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InsideIllinois
Sept. 5, 2013
Vol. 33, No. 5
For Faculty and Staff, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • http://news.illinois.edu/ii
Blind mole-rats are resistant
to chemically induced cancers
By Diana Yates
Life Sciences Editor
L
ike naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus gaber), blind mole-rats (of the
genus Spalax) live underground
in
low-oxygen
environments,
are long-lived and resistant to cancer. A
new study demonstrates just how cancerresistant Spalax are, and suggests that the adaptations that help these rodents survive in
low-oxygen environments also play a role in
their longevity and cancer resistance.
The findings are reported in the journal
Biomed Central: Biology.
“We’ve shown that, compared to mice and
rats, blind mole-rats are highly resistant to
carcinogens,” said Mark Band, the director of
functional genomics at the U. of I. Biotechnology Center and a co-author on the study.
photo courtesy of Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Israel
Evolutionary adaptations Blind molerats (genus Spalax) can live more than 20
years, are resistant to cancer and tolerate
extremely low-oxygen environments.
Band led a previous analysis of gene expression in blind mole-rats living in low-oxygen
(hypoxic) environments. He found that genes
that respond to hypoxia are known to also play
a role in aging and in suppressing or promoting cancer.
“We think that these three phenomena are
tied in together: the hypoxia tolerance, the longevity and cancer resistance,” Band said. “We
think all result from evolutionary adaptations
to a stressful environment.”
Unlike the naked mole-rat, which lives in
colonies in Eastern Africa, the blind mole-rat
is a solitary rodent found in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thousands of blind mole-rats have
been captured and studied for more than 50
years at Israel’s University of Haifa, where the
animal work was conducted. The Haifa scientists observed that none of their blind molerats had ever developed cancer, even though
Spalax can live more than 20 years. Lab mice
and rats have a maximum lifespan of about 3.5
years and yet regularly develop spontaneous
cancers.
To test the blind mole-rats’ cancer resistance, the Haifa team, led by Irena Manov,
Aaron Avivi and Imad Shams, exposed the
animals to two cancer-causing agents. Only
one of the 20 Spalax tested (an animal that was
more than 10 years old) developed malignant
tumors after exposure to one of the carcinogens. In contrast, all of the 12 mice and six rats
exposed to either agent developed cancerous
tumors.
The team next turned its attention to
SEE BLIND MOLE-RAT, PAGE 12
photo by L. Brian Stauffer
Quad’s-eye view Nearly 660 registered student organizations
participated in Quad Day on Aug. 25. The annual event gives students the
opportunity to sign up for extracurricular and social activities. This year’s
participants included student and community organizations and academic
units. The day also featured more than 20 performances. It’s the 42nd time
the event has been held.
Chancellor Wise says new academic year is one of action
By Mike Helenthal
Assistant Editor
C
In This Issue
hancellor Phyllis M.
Wise is delighted that
the new academic year
is underway.
Part of the reason is that she
has spent a lot of time spurring a
campus self-assessment process
leading to the recently unveiled
Strategic Plan, a three-year plan
requested by university President
Bob Easter. Initiating that plan is
the next step.
“This year you’re going to start
seeing that this plan is being put
into action,” Wise said. “Too many
people (faculty, staff, students and
external stakeholders) have spent
too much precious time and effort
for this to be one of those plans
that is not executed.”
Wise said initiatives for several
of the plan’s themes – environment and energy, health and wellness, social equality and cultural
understanding and economic development – are being developed
or are already underway.
For example, the recruitment
process has already begun for
NEW LEADERSHIP
See new leaders, page 3.
the hiring plan unveiled at last
spring’s town hall meeting, where
Wise and Illesanmi Adesida, the
provost and vice chancellor for
academic affairs, outlined the plan
to recruit 500 faculty members in
the next five to seven years.
Hiring that many new faculty
members will serve many purposes, Wise said. Among them, bringing faculty numbers more in line
with student demand and utilizing
“cluster” hiring to bring teams
of specialists from emerging and
cross-disciplinary fields.
Wise said the effort also would
bolster parallel efforts to promote
innovative learning and research
opportunities for all students, particularly undergraduates.
The chancellor and provost
have appointed a faculty committee that has conducted its own
“listening and learning” tour in
recent months to discuss with
deans and departments efforts to
improve the search process and
Preserving history
The University Archives is
looking to the future in its
approach to preserving
the past.
PAGE 10
meet the recruiting goals in the
Strategic Plan.
Wise said this fall’s enrollment
numbers may break records for the
number of international students.
And average GPA scores also are
up this year.
“Coming to Illinois is a great
opportunity to know and be a part
of the global environment,” she
said. “I’m encouraging students
to go outside of themselves and
reach out to someone who is different from them.”
Wise said she is confident that
this year is a year of action because the campus has gotten firmly behind the principles outlined in
the Strategic Plan.
“It’s everybody’s strategic
plan,” she said. “So many people
helped create it and we hope everyone embraces it as their own.”
She said she and her leadership
team have gelled in their short
time working together and she is
optimistic about the future.
“I am so pleased with the team
around me,” she said. “I’ve been
here long enough now where I
know who to turn to for an an-
Momentum maker The chancellor’s Listening and Learning
tour and the Visioning Future Excellence initiative have been
completed, the Strategic Plan has been submitted to the president
and Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise is looking forward to the 2013-14
academic year as a year of action. Wise said many of the initiatives
outlined in the Strategic Plan have already begun.
swer. They’ve been tremendous,
and there are repercussions everywhere across the campus:
It affects all aspects of the institution because of the knowledge they possess and the things
Performance
exhibitions
Dance performances are
being featured this month
at Krannert Art Museum.
PAGE 14
Inside Illinois Online: news.illinois.edu/ii/ • To subscribe: go.illinois.edu/iiSubscribe
they’re able to accomplish. These
are very unique times in higher
education and we have to anticipate the need to manage change
as opposed to being managed by
changes.” u
INDEX
A MINUTE WITH … ™
13
BOOK CORNER
11
BRIEF NOTES
18
DEATHS
3
ON THE JOB
3
InsideIllinois
PAGE 2 Sept. 5, 2013
New SEC chair expects busy, productive year
By Mike Helenthal
Assistant Editor
T
he Senate Executive Committee’s
first meeting of the academic year
was light on business – but don’t
expect that to become a trend, said
new chair Roy Campbell after the Aug. 26
meeting.
Campbell said he expects the 201314 year to bring a heavy workload for the
Urbana Academic Senate, SEC and its 18
committees, as several important campus
issues likely will come before them for consideration.
He said the recent submission of the
campus Strategic Plan to university administrators and the speed at which those
strategies are implemented will likely lead
to an increase in senate business, as will the
current internal review of senate operations
and procedures.
“I think all of that activity will lead to
quite an agenda because in some form or
fashion, all of those things will come back
to us,” he said. “I think we’ll have many
tasks set aside for us to consider. A year is
very short and it would be nice to make a lot
of progress.”
Outside of affecting administrative and
academic direction, Campbell said the discussion and implementation of the strategic
plan represents an opportunity for the senate to directly affect funding decisions.
“Good budgeting comes from careful
planning, and being at the table for these
larger discussions is important,” he said.
“You’d like to give everyone the same
amount, but funding will continue to be a
difficult issue. It will be about identifying
campus priorities.”
Other issues of import include the ongoing discussion of how massive open online
courses fit into the land-grant university
structure; how open-access initiatives can
be balanced against the call for increased
economic return in the face of funding pressures; and how far proposed changes in
federal standards will go to address student
access and cost, to rank university performance, and the distribution of funding in
the future.
He said an ad hoc senate committee had
been working over the summer to address
salary, benefit and pension issues, the budget and campus renovation priorities, and
how the senate can affect them.
Kim Graber, the SEC’s new vice chair,
said the difficulties in deciding some issues
will be compounded by a need to act “nimbly” as Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise has put
it, when they come up for consideration.
Graber said SEC members are encouraged by recommendations made in the
Strategic Plan, as well as by the importance
Wise and Ilesanmi Adesida, the vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost,
have indicated they place on the concept of
shared governance.
“I think everyone understands the need
to focus our energies for the future, and the
work of the ad hoc task force this summer
was informed by both faculty members and
the administration,” she said. “It was shared
governance at its best, and it’s a good sign.”
Campbell said that the senate’s review of
ON THE WEB
http://senate.illinois.edu
its own role within the shared governance
structure is important as well, considering
the convergence of so many future-focused
academic issues. And it’s especially prescient considering the university administration is simultaneously conducting its
own internal review.
He said he sees one of his main roles as
improving and increasing communication
between all of the interested parties, “because we’re all dedicated to making this
university better.” He said he would emphasize the need to make senate meetings and
correspondence transparent and meet the
criteria of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
“We’d like to make our (senate) decision-making more effective and timely, but
at the same time we want to encourage debate,” he said. “I think the senate structure,
as it is, is strong, but are there ways we can
improve? The answer is always ‘yes.’ ” u
Nine faculty members named to Center for Advanced Study
By Dusty Rhodes
Arts and Humanities Editor
T
he Center for Advanced Study has
announced nine new appointments
to its permanent faculty – one of the
highest honors the U. of I. campus
bestows for outstanding scholarship.
The new CAS professors are James D.
Anderson, education policy, organization
and leadership; Nigel Goldenfeld, physics; Stephen Long, plant biology; Tere
O’Connor, dance; John Rogers, materials science and engineering; Jay Rosenstein, journalism; Klaus Schulten, physics;
Jonathan Sweedler, chemistry; and Maria
Todorova, history. They join 18 other CAS
professors, drawn from academic departments across the campus, and will continue
to serve as full members of their home departments while shaping the future of CAS
by selecting associates and fellows for the
center. They each receive a research fund
of $5,000 per year. Their appointments are
permanent, and were approved by the U. of
I. Board of Trustees during its July meeting.
Anderson heads the education policy, organization and leadership department where
he is a Gutgsell Professor. His teaching and
research focus on the history of American
education with a special interest in the history of African-American education, the
history of desegregation and diversity in all
levels of education, and the history of minority school achievement.
Goldenfeld is a Swanlund Professor in
the physics department and leads the biocomplexity theme at the Institute for Genomic Biology. He is the director of the
Institute for Universal Biology, part of the
NASA Astrobiology Institute network. His
research encompasses physics, microbial
ecology, evolutionary biology, fluid mechanics, materials science and quantitative finance, with a unifying focus on the
evolution of patterns over time, such as the
growth of snowflakes, the microstructures
of materials, the flow of fluids and spatial
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organization of ecosystems. He also is the
author of a popular graduate textbook on
statistical mechanics.
Long, a Gutgsell Professor in plant biology and crop sciences, studies photosynthetic efficiency, through both mathematical modeling of the molecular processes
and practical investigation at the field-crop
level, focusing on global change. He has
identified the most productive plants and investigated the basis of their success. He has
led the development of SoyFACE, a facility that analyzes the effects of atmospheric
change on crops, and the Urbana-campus
component of the biofuels research initiative, Energy Biosciences Institute. He now
directs projects funded by the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy
to improve photosynthetic efficiency in a
variety of crops.
O’Connor has been choreographing contemporary dance since 1982, creating more
than 35 works for his own company, Tere
O’Connor Dance, as well as commissioned
works for companies around the world including the Lyon Opera Ballet and solo
pieces for Jean Butler and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He’s known for his dance advocacy
through writing, teaching, mentoring and
speaking engagements, and has won numerous awards, most recently the Doris
Duke Performing Artist Award.
Rogers is a Swanlund Professor and is
the director of the Seitz Materials Research
Laboratory. He is well-known for his pioneering work on merging hard and soft
materials into unusual electronic systems,
with an emphasis on bio-integrated devices
and bio-inspired design. Recent examples
include injectable, cellular-scale optoelectronics, “insect eye” digital imagers and
biodegradable circuits.
Rosenstein is a documentary filmmaker
specializing in social issue stories. He has
won a Peabody Award and two regional
Emmy awards. His work has been broadcast on the PBS series “POV” and “Inde-
InsideIllinois
Editor
Doris K. Dahl
217-333-2895, [email protected]
Assistant Editor
Mike Helenthal
Photographer
L. Brian Stauffer
News Bureau Interns
Chelsey B. Coombs
Earn Phatthamon Saenmuk
News Bureau contributors
Liz Ahlberg
engineering, physical
sciences
Craig Chamberlain
media, international
programs, social sciences
Phil Ciciora
business, labor, law
Sharita Forrest
education, social work
Dusty Rhodes
arts, information science,
humanities, library
Diana Yates
agriculture, applied health
sciences, life sciences
pendent Lens” and on the Independent Film
Channel. His films have been screened at
festivals worldwide including the Sundance
Film Festival. His 1997 documentary, “In
Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots
in Sports,” helped influence the NCAA’s
policy against the use of American Indian
mascots. His 2010 documentary, “The Lord
is Not on Trial Here Today,” about the First
Amendment case that established the separation of church and state in public schools,
was named best TV program for fostering
the public’s understanding of law by the
American Bar Association.
Schulten, a Swanlund Professor, heads
the theoretical and computational biophysics group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and codirects the Center for the Physics of Living
Cells in the physics department. He was the
first to demonstrate that parallel computers
can be employed to solve the many-body
problem in biomolecular modeling and the
first to accomplish a simulation of an entire
life form (the satellite tobacco mosaic virus).
His group recently discovered the molecular
structure of the HIV capsid, offering farreaching implications for HIV pharmaceutical interventions, and his group’s software
for molecular graphics and modeling is used
by thousands of researchers worldwide.
Sweedler, the Eiszner Family Professor
of Chemistry, is the director of the School
of Chemical Sciences and associated with
four other scientific programs on campus.
His research emphasis is on analytical neurochemistry, focusing on investigating the
roles that peptide hormones, neurotransmitters and neuromodulatory agents play in behavior, learning and memory.
Todorova, the Gutgsell Professor of
history, specializes in the Balkans in the
modern period. Her research focuses on the
symbolism of nationalism, national memory and national heroes in Bulgaria and the
Balkans, as well as problems of socialism
and post-communism. She is the author of
more than 30 books, and has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim
Fellowship. u
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InsideIllinois
2013-14 Publication Schedule
FALL 2013
Sept. 5
Sept. 19
Oct. 3
Oct. 17
Nov. 7
Nov. 21
Dec. 5
Dec. 19
SPRING 2014
Jan. 16
Feb. 6
Feb. 20
March 6
March 20
April 3
April 17
May 1
SUMMER 2014
May 15
June 5
June 19
July 3
July 17
Aug. 7
Aug. 21
news.illinois.edu/ii • [email protected]
For a full schedule with deadlines, go to news.illinois.edu/ii/13-14_full_schedule.pdf
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Sept. 5, 2013 InsideIllinois
PAGE 3
On the Job Marie Childress
By Mike Helenthal
Assistant Editor
W
ork hard, play hard and
follow your passion.
