PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 26, No. 6, Sept. 21, 2006

Faculty, staff members noted for public service, outreach

Two faculty members and two academic professionals will be honored with this year’s Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.  In addition, a team award will be presented to a campus program administered by a group of faculty and staff members and students. Now in its seventh year, the awards program was developed to recognize people who have applied their knowledge and expertise to issues of public concern in order to improve the well-being of Illinois residents.  Recipients will be honored at an Oct. 3 reception.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Lydia Buki

Lydia Buki
professor of educational psychology
Lydia Buki has led local and national organizations in addressing the health-care needs of women, particularly underserved Latinas and their families. 
Latinas have a higher incidence rate of cervical cancer and a lower five-year survival rate for breast cancer than non-Hispanic whites. Spanish-speaking Latinas are even more isolated from early detection services and information. Buki has worked with and been funded by a number of national organizations to help these women gain access to needed services.

In the late 1990s she founded the Coalition for Hispanic Women’s Health in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area to provide services such as free cervical and breast cancer screening.

In 2002, Buki continued her efforts by creating a coalition of local organizations including the Rape Crisis Center, the Refugee Center, and Planned Parenthood to hold a daylong health fair offering educational workshops and presentations in Spanish on issues such as cancer screening, domestic violence, osteoporosis and diabetes.

Not only has Buki served in leadership positions in health related organizations attending to the needs of underserved women, she also works to encourage collaborative relationships among such organizations. Buki’s work has influenced communities, policies, research agendas and positively affected the lives of many women and their families.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Orville Vernon Burton

Orville Vernon Burton
professor of history and of sociology, director, Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Orville Vernon Burton has devoted his life to the arenas of social justice, K-16 education and public service.

Dennis Hayes, longtime civil-rights leader, praises Burton: “No one individual has given more of himself than Dr. Burton in providing services to the cause of equal opportunity and social justice. He has contributed his expertise as a quantitative analyst, historian and demographer.”

Included among his many accomplishments: Burton organized two UI conferences: “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” and “Racism and Diversity in the Classroom,” attended by hundreds of teachers from high schools across the state. He recently played a key role in helping the Urbana School District obtain a National Endowment for the Humanities Teach for America Grant. Burton’s National Science Foundation grant “GK-Ed Grid Graduate Teaching Fellows Program” brings together history graduate students with K-12 teachers to help them use technology and modeling to teach science and math. Burton also created the RiverWeb project, an interdisciplinary, multimedia, collaborative exploration of the Mississippi River’s interaction with people throughout history.

Through his co-leadership of campus organizations such as the Martin Luther King Commemorative Planning Committee, Burton has encouraged the campus to reach out to the local community through activities such as a campus visit by the Tuskegee Airmen and a large-scale community event at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. 

Click photo to enlarge Photo by David Riecks ACES-ITCS Robert Frazee

Robert Frazee
Extension Educator, Natural Resources Management
East Peoria Center
Robert Frazee’s passion for the Illinois River and his stewardship of Illinois’ natural land and water resources has resulted in a long list of accomplishments over more than 20 years at the UI. 

Frazee has nurtured a forum on the management of the Illinois River system to create awareness of the problems of soil erosion and sedimentation, developed working coalitions among local, state and federal agencies, provided leadership in the application of conservation practices to the watershed, developed river/watershed legislation and generated significant funding to support these critical activities.

In recognition of his contributions to the first statewide Governor’s Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System, Frazee has been appointed by the Governor’s State Water Plan Task Force to chair/co-chair this important biennial conference in Peoria since its first conference in 1987. Governors Jim Thompson, Jim Edgar, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich have each issued a governor’s proclamation on the occasion of the past 10 conferences under Frazee’s leadership. 

In a letter on behalf of Frazee’s nomination for this award, one supporter said, “… I cannot think of a more prominent ambassador for the University of Illinois regarding the welfare of the Illinois River and our natural resources … he is a true leader and a paradigm for excellence in public engagement.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Edward A. Kieser

Edward A. Kieser
Chief Meteorologist
WILL AM-FM-TV
As WILL AM-FM-TV chief meteorologist, Edward Kieser has worked nearly 20 years on-air to provide safety information during severe weather and valuable weather-related information to a range of listeners across Illinois and Indiana. But it is his off-air efforts that are the foundation for recognition of his public engagement efforts. Kieser has worked with constituencies over a large geographical area, including visits to Illinois and Indiana schools, scout groups, civic groups, agricultural producers and the general public.  He also has shared his expertise on weather safety issues with a variety of local, state, national and international governmental agencies. Of particular importance is Kieser’s work on behalf of the agricultural community. He presents critical information at several agricultural outlook meetings each year, assisting farmers in making production and marketing decisions that directly affect the bottom line of their businesses.

Kieser has developed partnerships with such institutions as the Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College, the Champaign County Emergency Management Agency, and the National Weather Service.  He has mentored numerous students considering careers in journalism or meteorology. 

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Team effort The Youth Media Workshop was honored with a Team Award for the 2006 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. Pictured at the WILL studios are William Patterson, professor and associate director of African-American Studies and Research Program, and Kimberlie Kranich, program coordinator for WILL AM-FM-TV with students from the workshop. The after-school program directly serves African-American public-school students from low-income housholds, giving them the opportunity to create radio and television documentaries from oral history interviews with local African-American residents.

Youth Media Workshop
Team Award
The Youth Media Workshop is a collaboration between WILL AM-FM-TV; the College of Communications; William Patterson, associate director of the African-American Studies and Research Program; and teacher Shameem Rakha from Franklin Middle School in Champaign. The workshop is an after-school program created in 2003 to directly serve African-American public-school students from low-income households, helping them become leaders and alleviate the “achievement gap.”

Patterson and WILL’s Kimberlie Kranich teach students documentary production, journalistic methods and professional media techniques. Workshop students create, market, broadcast and preserve radio and television documentaries made from oral history interviews with local African-American residents. The students learn about civic rights and responsibilities, critical thinking, library research, interviewing, audio recording and engineering, videotaping, lighting and other related skills. Since 2003, workshop students have produced two radio documentaries: one on the history of Champaign’s 1968 desegregation of its elementary schools and another on life stories of African-Americans in Champaign-Urbana. Third-year students are working on a third radio documentary on the defining moments of five local African-American women. In addition to the core teaching team of Patterson and Kranich, more than three dozen university scholars and community residents have directly contributed to the project and are producing research based on the workshop.  One student provided this reflection on her experience in the workshop: “We have found that by sharing what we’ve learned we can educate our peers. For example, we are able to lead discussions in our social studies classes on Sundown towns, segregation, the history of soul food and forced bussing in our community. I noticed that when I spoke the students paid more attention to me than (to) the teachers.  It felt good.”

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