NIU professor's icon discovery pushes back
emergence of Andean religion by a millennium

The god on the gourd has a story to tell.

Searching through a looted, unmarked burial ground on a sandy terrace near the Peruvian coastline last summer, NIU's Winifred Creamer and her fellow archaeologists retrieved a fragment of a gourd bowl, made by drying and hollowing out the fruit's shell. A simple image of a god scratched or burned on the gourd may end up rewriting the archaeological textbooks.

"This god on the gourd is telling us about the history of religion in South America," said Creamer, a professor of anthropology. "This discovery pushes back the emergence of the oldest known Andean religion by more than 1,000 years."

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The Hillel Jewish Student Organization inadvertently was omitted from the list of members in the newly renamed Association of Campus Religious Organizations, which appeared in Monday's Northern Today. Hillel was a founding member of the Campus Ministries Association, and was actually the group requesting the more inclusive new name. Northern Today regres the error.

President responds to governor's budget message

Citing "mixed feelings" about a financial plan that spares NIU from the most drastic scenarios but cuts deep into resources for the coming fiscal year, President John Peters last week responded to the governor's budget address with caution.

"I write to you today with very mixed feelings about the news we have just received from Springfield," Peters said in an e-mail to faculty and staff. "Today's budget message from Governor Blagojevich revealed his intent to limit drastic cuts to the FY03 budgets of public universities, but requires even greater sacrifice from all of us in FY04."

The worst-case scenario - in which NIU would have been required to send back more than half of its remaining FY03 state dollars - was averted. That proposal (8 percent of the entire year's budget in the remaining three months of the fiscal year) was trimmed back to 2.9 percent, or $3.2 million. At that level, the president said, summer school could proceed as planned.

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Close to 700 Illinois schools languish on the state's academic "early warning" and "watch" lists, scrutinized because their young pupils fail to meet standards.

Fewer than half of the state's schools - 43 percent - have integrated curriculum standards mandated in July of 1997. Lack of communication between schools and the colleges and universities that prepare new teachers has produced a gap between what principals expect and what professors deliver. Higher education receives many students who are not ready for college-level courses and require remediation.

Enter Northern Illinois University and a new, statewide initiative aimed at getting all the players at the table at the same time. NIU's "P-20" (preschool through graduate school) initiative is attracting attention from all corners of the state.

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During a post-doctoral year at Louisiana State University, Robert Wheeler applied to 100 colleges and universities for a job teaching mathematics.

Only one was north of the Mason-Dixon line. Only one called to schedule an interview. Only one offered a position.

"It was zero at noon, the wind was blowing handsomely, and I wondered what I was doing here," the interim vice provost recalls as he enters the final 75 days of his 31-year career at NIU.

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Four members of NIU's Supportive Professional Staff (SPS) have been chosen to receive the university's Presidential Awards for Excellence.

The recipients are Robert Burk, director of admissions; Michelle Emmett, associate vice provost for Student Affairs; Jack King, internship coordinator in the Department of Sociology, and Donna Prain, information systems manager in the Department of Biological Sciences.

They will be honored at a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, in the Clara Sperling Sky Room in the Holmes Student Center. Each will receive a plaque and $1,000 in appreciation for their outstanding contributions to NIU.

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In the midst of some very difficult economic times, the Illinois Policy Survey offers a bit of good news for higher education: For what it is worth, the people of Illinois support maintaining or boosting funding for education at all levels.

Nearly 95 percent of 1,206 voters polled in January said funding for education, kindergarten through college, should be protected at current levels or increased. They backed up that assertion when asked hypothetical questions about their willingness to pay $25 more a year in taxes to avoid cuts in specific services. Eighty percent were willing to pay that much to avoid cuts in K-12 education, while 56 percent would pay to prevent cuts in higher education.

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Those who regularly travel on and around Gilbert Drive might want to begin scouting for alternate routes to use this spring and summer.

Beginning April 21, crews will start tearing up roads and sidewalk in that vicinity to install chilled water lines and rebuild Gilbert Drive. Work is scheduled for completion by the start of the fall semester.

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Outside of academia - in the workplace, mostly - a three-pronged model of learning is used to investigate and solve problems for which there seems no answer. Many heads, drawing on their own experience, work better than one - and can assist the organization on how to work as individuals and teams.

"As we look at change in our world today, there are many situations that have never before been experienced in this global world," said John Niemi, a Distinguished Teaching Professor. "There are no past practices to guide us. The theories that sprang from university-based research over the last 80 years often are not applied to the field of practice."

Niemi will try to bridge that gap when he delivers the spring Distinguished Teaching Professor seminar on the learning organization, scheduled for noon Tuesday.

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A plain-text version of Northern Today is available for those who are unable to receive HTML-based e-mails. To subscribe, visit http://www.niu.edu/northerntoday/subscribe-text.shtml.

NIU photography teacher
exhibits works at House
Barbara Stewart Thomas, an instructor of photography in the NIU School of Art since 1990, is holding an exhibit of her work through May 27 at The House, 263 E. Lincoln Hwy.

These photographs are a selection from work Thomas has done over the last 15 years.

