Literacy Education students learn
what books boys like to read
 Fifth-grade boys in Rockford's Rolling Green Elementary School are e-mailing NIU students about books.
And not just books about dead dogs.
As part of Project REAL, the federally funded partnership between NIU, the Rockford Public Schools and Rock Valley College, the e-mail pen pals read the same books and discuss them through the computer.
It's an experiment that one participating teacher believes has national potential.
“Everyone is concerned about boys and reading,” says Pamela Nelson, the Department of Literacy Education professor who devised the program that began a year ago this month.
“My ‘Children's Literature in a Multicultural Society' course graduates, who were student-teaching, or first-year teachers, or working at summer camps and day-care centers, were asking me for names of good books to read aloud during resting times and transition times,” Nelson adds. “I thought, ‘We had just had the children's literature course. What am I not doing that's making them e-mail me about this?' ”
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 NIU announced today that it is nearing approval of several new certificates that will prepare students for careers in homeland security and disaster preparedness.
“These certificates were created in response to an important un-met need in government and industry for people trained to prepare for and respond to emergency situations,” said Virginia Cassidy, NIU's vice provost for academic planning and development. “Students who earn these certificates will graduate with the expertise to help plan for and react to all types of disasters – natural or man-made.”
Each of the four NIU certificates in homeland security is designed to provide students with an understanding of issues related to homeland security and natural disasters, while focusing on specific areas of interest related to the student's primary field of study.
Students who earn the certificates will be able to assist in the development and implementation of systems for homeland security planning and management at the local, state and federal levels.
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 Dan Brown, author of the controversial and best-selling “The Da Vinci Code,” stood in a London courtroom last week and insisted he had not plagiarized ideas from a non-fiction book published in 1982.
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of highly publicized allegations or acts of dishonesty, some of which have tarnished newspapers such as the New York Times and USA Today and rocked companies such as Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom.
Cheating and plagiarism can end careers, ruin reputations and, in some cases, beget prison sentences. At NIU, academic dishonesty can produce an invitation to the Judicial Office and, for some, a letter of dismissal.
Murali Krishnamurthi, director of the NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, has developed an online tutorial on cheating and plagiarism to raise students' awareness about the causes and consequences.
“This is not all about the penalties," Krishnamurthi said. “This is to become proactive.”
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 Retirement is busy for Pamela Farris, who in December ended her 26-year career in the NIU Department of Literacy Education.
Farris is writing two books, one on language arts and the other on literacy-based instruction of social studies, and has a journal article set for publication next month. She volunteers in the Rochelle schools, and just judged a science fair at St. Mary's School in Sycamore. She still presents at academic conferences and, in June, will chair the annual NIU summer reading conference at Waubonsee Community College.
And, come Friday, Farris will enter the Illinois Reading Council Hall of Fame during the group's annual meeting in Springfield.
“It really came as a surprise. It was quite out of the blue, but it certainly is a significant honor,” Farris says. “They give this award each year to someone who has made a major impact on literacy and reading instruction in the state of Illinois.”
Farris joins former NIU colleagues Jane L. Davidson and Jerry Johns, who retired from the university in 1991 and 2000 respectively.
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 Walter LaFeber, a well-known author and one of the nation's most prominent historians, will visit campus later this month to deliver the second installment of the W. Bruce Lincoln Endowed Lecture Series.
The lecture, titled “Empire: A View of the American Experience from Ben Franklin to George W. Bush,” will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 29, in the Altgeld Hall Auditorium. Admission is free, and the event is open to the public.
“Walter LaFeber is one of the truly great historians of American foreign relations,” said Kenton Clymer, chair of the NIU Department of History. “He has written about the Cold War, Latin America, globalization and even Michael Jordan. No one is better qualified to place our current foreign policy in a broad historical context, and I am just delighted that he has agreed to deliver the second annual W. Bruce Lincoln Lecture at NIU.”
LaFeber is the Andrew Tisch and James Tisch University Professor at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1959.
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 NIU's Department of Communication will host Reality Bytes, a student documentary film festival, from Friday, March 31, to Monday, April 3.
Admission is free and open to the public for all events, which will include screenings of student and alumni documentaries as well as a music-video competition.
“This is a great opportunity for our students to screen their work before a public audience,” said Laura Vazquez, a professor of communication and director of the festival. “We expect as many as 200 people for some of the events.”
