikolay Malyshev, head of Russia's federal program on the application of information technologies to education, will visit three University of Colorado campuses and present a public talk during his March 14-19 visit. Malyshev is visiting Colorado as part of an effort to develop distance education in Russia in cooperation with leading schools and industries around the world.