A sampling of points of pride from Liberal Arts and Sciences
- The work of NIU anthropologists has been featured in National Geographic, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Nova, CNN, NPR, Scientific American, New Explorers with Bill Curtis and numerous professional journals.
- NIU’s public administration program, a division within the Department of Political Science, produces about one-third of all Illinois city managers. U.S. News & World Report ranks the program third nationally in the specialty field of city management and urban policy.
- NIU professor Douglas A. Klumpp and students in his organic chemistry laboratory class made a discovery that might help fight cancer. They found a simple method for preparing diarylalkyimidazoles, a class of compounds possessing promising activity against certain forms of cancer. The resulting research was published, with all enrolled students listed as co-authors, in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.
- Department of Communication graduate student Andrew McCormick and undergraduate Steven Stein recently were awarded paid internships in Hollywood, arranged through the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation. McCormick interned with the Post Group, one of the largest post-production houses in the world. Stein interned with the Cartoon Network.
- The Foreign Language Residence Program is the oldest in the country, offering immersion in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. In addition, the Department of Foreign Langauges and Literatures offers instruction in nine other languages, including Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Russian, Tagalog and Thai.
- NIU’s Department of Geography is home to the oldest undergraduate program in meteorology in Illinois and one of the largest undergraduate-only meteorology programs in North America.
- NIU’s History/Social Science Teacher Certification Program was recently judged one of the best in the nation by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
- The NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences traditionally has been one of the country’s largest programs for certification of secondary mathematics teachers. The department also has one of the nation’s largest middle school mathematics endorsement programs.
- The Department of Philosophy’s masters program is ranked No. 2 in the nation in preparing MA students for doctoral studies in philosophy.
- More than 120 NIU Physics students have worked with faculty on Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s DZero collaboration, which conducts experiments using the world’s most powerful particle accelerator in order to identify and better understand the building blocks of nature.