That’s the credo Marie Childress follows, and
it has worked well during her 26 years
at the U. of I.’s College of Veterinary
Medicine. She has spent nearly the last
10 years in the Veterinary Diagnostic
Laboratory and the last three as a business manager I.
She was hired as an accountant technician in the business office in 1987 and
in 1990 moved to the college’s Comparative Biosciences Division for 14 years
before starting at the diagnostics lab in
2004.
“I’ve moved around a little but it’s all
been in this college,” she said. “This is
my home; I never wanted to be anyplace
else.”
Childress said she enjoys the challenge of her job, which has her doing
a variety of things – including business
and finance, human resources, customer
service, and preparing and disseminating
laboratory information and results.
She said her staff is well trained and
professional, asking relevant questions
when issues come up.
“I have a good group that knows
when to call me in,” she said. “I like
people who can work on their own but
who aren’t afraid to ask when they don’t
understand something.”
She said she leads by example.
“I care about the people I work with
and the people I do things for and I love
digging into problems and trying to
solve them,” she said.
That even goes for problems that
seemingly aren’t hers.
“Somebody’s always wandering
through the building wondering where to
go,” she said. “I always take the time to
help them. I don’t like it when someone
says, ‘It’s not my job.’ To be a good employee you need to go that extra step. Over
the years you just learn where and how to
help people.”
The diagnostic lab is responsible for
the blood work, biopsies and other tests
requested by veterinarians from inside the
college at the teaching hospital and out.
The lab receives inquires and referrals from
around the world.
“We don’t always see the (animal) owners, but we know the data we give out are
important,” she said. “Around here, it’s
ultimately about the patient. There’s an attitude of, ‘If something’s not right, let’s fix
it and get it right.’ It’s fascinating to see the
care and consideration that goes on here.”
Growing up on a farm near Monticello, Childress, one of eight children, spent
much of her time around cows, sheep and
plenty of chickens.
“I was allergic to most of them (animals), but I could still field dress a chicken
(today) if I needed to,” she said. “Working
here has been my way of helping animals.”
Childress’ interests were pulled in opposite directions when she was younger and
they still compete. As a young student she
excelled at both art and math and had to decide one over the other when it came time
to pick a career.
While she still dabbles with art, she realized an accounting career – and a certificate from Parkland College – was a more
dependable way to pay the bills.
“Somebody without a degree can go
far here (at the university), but I’ve never
stopped learning,” she said.
Childress’ parents espoused creativity as
a virtue and Childress said her mother still
has Childress’ childhood artwork around
New leadership appointments announced
M
any new administrators or
changes in appointments have
been announced within the last
few months:
n Bob Easter, the president of the
university. His contract has been extended through June 2015.
n Michel Bellini, the interim director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. The center is merging
duties and staff members from the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Office
of Online and Continuing Education,
and Campus Programs on Teaching and
Learning, as well as select staff members from CITES Academic Technology
Services. Bellini was the associate director for undergraduate education in the
School of Molecular and Cellular Biology and is a professor of cell and developmental biology.
n Andreas C. Cangellaris, the dean
of the College of Engineering. Cangellaris was the head of the department of
electrical and computer engineering at
Illinois. He joined the U. of I. faculty in
1997.
n Peter D. Constable, the dean of
the College of Veterinary Medicine (effective January 2014). Constable is a
Purdue University professor of veterinary clinical sciences and the head of that
department. He was a professor of veterinary clinical medicine at Illinois for more
than 10 years, serving as the interim head
of that department from 2004-2005.
n Fritz Drasgow, the interim dean
of the School of Labor and Employment
Relations. A professor in the school, he
has been on the faculty since 1978.
n Bryan Endres, the interim associate provost for international affairs and
director of International Programs and
Studies. Endres has been a professor of
agricultural and consumer economics
and of food and agricultural law at Illinois since 2003.
n Christopher Z. Mooney, the director of the Institute of Government and
Public Affairs. Mooney joined the faculty
at UIS in 1999 and has been a member
of the IGPA faculty since 2004. His appointment is subject to approval by the
U. of I. Board of Trustees at its September meeting.
n Brian Ross, the interim dean of
the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Ross, a professor of psychology, has
been on the faculty since 1982.
n Alma R. Sealine, the director of
University Housing. Sealine was the director of Housing at Case Western Reserve University.
n H. Edward Seidel (Jan. 15, 2014),
the director of the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications. Seidel
was the senior vice president of research
and innovation at the Skolkovo Institute
of Science and Technology in Moscow.
n Jan Slater, the dean of the College
of Media. Slater had been serving as interim dean since 2010. She came to Illinois in 2007 to become the head of the
Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising.
n Allan M. Stratman, the executive director of Facilities and Services.
Stratman recently retired from the Navy.
He had been the executive officer of the
Navy Facilities Engineering Command,
Southwest.
n John P. Wilkin, the university librarian and dean of libraries. Wilkin was
an associate university librarian at the
University of Michigan. u
Bringing the ‘A’ game Marie Childress, who has worked at the U. of I.’s
College of Veterinary Medicine for 26 years, says that going the extra mile is
what makes the employees there stand out. “Around here, it’s ultimately about the
patient,” she said. “There’s an attitude of, ‘If something’s not right, let’s fix it and
get it right.’ ” At home, Childress likes to play video games with her children –
which she sees as bonding time and a way to promote their interest in technology.
her house.
It’s a family-raising approach that definitely has carried over with Childress. Married for 20 years, she said all of her family
members are taught to follow their passions.
For her husband, Tim, it was his recent
foray into beekeeping – something Childress supported wholeheartedly.
For her two sons, 17-year-old Daniel
and 11-year-old Dylan, it’s about learning
about computers and playing video games.
And for Childress herself – well, it’s
about playing video games, too. It’s a
hobby that her sons have enthusiastically
shared with their business-minded mom
and now she’s hooked.
“I love to go home and play with them,”
she said, noting the eldest son is consider-
ing a career in game design. “That’s our
bonding time and it’s a way to escape.”
She proudly declares she has
reached level 50 on one of her favorite
adventure games.
“It took a (virtual) arrow to the knee
to stop me.”
She also likes working crossword
puzzles, gardening and crochet – a skill
she learned in the seventh grade.
“I’ve got to either be doing something ‘puzzly,’ ” she said, “or something with my hands.” u
On the Job features U. of I.
staff members. To nominate a
civil service employee, email
[email protected].
deaths
David James Brademas, 83, died Aug.
19. He was a professor of recreation, sport
and tourism for 36 years, retiring in 2000.
Memorials: Brightbill/Sapora Professorship in Recreation (Fund #770188), U. of
I. Foundation, 1305 W. Green St., MC386, Urbana, IL 610801, uif.uillinois.
edu; St. Mark’s United Methodist Church,
1431 W. Magee Road, Tucson, AZ 85704,
umcstmarks.org; Casa de la Luz Foundation, 7740 North Oracle Road, Tucson,
AZ 85704, casafoundation.org; Stephen J.
and Beatrice Brademas Memorial Scholarship, Department of History (Fund #3852),
Ball State University Foundation, P.O. Box
672, Muncie, IN 47308, cms.bsu.edu/giving/bsufoundation; or Pulmonary Fibrosis
Foundation, 230 E. Ohio St., Suite 304,
Chicago, IL 60611, pulmonaryfibrosis.org/
donate.
Donald Edward Crummey, 72, died Aug.
16. He taught at the U. of I. from 19732003. He was a professor of history and
later a professor in the Center for African
Studies. Memorials: Chapel of St. John the
Divine, 1011 S. Wright St., Champaign, IL
61820, chapelsjd.org; College of Wooster,
1189 Beall Ave., Wooster, Ohio 44691,
wooster.edu; or Save the Males, University
of Colorado Hospital Foundation, Leprino
Building, 12401 E. 17th Ave., Mail Stop
F485, Aurora, CO 80045, uch.edu.
Elizabeth Lohmann Faucett, 93, died
Aug. 10 at Carle Foundation Hospital,
Urbana. She was an illustrator at the U. of
I. Memorials: Urbana Park District Lohmann Park, 505 W. Stoughton St., Urbana,
IL 61801, urbanaparks.org; the Organ Fund
at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 309
W. Green St., Urbana, IL. 61801, uucuc.
org; Kappa Alpha Theta Foundation, 8740
Founders Road, Indianapolis, IN 46268,
kappaalphathetafoundation.org; or Gunston
School, 911 Gunston Road, P.O. Box 200,
Centreville, MD 21617, gunston.org.
Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster, 79, died
Aug. 25 at his Urbana home. He was a professor in the U. of I. Graduate School of Library and Information Science for 22 years,
retiring in 1992. Memorials: Save the Children, 54 Wilton Road, Westport, CT 06880,
savethechildren.org; or the World Wildlife
Fund, 1250 24th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20037, worldwildlife.org.
Steven Jay Mast, 57, died Aug. 16. He
was a project engineer at the U. of I. for
29 years. Memorials: Salt & Light, 1512
W. Anthony Drive, Champaign, IL 61821,
saltandlightministry.org; or Carle Hospice,
206A W. Anthony Drive, Champaign, IL
61822, carle.org.
Sonja J. McManaway, 74, died Aug. 22
at Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana. She
worked in the U. of I. accounting office.
Memorials: the Good Shepherd Lutheran
Church, 2101 S. Prospect Ave., Champaign,
Ill. 61820, gslc-cu.org.
James Bruno Risatti Jr., 71, died recently.
Risatti was a geochemist in the Organic
Geochemistry Section of the Illinois State
Geological Survey for 29 years, retiring
as head of the section in 2006. Memorials:
Alzheimer’s Disease Research Foundation,
alzheimers-research.org; The Nature Conservancy, 8 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL
60603, nature.org; or St. Patrick’s Catholic
Church Building Fund, 708 W. Main St.,
Urbana, IL 61801, stpaturbana.org.
Jacob Stern, 89, died Aug. 27 at his home
in Oriental, N.C. He taught at the U. of I.
for 22 years, retiring in 1984 as associate
professor emeritus of vocational and technical education. Memorials: Temple B’nai
Sholem, 505 Middle St., New Bern, NC
28560, bnai-sholem.org; Hospice of Pamlico County, P.O. Box 959, Bayboro, NC
28515, hospicepamlico.webs.com; or the
SEE DEATHS, PAGE 4
InsideIllinois
By Mike Helenthal
Assistant Editor
I
t’s been just a year since the Office of
the Provost created the Office of Undergraduate Research and it already has
produced tangible results.
The new office, led by Paul Diehl, the
Henning Larsen Professor of political science, is creating a broad-based undergraduate research program to provide more opportunities across disciplines, and to increase financial and project support, and
multiple ways for students to showcase
their work.
Students are clamoring for the opportunity to conduct research and the university
owes it to them to be able to do so, said
Diehl, who for 10 years has been the leader
of the Teaching Academy in the College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences.
A significant increase in participation
at the 2013 Undergraduate Research Symposium is a sign of students’ desire for research – the number of posters and presentations increased from 203 in 2012 to 342
this year.
The undergraduate research office has
identified a number of new approaches to
connect undergraduate students with reFaculty Workshops on
Undergraduate Research
Sept. 24: “Integrating Research
Opportunities Into Your
Undergraduate Courses”
Oct. 16: “Designing Undergraduate
Research in Humanities and Fine
Arts”
Nov. 12: “Integrating Undergraduate
Research in Large Introductory
Classes”
Presented by the Center for Innovation
in Teaching and Learning in collaboration with the Office of Undergraduate
Research. All workshops meet noon1:15 p.m. in Room 428 of the Armory.
DEATHS, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3
Pamlico County Education Foundation,
P.O. Box 27, Bayboro, NC 28515.
Donald Bradford Stone died Aug. 21 at his
home in Fernandina Beach, Fla. He was a
professor emeritus at the U. of I. Memorials: American Cancer Society, cancer.org/
donate; or American Red Cross, redcross.
org/donation.
Gerald T. Warmbier, 71, died Aug. 14 at
Carle Foundation Hospital. He was a photographer at the U. of I. Memorials: Holy
Cross Catholic Church, 405 W. Clark St.,
Champaign, IL 61820, holycrosscatholic.org; or the Prairieland Anti-Cruelty
Shelter for the spay and neuter program,
2173 County Road 750 E., Champaign, IL
61822. u
Campus shifting to emphasize undergraduate research
ON THE WEB
Current annual report of the Office of
Undergraduate Research:
provost.illinois.edu/our
search opportunities that transform their U.
of I. experience, Diehl said.
“There are a number of initiatives that
we’ve identified as important and some of
them already are being incorporated in the
classroom.”
The annual faculty retreat, in February,
was attended by more than 200 people,
who discussed ways to incorporate undergraduate research opportunities in existing
classes and developing new programs that
support such research.
“These are things that have to be initiated and put in place at the unit level to be
successful,” Diehl said. “We’ve already
been working individually with several colleges and departments to get some of these
things going.”
Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise said the focus on undergraduate research was important enough to include in the university’s
recently completed Strategic Plan.
“We want every single student to have
the opportunity to have the best education
they can imagine,” Wise said. “Undergraduate research opportunities are a big part
of that, and that includes those who don’t
choose a research career.”
Providing undergraduates with more
research opportunities is the equivalent of
giving them hands-on experience, she said.
“When you ask those graduates what
their favorite college experience was,” she
said, “many times they’ll tell you that getting to conduct research with a world-class
faculty member is what they enjoyed most.”
Diehl said his office has focused on two
broad areas. One is providing a more supportive environment for young researchers,
and the other is to better incorporate research concepts into teacher training.
Undergraduate overtures Paul Diehl, the Henning Larsen Professor of
political science, said the new Office of Undergraduate Research has already
seen success, just a year after he was picked to lead it through a 50-percent
appointment. Several initiatives to increase undergraduate research
opportunities and campus support for them are progressing, and last spring’s
Undergraduate Research Symposium saw a significant increase in participants.
As for the support network, work is proceeding to create undergraduate research
journals, offer certificates to undergraduates successfully completing a sanctioned
research project, make available summer
fellowships, and provide a conference
and travel assistance program for students
wanting to present their work off campus.
Diehl said the new initiatives don’t just
focus on providing opportunity.
A great deal of work also is going into
changing the nature of undergraduate
courses.
“We’re asking everyone to look at what
they’re teaching and consider ways to build
research components into their courses,” he
said, which means reconsidering courses
that in the past may not even have been
thought of as research-adaptable.
