Century's first decade full of achievement, promise for NIU
 NIU in the first decade of the new millennium is a stronger institution with greater promise than ever, according to President John Peters' ‘five years back, five years forward' view of the institution laid out last week in his annual State of the University Address.
Peters described NIU in 2005 as a university that has survived serious financial downturns and has stepped up efforts to become for self-supporting in an era of dwindling state appropriations. He stressed the need to concentrate on student retention and graduation, calling those issues “the heart of national debate on accountability in higher education.”
“Twenty-five years ago, when college was still considered optional and most college students came from more privileged backgrounds, a high ‘flunk-out rate' was considered a mark of institutional academic rigor,” Peters said.
“Today, with 85 percent of new jobs requiring some college education, graduation is a make-or-break imperative. It's not enough to simply provide access: we need to ensure success,” he added.
Peters praised recent efforts to enhance student success rates, including the new undergraduate advising center, an early alert program that identifies struggling students within the first few weeks of school, and stepped-up tutoring programs, including those at the newly opened Grant Towers tutoring center.
 NIU will throw open its new front door to the world Saturday, Oct. 15, when it dedicates the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center during Homecoming festivities.
“This building is nothing short of spectacular,” said NIU President John Peters. “Dennis and Stacey Barsema, Ruth Pollack and the more than 2,000 other donors who so graciously and generously supported this project have created a new gateway to the university, one that makes us all proud. It is a first-class facility befitting of an outstanding institution such as NIU.”
The 40,000-square-foot building, located at the corner of Annie Glidden Road and Stadium Drive, will play host to a donors-only reception Friday, Oct. 14. It will open to the general public at 11 a.m. on Homecoming Saturday, and formal dedication ceremonies will take place at 12:30 p.m.
Visitors at those events will have an opportunity to tour the facility.
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 Enrollment inched upward this year with an overall increase of 1.6 percent, NIU President John Peters has announced.
The modest growth is in keeping with the university's goal of limiting total enrollment to a level that can be served adequately by available resources.
“The demand for an NIU education continues to be at an all-time high, but we have to be prudent,” Peters said. “Years of decreased funding from the state have stretched our resources thin. It is only through the extraordinary dedication of our faculty and staff that we have been able to uphold the high standards we set for the university. We owe it to our students to ensure that our enrollment doesn't outstrip our ability to provide a top quality educational experience. This increase achieves that goal.”
According to the university's official 10th-day count, the total enrollment at the university grew to 25,208, up 388 students compared to last fall.
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 NIU Professor J.D. Bowers will play a crucial role as “historian-in-residence” for a new project aiming to enhance students' knowledge of U.S. history in the Woodstock, DeKalb, Harvard, Belvidere and Prairie Grove public school districts.
Officials from the districts recently announced that they will share nearly $1 million in federal funding to launch the “Challenge of Freedom” project. The three-year effort will provide high quality professional development to as many as 160 history teachers, with the objective of improving instruction and raising student achievement at the elementary, middle school and high school levels. The five districts serve more than 23,000 students.
The Woodstock School District is spearheading the collaborative effort, with funding provided through a federal Teaching American History grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Education.
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   An academic paper arrives at a professor's desk with a note requesting a peer review, yet the recipient is unqualified to accurately assess the work and fails to disclose the problem.
Another professor asked to evaluate a proposal for research borrows an idea contained in the pitch. A third is listed as an author on a project to lend it credibility despite no involvement in the work.
Such lapses in good judgment could spiral into disaster, says Murali Krishnamurthi, director of NIU's Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center.
“Ultimately,” he says, “these things impact public welfare and safety if somebody takes these research findings that are reported in the paper and they take it to be truthful and apply it to certain activities that impact public safety and health.”
Krishnamurthi, along with Faculty Development colleagues Dan Cabrera (multimedia coordinator) and Jason Rhode (online technologies coordinator), have earned a third grant of $25,000 from the federal Office of Research Integrity to develop online learning modules that promote responsible conduct in research.
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 Chris Carger's students in Literacy Education used to catch a van at dawn so they could tutor English language learners in Chicago 's Pilsen neighborhood.
Now the growing Hispanic population in DeKalb County allows the NIU students to practice in local classrooms while Carger spends more of the program's limited dollars on art supplies rather than gasoline and tolls for rented vans.
