In a coup of sorts for Northern’s Department of History, Michael J. Gonzales’ new book on the Mexican Revolution has been made a selection of the prestigious History Book Club. Gonzales is NIU’s senior Latin American historian and director of the university’s Center for Latino and Latin American Studies. Described as a path-breaking study, his new book, The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940, presents an overview of the first social revolution of the 20th Century. The book will be a September selection of the History Book Club, which is advised by a panel of distinguished historians. “I’m honored,” Gonzales says. “Every author wants to be read, and the History Book Club typically chooses selections that would be of interest to both historians and non-historians. So this will be an opportunity to reach a large audience and hopefully to inform people about the significance of the Mexican Revolution.”

Gonzales, whose father and grandparents emigrated from Mexico to the United States during the revolution, said the book will especially appeal to Mexican-Americans. “Everyone who grows up in
Mexico hears about the revolution, not only about the event but how it has shaped thei lives,” Gonzales says. “Everybody in Mexico today views the revolution as a starting point for the contemporary history of Mexico.”

It’s a groundskeeper’s dream: the blank canvas of lagoon banks, newly dredged and ready for planting.While it may be tempting to stock the banks with every variety of exotic plant available, what the land really wants are plants that could have grown here wild. Plants that are native to the area will thrive, provide ideal habitat for wildlife, and will give visitors a glimpse into what Illinois’ landscape would have resembled long ago. Native grasses and wildflowers taking root at the lagoon include prairie cord grass, bottle brush sedge, fireweed, swamp milkweed, cardinal flower, and marsh marigold (left, illustrated by Molly Holman, ’02).

Officials of Northern’s Speech and Hearing Clinic are celebrating a gift of $12,000 from the DeKalb County Community Foundation. The money will pay for new equipment and materials to help provide support and service for infants with hearing loss and their families. It also will help to establish a specialty type of clinic that would provide in-depth assessment, consultation, and intervention for school-age children with academic and/or auditory processing difficulties. Anne Davidson, director of the clinic, says the dollars come at a crucial time. “We’re so excited,” Davidson says. “The clinic has to support itself, and our equipment is wearing out. Now we can expand a little, but mostly
we can continue.”

When the Frontier Physics road show hits town, with its marshmallows dipped in nitrogen and exploding hydrogen balloons, you immediately know who the scientists are. They’re the ones in the Hawaiian shirts. “We’re out to break the stereotype of scientists being dorky guys with white lab coats, goggles, and gloves,” says Patrick Burnett, Northern Illinois Physics Outreach Program coordinator. “We want to show kids that scientists are cool and they’re not just men.”

Laura Schroeder

The program is an effort by the NIU Department of Physics to spark a lifelong science interest in school-aged children in DeKalb, Kane, and Winnebago counties. The program includes a web site, a science equipment repair program, and the traveling Frontier Physics Road show.

Levitating magnets, liquid nitrogen-dipped carnations (they shatter!), and balloons filled with hydrogen and then set on fire (makes a “pretty impressive fireball,” says Burnett) are all part of the show.

The fireball finale causes some teachers to “jump out of their seats,” explains Burnett. The intent, of course, is not to scare teachers but to help them. Frontier Physics has visited a dozen schools and dozens more are scheduled.

In a new study that would seem to confirm the suspicions of every college basketball fan who ever griped over officiating, an NIU researcher is whistling a foul on the referees.

Anthropology professor Kendall Thu says his study detects an unusual foul-call pattern in NCAA Division I officiating. However, it isn’t the screaming of home-court fans that influences referees, but rather the presence of a national television spotlight.

“Referees tend to keep nationally televised games close by calling a significantly higher number of fouls against teams that are ahead in the score,” says Thu. “This results in more competitive games that maintain an edge of suspense for viewers.” In the games televised on national networks and analyzed by Thu, referees called 58 percent of the fouls against the leading team (excluding calls during the last two minutes of each half and tie-game situations).

The study suggests that the evolution of college athletics into big business might alter the way in which rules are enforced. “The rules of fair play may actually be the rules of keeping the game close in order to create a product for spectatorship in a very commercialized setting,” Thu says.

Remember when algebra and geometry lessons left you wondering, “How does this relate to life”? Those days are disappearing in DeKalb schools.

Third graders are using math to solve “quality control problems” for the fictional Sweet Tooth Candy Company. Fourth graders are learning geometric and algebraic concepts by arranging triangle-shaped chairs and hexagonal tables at the make-believe Planet Mercury Cafe.

Those are but a few examples from Measuring Up, a program that is helping DeKalb elementary and middle school teachers and their students better relate math concepts to the real world. Run by NIU in a partnership with the DeKalb public schools, the program over the past six years has assisted about 100 DeKalb teachers in developing real-world problem-solving experiences for students.

“The main goal of our project is to help develop learners who experience mathematics as relevant, meaningful, and enjoyable,” says Helen Khoury, mathematical sciences professor.

It’s not often that college students from different backgrounds come together at a scenic outdoor retreat to spend a weekend talking about what can sometimes separate them most—their race.

NIU set out to change that with the Dialogue on Race program, joining 40 students of different backgrounds to explore sensitive issues of racial intolerance and apathy. The group, composed of an equal representation of races, including many biracial students, meets annually at the Lorado Taft Field Campus in Oregon, Illinois.

“It’s amazing the kind of feedback we get after students return from the program,” says Counseling and Student Development Center psychologist Barb Fouts, coordinator of the program. “Race is hard to talk about. This is something new and exciting to get students to start talking about their race and ethnicity.”

Stephen Kern’s research is, quite literally, murder.

For the past 10 years, the veteran history professor has combed through some of the past two centuries’ most celebrated murder novels—ranging from Oliver Twist to The Silence of the Lambs.
Along the way, he is assembling a history of the concept of causality, examining how scientists explain the act of murder and how novelists dramatize it.

“The way writers answer the ‘whydunit’ changes in relation to culture,” Kern says. “Through literature, I’m able to track a major shift in the way thinkers rendered the motives and explanations for human behavior.”

Impressed with the project, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded Kern its prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The yearlong fellowship will allow the historian to complete his forthcoming book: A Cultural History of Causality: Science, Murder Novels, and Philosophy Since 1830.

It all started innocently enough: engineering professor Vincent McGinn wanted to set up a small model train track in his office. His classic Lionel O-gauge train needed a new relay in the coal tender car, so he contacted Lionel for a replacement.When he was told that no one manufactures electromechanical replacement relays anymore, he didn’t give up. Instead, he set forth, with his graduate assistant Brian Hall, to build a solid-state replacement.What began as an individual seeking a train in his office has turned into a student learning project and a grant for the Department of Electrical Engineering.

“The boards we designed do more than replace the relay,” McGinn says. “We’ve created a system that allows us to control two trains on the same track. This design is totally new and was previously unavailable,” he says. The boards are designed to fit perfectly into classic trains, eliminating the need to replace an entire system when one component goes bad.

Independently controlling two trains on the same track adds to the appeal of the boards, “because,” explains McGinn, “the goal of model train enthusiasts is to replicate as closely as possible, on a small scale, the way real trains and tracks operate.”

The Train Station, a Lionel distributor, provided equipment to Northern to test; the NIU Foundation provided matching funds for research and development; and this fall electrical engineering students will begin building relays for testing in model trains nationwide. Says McGinn: “Ideally, every new Lionel train will incorporate technology that was researched, tested, and perfected at NIU.”

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