September 16, 1999 / Volume 19, Number 6
News Bureau | Calendar | II Info | II Archives
- Preserving history: Researchers restore 12th century church, a recent survivor of Turkey earthquake
- Like so many houses of cards, recently constructed buildings throughout Western Turkey collapsed -- many instantly -- when the region was rocked by an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale during the wee hours of Aug. 17. But when the new day dawned in Istanbul, it was apparent that the architectural survivors of the seismic activity actually included some of the city's oldest and most historic structures. Among them, a 12th century Byzantine church, which UI architecture professor Robert Ousterhout and a team of Turkish researchers have been documenting and restoring since 1996.
- Church named one of 100 'most endangered sites'
- Changing status of female workers fosters social changes
- The rapid influx of women into labor markets worldwide is one of the most significant developments of the 20th century, a UI professor writes in an upcoming journal issue devoted to the subject.
- Public universities losing to privates in high-cost race for prestige
- A large gap has widened between what private and public research universities pay their faculty members, with private institutions in the lead. For full professors, the gap is five times what it was just two decades ago, according to research by a UI professor.
- Keeping the peace: Solutions to U.N.'s money woes fraught with problems
- The rewards of peace may be priceless, but the cost of keeping it is staggering. So staggering that the world's chief peacemaker -- the United Nations -- is in financial crisis, and, what is worse, most of the options that would resolve the crisis have serious problems.
- Poverty, schools among barriers to job success for minority youth
- Even in good economic times, many of the nation's minority youth are finding significant obstacles in their transition from school to early job success, a UI professor says in a study to be published this month.
- Crazy like a fox? Research team tracks increasing number of coyotes, decreasing foxes
- They look like the kind of vehicles Fox Mulder would drive to track visitors from outer space. But the trucks with large rotating antennas sticking through the roofs are actually tracking wildlife in Central Illinois.
Changing biotechnology spurs need for new center
Krannert Art Museum celebrates with 'World of Wonders'
Police canine tracks suspects, sniffs out drugs
Ada Doisy Lecture in Biochemisty Sept. 16 and 17 ... Symposium honors Lauterbur ... Winning compostitions featured Sept. 16 ... Preparing for a water crisis ... Museum offers Saturday Safaris for kids ... Sin-up for Women's Club special interest groups is Sept. 22
Like so many houses of cards, recently constructed buildings throughout Western Turkey collapsed -- many instantly -- when the region was rocked by an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale during the wee hours of Aug. 17.
But when the new day dawned in Istanbul, it was apparent that the architectural survivors of the seismic activity actually included some of the city's oldest and most historic structures. Among them, a 12th century Byzantine church, which UI architecture professor Robert Ousterhout and a team of Turkish researchers have been documenting and restoring since 1996.
"Most of the historic structures have suffered little apparent damage, but many are nonetheless in need of careful examination and restoration," said Ousterhout, a professor of architectural history and former chair of the School of Architecture's history and preservation division.
The UI professor was in Istanbul completing the most recent phase of the monumental research and restoration project when the quake hit. Like other survivors, he was awakened about 3 a.m. by the rumble, which sent him scrambling into the street in his bed clothes.
The next day, he noticed that a house near his rented home in the heart of the old city had been leveled. However, most of the structures in his neighborhood weathered the quake fairly well compared with newer, rapidly constructed -- and typically shoddily built -- residences located in Istanbul's far suburbs. Since his departure from Istanbul was scheduled for the day after the quake, Ousterhout didn't actually learn the fate of "his" historic building, the Zeyrek Camii, until he returned stateside.
The most recent quake was just one of many the three-building complex has survived since it was constructed eight centuries ago as a church and dynastic mausoleum by the Emperor John II Komnenos and his Hungarian wife Eirene. Originally known as the Church of the Pantokrator -- which translates as "the judge of all" -- the structure was converted for use as a theological school, and subsequently as a mosque, by Mehmet the Conqueror following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Ousterhout and colleagues from the Istanbul Technical University uncovered evidence of previous earthquake damage and subsequent restorations to the complex this summer while undertaking the first major phase of the current restoration. The project included the removal of the concrete roofing and its replacement with lead sheeting -- a daunting task considering the complexity of the roof, which includes five domes.
