IN THIS ISSUE: Economic interest forms due to University Ethics Office by April 23 | SUAA regional meeting to focus on 'Surviving the Illinois Fiscal Crisis' | World music, trumpet camps available | Program offered for non-business majors | GSLIS research showcase is April 9 | New trends in graduate education featured | Films to be shown March 31, April 21 | Promotion, tenure workshop is April 6 | Lecture explores climate change | Diversity conference is April 7 | Help sought to identify campus pollution | Latino scholar to speak April 1
University Ethics Office
Economic interest forms due April 23
The Office of the Secretary of State recently sent notification letters and forms to UI employees required to file a Statement of Economic Interests under the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act.
All completed forms must be submitted to the University Ethics Office by April 23 for review. The ethics officer will review and forward all completed forms to the Office of the Secretary of State.
Send forms through U.S. mail to University Ethics Office, Human Resources Building, Room 20, One University Plaza, HRB 20, Springfield, IL 62703-5407.
Forms should not be sent through campus mail.
Employees with questions about the criteria for filing may call the Ethics Help Line at 866-758-2146 or visit the University Office of Human Resources Web site or the University Ethics Office Web site.
Questions about the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act should be directed to the Secretary of State at 217-782-7017.
State Universities Annuitants Association
Regional meeting to focus on ‘Surviving the Illinois Fiscal Crisis'
The Urbana Chapter of the State Universities Annuitants Association will host a regional meeting on “Surviving the Illinois Fiscal Crisis” on April 6.
The association is a statewide organization whose members are current employees and retirees of Illinois public universities, community colleges and allied agencies (those in the State Universities Retirement System). The meeting, open to all current and potential members of SUAA, will be from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hawthorne Suites, 101 Trade Centre Drive, Champaign.
Featured during the morning sessions: Linda Brookhart, SUAA executive director; Dick Lockhart, SUAA lobbyist; and Dick Johnson, SUAA president, as well as Fred Giertz, SURS board member, who will talk on “The Illinois Fiscal Crisis – Its Impact on SURS Participants, Retirees and Funding Issues.” In the afternoon, a panel of state legislators, including Reps. Naomi Jakobsson and Chapin Rose, will discuss the crisis, followed by a discussion of what SUAA leaders and members can do to help resolve this fiscal crisis.
Those attending the meeting must register by March 30. The registration fee is $15, which includes lunch and refreshments. Questions or comments should be directed to SUAA at 217-585-2370 or suaa@suaa.org. The program and the registration form are available online.
SUAA’s main purpose is to advocate a strong and secure retirement pension and health benefit system for all members of the SURS system whether active employees or retirees.
Illinois Summer Youth Music
World music, trumpet camps available
Illinois Summer Youth Music is tuning up for its 61st year of camps for budding musicians, thespians and vocalists, and this summer’s students will have even more opportunities for courting their muses.
ISYM, which has offered camps annually since 1949, is one of the best-known and most highly regarded musical programs of its kind in the U.S., providing comprehensive and intensive instruction annually to more than a thousand students in sixth grade through high school. Students can choose camps that focus on band, orchestral or choral music or camps that focus on a single instrument.
Over the past several years, ISYM has expanded the number of camps from 18 to 23, spread over three one-week sessions. The first session begins June 20.
New this year are a world music camp and a camp for senior-high trumpet players. The pre-college organ performance camp, begun last year, also is being expanded to accommodate more students, said David Allen, the coordinator of outreach and public engagement for the School of Music.
ISYM Academy, an accelerated track within the ensemble programs for college-bound music majors, is being offered for the second year. The academy is geared to high-level performers who seek a more rigorous musical experience, including private lessons with faculty members, master classes and playing in small chamber ensembles with other academy students.
Enrollment is limited to one or two students per instrumental or voice area, and selection is made through audition recordings, which must be submitted by May 1.
