NIU is seeing substantial increases in the number of students participating in study abroad programs and in the number of new undergraduate international students.
During the 2007-08 academic year, 276 NIU students studied abroad, representing a 21 percent increase over the previous year. That includes a 77 percent increase in students studying abroad for durations of a semester or more, according to the Division of International Programs.
Study abroad numbers have been on the rise in recent years. From the 2004-05 academic year to 2007-08, NIU saw a 47 percent jump in the total number of students studying abroad and a 100 percent increase in those who studied overseas for a semester or more. The number of business students studying abroad soared by 150 percent, while graduate student numbers jumped by 77 percent.
The most common destinations for NIU students are England, Spain, Ireland and Italy, although the Study Abroad Program also is making inroads with less commonly chosen destinations, such as Malaysia, Cyprus and Tanzania, said Deborah Pierce, associate provost of International Programs.
The increased participation in study abroad mirrors a national trend. Recognizing the importance of an international education in today’s global society, U.S. students are studying abroad in record numbers.
“Like students across the United States, NIU students are realizing they need a global component to their education in order to be competitive when they graduate,” Pierce said.
She also credited the work of NIU faculty.
“Our strong programs led by NIU faculty members are a very big draw for us. They deserve the most credit,” Pierce said.
“We also just keep working harder and thinking of new ways to reach the students,” she added. “The best way is always class visits, but we also have been working with folks on campus to reach out more effectively to students in ethnic or demographic groups that are underrepresented in study abroad. Emily Prieto of the Latino Resource Center, for instance, has been a great ally for us. We’re starting a new initiative with her and have high hopes for it.”
President John Peters, who served on the national Abraham Lincoln Commission on Study Abroad, has pushed for the campus community to embrace the vision of NIU as a global university by heightening study abroad participation, welcoming more international students and faculty to our campus and internationalizing our curriculum.
The number of new undergraduate international students also is on the upswing. The fall 2008 enrollment reached 79 students, an increase of 59 percent over a four-year period. The enrollment of new international graduate students also increased substantially during the same period.
Overall, 762 international students are enrolled at NIU. The leading places of origin are India and China, and the leading areas of study are computer science, engineering and business.
The rising number of international students also reflects national trends, according to the Institute of International Education. The major reasons for the reported increases appear to be largely related to the growing reputation and visibility of U.S. campuses, more active recruitment efforts and a weak U.S. dollar that made U.S. tuition costs more attractive to international students.
Pierce said NIU has a growing profile abroad. “We have faculty who are very active internationally,” she said. “That definitely is a major attraction.”
The university in recent years has increased its online advertising presence targeting international students and improved online communication with prospects. Plans are in the works to further step up efforts to attract international students.
“Next spring we hope to participate in our first international college fair tour in China,” Pierce said.
Nancy Oldenburg has become the fourth nursing professor from NIU to receive a prestigious Nurse Educator Fellowship Award from the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
Oldenburg and 14 other nursing faculty from around the state were named Dec. 9 as the third class of a program created to ensure the retention of well-qualified nursing educators: Illinois, like other states, is suffering from a critical lack of nurses and nursing educators.
Recipients of the nursing fellowships collaborate with the IBHE and the Illinois Center for Nursing, assist in reviewing nomination materials for future fellows and participate in conferences. They must participate in statewide nursing advocacy and prepare final reports that describe their fellowship experiences.
Fellows also receive $10,000 each to further their work as teachers and researchers.
“I’m really excited about the opportunities it’s given other faculty here at NIU, and I’m certainly very excited to have this opportunity myself,” said Oldenburg, an assistant professor who came to the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences as an instructor in 2001.
NIU colleagues Judith Hertz and Donna Plonczynski are charter Fellows. Karen Baldwin was named last year.
“This good news speaks very well of our program and the caliber of our faculty. Nancy is a faculty member who always rises to the need of the school and the students,” said Brigid Lusk, chair of the NIU School of Nursing and Health Studies.
“She’s a dependable, outstanding teacher, and this year she was invited by the graduating seniors, just last Sunday, to be their speaker at the convocation ceremony,” Lusk added. “I admire her consistent team spirit. We have had some instructors who, for health reasons or other reasons, have suddenly had to leave teaching. She has repeatedly filled in for them. She always puts students first.”
