At first glance, NIU’s 2009 Presidential Teaching Professors could not be more different.
Laurie Elish-Piper prepares teachers to teach reading, one of the most fundamental of subjects. At the other end of the spectrum is Stephen Martin, who works to help his students understand the theoretical foundations of the subatomic of the universe.
Somewhere in between is David Gunkel, who teaches students how to communicate using the latest technology, while placing that work into a philosophical perspective that is as old as the written word.
However, when you look beyond the differences in what the three teach, they actually share much in common.
All three are considered outstanding researchers who have made important contributions to their field, are deeply involved in the academic life of their departments and respected by their peers.
The most striking similarity, however, is that when they step in front of a class, each feels a solemn duty to focus intently on the needs of each and every student. They believe that they have a responsibility to not just help students learn information, but to help them internalize and apply it.
And all three give generously of their time beyond the classroom to help students – whether they are new undergrads or seasoned veterans pursuing a doctorate degree.
It was the traits they share in common that helped each to be selected as a Presidential
Teaching Professor, the university’s highest honor for outstanding teaching.
Presidential Teaching Professors receive a salary increase and grant money to further develop their classroom talents over their four-year appointments. After four years, they are awarded the title of Distinguished Teaching Professors.
Here is a closer look at this year’s winners.
For Laurie Elish-Piper, stepping in front of a class is like engaging in a bit of performance art.
She wants her students to not only learn the lesson on that day’s syllabus, but also to experience a very personalized form of teaching that she hopes they will someday apply in their own classrooms.
“My goal is not just to talk about how my students should teach, but to show them how to teach,” says Elish-Piper, a professor in the Department of Literacy Education.
For her that means approaching every class as a gathering of individuals, each of whom brings a unique history and background to the class, which influences the way they learn. Her challenge, she says, is to take those factors into account and tailor her teaching to the needs of each individual.
According to colleagues and students, Elish-Piper is quiet successful in that quest and an outstanding choice for a Presidential Teaching Professor.
“As a student in her classes, it was impossible not to catch her enthusiasm. I felt I was learning every single second,” says Angela Howard, who studied under Elish-Piper as both an undergrad and master’s student. “The way she managed her classroom and used her instructional time has inspired me to make learning in my classroom as engaging and purposeful as possible.”
Jerry O’Shea, director of curriculum and assessment at Marquardt School District 15 in Glendale Heights, already had been through two graduate programs when he came to NIU to complete his doctorate. “I believe I grew the most in my learning and development of education issues in her classroom,” he says, adding that he still reflects on lessons learned in her classes 10 years later.
Admiration of Elish-Piper extends to her colleagues.
In his letter of nomination, Norm Stahl, chair of the Department of Literacy Education, pointed out that he has had the privilege of working alongside three past recipients of the Presidential Teaching Professorship. “These individuals have all brought great honor to our institution and demonstrated the very best in pedagogical practice. Dr. Elish-Piper clearly meets, if not exceeds, the standards set by these remarkable individuals,” he said.
As a Presidential Teaching Professor, Elish-Piper hopes to model her teaching style for a new audience: her fellow members of the NIU faculty.
“A lot of people seem to believe that if you practice student-centered teaching you can’t be rigorous, or that you can’t cover the required curriculum. I argue that you can,” she says.
Furthermore, her own schedule would make the case that being busy is no excuse for not using a student-centered approach. In addition to carrying a full teaching load, Elish-Piper also oversees the NIU Literacy Clinic, advises graduate students, researches and publishes, speaks at national conferences, collaborates with and advises school districts throughout the region and actively participates in organizations such as the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers, where she currently is the president-elect and program chair.
While all of this keeps her on the run, Elish-Piper says her heart still belongs to the classroom.
“I really enjoy teaching,” she says. “My favorite part of the week is when I am in class.”
Like many children of his generation, David Gunkel grew up dreaming of becoming an astronaut.
He came closer than most, earning a commission to the U.S. Naval Academy. His plan was to pull good grades there, move on to the cockpit of a fighter jet and then ultimately into a space capsule. Before that could happen, however, military doctors decided he didn’t have the right stuff.
That hasn’t stopped him from working in space, however. He just traded outer space for cyberspace. In the end, it has proven to be a good swap, he says. The arrival of the space shuttle made orbital flight almost mundane, while the explosion of information technology has opened up vast new vistas to be explored.
Today Gunkel is considered one of the leading thinkers in the area of information and communication technology, researching the philosophical dimensions of the exchange of information on the digital frontier. A philosopher by training, his classes are a unique blend that combines the alphabet soup of the digital age (HTML, JPEG, bits and bytes) with a liberal seasoning of commentary from great thinkers such as Hegel, Kant and Descartes.
The goal of that approach, says Gunkel, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, is not just to teach students how to use computers, but rather to help them become engaged critical thinkers and creative problem solvers. He strives to cultivate in them a cultural literacy that helps consider the possibilities that technology creates.
His students attest to his success in doing so.
“Professor Gunkel’s teaching is second to none,” says former student Timothy Bond, who now works in sports information at Missouri State University. “He has a knack for instilling in the student not only the knowledge to succeed, but the diverse means in which knowledge can be applied to other areas of life.”
Others have been so moved by Gunkel’s teaching that it literally changed the course of their lives.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that it completely changed the course of my academic career,” wrote former student Paul Booth, who had planned a career as a documentary filmmaker but is now a newly minted assistant professor of new media at DePaul University. “After spending a semester with Dr. Gunkel, and watching his obvious enjoyment of the subject matter, I decided to switch emphases.”
As a Presidential Teaching Professor, Gunkel hopes to share some of that excitement with peers by demonstrating to other faculty that communication technology can be used to enrich just about any subject. Whether it be exploring the limits of what can be accomplished in a PowerPoint presentation, or recreating ancient worlds in the virtual realm of Second Life, technology can be harnessed to illuminate ideas in new and exciting ways he says.
“I think part of my calling – my duty – as a Presidential Teaching Professor is to help people see something that can be transformative of their pedagogy,” Gunkel says. “We are teaching a generation that is very technologically engaged, it would be silly of us not to use the tools and the things that they connect with and understand.”
Theoretical physicists around the world know NIU’s Stephen Martin as author of the “Supersymmetry Primer,” an introduction to an arcane area of science that seeks to fill in the missing pieces of the Standard Model of the universe, contemplating subatomic particles that have yet to be discovered.
Undergraduates in NIU’s Department of Physics are more likely to know him as the professor who teaches them about the far simpler (by comparison) topics of electricity and magnetism.
While far apart on the academic spectrum, those two groups share one thing in common – they both believe Martin is an outstanding teacher, and their accolades helped lead to his selection as one of NIU’s Presidential Teaching Professors for 2009.
