David Gooler, an instructor and researcher in the department of speech and hearing science, says recent renovation has better equipped the Audiology Clinic to educate students to provide clinical diagnostic, consultative and treatment services for people with communicative disorders. The clinic also provides a modern laboratory for the study of communication challenges. Read full story.
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University of Illinois chemistry professor Alexander Scheeline wants to see high school students using their cell phones in class. Not for texting or surfing the Web, but as an analytical chemistry instrument.
With bits of DNA extracted from century-old museum specimens, researchers have found a place for the extinct passenger pigeon in the family tree of pigeons and doves, identifying for the first time this unique bird's closest living avian relatives.
Wind power is likely to play a large role in the future of sustainable, clean energy, but wide-scale adoption has remained elusive. Now, researchers have found wind farms' effects on local temperatures and proposed strategies for mediating those effects, increasing the potential to expand wind farms to a utility-scale energy resource.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year, $449,000 grant to a multi-institutional research team led by a disaster recovery specialist at the UI that is studying China's recovery from a devastating earthquake in 2008. The goal of the project is to develop a model of recovery management that outlines appropriate governmental roles and actions to ensure fast, efficient, equitable and sustainable recovery from disasters.
Security cameras inside and outside UI buildings, and inside Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District buses are among the newest campus police tools. And for good reason. “If criminals know there is a camera nearby, they’re not likely to assault you,” said Barbara O’Connor, the UI executive director of public safety.
Faculty members and students have numerous concerns about changes being proposed by the UI Board of Trustees to the university administration and to key university governing documents. Many of those concerns were raised at a special meeting of the Urbana-Champaign Senate on Oct. 18.
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.
The School of Social Work reopened the BSW program this fall, after a needs assessment indicated a strong demand for it based upon student interest and societal and employment trends, said Brenda Coble Lindsey, the director of the BSW program and a faculty member in the school.
UI physics professor Benjamin Lev has been named a Packard Fellow in science and engineering. He is among 17 early career researchers honored by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in 2010 for outstanding creative research.
Six centers at the UI dealing with international areas and issues have received $14.7 million in federal grants to continue their programs through the current and next three academic years (2010-2014).
A consortium led by the UI College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences received $9 million to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers in the world’s poorest nations by modernizing and strengthening their agricultural Extension systems.
Juggling the demands of being a faculty member, as well as trying to find time for yourself and family and friends can seem overwhelming. “The Joyful Professor” (Henschel Haus, 2010), by Barbara Minsker, a professor of environmental and water resources systems engineering, provides tips for balancing the many roles of researcher, teacher, coach and mentor, while maintaining a healthy personal life.
In “Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England” (Oxford University Press, 2009), Elizabeth H. Pleck, a UI professor of history and of African American studies, and her co-author, explore how black women in colonial and revolutionary New England sought not only legal emancipation from slavery but also defined freedom more broadly to include spiritual, familial and economic dimensions.
