August 18, 2003, Northern Today

Students return to campus Thursday

The NIU campus this week begins its annual end-of-the-summer return to a hustling, bustling home to thousands of students: Thursday brings Move-In Day, the annual Huskie Bash and the start of New Student Welcome Days.

Admission Director Bob Burk’s “best guesstimate” about the fall population who will live in the DeKalb-Sycamore area is 15,925 – an estimated 13,725 undergraduate students, 2,000 graduate students and 200 students in the NIU College of Law. That ballpark number represents about 75 percent of NIU’s more than 18,000 undergraduates and half of the 4,000 graduate students.

NIU’s residence halls accommodate 6,000 of those undergraduates. Full story

NIU welcomes new students

Here’s a complete run-down of New Student Welcome Days activities, which begin Thursday. Full schedule

NIU-Maryland football opener
can reach 95 million homes
on Fox Sports Net broadcast

NIU’s 2003 home football opener Aug. 28 against Atlantic Coast Conference power University of Maryland is a “national game” in more ways than one.

The NIU-Maryland contest will be featured nationally on cable television, shown live and on taped delay to approximately 24 Fox Sports Net affiliates that reach an estimated 95,444,000 potential households across the country. Full story

Blaster virus worms its way onto NIU’s network

NIU was not immune to the effects of the Blaster worm, a malicious computer virus that wreaked havoc on computers across the nation last week. The worm briefly slowed NIU’s computer network and caused erratic behavior on infected machines.

Information Technology Services (ITS) staff worked to block access points used by the worm and scan subnets for infected machines, preventing further spread of the worm. Thanks to their swift work, and some preventative steps taken a few weeks earlier, a relatively small number of NIU computers were infected: around 350 out of a possible 7,500. Full story

$1.4 million federal grant boosts
Center for Southeast Asian Studies

The NIU Center for Southeast Asian Studies will expand its programs and outreach efforts thanks to a U.S. Department of Education grant of more than $1.4 million.

The Title VI grant represents a funding lift of 47 percent over a similar grant received in 2000. The grants are awarded every three years in support of efforts to increase the national capacity of trained specialists in world languages and cultures.

NIU received the largest federal grant of the seven National Resource Centers for Southeast Asian studies, located at such prestigious institutions as Cornell University, the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley. Full story

Convocation Center announces
trio of fall semester events

Music and comedy are on the fall semester schedule at NIU’s Convocation Center.

A touring company of the musical “Fame – the Musical” performs Sunday, Sept. 21. The country music sounds of Rascal Flatts and performers from the Country Music Television’s “CMT Most Wanted Live” entertain Sunday, Sept. 28. Later, popular comedian Wayne Brady brings his show of laughs and songs to DeKalb Saturday, Nov. 1. Full story

BikeMe! aims
to put campus
wheels in motion

For those on campus bemoaning the excess of autos and paucity of parking, Bob Albanese has the following suggestion: BikeMe!

That’s not an insult, but rather the name of a new program NIU hopes will help reduce automobile traffic around campus, says Albanese, associate vice president for Finance and Facilities and director of the Physical Plant.

“We’re not kidding ourselves into believing that making 25 bikes available will solve our parking shortage,” Albanese says, “but if each bike is used just 10 times a day, that would be 250 fewer automobiles driving across campus and looking for a parking space, so it should help.”

The two-wheelers all are stripped-down mountain bikes, reduced to a single gear for ease of maintenance and painted Huskie red. Full story

‘Good Morning America’ features
NIU Masters Book Club

Last November, six NIU College of Education graduate students began sending e-mails to “Good Morning America” in response to the show’s search for book clubs.

In January, the women of the NIU Masters Book Club got a response.

Soon after, though, their contact left the popular ABC news program. They figured their chances to share a book with the nation – and to receive a reading recommendation from another book club somewhere – were crushed.

Months passed without a word from the network. Club member Miriam Rodriguez, a fifth-grade teacher at Woodland Intermediate School in Gurnee, only could shake her head when her young pupils frequently raised their hands: “Have they called you back? Have they called you back?”

Suddenly, around the start of August, a call – the call – came in the form of an e-mail. Full story

Kudos

Frederick Kitterle is named to the Illinois Mathematics and Science Partnership Advisory Panel, excellent faculty and staff in the NIU College of Education earn recognition, the latest CD from the NIU Jazz Ensemble enjoys a rave review and Rena Cotsones works to welcome NIU Huskie Football fans to town. Full story