PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 22, No. 22, June 19, 2003

brief notes

Service Recognition Banquet
Retirees and long-service staff to be honored
Long-service and retiring staff members will be honored at the annual Service Recognition Banquet on Nov. 8. The banquet begins at 6 p.m. in Illini Union Rooms A, B and C. To find out who is being honored and to make reservations, go to the Personnel Services Office Web site.

The online form should be used by anyone who wishes to attend the banquet who is not an honoree. Honorees plus one guest may attend the banquet free-of-charge, and have received a separate invitation from Personnel Services with an RSVP card enclosed.

University Library
Annual book sale Oct. 27-28
The University Library annual book sale will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 27 and 28 in the Marshall Gallery in the east foyer of the Library. Hardback books will be priced at $3; quality paperbacks will be $1. Special edition books and prints will be priced accordingly. All proceeds benefit the library collections. More information is available at 244-2070.

Spurlock Museum
Day of the Dead children’s activity day
Children from kindergarten through fourth grade may sign up for the Spurlock Museum’s Day of the Dead Activity Day from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Nov. 6. Activities will include craft-making, learning about the holiday and exploring the museum’s newest Focus Gallery exhibit, “A Celebration of Souls: Day of the Dead in Southern Mexico.” This exhibition was developed by The Field Museum in collaboration with Mars Inc. The cost for the day is $5, and pre-registration is required by Nov. 2.

For registration information, call 244-3355.

Public discussion
Scholars to discuss state of the humanities
Three distinguished speakers whose works have influenced the direction of humanities scholarship in the United States. will participate in a free public discussion at 2 p.m. Oct. 22 in Foellinger Auditorium.

Stanley Fish, Cary Nelson and E. Ann Kaplan will discuss the prospects for the humanities during “The Future of the Humanities: A Discussion on Truth, Politics and the Academy.”

Fish is dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UIC. He also is a distinguished professor of English, of political science and of criminal justice, and the chair of the religious studies committee at UIC.

Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of English at the Urbana campus. Among the country’s most influential radical intellectuals, he is a founding member of Illinois’ Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and is closely associated with the field of cultural studies, which he helped introduce to the United States.

Kaplan, a professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, will serve as moderator of the discussion.

Among the questions the participants will consider: What is the role of the humanities today? How do the humanities function politically? Can the search for truth be a goal of the humanities?

The event inaugurates an IPRH initiative on the state of humanities scholarship. For more information, contact IPRH at 244-3344 .

Educational and cultural center
Japan House hosts open house
Japan House will host its annual fall open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 23.

Yutaka Yoshizawa, Consul General of Japan at Chicago, will speak at 2 p.m. during a ceremony planned in honor of Saburo Muroga and Shozo Sato. Muroga and Sato, both retired UI faculty members and longtime supporters of Japan House, were awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the emporer of Japan in May.

Throughout the day, tea ceremony demonstrations will be conducted by members of the Urbana-Champaign Association of Chado Urasenke Tankokai.

‘SuperGrid 2’
Lecture on energy is Oct. 24
Jesse H. Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University in New York City, will present a free public lecture titled “Big Ways to Decarbonize the Energy System.” The lecture, to begin at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24 in the third-floor meeting room at Levis Faculty Center, is part of the national SuperGrid 2 Conference taking place at the UI.

The conference will be Oct. 25-27 and will bring together about 60 energy experts from industry, government and academia. Ausebel has worked for the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering and was one of the main organizers of the first U.N. World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979.

SuperGrid is a proposal for the creation of a continental energy grid that will deliver both electricity and fuel.

Overlooked Film Festival
‘Ebertfest’ passes on sale
Festival passes will go on sale Nov. 1 for the seventh annual Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, to be April 20-24 at the Virginia Theater in Champaign and at the UI.

The passes, which cover all screenings during the five-day event, are $85. Passes can be purchased through the theater box office, 356-9063, or on the festival Web site. Tickets for individual films will be $9 each and available April 1.

