A University alumnus and Athens native died during combat operations in Afghanistan last week.

Sgt. Luke J. Mercardante, 35, was killed April 15 by a roadside bomb near the Pakistani border.

He was 1st Sgt. Battalion Sergeant Major for Combat Logistics Battalion 24, stationed in Afghanistan in a rapid response force that is hunting down insurgents in the southern province of Kandahar.

Luke was born May 10, 1972 in San Diego, California and moved to Athens when he was almost four.

He attended Athens Christian School and graduated from Oconee County High School in 1990. Mercardante attended the University for two years before enlisting in the Marines in 1992.

Mercardante had been in Afghanistan since February, his second overseas deployment. He served as gunnery sergeant at a detention center in Al Asad, Iraq, in 2006.

His decorations include five Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals.

Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. today at Mars Hill Baptist Church.

About 28 comments were left by friends and people who served with Mercardante on the Athens Banner-Herald Web site by Monday evening.

- Associated Press

Student wins Maley Teacher scholarship

Todd R. Kelley, a University doctoral student in technology education, has received the Maley Technology Teacher Scholarship, the only graduate scholarship presented by the International Technology Education Association.

Kelley, who received the $1,000 scholarship, is a graduate fellow in the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE), one of 17 centers funded by the National Science Foundation, that focuses on teaching and learning. It is the only center addressing engineering and technology education.

The ultimate goal of NCETE is to infuse engineering design, problem-solving and analytical skills into the K-12 schools through technology education in order to increase the quality, quantity and diversity of engineering and technology educators, and to significantly strengthen the pathways to engineering and technology professions for students.

Kelley, who is completing his dissertation, will join the faculty at Purdue University as an assistant professor of technology education in August.

Kelley worked as a middle and high school teacher in New York and Indiana for 10 years before entering the UGA doctoral program in 2005. He was a

three-time recipient of the Philip Gray Memorial Scholarship while attending the University and has authored many grants and published scholarly articles in journals such as The Journal of Technology Education Technology Teacher and Technology and Children.

Univ. natural history museum to own site

One of the best-preserved and most important archaeological sites in the state of Georgia and the Southeast will soon be owned and managed by the University of Georgia’s Museum of Natural History (MNH) and will offer insights into a chiefdom that flourished in west central Georgia some 700 years ago.

Acceptance of the gift of the Singer-Moye Indian Mound complex from the Columbus Museum in Columbus was made formal at a recent meeting of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. The transfer is still pending final legal arrangements.

The site, featuring eight mounds, is, according to Byron J. Freeman, director of the MNH, a hidden treasure relatively unknown to the public and barely known even to the professional community.

Singer-Moye has been part of the Columbus Museum for some 40 years and the site of productive research, though the vast size of the tract means much of it has never been studied.

“The largest mound, clearly the home of a very powerful Indian chief, is perhaps the fourth-largest such structure in the state behind Etowah, Ocmulgee and Kolomoki,” said Freeman, who is also a senior public service associate in UGA’s Odum School of Ecology.

- University News Services