NIU political science professor Ross Corbett recently won the second-place award in the Templeton Fellowship Essay Contest. His award is accompanied by a cash prize of $5,000 and an honorary Templeton Fellowship.
The annual international contest for junior faculty is conducted by the Independent Institute. In the junior faculty category, first-, second- and third-place awards were presented.
Essayists were asked to consider this Benjamin Franklin quote: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” They were then asked to respond to the question: “Which virtues contribute the most toward achieving freedom, and how can the institutions of civil society encourage the exercise of those virtues?”
Corbett’s winning essay was titled “Liberal Education for a Liberal Democracy.”
The Sir John M. Templeton Fellowships Essay Contest encourages college students and young college professors around the world to study the meaning and significance of economic and personal liberty. Co-sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation and the Independent Institute, the essay contest honors Sir John M. Templeton and is held with a different topic each year.
“The contest winners deserve our highest accolades,” said Carl Close, academic affairs director of the Independent Institute. “By identifying key connections between virtue, freedom and civil society, these young scholars have reinforced the intellectual edifice on which liberty stands.”
Corbett teaches courses relating to the history of political philosophy and the theoretical foundations of the American regime.
ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, has bestowed its annual ASCAPLUS Award on NIU School of Music faculty member Greg Beyer. This is the fifth consecutive year that Beyer has won this prestigious award.
Beyer has been receiving recognition for his groundbreaking compositions involving the Brazilian instrument known as the berimbau.
For 2009, he composed for two projects that included the berimbau and the use of max/MSP (a visual programming language for music and real-time digital audio signal processor). These works were performed at New York City’s The Stone, one of the most significant venues for experimental and avant-garde music in the United States.
Beyer’s two compositions are “My One and Only Loop,” for percussion, piano and interactive electronics, and “The Northern Wind,” for solo percussion, berimbau and interactive electronics.