“Dr. Martin has earned the respect of his colleagues and students by successfully and consistently teaching the most difficult courses in advanced physics with clarity and thoughtfulness,” says NIU colleague Gerald Blazey, a Distinguished Research Professor and a collaborator on the International Linear Collider Program operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Martin’s “Supersymmetry Primer,” Blazey says, has become the standard teaching tool in the field and has been cited more than 700 times by researchers in the area of high energy physics. Such expertise puts Martin in great demand as a lecturer across the United States and abroad, including at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.
Addressing such groups is an honor, says Martin, but he still enjoys the challenge of opening the eyes of undergraduates, recalling the days when he was on the other side of those lectures.
“I think much of my success as a teacher comes down to empathy,” he says. “Once upon a time I was a student and I remember that learning this stuff was hard. So I try to put myself in the shoes of the student and say, ‘What is the really confusing part?’ and try to work through that.”
To help his students grasp some of the most complex questions in science he often uses simple examples. Sometimes has students contemplate questions they might have first asked in kindergarten, such as “Why is the sky blue?”
Similarly, rather than rely upon flashy technology to teach his cutting edge topic, Martin is much more likely to spend lecture time at the front of class with chalk or marker in hand. As he lectures he dashes off equations, fielding questions on the fly, interjecting examples that illuminate the topic at hand.
“I think working at the blackboard forces me to move at an appropriate pace,” he says. “Students seem more inclined to ask questions, making me explore aspects I hadn’t considered. It allows me to adapt to the needs of the students. My lectures change in real time.”
Should those efforts not quite succeed in making a concept stick, students know that they can almost always find Martin in his office. Some have commented that they aren’t sure what his office hours are because he always seems to be around and available to help.
While some might marvel that one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists would devote so much time and energy to helping undergraduates work through the basics of the field, Martin says he finds the time spent teaching those topics to be energizing.
“Teaching the basics keeps me sharp,” he says. “There are always times in your research when you feel stuck. But I know that if I can go into the classroom and do a good job teaching I am earning my keep.”
Less than two years after NIU embarked on an ambitious, campus-wide strategic planning process, a new report shows several key initiatives firmly in place and producing measureable impact, while others are leaning on the starting blocks with new funding and recently filled positions.
By the end of the current fiscal year, NIU will have spent nearly $3 million in new and reallocated funds to jumpstart more than a dozen projects and address key issues raised during the planning process.
Ranging from literacy and STEM initiatives in NIU’s P-20 school partnerships to improvement of core user facilities on campus, phase one of the university’s strategic plan addresses a panoply of important curricular and infrastructure issues.
Among the biggest investments this year was hiring of new faculty and addition of more class sections in areas of greatest demand. Nearly 300 new sections are helping students expedite their time-to-degree through greater access to high-demand courses.
New investments have bulked up academic support units as well. Implemented this year were an early-alert system for at-risk students, a mid-semester check to help students with a variety of academic and related challenges, and enhanced counseling for students identified as struggling in their academic programs. Two university-level task forces funded with strategic planning dollars are also helping improve student outcomes: one through comprehensive review of NIU’s general education requirements and the overall baccalaureate experience, and the other through study of new ways to improve students’ engagement in their own education.
Guiding the selection and implementation of all new initiatives was a set of four “strategic imperatives” adopted by the Strategic Planning Task Force in 2008:
“The hard work we did early on in the planning process is really bearing fruit today,” said NIU Provost Ray Alden. “When we established our four strategic imperatives, we gave the campus a framework in which to view a nearly endless list of suggestions. As we near the end of the first year of implementation, I think it’s clear that what we’ve funded and supported in this process tracks very closely with what the campus said it valued during the strategic planning process.”
Thus far, campus leaders have scheduled three years worth of funding for new and continuing initiatives. Beginning with those that started in the current fiscal year, they include the following:
Several more initiatives for which planning has already begun will be funded in FY10 and FY11, including:
By the end of FY11, more than $6.45 million in new and reallocated dollars is planned to be directed at these key initiatives, as well as new resources to facilitate external support and grant dollars that will enhance all of the new strategic planning programs.
“Given the very challenging economic climate in which NIU must operate, we are making impressive progress toward our four key imperatives,” Provost Alden said. “I think we all understand as well the double-blow impact of the current recession and the tremendous resources required to manage the aftermath of 2/14. Given all of that, I’m impressed with the steadfast dedication I’ve seen from faculty and staff in carrying on our strategic planning initiatives and bringing many of them to life in such challenging times.”
For more information on the NIU strategic planning process and implementation, click on executive summaries at www.niu.edu/strategicplan.
Author and poet William Arthur Ward once said of teachers: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
NIU has many great and inspirational teachers, and Mylan Engel, Lesley Rigg and Jeanette Rossetti stand tall among them. The three are this year’s recipients of the Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Engel, from the Department of Philosophy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Rigg, from the Department of Geography in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Rossetti, from the School of Nursing and Health Studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences, now enjoy the university’s longest-standing honor.
The recognition stands in a class of its own because the nominations and subsequent words of support originate with the young minds on the other side of the classroom.
“To have the students you teach support you for this award is an incredible honor. It says the students themselves value what you’re doing in the classroom,” Engel says. “I routinely have former students contact me to say, ‘Contemporary Moral Issues is the only college class I still think about.’ If you can teach a class and have the students still thinking about it 10 years later, you’ve accomplished what you were hoping to.”
Initiated in 1966, the awards honor excellent undergraduate teaching at the university, encourage improvement of instruction and promote discussion among members of the university community on the subject of teaching.
Nominees must be full-time faculty whose major responsibility is teaching and must have worked at least five full academic years at NIU. Engel, Rigg and Rossetti each receive a check for $2,000.
Joining them in honor is Ed Brata, an instructor in the Department of Marketing in the College of Business, who has received the university’s third Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction award.
“It means a lot to me. They’re saying, ‘You are doing a good job, and we appreciate it,’ ” Brata says. “I’m definitely humbled and proud. I must be doing something right.”
Here is a closer look at the four.
Credit Mylan Engel’s mother with incredible foresight – and equal patience.
Her young son spouted an endless stream of profound interrogations, most of which were far beyond why the sky is blue. He wanted to know if other children saw colors the same way he did and, oh, why more people weren’t Christians if faith in God meant eternal happiness.
“My whole life, I was intrigued by philosophical questions without even realizing they were philosophical questions,” Engel says. “She’d say, ‘You think too much.’ I was a 10-year-old kid.”
Yet when he went to Vanderbilt University for a double major in business and economics – Engel intended to become a lawyer at his father’s firm in hometown Mobile, Ala. – his mother encouraged him to take a philosophy course. It changed his life.
Among the topics on the first day: the inverted color spectrum. “The very thing I had puzzled over as a kid! I thought, ‘Other people think about these things!’ ” he says.
Engel fell in love with the discipline’s deep questions, which he calls “fundamental, intellectual puzzles,” of the nature of reality and our place in the universe.
He has philosophically examined the ethics of eating animals and concluded that not only is it immoral but that most humans would agree if they fully analyzed their own beliefs. He’s also concluded there are no valid reasons to believe in God.