The earliest, the black and white print "Water Tower Place, Chicago, 1988," is from my MFA exhibition Women: Image & Myth. She photographed women in public places, contrasting the images of real women with the fantasy images displayed in store windows. One other early photograph is a self-portrait from the series Take Away the Pictures and What do you See? from 1992.

For more information, contact Thomas at (815) 756-3839 or send e-mail to bstewart@sun.soci.niu.edu. Visit Thomas online at http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~bstewart/.

Anger-related workshops
continue through April, May
A series of workshops and brown-bag lunches related to anger - expressing it and dealing with it - continues through April and into May.

Sponsored by University Resources for Women, the "Tongue Fu Tuesdays" workshops take place from 4:45 to 6:15 p.m. at the University Resources for Women building at 105 Normal Road. All are welcome. -- MORE

MTV's 'Real World' castmates
scheduled to speak April 22
Theo, of MTV's "The Real World: Chicago," and Trishelle, of "The Real World: Las Vegas," will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, at NIU.

The sixth and final event of the Campus Activities Board Speakers Series takes place in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium in the Holmes Student Center. It is free and open to the public.

Using their unique experiences in the Chicago and Las Vegas houses, Theo and Trishelle will speak about accepting diversity, resolving conflicts, creating and maintaining relationships, coping with grief, developing confidence and much more.

For more information, please call 753-1580, stop by Campus Life Building room 160 or visit www.niu.edu/cab.

NIU Mac Users listserv
now available to subscribers
NIU faculty, staff and students now can subscribe to the "NIU Mac Users" listserv.

This listserv is an electronic mailing list intended for discussion of Apple Macintosh hardware and software. It is an unmoderated list, which means it can receive posts from any user on the recipient list. Approval from a listserv moderator is not required, but posts should follow the general principles of good "netiquette." -- MORE

Career Planning and Placement
to host first recognition tea
The Career Planning and Placement Center will host its first Volunteer and Service Learning Recognition Tea from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday, April 28.

The purpose of this event is to recognize and reward exemplary participants (faculty and students) for their volunteerism, community service and service learning. The Volunteer Tea also recognizes outstanding agencies and volunteer sites that provide opportunities for civic involvement to the NIU campus.Awards for this event will be based on hours of service, type of project and student or faculty organizational recommendation. Center staff are seeking award applicants. The deadline for applications is today. Individuals or groups can nominate themselves, or be nominated by others. The application form can be downloaded at www.niu.edu/cppc/volunteer/pdfs/pepsi_grant.pdf.

Students and faculty also are sought to serve on the committee that chooses the winners. Individuals who want to help on the committee will be required to commit only a few hours for a couple of days. The committee deadline also is today. Please contact Karen Castelein at kcastelein@niu.edu, or Mary Krabbenhoeft at Rainbo1145@aol.com.

The Public Relations Student Society of America is the lead voluntary organizer and promoter of the recognition tea. Funding for this event is made possible through the Pepsi Quality of Life Grant.

Deadline approaches Tuesday
for some FY03 purchases requests
Purchase requests for FY03 orders/expenditures between $25,000 and $249,000 must be received in the Accounting and Procurement offices no later than Tuesday, April 15.

This is to allow adequate time for bidding, approvals and ordering processes to be completed. If funded with appropriated (02) funds, the orders must be placed by June 30 and received and invoice received not later than Aug. 6. Orders for goods or services purchased with locally held funds (29, 31, 41, etc.) require that the orders must be received, or services completed, by June 30 to be expensed in FY03. Otherwise, such charges will be made against your FY04 budget. -- MORE

NIU religious ministers rename group
The religious counselors and ministers at NIU have renamed their organization the Association of Campus Religious Organizations to help point out the range of religious centers on the campus.

ACRO replaces the NIU Campus Ministries Association, a 50-year-old name, because while some campus religious workers are ordained ministers, others are faculty members, graduate students and social workers.

"The new name is more inclusive," explained ACRO president Michael Evans, the adviser of the student Latter Days Saints (Mormons) group.

ACRO's secretary is Father Steve Knox, one of the ordained ministers on campus, who works with Newman Catholic Student Center.

The other ACRO members are the Campus Crusade for Christ, Campus Missions International, Impact Christian Fellowship, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, the Judson ABC-USA Baptist Fellowship, Lutheran ELCA Campus Ministry, Westminster Presbyterian Ministry, the Lutheran Missouri Synod Student Fellowship, and the Wesley Foundation (also know as United Campus Ministries).

Hillel was a founding member of the Campus Ministries Association, and was actually the group requesting the more inclusive new name.

University Health Service
receives national accreditation
The NIU University Health Service recently was awarded three-year re-accreditation by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, Inc.

Accreditation is a voluntary, multi-step evaluation process that involves a self-assessment by the organization and an on-site assessment by a team of AAAHC surveyors. AAAHC accreditation is nationally recognized and is one of the highest honors a health care organization can receive for the quality of care it provides.-- MORE

Was it University Police Chief Don Grady's birthday April 1? Or just some April Fools' Day fun?

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