Hispanic children now make up 30 percent of the enrollment in some DeKalb schools, she said, up from as little as 2 percent in the last decade.
“Our main goal is to really help English language learners to achieve literacy in English and to also have a really good feeling about their native language,” Carger said. “We no longer have to go to Chicago to get that experience.”
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 A memorial scholarship award is being established to honor the memory of Carol J. Feltz, a talented statistician and researcher whose passion for teaching led her to return to NIU, her alma mater.
“What stood out in Carol's professional life was her sense of devotion to teaching and helping students,” said Rama Lingham, director of the Division of Statistics within the NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences.
“The superb art of teaching requires a person with special talents and a spirit of care,” he said. “Carol was one of those people.”
The only full-time female professor in the statistics division, Feltz was a role model to women in a subject area traditionally dominated by men. She taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses at NIU during her 16-year career.
Feltz, of St. Charles, carried a full teaching load last spring, vacationed with her family in Switzerland in June, finished writing a scholarly book chapter in July and intended to teach this fall.
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 A startup band on campus is making history, of sorts, with catchy songs such as “Yuppie Socialists,” “Flags, Guns, and Bibles” and “Goin' Atlantic.”
These aren't your typical student alternative rockers, however. All of the members of Captain Swing, which formed in 2004 and cut its first CD this past summer, are NIU history professors.
“All we've played so far has been history department events,” admits vocalist and percussionist Beatrix Hoffman.
Still, the group's debut effort, appropriately titled “Historiography,” has been a hot commodity among students and faculty. The band is scrambling to produce more CDs after about 85 originals sold out at a modest $5 each. Proceeds benefit the NIU History Club.
In addition to Hoffman, band members on the new CD include Jason Hawke (vocals, bass, percussion), Sean Farrell (keyboard, vocals), Jim Schmidt (guitar, vocals, banjo), Eric Jones (guitar, vocals) and Taylor Atkins (bass, percussion).
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 Read good news about – and send congratulations to – Paul Culhane.
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NIU's Center for Black Studies will host a day-long symposium, Tuesday, Oct. 11, titled, “The Emmett Till Continuum in the Katrina Disaster Exposes the Theft of Life, Intellect and Spirit – 50 Years Later: Another Wake-up Call, Another Catalyst.”
Headlining the event will be Clenora Hudson-Weems, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia and author of “Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement.”
Hudson-Weems, who is considered by many the definitive authority on the Emmitt Till case, purports that the 1955 lynching of Till in Money, Miss., for allegedly whistling at a white woman was the true catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Hudson-Weems will argue that the events that unfolded after Hurricane Katrina, which disproportionately devastated poor blacks, demonstrates that many of the conditions and attitudes of a half-century ago persist.
Other guest speakers at this event will include:
- Barry Morrow, award winning co-writer of the movie, “Rain Man,” who is collaborating with Hudson Weems on the feature movie, “Resurrecting Emmett: Passion for Truth.”
- Evelyn Coleman, award-winning author of books for children, and author of the adult thriller, “What a Woman's Gotta Do.”
- Elombe Brath, executive producer and host of “Afrikaleidoscope” on WBAI-FM in New York City.
- Alvin O. Chambliss, Jr., Mississippi civil rights attorney.
- William Turner, vice president at the University of Kentucky.
- Jackie Frazier-Lyde, five-time world champion boxer and attorney at law.
The event, which will begin at 9 a.m., will include four plenary sessions, followed by an afternoon presentation titled, “Statements of Outrage: Plagiarism Must Stop.” The day will conclude with a 7 p.m. reception, followed by an 8 p.m. banquet.
For more information, call Laverne Gyant at (815) 753-1709.
The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, will present the 2005 Marla Dickerson Public Interest Lecture Series at the NIU College of Law, making him the second speaker for the distinguished annual lecture series.
The lecture will be given at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20, in Altgeld Hall.
Jackson is one of America 's foremost civil rights, religious and political figures. Over the past 40 years, he has played a pivotal role in virtually every movement for empowerment, peace, civil rights, gender equality and economic and social justice.
His lecture will center on the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. As key provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are set to expire in 2007, Jackson aims to ensure that such sections are reauthorized to protect voters from discrimination at the ballot box.