“I really have a passion for the subject,” he says. “The ancient Greeks were right. Philosophy holds the key to the good life. I want that for my students: to think philosophically, to question, to become an independent thinker, to grow immensely.”
Teaching came naturally. A former competitive gymnast, Engel had coached the sport to children from age 3 through high school.
In his classes, Engel challenges students to think in a “radically reflective way” that requires them to open their minds and become “dispassionate” about the topics as they search for the truth. They must set aside emotional attachments. They must respect each other.
During the process, they discover their personal values and beliefs. Sometimes, he says, those conclusions are troubling. And, he adds, if you realize you’ve been mistaken once already, chances are good there are other mistakes in your thinking.
“I often set things up as a puzzle, and they start to see, ‘Oh, there’s some inconsistency in my beliefs,’ ” he says. “They don’t like that. They thought they had it all worked out.”
“Though Professor Engel’s classes have proven to be some of the most challenging that I’ve taken, each class also proved to harbor what I believe to be some of my greatest intellectual growth,” student Adrian Seeley says. “His expectations of his students are high, but it is clear that his personal teaching expectations are as well.”
“Professor Engel has a remarkable ability to explain complex philosophical notions with great clarity and articulation,” student Kearney Grambauer adds.
All college students can benefit from courses in philosophy, Engel says. They’ve left home, eager to carve out unique personalities and to profess individuality, maybe dyeing their hair green or purple, “yet they believe almost everything they’ve been taught.”
Study of philosophy also promotes responsible parenting, he says. Parents who explore their fundamental values can then teach ethics and values to their children without having to “pawn” that duty off to someone else or simply “passing down” what their own parents imparted.
“It’s our thoughts that define us, not the color of our hair,” he says. “My goal is to force you to think for yourself and to free you from the shackles of your upbringing.”
Ebert and Roeper might enjoy auditing Lesley Rigg’s geography classes.
Rigg requires students to critique movies, not for their entertainment value but from a physical geography perspective. Take “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” for example: Viewers glimpse Australia. Or Rigg’s favorite, “Lawrence of Arabia,” which features desert footage filmed in Jordan and Morocco.
“Maybe it will make them curious. Maybe they’ll go there 10 years down the road,” Rigg says. “But I’ve had students say, ‘You’ve ruined movies for me!’ ”
She’s also spoiled spring break and family vacations for others. Some students who intended to recline on hot beaches with adult beverages in hand instead found themselves running along dunes to examine coastal processes.
Rigg’s own love of geography began as a young girl in Toronto, Canada, where she earned a private pilot’s license and a glider license.
“I did a lot of flying as a kid, so I had a lot of appreciation for the landscape,” the DeKalb resident says. “Geography came naturally. It was one science where I could see where all the pieces come together.”
During a one-year break as she earned her bachelor’s degree at York University in Canada, she worked as an international flight attendant. “I saw the world from 36,000 feet,” Rigg says. “Then I came back to university (and eventually in pursuit of a master’s in Colorado and a doctorate in Australia) and never left.”
Geography offers a study of “everything that happens on the earth’s surface – climate, soils, plants, humans, hydrology – through space and time. It’s not just where, but why things are there.”
Two-thirds of Rigg’s students, many of whom are non-majors, find that geography is not what they expected. Many change their majors after introductory classes capture their enthusiasm.
She involves students in her current research on the impact of climate change and pollution on sugar maples at their northern limit in North America. She and her team will return this summer to Lake Superior Provincial Park in Canada, where they are simulating projected future temperatures and precipitation patterns on sugar maple seedlings growing there.
“Science isn’t horrible. Science isn’t scary. Science isn’t difficult, mostly,” says Rigg, winner of the 2009 Wilma D. Stricklin Award for enhancing the climate on campus for women. “Teachers just have to make it approachable. You have to make students comfortable first. I say something funny. I do something silly. Students learn when they’re having fun. It’s not that it has to be fun, but fun means they’re learning more.”
Rigg’s teaching load includes sections of Geography 101 that pack as many as 400 students into the auditorium. A good teacher can reach those few hundred as if they’re a few dozen, she says.
“Dr. Rigg is animated and direct in her teaching, but offers the opportunity to discuss and debate in a comfortable and welcome environment,” student Jennifer Outcalt says. “Dr. Rigg spends time with every student, working with their level, and expects you to work hard. She gives as much as you are willing to give her.”
“You have to be yourself. You only can be yourself. The biggest thing is that you can only know what you know and you can only teach what you know. I’m not afraid to say, ‘I don’t know.’ I’ll say, ‘That’s a good question. I’ll find out,’ ” Rigg says. “You’ll see students move toward the front. Attendance increases. Students almost become protective of that classroom environment and protective of that friendly atmosphere we have.”
Rigg and her husband, David Goldblum, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, are parents to 8-year-old Rachel and 5-year-old Aaron.
No one would blame Jeanette Rossetti if she chose to avoid hospitals for the rest of her life.
As a young girl, she watched her father battle maladies that included stroke and heart attack and that eventually claimed his life when Rossetti was only 13. Yet as doctor’s offices, hospitals and even the Mayo Clinic became familiar surroundings, she somehow saw a bright side.
“I was exposed to that whole health care environment, and it got me hooked,” Rossetti says. “I really saw the importance of how a nurse could teach or motivate a patient. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really an important job.’ ”
The Joliet native earned a degree in nursing from Lewis University but felt unexpected doubts during her first clinical rotation in medical surgical nursing.
Her second clinical, in the psychiatric ward, reignited her passion for nursing and launched her career as a psychiatric mental health nurse.
“I was fascinated by what the mind could do or not do, and my teacher was so supportive. She said, ‘You are really good at communicating,’ ” she says. “We care for patients who have mental illness – depression, bipolar, anxiety schizophrenia – and our job is to keep the patients safe, to monitor their meds, talk to them, preserve their self-esteem, and to do so in a compassionate manner.”
Rossetti started at Riveredge Hospital, a 200-bed psychiatric facility in Forest Park. The work was hard and often challenging: Some patients were homicidal; others suicidal. Nonetheless, she loved her work there and, in 1996, earned a master’s degree focused on psychiatric nursing.
Her 13 years at Riveredge also provided a first dose of teaching when nursing students arrived for clinicals.
“I was always the nurse who said, ‘Cool! The students are here.’ I’d say, ‘Come with me. Stay with me. Spend the day with me,’ ” she says. “The students were great to work with, and I always thought that somewhere down the line I would teach.”
That opportunity came in 1997 at Rockford’s Saint Anthony College of Nursing, where she was an instructor for three years.
Rossetti “fell in love” with teaching, pursued a doctoral degree in adult education at NIU and discovered her second life’s calling. She joined the faculty in the College of Health and Human Sciences in 2000.
In 2005, she spearheaded a commitment from Linden Oaks Hospital at Edward in Naperville to become a summer intership site for psychiatric nursing students. In 2007, she won the college’s Lankford Award for Teaching Excellence.
Rossetti’s classes, which enroll many students who never will pursue mental health work as psychiatric nurses, are brought to life with her tales from the field. “I tell lots of stories. They can read the book, but I try to bring it to life,” she says.
