Mario Borelli, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Notre Dame and director of two special University instructional programs, has retired as director of those programs.p. Borelli served for the past eight years as director of the CANDAX-ME McNair project. His successor is Donald B. Pope-Davis, a professor of psychology at the University.p. He also served as director of the Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair since 1989. David Leighton, a professor of chemical engineering, and Karen Morris, a professional specialist in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, will now serve as co-directors of the fair.p. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1965, Borelli plans to retire from his teaching position at the end of the 2003-04 academic year.p. The U.S. Department of Education has funded the McNair Program at Notre Dame since 1992. It promotes and prepares first generation and under-represented college students for doctoral studies.p. CANDAX-ME is an acronym for Clark Atlanta University, Notre Dame and Xavier University of Louisiana, the three initial universities where the program operated. In 2000 the project also began serving St. Mary’s University of San Antonio and St. Edward’s University of Austin, hence the ME attachment to the acronym.p. Ronald E. McNair was a laser physicist and space shuttle astronaut who was mission specialist on the successful 1984 Challenger flight before his death in the explosion of the same shuttle in 1986.p. The Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair features some 300 projects created by students in grades four through 12 from public and private schools in St. Joseph, Elkhart, Fulton and Marshall counties. More than 150 special awards are presented to participants, including an all-expense paid trip to the International Science and Engineering Fair.p. Borelli previously directed Project Stars, which was aimed at assisting high school science teachers, from 1990-91; Notre Dame Science and Engineering for Talented Seniors (Project NDSTETS), a hands-on research opportunity for high school seniors in the University’s science and engineering laboratories, from 1990-94; and Promote Women&Minority Enrollment in Graduate Studies (Project PWMEGS), a program that exposed talented minority students to a summer of faculty-directed research, from 1990-95.p. A specialist in algebraic geometry, Borelli received his undergraduate education from the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa, Italy, and earned his doctorate from Indiana University. He was a Ford Foundation visiting professor at Catholic University in Lima, Peru in 1967, and received a Science Faculty Professional Development Award from the National Science Foundation in 1977.p.
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