The Board of School Trustees of the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation will meet in

executive session at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, April 29, 2024, in the Schroeder Conference Centre located

in the EVSC Administration Building, 951 Walnut, IN 47713, Evansville, IN. The session will be

conducted according to Senate Enrolled Act 313, Section 1, I.C. 5-14-1.5-6.1, as amended. The purpose

of the meeting is: initiation of litigation or litigation that is either pending or has been threatened

specifically in writing, (b)(2)(B); purchase or lease of property, (b)(2)(D); and job performance

evaluation of individual employees (b)

The newly established Indiana Center for Emerging Technologies was awarded $50,000 in prize money for equitable access to entrepreneurship support

EVANSVILLE, IND. (04/23/2024) Today, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the Indiana Center for Emerging Technologies (ICET) as a Stage One winner for the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC). The ICET is a collaboration between Evansville, Indiana’s Circular Venture Lab and the University of Evansville’s Center for Innovation and Change (CIC). The ICET will receive a $50,000 cash prize for its impactful and inclusive approach to nurturing a collaborative innovation ecosystem that will advance small business research and development (R&D) from ideas to the market.

By fostering connections between entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, philanthropies, corporations, investors, and other shared resources, GAFC 2024 catalyzes strategic ecosystem partnerships to build community and organizational capacity for the successful launch, growth, and scale of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)-based entrepreneurs. This opportunity will include funding for ChangeLab interns from UE and within the Evansville Promise Neighborhood, providing young people the resources needed to grow their entrepreneurial mindset.

Logan Jenkins, Executive Director of Circular Venture Lab, states, “The ICET empowers Indiana’s talent to research, evaluate, and validate the market potential of emerging technologies. The Center will catalyze a new economic development model, where technology innovations are researched and applied. Students, industry leaders, and academia will collaborate to build new ventures and create spinoffs. Early validation of the concept through GAFC 2024 significantly bolsters our chances for success regionally and across Indiana.”

Erin Lewis, the Executive Director of UE’s Center for Innovation & Change remarked, “This collaboration between the CIC and Circular Venture Lab has now received its third federal award in five months; two from the U.S. Department of Energy, and now a third from the U.S. Small Business Administration. We’re incredibly excited about that investment in our vision for inclusive access to entrepreneurial support, and look forward to sharing progress in the coming months.”

Two Stages

SBA welcomed Stage One submissions from a broad range of organizations with a collaborative vision to nurture a national ecosystem for equitable access to entrepreneurship. Winners of Stage One were selected through a multi-tier review panel process with experts in entrepreneurship, business, innovation, and strategic planning both inside and out of the federal government.

Stage Two offers an additional $50,000 to $150,000 in cash prizes for Growth Accelerator Partnerships.

To learn more about Stage Two opportunities and to access the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition Guidelines, please visit https://www.americasseedfund.us/accelerators.

About the Indiana Center for Emerging Technologies (ICET):

From inequity and climate change, to supporting national defense and community-driven economic prosperity, the real opportunity is now to build up innovation ecosystems and the ICET is eager to deepen its collaborative impact in National Defense and Economic Security. The ICET is a collaboration between Evansville, Indiana’s nonprofit 501(c)(3) Circular Venture Lab and the University of Evansville’s Center for Innovation and Change. The concept includes a centralized network and facility in Evansville to support our region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, which serves multiple purposes:

Collaboration Hub

The Indiana Center for Emerging Technologies (ICET) is a resource for industry leaders to explore collaborations between academia, government research agencies, and Indiana manufacturers.

Talent Attraction

The facility will attract new entrepreneurs and new industries, spur the creation of new startups and spinoffs, and help retain our current entrepreneurial talent.

Industry Showcase

The ICET allows our regional technological capabilities and strengths to be showcased in a physical space, serving a multitude of economic development purposes. More details and ways to contact the team can be found at the Center’s website.

The University of Southern Indiana New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art (NHGCA) will host a group exhibition Residence VIII, in partnership with New Harmony Clay Project, Saturday, April 27 through Saturday, June 1. The exhibition features ceramic works by recent residents of New Harmony Clay Project: Tom Belden, Katie Botterman, Audra Lynn Clayton, Christie Cooper, Gary Greenberg, Alex Lewis, Autumn McKay and Greg Van Dusseldorp. An opening reception will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 27 at the Gallery and is open to the public at no charge.