"We found earthquake damage from a much earlier period, where molten lead was poured into the cracks to correct the damage," Ousterhout said.
In addition to replacing the roof, the restoration project involved examining the cornices -- and replacing them where necessary -- and adding a clay cushion between the roof and the lead sheeting that capped the domes and other surfaces.
"Because restoration had been done on previous occasions during the Ottoman period, we had to decide which period of the building's history would be restored," he noted. When the original roof was removed, two Ottoman-style cornices and one Byzantine design were revealed.
"We had to anchor the roof, so we had to decide which type of cornice we would use." In the end, "where Ottoman cornices were found, they were preserved, and where none existed, the easiest thing to do was to recreate Byzantine cornices -- bricks set at a 45-degree angle to make a dogtooth pattern."
Among the more interesting outcomes of the roof restoration was a trash-to-treasure find.
"We found fragments of architectural sculpture and mosaic cubes had been thrown in as fill in the roof," Ousterhout said. In addition, workers uncovered 40 Byzantine amphoras, also wedged in as filler. The amphoras were studied and restored, then relocated to the nearby Museum of the Vakiflar. But as a late 20th century nod to the original construction methods, one of Ousterhout's colleagues went to a local market and purchased similar jugs, which were substituted for the originals.
The next major project looming is the replacement of the structure's 99 windows, which Ousterhout said will be a challenge because they come in "all different shapes and sizes." Even more of a challenge, however, is gaining the required approval to proceed from several governmental bodies and commissions.
"The bureaucracy of it is almost as complicated as the building itself," Ousterhout said.
Once the window project is completed, he said, "we can proclaim the building as secure from man and the elements. Then we can return to the interior, where we'll be doing things like systematically removing plaster to find early Byzantine or Ottoman decoration."
After the building is completely stabilized, Ousterhout hopes to be able to initiate what he calls "archaeological interventions" -- determining where the emperor and his descendents are entombed.
"I have documents with names of about 20 people buried there," he said. "And by understanding burial practices of the time, we should be able to locate them." Ousterhout explained that "any evidence of the tombs disappeared at the time of the Ottoman takeover."
"Who knows what we'll find?" he said. "That's one of the interesting things about archaeology. To some, I realize, it sounds like treasure-hunting, but the important thing is to get an accurate documentation of life in the 12th century."
UI architecture professor Robert Ousterhout's efforts to document and restore a 12th century Byzantine church in Istanbul just got a big boost from a Sept. 14 announcement by the World Monuments Fund.
The church, later converted into a mosque known as the Zeyrek Camii, has been named to the WMF's 2000 Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Other sites on the list include Machu Picchu in Peru, Teotihuacan in Mexico, and an 8,000-year-old rock art site in Niger.
The New York-based WMF is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1965 to prevent the destruction of artistic and architectural treasures throughout the world. According to WMF president Bonnie Burnham, the watch list is issued as "a bold challenge to local and national authorities to step up to their responsibilities -- and an appeal to the public to take immediate action -- to save these irreplaceable sites that define the history and the humanity of the people. Once they are lost, they are gone forever."
The 2000 list is the third the group has issued since 1996.
The Zeyrek Camii's status as an endangered site was announced locally on Sept. 14 during the opening of a new exhibition, "A Heritage to Preserve: the Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul," in the Architecture Gallery in Temple Buell Hall.
The exhibition, which runs through Sept. 25, features photographs, architectural drawings and text "linking work being done right now and in the past and preservation work crying out to be done," Ousterhout said. Work in progress at the Zeyrek Camii is the highlight of the show, which also includes information on other projects in Istanbul and at Hagia Sophia.
Ousterhout said restoration of the Zeyrek Camii is critical as the structure represents "one of the most important architectural undertakings of the 12th century, and is one of the last major Byzantine monuments in the city lacking monographic treatment."
Although the historic structure's inclusion on the WMF's watch list doesn't necessarily guarantee that Ousterhout's project will receive direct financial support from the organization, the designation could help draw support from other sources.