Student documentary screenings will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, March 31, in Room 204 of DuSable Hall. Winning films will be selected in three categories: historical, biographical and social issues. Following the screenings, winning filmmakers will be honored during an awards ceremony.
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 NIU students have a way to feed you and the hungry in our community at the same time.
The eighth annual “Empty Bowls” project is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 22, in the Chandelier Dining Room, 143 Adams Hall. Reservations are required for either of the two seatings, from 5 to 6 p.m. and from 6 to 7 p.m.
A donation of $15 buys all-you-can-eat homemade soup and bread, a beverage and, while supplies last, a ceramic bowl hand-crafted by an NIU art student. A donation of $10 buys food and drink only. Additional donations are welcome.
All proceeds benefit the Hope Haven shelter in DeKalb.
The menu includes chicken noodle soup, broccoli-cheddar soup and vegetable soup. Guests also can munch on a variety of breads. Beverages include coffee, tea, iced tea and water.
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 Read good news about – and send congratulations to – Norm Stahl.
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A few spots remain available for those interested in attending Internet2 Day.
The event, at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 30, in Altgeld Hall Room 100, will introduce the campus to a powerful new communication tool, Internet2.
Intended as a laboratory for the creation of the “next generation” of the commodity Internet, I2 is a high-speed, high-capacity communication network available only to about 300 member universities, research laboratories, institutions and select corporate partners. NIU became an active I2 member with the recent “lighting” of the first leg of its NIUNet fiber optic network earlier this year.
Internet2 Day will feature speakers who have first-hand knowledge of the power of this tool. They will touch on some of its many uses from data-heavy applications such as downloading (in minutes, rather than days) the enormous files required to analyze experiments done on particle accelerators like those at Fermi Lab, or the potential of Internet2 to open up entirely new horizons in the arts and humanities or to transform distance education into a much richer experience.
Those interested in attending can register online here. Click here to learn more about Internet 2.
Affirmative Action and Diversity Resources (AADR) has announced the second date of its 2006 Spring Series featuring Collective Stories and Cultural Experiences.
The event, scheduled from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 22, in Holmes Student Center Room 306, focuses on “Why Women Need Each Other: Understanding the Substructure of the Higher Education System.”
What are the unwritten codes of privilege that course through the hallow halls of academia which can add to the initial confusion of non-movement so often felt by working and learning women? Without understanding, so the belief goes, women accept pathways not chosen by importance and/or invested value, but by the mere instinct to survive.
Panelists are Robin Moremen, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Sociology; Susan Kuo, associate professor, School of Law; and Sharon Holmes, assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, Adult and Higher Education.
All are welcome to attend. For more information please contact Phinette Maszka, assistant director, mediation and diversity awareness programming at (815) 753-6030, TTY (815) 753-2000 or at pmaszka@niu.edu. Feel free to bring your lunch. Light refreshments will be provided.
Mortar Board, NIU's senior-class honor society, will kick off The Last Lecture Series this week with a presentation by Professor Gerald Miller from the Department of Electrical Engineering.
Miller will lecture on the topic of chaos theory at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 22, in the Heritage Room of Holmes Student Center.
The Last Lecture Series is a springtime tradition at many universities across the nation. Members of each Mortar Board local chapter recognize top faculty members and instructors by awarding them with the opportunity to deliver a lecture “as if it were their last.”
“The award allows each recipient an opportunity to indulge themselves in a lecture topic of their choosing,” said Jared Grandon, a senior majoring in electrical engineering who serves as vice president of Mortar Board at NIU. “The program is designed to promote scholastic interaction between students and professors.”
Other lectures on tap for the series:
- Professor Sharon Sytsma from the Department of Philosophy will lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 30, in the Heritage Room of Holmes Student Center on the topic of intersexuality and the ramifications within today's society.
- Professor Donald Tidrick from the Department of Accountancy will lecture on Tuesday, April 11, in Barsema Hall. The time and room have not yet been announced. Tidrick will provide reflections of a CPA and talk about how to survive in today's business world.
- Graduate Assistant Kelley Wezner of the Department of English will talk about humor in 18th-century literature at 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 17, in the Illinois Room of Holmes Student Center.