Works on display indicate the rich span of contemporary artistic approaches to working in ceramics today. The exhibit features life size sculptures alongside works embracing contrasting elements of abstraction and figuration. Residence VIII offers cutting-edge insight into the styles and techniques of contemporary artists and explores new concepts and frameworks for expanding the medium.

Belden is currently retired from teaching, but he continues to produce his own art works and does workshops around the country in ceramic art and kiln construction. Belden acquired his Bachelor of Science in Art Education at the University of Wisconsin/Stout and Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics at Arizona State University. He taught drawing, painting, ceramics, art history, design and sculpture for 41 years at the university level. He taught at Arizona State University, Kentucky State University, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Mesa Community College and Central Arizona College. Additionally, he was the Department Head at two of those institutions and Director of the Art Galleries at two others.

Katie Botterman is a ceramic artist and instructor working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio University. Notable exhibitions include Rendered Fusion: Clay, Connection, Attention NCECA Annual 2024 at the Harnett Museum of Art in Richmond, Virginia, and ORIGIN, juried by Kensuke Yamada at Baltimore Clayworks, Baltimore, Maryland. Botterman currently works as a ceramics instructor in her hometown at the North Hills Art Center where she shares her love of clay with others while pursuing her own new works.

Audra Lynn Clayton has been a practicing potter for over 20 years. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she is excited about functional work, sculpture and atmospheric firings. Her sculptural work explores people and their places. She is the Studio Arts Manager at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media, where she finds great joy in facilitating opportunities for the artists there to thrive.

Christie Cooper received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2011 at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Cooper majored in ceramics and minored in art history. While at Indiana University she studied with Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Tim Mather and Christyl Boger. In addition to making and exhibiting work she has worked as a ceramics instructor since 2011.

Gary “Greeny” Greenberg has been involved with ceramics for more than 52 years. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State, which has resulted in his current position as Assistant Professor Art/Ceramics and former department chair at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, for the last 30 years.

Alex Lewis is currently based out of Columbus, Ohio. In 2021, Lewis received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics with a minor in art history from Otterbein University, Westerville, Ohio. He received his Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 2023. He has exhibited in the United States and in Canada.

Autumn McKay is a ceramic artist from Louisville, Kentucky. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Louisville and was selected to be a part of the first cohort of the Hadley Creatives grant program in Louisville, Kentucky. She received a grant from the Great Meadows Foundation that assisted her travels to Vallauris, France, where she was a resident artist at A.I.R Vallauris for three months. After returning to the United States, McKay accepted a short residency at HOBA house in the Portland neighborhood of Louisville. In 2021, she was accepted into the post-baccalaureate program at Indiana University Southeast.

Greg Van Dusseldorp is a studio artist that works in 2D & 3D formats, with clay and paint being the primary materials. He received his Bachelor of Arts in art from Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Greg received his Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics/Drawing at the University of Iowa’s School of Art and Art History. He studied ceramics under the guidance of Chuck Hindes, Clary Illian and Bunny McBride. Greg has been a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and Red Lodge Clay Center. He has taught ceramics as a Visiting Professor at Kent State University for Kirk Mangus and as an adjunct at The University of Iowa’s School of Art & Art History. He was also an Assistant Professor of Art at Iowa Wesleyan College. Greg exhibits nationally and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

The NHCP is an artist residency and educational center located at the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Ceramic Studio in historic New Harmony. NHCP fosters an environment that supports the investigation of new ideas and work in the ceramic arts. It is an organization under the New Harmony Artist Guild, a non-profit 501(c)3, that serves as an incubator for nurturing the arts. NHCP is a rural residency program, supported by the Efroymson Family Fund, Lenny and Anne Dowhie Trusts and Robert Lee Blaffer Foundation. Its goal is to encourage emerging and professional visual artists/educators in ceramics by giving them quiet space and the time to develop a new body of work.

The NHGCA promotes discourse about and access to contemporary art in the southern Indiana region and is an outreach partner of USI. The gallery is located at 506 Main Street in New Harmony, Indiana. Regular hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, visit the NHGCA website or call 812-682-3156.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana and the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.