NIU’s Huskie football sqaud, one of the most improved teams in the country in 2008 under first-year head coach Jerry Kill, will take on Louisiana Tech in the 33rd Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La.
The Independence Bowl will be played Sunday, Dec. 28, at 7 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN. NIU will make its fourth postseason appearance, third bowl showing, in the last five years. It will mark the first time Northern Illinois will play a bowl in a state other than California.
Kill was excited that his 2008 Huskies will have the chance to extend their season at such a prestigious event as the bowl in Shreveport.
“I think for our team to play in the Independence Bowl is a tremendous opportunity and I want to thank all the hard work our administration did to help put us in this game as well as the Mid-American Conference and the bowl itself,” Kill said. “It’s great for our seniors, great for our team and great for our university, and I couldn't be more excited.”
Northern Illinois completed a 6-6 regular season on November 25 to triple its win total of a year ago, while its 5-3 record in Mid-American Conference games represents a four-game improvement. The Huskies are led by senior defensive end Larry English, the two-time MAC Most Valuable Player and the NCAA’s current active leader in quarterback sacks.
Louisiana Tech, a member of the Western Athletic Conference, will play in its first bowl game since 2001. The Bulldogs are 7-5 on the season after opening the season with a victory over Mississippi State.
NIU and Louisiana Tech will meet for the seventh time with Tech holding a 5-1 lead in the previous six meetings. The teams played as members of the Big West Conference from 1993-95 and the last game between the teams was in 1996, a 40-14 Bulldog victory.
Ticket Office in the Convocation Center by phone at (815) 752-6800 and can be purchased online at the tickets link on www.niuhuskies.com beginning at 3 p.m. on Monday. Ticket prices range from $25 to $40 and Huskie fans are STRONGLY encouraged to purchase their bowl tickets through Northern Illinois in order to be seated in the NIU section. In addition, all Huskie Athletic Scholarship Fund donors or football season ticket holders who buy tickets will receive a $5 discount.
NIU Associate Vice President and Director of Athletics Jeff Compher congratulated the 2008 squad while emphasizing the need for Huskie fans to purchase tickets through Northern Illinois.
“For the Huskies and our 21 great seniors to finish the season in the Independence Bowl is a tribute to the hard work they have put in all season long and I could not be happier for them and for our university,” Compher said. “This is a great opportunity for our fans to support this team and the job that Coach Kill and his staff have done this season. I cannot stress how important it is for Northern Illinois fans to purchase their tickets through the NIU ticket office. This will definitely help us in the future when we are talking to potential bowl partners.”
Compher also announced that NIU will offer one FREE ticket to the first 500 Northern Illinois students who will attend the game. To obtain their free ticket, students should come to the Convocation Center Ticket Office or call the office at (815) 752-6800. Proper identification will be required before FREE student tickets are distributed.
Northern Illinois will post information for fans on the Independence Bowl, including ticket and stadium details, as well as travel information and packages at www.niuhuskies.com.
- NIU Sports Information Office
Members of the legendary NIU Jazz Ensemble are throwing a party to celebrate their new CD, and all of Chicagoland is invited.
Considered one of the nation’s best, the NIU Jazz Ensemble will play two shows at 8 and 10 p.m. this evening at the Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth Ct. in Chicago. Also taking the stage at the Midwest’s premier jazz club that night are student vocalist Travaulya Wallace, the NIU Liberace Jazztet and faculty of the NIU jazz studies program.
Director Ron Carter will sell copies of the new CD, “The Life of Swing,” at a discount to NIU alumni who make the gig.
“This CD was recorded live on our 2004 tour,” says Carter, head of jazz studies in the NIU School of Music. “I just went back over some of our recordings from that tour and selected 12 tunes I thought fit together, program-wise and quality-wise.”
Carter calls students in this year’s Jazz Ensemble, fresh off tours with drummer Louis Bellson and trombonist Curtis Fuller, a “strong and mature group.”
Monday’s show will include tunes from “The Life of Swing” as well as from Bellson’s latest disc and Fuller’s stage repertoire. Spring tours are planned in February with trumpeter Lew Soloff and in April with National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master saxophonist Benny Golson.
All follow in the footsteps of 40 years of jazz excellence in DeKalb. Some of the nation’s top high school jazz musicians – and many undergraduate, graduate and professional players – come to NIU to gain a piece of that heritage.
“NIU jazz is special because of the level of our commitment to the jazz tradition while still maintaining an extraordinary level of progressive creativity,” Carter says. “I perform and clinic with bands all over the country and in Canada. Students meet me and other jazz faculty. They also know of us through the recordings we’ve made in the past.”
The NIU Liberace Jazztet boasts not only its largest group ever – seven members, including four rhythm section players and three horns – but, to Carter’s ears, one of its best.
Now enjoying it eighth consecutive year of support from the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts, with a 2008-09 award of $13,000, the group is planning a March tour of Indiana and a return engagement at the Peru Jazz Festival.
“Our piano player has already toured internationally with jazz and pop artists such as Kanye West,” Carter says. “Our bass player recorded on will.i.am’s Grammy-winning CD. Our drummer and featured saxophonist have been performing professionally for over 10 years.”
For more information, visit www.niu.edu/music or call (815) 753-1551.
When the dust settles on Wall Street, the investment companies that are left standing might want to pay a visit to Sycamore High School.
It is there that a team of student investors nearly doubled its money in a few weeks, despite working in one of the most turbulent markets in history. The students invested in stocks related to construction and farming – at a time when many stayed away from those sectors.