To that end, this fall the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning is offer-
ing a faculty workshop series led by Diehl
that focuses on integrating research opportunities into the curriculum, identifying research opportunities in the humanities and
fine arts, and providing research opportunities for large introductory classes.
Charles Tucker, named vice provost for
undergraduate education and innovation in
February, said the transition to a researchbased undergraduate education is a good
thing.
“I really like undergraduate research,” he
said, “because it gives students a place to
take initiative.”
He said the initial success of the Office
of Undergraduate Research has been encouraging.
“The people who will address these
problems are the students we’re teaching
now,” he said. “It’s our duty to prepare them
well.” u
Flash Index holds steady; economic growth slows
T
he U. of I. Flash Index for August
shows that economic growth in
Illinois is continuing but that the
pace of that growth has slowed
to a crawl. The index remained at 106.5
in August, the same level as the previous
month.
The reading of 106.5 is the highest for
the index since it stood at 106.7 in July
2007, which was before the 2007-2009
recession began.
“It should be remembered that this
does not mean the Illinois economy is not
growing, just that growth is not accelerating,” said economist J. Fred Giertz, who
compiles the Flash Index each month for
the university’s Institute of Government
and Public Affairs. An index level of 100
marks the dividing line between economic growth and decline.
“Recently released national data indicate that the national economy in the
second quarter of 2013 grew at a faster
pace than originally reported (2.5 percent
vs. 1.7 percent),” Giertz said. “This is
consistent with the relatively strong performance of the index during this period.
But we also note again that the growth of
the Illinois economy has made little impact on the unemployment rate, which
increased slightly in July to 9.2 percent.”
As with July, two components of the
index (individual income and sales tax receipts) were up moderately in real terms
ON THE WEB
igpa.uillinois.edu/flash-index
in August compared to the same month
last year, while corporate tax receipts
were down slightly.
The index is a weighted average of Illinois growth rates in corporate earnings,
consumer spending and personal income.
Tax receipts from corporate income, personal income and retail sales are adjusted
for inflation before growth rates are calculated. The growth rate for each component
is then calculated for the 12-month period
using data through Aug. 31, 2013. u
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InsideIllinois
Sept. 5, 2013 photo by L. Brian Stauffer
New faces 2013
PAGE 5
Among the newcomers to the Urbana campus are faculty members whose appointments began this
summer or fall. Inside Illinois continues its tradition of introducing some of the new faculty members
on campus and will feature at least two new colleagues in each fall issue.
Megan J. Dailey
an assistant professor of animal sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Education: Ph.D. (biology), Georgia
State University; post-baccalaureate
study (psychology), University of
Pennsylvania; B.A. (psychology),
University of South Florida
Courses teaching: ANSC 222,
Anatomy and Physiology, one of four
foundation courses for all animal
sciences students. She also will
develop a physiology course to broaden
the physiology training of upper-level
undergraduate students.
Research interests: Her research will
help scientists understand nutrient
sensing in obese and lean individuals,
as well as provide an understanding
of the mechanisms responsible for
cellular adaption in the intestine. The
broader impact is in finding a therapy
for intestinal disorders that include
Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel
syndrome and cancer.
“We hired Megan because of her
strong discovery research training
and her abilities to work across
disciplines in multiple departments,”
said Doug Parrett, the interim head
and a professor of animal sciences.
“Her research associated with obesity
and brain-to-gut metabolism is a
great fit for animal sciences and also
human health issues. She also has
great enthusiasm for teaching and
has experience in developing new and
engaging teaching strategies that will
benefit our students. I particularly like
her high energy level and her great
ability to engage others in topics and
projects.”
Why Illinois? “I chose to be a part of
U. of I. because the faculty, staff and
students set the university apart from
other academic institutions,” Dailey
said. “Faculty members are passionate
about their jobs and creative in their
research endeavors. The university is
continuing efforts to improve teaching
and enhance the learning environment
of the students. I am excited to
get involved in the interdisciplinary
research that occurs throughout
the campus and to contribute to the
university’s success.” u
Andriy Norets
an associate professor of economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Education: Ph.D. (economics),
University of Iowa; M.A. (economics),
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy, Urkraine; Diploma (applied
mathematics and computer science),
National Technical University of
Ukraine
Courses teaching: Norets will be
teaching required and elective Ph.D.
courses in econometrics, as well as
an advanced undergraduate course in
econometrics.
Research interests: His research
focuses on Bayesian methods in
econometrics.
“Andriy Norets comes to Illinois from
Princeton University, where he was an
assistant professor,” said Martin Perry,
the head of economics. “He has made
important contributions to the analysis
of dynamic discrete choice problems.
His work has applications to a wide
variety of economic decision processes
including retirement decisions and
firm entry and competition. He has
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published his research in the leading
econometrics and statistics journals
and has recently received a three-year
National Science Foundation grant
to explore unification of classical and
Bayesian inference in econometrics.”
Why Illinois? “Among other factors,
the presence of renowned researchers
in my field and plans to hire new
economics faculty in multiple fields
over the next few years played an
important role in my decision to come
to Illinois,” Norets said. u
InsideIllinois
‘Causal overdetermination’ provides middle ground for courts
By Phil Ciciora
Business and Law Editor
A
disagreement among state courts
on the subject of drunk-driving
homicide can be resolved by requiring the prosecution to prove
in these cases not that the driver’s intoxication caused the fatal accident, but merely
that it contributed to the causal mechanism
behind the accident, says a forthcoming paper by a U. of I. expert on criminal law.
Although philosophers and legal scholars have long recognized that conduct can
contribute to a result without strictly causing it, this phenomenon of “causal overdetermination” has been almost entirely overlooked by criminal law scholars, says Eric
A. Johnson, a professor of law at Illinois.
Even scholars in areas other than criminal law have failed to spot the connection
between causal overdetermination and
the kind of “wrongful aspect” causation
at work in drunk-driving homicide cases,
Johnson said.
“Nobody has put the two ideas together,” he said. “With this paper, I want to
make judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers notice the connection between the two
ideas.”
According to Johnson, in cases involving drunk-driving homicide, courts around
the country are divided about equally on
the question of whether the law requires a
“causal nexus” between the defendant’s intoxication – the wrongful aspect of the conduct – and the fatal accident.
“There’s this division in the courts, and
they don’t even really appear to know that
they’re divided,” he said.
It’s a question that gets litigated frequently in state courts, each of which applies its own distinctive state criminal law
on the subject, Johnson said.
“The courts have come to different conclusions about whether or not the government is required to prove that the intoxication actually caused the accident,” he said.
“So there’s this stark division between the
two positions, and I was interested in exploring the question, ‘Who’s right?’ It
seemed as though one side or the other had
to be right.”
When Johnson investigated this divide
among the courts, though, he noticed that
the courts on both sides seemed uncomfortable with the positions they had staked out.
“It seemed as though the courts that had
decided not to require a causal nexus, well,
they were nevertheless uncomfortable imposing liability in cases where the defendant’s intoxication had nothing to do with
the accident,” he said. “On the other side of
the spectrum, the courts that said a causal
nexus is required, they didn’t really seem
to be demanding what the law appears to
require, which is proof beyond a reasonable
doubt that the accident would not have occurred but for intoxication.”
Johnson’s own intuitions about the problem also were divided. On one hand, the
position that the intoxication’s causal role
shouldn’t matter at all in these cases struck
him as “intuitively wrong.” But he also recognized that in many cases the government
would find it next to impossible to prove
that the accident would not have occurred
“but for” the driver’s intoxication.
“In some states, the prosecution needs to
satisfy the ‘but-for’ standard – that is, it has
to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the
accident would not have occurred ‘but for’
the driver’s intoxication,” he said. “Well,
if somebody runs over a pedestrian who’s
walking on the side of a dark road with
hairpin curves, it’s very hard to say beyond
a reasonable doubt, ‘A sober driver would
not have run over this person.’ And in fact it
seems as though the courts in practice aren’t
really willing to hold the government to that
tough burden of proof. It seems as though
the courts in those jurisdictions that require
a causal nexus are hedging.”
According to Johnson, the solution to
this problem lies in the idea of “causal overdetermination.” In cases of causal overdetermination, a person’s actions contribute to
the causal mechanism underlying the harm
without necessarily playing a decisive role.
If causal overdetermination were at
work in the drunk-driving homicide cases,
it would explain why the courts seemed
uncomfortable with the idea of requiring a
“but for” causal connection, Johnson said.
“Causal overdetermination basically
occurs when someone contributes to an already dangerous situation,” he said. “Let’s
say that someone’s gravely ill and you want
to kill them. You steal their medication and
a few hours later they die. In this case, we
can’t say for sure that the person wouldn’t
have died anyway. After all, they were
gravely ill. But we can say that taking away
their medication increased the likelihood
that the underlying illness would kill them.”
The theft of the medication in this case is
an “overdetermining cause,” Johnson says.
So the court wouldn’t require the government to prove that the victim would not have
died “but for” the theft of the medication.
“The person might have died anyway,”
he said. “So the government can’t prove
that they would not have died ‘but for’ the
On vacation?
Subscribe to the online version
of Inside Illinois and receive by email an index and
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Cause and effect A disagreement among state courts on drunk-driving homicide
cases can be resolved by requiring the prosecution to prove that the driver’s
intoxication contributed to the causal mechanism behind the accident, says a
forthcoming paper from Eric A. Johnson, a professor of law at Illinois.
defendant’s actions. What the government
can prove is that the defendant contributed
incrementally to the causal mechanism behind their death. And that’s enough in a case
like this.”
Drunk-driving homicide cases also involve causal overdetermination, Johnson
says.
“In drunk-driving homicide cases the
causal mechanism behind the accident usually is the interaction of a roadway hazard
– a pedestrian on a blind curve, for example
– with inherent limitations on the abilities
of human drivers to perceive and react to
hazards,” he said. “That combination is
what causes the accident. But the driver’s
intoxication contributes to the danger posed
by that combination in exactly the same
way that taking away a sick person’s medication contributes to the danger posed by
their underlying illness.”
If drunk-driving homicide cases are
causal overdetermination cases, then courts
that require a “but for” causal connection
between the intoxication and the accident
are requiring too much. By the same token,
though, courts that require no causal connection at all are requiring too little.
“The answer really lies in the middle,”
he said. “What’s required is only that the
driver’s intoxication contribute to the
mechanism behind the crash. So if the accident occurred under circumstances where
the driver’s intoxication made matters
worse, where it’s even possible that a sober
driver would have been able to avoid the accident, then the crime’s causation element is
satisfied.”
According to Johnson, this is the kind of
issue that lawyers deal with all the time.
“It’s probably one of the most frequently
litigated questions in drunk-driving homicides,” Johnson said.
Although it sounds purely academic on
the surface, “it’s easy to see how it could be
reduced to a jury instruction in a criminal
case,” he said.
“You could do that very easily – you’d
tell the jury that the only question is whether
the accident occurred under circumstances
where the driver’s intoxication ‘might’ have
made a difference. The government doesn’t
have to prove that his intoxication ‘would’
have made a difference.”
As a former prosecutor who worked in
the offices of the attorneys general of New
York and of Alaska before becoming a criminal law scholar, Johnson says he would like
to see the law go in that direction.
“The government shouldn’t have to
prove that the accident definitely wouldn’t
have occurred; it’s enough that the driver
was drunk, which increased the risk, and
the accident occurred,” he said.
The paper will appear in the Connecticut
Law Review. u
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The Campus Charitable
Fund Drive starts
SEPTEMBER 16!
The annual 8-week employee fund drive to
support charitable organizations.
2013CCFD
Kick-off and Agency Fair
September 16, 2013
12:15-1:30 p.m.
Illini Union, Room C
All employees and
retirees are invited to
attend and learn more
about the 11 agencies we
support. It’s your chance to
ask any questions regarding
your contributions and fill
out a pledge form.
Y
R
E
EV GE
PLED TS!
N
U
CO2013CCFD
Donate or learn more about the agencies at
ccfd.illinois.edu
This is an approved event. Your attendance must be approved by
your supervisor who will make the decision based on the operating
needs of your department.
2 0 1 2
C A M P U S
C H A R I T A B L E
F U N D
D R I V E
Designated Levels of Giving Donors
Some members of the campus community who contributed to the
success of last year’s drive are listed here. This list was compiled
from payroll and fund-drive records at the end of the 2012
Campus Charitable Fund Drive. We apologize if any names were
inadvertently omitted. This list is also available at ccfd.illinois.edu.
