December 13, 2004, Northern Today Abridged

Huskies find way to San Jose

NIU fans love their Huskies – and they’ve proven it again by selling out a 200-seat charter bowl trip before final details were even worked out.

Negotiations on an all-inclusive, three-day, two-night Silicon Valley Football Classic package hadn’t even concluded last Thursday before word-of-mouth advance registrations sold out the plane.

Officials with Huskie Athletics report that game ticket sales are brisk. They are encouraging fans who are still interested in attending the Dec. 30 game in San Jose, Calif., to contact official Mid-American Conference travel agency Anthony Travel at 1-800-736-6377 for information on other travel packages.

NIU enters the bowl with an 8-3 overall record, a share of its third MAC West Division title in the last four years, plus a No. 32 national ranking this week in the coaches’ ESPN/USA Today poll and a No. 35 rating in the Associated Press version.

Hung receives David W. Raymond grant

Wei-Chen Hung, a professor in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, is the winner of the 2004 David W. Raymond Grant for Use of Technology in Teaching.

Hung will use the $2,500 grant to create the “Action Organizer,” an interactive computer program to help students expertly manage problem-based learning activities. The program also will encourage structured collaboration between classmates while allowing instructors to monitor, evaluate and bolster their progress.

It will reach far beyond current computer-based communication – e-mails and online chatter between classroom partners that merely wonder whether particular assignments are completed – and could set the stage for a larger project with external funding.

“The purpose of problem-based learning is to facilitate students’ metacognitive skills and critical thinking skills,” Hung said. “But students usually don’t know how to solve the problems. They usually just think about them. There’s no tool. This will help them manage the problem and guide them to solving the problem step by step, based on an expert model.”

Students must identify the learning issues each problem presents, along with their thoughts and hypotheses, and plug those factors into the program. Instructors review the entered information and offer feedback along the way, a path that will become structured thanks to the program’s adherence to scientific process.

“Everyone will have to enter a lot of information to promote their critical thinking skills. When an expert thinks about a problem, he or she draws from multiple perspectives to look at the problem assigned to them. This system follows that expert thinking process,” Hung said.

“I’ve been doing problem-based learning for some time, and I see a problem inherent in e-mail and online discussion. They are unorganized,” he added. “Most times, students just use them for confirmation: ‘Have you done this yet? Have you done that yet?’ They don’t really discuss the problem.”

The program is almost done, he said. Informal testing already has begun, and some of his students will conduct the pilot testing next semester. For now, Hung is developing the program only for college students and for local networks.

However, he said, K-12 and Internet-based models could come in later stages: Hung is submitting a grant to the National Science Foundation in hopes of further financial support.

“This grant is a very good start for me. I’m thrilled,” he said. “It gives me the opportunity to put my theory into practice.”

The grant was endowed in 1998 by Raymond, a former NIU trustee who donated $25,000 to the NIU Foundation to fund faculty innovations in computer-aided teaching. The initial gift was invested, with annual interest earnings matched by the Provost’s office, to fund the yearly award to a faculty member whose proposal best matches Raymond’s gift criteria.

Jerrold, Carol Zar contribute to
Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center

Jerrold and Carol Zar’s fervent devotion to NIU, their shared alma mater and workplace, is easy to see.

The Zars have made several gifts to the university over the decades, spreading a substantial amount of dollars across more than 50 departmental and college funds, as well as Northern Public Radio, Founders Memorial Library, the Division of Student Affairs and Intercollegiate Athletics. They also have endowed two scholarships for undergraduate students.

Now they have given their largest gift ever: $50,000 to the new Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center. It will build an outdoor terrace, named in their honor, adjacent to the John and Nancy Castle Faculty Library.

Their gift also is expected to inspire other faculty to pledge financial support.

“We’ve made contributions for many, many years in a variety of ways, to many different departments and activities. The Alumni and Visitors Center caught our eye, primarily because we’re both alumni and longtime beneficiaries of what the university has to offer,” said Jerry, who retired in 2002 after an 18-year term as dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for Graduate Studies and Research.

“It should serve as an attractive gateway to the university, a place for alumni and visitors to learn about the university, either as an introduction during their first time here or to reminisce about past times.”

“It’s a facility that is filling a need, not just for the university, but for the whole community,” added Carol, assistant director of NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies. “I’m certain it will have heavy use, not just from alumni but university supporters in DeKalb and Sycamore, whether they’re alumni or not. That’s a piece of it that’s important to me.”

Ground was broken Homecoming weekend on the two-and-a-half story, 37,000-square-foot Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center.

Located on the southwest corner of Annie Glidden Road and Stadium Drive, the building will boast state-of-the-art meeting and conference facilities and office space for the NIU Alumni Association, the NIU Student Alumni Association and representatives from the admissions and orientation offices.

Its centerpiece is the Great Hall featuring plaques, displays and exhibits highlighting the history of NIU and the accomplishments of the university’s alumni. The NIU Foundation is serving as developer and financing construction of the building, which it will turn over to the university when the debt has been retired.

