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 Some familiar faces from NIU – and one terrifying beast from Montana – could be entering your living room this week.
“The Mystery Dinosaur,” featuring interviews with an NIU student and faculty member, will premiere on The Science Channel today and air several more times throughout the week.
The documentary tells the story of Jane, a pristine dinosaur skeleton unearthed in Southeastern Montana by a group of mostly amateur fossil hunters from the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, where the dinosaur is now prominently displayed.
Jane was built to kill. Twenty-two feet long and 7-1/2 feet high at the hip, the dinosaur during its day tipped the scales at about 1,500 pounds. It had 72 serrated teeth.
Mike Henderson, curator of earth sciences at the Burpee and a Ph.D. student in geology at NIU, led the Montana expeditions that discovered the dinosaur and brought its skeleton back to Rockford.
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 As bacteria go, Bacillus megaterium doesn’t exactly get a lot of press. Most people have never heard of it. Yet the common little bug with the grandiose name is yielding important information about subjects that are vital to public interest: AIDS, bioterrorism and environmental cleanup.
For the past three decades, Patricia Vary, an NIU Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and former chair of biological sciences, has been working to develop a better understanding of the genetic makeup of B. megaterium, or B. meg, as she calls it.
In the process, Vary and her colleagues developed a strain of B. meg that acts as an ideal host for the cloning of foreign DNA. For the past several years, this patented strain has been used by Abbott Laboratories for the production of a viral protein used in diagnostic tests for AIDS.
Most recently, the National Science Foundation provided a grant of $630,000 to The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), which is working with Vary and her research group at NIU to sequence the B. meg genome. Vary is among the three principal investigators on the research project, and NIU is receiving about $40,000 of the grant money.
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 Spanish instructor Kerry Chermel in NIU’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures is saying adios to the flat cornfields of DeKalb.
Chermel has received a prestigious Fulbright Teacher Exchange grant and will spend the fall semester at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, located at the foot of the Andes in the busy and beautiful city of Mendoza, Argentina. She will teach two sections of American literature at the university.
“I had lived in Spain before and really wanted to have the experience again of living in another culture,” Chermel said. “For a Spanish teacher, it’s essential to have these kinds of experiences. They broaden your knowledge of the language and of the culture.”
The Fulbright Teacher Exchange program is highly competitive. About 170 U.S. citizens will travel abroad through the program during the coming school year.
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 Read good news about – and send congratulations to – Roger Dahlstrom and Michael Day.
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Children ages 6 to 12 are invited to the NIU Music and Art buildings from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, July 25, for a fun day of hands-on arts activities. Arts Jam Xpress is sponsored by the NIU Community School of the Arts.
Children are divided into groups by age and enjoy three different classes in music, art and drama throughout the day. This is the first year for Arts Jam Xpress, which has been modeled on Arts Jam, a popular summer day camp that has become a community school tradition.
For more information, call Renee Page at (815) 753-1450 or check www.niu.edu/extprograms.
The NIU Community School of the Arts is pleased to announce two upcoming summer concerts. All are held in the Recital Hall of the NIU Music Building and are free and open to the public.
The Chamber Intensive performs at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 25. This small group of young musicians perform chamber music. This year’s group includes violin, viola, cello, trombone and trumpet. Laurie Rodriguez directs.
At 7 p.m. Thursday, July 27, the Suzuki piano students of Marilyn Montzka perform solos they have been working on throughout the summer.
The NIU Community School of the Arts is sponsored by the NIU College of Visual and Performing Arts. It is a year-round program offering experiences for children and adults in music, art and theater, including lessons, classes and ensembles. The fall semester begins in September. To be on the mailing list, call Renee Page at (815) 753-1450 or check www.niu.edu/extprograms.
Transportation is available Friday, July 28, from NIU to the Fiesta del Sol in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
The group departs from the Normal Road entrance of the Holmes Student Center at 9 a.m. and returns around 5 p.m. A $50 registration fee includes transportation only.
What started off as a block party has evolved into a nationally publicized event complete with corporate sponsorship. Unlike other festivals, Fiesta del Sol is alcohol and tobacco-free and, most importantly, it is still organized by members and leaders of the Pilsen community.
Fiesta de Sol began in 1972 as a celebration to commemorate the Pilsen Neighbors Community Council’s role in securing the city's commitment to building Benito Juarez High School.
For more information, please contact LA&S External Programming at (815) 753-5200 or lasep@niu.edu.
NIU’s Office of Scholarship Coordination, together with University Advancement, the NIU Foundation, the Office of Student Financial Aid and Accounting, is pleased to offer a training session on scholarship administration.
The workshop will take place from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday, Aug. 14, in Altgeld 100. Topics to be covered include scholarship policies, procedures and guidelines as well as reading foundation reports and filing necessary scholarship paperwork and forms. Refreshments and a training manual will be provided for each workshop participant.
Whether you are new to working with scholarships or a seasoned pro, this workshop will provide something for everyone. Reservations are encouraged, but not required. For more information or to reserve your space, contact Michele Niedermeier at mniederm@niu.edu or (815) 753-4829 by Wednesday, Aug. 2.
Area code 815 soon will run out of numbers. To resolve this problem, the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) authorized the assignment of a second area code.
Beginning Aug. 17, calls to the local calling area will be made by dialing 11 digits (1 + area code + number) rather than seven.
A period of permissive dialing extends until Feb. 17, 2007. During this time, anyone in the local calling area can be reached by dialing either the seven-digit or the 11-digit number. Afterward, 11-digit dialing will be required for all calls. On-campus calls (NIU to NIU) will remain seven digits. The new code, 779, may be assigned to new residents and businesses as early as March 17, 2007.
The ICC has published additional area code information online.
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