Of course, it’s a bit easier to gamble when you are playing with fictitious money, and that is what the Sycamore team was doing as participants in The Stock Market Game.
A simulated investment exercise, the game is sponsored nationwide by Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street’s largest trade group. In Illinois, the game is administered in Illinois by the Illinois Council on Economic Education, a branch of NIU-Outreach. The game is part of ICEE’s efforts to create not only savvy investors, but better citizens with strong personal finance skills.
The performance of the team (one of about three dozen at the school) places it in a league of its own. Out of 3,700 student teams across the state, only 57 teams (about 3.5 percent) were showing a profit as of mid-November. Most of those were lucky to be up 10 percent, which pales compared to past years when top teams regularly saw a return on investment of 30 or even 40 percent, says ICEE program coordinator Marty Paul.
The tough market that has battered most student portfolios (and most professional portfolios, for that matter) might also have reduced the number of teams competing this year. After a 40 percent increase in 2007, the number of teams playing the game dropped slightly this year.
“We haven’t done the research to prove it, but I suspect the drop-off is mostly due to a decline in teachers who are trying it for the first time,” Paul says. “I think the volatility of the market scared them off.”
Cheryl Maness, who includes the game as part of her consumer economics curriculum at Sycamore High School (which includes the state’s leading team), understands that fear. Even in the robust market of 10 years ago, she was hesitant about taking the plunge.
Now she can’t imagine teaching without it.
“It’s a tremendous cross-curriculum program. It requires students to do research, critically evaluate information, apply computer skills, convince teammates – it pulls together a lot of different things,” Maness says.
Maness reports that students on teams that are not faring well are still enjoying the game, albeit not as much as when the market was booming. Paul is hearing similar reports from other schools, but she is doing her best to remind everyone that there could be more to be learned in tough times than in good.
“This is a great way for a new generation of investors to learn the ropes in one of the most challenging markets in history. In the game they can take risks and try plays they probably would never dream of and, at the end of the day, they are out nothing,” Paul says. “I hope more teams jump into the game when we begin a new round in the spring.”
For more information on The Stock Market Game, look on the Web at www.niu.edu/icee/smg or contact Paul at (815) 753-0354 or via e-mail at mpaul@niu.edu.
Run by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street’s largest trade group, the game is a computer-based simulation that introduces students to the workings of the stock market.
Students are divided into teams of three to five individuals, each with a fictitious $100,000 to invest in the stock market. Students in lower grades are restricted to individual stocks. Older students can choose stocks, bonds and mutual funds. All teams must own at least four investments and can invest no more than 30 percent of their money in any one product.
Teams are required to make four transactions per semester.
The game is open to students in grades 4-12, with lessons tailored to each age level. While math is an important facet of the game, there are lessons plans available to help teachers incorporate talk about the market across the curriculum – in language arts, social studies, economics and other courses.
In an average semester, about 400 teachers incorporate The Stock Market Game into their curriculum, engaging about 35,000 students.
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.
Anthropology professors Susan Russell and Katharine Wiegele won international recognition last month in the 27th National Book Awards.
The National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle announced the best published books of 2007 at the Yuchengco Museum in the Philippines.
Russell’s chapter in the book that won the best anthology is the following:
Russell, S. (2007). Feasts of merit: the politics of ethnography and ethnic icons in the Luzon highlands. In: “Cordillera in June: Essays Celebrating June Prill-Brett, Anthropologist, ed. Ben Tapang,” pp.30-61. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Wiegele’s book that won the best book in theology and religion is the following:
Wiegele, K. (2007). Investing in Miracles: El Shaddai and the Transformation of Popular Catholicism in the Philippines. Quezon City: ADMU Press.
Brian Sandberg, assistant professor in the Department of History, has been awarded a 2009-10 Solmsen Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Institute for Research in the Humanities.
The institute, housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offers three one-year Solmsen Postdoctoral Fellowships each year to scholars from other universities working on literary and historical studies of the European Classical, Medieval and Renaissance periods.
The fellowships are awarded through an annual competition. The award this year is $40,000 for the academic year.
Sandberg is conducting research on the gendered dimensions of violence in the French wars of religion.
NIU’s Doctor of Audiology program participated in the 2008 Chicago Walk4Hearing this fall to benefit the Hearing Loss Association of America. The annual walk was held in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.
NIU audiology students, their family members and friends raised more than $1,100, which will be used to increase knowledge of hearing-related issues and advocacy for persons affected by hearing impairment.
The NIU audiology program is a four-year, clinically intensive training program culminating in the Doctorate in Audiology (Au.D.). NIU graduated its first class of seven Au.D.s in 2008.
After 25 years as NIU’s internal auditor, Sharon Dowen is retiring.
A reception will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10, in the Clara Sperling Sky Room of the Holmes Student Center. President John Peters will speak. All are welcome.
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.
The final candidate interview for the position of director of NIU’s CHANCE Program takes place this afternoon.
Open interview forums are scheduled for faculty (4 to 5 p.m.) and the public (5 to 6 p.m.) in Room 203 of Altgeld Hall. Call (815) 753-8381 for more information.
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.
Join the NIU Community School of the Arts this December with a variety of music performances.
All recitals are scheduled in the Recital Hall of the Music Building unless otherwise noted, and many end with a gala reception. The recitals are free and open to the public.
Lessons, classes and ensembles in music, art and theater are offered for children and adults throughout the year. The spring semester begins in January. Scholarships are available for those in financial need; the deadline for spring applications is Monday, Jan. 5.
For more information about classes, ensembles and lessons, contact Renee Page at (815) 753-1450 or visit www.niu.edu/extprograms.
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.