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In December, the IU Southeast Alumni Association joined with Hope Southern Indiana and Our Place Drug & Alcohol Awareness Services for a night of service and giving back to the community. Alumni and students spent a few hours helping both programs prepare for their holiday season by wrapping gifts and preparing food baskets.

IU Southeast has a new monument.

Named “Veterans for Peace,” the large-scale, original artwork combines veterans’ portraits and keepsake photos with images of iconic monuments and events to honor the roles military service personnel has played throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Local and student veterans worked with Susanna Crum, assistant professor of fine art, and Mariana Grohowski, assistant professor of English, to create the mural during the summer of 2017.

Grohowski, whose father is a veteran and whose research centers on veterans studies (she founded the Journal of Veterans Studies, the first scholarly journal dedicated to this field), initiated the process that led to the mural last year. She contacted Ehren Reed, outreach programs manager at Louisville Visual Art, a nonprofit dedicated to improving lives through visual art education, community outreach, and artist support, to explore possible collaborations around veterans themes. Coincidentally, LVA had been contemplating something in this direction. Reed had what she calls a “light-bulb moment,” and created a proposal for a crowd-funded ArtsMatch grant through the Fund for the Arts that would support a “Veterans for Peace” mural project. The proposal partnered IU Southeast student veterans with the Kentucky chapter of the National Association of Black Veterans and Peace Postcards.

“The addition of IU Southeast student veterans group to our project offers an exciting new opportunity for us to reach out the greater veteran community,” Reed wrote at the time. “The Veterans for Peace mural is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to engage local veterans in a hands-on visual art project to not only celebrate their service but also to depict their vision for peace.”

The proposal garnered enough support from the community to enable two projects, one in Louisville and one that would become the Veterans for Peace mural at IU Southeast.

Grohowski reached out to veterans on campus and in the community, to solicit stories, photographs and other artifacts of military service, and to invite veterans to participate in the creation of the mural.

With Crum and Grohowski acting as facilitators, the collaborating veterans hammered out a concept based on the American flag, overlaid with silhouettes of nations where other contributing veterans have been deployed, such as Iraq and Vietnam, and including their photographs. Moments and memories of those conflicts—helicopters taking off, comrades carried on stretchers, vintage tanks—are interspersed with the portraits and snapshots to fix the chronology and connect families, both veteran families and the larger family of the military, across generations.

Grohowski is proud of the final product.

“What I love, and what I hope people take away, are the layers and stories,” Grohowski said. “I hope it facilitates a dialogue and brings more community to the location.”

Indiana University Southeast has received a $200,000 implementation grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to enhance its School Counseling program, provide services to area schools and facilitate school-community partnerships, all with a larger goal of improving academic, college, career and social and emotional outcomes for K-12 students in southern Indiana.

The grant is part of the Endowment’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative, a 5-year initiative designed to increase the number of K-12 students in Indiana who are emotionally healthy; realize academic success; graduate from high school; obtain valuable postsecondary credentials, certifications and degrees; and are prepared to compete and prosper in a global society.

“We could not be more excited or more grateful for this opportunity,” said project director Mary Bradley, associate professor of education and coordinator of the IU Southeast School Counseling program. “The needs of area students are great. This grant will allow us to not only strengthen our own counselor preparation program, but also engage schools and the community in meeting student and workforce needs. Through this grant, we expect new partnerships and systems to emerge that will provide much-needed support to area counselors, students, schools and parents.”

The grant will fund school counseling curriculum revisions to reflect current best practices in college and career readiness. Among other skills, students will learn to design, implement and evaluate a comprehensive, progressive college and career readiness program in their schools that will address student and parent needs from the elementary level to senior year.

The grant will also fund professional development for area school counselors and administrators, paid and enhanced internships for IU Southeast graduate students in area schools, college-career readiness events for parents and students, and work with business, nonprofit and community stakeholders to address school counseling and college and career readiness needs at local and regional levels.

Following an initial planning grant, the funded implementation project was developed in dialogue with school districts and school counselors from Clark and Floyd Counties. Clarksville Community Schools, New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated Schools, West Clark Community Schools and Jeffersonville High School contributed to the final grant proposal and will serve as partners on the project, assisting with implementation and evaluation.

IU Southeast also convened a listening session with area business and workforce development leaders to gain input on the project, discuss student and workforce needs and explore future collaboration to support area counseling programs.

“The Comprehensive Counseling Initiative holds tremendous promise for improving student outcomes in southern Indiana and enhancing the civic and economic well-being of our region and our state,” said IU Southeast Chancellor Ray Wallace. “We are delighted to be a part of it and eager to engage area business, workforce development and nonprofit communities to help our schools address critical needs.”

The IU Southeast Master of Science in Education with a major in school counseling is a comprehensive, 45-credit-hour program. Candidates complete a minimum of 375 hours of clinical practice in local schools, working closely with licensed school counselors, administrators, teachers, staff and parents to provide individual and group counseling, family services, support for English Language Learners and college and career exploration services. Approved by the Indiana State Department of Education, the IU Southeast Counseling program meets the professional requirements of the Council for the Accreditation of Education Programs (CAEP), and each course aligns with the Indiana Content Standards for School Counselors.