Annie Abbott
Brenda L. Abbott**
Ahmed Abdel-Khalik**
Daniel Abrams*
Barry Ackerson**
Ilesanmi Adesida***
Kim Adkinson
Sarita Adve***
Vikram Adve***
Stephanie and Ralph Alexander**
Barbara Allen**
Rodney Allen*
Marianne Alleyne*
Carl and Nadja Altstetter***
Alison Anders**
Ken and Mary Andersen*
Brian Anderson*
Thomas Anderson*
Matthew Ando**
Michael Andrechak**
Michael Andrejasich***
Michele Andrews
Kathryn Anthony
Mary Arends-Kuenning**
Dianna Armstrong***
Richard and Carol Arnould**
Walter Arnstein**
Paul Arroyo*
Leslie Arvan
Peter Ashbrook**
Alma Aubrey
Carol Augspurger**
Romana Autrey
Ronald W. Bailey*
Stacey L. Ballmes*
Maureen Banks**
Laura Barnes**
Chad Barringer*
Gene and Kathy Barton**
Julijj Baryshnikov*
Michael Bass*
Thomas Bassett
Paul Bateman**
Rita Bates
Dale Bauer**
Laura Bauer
Katherine Baylis**
Craig Bazzani**
Danda Beard***
Tammy Beasley*
Steve Beckett*
Margaret Beckmann*
Alison Bell
George Bell***
James Bell***
Karen Bender*
Ann and Bob Bender***
Ann Benefiel-Kunkel
Robert P. Bentz**
Howard Berenbaum*
May Berenbaum***
David Bergandine**
Clifton G. Bergeron*
Louis Bergonzi
Stewart Berlocher
Mark Bernhardt***
Samuel Beshers*
Corey Betka*
Brenda Betts*
Christine Beuoy**
Kenneth Bialeschki
Michael Biehl***
Deborah Bielser
Andrew Bishop
Richard Bishop*
Mary Blair**
Don and Gail Block**
Kimberly Blum*
Cheelan Bo-Linn*
David Boehm*
Tami Bond**
Donna Bosch*
January Boten
Merle Bowen
Van and Kathy Bowersox**
Dustin Boyer**
John Braden*
Steven Bradlow**
Michael Bragg*
Amy Braghini
Steven Branch*
Bruce Branham
Paul Braun*
Susan Braxton*
Alexander Breen
Scott Bretthauer*
Ellen Brewer**
William Brewer**
Maynard Brichford*
Gerald and Lois Brighton***
Joanne Broadbent**
Debbie Broadrick*
Willard and Anne Broom***
Jeffrey Brown**
Justin Brown
Kristine Brown**
William Brown*
Gregory Burdette*
Carol Buss
Ann Byers
David and Ann Byers*
Carla Caceres*
Martin Camargo**
Robyn Camp*
Ann Campbell
R. Campbell***
Charlene Carlier*
Karen Carney*
Jeffrey Carns*
Starla Carpenter*
Jennifer Carrell
Janet Carter-Black*
John Caughlin*
Deborah Cavanaugh-Grant**
David Ceperley***
Brian Chaille
Russ Chalfant***
Craig Chamberlain
Margaret Chambers*
Kuo Chi Chan***
Kevin Chang*
Carla Chapman
Jie Chen**
Weng Chew*
Barbara Childers**
Wojciech Chodzko-Zajko*
Jeffrey Christensen*
You-Hua Chu***
Lonnie Clark**
Roger G. and Gaye Clark***
Stuart Clark-Price**
Jesse Clements***
Vicki Clements**
Margaret Cline
Laura Clower*
Willis Colburn**
Elyne Cole**
Fred Coleman*
Helen Coleman*
John Collins**
John Colombo**
Kathleen Conlin***
Susan Conrad
Thomas and Sharon Conry***
Richard Cooke**
Leanne Courson**
Joshua Cox*
Daniel Crawmer**
Pamela A. Crews*
John Cronan***
Clare Crowston*
Clark Cunningham and Aulikki
Kokko-Cunningham***
Kenneth Cuno
Ramona Curry*
George and Sally Czapar**
James Dalling**
Leon Dash
William Davey**
Frederick Davidson*
Stephanie Davidson
Susan Davis
Terry L. Davis
B. A. Davis-Howe*
Marilyn De Jong**
Joseph Debarr*
Cynthia Debrock**
Lawrence Debrock**
Luisa-Elena Delgado*
Gary Dell***
Michael Delorenzo**
Elizabeth Dennison*
Lizanne Destefano*
Mike and Christy Devocelle***
Lisa Dhar*
Harold Diamond**
William Dick***
Amy Dickinson**
Tracy Dombek*
Jane Domier
Sharon Donovan
Cale Doubet
James Drackley**
Diane Beck and Steve Drake
Jean Drasgow
Bryan Dunne*
Debasish Dutta***
Craig Dutton*
Michael Dyer***
Mary Eamon
Robert and Cheryl Easter**
Aaron Ebata*
James Eckstein
Melissa Edwards***
Amy Elli
Paul Ellinger*
Celia Elliott***
W. Elliott
Amr Elnashai*
Carol Emmerling-Dinovo***
Rhoda R. Engel**
Jason Ensign*
Robert and Mary Ann
Espeseth***
Rupert and Mary Evans***
Edward Ewald*
F&S Fundraisers***
Frederick Fairchild**
Brian Farber*
Michael Faullin*
Vanessa Faurie*
Duncan Ferguson
Edward Feser*
Peter Feuille*
Joan Fiesta**
Cara Finnegan
Ellen Fireman*
Cynthia Fisher***
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Kathryn Flint
Robert and Deborah Foertsch*
Barbara Ford
Kevin Ford**
David Forsyth***
Scott Frailey**
Virginia France*
Michelle Franke
Steven Franke**
Mr. and Mrs. Frankel
Karen Fresco
Eric Freyfogle***
Samantha Frost*
Vernon Frost*
Amy Fruehling**
Marna Fuesting
Don Fullerton***
John Fundator
Ted Funk
Tanya Gallagher
Charles Gammie*
Steven Gangloff*
Jon Gant**
Jeffrey Gardner*
Susan Garnsey**
Lori Garwick
Thomas Geis**
Barbara Geissler**
Jay Geistlinger*
Judith Geistlinger*
James Gentry**
Susan Gershenfeld
Philippe Geubelle**
Andrew Gewirth**
Avijit Ghosh*
Timothy Gilles
Gregory Girolami***
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Darren Glosemeyer*
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Lyndon Goodly*
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Jonathan Goodwin***
Richard Gorvett**
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Camille Goudeseune*
Lynn Grabher Bradtke
Robert Graves**
Eric J. Green*
Kerri Green*
Laura Greene*
Sonya Grindley**
William Gropp
David and Claudia Gross***
Ernest Gullerud
Jon Gunderson***
C. Gunsalus***
Robert Haber*
Thomas Habing
Devon Wallis Hague***
James Hahn*
Laura Hahn
Terri Haines
Bruce Hajek*
Dr. Lorrie Hale Mitchell**
James Halle***
Robert Halverson**
Leslie Hammersmith
William Hanafin
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Christopher Hannauer*
Kathleen Harleman***
Walter Harrington*
Frances Harris**
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Stacy Harwood**
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Alvaro Hernandez*
Bev Herzog and Craig Cutbirth**
Geoffrey Hewings*
Karen Hewitt*
Karen Higgins
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Leon Hinz
Mike and Debbie Hirschi*
Paul Hixson**
Robert Hoeft**
Patrick Hoey*
John Hoffmann**
Nathan Hoffmann***
Kristin Hoganson*
Derek Hoiem***
Kathleen Holden and David
Prochaska**
Nick Holonyak**
Cory Holt
Peter and Joan Hood**
Lewis and Susan Hopkins***
Amy Hovious*
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Robert Hughes*
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Michael Insana*
Sharon Irish***
David Irwin***
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JoAnn Jacoby*
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Diane Jeffers*
Christine Jenkins*
Emily Jenkins*
Jianming Jin*
Walter John***
Cynthia Johnson*
Harley Johnson**
Kara Johnson*
Stephen Johnson
Yvette Johnson-Walker*
Janis Johnston**
Marcy and David Joncich*
Ben and Georgeann Jones*
Janet Jones
Patricia M. Jones**
Rose Jones
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Laura Jordan**
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Janice Juraska*
Patricia Justice*
Charles Kahn***
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W. Kangas**
Richard Kaplan*
Troye Kauffman***
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David and Marilyn Kay*
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John Kelley
Sara and Keith Kelley***
Cynthia Kelly*
Kevin Kelly
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Henson Keys
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Diane Kiddoo***
Susan Kieffer**
Susan Kies*
Tammey Kikta*
Duane Kimme*
David King
Daniel Kirsanoff***
Barbara Klein*
Miles Klein*
Walter Klemperer**
Gary Kling**
Ken Kochan*
Diane Koenker**
Roger Koenker**
Brenda Koester
Rohn Koester
R. Kokko-Cunningham***
Sandra Kopels**
Wynne Korr***
Matthew Kraatz**
Mary Kraft*
Arthur Kramer**
Laurie Kramer
David Kranz**
Delphine Kranz**
Philip Krein***
Mary Krick**
Herman Krier**
Curtis and Susan Krock*
Ed and Margarget Krol***
William Kruidenier**
Sharon Kuehl
Frances Kuo*
James Lafave*
Wayne and Loretta LaFave***
Betsy Lancaster*
Martha Landis***
Deirdre Lanesskog*
Stig Lanesskog***
David Lange*
Bruce and Janice Larson***
Reed Larson***
Norma Lauder**
Patrick and Rosemary Laughlin**
Huseyin Leblebici*
Noni Ledford*
Bumsoo Lee
Anthony Leggett***
Morris Leighton*
Michael Leroy*
Raymond Leuthold**
Stan and Joan Levy*
Stuart Levy**
Daniel Lewart**
Futing Liao**
Harry Liebersohn
Cheryl Light Shriner
Yu-Feng Lin
Brenda Lindsey***
J. Litchfield**
Rui Liu*
Melanie Loots***
Cindy and Michael Loui*
James Lowe**
Craig Lundstrom*
Mildred Luther***
Joseph Lyding**
Morgan Lynge*
Michael Lyon***
Drew MacGregor**
Michael Machesky*
Carol Maddox**
Joseph Mahoney*
Joy Malnar*
Daniel Mann**
Areli Marina*
Sandra Marretta*
Stephen Marshak**
Marilyn Marshall
Lovick Martin*
James Martinie**
Joseph Martocchio*
Nadya Mason
Laurie Matheson*
Edward McAuley
Brent McBride*
Rebecca McBride*
Tracy McCabe
Jeanette McCollum*
Carla McCowan*
Nancy McElwain*
James McEnerney**
Karen McFarlin
Greg McFarquhar
Steven McGaughey
Jamie McGowan*
Janet L. McGreevy**
James McGuire*
John McKay***
Michael McKelvey*
Robert McKim***
M. McLaughlin**
Julie McMahon
Walter McMahon***
Paul McNamara*
Prashant Mehta*
Ravi Mehta*
Evan M. and L. Lee Melhado*
Jay Menacher**
Anna Merritt***
Gholamreza Mesri
Sidney Micek*
Theresa and Bruce Michelson***
Janet Milbrandt
Joseph Miles*
Lesley Millar**
Brian K. Miller**
Laura Miller
Theresa Miller**
Julie Misa*
Phyllis Mischo**
Alan Mohn
Lisa Monda-Amaya*
John A. Monkman***
Ben Montez**
Tiana Montgomery*
Silvina Montrul
Benjamin Moreland**
Edward Morford*
Daniel Morrow
David and Nancy Morse***
Diane and Paul Mortensen**
Peter Mortensen*
Joda Morton
Robert and Frankie Mosborg**
Jessica Mosley
Sandra Moulton*
Allan Mueller**
Nicolai Mueller*
Kay Mulhall*
Peter Mulhall*
Jill Mulrooney**
Patrick Mulrooney**
Carrie Mulvaney*
Robert Muncaster**
Patricia Murdoch**
Alex and Joan Murray*
Diane Musumeci***
Lowa Mwilambwe*
Renee Nagy**
Shea Nangle*
David Nanney*
Lori Nappe
Ann Nardulli**
Rebecca Nash
Carol Neilson*
James Neilson*
Mary Nelson
Mark Netter and Eve Harwood**
Fred Neumann***
Helen Neville*
Lori Newcomb
Phillip Newmark*
Elaine Nicholas***
Ruth Nichols*
Martin Nieto*
Mark Nolan
Kevin Noland*
Nancy O’Brien*
Margaret O’Donoghue**
Tom and Diane O’Rourke***
Kathryn Oberdeck*
Jeffrey Oberg
Timothy Oberg**
Robert Olshansky*
Charles Olson
Craig Olson
Fred Ore*
Benita Ortiz*
Michaelene Ostrosky*
Cornelia Otnes*
Thomas Overbye**
Mark Overmier*
Roger Owens*
Brenda M. Pacey
Carol Packard
Robert Pahre***
Karen Partlow*
Kathryn Partlow*
Todd Kinney and Peggy
Patten***
Beatrice Pavia*
Deanelle Payne
Mark E. Peecher**
George Pennacchi***
Donald and Barbara Perrero**
Daniel Perrino*
Kimberly Perry
Roscoe and Ann Pershing**
Ronald Peters**
Steven Petruzzello
Wendy Petruzzello
Joseph Petry
James Pettigrew*
Christopher Phillips
Lissette Piedra
Marvin Piwoni**
Robert Plankenhorn**
Paul Polinski*
Marshall Poole*
Robert Porter*
Esther Portnoy***
Lisa M. Power*
Raymond Price
David Prochaska
Kathy Prouty
John Prussing*
James Pugh
Lesley Purnell*
William Qualls*
Paula Quick
Lane and Virginia Rayburn*
Peter Reagel**
Willis Regier***
Jennifer Reichlin**
Maeve Reilly*
Christine Renshaw
Sharon Reynolds*
Bruce Reznick**
Ronda Rigdon
Kathleen Riley*
Marlyn W. Rinehart***
Jennifer Robbennolt***
Brent Roberts*
Andrew Robinson
Arthur Robinson***
Gene and Julia Robinson**
James Robinson*
Sharee Robinson*
Elizabeth A. Robischon*
Alfred Roca
Heidi Rockwood*
Luis Rodriguez**
Chris Roegge*
Joseph Rohr*
C. Renee Romano***
Rolando Romero**
James Rooney
David Rosch*
Elyse Rosenbaum**
Brian Ross**
Jacqueline Ross***
Michael Ross***
Richard Ross***
Edward Roy
Kirsten Ruby*
Lynne Rudasill*
Jennifer Russell*
Lucille Salika
Maxine Sandretto***
Michael Sandretto***
Rosa Santos Gilbertz
Patricia Sarver
Anne Sautman
Julia Saville***
William Saylor**
Marlynna Schaefer
Susan Schantz*
Alexander Scheeline and Alice
Berkson**
Elizabeth Scheid
Richard J. Schicht*
Peter Schiffer and Sharon
Hammes-Schiffer
Richard Schimmel
Wolfgang Schlör**
Ellen M. Schmidt*
Paul Schmidt
Christopher Schmitz**
Daniel Schneider
Lawrence Schook*
Jeffrey Schrader*
Amy Schuele*
Thomas Schwandt*
Matthew and Jacque
Schweighart*
Tom Seals and Ruth Wene***
Susan Searing***
Gigi Secuban*
Kathryn Seybert**
Naresh Shanbhag*
John Shapley**
Sharon Shavitt*
John Shea*
David and Julie Sherwood**
Kimberly Shinew**
Karrie Shogren
James Shriner*
Frank and Carol Shupp**
Douglas Simpson**
Patricia Simpson*
Jamie Singson
Kenneth Sivier**
Edward M. Slazinik*
Michael Smeltzer**
Bruce Smith**
David Smith
Linda Smith***
Marc Snir**
Vern and Jeannie Snoeyink***
Nuno Soares De Oliveira Da Rosa
Garoupa
Bethany Socie
Leellen Solter**
Catherine Somers*
Steven Sonka***
Penelope Soskin**
Nancy Sottos
Raymond South
Carol Spindel
Louis Spitz
Bob Spitze**
Ryan Squire**
Sid Stafford***
Philip Stanton*
Judy Stebbins
Eva Steger***
Elizabeth Stern*
Thomas Sternburg
Deborah Stevenson*
Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow
Christopher Stohr*
Michael Stone**
Diana and Ron Stroud*
William Sturtevant*
Kathy Sullivan
Ronda Sullivan
William Sullivan**
Zohreh Sullivan
Willie Summerville
Kaye Surratt
Kenneth Suslick*
David Sussman**
Allison Sutton
Earl and Becky Swanson***
Burton and Iris Swanson***
Jonathan and Kathy Sweedler***
Bob and Bonnie Switzer**
Charles Tabb**
John Taft*
Emile and Elizabeth Talbot*
Loren Taylor*
Jennifer Teper*
David Tewksbury**
Brian Thomas**
David and Carol Thomas*
Dawn Thomas
Susan Thomas*
Alexis Thompson*
Joe B. Thompson**
Marshall Thompson*
Sara Thompson
Joy Thornton**
Paul and Cathy Thurston**
Carol Tilley
Maria Todorova*
Joyce Tolliver**
Patrick Tranel***
Tim and Dorothe Trick**
Ralph Trimble*
Dallas Trinkle*
Barbara Trumpinski
Charles Tucker***
Albert Valocchi*
Lou Van Den Dries**
Robert Vanantwerp
Barbara Vandeventer
Kathleen Veach**
Steven Veazie*
Leslie Vermillion**
Eric Vimr*
John Vinton*
Lila Vodkin*
Pamela Voitik*
Amy Wagoner Johnson**
Bill Walker***
Daniel Walsh*
Stephen Wanzek**
Jeff and Annette Warsaw*
Ruth Watkins***
Emily Watts***
Ronald Webbink*
Carl Wegel*
Carl Weibel*
Jeanette Weider*
Thomas Weissinger*
David R. Wells*
Charles Werth**
Warren Wessels*
Rebecca and John Wetzel***
Richard Wheeler**
Joe and Mary White***
Jewell White*
Herbert Whiteley***
Glen Whitmer**
Danielle Wilberg*
Lynn Wiley**
Vincent Wiley
Andrei Wilke
Cynthia Williams*
Sarah Williams*
Sheila Williams**
Loretta Williamson**
Barbara Wilson***
Jaquilin Wilson**
Alex Winter-Nelson***
Karen Winter-Nelson
Phyllis Wise**
Elizabeth Wohlgemuth*
Tony Wong*
Alison Wood
Chris Wright*
Martin Wu
Donald Wuebbles**
Peter Yau*
Angela Young
Jerry Young**
John Young
Lowre Young*
Jenny Zadeh***
Sarah Zehr*
Suzanne Zelle
Julia Zemaitis*
David Zhao*
Sharon Zhu*
Richard Ziegler**
Raymond Zielinski**
Steven Zimmerman**
Steve Zumdahl***
PAGE 10
InsideIllinois
Sept. 5, 2013
Archives’ approach looks to the future, preserves the past
By Mike Helenthal
Assistant Editor
M
aynard Brichford wasn’t thinking about the past when he was
given the task of starting the
University Archives.
