FAYETTEVILLE - The logo designed by the UA Office of University Relations for the new Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences has won a merit award from Admissions Marketing Report, the national newspaper of college and university admissions marketing.

The award was one of six in the category "logo/letterhead design" made to universities with enrollments above 10,000 students. Other winners included the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Missouri-Columbia, New York City Technical College, Phoenix College, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences was established jointly last fall by the University of Arkansas and Oklahoma State University.

Roy Cordell, assistant director of University Relations, designed the winning logo.

"The challenge was how to represent a new, cutting-edge research unit that is owned by two universities with major funding from the National Science Foundation and seven industrial partners," Cordell said, "With so many players and sponsors, we needed to forego trying to blend their logos and instead invent a new logo that visually communicates the center’s name and purpose in the simplest, clearest fashion."

Dr. Derek Sears, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the Center’s director, said, "We are pleased that our colleagues in University Relations have won this award. The logo communicates in a simple but effective way the interests, hopes and aspirations of center scientists at both universities to others involved in space research all over the world. It is a design that resonates with everyone and we are very grateful to Roy Cordell and University Relations for creating this for us."