Many of the skills necessary for psychiatric nursing mirror those required for all nurses.
“My goal is that my students care for all patients, and take care of all their needs, no matter what kind of nursing they pursue,” Rossetti says. “Patients with mental illness need care and compassion, and nurses must be their advocates. Supporting patients’ rights is a passion of mine.”
“Dr. Rossetti did a brilliant job of honoring her relationships with patients by providing holistic nursing care, complying with hospital and state protocol, implementing evidence-based practice,” former student Dominique Kempf says, “and serving as a wonderful example to her students.”
Rossetti lives in St. Charles with her husband, Dave, who works in the transportation industry. Their daughter, Kristyn, 21, is a pre-law and paralegal studies major at Southern Illinois University.
Sometimes Ed Brata can’t believe where he is.
As a construction worker three-and-a-half decades ago, he helped to build Founders Memorial Library, the steam tunnels and other fixtures of the Normal Road infrastructure. Now he’s a well-respected instructor of sales management and principles of sales in Barsema Hall, the modern and sleek home of the NIU College of Business.
Between his final days as a laborer and his first one-year contract in 1992 at NIU stood a tremendously successful 15-year career in real estate. The rich stories of his real world experience make his classroom crackle with excitement over learning.
“I encourage students to think beyond the textbook and learn from each other and through my own real-world experiences,” Brata says. “I care that each student succeeds beyond getting good grades. It is my desire that their success is based on the tools, skills and knowledge that I provide them in the classroom.”
His first years as a teacher were not easy ones, he says. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both from NIU, but they’re in geography. He came to the front of the classroom with no teaching experience – “Nil,” he says – and found himself trying to tackle an “overwhelming” four classes and three prep sessions.
Fortunately, he says, two of his NIU colleagues noticed his struggles. Professors Geoffrey Gordon and Rick Ridnour took Brata under their wings, offering help by loaning everything from lecture notes and exams to instruction on how to fill out grade books.
Soon he received invaluable advice from Janet Giesen, of NIU’s Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, who told him to “get out of the textbook.”
“It took me one or two semesters before I fully realized that students were looking for more than what is between the creases of a textbook,” Brata says.
A career was launched.
“I’ve had jobs. I don’t deem this as a job. I enter the classroom with a sense of energy,” the Sycamore resident says. “It’s the students’ willingness to learn that keeps me coming back. They want to learn. I only act as a facilitator. I’m still learning to learn myself.”
“Ed has a heart the size of a watermelon and truly cares for each and every one of his students,” former student Mary Jo Orbegoso says. “Ed wants to see us succeed, and he will do whatever it takes to get us there. He is an outstanding teacher, mentor and role model.”
Brata calls the students his “120 movers and shakers.” They stay in touch long after graduation with phone calls and e-mails, he says. He’s been invited to their weddings and the baptisms of their children.
He creates a classroom environment that is “firm, friendly and honest” as well as “caring and respectful where students feel welcome and motivated and to learn.” Questions are encouraged. They must expect challenges. They must challenge Brata. Grades are earned, not given.
Lessons of integrity and ethics are as important as principles of sales and sales management.
Of course, there is plenty to teach about marketing. Minimize your regrets. Optimize your opportunities. Know things: Know yourself. Know your company. Your competition. Your customers. Your manager.
For his part, Brata knows his students – and has found a level of comfort as a teacher that he never knew as a Realtor.
“I’m engrossed in the students. They are just incredible. I’m honored to be able to touch their lives somehow,” he says. “You’ve got to live in the present. You can’t live in the past. You’ve got to give today the best you can. My passion now is in the classroom.”
When Randall Newsom once heard from a professor of voice that he could sing well – but not yet “great” – it really didn’t matter.
Newsom possessed a much stronger instrument.
His body’s incredible mastery of dancing, both ballet and modern, would elevate him from a modest start in the Appalachia town of Elkhorn City, Ky., to premiere stages across the United States and the United Kingdom.
By the mid-1970s, Newsom became a top performer, choreographer and teacher in the UK. In 1975 and 1976, he was co-artistic director of England’s Cycles Ballet Company. In 1977 and 1978, he served as soloist and principal character dancer with the National Ballet of Ireland.
One year later, realizing that his best days as a professional dancer were coming to an end, Newsom found his true home at NIU. Soon he will take his final bow after three decades as coordinator of the dance program in the School of Theatre and Dance.
“Thirty years is a long time,” Newsom says, “but I’m not going to give up teaching. When you’re teaching at a university, you can’t take the guest teaching jobs. The Virginia School of the Arts – a residential high school program – I’m going to teach two weeks there. And the Ballet Nouveau in Colorado. This gives me a little more flexibility.”
He also will continue to dance. Companies routinely call him with offers for “old dancers,” and he recently performed as Drosselmeyer in a Chicago production of “The Nutcracker” and as Evil Fairy in a Rockford production of “Sleeping Beauty.”
“Randy is just a fabulous, fabulous teacher and the institutional memory and conscience personified,” says Alex Gelman, director of the school. “We’ll miss him in the way we miss everybody who’s a master teacher and who’s unique. People like him are not replaced. Someone else will be teaching his classes – and someone who we hope is amazing – but Randy’s Randy.”
A gala event is planned at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 26, in the O’Connell Theatre of the Stevens Building. As part of the annual Spring Dance Concert, it will include alumni performances and a video presentation about Newsom after the intermission.
Dance performances without the Newsom tribute also are scheduled for Thursday, April 23, through Saturday, April 25. Call (815) 753-1600 for more information.
Newsom’s life of rhythmic movement began when he was young as his mother drove him miles and miles for lessons in dance, piano and trumpet.
“It became part of my life,” he says. “It was just a thing like brushing your teeth.”
At Dan McCarty High School in Fort Pierce, Fla., he made plans to join a dance company after graduation. His mother, of course, had different ideas. “She said, ‘You must get a degree,’ ” he says. “The only thing I felt comfortable with was music.”
So he earned degrees in music education, a bachelor’s at Pikeville College in Pikeville, Ky., and a master’s at Eastern Kentucky University. And he taught, first as the K-12 vocal teacher at the Elkhorn City schools, later at Pikeville and then in the public schools of Georgetown, Ky.
But dance tugged at him.
“It’s harder here in America. I’m so tall compared to the other guys. I looked like the Clydesdale compared to the Shetland ponies,” says Newsom, who is prone to jokes, quick to laugh and the owner of a deep and robust voice tailored for radio. “I’m 6 feet 4 inches; they’re 5 feet 7 inches. That’s a major difference.”
Newsom moved to Britain, where he would make his mark as a professional dancer. His resume from those years – the 1970s – is long. Reviewers sang his praises.
From the Nov. 3, 1975, Daily Telegraph: “ ‘Terminus,’ a solo danced by the remarkable American performer Randy Newsom, showed a beautiful flowing line with the excellent control of held positions and ended well with the dancer retreating into the security of a fetal position.”