He was looking to the future.
Brichford had become the university’s
first professional archivist in 1963 after
campus leaders decided creating a central
“place” dedicated to collecting and preserving the university’s historical record was
long overdue.
“Up to that point there were many collections of records and papers on campus,
but they were scattered all over the place,
stored in boxes and closets and not accessible for users,” said William Maher, who
took over as university archivist in 1995
after working alongside Brichford for 18
years. “There wasn’t anything connecting
them.”
Brichford set out to change that, developing an organizational scheme and a preservation approach that focused on accounting for and protecting campus records and
faculty papers before they were lost.
“He made many important and longlasting contributions,” Maher said. “He
knew that bridging the past to the present
can shape the future.”
This year the archives celebrates 50
years of being that bridge. Beginning with
this issue, Inside Illinois will begin a new
series, “From the Archives,” which will
feature an image and accompanying text
that the archivists have selected from the
archives’ vast holdings.
“For us, it was like selecting which of
our thousands of children we would feed
and clothe and which we would just leave
in their boxes,” Maher said.
At 50, the University Archives has expanded well past its offices and collections
in the main Library and includes the Student Life and Culture Archives, the Sousa
Archives and Center for American Music,
and a host of outside valuable research collections managed on contract by archives
staff members. Many records are stored in
an off-site location on the south campus.
“There are too many unfortunate stereotypes that come up when you talk about archives,” Maher said, “such as they’re dark
and dank and dusty and shut off from the
rest of the world. But we don’t want any
of that – we’re about shining a light on
things.”
He said the archives’ twofold mission,
first championed by Brichford, is to preserve information for its role in administrative support and accountability, and for its
ON THE WEB
archives.library.illinois.edu
research and heritage value.
“When you work in archives you absorb
the philosophy that eventually, the sensitivity (of documents) will diminish over
the years,” he said. “That means that even
things which might initially put someone
in a less than optimal light should eventually become available for research, even if
it takes a few decades. The integrity of the
record and value of history mean that we
have a responsibility to support this transparency.”
A trip to the archives can take you to just
about any place and any moment in time.
Some collections, like personal papers
and sensitive records, have been collected
internally or given to the university outright
for safekeeping. For example, the notes
kept in the mid-1800s by Gregor Mendel,
considered the father of the study of genetics, can be found there, and the archives is
acquiring the paper and electronic files of
the late Carl Woese, a renowned U. of I. geneticist who has been called “the modern
Darwin.”
“Faculty papers can take you well beyond the borders of our campus,” Maher
said.
Others, such as the archives Advertising Council historical collection, known for
such public advertising icons as Smokey
Bear and the “Crash Dummies,” are sponsored by an outside organization and managed by University Archives’ staff members.
“They get here by various routes,” Maher said of the items in their collections.
Regardless of the origins, the archives
is a veritable treasure trove for researchers
looking to connect the dots for some lost or
yet-undiscovered story.
“Our treasures aren’t the kind you put
on a shelf and admire,” he said. “They’re
here for people to use. We have things you
wouldn’t expect to find here – but you find
it. Seeing what researchers do with this information is just amazing. We’re about the
university, but about so much more.”
Maher said he would like to see the University Archives’ anniversary as a springboard to begin the conversation about expanding its facilities.
While neither dark nor dank, the main
archives quarters in the University Library
are cramped, and the off-site storage site at
the Horticulture Field Laboratory is in need
of an updated ventilation system to keep the
image courtesy University Archives
The University Archives is a repository for U. of I. records and for items
created by several outside organizations. The Advertising Council archives
contain correspondence, publications and advertising copy related to the
many public service campaigns overseen by the council. This is a 1949
bus/subway ad promoting forest fire prevention featuring the well-known
Smokey Bear character just five years after his creation.
A golden anniversary William Maher, the university archivist since 1995,
shows off image enlargements from the collection of John L. Strohm, a 1935
Illinois graduate who traveled to the People’s Republic of China in 1958 to study
agriculture and industry at the outset of the “Great Leap Forward.” The archives,
which began under the leadership of Maynard Brichford in 1963, has more than
1,500 collections of personal papers such as Strohm’s – a number that grows each
year.
oldest of the items from crumbling away.
“We need to continue to grow and we
need to be constantly adding new material
in all formats,” he said. “If not, the archives
become sort of a shrine to just one version
of the past.”
He said part of growing is not just adding collections, “which have a habit of just
showing up from time to time,” but expanding the “user community” as well.
The Sousa Archives, for example, has
offered programs in its space and at area
schools for students from elementary
through high school, and it has broadened
its focus to include the history of American music. Maher said it draws researchers
from all over the world.
“We can’t compete with the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame,” Maher said, “but we
can focus on engaging the local community
and the international community that the
university brings to our door.”
Other archives staff members are working to bring items of relevance from certain
collections into the classroom to add depth
and a campus connection.
“The Student Life and Culture Archives
has brought hundreds of students to the
archives who wouldn’t necessarily have
come here,” he said.
Intent alone will not keep the archives
up with the times.
The archives already is the sole repository of university records, but paper records
have given way to electronic ones, and Maher said archives staff members have fought
mightily to keep ahead of the technological
curve.
In addition, the archives is constructing
an initiative to capture electronic records of
university administrators and is working to
digitize other materials in an effort to make
them more accessible to the public.
“These are things that used to be put in
file cabinets, then boxes and then sent to the
basement to wait for the archivist,” he said.
“That’s why we are working to manage
electronic records as they are created and
used, so that the university will not enter a
digital dark age.”
He noted that the Library has just received word of approval from the National
Endowment for the Humanities grant in
support of a new, state-of-the-art environmental system for the south campus Archives Research Center.
There also are plans in the next year to
move some of the archives functions to a
more-visible and accessible first-floor location in the main Library.
However the future unfolds, a university
archivist is sure to be there documenting it.
“Our plan for the future is to be here
so the heritage and the records of the people of the present will be there in the future for others to examine them,” he said.
“We spend a lot of time thinking about the
future.” u
AY13-14 rates & dates online
Advertising rates and a full schedule with deadlines is
available online.
go.illinois.edu/iiads
Sept. 5, 2013 book corner
InsideIllinois
PAGE 11
What is key to black children’s psychosocial development?
By Sharita Forrest
News Editor
ON THE WEB
infoagepub.com
T
he formal and informal learning opportunities provided by multigenerational black communities in the
South – and how similar grassroots
efforts can turn around racial disparities in
academic achievement in the U.S. today –
are the focus of a new book by educational
researcher Saundra Murray Nettles.
In the book, titled “Necessary Spaces:
Exploring the Richness of African American Childhood in the South,” Murray Nettles identifies seven experiences believed to
be critical to black children’s psychosocial
development – connection, exploration,
design, empowerment, resistance, renewal
and practice.
These experiences, which the author collectively calls “necessary spaces,” recur in
the published autobiographical accounts of
prominent African-American scholars, activists and artists in the context of discussing learning opportunities that profoundly
affected them during childhood and that occurred in their homes, schools, churches, in
nature and other community settings.
Murray Nettles also examines each of
these necessary spaces in the context of her
own childhood spent in Atlanta’s Washington Park neighborhood and later in rural
Clayton County, Ga., during the 1950s and
1960s.
These tightly knit intergenerational and
occupationally diverse neighborhoods provided the necessary spaces that promoted
achievement, including everyday interactions with adults who formally or informally acted as “coaches” for children, encouraging and modeling academic and practical
learning.
“Neighborhood networks of lifelong
learning matter for child development,”
Murray Nettles said. “Sometimes educational reform is remembrance and recovery
of historical legacies.”
In a chapter that explores educational
initiatives by and for blacks in the late 19th
century, Murray Nettles reflects on her family’s legacy of education and attainment. Her
Psycho-social development Educational psychology professor Saundra Murray
Nettles is the author of a new book, “Necessary Spaces: Exploring the Richness of
African American Childhood in the South” (Information Age Publishing Inc., 2013).
paternal great-great-grandfather Alex Weems
was a freed slave turned farmer who learned
to read and write but never attended high
school. His grandson and great-grandson,
Murray Nettles’ grandfather and father respectively, each attended Morehouse College.
Murray Nettles’ father and mother were
schoolteachers; each earned master’s degrees in education.
Murray Nettles earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree
and a doctorate, both in psychology, from
Howard University. She also earned a master’s degree in library and information science from the U. of I.
Murray Nettles is a clinical professor in
the department of educational psychology,
a unit within the College of Education at Illinois.
In her research, Murray Nettles has examined issues of gender, race and ethnicity,
and the influence of community and environmental factors such as environmental
toxins on children’s academic performance.
Resilience has been a particular focus
of Murray Nettles’ research. And interwoven with the personal stories and insights
in the book are social science theory and
research, including examinations of several successful community-based initiatives that promote academic achievement
and resilience among at-risk children and
youth.
Among these is Stanton Elementary
School in Washington, D.C., a high-poverty district that was plagued with deteriorating facilities and marginal academic
performance when Murray Nettles began a
longitudinal research project there in 1996.
Four years later, the turnaround in black
male students’ academic achievement at
Stanton – brought about by the collaborative efforts of Stanton’s principal, faculty
members, parents and community partners
– was the focus of an ABC “Nightline”
documentary.
Murray Nettles and Stanton’s principal,
who has since retired, also collaborated on
a research report that was published in a
guidebook for educators on promoting resilience.
Murray Nettles said that her belief in the
value of community partners helping children adjust to school was sparked early in
her career, when she worked with political
scientist and author Charles Murray at the
American Institutes for Research evaluating the educational access and equity program PUSH for Excellence as well as the
public-school reform initiative Communities in Schools, formerly known as “Cities
and Schools.”
“ ‘Necessary Spaces’ is a culmination
of some of the things that I learned along
the way about children’s development, especially among black children and poor
children, in schools and neighborhoods,”
Murray Nettles said. “There’s a wealth of
information out there on child and youth
development, but I think there’s a dearth of
narrative accounts that parents can use on
a daily basis. That’s what my book represents: I wanted to write in a personal way
that speaks to parents and other community
members, and at the same time provides social science data.”
Relevant to educators, policymakers,
parents and community members who work
with youth, “Necessary Spaces” (published
by Information Age Publishing in Charlotte, N.C.) provides practical examples
that they can use to improve children’s lives
and revitalize neighborhoods.
Besides being the author of numerous
scholarly publications, Murray Nettles is a
published poet and the author of the book
“Crazy Visitation: A Chronicle of Illness
and Recovery” (University of Georgia
Press, 2001), a memoir about her battle
with a massive brain tumor that went undiagnosed for many years. u
Report: African American studies in the U.S. ‘alive and well’
By Craig Chamberlain
Social Sciences Editor
T
he field of African American studies in U.S. higher
education “is alive and
well, and, in fact, growing and maturing,” despite some
reports to the contrary, says a new
study published online last week
by the department of African
American studies at the U. of I.
Through a national Web-based
survey of 1,777 U.S. colleges and
universities, U. of I. researchers
found that 76 percent of those institutions had some form of black
studies.
Twenty percent, or 361 institutions, had formal academic units,
most classified as departments or
programs, according to the study.
But another 56 percent, or 999 institutions, had a course or courses
dedicated to the black experience.
This positive assessment conflicts with many studies in recent
years – and news reports based
on those studies – which have
suggested that black studies programs are disappearing, according to Ronald Bailey, the head of
the department of African American studies at Illinois. But many
of those studies were based on a
small, selective sampling, he said.
Those studies “are more like
biopsies,” according to the report,
ON THE WEB
www.afro.illinois.edu/documents/BlackStudiesSurvey.pdf
“and what the field needs is this
kind of broad survey with data
that can be generalized. We need
to understand the forest, and not
just a few trees, no matter how tall
and prestigious they might be.”
Abdul Alkalimat, a professor in
the department of African American studies and in the Graduate
School of Library and Information Studies at the U. of I., was
the lead author of the report, titled
“African American Studies 2013:
A National Web-Based Survey.”
The report, Alkalimat said,
“grows out of a long-term interest
in producing scholarship focused
on understanding how black studies is actually being practiced
across the U.S.” It should be of interest to a broad array of scholars
and administrators in higher education, he said.
