May 27, 2003, Northern Today Abridged

Legg, department chairs, tackling diversity challenges

Reports on the diversity issues facing NIU faculty and their leaders are due this week on Provost Ivan Legg’s desk, containing what he expects are snapshots of current situations in each academic department and plans for improvement.

But the university-wide appraisal of NIU’s academic diversity – and the ensuing recommendations to make the environment for minority faculty here more welcoming – will take time.

“The civil rights movement changed the laws,” Legg said, “but it did not change the hearts. That’s a much, much more difficult challenge. The changing of the souls and the hearts of people is not something you can assess very easily.”

Legg gathered in March with 31 of NIU’s 41 academic department chairs for a day-long diversity workshop, an initiative that grew out of his semi-annual retreats with the seven deans.

He is sure it raised the level of consciousness of the chairs present and of their awareness of the need for understanding and sensitivity.

“It is a primary mission of a university to deal with the growing need to have students who are prepared to work in a world that is progressively growing more diverse. You have to understand the complexity of all these cultures and backgrounds to function effectively. I’m pleased to note that the student body at NIU has very rapidly grown more and more diverse, at least 25 percent now,” Legg said.

“Yet I note the faculty is much less diverse than the student body,” he said. “If you read the literature in this area, you will learn quite rapidly that one of the key issues in addressing this challenge has to deal with the retention of the diverse faculty once you recruit them by understanding the challenges and needs in an environment that’s predominantly white, and white male.”

Legg also hired keynote speaker Lee Mun Wah, a nationally acclaimed lecturer and trainer on diversity issues. Wah, executive director and founder of StirFry Seminars, has led workshops for the U.S. Navy, the Pentagon and the U.S. Postal Service as well as major corporations and universities.

Wah, who has made a number of documentaries dealing with race relationships, showed one of his videos and stimulated discussion afterward on such interactions.

The ultimate goal, Legg said, is to make all of NIU similar to the College of Law, a place known for welcoming people of color.

LeRoy Pernell, dean of the law school, chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Minorities and a workshop participant, said his predecessor, James Alfini, planted the seed of diversity at the law school.

Pernell has made sure it blossomed.

“One of the most important aspects was the commitment of the faculty to not just having numbers but also commitment to the professional success of a wide range of faculty, including faculty of color and women,” Pernell said.

“One of the things that caused me to accept the offer as dean was that I was impressed by what I felt was a genuine commitment on the part of the faculty to the reality of diversity. That was the starting point, and what we were able to do was build on that,” he added. “With the clear backing of the faculty, I was able to personally become involved in the hiring of new faculty by encouraging faculty of color to come to NIU and to impress upon them that we were serious. Certainly, it helped to be a person of color myself.”

Equally important, Pernell said, is a commitment to fostering the professional success of faculty by making their tenure a priority. From the moment a new faculty member arrives, the school works hard to ensure whatever resources are available to help someone achieve in teaching, research, writing and public service are offered.

Materials Management director prepares for retirement

Chicago native Joe Baird came to NIU in 1964 for a degree in business and marketing, but found something more important in this small college town: His life’s work.

The director of Materials Management retires Friday after 35 full-time years at the university. A reception in his honor is planned for 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday, May 29, in the Clara Sperling Sky Room of the Holmes Student Center.

Baird has been an NIU employee since his freshman year, when he took a job in Lincoln Hall food service. After graduation in 1968, he found an opportunity to stay on campus.

“NIU offered me a full-time position in residence hall food services. I had worked 3½ years there as a student. I liked the job, and I liked the people, so I decided to stick around for a while and be a food administrator,” he said.

“The DeKalb community was, from the very beginning, a more rural atmosphere than Chicago, where we were both from. It was a nice environment, a good place to raise a family, good schools. I just liked the idea of living about five minutes away from my work, instead of having to commute. I liked the work. I liked being around the students. In food services, we served the student population every day. It’s a youthful environment to work in.”

In October of 1969, Baird moved to Auxiliary Services, where he eventually became associate director. He was responsible for bond revenue capital budgets and for administering athletic concessions, vending and interior deigns contracts for the university. He also opened and managed the first university conference facility, located in Stevenson South, in 1974.

Baird became manager of Central Stores in 1978. By 1986, he was associate director of Materials Management.

In November of 1995, he took over the operation, working with a staff of six talented and dedicated managers to operate several service departments that touch the lives of faculty, staff and students every day.

These include Campus Mailing Services, Central Receiving, Central Stores (selling food, office supplies and commodities), Delivery and Moving Services, Furniture Repair Services (upholstery, carpeting, drapery fabrication), Procurement Services (all purchasing activities for the NIU community) and the Property Control Department (tagging and monitoring university equipment purchases) and its unique used office furniture resale program.

