Paul Baker, adjunct professor at the School of Public Policy and associate director of the Center for 21st Century Universities, was part of a team that won the Excellence in Research Award from the InfoSci-Journals group.

This award recognized the best articles from the IGI Global's journal collection for the 2011 volume year. Published in the International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP), the article was titled "Beautiful to Me: Identity, Disability, and Gender in Virtual Environments," and was co-written with Jessica Pater, graduate student in the School of Interactive Computing, Abbe Forman of Temple University, and Kel Smith of Anikto LLC.