The U.S. Senate has confirmed the nomination of Samuel D. Heins (’72) as the United States ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway. Heins was nominated to the ambassadorship by President Obama in May 2015. In a statement, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar praised the Senate’s action, saying, “Minnesota is home to more people of Norwegian heritage than anywhere except Norway itself, so it is only fitting that the new ambassador hails from our state.”

Governor Mark Dayton has announced the appointment of Keiko L. Sugisaka (’96) to a three-year term as an at-large member of the state’s Commission on Judicial Selection. The commission solicits judicial candidates, evaluates applicants, and recommends nominees to the governor.

Joint-degree candidate Joy (Shuangqi) Wang, who expects to receive both her J.D. and her M.P.H. in environmental health this May, is a member of a six-student team that recently won first place in the 2016 University of Minnesota Global Health Case Competition. The competition is conducted annually by the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility, part of the University’s Academic Health Center, as a way of challenging interdisciplinary teams of students to make effective strategic recommendations for helping to alleviate real-world health problems.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has appointed Diane B. Bratvold (’87) to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, replacing Judge Margaret H. Chutich, whom Dayton has named to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Bratvold has served as a judge in the state’s 4th Judicial District since 2014. She previously was a shareholder with Minneapolis-based Briggs and Morgan, where her practice focused on civil appeals and advice to clients and trial counsel. Before that she spent 13 years as an attorney with Fetterly & Gordon, and 6 years as a partner and associate at Rider Bennett, both in Minneapolis.

The National Jurist has named Professor Joan Howland to its annual list of the 25 most influential figures in American legal education. Howland, who holds the Law School’s Roger F. Noreen Professorship and serves as associate dean and director of the Law Library, is 16th in the magazine’s ranking, which appears in its Winter 2016 issue. The National Jurist is read by more than 100,000 law students and educators.

The Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost has announced that Associate Professor Neha Jain has been named a 2016-2018 McKnight Land-Grant Professor. Jain is one of just eight University of Minnesota faculty members selected this year for the honor. The two-year professorships include research grants of $25,000 in each year, to be used for expenditures related to the recipient’s research and scholarship.