Jerry and Carol also believe the prominent acknowledgement of outstanding professors through showcasing their scholarship inside the library will boost recruitment of new students, all of whom will start their campus tours in the center. “Showing off your star faculty is important,” Carol said.

To the Zars, the new facility also reflects a university moving forward.

“For us to continue to contribute to so many causes over so many years shows that we think the university is advancing and doing good things. This gift is filling a niche that hasn’t been met before,” Jerry said. “It also doesn’t mean our contributions will stop.”

Jerry came here in 1958, completing his bachelor’s degree in biology four years later. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he met Carol, who was earning her bachelor’s degree there.

When Jerry was ready to begin teaching, he and his new wife came to NIU. He spent his initial years here teaching biology and conducting research into physiological adaptations of animals to their environment and statistical analysis of biological data.

In 1974, Prentice Hall published his book, “Biostatistical Analysis.” A fourth edition of the book was published in 1999, and he has a publisher’s contract to write the fifth edition.

Named chair of the Department of Biological Sciences in 1978, he continued to teach and wrote the last half-dozen of 13 proposals for a Ph.D. program until it finally was approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. In the meantime, faculty in the department stepped up research and achieved a strong balance between teaching and scholarship.

Carol spent her first years in DeKalb as a full-time mother and homemaker and, when her children began school, resumed her education. She earned an NIU master’s degree in public affairs.

In her first NIU job, in the Division of Public Administration, she served as intern coordinator. Four years later, she moved to the Center for Governmental Studies.

Carol continues to provide support that improves local government in Illinois, working with city managers, village clerks, elected officials, leaders of not-for-profit agencies and others in the municipal arena “to make the way we run our communities more professional.”

She also has served as the executive director of the Illinois City/County Management Association and on the board of directors of Mainstreet/DeKalb Inc., a downtown historic preservation and revitalization effort.

The Zars now are grandparents (they have a son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in St. Louis and another son in Madison), and Jerry keeps busy as an author, a consultant for the Council of Graduate Schools (the national association of graduate school administrators) and playing his trumpet in the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra and other local ensembles.

For more information about the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center and the many opportunities to give, call (815) 753-1048.

Hosmane receives prestigious German professorship

Göttingen Academy of Arts and Sciences in Germany has selected NIU’s Narayan Hosmane to receive the prestigious Gauss Professorship. Hosmane, an NIU Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, will spend two months next year (May and November) at the historic German university, founded in 1751. There he will lecture on new perspectives in cancer therapy.

The Gauss Professorship is named in honor of Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), a famed mathematician noted for his many contributions to physics, particularly in the study of electromagnetism. The Gauss Professorship aims to cultivate the exchange of scientific ideas. It is awarded annually to a leading scientist in one of Gauss’ fields of interest, and nominations come from across the globe.

Hosmane’s distinguished career has produced a long list of accomplishments, awards and recognitions.

In 2001, he won the Humboldt Research Award for senior scientists (with a stipend of about $70,000) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Bonn, Germany. That award is presented annually to scientists from across the world as a tribute to their lifelong accomplishments. Hosmane also was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Distinguished Chair of Chemistry at the University of Hyderabad, India.

“I consider the Gauss Professorship the highest honor,” Hosmane says. “This award usually goes to mathematicians or physicists. Very few chemists have been selected.”

Hosmane’s area of expertise falls under the broad category of boron chemistry research, but his interests are widely varied. He is the founder of Metallo-Biotech International Inc., a university spin-off company that is advancing Boron Neutron Capture Therapy, a promising approach to cancer treatment.

The Gauss Professorship was awarded to Hosmane for his research in gadolinium chemistry. Gadolinium in a contrast dye is given intravenously before Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans to improve the quality of the pictures in cancer therapy.

Chicago musical 'Menopause' to benefit
College of Visual and Performing Arts fund

Smiles and laughs at the expense of four women going through “The Change” will help enhance learning experiences for students in NIU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA).

Supporters of the college are invited to attend the 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 19, production of “Menopause The Musical™” at the Apollo Theatre, 2540 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. All proceeds benefit the Dean’s Fund for Arts Initiatives.

The Apollo seats 400, and Dean Harold Kafer is working all lines of communication to pack the house. NIU alumna Jeanie Linders, writer and producer of the musical and a member of the CVPA advisory board, and the “Menopause” cast will attend a special post-show reception.

The event is a board project. A subcommittee of the board has been working for two months on marketing and promotion of the event, including launching a Web site (www.cvpadeansfund.com) and organizing a silent auction and a raffle to further boost the fund.

It’s all part of the college’s most ambitious fundraising effort to date.

“Our college has been driven over the past decade by a focus on being a major provider of artistic services to the region in ways that strengthen the teaching and learning environment – the interaction of faculty and students on campus,” Kafer said.

“Like the university in general, we have more opportunities than we can possibly pursue given the limits of financial and human resources, so there has to be some rubric by which one says ‘yes’ rather than ‘no,’ ” Kafer added. “Certainly those opportunities which are going to have the greatest positive benefit for our students, especially in terms of enhancing their educational experience, are the opportunities to which we try to say ‘yes.’ ”

Saying ‘yes’ often requires funding, however.