"Being on the list will give us visibility and publicity," Ousterhout said, noting that monuments targeted by the WMF in the past have attracted support from major corporations and agencies that provide matching funds.
To date, the project has been supported by the UIUC Research Board; Istanbul Technical University; Dumbarton Oaks, a research institute of Harvard University in Washington, D.C.; and an anonymous bequest given through the UI Foundation.
The rapid influx of women into labor markets worldwide is one of the most significant developments of the 20th century, a UI professor writes in an upcoming journal issue devoted to the subject.
Many social changes -- ranging from the rise in divorce rates to declining fertility -- have been influenced by the changing status of female workers, according to Marianne A. Ferber, professor emerita of economics and women's studies. Her comments preface a forthcoming special issue of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance.
The increase of women in the labor force has occurred in much of the developing world as well as in economically advanced countries. It began slowly in the United States at the end of the last century, then accelerated in this century, especially during the 1970s.
The historic gap between black and white female workers has virtually disappeared.
Equally striking is the widening gulf of employment based on level of education.
Employment segregation has been changing only slowly, Ferber writes, so that there continue to be many occupations that are almost entirely male and others that are as predominately female, and gender segregation by specialty and rank remains within such groups as medical doctors and university professors. The same is true for the earnings gap between men and women, which is relatively large in the United States compared with many other economically advanced nations.
The increasing incidence of poverty among women has been linked to the rising divorce rate and the increasing proportion of families headed by females without a husband present. In developing nations, "lack of access to capital is one of the most serious impediments for women" with or without husbands, Ferber notes. A program in Indonesia, described in the special issue, tells how very poor women who were able to get loans raised their standard of living, especially when the loans were coupled with skills training.
The rise of "non-standard" work also has affected American women who are overrepresented in help-agency work, on-call work, and other temporary and part-time jobs that tend to pay lower wages and benefits than standard positions.
Workplace statistics
By gender
By race
By education (1995)
A large gap has widened between what private and public research universities pay their faculty members, with private institutions in the lead. For full professors, the gap is five times what it was just two decades ago, according to research by a UI professor.
In the shadow of that gap -- produced, in large part, by revenues from rising tuition and tuition-based government aid -- the nation's elite public universities are quickly becoming second-tier institutions, says F. King Alexander, a professor of higher education. "The question is, are we content with allowing our greatest public universities to become the faculty training grounds for private universities -- because that's what's happening," Alexander said.
From 1980 to 1998, the gap between private and public research universities in their average salaries for full professors grew from $3,000 to $15,600. For all ranks of faculty members, the gap grew even more dramatically, from $1,900 to $14,400. (All amounts in 1998 dollars.)
"People need to understand why there's pressure to continually increase tuition in most of the premier public universities, and this is a big piece of it," Alexander said.
Through the 1980s and early 1990s, "public universities used new tuition revenues to offset losses in state appropriations," Alexander said. During the same period, private schools raised tuition at comparable and even higher rates, "using the new revenue to give themselves a competitive advantage, a considerable market advantage that is represented by the disparities that currently exist."
Ultimately it's about prestige, Alexander noted. "The higher education marketplace is being driven by a prestige phenomenon that continuously fuels a 'Cold War' of expenditure growth," he wrote in a paper to be published later this year in a special financial issue of the Journal of Staff, Program, & Organization Development. Like the Soviet Union in the 1980s arms race, public universities are on the short end of a spending race, with limits on their ability to compete.
It's important to point out, Alexander said, that much of the money fueling the growth is tuition. "And it's tuition money supported by government tuition-based policies, in the form of direct student aid," from which private schools benefit disproportionately. "That's kind of the heart of it. Institutions that have autonomous control over their student tuition have had the ability to out-spend competitor institutions that have been constrained by state legislatures, boards of governors, and other public bodies."
Even many university presidents and provosts are not aware of how the situation developed, Alexander has found. "What they see right now is just a massive disparity; what they don't see is that those disparities didn't exist in 1980." As a result, many have been asking their states in recent years for additional funds and special programs to retain their best faculty members, he noted, but even in the rare cases when they get them, "these temporary remedies are only small Band-Aids on the larger issue, because these disparities continue to widen each year."
