The University of Iowa School of Music will present a free performance by the UI Chamber Orchestra, led by William LaRue Jones, director of orchestral studies, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6, in Riverside Recital Hall.

University staff, faculty, students, and alumni are accomplishing great things every day. See who's making news with awards, publications, promotion and tenure, and more.

Fourteen staff members at the University of Iowa received 2013 awards for excellence presented by the UI Staff Council.

With help from the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, three scholars have translated a complex account of Cortés' conquest of Mexico, offering a local account of events often viewed through European and contemporary eyes.

For 8 years, Bryan Brown attended speech therapy classes and while he still stutters, he not only has better control of it, but says it's made him who he is today; a speech pathologist studying at the University of Iowa, a world famous center for stuttering research.

Mothers who have one-on-one sessions with nurses after having a premature birth are found to decrease their postpartum symptoms, according to a UI study.

We all find ways to kill time while in waiting rooms. In the case of music faculty Anthony Arnone, why not play some cello while waiting for his car to be serviced? Positive reactions inspired Arnone to start a new project, "Bach to Work." He visited several public spaces this fall, providing the beauty of art in unexpected places.

Along with Hancher, the UI’s School of Music started construction recently. Both are major flood recovery projects on campus that are expected to be completed in 2016.

Poets Lucy Ives and Haley Thompson, alumnae of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will read from "Orange Roses" and "Home Is a Place Worth Burying," respectively, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Carl Klaus, founder of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and professor emeritus, will read from "A Self Made of Words" at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the UI Writing University website.

The University of Iowa International Writing Program, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Prairie Lights Books will host a reading to commemorate the life and works of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in Room 100 of Phillips Hall on the UI campus.

The University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program will present a free public performance by the JACK Quartet at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, in Riverside Recital Hall on the UI campus. The concert, which will feature clarinetist Derek Bermel, is part of the JACK’s extended residency Oct. 6-13 at the UI School of Music.