Co-authors of the report were
Bailey; Sam Byndom, Desiree
McMillion and LaTasha Nesbitt,
all doctoral students in the department of education policy, organization and leadership; Kate
Williams, a professor in GSLIS;
and Brian Zelip, a master’s degree
student in GSLIS.
The researchers did “data col-
lection on a shoestring,” according to the report, by drawing on
websites to gather the colleges’
and universities’ own self-reported data.
Among other findings, the researchers found that more than a
third, or 35 percent, of all formal
African American studies units are
classified as departments, which
are considered more permanent in
the institution and its budget. Of
the rest, 57 percent are classified
as programs and eight percent as
some other kind of unit.
Looking at regions of the country, the researchers found that institutions in the South were the
most likely to have black studies
in some form, at 87 percent, even
though only 16 percent had units.
On the other hand, institutions in
the West were the least likely to
have black studies in some form,
at 56 percent, even though 23 percent had units.
The same figures for the Midwest were 79 percent and 22 percent, and for the Northeast 74 percent and 23 percent.
The researchers found that
nearly half of all black studies
units, or 49 percent, use terms
photo provided by authors
Program review More than three-quarters of U.S. colleges and
universities surveyed offer black studies in some form, says a new
report from the African American studies department at the U. of I.
in their unit names such as “Africana,” “African and African
American,” or “Pan-African”
that reflect the larger African diaspora or the different waves of
Africa-descended peoples who
have come to the U.S. The highest
percentage was in the Northeast,
at 65 percent, which the researchers suggested might be due to recent immigration into those states.
“National” names – including African American, Afro-American or
Black – are used by 32 percent of
all programs.
SEE SURVEY, PAGE 17
InsideIllinois
PAGE 12
Sept. 5, 2013
Study offers insight into the origin of the genetic code
By Diana Yates
Life Sciences Editor
A
n analysis of enzymes that load
amino acids onto transfer RNAs
– an operation at the heart of
protein translation – offers new
insights into the evolutionary origins of the
modern genetic code, researchers report.
Their findings appear in the journal
PLOS ONE.
The researchers focused on aminoacyl
tRNA synthetases, enzymes that “read” the
genetic information embedded in transfer
RNA molecules and attach the appropriate
amino acids to those tRNAs. Once a tRNA
is charged with its amino acid, it carries it
to the ribosome, a cellular “workbench” on
which proteins are assembled, one amino
acid at a time.
Synthetases charge the amino acids with
high-energy chemical bonds that speed the
later formation of new peptide (protein)
bonds. Synthetases also have powerful editing capabilities; if the wrong amino acid is
added to a tRNA, the enzyme quickly dissolves the bond.
“Synthetases are key interpreters and
arbitrators of how nucleic-acid information translates into amino-acid information,” said Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, a U.
of I. professor of crop sciences and of bioinformatics. Caetano-Anollés, who led the
research, also is a professor in the Institute
for Genomic Biology. “Their editing capabilities are about 100-fold more rigorous
than the proofreading and recognition that
occurs in the ribosome. Consequently, synthetases are responsible for establishing the
rules of the genetic code.”
The researchers used an approach developed in the Caetano-Anollés lab to determine the relative ages of different protein
regions, called domains. Protein domains
BLIND MOLE-RAT, FROM PAGE 1
fibroblasts, cells that generate extracellular factors that support and
buffer other cells. Previous studies of naked mole-rat cells have
found that fibroblasts and their secretions have anti-cancer activity.
Similarly, the researchers at Haifa
found that Spalax fibroblasts were
efficient killers of two types of
breast cancer cells and two types
of lung cancer cells. Diluted and
filtered liquid medium drawn
from the fibroblast cell culture
also killed breast and lung cancer
cells. Mouse fibroblasts, however,
had no effect on the cancer cells.
To help explain these results,
Band and his colleagues looked
to the gene expression profiles
obtained from their previous studies of blind mole-rats in hypoxic
environments. The researchers
had found that genes that regulate
DNA repair, the cell cycle and
are the gears, springs and motors that work
together to keep the protein machinery running.
Caetano-Anollés and his colleagues
have spent years elucidating the evolution
of protein and RNA domains, determining
their relative ages by analyzing their utilization in organisms from every branch
of the tree of life. The researchers make a
simple assumption: Domains that appear in
only a few organisms or groups of organisms are likely younger than domains that
are more widely employed. The most universally utilized domains – those that appear in organisms from every branch of the
tree of life – are likely the most ancient.
The researchers used their census of protein domains to establish the relative ages
of the domains that make up the synthetases. They found that those domains that load
amino acids onto the tRNAs (and edit them
when mistakes are made) are more ancient
than the domains that recognize the region
on the tRNA, called an anticodon, that tells
the synthetase which amino acid that tRNA
should carry.
“Remarkably, we also found that the
most ancient domains of the synthetases
were structurally analogous to modern enzymes that are involved in non-ribosomal
protein synthesis, and to other enzymes that
are capable of making dipeptides,” Caetano-Anollés said.
The researchers hypothesize that ancient
protein synthesis involved enzymes that
looked a lot like today’s synthetases, perhaps working in conjunction with ancient
tRNAs.
Researchers have known for decades
that rudimentary protein synthesis can occur without the involvement of the ribosome, Caetano-Anollés said. But few if any
have looked to the enzymes that catalyze
programmed cell death are differentially regulated in Spalax when
exposed to normal, above-ground
oxygen levels (21 percent oxygen) and conditions of hypoxia (3,
6 and 10 percent oxygen). These
changes in gene regulation differed from those of mice or rats
under the same conditions, the researchers found.
Spalax naturally have a variant
in the p53 gene (a transcription
factor and known tumor suppressor), which is identical to a cancerrelated mutation in humans, Band
said. Transcription-factor genes
code for proteins that regulate the
activity of other genes and so affect an animal’s ability to respond
to its environment. The research
group in Israel showed “that the
Spalax p53 suppresses apoptosis
(programmed cell death), however enhances cell cycle arrest and
Evolutionary insights From left, graduate student Derek Caetano-Anollés, crop
sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés and
senior bioinformatician Minglei Wang report that the emergence of the genetic code
corresponds to the advent of protein flexibility.
these reactions for evidence of the evolutionary origins of protein synthesis.
Alerted to the potential importance of dipeptide formation in early protein synthesis,
the researchers next looked for patterns of
frequently used dipeptides in the sequences
of modern proteins. They focused only on
proteins for which scientists have collected
the most complete and accurate structural
information.
“The analysis revealed an astonishing
fact,” Caetano-Anollés said. “The most ancient protein domains were enriched in dipeptides with amino acids encoded by the
most ancient synthetases. And these ancient
DNA repair mechanisms,” he said.
Hypoxia can damage DNA and
contribute to aging and cancer, so
mechanisms that protect against
hypoxia – by repairing DNA, for
example – likely also help explain
the blind mole-rat’s resistance to
cancer and aging, Band said.
“So now we know there’s overlap among the genes that affect
DNA repair, hypoxia tolerance and
cancer suppression,” he said. “We
haven’t been able to show the exact
mechanisms yet, but we’re able to
show that in Spalax they’re all related. One of the lessons of this research is that we have a new model
animal to study mechanisms of
disease, and possibly discover new
therapeutic agents.”
The United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation and the
Israel Cancer Association supported this research. u
dipeptides were present in rigid regions of
the proteins.”
The domains that appeared after the
emergence of the genetic code (which
Caetano-Anollés ties to the emergence of
the tRNA anticodon) “were enriched in dipeptides that were present in highly flexible
regions,” he said.
Thus, genetics is associated with protein
flexibility, he said.
“Our study offers an explanation for why
there is a genetic code,” Caetano-Anollés
said. Genetics allowed proteins “to become
flexible, thereby gaining a world of new
molecular functions.” u
Cancer resistance Mark Band, the director of functional
genomics at the U. of I. Biotechnology Center, and his colleagues have studied the blind mole-rat’s extraordinary cancer-resistance.
InsideIllinois
Sept. 5, 2013 photo courtesy College of Law
Law professor Sara R. Benson
on Illinois’ same-sex marriage ban
Editor’s note: Cook County Circuit Judge Sophia
Hall is expected to rule on a challenge to the state
of Illinois’ 17-year-old same-sex marriage ban when
court resumes later this month. U. of I. law professor
Sara R. Benson, an expert on sexual orientation and
the law, spoke with News Bureau business and law
editor Phil Ciciora about the ongoing fight to legalize
same-sex marriage in Illinois.
How similar is the fight to allow
same-sex couples in Illinois to marry
to California’s headline-grabbing
Proposition 8 battle of a few years ago?
In some ways it is very similar – especially with regard to the legal issues involved. The main similarity is that people
are being treated unequally on the basis of
sex or sexual orientation. We heard similar
arguments in the Prop. 8 litigation, and this
is also the basis for just about every samesex marriage legal battle. Whether the
litigation takes place in California or Iowa
or Illinois, the point of contention is that
people are being treated unequally under
the law.
On the other hand, the Illinois lawsuit
is a challenge to a state law providing that
marriage is only permissible between a
man and a woman. This is different from
the California litigation because Prop. 8
was not a state law – it was a resolution
passed by a vote of the people. In California, the voting public essentially tried to
amend their constitution to forbid same sex
marriage, which is different than challenging a long-standing state law.
In light of last June’s Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor, which overturned
the Defense of Marriage Act, people’s lives
and livelihoods are at stake in the current
litigation because the outcome could affect
their taxes, Social Security benefits and
other spousal benefits. Before the DOMA
decision, same-sex partners weren’t allowed to file joint tax returns because
federal law prohibited it. But now, with
DOMA overturned but only civil unions
legal in Illinois, there are greater things
at stake, especially after the government
issued a statement announcing that civil
unions will not be treated similarly to marriage under the U.S. v. Windsor decision.
In other words, only individuals who
qualify as married to their same-sex partner can benefit from the Windsor decision.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita
Alvarez both declined to defend the law
that bans same-sex marriage. What can
we infer from that?
This is another parallel to the Prop. 8
case. In both instances, the individuals
charged with defending the law declined to
do so. In Illinois, one of the clerks named
in the lawsuit has publicly stated that he
does not support the law and will not defend against the lawsuit.
Public officials are thinking about their
roles at a higher level. This public stance
also is similar to (President) Obama’s
stance on DOMA – saying, in effect, the
federal government will follow DOMA,
but will refuse to defend it in court because
it is unconstitutional. By being so bold as
to publicly endorse that position, Obama
PAGE 13
A Minute With … TM Archives
Recent interviews with U. of I. experts
n Sundiata Cha-Jua, African
American history expert, on the
50th anniversary of Martin Luther
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Aug. 21, 2013
n Nancy Benson, expert on
international journalism, on the
arrival of Al Jazeera in America.
Aug. 17, 2013
really set the tone for future public officials such as the clerk in Illinois. That’s
been the playbook that other public officials have followed ever since.
It also helps that Obama was re-elected,
which created political cover.
How long until this case is resolved?
Right now the case is only at the trial
court level, and it’s in the early stages.
By no means will it be an overnight case.
This will likely be drawn out for some
time through the appellate process. But
that doesn’t mean this process goes on in
a vacuum. My feeling is that there will be
more movement in the Legislature as well.
It could be that the Legislature beats the
courts to legalizing same sex marriage in
Illinois because of the machinations of the
appeals process.
Also, if the suit is dismissed, that could
be the end of the lawsuit, barring an appeal – but that doesn’t mean it’s the end
for same-sex marriage in Illinois. The Legislature could still go forward with another
bill to legalize it.
Whatever happens, it will be an ongoing process, one where there’s not likely to
be a quick resolution.
The bill that would have made Illinois
the 13th state to allow same-sex
couples to marry fell a few votes
short in the Illinois House earlier
this summer. Where does the state
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n Deepak Somaya, expert on
high-tech intellectual property
strategies, on the patent battle
between technology titans.
Aug. 16, 2013
A Minute With ...™ is provided by the
U. of I. News Bureau. For archived
interviews, visit go.illinois.edu/amw.
of Illinois sit on the spectrum of gay
rights?
The state of Illinois is the next fighting ground for gay rights. This lawsuit is
happening at this time because Illinois has
made some progress. That is, we have civil
unions, and the state Legislature has been
proposing same-sex marriage and gotten it
passed through one legislative body.
But are we on the cutting edge? No.
DOMA has already been struck down;
the Prop. 8 litigation has been settled; and
states like Iowa and Massachusetts have
already legalized same-sex marriage.
So Illinois is certainly not at the vanguard. But is it important? Yes. The Supreme Court made it very clear in Windsor
that they consider gay marriage to be a
state law issue. Part of the decision in
Windsor is an idealized federalism, saying,
in effect, that this is an issue for the states
to figure out, and we’re not going to unilaterally say we need same-sex marriage for
everyone. That means you’re going to see
the fights rev up at the state level, and Illinois is a prime example. u
InsideIllinois
PAGE 14
Sept. 5, 2013
By Dusty Rhodes
D
ance performances both
live and in video installations are being featured
this month at Krannert
Art Museum – not to be confused
with Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The dance exhibitions represent the second installment in the art museum’s Openstudio series, which presents live
musical or dance performances in
conjunction with artist residencies,
intended to forge interdisciplinary
learning and cultural exchange.
Four new art exhibitions also
are on display at KAM.
U. of I. dance professor and
choreographer Tere O’Connor
premieres “Sister,” the latest
work in his “Bleed” project, on
Sept. 11 and 12 at 7:30 p.m. Earlier this year, O’Connor received
a Doris Duke Artist Award worth
$275,000. He has previously been
named a Guggenheim Fellow, and
has received multiple grants from
the National Endowment for the
Arts. With his New York-based
company, Tere O’Connor Dance,
he has won three New York Dance
and Performance (Bessie) Awards.
Commissioned
by
KAM,
O’Connor’s “Sister” will feature
two members of his company,
Cynthia Oliver and David Thomson, who have each won numerous
honors in the areas of dance, choreography, higher education and
arts advocacy. Oliver is a dance
professor and University Scholar
at the U. of I. Thomson is an artistin-residence at Gibney Dance and
Baryshnikov Arts Center in New
ON THE WEB
kam.illinois.edu
York City.
On Sept. 19, Illinois dance professor Jennifer Monson will present an hourlong solo performance
as a component of “Live Dancing Archive.” The piece includes
a video installation using footage
from Monson’s 2002 trip tracking the migration of osprey from
Maine to Venezuela, during which
she and three colleagues danced
on beaches and in parks along the
way. A digital archive of photos,
scores and journal entries from
that journey is another component
of the piece.