“Last year, we accepted 35 academy students out of about 1,000 campers, so it’s a really high-level, challenging track for music performers,” Allen said. “The beautiful thing about ISYM is that we provide challenges for college-bound music majors, but we also have opportunities for kids who just want to come and play in a band or sing in a choir for a week.”
Scholarships are available from Rotary or Lions clubs and other organizations, while some students earn scholarships from ISYM based upon their achievements. A $5,000 grant from the Urbana Arts Council will pay tuition for 13 commuter students this year, Allen said.
Camps usually fill quickly, and ISYM already has received about 200 applications, Allen said.
A complete schedule of camps and information about scholarships are available on the ISYM Web site at www.music.illinois.edu/isym/.
College of Business
Program offered for non-business majors
The UI College of Business is offering a new four-week certificate program to give non-business majors a head start when they hit the job market.
The crash course seeks to give students a competitive edge, augmenting their primary studies with business fundamentals that apply in nearly every career, said Cele Otnes, the director of the program.
“This program will really round out students’ resumes, setting them apart from thousands of other graduates in their majors,” she said. “It shows that they were proactive to make themselves more marketable and also demonstrates their intellectual curiosity.”
She says resume building is especially important as students compete for work in an economy that is still recovering from a deep and lingering recession.
“It’s hard to differentiate yourself in a market like this,” said Otnes, a UI marketing professor. “There are signs that the economy is turning around, but it’s still tough out there and this program can help.”
The 72-hour program is a “boot camp” on the basics of business, she said, covering accounting, finance, marketing and management. Students will receive training in entrepreneurship, business ethics and sustainable business practices, along with skills such as resume building, business writing and effective presentations.
The certificate program also will include a case-study competition that will give students a chance to develop solutions for real-world business problems.
Classes are scheduled on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from May 24 to June 17, and will be taught by more than a dozen professors from the College of Business.
The program is open to students with at least a junior standing at the UI or other four-year colleges, as well as graduates. Cost is $3,500, along with a $300 charge for program-related fees.
Officials hope the pilot program, offered through the new Illinois Summer Management Institute, becomes an annual event.
A complete course schedule and application information is online at www.business.illinois.edu/ISMI.
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Research showcase is April 9
The Graduate School of Library and Information Science will host its 2010 Research Showcase from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. April 9.
Faculty members and doctoral students will present short talks highlighting their scholarly work from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in Room 126, followed by a poster session and reception from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Room 131 and the East Foyer. The event is free and open to the public.
Topics include data curation, text mining, facet analysis, bioinformatics, e-science, organization of information, music information retrieval, youth literature, social networks and media and community informatics.
The 2010 program is posted at www.lis.illinois.edu/research/showcase/. Links to slides and audio recordings of the presentations will be posted after the event.
Graduate College Distinguished Speaker Lecture
New trends in graduate education
Earl Lewis, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Emory University, will deliver the spring 2010 Graduate College Distinguished Speaker Lecture on April 2. His talk, “Flipping on the Switch to the Future: Planning Now for New Trends in Graduate Education,” begins at 11 a.m. in 112 Chemistry Annex.
Recently appointed to the newly constituted National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Lewis also has served as dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and vice provost for academic affairs/graduate studies at the University of Michigan.
Lewis is author and co-editor of several books. His most recent books are “The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives From the Colonial Period to the Present,” co-edited and published by Palgrave (2004). He co-wrote “Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan,” published by the University of Michigan Press (2004).
CHAMP
Films to be shown March 31, April 21
The Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices has announced its first film series with the theme cultural heritage and museums.
The films, free and open to the public,:
- “Night at the Museum,” 5:30 p.m. March 31, Plym Auditorium, Temple Buell Hall.
- “In Bruges,” 5:30 p.m. April 21, Room 112, Chemistry Annex.
The organization is an interdisciplinary collaborative at the UI for the critical study of cultural heritage and museums in the global context.
Urbana Chapter of AAUP
Promotion, tenure workshop is April 6
Richard Wheeler, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs, will be the principal panelist at a workshop on April 6 on “Achieving Tenure and Promotion – Policies and Procedures on the UIUC Campus.” Sponsored by the Urbana Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the program will begin at 2:30 p.m. in Latzer Hall at the University YMCA.