From the June 26, 1976, Litchfield Mercury: “Most striking in the first half of the programme was Mr. Newsom’s performance of Hilary Matthews’ ‘Sunwheels.’ His gymnastic flow and firm control of held positions resulted in a virtuoso display.”
From the December 1978 issue of Dance and Dancers magazine: “Randall Newsom’s elderly Flaherty was imaginatively portrayed, not least in his controlled tipsiness in the last scene, which was hilarious to watch without being at all overdone.”
Those UK years also brought the Southern boy from the States to create and choreograph “down so long it looks like up,” a character piece of “winos, bag ladies and displaced elderly.”
He pinpoints its origins to feeling lonely and homesick in London and the day he purchased an LP record that reduced him to tears as it played on the turntable in his small apartment. It has become such a hallmark of Newsom’s repertoire that he now jokingly calls it “done so much.”
In 1978, an old friend from back home named Toni Beck called him with an offer. She had started a new professional company in Texas – the Repertory Dance Company of the Southwest – and could use him.
Newsom took the job, and used the occasion of his return to apply for university teaching jobs. NIU and Kansas State University gave him interviews.
“I liked NIU a bit better. It was a new program. It was close to Chicago, a large city with more opportunities,” he says. “I felt very lucky getting a job here. I like to watch the improvement, helping someone develop the skills to become an artist. Sometimes you just see this glimmer, and it just blooms.”
And so, with only four students, he began to build a program. It started with a requirement for all students to take modern and ballet dance classes five days a week to develop their physical strength and their skills.
Soon they presented “Bluebird,” the first classical pas de deux (dance for two) ever performed at NIU. By 1985, his students were able to tackle the complicated piece “Paquita.” By 1989, Newsom’s students staged “Sleeping Beauty,” their first full-length classical ballet.
Another milestone: In 1998, Newsom’s students were chosen to perform “Paquita” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as part of the 25th anniversary of the American College Dance Festival Association.
Now NIU prides itself on being the only university in Illinois that performs the classical ballets, such as “The Nutcracker,” “Giselle” and “Le Corsaire.”
Meanwhile, Newsom says, only current students are put on stage. No alums return to dance. “It’s very good training,” he says, “and harder work for everybody.”
Graduates of NIU’s dance program began to earn recognition for their training as well as plum spots in the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York and major companies across the United States and Canada, including Dayton Ballet, BalletMet Columbus, Louisville Ballet, Memphis Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Southern Ballet Theatre.
Some join Dance Loop, the professional company of Newsom’s NIU colleague Paula Frasz. One performs in Cirque du Soleil. Another dances on a Disney cruise ship.
“Randy has really made sure our students are the most trained professional dancers they can be. When they get into the business, they are fully ready to go and to handle what’s going to be asked of them, technically, artistically and discipline-wise,” colleague Judith Chitwood says. “He has always put the students first. It’s never about what he ultimately gets out of it. It’s ultimately what the students get out of it.”
Through the years, Newsom earned advanced certification in Benesh Movement Notation, a highly complex system of recording movement that allows choreographers to retain their work, pass it on to other companies and even secure copyrights.
He also has nurtured a passion for the romantic ballet of the early 1800s, a period being lost to history, and has resurrected some of those pieces for modern audiences. One, “La Vivandiere,” is on the program for this week’s Spring Dance Concert.
In 1988, he won NIU’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Newsom is confident he is leaving the house he built in good hands with faculty who believe in the program’s philosophy and construction that stress equal training in modern dance and ballet.
“I’ll miss the camaraderie with the other professors and the students. I’ll miss the people in tech who help us with the productions – the sets, the lights, the costumes,” he says. “This is a small school with big ambitions that turns out ambitious dancers. It’s very rewarding, and it’s nice to be a part of this community.”
The NIU Foundation is offering hope for NIU students as they struggle with the challenges presented by our troubled economy.
In an effort to help, the foundation has provided support for the NIU Financial Literacy Initiative created in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. The program is the sole winner of the foundation’s 2009 Venture Grants program.
The project, which strives to provide “financial survival” to students who are working to fund their education and manage their debt, is receiving $25,000 from the foundation.
Brent Gage, assistant vice provost for enrollment services, and Kelly Wesener, assistant vice president for student services, proposed the initiative as one answer to a call made by NIU President John Peters during his 2008 State of the University Address.
“A college education is expensive,” Peters told his audience. “Students and their families work hard to pay for their education, and they have every reason to expect us to do whatever it takes to help them leave here with a degree.”
“Helping students come to NIU and stay here is a high priority for the foundation,” said Mallory M. Simpson, president and CEO of the NIU Foundation. “This innovative program comes at a critical time given the economic crisis, and we believe it’s just one we can help.”
The initiative has three specific components:
A peer mentor program to guide students in need while providing other students who have taken classes in consumer protection and economics the opportunity to apply their knowledge as educators.
Centralization and coordination of existing debt management and financial education programs and services will include a user-friendly, intuitive Web site. Students can access educational tools, campus resources and outreach programs. They also can schedule mentoring sessions where they can have their questions answered in real time.
Coordination of the university’s already established outreach education efforts and enhancement those efforts with faculty research findings and proven methodology to bring relevant and time-sensitive fiscal education to students.
Venture Grants support 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, staff and students.
President John Peters invites nominations of faculty, staff and students for appointment to the four presidential commissions.
The nominations will be for appointments effective in AY2009-10. The four presidential commissions, and sources where additional detailed information on each commission can be found, are:
Greg Long, chair
glong@niu.edu
(815) 753-6508
http://www.niu.edu/pcpd/
http://www.niu.edu/u_council/commbook0809/disabilities.htm
Norden Gilbert, chair
norden@niu.edu
(815) 753-8365
http://www.niu.edu/lgbt/pcsogi/index.shtml
http://www.niu.edu/u_council/commbook0809/sexualori.htm
Kay Shelton, Chair
kshelton@niu.edu
(815) 753-2315
http://www.niu.edu/pcsm/
http://www.niu.edu/u_council/commbook0809/minorities.htm
Rhonda Robinson, Chair
rrobinson@niu.edu
(815) 753-9323
http://www.niu.edu/pcsw/
http://www.niu.edu/u_council/commbook0809/women.htm
Self-nominations are welcome. Forward nominations, including name, address, e-mail and telephone number, to krepel@niu.edu.
Nominations should be submitted on or before Friday, May 1.
The Illinois Governmental Ethics Act requires certain public officers and employees of NIU to file a Statement of Economic Interests by May 1 of each year. P.A. 90-737 requires these disclosures be submitted to the University Ethics Officer for review before they are filed with the Secretary of State.
The forms are mailed in mid-March to employee home addresses.
All questions must be (1) fully answered (or indicate “not applicable” if appropriate), (2) personally signed, and (3) without delay sent for review to the General Counsel and University Ethics Officer Kenneth L. Davidson, Altgeld Hall 330. After his review, the completed forms will be forwarded to the Index Division of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, and a stamped receipt for the filing will be mailed to the employee.