Oldenburg, who spent 25 years as a pediatric nurse in hospitals before coming to academia, will apply her grant to developing a new teaching module that requires nursing students to write and present medical scenarios to their classmates.
Few nursing schools require student-written scenarios, Oldenburg said. She plans to start with her Fall 2009 section of “Child Health.”
“I’ll give them a list of ideas, and I’ll give them some guidance – steps that need to be completed by certain times throughout the semester,” she said. “This will involve a lot of research, and they’ll have to actually apply the things they find. They’re going to have to predict how the child might react, and the measures that have to be taken for the child.”
Students will deliver their scenarios in the school’s new Human Patient Simulation laboratory.
Purchased with an IBHE grant, the state-of-the-art equipment allows students to practice and learn techniques again and again on artificial patients incapable of injury or death.
The “patients,” which include an infant, also help students to learn diagnosis skills, including different cardiac and pulmonary diseases: The sims have realistic heart and lung sounds and even turn blue if deprived of oxygen.
Students also can discover numerous symptoms and conditions that might not exhibit themselves during their clinical rotations in real emergency rooms. Their HPS interactions are monitored in real-time with cameras and recorded digitally as faculty watch from behind a two-way mirror.
“I’m looking forward to seeing their progress on the simulation, including the actions of the nurse and the reactions of the child,” Oldenburg said. “The main thing they’re going to get out of this exercise is actually applying what they’re learning in the classroom. They do that in a clinical setting, of course, but there are a limited number of conditions they’re actually exposed to in a brief clinical experience.”
Oldenburg, who recently completed a doctoral degree in educational technology from NIU, will spend the spring semester teaching online courses. “That’s exciting,” she said. “It’s my area of interest.”
The winner of NIU’s Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction Award in 2007 also is passionate about lifelong learning.
Nursing demands intellectuals, she said then to explain her teaching philosophy, and the education doesn’t stop with a degree and nursing licensure exam.
“It’s important they know how to learn, and that if they need information, they know where to find it and can judge the validity of what they find,” she said. “The most important thing is for students to understand why they’re doing something. The whole picture of what’s wrong with the patient becomes so much more obvious to them, and it makes them such better nurses.”
Northern Public Radio’s classical WNIU (90.5) and news station WNIJ (89.5) will offer special holiday programming in December.
WNIJ and WNIU are the stations of Northern Public Radio, the broadcast service of Northern Illinois University.
The accolades keep coming in for NIU historian Christine Worobec.
Worobec recently picked up the 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies during the group’s 20th anniversary meeting in Philadelphia.
The award recognizes both exceptional scholarly and professional accomplishment throughout the recipient’s career, and dedicated mentoring of female students and colleagues. Past recipients have included Barbara Alpern Engel of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Stephanie Sandler of Harvard University and Nadezhda Azhgikina, secretary of the Russian Journalist Union.
Earlier this fall, Worobec was named one of the three inaugural recipients of the NIU Board of Trustees Professorships. That award also recognized the international recognition she has received for her scholarship and her continued efforts to engage students in her research and professional activities as well as to mentor graduate students and colleagues at other institutions.
Worobec, a former acting director of graduate studies in the Department of History, is among the world’s leading historians of tsarist Russia. She has won international praise for her interdisciplinary work exploring the extraordinary history of Russia’s common folk in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Association for Women in Slavic Studies sponsors research and teaching for scholars of women’s studies and questions of gender analysis in Central/Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Worobec is the only scholar in her field who has twice won the prestigious Heldt Prize from the association. The award is presented for the book of the year in Slavic, East European and Eurasian women’s and gender studies and the book of the year by a woman in any area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian Studies. Worobec has won in both categories.
Electrical work Friday, Dec. 19, will close Founders Memorial Library until at least 1 p.m. Access to electronic resources also will be unavailable during this time period.
For building status updates Friday, call (815) 753-9844 or check the university’s main Web site.
NIU’s Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center will host two workshops in January: “Teaching Inclusively: An Approach to the Dynamics of Diversity in the University Classroom” and “Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive, High Engagement Process and Philosophy for Increasing Teaching and Institutional Effectiveness.”