Wheeler and his fellow panelists will make short presentations, lead the discussion and answer questions from the audience. This program is of particular interest to new and continuing tenure-track assistant professors, associate professors seeking promotion, and to those mentoring these individuals or serving on promotion and tenure committees.
The panelists (and the topics they will address) include: Wheeler and vice provost Barbara Wilson (campus policies, three-year review procedures); James A. Imlay, a professor of microbiology and past chair of the Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee (procedures followed by the Promotion and Tenure Committee); and Billie Jean Theide, a professor of art and design and chair of the Urbana Faculty Advisory Committee (appeal procedures).
There also will be a panelist from the AAUP to discuss the position of and support provided by the association.
No prior registration is required and all faculty members are welcome. Refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Harry H. Hilton, 217-333-2653, h-hilton@illinois.edu, or John Prussing, 333-8231, prussing@illinois.edu.
2010 LAS Humanities Lecture
Lecture explores climate change
The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 was the largest volcanic event since human civilization emerged 10,000 years ago. Why is so little known about it today?
“Climate Denial and the Philosopher King of Java, Rewriting History Through an Ecological Lens” will be presented at 4:30 p.m. April 1 by Gillen Wood, the Nicholson Professor in English at Illinois.
The talk, the 2010 Humanities Lecture, will be presented at the Spurlock Museum. Wood also is the Environmental Change Institute Scholar.
Wood will talk about the eruption that caused snows in July and civil unrest. Its worldwide impacts are largely unstudied, Wood argues, because of an over-correction by humanists for the discredited theory of climate determinism. That over-correction is still limiting our understanding of climate change.
E-mail reservations for a reception following the lecture by March 26 to rsvp-las@illinois.edu. This event is free and open to the public.
Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society
Diversity conference is April 7
The Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society is hosting a conference April 7 that will focus on race, diversity and campus climate. The Diversity and Democracy Conference builds on and extends the theme of previous CDMS conferences. The major themes of the conference include diversity issues at the UI and assessment and evaluation of the campus climate for students, and staff and faculty members.
The conference, which will be held at the Illini Union, will feature keynote speaker Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal speaking about “The Changing Face of Diversity and Democracy and Implications on Higher Education.” Nadal is a professor of psychology and of mental health counseling at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He has written several published works focusing on Filipino American, ethnic minority and LGBTQ issues in the fields of psychology and education. His research has focused primarily on multicultural issues in psychology, including impacts of racial discrimination and racial/ethnic/sexual identity development on mental health. His book, “Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice,” was published in 2009.
The goal of the conference is to provide information that can be used to make the campus more diverse and more inclusive. It will feature multidisciplinary research and scholarship in the form of panels, roundtables and presentations. Sessions are designed to be interactive and experiential.
The conference is free and open to the public; registration is required. Advance registration is recommended. For more information about the conference, and to register, visit http://cdms.illinois.edu.
Environmental Compliance Department
Help sought to identify campus pollution
The Environmental Compliance Department is asking for help in identifying water pollution on campus. People are asked to report discolored water, foaming or an unusual odor in the Boneyard Creek as well as anything draining into a storm sewer inlet or leaking containers of unknown or hazardous substances. Any of these situations should be reported to the department at 217-265-9828.
Mexican American civil rights movement
Latino scholar to speak April 1
Ramón Gutiérrez, one of the nation’s leading Latino scholars, will discuss “Reyes Lopez Tijerina and the Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement” at 4 p.m. April 1 in Room 160 English Building. A reception will follow.
Gutiérrez is the Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History and director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago.
He is the author of “When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away” (1991) and is editor of six volumes. He is working on a study of the religious and political thought of Tijerina, one of the leaders of the Mexican American civil rights movement during the 1960s. Gutiérrez has received numerous academic awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians.
This event is co-sponsored by the Latina/Latino Studies Program and the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society.