Ebert, a 1964 Illinois journalism graduate, adjunct professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will again host the event and select the films that he believes have been overlooked by audiences, critics and distributors. The lineup of films, along with additional information on film-associated guests and other festival events, will be announced several weeks before the festival.

Updates on the festival, a special event of Illinois’ College of Communications, will be posted on the Web.

Sponsors and volunteers for the festival are being sought, and those interested should contact Mary Susan Britt at 244-0552. Those seeking additional information and updates on films, guests and festival events should contact either Britt or festival director Nate Kohn, 706-542-4972.
Library lecture
Mortenson Distinguished Lecture
Pancras J.M. Ssebuwufu, the former chief academic and administrative officer of Makerere University in Uganda, will give the 2004 Mortenson Distinguished Lecture at the UI.

His talk on “Managing an African University: My Experience as Vice Chancellor of Makerere University” will begin at 4 p.m. on Oct. 26 in Room 126 of the Library and Information Science Building. The event is free and open to the public.

“Ssebuwufu made an incredible contribution to Makerere University during the time he was vice chancellor,” said Barbara Ford, director of the Mortenson Center and Mortenson Distinguished Professor.

Makerere University is considered to be the premier institution of higher education in East Africa, Ford said. Throughout the tumultuous years of the Amin and Obote regimes, Ssebuwufu “defended the high standards in science and technology he has espoused throughout his academic career.”

Ssebuwufu has written or co-written 20 scholarly articles and papers, and has served as a consultant to the Ugandan government and several private firms on a wide variety of chemistry-related issues.

There will be a reception immediately following the lecture. For more information, call 333-3085.

The Mortenson Center for International Library Programs and the Mortenson Distinguished Professorship seek to strengthen international ties among libraries and librarians, regardless of geographic location or access to technology, Ford said.

Thai lecturer
Bhuddist activist to speak
Sulak Sivaraksa, a noted philosopher and activist from Thailand, will discuss Buddhism and the law at 4 p.m. Oct. 21 in Room D at the Law Building. He also will speak at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 22 in Room 336 of Lincoln Hall. The talks, based on the practice of making Buddhism relevant to modern society, are free and open to the public.

“Sivaraksa was trained as a lawyer in England,” said Tom Ginsburg, UI law professor and sponsor of the event. “In the 1960s, he returned to Bangkok and started a journal, The Social Science Review, which became the country’s premier intellectual magazine and a vehicle for criticism of various military governments. He has been put into jail several times for criticizing the government.”

Sivaraksa describes himself as a “radical conservative” and encourages people to remain true to their traditions in the face of globalization and consumerism. He has been a central figure in Thailand’s NGO (non-governmental organization) movement and founded the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he will give an overview of his ideas about law, spirituality and social activism.

I space gallery
Two Central Illinois artists featured
Central Illinois-based artists Roger Blakley and Harold Boyd will exhibit their latest work in two new shows on view through Nov. 20 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the UI.

• “Roger Blakley: New Works” consists of wall-mounted and freestanding cast bronze sculptures by the artist, a retired UI professor of art. Many of the sculptures’ components are cast from fruit and seed pods, but the complex constructions – finished in shiny, bright hues of automobile paint – hardly resemble anything found in nature.

• “Harold Boyd: Tributes” features works on paper by the retired Illinois State University art professor. Boyd’s watercolors – populated by caricature-like Buddhas, moon-faced girls and other figural forms – reflect the artist’s interest in the duality of human nature.

The exhibition is accompanied by essays by Marcel Franciscono, a UI professor emeritus of art history.

The gallery, 230 W. Superior St., Chicago, is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

‘French Means Business’
Forum to showcase opportunities
The 2004 French Means Business Forum will be held Oct. 28 at the UI.

Sessions for the free and public event, which is targeted to high school and college students and teachers, will run from 10 a.m. to noon, and from 2 to 4 p.m. in Room 314 A and B in the Illini Union. A program is posted online.