He also is a longtime volunteer with the NIU Employees Federal Credit Union, having served on the Board of Directors for 27 years, including several terms as board chair, treasurer and, currently, secretary.

After nearly 40 years in DeKalb, Baird’s connection to the university is deep. His wife, Georgiann, is also an alum and works for NIU as a computer specialist in the Holmes Student Center. All three of his grown children have attended NIU over the years, two leaving with degrees. His youngest daughter is vice president of the NIU credit union.

Retirement will afford time to spend with his grandchild – a second is on the way – and an opportunity to knock around the little white ball.

“I plan on playing golf every day as long as the golf season lasts,” he said. “After that, I have a whole list of projects to do around the house, and we’ll do a little traveling, some mini-vacations.”

Baird expects retirement will find him too busy to miss coming to work each day, although he will miss the people of NIU.

“I leave knowing my staff – my management staff, especially – will carry on everything we do here. I don’t have to worry about that at all,” he said. “That makes it easier to move on.”

NIU archaeologists harvest past from Yorkville cornfield

Early this spring, NIU archaeologist Tom Berres and his assistants trudged through a corn-stubble field near Yorkville, looking for hints of history.

They found some: nails, glass, chunks of limestone and pieces of dishware, all located in a concentrated area of the soon-to-be-developed farmland. To the untrained eye, the discoveries would seem unremarkable, but Berres knew his team was on to something bigger.

Within weeks, Berres and fellow anthropologists from NIU’s Contract Archeology Program turned a small section of the cornfield along Route 34 east of Yorkville into a dig site. They also transformed the field into an outdoor laboratory for visiting local historians, Boy Scouts and students from Yorkville and Oswego high schools.

Turns out, the commonplace cornfield once accommodated the home of one of Kendall County’s early settlers and most prominent citizens of the 1800s, the wealthy Judge John C. Scofield.

“There’s history right in our own back yards,” Berres said. “People need to know their past before it’s paved over.”

When the digging began in earnest, archaeologists uncovered a cistern and two cellars hidden beneath the plow line. They also unearthed fragments of 19th century farm life: cutlery, buttons, needles, combs, shoe soles, medicine bottles, a graphite pencil, leather belt straps, a clay pipe stem, remnants of a horse harness, cow and chicken bones, broken hand-painted pottery, an 1857 Indian Head penny, a coin minted by the Sandwich Bank and pieces of slate.

Northern Star's Web site named best in nation – again

Winning is getting to be a habit for the editors of the Web site at the Northern Star, the student-run newspaper at Northern Illinois University.

For the second straight year, Editor & Publisher has selected the site (www.northernstar.info) as Best College Newspaper Online Service. Earlier this academic year, the Web site also received its second straight Pacemaker award from the Associated Collegiate Press. The Pacemaker is considered the Pulitzer Prize for collegiate newspapers.

“It’s great to be viewed as being on the cutting edge,” says Northern Star Adviser Jim Killam, who credits Online Editor Jeremy Norman for keeping the online edition of the paper out in front of the pack.

“The Star is so far ahead of what a lot of schools are doing that it is almost a given that they are going to win some of these awards,” Killam says.

The secret to that success, says Norman, who next fall will be a senior majoring in computerized design, is always working to ensure that users get what they want – and then some.

When Norman took over as webmaster during his freshman year the site was little more than an electronic posting of the news from each of the Star’s five weekday editions. The site attracted about 400 hits a day, mostly from alumni.

Today, the site has such a diverse mix of information and features that it more closely resembles something akin to the Yahoo homepage, only with greater emphasis on the campus and the surrounding city of DeKalb, Killam says. The changes were a ringing success. Within a year, the site was attracting 32,000 unique visitors a day, and that number more than doubled to 86,000 this past school year.

Illinois Reading Council honors NIU professor

Like everyone, Pam Farris must make occasional trips to the doctor’s office.

But Farris, a Distinguished Teaching Professor in NIU’s Department of Literacy Education, took note of what other adults might miss: Neither the waiting rooms nor the examination rooms offered little, if anything, for children to read.

“Looking around, it was pretty sparse,” Farris said. “Sometimes the sibling is ill, and the other kids are fine, and they need something to occupy their time.”

So Farris began buying children’s books, in English and Spanish, and last fall started to place them in local clinics, health departments and hospitals. The books are found at the Tri-County Community Health Center and its branches, the DeKalb County Health Department and the Rochelle Community Hospital.

She also has placed books at Linda’s Touch of Class beauty shop in DeKalb.

“My customers really enjoy them,” owner Linda Perkins said. “We have some little ones who do come in and sit and wait for their appointments. Their mothers and grandmothers sit and read the books to them, and they really enjoy it.”