“Teaching Inclusively” is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 8. “Appreciative Inquiry” is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9. Both take place in the Regency Room of the Holmes Student Center.
These workshops are only for NIU administrators, faculty and staff. Registered participants for either or both of the seminars will receive workshop materials, lunch, refreshments and certificates of participation. Advanced registration is required by Friday, Dec. 19.
Registration is available online. Those who are unable to attend either or both of the workshops after registering should inform the center by Jan. 6 to give others on the waiting list the chance to participate. Call (815) 753-0595 or e-mail facdev@niu.edu for more information.
The college classroom has become a critically important place where students can explore their assumptions about diversity and social justice, learn about communities other than their own, try on new perspectives and gain a more expansive and complex humanity as a result of their interaction with people whose experiences differ from their own.
Maurianne Adams, professor emeriti at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will lead the workshop. Adams, editor of “Equity & Excellence in Education,” teaches social justice education graduate courses on foundations of social justice education and social identity.
Her institute examines four educational components of diversity in classrooms:
Appreciative inquiry (Ai) is both a worldview and a process for facilitating positive changes in systems. Its assumption is simple: Every system has something that works right, things that give it life when it is vital, effective and successful.
In the last 20 years, Ai has found its way into every sector, including higher education. Ai has been used to facilitate positive change in medical schools, academic departments, student affairs, human resources, extension services, library systems and institutionally, through work with boards of trustees.
Ray Wells, president of Abington, Pa.-based Wellbeing Systems, Inc., will lead the workshop. Wells has held student affairs positions at Arizona State University, Southeast Missouri State University and Temple University. He is co-owner of Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, LLC.
Media Services will offer training on the use of the audiovisual equipment in Provost-sponsored SMART classrooms from 8:30 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 3 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 8, and Friday, Jan. 9, in DuSable Hall 348, or by appointment earlier in the week. Call Keith Bisplinghoff at (815) 753-0172.
These seminars are open-ended and run continually. A complete demonstration with hands-on practice takes about 30 minutes.
NIU’s Civic Leadership Academy hosts its next workshop Thursday, Jan. 8, on “Governmental Cooperation, Collaboration, and Consolidation in the New Economy: It’s Not Just a Concept Anymore.”
This workshop will explore the changing dynamics between units of government. Current research and writings on the topic about “the strains on the system” will be debated. Do old models really work, and if so, for how long? What can we do better? What can we do together? What shouldn’t we do any longer?
Regions and regionalism also will be explored. Are they really dirty words or simply modern recognition that the world and intergovernmental relations has changed? You decide. We’ll take a closer look at networks and collaborations, particularly their logical models and some real world local government examples.
Participants will be stimulated to ponder and critically assess “how long can we go on/operate like this?” Professional insight will be presented as to what’s realistic, what’s on the horizon and what might be forced on us with regard to governmental consolidation and cooperation.
Co-presenters are Robert Gleeson, director of NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies and associate director of the Regional Development Institute, and Kurt Thurmaier, professor of public administration at NIU.
Registration and more information about CLA and its upcoming workshops is available online.
NIU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming will offer two review courses during the spring semester for those intending to take the GRE, GMAT and LSAT. Sessions begin in January and in April and take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays in Swen Parson Hall. Sessions include a lunch break.
Register online at www.niu.edu/clasep, by phone at (815) 753-0277 or at the Monat Building, 148 N. Third St., Room 152.
NIU hosts the Northern Illinois Bridal Expo from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11, at the Holmes Student Center Duke Ellington Ballroom. The free admission includes a complimentary buffet. Don’t miss the professional fashion show at 2 p.m.
Parking is available at the visitors lot on Carroll Avenue, just south of the student center. For more information, visit www.niu.edu/hsc.
The Lifelong Learning Institute will offer the following study groups beginning Tuesday, Jan. 20. Classes meet over a four-week period unless otherwise noted; visit the Web site for specific dates and register online.
LLI also will host the Winter Notables Lecture Series. Presentations are held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays in the Holmes Student Center, Room 505. The lectures are free and open to the public. Topics are subject to change; confirmation is recommended.