Important Special Note: Completed forms should not be sent directly to the Secretary of State’s Office. Failure to transmit the forms through the Ethics Officer may result in filing delays and possible late-filing penalties for employees.
Who is required to file?
Members of the Board of Trustees of Northern Illinois University are required to file.
The criteria that apply to compensated Northern Illinois University employees are described in Section 4A-101(f) of Public Act 88-187 as amended in August 1993. The applicable criteria include:
Persons who are, or who function as, the head of a university department or other administrative unit.
Persons who have supervisory authority over, or direct responsibility for the formulation, negotiation, issuance or execution of contracts entered into by the University in the amount of $5,000 or more.
Persons who have authority for the issuance or promulgation of formal administrative rules and regulations within the university.
Persons who adjudicate, arbitrate or decide any judicial or administrative proceeding, or review the adjudication, arbitration or decision of any judicial or administrative proceeding within the authority of the university.
Persons who have supervisory responsibility for 20 or more University employees.
In January, the names of employees whose responsibilities were expected to include one or more of the above criteria were certified to the Office of the Secretary of State by the University President in consultation with Human Resource Services and the University Ethics Officer.
Accuracy and completeness required
The law states that any person required to file a statement of economic interests who willfully files a false or incomplete statement shall be guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.
Penalties for late filing/failure to file
Employees required to comply with this Act should note there are personal penalties imposed through the Secretary of State’s Office for failure to timely file an original, fully completed Statement of Economic Interests.
These include:
Failure to file by May 31 will result in ineligibility for, or forfeiture of, office or position of employment.
Assistance is available
Questions regarding this act or filing requirements should be directed to the General Counsel and University Ethics Officer Kenneth L. Davidson at (815) 753-8364, or e-mailed to him at: Ethics@NIU.EDU. Renee Paine at the Office of the Secretary of State at (217) 524-0309 is also a resource.
Three mechanical engineering students from the NIU College of Engineering and Engineering recently tool first price in their categories at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Chicago Regional Chapter student poster contest. The students competed against their peers from IIT and Northwestern University.
Chase Johnson’s poster on superalloys was the best undergraduate poster and received a $150 award for his effort.
Co-authors Sri Harsha Panuganti and Mike Matusky, students of Professor Federico Sciammarella, shared the first prize award for the graduate student poster on laser-assisted machining of ceramics. They will display their poster at the NIU Engineering Building outside the Macro/Micro Manufacturing Laboratory.
The Learning Dimension is currently reviewing the first-year learning experiences that develop knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors to meet NIU’s philosophy and mission as an institution of higher education.
This committee is examining both in-class and out-of-class experiences, the learning associated with those experiences and the ways in which that learning is documented and/or assessed. The committee members are in the process of collecting information from offices and programs across campus that interact with first-year students (course/program descriptions and related materials, publications, brochures and Web site pages).
The committee members will:
For additional information about, to participate in, or to provide information for the Learning Dimension, contact co-chairs Paul Stoddard (pstoddard@niu.edu) or Kelly Wesener (kwesener@niu.edu).
NIU faculty eager to win federal stimulus money that would support their existing research and development funds must position themselves for grant competition.
To that end, the Office of Sponsored Projects will host an informational presentation Tuesday, April 21, on issues of federal stimulus money. Sessions are scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Regency Room of the Holmes Student Center.
Presentations focused on mathematics, physical sciences and engineering will take place between 1 and 2 p.m. Information on education and social, behavioral and health sciences, as well as on state and foundation funding, will be covered between 2 and 3 p.m.
The Federal Stimulus Package (ARRA), the FY09 federal budget and the FY10 federal budget all contain significant new funds to support university-based research and development efforts.
The ARRA alone will add roughly 30 percent ($21.5 billion) to research and development funding available in the coming year. The federal FY09 research and development budget calls for $151 billion in spending for the rest of the fiscal year.
If NIU is competitive, the university could see an increase in federal research funding of as much as $4 million.
Tuesday’s sessions are open to all faculty in order to direct them to funding possibilities available through the ARRA, key funding possibilities in the FY09 budget and an overview of the FY10 budget to help faculty begin to think ahead for next year.
Presentations will cover the NSF, NIH, DOD, DHS, NASA, Department of Energy, USDA, Department of Education, Department of Commerce, Department of Transportation, DOJ and HUD as well as discussions of funds that might be available through the State of Illinois and the outlook for funding from foundations for the coming year.
Slide presentations will be posted on the OSP Web site after presentations are given.
Call (815) 753-1581 for more information.
The NIU community is invited to the 2009 Faculty Awards Ceremony and Reception, scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, in the Altgeld Hall auditorium. The recognition ceremony begins at 4 p.m.
This event honors the newly named Presidential Teaching Professors, Presidential Research Professors, the recipients of the Board of Trustees Professorships as well as the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching award recipients and the Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction award recipient.
For more information, call (815) 753-1999.
On the menu at Ellington’s this week: Isla del Sabor is scheduled for Tuesday. Bem Vindos! takes over Thursday.
Continuing this semester is the option to enjoy wine with your meal. One red and one white wine choice will be available with meal service. Wine will be selected for the menu based on wine-and-food pairings made by the students. Wine selections will range from $4.50 to $6.50 per glass.
Isla del Sabor features Caribbean sweet potato and black bean salad or callaloo soup for starters, spiced chops with mango-mint salsa or grilled tofu in Caribbean coconut curry marinade for entrees and key lime meringue pie or mango sorbet for dessert. Each table also will be served Caribbean salsa with blue tortilla chips.
Bem Vindos! features creamy hearts of palm soup or Brazilian potato salad for starters, black beans and turkey stew or sweet potato-stuffed eggplant for entrees and coconut custard or tropical dessert for dessert. Each table also will be served French loaf and butter.
Seating is from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. with service until 1 p.m. The cost is $9 per person. Ellington’s is located on the main floor of the Holmes Student Center. Call (815) 753-1763 or visit www.ellingtons.niu.edu to make reservations.
NIU’s Jazz Lab Band will present its last concert of the spring 2009 season at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall.
The program will feature Tom Garling, jazz trombonist and a member of the School of Music faculty. Music on the program includes works by Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer, Horace Silver, Bobby Watson, Pam Watson, Ernesto Lecuona, Phil Kelly and Bill Holman.
The concert is free and open to the public, and the building is accessible to all. Call (815) 753-1546 for more information.
NIU’s New Music Ensemble will present “Natural Rhythm, Colorful Spirit,” a concert of music by Olivier Messiaen, at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall.
Messiaen’s idiosyncratic musical output was dominated by basic and fundamental concerts that reflected his own passions in life: non-retrogradable rhythms; colorful harmonies based on his own system of modes of limited transportation; the observation of the bounty of Earth’s nature, especially his well-known use of the rapid-fire gestures inherent in birdsong, something he spent hours transcribing and using directly in his music; and his deep-seated Catholic faith.
