From the Desk of the Chancellor, March 29, 2010

Chancellor Charles R. Bantz View print-quality image

Last Monday, attending the IUPUI Jaguars / Princeton Tigers men’s basketball game, I had the pleasure of meeting IUPUI’s first-ever NCAA champion: Chen Ni. On March 20, the IUPUI sophomore won the women's platform diving title at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships with a spectacular performance doing mid-air acrobatics from three stories high at the Boilermaker Aquatics Center.

Chen Ni is a native of Qingdao, China. Her father is a friend of Wenbo Chen, a coach at USA Diving's national training center in Indianapolis. This association, along with the encouragement of IUPUI diving coach, Johannah Doecke, led Chen to decide to pursue her college degree at IUPUI. From her first year with the Jags, she immediately began breaking diving records.

Chen plans to become a kindergarten teacher through IUPUI’s Transition to Teach Program. She loves working with young people and loves coaching young divers. And she has Olympic dreams to work on as well.

Although she spoke little English when she first arrived, Chen has quickly taken up academic life at IUPUI. Last April, she participated in IUPUI’s inaugural Research Day. Her team’s Undergraduate Student Abstract, funded by a Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Institute (MURI) grant, was an “Investigation of the Relationship among Sport Motivation, Involvement, and Quality Of Life of Indianapolis Colts Fans.” Other team members were from the Department of Tourism, Conventions, and Event Management.

A 2009-2010 MURI-funded project has Chen Ni working with fellow students Paige Conder (Science, Pre-Med), Dana Gardner (Business), and Orey Pence and Donna Wampler (Dental Hygiene,) on “Evaluating the Relationship between Promotions and Public Perception of the New Dissolvable Tobacco Products during their Test Market in Central Indiana.” Clinical Associate Professor of Oral Biology Laura Romito mentors the team.

We are proud of this young scholar-athlete and her historic achievements.

For an account of her historic diving win, see the press release.

For a profile of the young diver shortly after she came to IUPUI, see Web page 32 of the IUPUI Magazine (Winter 2009 issue).

Comments? Write chancllr@iupui.edu.