People

Spotlight

Name: Steve Virostko.

Position: Project manager in the facilities department in the Office of Design and Construction. Coordinating renovations for small- and large-scale construction projects. Managing outside consultants and contractors while maintaining construction budgets and schedules.

Quote: ''I started working at Princeton in 1971 while I was a senior in high school drafting floor plans of buildings on the main campus and at Forrestal. What is most interesting about working here is the diversity of both the people and the projects I get involved with each day.''

Other interests: Tending beef cattle on his farm. Restoring antique cars and tractors. Helping friends and neighbors with construction projects.

Briefs

Toni Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, has received a book award from the Ohioana Library Association for her eighth novel, ''Love'' (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

These awards have been given annually since 1942 to recognize outstanding books written by Ohioans or about Ohio. The is the sixth Ohioana award for Morrison, who was born in Lorain, Ohio.

Also the recipient of major international honors, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. She was the first African-American winner and the first woman to win since 1938. She won the 2000 National Humanities Medal for her contributions to American cultural life and thought, the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for ''Beloved'' and the National Book Critics Award in 1977 for ''Song of Solomon.'' Her other novels include ''The Bluest Eye,'' ''Sula,'' ''Tar Baby,'' ''Jazz'' and ''Paradise.''

The 2004 Ohioana Awards were presented at the Oct. 16 Ohioana Day Celebration in Columbus.

The National Academy of Engineering has selected David Billington as its Walter Robb Engineering Education Senior Fellow for 2005.

The two-year fellowship will allow Billington, who is Princeton's Gordon Wu Professor of Civil Engineering, to ''improve and expand instructional material that would allow faculty at other institutions to adapt his highly acclaimed introductory engineering course 'Engineering in the Modern World.''' The course explores how engineering and its products -- from automobiles to airports to computers -- have influenced society and how political and cultural forces have affected engineering. It satisfies University requirements in both history and science or technology and has been very successful in attracting non-science majors.

Under the Robb fellowship, Billington will organize workshops for selected colleagues at other universities who share his goal of making engineering accessible to all students. After an initial workshop in the summer of 2005, the participants are expected to apply Billington's materials and ideas in their own classrooms and report on their experiences during a follow-up session in 2006. Their findings will be assembled into a report that will be presented at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering's Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education.

Billington also recently received the John McGovern Lecture Award in the field of science from the Cosmos Club Foundation in Washington, D.C. The foundation selects two McGovern Award recipients each year, rotating through the fields of arts and humanities, literature and science. Billington, the first engineer to receive the science award, accepted the honor at an Oct. 6 ceremony during which he delivered a lecture on ''The Engineer as Artist.''

A 1950 graduate of Princeton, Billington joined the faculty in 1960.