Farris’ first-year efforts have earned her the Family and Literacy Award from the Illinois Reading Council, which first inspired her with a recommendation for teachers to read aloud to children in Laundromats.

“I thought that was really great,” she said. “They’re recognizing you have to go out and reach parents and children wherever they may be, and in this case, the free health care clinics are a great place. They have time on their hands to peruse the pictures and read to them. The kids are picking the books up.”

Farris started last fall with a $250 grant from the Northern Illinois Reading Council. Her undergraduate students contribute their bonus points from the Scholastic Book Club, and the latest award of $100 will buy between 25 and 50 new books.

She tries to purchase popular books: the “Clifford the Big Red Dog” series, in English and Spanish, or the “Arthur” series; for older children, she places copies of Beverly Clearly books, such as the “Ramona” series.

Other books are non-fiction, including informational books on frogs, sharks and other wildlife. “A lot of boys, in particular, pick those up,” she said.

Sebenste to receive Mark Trail Award

In recognition of his efforts to provide timely weather warnings to the Northern Illinois University community, NIU Staff Meteorologist Gilbert Sebenste has been selected to receive the Mark Trail Award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Now in its seventh year, the Mark Trail Award program honors individuals and organizations that use or provide NOAA Weather Radio receivers and transmitters to save lives and protect property. Sebenste, one of 19 recipients from across the nation this year, will receive his award June 17 at ceremonies in Washington, D.C.

The award recognizes Sebenste’s efforts to purchase and install, across campus, more than 170 NOAA weather radio receivers. He also aggressively pursued the installation of a 100-watt transmitter on campus to improve reception on those radios. At his urging, the university provided tower space for the transmitter, an equipment shelter, power and a backup generator to ensure operations during power outages.

That work, in addition to Sebenste’s efforts to develop emergency plans, makes the campus community aware of correct protective actions and to train campus police as severe storm spotters led to NIU becoming the first university in the nation to earn the Storm Ready designation from the National Weather Service.

“Gilbert has always held the safety of students as a high priority,” says Jim Allsopp, warning coordinator meteorologist at the Chicago Weather Service Forecast Office in Romeoville. “His efforts ensure that students, faculty and staff at the university will now be advised of approaching severe weather in time to take adequate shelter, which is an invaluable service.”

Office of Campus Recreation
offers ‘Walk This Way’ class

Back by popular demand, the Office of Campus Recreation will offer the “Walk This Way” motivational walking class this summer for NIU faculty and staff.

The class begins Tuesday, June 17. The class will meet anytime between 11:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Aug. 7.

“Walk This Way” will include different walking routes on and around campus, instruction on walking techniques as well as information on a variety of topics, such as stretching and flexibility, good eating habits, strength training, mind/body fitness and more.

There also will be optional Wednesday activities from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m., such as yoga and body toning.

Costs for the walking class is $15. Participants completing 13 classes will receive an “I Walked This Way Summer 2003” T-shirt. Sign-up is available at the Rec Center Service Window or via campus mail (checks only) with attention to Walk This Way.

For more information, call Megan Ehlers at 753-9421.

Intercollegiate Athletics offers sports camps

Intercollegiate Athletics again is offering sports camps this summer in athletic training, football, softball, volleyball, wrestling and boys and girls basketball and soccer.

All camps offer a 10 percent NIU faculty/staff discount.

More information is available at 753-5300, via e-mail at sportscamps@niu.edu, or on the Web at www.niuhuskies.com under camps and clinics.

DeKalb Area Women’s Center to host art exhibit
featuring works of recent NIU School of Art graduate

Selected art works by Luis Maldonado are on display at the DeKalb Area Women’s Center.

Maldonado recently received his BFA in sculpture from the Northern Illinois University School of Art with additional studies in painting. The works being shown are a broad spectrum of styles and media consisting of painting, sculpture, video and installation. The entire show is displayed in chronological order to demonstrate the progress that was accomplished during his study in DeKalb.

“The Beginning to the End: Three Years of Study in DeKalb” is being shown at the OnStage Gallery and the Great Hall Exhibit Space at 1021 State St. in DeKalb from June 1 through June 25. The artist will be present each day from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, June 16 to 20. Viewing also is possible whenever there is an event taking place at the DeKalb Area Women’s Center, Fridays in 2003 from 7 to 9 p.m., and by appointment at 758-1351.

The free artist’s reception will take place from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, June 14. Jen Conley will provide violin music, partially supported by the Mary E. Stevens Concert & Lecture Fund. The public is invited to share in the art, music and refreshments with the artist.

Parking is available one-half block south of the building off 11th Street and south of the alley which is between and parallel to State and Market streets. The handicapped-accessible lift can be reached from the alley just north of the State Street building.

For further information, or to arrange a group showing, please call 758-1351.

5-27-03