The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) has given Cornell four Circle of Excellence Awards this year. CASE sponsors a worldwide competition that honors exemplary programs and activities in higher education in several areas of communication, alumni relations and fundraising.

These 2014 awards are:

• Gold medal in mobile applications (out of 13 entries) for Merlin Bird ID, which helps users identify birds. Merlin Bird ID’s principal investigator is Miyoko Chu, Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s senior director of communications; the project leader is Jessie Barry at the lab. The app has been downloaded 157,000 times and used in 1.6 million sessions since January 2014.
• Silver medal in periodical staff writing (31 entries) for the quarterly magazine Living Bird, edited by Tim Gallagher and published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
• Silver medal in design for books (18 entries) for “VOICES: Stories of Insight and Experience,” a collection of 50 short essays by faculty, staff, students and alumni painting a picture of life at Cornell for families of new students. The staff of the Office of the Dean of Students and University Publications created it for distribution to families of new students, beginning last fall.
• Bronze medal in news and research videos (44 entries) for the seven-minute video, “Portrait: Fredrik Logevall,” which is part of Portraits: A Collection of Extraordinary Individuals on Cornell’s website. It was produced by producer/director Micah Cormier of University Communications.