The rewards of peace may be priceless, but the cost of keeping it is staggering. So staggering that the world's chief peacemaker -- the United Nations -- is in financial crisis, and, what is worse, most of the options that would resolve the crisis have serious problems.
So says UI political scientist Paul Diehl, who, with his student Elijah Pharoahkhan, has done a systematic analysis of the U.N.'s options for financial and political viability. Their findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of Policy Studies Review.
The heart of the problem, Diehl said, lies with the U.N.'s system of financing. Rather than having one standard system, peacekeeping missions are financed through several mechanisms: the regular U.N. budget, disputants' budgets, and, primarily, U.N. member states' contributions. However, U.N. members, mostly for political reasons, often refuse to pay their financial obligations -- or do so in an untimely manner, thus pushing the U.N. deeper into debt.
Aggravating the problem is that the U.N.'s peacekeeping services are in greater demand than ever. In fact, the agency "has launched more peacekeeping operations in the last decade of this century than it did in the previous 45 years of its existence," Diehl said, noting that 30 of the 50 U.N. peacekeeping missions have been deployed between 1990 and 1997, resulting in "far larger than expected costs." Also, many operations are now more complex and require a greater number of troops, and therefore are considerably more expensive than traditional operations.
The consequences of the U.N.'s ever-growing debt due to peacekeeping are "highly deleterious," Diehl said. "Cost starts to become a factor in assessing whether to authorize a new mission, how large that mission should be, and how long it could be kept in place. Normally, those kinds of decisions should be made primarily on political or strategic grounds."
Proposals to resolve financing problems are wide-ranging: making only incremental changes, such as late-payment fees and new methods of calculating fees; levying international taxes -- for example, a small uniform tax on foreign exchange transactions, a tax on "global commons" -- oceans, outer space, or a tax on arms sales; and creating programs -- for example, setting up a separate budget for peacekeeping or incorporating peacekeeping funding in member states' national defense budgets.
The incremental changes would have a "marginal effect on the U.N. financial crisis," the authors write, and many proposals for new programs are "severely flawed" and would create problems. The authors believe the most attractive option is the one that would impose new international taxes. This measure could provide adequate revenue for peacekeeping operations, meet unexpected demands in the security area, and remove the dependency of the United Nations on direct member contributions. The main stumbling block to this proposal lies with the states: "They are as yet unwilling to relinquish the influence that comes with directly providing or withholding funds to the U.N."
Even in good economic times, many of the nation's minority youth are finding significant obstacles in their transition from school to early job success, a UI professor says in a study to be published this month.
In schools, in workplaces, in society and in themselves, many of these youth are dealing with barriers that keep them from becoming the productive members of the workforce that the nation increasingly will need, says Rose Mary Wentling, a professor of human resource education.
"I think it's very important for society, and workplace and school personnel, to understand that these barriers do exist and are hindering the successful progress of minority youth, who really are our future," Wentling said. Projections by the U.S. Bureau of the Census show minorities growing as a percentage of the labor force over the next several decades, she noted.
Wentling and co-author Consuelo Luisa Waight, a research associate, sought out a small but very knowledgeable group for their study: 21 directors of school-to-work partnership programs in 16 states.
The 21 programs were the recipients of 1995 grants from the U.S. Department of Education, National School-to-Work Office, which recognized them as exemplary in their efforts to support minority youth in high-poverty areas. The programs, 12 in urban areas and nine rural, served more than 50,000 students total. The directors of the programs averaged 5.2 years in their current positions.
The researchers conducted in-depth, open-ended telephone interviews in 1998 with each of the program directors, giving each a chance to discuss in detail the barriers they thought youth faced.
Highest on the list of barriers was poverty, cited by 18 of the 21 directors (86 percent).
School-related barriers also were high on the directors' list, with 81 percent citing what they saw as resistance to change by school personnel, she said. Schools were not open to new teaching methods that might accommodate diverse learning styles, these directors said. Many also cited a lack of understanding in schools concerning different cultures (76 percent) and the lack of an integrated or relevant curriculum that might help prepare students for the workplace (71 percent).
The directors perceived that "many times teachers thought that if you [a student] weren't going to college, you were a failure, and that showed in the way they prepared the students. They didn't provide them with the relevant, current curriculum that they needed to succeed," Wentling said.