The dance performances will
occupy KAM’s east gallery, which
is the largest gallery on the main
floor. But even when it’s not being used for a rehearsal or performance, the space will still be
filled with dance, thanks to professor Renée Wadleigh’s “Dance
on Video” installation. A former
dancer and teacher with the Paul
Taylor Company, Wadleigh has
been collecting videos of dance
performances for more than three
decades. The pieces in the installation illustrate correspondences
between developments in contemporary art and dance that took
shape in the 1960s and intensified
through the 1990s. Wadleigh will
give a gallery talk, “The Intersection of Dance and the Visual Arts,”
at 5 p.m. on Sept. 9 and her installation will be on view through
Sept. 22.
Also currently at KAM:
“Return to Sender: Ray Johnson, Robert Warner and the New
York Correspondence School”
uses the ephemera from a “mail
art” event that Johnson – a collagist who founded the “New York
School of Correspondence” in the
late 1950s – staged in Illinois in
1974. Johnson, a contemporary of
Andy Warhol, came up with the
concept of mail art when he began
sending letters or objects to artists,
writers and celebrities around the
world with a request to modify the
item and mail it to a second artist,
who would modify it and return the
item to Johnson. In 1988, he gave
Warner – a New York artist, optician and printer – 13 boxes of mail
art and other items. For this exhibition, Warner will reinstall Box
13, along with 25 collages Johnson
made for gallery exhibitions.
On Oct. 10, KAM will screen
a pair of films related to this exhibition: “Ray Johnson Correspondence School,” a campy, unreleased short by John Orlandello
documenting a performance and
exhibition that Johnson made as an
artist-in-residence at Western Illinois University in the early 1970s;
and “How to Draw a Bunny,” a
90-minute documentary by John
Walter and Andrew Moore that explores Johnson’s life and mysterious death.
A companion exhibition, “Correspondents of Ray Johnson,”
shows works from KAM’s permanent collection by artists who participated in Johnson’s mail-art network. This exhibition highlights
artists who shared similarities to
Johnson’s aesthetic, such as Rob-
photo by Natalie Fiol
Dance performances, new art exhibitions featured at KAM
Openstudio 2 Cynthia Oliver and David Thomson will perform
at Krannert Art Museum at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11-12 in the premiere of
Tere O’Connor’s “Sister,” the latest work in his “Bleed” project. This
dance exhibition and others are part of the museum’s Openstudio
series.
ert Indiana, James Rosenquist, Ed
Ruscha and Karl Wirsum.
“Hello World! or: How I
Learned to Stop Listening and
Love the Noise” is an installation
comprising 5,000 unique video
diaries gathered and arranged in
a grid with a multi-channel, immersive soundscape by the artist
Christopher Baker, a scientistturned-artist whose work has been
presented in exhibitions across
North America, Europe and the
United Kingdom. He is a professor in art and technology studies
at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago.
Artist Yun-Fei Ji uses traditional Chinese materials such as
ink and watercolor on handmade
mulberry or xuan paper to address
the destruction wrought by China’s Three Gorges Dam project.
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The world’s largest hydroelectric
plant, this dam was conceived as a
means of achieving green energy
production, but it has displaced
more than a million people, submerged industrial sites, and wiped
out acres of forests and agricultural land. Ji’s images capture the
struggle and despair of people
forced into poverty and degradation as a result of the project, and
raise questions about industrial
development in the affected communities. “Manufactured Landscapes,” a 90-minute film following photographer and artist Edward Burtynsky across the globe
as he documents industrialization
and its effects, will be shown continuously throughout this exhibition.
The three visual art exhibitions
continue through Jan. 5, 2014. u
PAGE 15
American music Musician and
author Stephen Wade (above right), a
George A. Miller Visiting Scholar, will
use live music and images to explain
how American music reinvents itself
when people reshape the songs of a
shared repertoire. His talk is at 4 p.m.
Oct. 30. Also pictured: above, the Smith/
Gladden family in Henrytown, Va.,
1926; at right Jess Morris fiddling with
other musicians in Dalhart, Texas,
late 1940s. The photos are from Wade’s
book, “The Beautiful Music All Around
Us: Field Recordings and the American
Experience” (U. of I. Press).
cordings and the American Experience,”
published by the U. of I. Press, in which
he tracked down and interviewed the descendants of a dozen folk musicians whose
unique talents were captured between 1934
and 1942 on field recordings made by Alan
Lomax for the Library of Congress. The
Wall Street Journal described the resulting
book as “a masterpiece of humane scholarship – but one that reads like a detective
story.” Wade also is the creator of numerous
theatrical productions, including “Banjo
Dancing,” which ran for 13 months in Chicago and six years at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s. His Oct. 30 talk
begins at 4 p.m.
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photo by MaryE Yeomans
T
he fall 2013 Center for Advanced
Study/MillerComm lectures begin
Sept. 18 with Gunther Schuller –
musician, composer, conductor, educator, historian and publisher. He has won
a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur Foundation
“genius” award and three Grammy Awards.
Schuller, a George A. Miller Visiting Artist,
has composed more than 180 works covering genres from symphonic to operatic
to jazz, founded publishing and recording
companies, and served as the president of
the New England Conservatory for a decade. Instead of giving a lecture, Schuller
will be interviewed at 7:30 p.m. by U. of
I. French horn professor Bernhard Scully,
who is performing Schuller’s Quintet for
Horn and Strings the next night (Sept. 19)
at the Allerton Music Barn Festival in Monticello, Ill.
Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at
Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the
Freeman Spogli Institute for International
Studies, is one of the few scholars who
was investigating terrorism long before
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Her latest
book, “Explaining Terrorism: Causes, Processes and Consequences,” documents the
development of her research on this topic
through essays she wrote during the past
three decades. Her lecture, at 4 p.m. on
Sept. 26, will focus on her current research
into the varied responses of governments to
terrorist attacks and an evaluation of their
effectiveness.
On Oct. 1 at 4 p.m., Subra Suresh will
address “Crossing Boundaries and Transforming Lives: Engineering, Cell Biology
and Medicine.” Suresh is the president of
Carnegie Mellon University. In 2010, he
was appointed director of the National Science Foundation; previously, he was the
dean of the School of Engineering at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
has co-written more than 250 journal articles, registered 21 patents and written three
books. His talk will provide specific examples of cross-disciplinary developments in
understanding human diseases.
Susan Goldin-Meadow has found that
deaf children invent their own languagelike system using manual gestures, and
that gestures used by people with normal
hearing can convey secrets of the mind.
Goldin-Meadow is the Bearsdley Ruml
Distinguished Service Professor in the psychology department at the University of
Chicago. Her Oct. 7 lecture, “Talking With
Our Hands: Gesture’s Role in Creating and
Learning Language,” begins at 8 p.m.
Deborah Bräutigam, a China scholar,
went to Africa to research Chinese engagement, and has been specializing in the topic
ever since. She is the author of three books,
including “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real
Story of China in Africa,” and will discuss
the impact of Chinese aid and investment
in Africa, and assess whether China’s presence in Africa is a threat to U.S. interests.
Her lecture, “China in Africa: Stripping
Away the Myths,” begins at 4 p.m. Oct. 24.
Bräutigam is a professor of international
development and comparative politics at
Johns Hopkins University, where she is the
director of the International Development
Program.
Musician and author Stephen Wade,
a George A. Miller Visiting Scholar, will
use live music and images to explain how
American music reinvents itself when people reshape the songs of a shared repertoire.
His talk, titled “Getting Their Hands on the
Tune: From the Front Porch to the Library
of Congress and Back Again,” highlights
the intersection of the personal and the historical in music. He is the author of “The
Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Re-
photo courtesy Vera Morris
By Dusty Rhodes
photo courtesy Jim Gladden
Fall speakers announced for 2013 MillerComm series
Kevin Featherstone, a professor of contemporary Greek studies and European politics at the European Institute, will discuss
the endemic problems in Greek government
and the challenges they present not only for
Greece but also for the European Union.
His talk, “A System Fit for Purpose? The
Challenge of Governance in Greece,” begins at 4 p.m. on Nov. 14.
All MillerComm lectures are free and
open to the public. Goldin-Meadow will
speak in the Ballroom at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center. All other MillerComm
lectures take place in Knight Auditorium at
the Spurlock Museum. u
PAGE 16
InsideIllinois
Sept. 5, 2013
Sinfonia kicks off 30th season with gala, performances
By Dusty Rhodes
SINFONIA DA CAMERA
S
infonia da Camera, the professional chamber orchestra led by
Ian Hobson, a professor emeritus
of music at the U. of I., celebrates
its 30th anniversary season with a gala at 6
p.m. Sept. 15 in the lobby of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Cocktails, a formal dinner and dessert will be served while
Hobson, guest soloists and Sinfonia musicians perform classical chamber music favorites and jazz standards. The evening will
end with a live auction and dancing. Tickets
are $150 per person (half of that amount
is a tax-deductible gift) and are available
through the Sinfonia da Camera office.
The first concert of the season, on Nov. 2,
“Opening Night Romance,” will feature
Brahms’ Serenade No. 2 in A major, Op. 16,
which he dedicated to Clara Schumann, followed by Poulenc’s melancholy “Aubade,”
depicting two lovers separating at dawn.
The evening will end with Strauss’ “Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” a lighthearted
orchestral suite that captures the humor of
Molière’s famous play.
On Nov. 21, Illinois voice professors
Barrington Coleman (tenor) and Ricardo
Herrera (bass-baritone) and the U. of I.
men’s and women’s glee clubs will join
Sinfonia to present Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, a Mass so dramatic that the German
conductor Hans von Bülow famously described it as “Oper in Kirchengewande,” or
“opera in ecclesiastical dress.” Coleman has
performed and recorded as a tenor soloist
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and
Chorus, the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras, and on the EMI
recording and film of “Porgy and Bess.”
Herrera made his debut at Carnegie Hall
in 2000 as the bass soloist in Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, and his European operatic debut at the Oldenburgisches
30th Season Gala
Sept. 15
“Opening Night Romance”
Nov. 2
Verdi’s “Requiem”
Nov. 21
“The Nutcracker”
Dec. 5-8
“From Russia With Love”
Dec. 5-8
“The Mikado”
March 14
“Three’s A Charm”
May 3
vvv
photo courtesy Sinfonia da Camera
Celebratory season Sinfonia da Camera, the professional chamber orchestra
led by Ian Hobson, a professor emeritus of music at the U. of I., celebrates its 30th
anniversary season with a gala in the lobby of Krannert Center for the Performing
Arts on Sept. 15, five regular season performances and its annual presentation of “The
Nutcracker” with the Champaign Urbana Ballet.
Staatstheater in Germany. Sinfonia audiences will remember him as Tiresias and Le
Veilleur in the 2005 production of Enesco’s
“Oedipe” and as Figaro in Sinfonia’s production of “Nozze di Figaro.”
During the holiday season, Sinfonia da
Camera will collaborate with the Champaign Urbana Ballet to present six performances of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” Dec. 5-8.
On Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, Sinfonia
offers “From Russia With Love,” with Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony No. 1 in D
major, Op. 25; Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite”
(the 1919 version); and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, featuring violinist Andrés Cárdenes. The former
concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, Cárdenes has appeared as a soloist on four continents with more than 100
orchestras, including the Dallas Symphony,
Helsinki Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Moscow Philharmonic and the
Shanghai Symphony. He has made more
than two dozen recordings on Arabesque,
RCA, Sony, Telarc and other labels, and has
been nominated for a Grammy Award.
On March 14, soloists, including voice
professors Herrera, Dawn Harris, Yvonne
Redman and others, will join Sinfonia to
present one of the most popular operettas of
all time, Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.” Harris’ diverse performing background
includes more than 50 “Mikado” performances as Yum-Yum. Before becoming a
voice professor, Redman enjoyed a 15-year
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krannertcenter.com
career as a main stage soprano at the Metropolitan Opera, including the roles of Zerlina
in “Don Giovanni,” Giannetta in “L’Elisir
d’Amore” opposite Luciano Pavarotti, and
in “Parsifal” with Placido Domingo.
Sinfonia will end its 30th season on
May 3 with “Three’s a Charm,” a trio of
Beethoven number 3s – the “Leonore”
Overture No. 3, Op. 72a; the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, featuring
Hobson at the keyboard; and the “Eroica”
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55.
All Sinfonia concerts begin at 7:30 p.m.
in the Foellinger Great Hall at Krannert
Center for the Performing Arts. “The Nutcracker” is in the center’s Tryon Festival
Theatre, with performances at 7:30 p.m.
Dec. 5-6 and performances at 2 and 7:30
p.m. on Dec. 7 and at 2 and 6 p.m. on Dec. 8.
Tickets are available through the Krannert
Center ticket office. u
PAGE 17
Novelists, poets to take part in Carr Reading Series
By Dusty Rhodes
A
ward-winning novelist Micheline
Aharonian Marcom will read from
her latest book, “A Brief History
of Yes,” to open the fall 2013 Carr
Reading Series at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 18 in the
Illini Union Bookstore. Marcom is the author of five novels. Her first, “Three Apples
Fell From
ON THE WEB
Heaven,”
was
a
creativewriting.english.
New York
illinois.edu/carr
Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times and
Washington Post Book of the Year in 2001.
It served as the first installment of her trilogy on the 1915-17 Armenian genocide
and its aftermath. The Times Book Review
credited the “fierce beauty of her prose”
for confronting readers with “breathtaking
cruelties” and carrying readers past them.
She has written just as fiercely about love
triangles, female sexuality and mourning
in her other two novels, “The Mirror in the
Well” and “A Brief History of Yes.” She has
SURVEY, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
They also found that 46 percent of
black studies unit heads were women,
showing that these units “have been as
successful as any in higher education in
recognizing and promoting gender equity in their leadership,” Bailey said.
In addition, the researchers found that
53 percent of units were located on campuses that also had Latino studies units.
Bailey described this finding as “essential,” given changing demographics
and the need to build coalitions between
blacks and Latinos in the larger society.
Gauging the state of black studies in
its broad, historical context is important,
Bailey said, because its influence has of-
received numerous fellowships
and awards, including the PEN/
USA Award for
Fiction and a
Fulbright Fellowship.
On Nov. 4,
poets Ladan Osman and Roger
Reeves
will
read from their
works. Osman
has
received Micheline Aharonian
several fellow- Marcom (Sept. 18)
ships, including
one from the Michener Center for Writers,
and her chapbook, “Ordinary Heaven,” will
appear in “African Poetry: A New Generation Anthology” next year. Reeves’ poems
have appeared in “Ploughshares,” “American Poetry Review,” “Boston Review” and
others. He has received several awards and
fellowships, including a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.
ten gone beyond its size.