NME will perform six works that represent more than 30 years of Messiaen’s musical output. School of Music professor Brian Hart, a specialist in the music of 19th and 20th century France, will give a pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m.
The concert is free and open to the public, and the building is accessible to all. Call (815) 753-1546 for more information.
Join NIU’s Lifelong Learning Institute on an exciting field trip exploring some gems of Chicago’s North Shore.
Travelers will visit the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, the only museum in the Chicago area that focuses exclusively on the history, culture and arts of the native people of North America.
Another stop will be the Baha’i House of Worship for the North American Continent in Wilmette. Like all Baha’i houses of worship, the temple in Wilmette has nine sides and a dome and is surrounded by exquisite gardens and fountains.
At the Block museum, the special exhibit on Gordon Parks (1912-2006) will be on display. Parks served as a staff photographer for Life magazine from 1945 to 1975, capturing images from all walks of American society, from the struggle for civil rights to the glamour of Hollywood stars.
The trip will depart from the Normal Road entrance of the Holmes Student Center at 7:30 a.m. Friday, May 8, and return at approximately 6:30 p.m. The fee includes entrance costs and transportation. Lunch is on your own at Northwestern University’s cafeteria.
A minimum of 20 registrants is needed by Friday, April 24, to offer this trip.
The trip is open to everyone in the community; LLI members, NIU Cardinal & Black Alumni members and University Women’s Club members are eligible for a discounted rate.
For more information, or to register, contact the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming at (815) 753-5200, online at http://www.LLI.niu.edu or in person at Room 152 of the Monat Building, 148 N. Third St. in DeKalb.
The NIU Steelband, under the direction of Cliff Alexis and Liam Teague, will present its spring concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 26, in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall.
Musical selections include Alexis’ arrangements of “Magic Drum” and “The Ten Commandments” as well as the celebrated Panorama arrangements of “Pan By Storm” and “Birthday Party.”
Guest conductors Ronnie Wooten and Alexis Janners will direct “Poet and Peasant Overture” and “Concierto para Quintero,” adapted by NIU graduate student Yuko Asada.
NIU’s Robert Chappell will perform his “Open Window” for steelpan and marimba with Teague. Mia Gormandy, one of the winners of the 2009 NIU Concerto Competition, will play Jan Bach’s “Concerto for Steelpan and Orchestra.”
The concert is free and open to the public, and the building is accessible to all. Call (815) 753-1546 for more information.
NIU’s Art Museum will present “Assessing Exhibition Excellence,” a lecture by Deborah Wood, at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 29, in the South Gallery.
Wood is senior curator at the Block Museum, Northwestern University, where she takes the leading role in developing the museum’s exhibitions and collections.
Since her arrival in 1999, she has focused on 20th century art and the history and study of prints. Her prior experience includes work at the Elvehjem Museum of Art (now called the Chazen Museum of Art) in Madison, Wis.; the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland; and an assistant professorship of art at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She earned a B.F.A. from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wood will discuss exhibition education while addressing the exhibition “Moonlight Cocktails are the Thing,” which attempts to summarize a lifetime of remarkable achievements by printmaker David Driesbach. Driesbach, a former professor of art at NIU, creates prints that contain rich narratives and are complex, colorful and whimsical.
“Moonlight Cocktails are the Thing” was co-organized with students enrolled in “Exhibition Interpretation” a graduate-level Museum Studies course.
Located on the west-end first floor of Altgeld Hall, the galleries are open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and by appointment for group tours. Exhibitions and lectures are free; donations are appreciated.
The exhibitions of the NIU Art Museum are funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, the Friends of the NIU Art Museum, and the Arts Fund 21. For more information, visit www.niu.edu/artmuseum or call (815) 753-1936.
Friends of the NIU Libraries invites the public to attend its third annual Book Appraisal Fair from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, May 3, in the Rare Books and Special Collections Department on the fourth floor of Founders Memorial Library.
Members of the Friends of NIU Libraries will receive their first three books appraised free of charge, with additional appraisals at a rate of $5 each. Appraisals for non-members will cost $10.
“We will gladly accept new members that day for non-members who wish to take advantage of the ‘member rate’ for appraisals,” said Lynne Thomas, faculty liaison to the Friends of NIU Libraries and head of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Thomas Joyce of Thomas J. Joyce & Company and the Chicago Rare Book Center, who has also appeared on HGTV’s “Appraisal Fair,” and Bill Butts of Main Street Fine Books in Galena, will serve as book appraisers. Joyce specializes in printed books, and Butts has extensive experience in appraising autographs and other ephemeral materials.
Proceeds from the event will benefit the Friends of the NIU Libraries. For more information on the Book Appraisal Fair, call (815) 753-8091.
NIU’s College of Education is hosting a retirement party for Nina Dorsch from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, in the Sky Room of the Holmes Student Center.
Dorsch is co-chair and associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. The program will begin at 3:30 p.m.
Members of the NIU Annuitants Association and fans of “A Prairie Home Companion,” broadcast each weekend on 89.5 FM-WNIJ, have the opportunity to see Garrison Keillor and watch a nationally broadcast performance Saturday, June 20, at the Ravinia Festival.
The group departs DeKalb at 1:30 p.m. and will have time at the festival grounds to visit one of the restaurants or enjoy a picnic before taking their seats in the pavilion for the 4:45 p.m. show. The group will depart the festival grounds in Highland Park about 7:15 p.m. to return to DeKalb.
Space and more information are available from Steven Johnson at sjohnso11@niu.edu. More details about the NIU Annuitants Association can be found at www.niu.edu/annuitants.
The final exhibit of the 2008-2009 gallery season is a significant show of drawings and prints at the Nehring Gallery, in the historic bank building on the corner of Lincoln Highway and Second Street in downtown DeKalb.
“P2: Peter Squared” is a collection of contemporary artwork by NIU artists Peter Olson and Peter Van Ael that was assembled to coincide with the Southern Graphics Council, held last month in Chicago.
Olson, assistant director of the NIU Art Museum in Altgeld Hall, holds a master’s degree in printmaking and has accumulated a wide record of exhibitions. He works with an ornithological theme conveying a sense of his vast knowledge of species found in Illinois, Oregon and Costa Rica. Visit www.peterolsonbirds.com for more information.
Olson will share his expertise in bird walks from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. on two upcoming Sundays: May 3 at Afton Forest Preserve on Crego Road, and May 10 at Wilkinson-Renwick Marsh on Annie Glidden Road.
Van Ael, coordinator of the Jack Olson Gallery on the second floor of the NIU Visual Arts Building, comes to residency in Illinois with an extensive exhibition record from Belgium and throughout the United States. Van Ael’s specialty is reduction wood cuts in which the wood block is carved, inked and printed; it then is further carved to develop the design in layers of intense hues. For more information and visuals, visit www.petervanael.com.
The public is invited to a free reception to meet the two artists from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 16, and to participate in their gallery talks beginning at 5:00 p.m. Additional viewing hours are from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays, from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays through May 2, and by appointment at (815) 758-1351.