A lack of cultural understanding also was cited as a barrier in the workplace, by 67 percent of the directors, Wentling said. Discrimination in the workplace was cited by 57 percent. Among the barriers youth faced as individuals, directors cited a lack of knowledge and skills needed to succeed (71 percent) and a lack of English language proficiency (67 percent).
They look like the kind of vehicles Fox Mulder would drive to track visitors from outer space.
But the trucks with large rotating antennas sticking through the roofs are actually tracking wildlife in Central Illinois.
Students staff the radio equipment in the trucks and track foxes and coyotes across the South Farms and out into the rural surrounds of Champaign-Urbana. About a dozen coyotes are being tracked and as many as 40 foxes. The study thus far has radio-tagged 170 foxes and 68 coyotes.
The project through the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is aimed at determining if the declining numbers of red fox in this area is a result of an increase in the number of coyotes.
Graduate student Todd Gosselink and Tim Van Deelen, a wildlife ecologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, are overseeing the research project. Gosselink, who is working toward his doctorate, concedes he has become amazed at what they've learned about the lifestyles of the foxes and coyotes.
One surprising fact they've learned is that there are a significant number of foxes that live in urban areas, usually on the edge of Champaign-Urbana. The South Farms certainly has a number of foxes, he said, and they've also tracked some that live near Parkland College.
As long as one isn't a chicken farmer, there's no need to fear foxes, Gosselink said. They eat mice and other rodents, mostly.
And although coyotes have rather notorious reputations for killing pets such as cats and puppies, out in the agricultural fields they also eat mice and other rodents. And occasionally, they kill foxes.
"About 30 years ago, there were quite a few more foxes than there are today," Gosselink said. "And at the same time, there weren't that many coyotes. So people think if the coyotes have moved in, they must be killing all the foxes."
According to Gosselink, although both foxes and coyotes prefer to be near roads, foxes utilize roads more than coyotes, often making their homes in culverts along rural roads. The culverts are too small for coyotes to get into, so while it offers protection in that way, it also increases the risk of being killed by traffic. The research has shown more foxes killed on the road (47 percent of mortality causes) than coyotes (29 percent of mortality causes). And about one-third of the young foxes are killed on the roads, he said.
Another third of the fox pups are killed by coyotes in the summer, Gosselink said. "A fox litter can have four to nine pups, and I think the average is probably around six," Gosselink said. "Out of that litter born in May, only one or two may survive until October."
But more coyotes are killed by shootings (57 percent) than foxes (11 percent). "Most farmers and hunters will tend to shoot a coyote but not a fox as quickly, due to their viewpoint of coyotes being over-abundant and a nuisance," Gosselink said. The coyote's fear of humans may be why it tends to make its home farther from humans than the fox. Coyote dens are usually out in the middle of a field, away from human disturbance, unlike the fox, which will create dens under barns and along roads.
Another surprise they've found in tracking the animals is in how far they will travel. Although most of the foxes and coyotes do claim territories and live their entire lives within a two-to-five-mile area, some are nomadic.
Gosselink said they've tracked coyotes moving back and forth from Monticello to Decatur, moving up and down the Sangamon River. Foxes have dispersed from Champaign to west of Springfield and Peoria.
As director of the Biotechnology Center, Harris Lewin has spent a good portion of his life looking through a microscope.
He spent a few minutes looking across the table at the UI trustees Sept. 1 and 2 in Chicago, building his case for a new biotechnology center on the Urbana campus.
The UI has become a leader in biotechnology, but much more could be done, Lewin said.
In the past, biotechnology was thought of in simple terms, Lewin said. "It was the use of living organisms to solve problems and make useful products," he said.
One example of the "older" type of biotechnology that stems from centuries ago, Lewin said, is when scientists discovered they could use yeast to make beer.
The modern definition has changed quite a bit, he said, to include "a collection of technologies that use living cells and biological molecules to solve problems and make useful products."
One of the most important recent discoveries in biotechnology happened in 1988 -- the birth of the human genome project.
The project involves the mapping and sequencing of more than 3 billion nucleotides that make up a human being.