For more information, contact Doug Kibbee or Karen Fresco; or the French department at 333-2020.

Chicago Tribune, New York Time columnists
Journalists to discuss democracy
Clarence Page and David Brooks, editorial columnists for the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, respectively, will offer their opposing perspectives on current challenges to American democracy during free public talks at the UI.

Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and frequent essayist and panelist on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” will speak from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Oct. 26 in the auditorium of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Later that day, Brooks, a best-selling author and regular political commentator on National Public Radio and “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” will speak from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Colwell Playhouse at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

The lectures are part of the inauguration of a newly endowed Center for the Study of Democratic Governance at Illinois. Their talks will be preceded by a free public conference, “Democracy in the Twenty-First Century: Prospects and Problems,” which will be Oct. 24-26 at various locations on the UI campus.

The conference celebrates the centennial of the department of political science. Drawing expert and key scholars from across the country, and organized by Peter F. Nardulli, head of political science, the conference leads directly into the inauguration of the center, which will begin with the Page and Brooks presentations.

Their lectures will be followed by the ninth annual Cline Symposium, which also focuses on challenges to American democracy.

Speakers, topics, times and locations for the conference and the Page and Brooks lectures, which although free and open to the public, will have limited seating.

Family activites planned Oct. 23
Arboretum to host Fall Festival
The UI Arboretum will host its Family Fall Festival from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 23. Activities will include hayrides, a scavenger hunt, a pumpkin-painting contest for children ages 5-12, arboretum tours, landscape architecture demonstrations and apple tasting. There will be a $3 pumpkin charge for the painting contest; painting supplies will be provided. All other activities are free.

The arboretum is located at the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and St. Mary’s Road in Urbana.

benefits briefs

Retirement planning seminar series offered
The University Office of Human Resources and the campus Benefits Center are presenting a series of seminars on the university’s Tax-Deferred Retirement Plan (403b). The Retirement Planning Seminar Series is free to university employees. Employees may enroll in the entire series or individual sessions of interest.

Representatives from the 403b vendor companies TIAA-CREF and Fidelity will lead the seminar discussions. Scheduled:

Understanding How the Markets Affect Your Workplace Savings Plan
Presented by Fidelity, this session is for employees who have a basic knowledge of investing and want to learn more about mutual funds relative to the market. The advantages of mutual funds, the role of the portfolio manager, how markets behave at different times, how to measure fund performance and more will be reviewed.
(Oct. 21, 10:30 a.m. to noon)

Looking Ahead to Retirement
Presented by Fidelity, This session is ideal for employees who have between five and 10 years until retirement. The discussion will include estimating potential expenses, identifying potential sources of income, and how to determine if you are on track to meet your goals.
(Oct. 21, 1 to 2:30 p.m.)

Developing an Asset Allocation Strategy
Presented by TIAA-CREF, this session is targeted toward new employees or employees new to investing and will help employees understand allocation basics by reviewing topics such as investor risks and diversification.
(Oct. 28, 3:30 to 5 p.m. or Oct. 29, noon to 1:30 p.m)

Developing an Investment Strategy
Presented by TIAA-CREF, this seminar is designed for employees who are looking for more detailed information about asset allocation and investing, this session will review investment strategy basics, volatility of investments, the benefits of managed portfolios, comparing performance and expenses to select an investment company, and the “hows and whys” of rebalancing a portfolio.
(Oct. 28, noon to 1:30 p.m. or Oct. 29, 9:30 to 11 a.m.)

All seminars will be in Room 514 Illini Union Bookstore Building. Participants may bring a brown bag lunch. Seating is limited, so advanced registration is requested. Register online.

For more information about the seminar series, call the University Office of Human Resources, 333-2590. For questions about participating in the University’s Tax-Deferred Retirement Plan, call the Benefits Center, 333-3111.

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