NIU Foundation Venture Grants are intended to support faculty in their pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, and outreach to the larger community. The funding is an investment in the imagination, intellect and dedication of NIU’s faculty and students.
This year, six Venture Grants totaling approximately $60,000 were distributed.
Technology can transform the life of a student with a disability, but only when educators know how to use it.
Thanks to a $13,000 Venture Grant, NIU professor Toni Van Laarhoven of the Department of Teaching and Learning will help educators at NIU and around the country learn how to use assistive technology to make school (and life) a little easier for students with all types of disabilities.
Van Laarhoven will use the funding to create training videos for teachers and speech, language and physical therapists. The tutorials will prepare these professionals to use resources such as software programs that help students read and write; communication devices that “speak” for students who cannot; and devices that allow students with motor and/or visual impairments to use computers.
Van Laarhoven’s work will not only impact NIU students but also will help establish NIU as a leader in the field of assistive technology by making these instructional resources available across the country via professional publications, conferences and the Internet.
Sometimes a photograph is all we have left to remember and learn from the past.
The Khmer Rouge regime’s devastation of Cambodia in the 1970s was one of the worst incidents of genocide of the 20th century. In less than four years, more than 1.7 million people were executed or killed by ensuing famine and disease.
While most of Cambodia’s photographic records were destroyed during the massacre, a precious few images remained: those taken by May Ebihara, the only American anthropologist to conduct field work in rural Cambodia before and after the war.
Not only do Ebihara’s photos document the aftermath, they are one of the only collections of images of daily life before the genocide. Her work captured images of families, religious rituals and villagers making palm sugar, threshing rice and plowing the fields with oxen.
Upon her passing, Ebihara left the image collection to her former assistant, NIU anthropology professor Judy Ledgerwood. Recently, Ledgerwood generously has pledged the images to NIU.
Now, with the help of a $5,927 Venture Grant, Ledgerwood will work with the Digitization Unit and Southeast Asia Collection of Founders Memorial Library to digitize Ebihara’s photos, making them available as a national and international resource for research and teaching on the Internet and as exhibitions at museums across the country.
The key to biodegrading some of the world’s most toxic substances could be held in the most surprising place: a tiny piece of extra DNA in a bacterial organism.
That tiny piece of DNA is called a plasmid, and understanding its genetic sequencing might bring us one step closer to a cleaner, safer environment.
R. Meganathan, Distinguished Research Professor of biological sciences at NIU, has found a soil bacterium capable of degrading a number of carcinogenic compounds.
Its secret lies in the genetic code of the bacterium’s plasmid. The plasmid’s gene sequence is what gives the bacteria the ability to digest unusual substances – substances such as the cancer-causing malachite green. Malachite green is a dye used in the nylon, wool, silk, leather and cotton industries – a dye that is contaminating our rivers and groundwater, jeopardizing the ecosystem and posing a serious health risk.
A Foundation Venture Grant of $5,500 will allow Meganathan to determine the genetic code of this bacterial plasmid, a step that will allow him to embark on this promising new field of discovery. Understanding this sequencing also will help Meganathan turn his provisional patent on his work into a functional patent, a process he must complete within a year in order to continue his research.
Meganathan’s work includes graduate and undergraduate biology students with the talent and motivation to work within the complex areas of bacterial genetics and biochemistry
As a “universal language,” music long has been known for its power to bring people together. The same can be said for video conferencing, which has been used for quite some time in the business world to bring people from different sites together for “virtual meetings.”
With the help of a $19,000 Venture Grant, Paul Bauer, director of NIU’s School of Music, will adapt the tools used for business video conferencing for use in the music world.
The technology will open myriad opportunities for music students through one-on-one private lessons, group instruction and even concert performances. Students, professors, and community members will “meet” through NIU’s current Internet and Internet2 connections.
The grant will pay for the video conferencing equipment that will allow the NIU School of Music to become a leader in the region and to perform as leaders throughout northern Illinois, the nation and the world.
The equipment also will generate revenue the school will use to provide instruction to students at other institutions of higher education and local public school districts.
Thanks to the Venture grant program, musical video conferencing capabilities will debut at NIU this fall.
Few problems can be more frustrating for children or their parents than struggling in school.
That’s why the psychology department at NIU has been awarded a $7,500 Venture Grant to help with start-up costs associated with creating an innovative clinic to conduct in-depth assessments of student needs and respond with timely, effective, research-based “next steps.” Interventions at the new clinic will follow a problem-solving model that allows for continual data collection and analysis and flexible strategies based on the constant stream of data.
Led by Michelle Demaray and Christine Malecki, associate professors in the Department of Psychology, the program will benefit academically struggling children, their parents and NIU graduate students.
The clinic will provide local families with innovative academic support for their students while grad students benefit from rich supervised training experiences as they help these children succeed.
This project also is supported with $15,000 of in-kind donations from the Department of Psychology.
A generous gift can inspire a lot in an academic community. Take, for example, a gift of Japanese prints given to the NIU Art Museum from art collector Richard F. Grott.
The gift inspired Helen Nagata, professor of art history, and Josephine Burke, director of the NIU Art Museum, to design a multi-disciplinary, interactive program that will multiply the Grott collection’s impact three-fold.
In honor of the Grott donation, Nagata and Burke have designed a large-scale academic project designed to illuminate issues of identity in Japanese artwork from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The exhibits, activities and events will encourage reflection on the artist’s sense of self and response to place and society from one century to the next.
The project will be funded, in part, by a $9,000 Venture Grant.
Ultimately, the university, its faculty and students and the community all will benefit from this highly collaborative project that includes three visual art exhibitions; a scholarly catalogue; guest lecturers; extensive student involvement; opportunities for international organizations; musical performances; and public programming.