Kafer makes use of “unrestricted money,” given to the college through the NIU Foundation by individual donors, to fuel the fund. The fund provides the dollars necessary for the students and faculty to “make a difference in the cultural landscape of the region and add quality and economic value to the lives of (its) citizens.”

The money can cover a variety of costs, from support for the students and professional artists and their transportation, to marketing and production of the events, he said.

“Very often,” he added, “taking advantage of such opportunities means having some sort of investment capital in the initial phases of a project, which might at some later time produce revenue or attract philanthropic support.”

Board members are helping to sell tickets and are making contributions to the silent auction. Kafer is donating two season tickets to the NIU School of Theatre and Dance and four tickets to the March 16 concert by the Vermeer Quartet at the Harris Theatre at Millennium Park in Chicago.

A member of the college’s advisory board is donating the raffle prize: a four-day, three-night trip to Las Vegas with hotel and airfare included.

For more information, visit the Web site (www.cvpadeansfund.com) or contact Susan Carter at 753-1636 or via e-mail at scarter@niu.edu.

Kudos

Presidential Research Professor William Baker published an in-depth, two-page article on George Eliot, the pen name for Victorian writer Mary Ann Evans, in the Dec. 3 issue of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS).

The TLS is a prestigious weekly literary review published in London. Over the past century, the review has featured such distinguished contributors as Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

Baker’s article describes, comments and transcribes previously unpublished notes of Eliot dealing with 15th century Spain and the Inquisition. Eliot transformed the material creatively in her poem “The Spanish Gypsy” (1868) and in her last completed novel “Daniel Deronda” (1876). Baker discovered the notes at Princeton University Library.

Holding a joint appointment the NIU Department of English and University Libraries, Baker is considered the foremost bibliographer and a leading scholar on the works of Eliot. She was among the most important British novelists of the 19th century.

Distinguished Research Professor Thomas Rossing has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), “for contributions to engineering education, acoustics and magnetic devices.” Each year the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for one of the Institute’s most prestigious honors, election to IEEE fellow.

Rossing, professor emeritus in the NIU Department of Physics, has previously been elected to fellowship three other scientific societies, the American Physical Society, the Acoustical Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received the Silver Medal in Musical Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America, and the Millikan Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers.

He will be a visiting professor at Stanford University during the winter quarter.

FIT program holds spring registration

The FIT Program will be holding spring registration on the following dates:

Monday, Jan. 10
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. – returning members only

Tuesday, Jan. 11
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. – returning members only
3 to 4 p.m. – returning members only

Wednesday, Jan. 12
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. – new members only

Thursday, Jan. 13
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. – new members only
3 p.m. to 4 p.m. – new members only

Friday, Jan. 14
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. – open registration

Payment is due at the time of enrollment via check or payroll deduction (for NIU employees). Spring session begins January 18. Questions? Please contact the FIT staff at 753-0335 or via e-mail at fit@niu.edu.

Lifelong Learning ready for spring

The NIU Lifelong Learning Institute’s winter semester – Jan. 18 to Feb. 10 – will offer five study groups, one day trip, two extended trips and four notable lectures.

Study groups include “Eroticism in Films” with Sol Feldman, “The Uses of Fungi and Plants as Sources of Medicine” with Laszlo Hanzely, “Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China” with Lyle Sykora, “Jewish Holidays” with Avi Bass, and “That Was the Week That Was” with Elizabeth Bass. All classes begin the week of Jan. 18.

On Feb. 9, anyone can join NIU Lifelong Institute members to see “Measure for Measure” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

NIU’s Lifelong Learning Institute we founded four years ago for participants 55 years or older. A full class schedule with times and dates can be obtained by calling 753-5200 or visiting www.niu.edu/CLASEP online.

Students reminded of financial deadlines

The Student Financial Aid Office reminds students of the March 1 financial aid priority filing date. Complete the NIU Verification Form (www.fa.niu.edu) and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (www.fafsa.ed.gov) each and every year.

Call 753-1395 for more information.

Outstanding women sought for recognition, awards

NIU’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, in cooperation with the Office of the President, the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, Women’s Studies Program and the Office of University Resources for Women, recognizes the achievements of outstanding women students on an annual basis.

Created in 1980, the NIU Outstanding Women Student awards are intended to encourage the full participation of women students in all facets of the University experience and in their communities; to support their development of corresponding strengths, both cooperative and competitive; and to celebrate their achievements and contributions, including those not usually recognized by other award programs.

Eligible nominees have a graduation date during the award year: for example, seniors, third-year law students and graduate students who will receive their degrees in May, August or December 2005.

Information sheets must be completed by nominees regarding departmental and university leadership roles, community involvement, other awards and scholarships, goals and aspirations, and obstacles overcome in pursuit of their education. Preference is given to candidates with a 3.0 GPA or better.

Submit nomination using either this attached form or the electronic form located at http://www.niu.edu/women/PCSW/nonform.shtml.

The deadline is Friday, Jan. 7. Call 753-9614 for more information.

12-13-04