“Many people assume that black
studies was simply a political response
to the turmoil of the 1960s,” Bailey said.
“What is not fully appreciated is that
black studies also spurred and inspired
many significant transformations in
higher education. For instance, it produced one of the first big discussions
of interdisciplinary scholarship, and of
what is now known as service learning.
It is a discipline and field connected by
countless threads to communities and to
other disciplines and arenas of scholarship in higher education, both in the U.S.
and around the world.” u
Ladan Osman (Nov. 4)
Roger Reeves (Nov. 4)
Sara Levine will read on Nov. 13. She is
the author of a short-story collection, “Short
Dark Oracles,” and “Treasure Island!!!” – a
comedic novel in which the female protagonist uses Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic
as a self-help book, adopting boldness, resolution, independence and horn-blowing as
her core values. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book “unstoppably funny and
Sara Levine (Nov. 13)
not a little frightening,” and The New York
Times described it as “a rollicking tale,
shameless, funny and intelligent.” She is
a professor in the writing program at The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The readings take place in the Author’s
Corner on the second floor of the Illini
Union Bookstore. All Carr events are free
and open to the public. u
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InsideIllinois
PAGE 18
Center for Advanced Study
Initiative to look at cultures of law
Legal reforms adopted by East Asian countries over
the past two decades reflect a shift toward “participatory
legitimacy,” but may prove unstable, according to Tom
Ginsburg, the Leo Fitz Professor of international law at the
University of Chicago Law School.
Ginsburg will speak on “From Modernism to Participation in East Asian Law” at 4 p.m. Sept. 10 in the Spurlock
Museum’s Knight Auditorium. Ginsburg is the director of
the Comparative Constitutions Project and has served as
an adviser to the Judicial Commission of Afghanistan and
worked in several Asian countries on legal and constitutional reform.
The talk marks the beginning of the Center for Advanced Study’s 2013-14 Initiative on the Cultures of Law
in Global Contexts.
Illinois Club
Group hosts fall expo Sept. 9
The Illinois Club will host a fall expo 4-6 p.m. Sept. 9 in
the Illini Ballroom of the Hilton Garden Inn, 1501 S. Neil
St., Champaign.
The free event is meant to help prospective members
learn about the organization and meet current members.
Refreshments will be served.
The club is a registered university organization that offers more than 20 interest groups, including hiking, wine,
book clubs, bridge, mahjong and five foreign languages.
In addition, the group hosts local and statewide tours, luncheons with speakers and other events. There also are
events just for new members.
Philanthropy is an important component of the Illinois
Club. Through its endowments, the club awards more than
$20,000 in scholarships to U. of I. students each year.
Its members are mainly U. of I. employees and their
spouses and partners, but some also are community members.
For more information, go to TheIllinoisClub.org or
email Peri Ceperley at [email protected].
MS4 Technical Committee
Green conference is Sept. 17
The Green Infrastructure Conference will feature a presentation from noted landscape architect Marcus de la fleur
and a tour of local green infrastructure. The conference will
be Sept. 17 at the I Hotel and Conference Center.
The event will include discussions about stormwater
management, mosquito abatement, an Environmental Protection Agency regulatory update and homeowner projects.
The conference and lunch, hosted by the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems Technical Committee, is free to
attend, but registration is required.
For more information and to register, visit go.illinois.
edu/greenconference.
The MS4 Technical Committee is a collaboration between the U. of I., the cities of Champaign and Urbana, the
Village of Savoy, Champaign County, Champaign County
Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Prairie Rivers
Network.
College of ACES
Salute to Agriculture Day is Sept. 7
The College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences will host its annual Salute to Agriculture
Day from 9-11 a.m. Sept. 7, just prior to the Fighting Illini
football game.
The public tailgate at the ACES tent is located west of
the main entrance of State Farm Center.
WILL-TV’s ‘Illinois Pioneers’ features interview with Lou Henson
R
etired WILL-AM (580) host David Inge
returns to conduct interviews with former Illini basketball coach Lou Henson
when “Illinois Pioneers” returns to WILL-TV
(Sept. 5). Also scheduled for September: U.
of I. early childhood education pioneer Lilian
Katz (Sept. 12); Wolfram Research co-founder Theo Gray (Sept. 19); and former Champaign Mayor Dannel McCollum (Sept. 26),
interviewed by former WILL general manager
Mark Leonard.
In the season premiere, to be broadcast at
7:30 p.m., Henson, the all-time Illinois leader
in men’s basketball victories, talks about how
he got the best out of his teams and the danger
of expecting too much from a player. “You try
to be positive. You’re trying to make them better. If you jump on a player all the time about One-on-one with Lou Retired WILL-AM (580) host David
Inge returns to conduct interviews for this season of “Illinois
his weaknesses, he may get worse,” he said.
He also talks about his early life on a farm, Pioneers.” Former Illini basketball coach Lou Henson is
his relationship with former Indiana Univer- featured Sept. 5.
sity basketball coach Bobby Knight, overcoming health host of WILL-AM’s talk show “Focus” for more than
problems, why he started wearing his trademark orange 30 years and of a number of WILL-TV series and speblazer and whether it irritated him that TV sportscaster cials before retiring in June 2012.
Dick Vitale made fun of his hair, dubbed the “Lou ’do.”
Inge said it has been a relief for him to give up the
The third season of “Illinois Pioneers” features inter- pressure of doing a daily live radio show. “It was like
views with people who have made significant contribu- cramming for exams every night,” he said, and he’s entions to life in Central Illinois. Inge said he didn’t have joying the more relaxed recording schedule for “Illinois
to think for long before deciding to host the series in Pioneers.” He’ll be back for more new episodes in Ocretirement. “I thought, ‘It could be fun, it could be chal- tober and November. u
lenging, and I think I know how to do it.’ ” Inge was the
Adult breakfast tickets are $15; student breakfast tickets
are $10. A cash bar will be available and individual game
tickets may be purchased for $20. An auction of State Fair
prize-winning meat packages will be held prior to kickoff.
The event will allow attendees to meet U. of I. President
Bob Easter, broadcaster Orion Samuelson and other agricultural leaders.
Register for tickets at ecommerce.aces.illinois.edu/
salutetoagriculture/. Football tickets are available on a
first-come, first-served basis. Tickets may be purchased or
picked up if reserved online prior to the tailgate through
Sept. 6 at the ACES Library or at the tailgate on Sept. 7.
For information, contact [email protected] or call 217244-8227.
Center for African Studies
Africa is technology conference topic
The Center for African Studies will host a conference,
“Information Technology and Africa: Practices, Potentials
and Challenges,” from Sept. 11-13 at the Illini Union.
The conference will focus on the educational uses of information technology in Africa and for the first time will
bring to the U. of I. a set of leading online higher education
experts from various parts of Africa.
The keynote speaker is Atieno Adala, of the African
Virtual University in Nairobi, Kenya. AVU is the largest
online provider of mathematics and engineering courses in
Africa.
Other presenters will include open learning and access
expert professor Laura Czerniewicz, of the University of
Cape Town, and professor Yetunde Folajimi, an internationally renowned computer science and game designer at
the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
The speakers will be joined by online education experts
and practitioners from the U. of I., including Rob Rutenbar,
the head and a professor of computer science, and Deanna
Raineri, a professor and the associate dean of Instructional
photo by Michael O. Thomas, Illinois Public Media
briefnotes
Sept. 5, 2013
Technologies and Information Services. Provost Ilesanmi
Adesida will open the conference.
For the complete schedule, go to afrst.illinois.edu. For
more information, contact Terri Gitler at tgitler@illinois.
edu.
Talmudic perspectives on poverty
Thulin Lecture in Religion is Sept. 12
Moshe Halbertal, a professor at New York University
Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University, will deliver the annual Marjorie
Hall Thulin Lecture in Religion at 8 p.m. Sept. 12 in the
Knight Auditorium of Spurlock Museum.
The lecture, “On the Needs of the Poor – A Talmudic
Perspective on Charity and Dignity,” is sponsored by the U.
of I. department of religion and is free and open to the public. It was originally scheduled for April but was cancelled
because of inclement weather.
Halbertal also is a member of Israel’s National Academy for Sciences and the Humanities. He earned a Ph.D.
at Hebrew University in 1989, and from 1988-1992 he was
a fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.
He is the author of several books, including “Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and
Its Philosophical Implications,” and in 2012, “On Sacrifice,” both published by Princeton University Press.
Born in Uruguay in 1958, Halbertal was raised in Israel
in a modern Orthodox family. His father was a Holocaust
survivor from Łancut, Galicia (Central-Eastern Europe)
and his mother was an Israeli who had come to Uruguay to
teach Hebrew.
Halbertal is profoundly committed to the democratic
process. “Democracy is a nonviolent form of adjudicating
different ideologies,” he says. “It’s very easy to be nonviolent when stakes are low; in Israel, we are in a condition
where the stakes are very high.”
SEE BRIEFS, PAGE 19
InsideIllinois
Sept. 5, 2013 BRIEFS, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18
The annual lecture brings an internationally known
scholar of religion and contemporary culture to campus for
several days.
A reception in the Spurlock auditorium will follow the
lecture. For more information, contact David H. Price, the
head of the department of religion, at [email protected],
or go to www.religion.illinois.edu.
Asian Educational Media Service
Nominations sought for awards
AsiaLENS film series begins Sept. 10
International Programs and Studies is seeking nominations for its 2013 International Achievement Awards by
Sept. 30. The awards seek to honor Illinois alumni, faculty
members, or current graduate and undergraduate students
of an exceptional international achievement. Awards are
presented annually in five categories: international alumni,
distinguished faculty members, young humanitarian, graduate and undergraduate achievement. Recipients will be
honored during a banquet in April 2014.
Criteria and nomination forms are online at ilint.illinois.
edu/grants/awards.html. Previous recipients also are listed
online.
Asian Educational Media Service and Spurlock Museum
will host the first film in the AsiaLENS documentary film
series Sept. 10 with a screening of “Beijing Besieged by
Waste” at 7 p.m. in Spurlock Museum’s Knight Auditorium.
With a focus this fall on environmental concerns in contemporary Asia, this 2011 documentary by award-winning
photographer Wang Jiu-liang reveals through his observations of more than 500 landfills the huge problem of waste
created by an ever-growing population and the industrial
and urban expansion that follows. Karin Chien, the president and founder of dGenerate Films, which distributes
this film in partnership with Icarus Films, will be available
through Skype for a post-screening discussion.
Also featured this semester:
n “Tokyo Waka: A City Poem” (7 p.m. Oct. 8). Directed
and produced by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson, the
documentary explores the interwoven lives found within
the city by focusing on its population of more than 20,000
crows. The introduction and discussion will be led by Elizabeth Oyler, the director of the Center for East Asian and
Pacific Studies at the U. of I.
n “A Perfect Soldier” (7 p.m. Nov. 12). Director John
Severson follows the adult life of Aki Ra, a former soldier
under the Khmer Rouge regime, who devotes himself to
undoing some of the violence he took part in by removing landmines that still litter the Cambodian countryside.
His actions have led to the establishment of the Cambodian
Landmine Museum and School. He was recognized as one
of CNN’s Top 10 Heroes in 2010.
Asian Educational Media Service organizes the film
series in collaboration with the Spurlock Museum to give
access to films that address issues of contemporary life in
Asia. The educational screenings are free and open to the
general public, who are invited to further explore these
issues in post-screening discussions with local experts.
AEMS is a program of the Center for East Asian and Pacific
‘Incarceration’ is theme for fall lectures
The University YMCA’s fall 2013 Friday Forum lecture
series will focus on “Rethinking Security: Beyond Mass Incarceration.” The series, Fridays at noon at the University
YMCA’s Latzer Hall, will delve into current issues inolving incarceration and will feature expert views on current
issues at the local, state and national levels.
September speakers: Darrel Cannon and Jon Burge,
“Chicago Police Torture and Justice for Survivors” (Sept.
6); Rebecca Ginsberg, “Teaching on the Inside: Reflections
From the Education Justice Project” (Sept. 13); Mariame
Kaba, ”Neighborhood Portraits of Juvenile Justice in Chicago” (Sept. 20); and Angela Davis, ”Abolishing the Prison-Industrial Complex” (Sept. 27).
For more information and the full schedule, go to
universityymca.org/fridayforum.
Illini Union
Giancarlo Esposito to speak Sept. 18
Giancarlo Esposito, the Emmy-nominated and Critics
Choice Award-winning actor of AMC’s “Breaking Bad,”
will speak at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 in Room 112 of Gregory
Concert commemorates 9/11
Hall. Esposito will talk about his involvement in the movie
“School Daze,” which was made 25 years ago and considered one of Spike Lee’s most innovative and progressive
films.
Both presentations are co-sponsored by the Illini Union
Board, the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural
Center, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Access, and the
Multiracial/Multiethnic Student Initiative.
International Programs and Studies
Friday Forum
PAGE 19
T
he 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will
be observed Sept. 11 with a brief concert by
the Illinois Early Music Group – an a cappella
ensemble of eight student and faculty vocalists – at
Smith Hall on the U. of I. campus. The 15-minute
performance will begin at 7:46 a.m., coinciding
with the time the first hijacked airplane struck the
World Trade Center in New York City. This memorial will follow the tradition set by previous 9/11
concerts at the U. of I., with music, rather than
speeches, being the sole focus. Audience members
are asked to enter and leave in silence.
The concert, which is free and open to the public, will include works by Tomàs Luis de Victoria
and Juan del Encina, and Bobby McFerrin’s arrangement of Psalm 23. u
Studies at the U. of I.
For more information on the AsiaLENS series, go to
aems.illinois.edu.
University YMCA
Exhibition features Chinese art
The University YMCA is sponsoring a fall exhibition,
“Speak Out: Works From the Yunnan School of Painting,”
featuring a series of paintings produced by a group of Yunnan artists that represent a variety of styles from the school.
The exhibition will be on view through Nov. 8. Curated
by Ian Wang, a curator at the Spurlock Museum, the exhibition explores the artistic revolutionaries of post-Mao China.
The opening reception will be 6-8 p.m. Sept. 5 at the
University YMCA’s Murphy Gallery. Comments by Wang
will begin at 5:30 p.m.
Among the artists represented in this exhibition is Zhao
Zhong Xiu, who was a student of master painter Liao Xin
Xue, the first artist from Yunnan to study art in France.
Zhao’s painting album, “Remaining Scars From the Past,”
will be featured.
Wang plans to show the exhibition at different locations across the United States. Organized by the University
YMCA, the exhibition is co-sponsored by the Asian American Cultural Center, Dean’s Graphics and the Spurlock Museum.
For information call 217-337-1500. u
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