Funded by a donation from the Dickerson Family, the Marla Dickerson Public Interest Lecture Series was established to bring distinguished speakers to NIU to discuss current issues relating to public interest and appropriately honor the spirit of Marla Dickerson. Dickerson is a former NIU law student who died in a plane crash in 1994 during her second year of law school. She was determined to use her legal education in public interest.
Please RSVP to Melody Mitchell at (815) 753-1027 or mmitchell@niu.edu. This event is free and open to the public.
Jim Atwood, timpanist with the New Orleans Philharmonic, will be on campus Thursday, Oct. 13, to present a master class on timpani performance and how to repair and maintain the instruments.
Call (815) 753-1551 for more information.
Stress Busters, support group for learning how to deal effectively with the stress in your life, meets from 3 to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Nov. 15 at the Women's Resource Center, 105 Normal Road.
For more information, call Marianne Tomlinson or Deb Finke at (815) 753-0320.
The Paideia Projects Program will hold its third video/DVD presentation Sunday, Oct. 16, at the Fountain Blue Banquets and Conference Center, 2300 South Mannheim Road in Des Plaines.
There will be a full dinner with open bar before and after the dinner, wine on each table and a book exhibit. A dance group will perform traditional Greek dances. Cocktails are served at 5 p.m., and dinner begins at 6 p.m. The donation is $60 per person.
This year the Paideia program will present its second Paideia Award to Greek American Restaurant Association (GARA). The video's theme is “The Influence of Ancient Greece on the American Founding Fathers.”
The NIU Campus Child Care Center will hold its annual Children's Book Fair during the week of Oct. 24.
The book fair will be open from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday at the Campus Child Care Center. Come browse through a wide selection with multiple copies of books, early readers, parent resource materials, calendars and much more. About 1,800 books and other items will be available for purchase.
The center is located just off Annie Glidden Road west of Gabel Hall. The main entrance can be accessed by the circle drive in front of our white stone building in parking lot 38.
The Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences has announced additions to it schedule for its Fall 2005 Colloquia.
All talks are held at 4 p.m. in Davis Hall 308 and are co-sponsored by the Graduate Colloquium Committee of NIU. For more information, call (815) 753-1943 or click here.
Today: Dr. Rowan, distinguished lecturer for the AAPG, “Collisional Fold-and-Thrust Belts Detached on Salt,” held in Davis 309. Monday, Oct. 31: Distinguished lecturer for the SEG to be announced
Friday, Nov. 11: Reed Scherer, NIU, “T. Rex and T-bird, dolphin flippers and Cadillac fins.”
The Friends of NIU Libraries will sponsor a trip to the Newberry Library on Saturday, Nov. 5. The Newberry is hosting an exhibition, “Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country,” and will present two free lectures on “Indian Country through Photography and Film.”
Richard Mack, a photographer from Evanston, will speak on “The Lewis and Clark Trail: American Landscapes” at 11 a.m. Sally Thompson from the University of Montana, the media curator for the exhibit, will show her short documentary film, “Contemporary Voices Along the Lewis and Clark Trail,” at 1:30 p.m. and then discuss the film project.
For further details about this event, click here.
The Friends will provide a bus to and from the library, but space is limited. Lunch is not included. The bus trip is free to Friends; non-Friends and guests will be asked to pay $15 ($10 for students) to help defray expenses.
Payment (for non-Friends) will be collected when boarding the bus. To reserve a seat, contact Kathy Wright at (815) 753-5201 or kwright@niu.edu by noon Friday, Nov. 4. The bus will leave at 9 a.m. from the Normal Road entrance to the Holmes Student Center, and will return around 5 p.m.
The Oct. 21 nomination deadline is fast approaching for NIU's 2005 Outstanding International Educator award.
The Division of International Programs bestows the award during the annual International Recognition Reception, which will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, in the Clara Sperling Sky Room of Holmes Student Center.
The award recognizes an NIU faculty or staff member who has contributed significantly toward international education at the university. The award also aims to heighten visibility and awareness of international education.
Last year's winner, Presidential Teaching Professor Gene Roth of the Department of Counseling, Adult and Higher Education, will speak at the 2005 presentation.
The 2005 award recipient will have made sustained contributions to the enhancement of international education at NIU through teaching, research, public service and student-service efforts.
For application information, click here or contact Sara Clayton at (815) 753-9526. -- MORE
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