Join NIU and the University of Chicago in a Friday, Feb. 6, exploration of the Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wis.
Established in 1897, the observatory housed the University of Chicago’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Department. The historic building, located on the 77-acre park-like site, houses the world’s biggest lens-type telescope and continues to provide laboratory space and access to telescopes for research and instruction. The observatory was constructed outside the hustle, bustle and smog of Chicago to provide the clearest possible air for observations.
The facility includes a library and museum with displays featuring astronomers who had a profound impact on the scientific and local communities within the last century, as well as information on comets, galaxies, nebulae and the death of stars. Participants will learn about the observatory’s history, important discoveries and ongoing research in astronomy and astrophysics.
Depart at 2:45 p.m. from the Holmes Student Center, Normal Road entrance; return approximately 7:30 p.m. Cost is $35 and includes entrance fees, guide, snack and transportation.
To register, call (815) 753-0277 and reference Event #10121 or to register online, visit www.niu.edu/clasep and click on Special Events. For more information, contact LA&S External Programming at (815) 753-5200 or lasep@niu.edu.
The Southeast Asia Club of NIU announces a call for papers for the 2009 Student Conference on Southeast Asian Studies. One-page abstracts are due by Wednesday, Dec. 31.
One of the distinct characteristics of Southeast Asia is its complex and deep mixings of traditions, cultures and systems. This conference will explore these blends on various levels. Papers from all disciplines pertaining to the 2009 theme will be accepted from undergraduate and graduate students.
E-mail the following information to conference organizers:
Final drafts are due by Feb. 13, 2009. Best papers will be awarded $150 (undergraduate) and $250 (graduate).
Housing with students on campus can be arranged.
Please direct inquires and abstracts to Sarah Wiley, conference coordinator, Southeast Asia Club at NIU, by calling (630) 670-5703 or e-mailing SEA.Conference.2009@gmail.com.
The 2009 Graduate Student Research Conference on Education, Learning and Human Development is scheduled for March 27 and March 28 in the Holmes Student Center and will feature paper and poster presentations by NIU graduate students.
Sponsored by the College of Education, the conference seeks proposals for research papers in education, health and human services, the social sciences and in liberal arts areas that focus on education-relevant issues (for example, history and economics of education, human learning and human development).
Workshops, a keynote speaker, a series of brief “how-to” sessions by NIU faculty and a free buffet lunch are all part of the GSRC 2009. All NIU students, faculty and instructors are invited to attend this free conference.
Deadline for submission of proposals is Thursday, Jan. 15. All proposals will be peer-reviewed by a panel of graduate students. Accepted proposals are notified Feb. 15. Registration deadline is March 10.
Contact Professor M Cecil Smith at mcsmith@niu.edu or 753-8448 for more information.
NIU’s annual Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Institute is scheduled for the week of May 11, 2009, at the Holmes Student Center.
Full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty, instructors and supportive professional staff are invited to participate in the institute, which assists participants in incorporating multicultural perspectives and content into their courses, improving communication with students and preparing alumni to participate in a diverse workplace and society.
The institute features plenary sessions by prominent specialists, focused thematic discussions by NIU faculty and students, syllabi critiques, video presentations and small group discussions. The sessions in the institute focus on topics such as race, gender, social class, disabilities and sexual orientation. Plenary sessions and some panels are open to the public; small group sessions are restricted to participants.
Approximately 220 individuals have participated in the institute since its inception, and they have benefited from opportunities to learn about multicultural issues, share experiences and ideas and establish lasting professional relationships. Participants have made a significant impact on NIU’s programs at all levels across all colleges.
Qualified faculty and instructional staff interested in participating in the institute are encouraged to apply for Multicultural Curriculum Transformation stipends. Individuals selected will receive $1,000 stipends to support transforming existing courses or developing new classes that address multiculturalism. Faculty and staff on 12-month contracts can participate in the institute but are not eligible for the stipend.
The deadline for applications is Thursday, Dec. 18. Information about applications for the institute is available on the Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Web site. Applications should be submitted electronically to mcti@niu.edu.
For more information, contact graduate assistant Charles Stapleton at (815) 753-8557 or e-mail mcti@niu.edu.