• Learning Program Receives Silver Award Learning Program Receives Silver Award The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District V honored the "Learn with Us" initiative at the University of Notre Dame with a 2004 Silver Award in the collaborative programs category. Associate Professor J. Keith Rigby Jr., Jacquelyn Rucker, and Jaime Cripe developed the program as an outreach effort to local under-represented youth. The first project in the series -- which will feature activies in archaeology, fine arts, music, and history and be led by University scholars -- showcased dinosaurs. Approximately 25 students from the Robinson Community Center were able to view casts of the head and teeth of "Peck’s T-Rex," one of the largest specimens of tyrannosaurus ever found. Rigby unearthed the skeleton in northeast Montana near the Fort Peck Reservoir in 1997. University guides led the children, who ranged in age from kindergarten to sixth grade, in a pseudo dinosaur dig. Other activities incorporated into the program included reviewing dinosaurs in art, discussing books on paleontology, visiting dinosaur Web sites, and viewing the Discovery Kids Channel program "Bonehead Detectives of the Paleo World," as well as a news report on Rigby’s initial discovery of the skeleton. A faculty member since 1982, Rigby has discovered several dinosaur fossils in Montana. He teaches historical geology, sedimentation and stratigraph, and surficial processes. Rucker is director of the Office of Community Relations, and Cripe is the assistant director of the Eck Visitors’ Center. CASE is the largest international association of educational institutions in the world, serving more than 3,200 universities and related organizations in 45 countries. District V encompasses Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin and serves 462 institutions. [back to top]