Newsbriefs

May 23, 2000

Daily Staff Writer

Melsa named to library board

Iowa State’s College of Engineering Dean James Melsa has been named to the Board of Trustees of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association in West Branch.

The appointment recognizes Melsa’s interest in Hoover’s career as a mining engineer. Melsa had previously been involved with the Hoover Uncommon Student Award, which honors Iowa high school juniors.

Melsa has been at Iowa State since 1995. He previously served 10 years as vice president at Tellabs, Inc., in Lisle, Ill.

From 1973 to 1984, Melsa was employed by Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind. as chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering.

—Tara Payne

ISU receives grants from Department of Energy

Two grants totaling $600,000 have been awarded to Iowa State from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy.

Iowa State qualified for the grants as a part of the Office of Fossil Energy’s 1999 University Coal Research national competition.

One of the grants awarded was about $400,000, which will be used for a joint project with the University of South Carolina. The project involves converting sulfur dioxide pollutants from the burning of coal into a chemical compound used in water purification facilities.

The other grant, which is about $200,000, will be used by Iowa State to research the reduction of sulfur contaminants from transportation fuels made from coal.

—Heidi Jolivette

Sellers, Adelante fraternity settle lawsuit

The wrongful death lawsuit against Adelante fraternity, 318 Welch Ave., was settled last week for an undisclosed amount of money.

The suit stemmed from the murder of Harold “Uri” Sellers, who was stabbed to death outside the fraternity during Veishea1997. His father, Bill Sellers of Monroe, filed the lawsuit in 1998.

Uri Sellers wasn’t an ISU student, nor were the two men arrested in connection to his death. Michael Runyan of Fort Dodge is serving a life sentence without parole, and Luke Abrams of Fort Dodge received a lesser sentence for testifying against Abrams.

The settlement will replace a trial set for this week, provided a Jasper County probate judge approves the deal.

Warren Madden, ISU vice president for Business and Finance, said he hopes the settlement will mark the end of the healing process for the fraternity and Sellers’ family.

“I hope we are now coming to closure,” Madden said, “and this [settlement] would be the last chapter.”