The Friends of the NIU Libraries invite the public to attend “What You Really Need to Know About the Middle East,” presented by Mark P. Fischer at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 22.
Fischer is from NIU's Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences.
The program will be held in the Staff Lounge located on the lower level of Founders Memorial Library. Call (815) 753-8091 for more information. An opportunity for discussion and light refreshments follows the presentation.
The University Women's Club will host a potluck dinner at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 23, at the Eldood House Visitor's Center. A social hour begins at 5:30 p.m. The DeKalb High School Jazz Ensemble will entertain.
NIU's Art Museum announces “POP! Contemporary Textiles Influenced by Popular Culture,” a group exhibition of both emerging and mid-career artists curated by Christine LoFaso, associate professor of art at NIU.
“POP!” will run from Tuesday, March 28, through Saturday, May 13, in the NIU Art Museum 's South Galleries of Altgeld Hall, with a public reception for the artists from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 28.
As an extension of the Art Museum's Museum without Walls program, Rapunzel, an installation piece of five years of accumulated fabric compiled by artist Amanda Browder, will make a daily appearance from the parapet of Altgeld Hall between March 28 and Friday, April 7.
In conjunction with this exhibition, visiting artist Mark Newport will give a public talk about his over-sized hand-knit Super-Dad costumes on Thursday, April 6, at 5 p.m. in Visual Arts Building Room 111.
“POP!” examines the work of nine artists: Susie Brandt, Judith Brotman, Amanda Browder, Bonnie Ward Klehr, Jeff Hand, Christine LoFaso, Ai Kijima, Mark Newport and Karen Reimer, whose work humorously, poignantly, and critically addresses the popular culture scene.
The NIU Art Museum is located on the first floor, west end of Altgeld Hall. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Admission is free and open to the public, and the building and gallery are accessible to all. Click here or call (815) 753-1936 for more information. This project was funded in part by the Illinois Art Council, a state agency, Friends of the NIU Art Museum, the NIU School of Art and Arts Fund 21.
NIU's School of Theatre and Dance will present two staged productions, “Mahagonny Songspiel” and “Agamemnon,” in late March and early April.
Performances are scheduled from Thursday, March 30, through Sunday, April 2, and from Wednesday, April 5, through Sunday, April 9. Both plays will perform each night, and are directed by Dale Goulding.
Weeknight and Saturday performances begin at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday performances at 2 p.m. in the Stevens Building Players Theatre on the DeKalb campus. Tickets are $14 for general admission, $8 for seniors, and $7 for students.
“Mahagonny Songspiel” is a musical description of four drunken criminals, a prostitute, and her madame who journey from a mythical Alabama to the city of Mahagonny to find redemption. They find instead a paradise of sin, where every pleasure is on sale and the only crime is having no money. Yet, when God comes to visit this place of individual Utopia and orders everyone to hell, the inhabitants protest with the realization that their paradise already has become a collective hell.
Following a brief intermission, “Agamemnon” makes a distinctive political statement about the nature of violence. Adapting Aeschylus' first play in the “Oresteia” trilogy, Steve Berkoff wrote his version of Agamemnon in 1972 during the height of Vietnam anti-war sentiment and consequently emphasized the immorality of war.
More information and ticket reservations are available by contacting the Stevens Building Box Office at (815) 753-1600. Visit the School of Theatre and Dance Web site at http://www.niu.edu/theatre/.
The Operating Staff Council has five three-year vacancies to fill this year.
Union or non-union employees in status positions with their supervisor's permission are eligible to run for the seats, which require a commitment of about six hours each month for monthly meetings and subcommittee participation.
The council, which promotes the general welfare of operating staff employees, meets the second Tuesday morning of each month.
Candidate data sheets are available here and are due by 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 7, to Joe Koch, in the Office of Publications in Gilbert Hall B105. For more information, call Koch at (815) 753-6069 or e-mail jkoch@niu.edu.
NIU's Supportive Professional Staff Council invites SPS members to enjoy a networking lunch from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, with their colleagues across campus.
Cost is $5 for the soup-and-sandwich buffet in the Chandelier Room of Adams Hall. Reservations are required before Thursday, March 23, at http://www.niu.edu/spsc or by calling Elsa Miller at (815) 753-1980.
A printable abridged version of Northern Today is available.
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