Artworks are available for purchase from the artists, and a drawing for one print by Olson and one by Van Ael will be held to benefit the gallery.
Free parking is available on-street and in the city lots to the south. Entrance is under the logo awning at 111 S. Second Street to use the stairs or elevator to the second floor. All ages are welcome.
NIU’s Latino Resource Center will host “Crime Against Humanity,” a play presented by the Latino Cultural Awareness Committee and based on the real life experiences of 14 Puerto Rican political prisoners who spent more than two decades in prisons for seditious conspiracy.
Discover what these prisoners endured to raise consciousness and support for the campaign to free the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners.
The event takes place from 7 to 10 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, in the Holmes Student Center, Room 506. Admission is free and open to all. For more information, contact (815) 753-1986 or www.niu.edu/lrc.
All business managers and departments are advised that the NIU PeopleSoft financial system will be down from the close of business Thursday, April 23, through Monday, April 27, for required software and system maintenance.
Journals, budget journals, purchase orders, vouchers, checks and student refunds, etc., will not be processed on these business days. Campus queries also will not be available.
Access to financial and budget reports, accounting and procurement forms via the Web will not be affected by the outage. Normal operations should resume Tuesday, April 28.
NIU’s Interdisciplinary Institute for the Study of Language & Literacy will host a talk with Timothy Shanahan, director of the Center for Literacy at UIC.
Shanahan will discuss “Disciplinary Literacy: Teaching the Literacy of History, Chemistry, & Mathematics” at 4 p.m. Friday, April 24, in Room 2305 of the NIU Wellness & Literacy Center, 3100 Sycamore Road.
For more information, call (815) 753-5793 or e-mail iisll@niu.edu.
Fans of “A Prairie Home Companion,” broadcast each weekend on 89.5 FM-WNIJ, might be interested in a new feature-length documentary which looks behind the scenes and inside the imagination of the man who created it: Garrison Keillor.
WNIJ presents an exclusive sneak-preview of this new film by Peter Rosen at the Sycamore Theater, 420 W. State St. in Sycamore.
Show times are 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 24, 10:30 a.m. Saturday, April 25, and noon Sunday, April 26. Admission is $4 per person, and all ticket proceeds from these weekend screenings benefit the station. In addition, the back side of WNIJ’s souvenir movie pass lists several Sycamore vendors offering money-saving specials to ticket holders.
More details about the documentary can be found at www.wnij.org.
The NIU Women’s Rights Alliance will host a benefit production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” raising funds for the Women’s Rights Alliance and V-Day
The production takes place in the Barsema Auditorium inside Barsema Hall. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 24, and Saturday, April 25, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 26. Tickets are $5 for students and senior citizens and $7 for the general public and are sold at the door.
For more information, contact niuwra@gmail.com.
Calling all sellers of antiques, collectibles, sports cards, crafts and garage sale items.
The NIU Convocation Center will host the first “Convo’s Colossal Clean Sweep” from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, May 2, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 3. Admission is $1 for adults and free for children ages 6 and younger.
Vendors are encouraged to register by Monday, April 27, with the added incentive of a 10 percent discount for those who register by Friday, April 17. All NIU students with a valid NIU OneCard will receive a 15 percent rental fee discount. Only indoor space is available for rent.
To reserve your spot, download a registration form or visit the Convocation Center ticket office. For more details, call (815) 752-6800.
Volunteers are needed Saturday, May 9, to assist with NIU Athletics’ Inaugural Track and Field Meet. E-mail Sue Hansfield at shansfield@niu.edu with name and contact information.
The NIU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming will sponsor a trip Wednesday, June 3, to Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” performed at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.
Depart from the Normal Road entrance of the Holmes Student Center at 2 p.m. and return at approximately 12:30 a.m. Explore Navy Pier and enjoy dinner on your own before the performance begins at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $85 or $55 for students. Fee includes theater ticket and transportation. Parking is available at the NIU visitor parking lot for a $5 fee.
For more information, contact (815) 753-5200 or LASEP@niu.edu.
The Division of Research and Graduate Studies will hold its Outstanding Graduate Student Reception from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, in the Duke Ellington Ballroom of the Holmes Student Center.
An awards ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. to honor students who are receiving the following awards: the Carter G. Woodson Fellowship, Jeffrey T. Lunsford Fellowship, Dissertation Completion Award, University Fellowship, Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Award and the Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
Graduate faculty and advisers are encouraged to attend the event. Refreshments will be served.
Registration is open for ACT test prep scheduled for four Saturdays in May.
Classes meet from 9 a.m. to noon May 9, May 16, May 23 and May 30 in the Monat Building, 148 N. Third St. in DeKalb.
The program covers English, math, reading and science reasoning. The final session covers a sample testing of an actual retired ACT test and scoring.
Cost is $175 (or $200 one week before start of class) and includes instruction, textbook, CD-ROM and retired ACT tests. It does not include registration to take the actual ACT test.
For more information, contact Mark Pietrowski at (815) 753-1456 or pietrowski@niu.edu.
Students are now able to apply for the NIU Speech Camp, Creative Writing Camp, Film Camp, Sci-Camp Discovery, Sci-Camp Explorations, Sci-Camp Investigations and, for the first time, the KEMPA Journalism Workshop.
The camps allow students to explore topics of interest to them, experience life on a college campus and have fun learning.
The camp fees include room and board. An early bird discount applies until June 1, but parents and students are urged to apply as soon as possible to guarantee spots in their camps of choice.
A full application packet is available for download at www.niu.edu/clasep under Academic Summer Camps.
For more camp details, contact Mark Pietrowski at (815) 753-1456 or pietrowski@niu.edu or visit www.niu.edu/clasep.
Experience the cultural explosion and natural beauty of Iceland with the NIU Alumni Association from July 20 to July 26.
Where else can travelers witness such marvels as a tremendous icecap and slow grinding glaciers, spouting geysers, magnificent waterfalls, a multitude of birds, cavorting whales just offshore and fearless little puffins? Meanwhile, because of Iceland’s endless supply of geothermal energy, pollution is nonexistent.
Visit myniu.com or call (815) 753-1512 for more information.
Nearly one dozen programs and activities are planned throughout the month to raise awareness of and help bring an end to sexual assault and other forms of relationship violence.
“This month is designed to create many different avenues for people to discuss and learn about issues surrounding sexual violence,” said Andrea Drott, health educator for NIU’s Health Enhancement. “Everyone is encouraged to support the events and be a part of the solution.”
A complete schedule of discussions, performances and other activities is available online.
Events include:
All events are open to the public and, unless otherwise noted, are free. Sign language interpreters will be provided upon request; call (815) 753-6515. One week’s notice is preferred.
Event sponsors include NIU Health Enhancement; Men Against Sexual and Interpersonal Violence; Women’s Resource Center; Women’s Rights Alliance; PRSSA; Women’s Studies; and Safe Passage.
For more information, call Health Enhancement at (815) 753-9767.