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family – J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons J.K. Jr. and Eli – through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana.

Indiana University Southeast is proud to announce four recipients of the 2018 Chancellor’s Medallion.

Dr. Dan Eichenberger, president and CEO of Baptist Health Floyd, Kent Lanum, president and CEO of the Ogle Foundation, and Denny and Dot Ott, founders and owners of Clarksville construction company Dennis Ott & Co. Inc., will be honored April 7, 2018, at the Chancellor’s Medallion Dinner at Horseshoe Southern Indiana.

The Chancellor’s Medallion is the highest honor presented by the Chancellor of IU Southeast. It is given to individuals who have rendered distinguished service to the university and to the community; have given their talents in the promotion of human welfare and community well-being; and who, through their integrity, sensitivity, and commitment, serve as models for students and alumni of IU Southeast. To date, 45 of these awards have been presented.

Dr. Dan Eichenberger is president and CEO of Baptist Health Floyd and the original founder of Physician Associates of Floyds Knobs.

Eichenberger’s first job at Floyd Memorial was in environmental services at the age of 15 in 1978. He continued working as an orderly and an Emergency Room technician during high school and college to complete a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Indiana University Southeast. He then graduated from the University of Louisville School of Medicine and received an M.B.A. in Healthcare Management from Indiana Wesleyan University.

Eichenberger was named CEO of Floyd Memorial Hospital in 2015. He oversaw the swift merger of Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services with Baptist Health in October 2016.

Outside of his work at Baptist Health Floyd, Eichenberger sits on the boards of One Southern Indiana, Indiana Hospital Association Council on Government Relations, Kleinert Kurtz Hand Center, Southern Indiana Rehab Hospital, the Windsor Society and Align Southern Indiana. He was honored with the 2015 One Southern Indiana ACE Professional of the Year Award and the 2000 Pfizer Indiana Quality of Care Award.

Eichenberger and his wife, Stephanie, have been married nearly 35 years and have four children, Daniel, Jacob, Sally, and Stuart, along with 12 grandchildren. Eichenberger is devout in his faith and has facilitated Christian apologetics conferences in the Kentuckiana region.

Kent Lanum has served as the president & CEO of the Paul Ogle Foundation since 2007.

He holds a B.A. in Economics from DePauw and an M.B.A. and M.A. in Computer Resources & Information Management from Webster University.

Lanum is currently chairman of the board for 1804, Inc., and the River Heritage Conservancy. He is also a board member for the Indiana Grantmakers Alliance, a director of One Southern Indiana and a director for Endeavor Louisville. Lanum’s community leadership has been recognized with a number of honors, including the 2014 National Distinguished Leadership Award from the Association of Leadership Program, the 2013 Indiana Distinguished Leadership Award, and the 2013 Business Professional of the Year by One Southern Indiana.

His past service includes a term as chairman of the board for Leadership Southern Indiana, a founding member and past director of Velocity Indiana, a past member of the board of directors for the Indiana Philanthropic Alliance and two 4-year terms on the Indiana Governor’s Regional Works Council.

Lanum is a lifelong resident of southern Indiana area, where he resides with his wife, Dalene, and their son Reagan William.

Denny and Dot Ott are the husband-and-wife founders and owners of Clarksville construction company Dennis Ott & Co. Inc. Denny Ott attended IU Southeast in the days it was known as the Indiana University Jeffersonville Extension Center and completed his education at IU Bloomington in 1968.

Shortly after founding their construction company in 1973, Dennis Ott began giving back to his alma mater – supporting the IU Southeast School of Business, the Well House Society and Indiana University Athletics.

Ott was appointed to the IU Southeast Board of Advisors in 2015, where he serves on the Development Committee. He also serves on the IU Southeast Athletics Department Champions Dinner committee. In 2017, he and Dot committed $50,000 to establish the D. Ott Family Scholarship to support IU Southeast student-athletes.

Dot Ott started Dennis Ott & Co. Inc. alongside her husband before moving on to open her own construction company, Ott & Company. She is devoted to the development of children and young adults in the community, and she has volunteered at the Epilepsy Foundation, Boys and Girls Club, American Cancer Society Relay for Life, Our Lady of Providence and St. Anthony’s Catholic School theatre programs.

She has served on the Rauch, Inc. Board of Advisors and the Salvation Army Advisory Board, and she has dedicated much of her time to the Angel Tree Program. The Salvation Army has honored Dot Ott with the 2014 Service to Mankind Award and the 2017 Lifetime Service Award.

Denny and Dot Ott live in Jeffersonville and have three children, Deborah, Denise and Laura.

The Chancellor’s Medallion Dinner will be held Saturday, April 7, 2018, at Horseshoe Southern Indiana. Proceeds from the Chancellor’s Medallion Dinner benefit the Chancellor’s Medallion Scholarship program.

For ticket information and sponsorship opportunities, contact the IU Southeast Office of Development at 812-941-2464.