"It is the single most important endeavor in human history," Lewin said.
The applications of biotechnology are enormous and concentrate in three areas -- biomedical, agricultural and environmental.
"We believe animal genomics is the next frontier," he said. Researchers at Urbana already are looking into animal traits to determine how to bypass certain defects that animal breeders might not want.
"We are a leading institution in animal genomics," he said. However, more researchers and funding are needed to put Urbana on the cutting edge of biotechnology.
"We have significant strength, but we need to build on the strengths we have," he said.
Lewin suggested that perhaps a "Beckman South" would be a good move toward building Urbana's biotechnology center. It also is important that faculty members from all the disciplines that are needed can be under one roof. Lewin said there is a "new" biology that requires multidisciplinary researchers.
"It's a very critical area of research to our state," said Sylvia Manning, vice president for academic affairs. "It allows us to attract faculty."
"It might be proposed that, at this moment, our ability to think creatively is more important than ever before."
-- Exhibitions Working Group
Visitors to the UI's Krannert Art Museum are in for a few surprises this season, as curators -- with assistance from a multidisciplinary group of professors -- turn expectations upside down and light a few fires guaranteed to spark intellectual curiosity.
The carefully orchestrated changes are all part of a yearlong series of events and programs the museum has titled "World of Wonders: A Celebration of the Millennium, 1999-2000."
Most noticeably absent from the schedule are the usual temporary exhibitions imported from other institutions. In their place will be a series of experimental exhibitions, performances and other activities -- some of which focus attention on objects and concepts drawn from the art museum's and the university's own incredibly rich and varied collections. Other projects will explore the intersection of the visual arts and technology, and the ways in which a university art museum can stimulate creative, critical thinking campuswide.
"We're opening the year with a visual metaphor something that's just plain fun and interesting and attractive, and goes with our larger idea for the year: understanding that the university art museum is the natural place for disciplines to meet," said Linda Duke, the museum's director of education.
Duke is referring to an unusual and multifaceted exhibition opening Sept. 18 titled "Wunderkammer: A Chamber of Curiosities." She explains that the German "Wunderkammer" translates as "wonder-cabinet," a term that described the type of exhibit that was commonly displayed by European collectors of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Some of the items were drawn from museum galleries and storage, while many others were loaned by various university units. "We borrowed objects from a tremendous range of departments," Duke said. "We found that people have many treasures that people outside the various departments don't know about."
Museum curator Leslie Brothers noted that the original "chambers of curiosities" of centuries past "developed as eclectic collections that displayed manmade objects inspired by the new sensibilities of science and contemporary works of art, alongside curious and exotic objects of natural history and supposed relics of religious significance, folklore and antiquity."
Displayed in rooms or in actual cabinets, items "ranged from paintings to natural specimens to rare, precious jewels," she said. "The 'wonders of God and man' were systematically arrayed with the 'wonders of nature and science,' and when examined, might shock the viewer into a new conception of reality. These early esoteric collections eventually evolved out of their chaotic beginnings into larger displays that became the modern museums of the 19th century."
At the UI museum, artifacts and art are juxtaposed in several staged vignettes -- sans the usual labels that explain function or origin -- in ways that may or may not suggest patterns or associations to those viewing them.
Not accidentally, Duke said, the concept of the Wunderkammer has a late-20th-century cousin: "In some ways it resembles the Web."
Wall text that accompanies the exhibition expands on that idea, noting that " the Internet is a kind of modern Wunderkammer, allowing access to a vast amount of information, unconstrained by hierarchies and boundaries. It is up to each of us to sort it out -- to make sense of diversity, complexity and possibility. In doing so, we find meaning in and make connections between a wide range of ideas."
The "Wunderkammer" exhibition is actually just one result of a collaborative research project undertaken this past year by an interdisicplinary team of individuals, known as the Exhibition Working Group. Members of the EWG include museum staff members and faculty from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, School of Art and Design, College of Education, Beckman Institute, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The group functions, in effect, as a think tank.
It makes sense, Duke said, to explore ways to open up the museum to the entire campus community and encourage innovative ways of thinking about the function of an art museum. Because despite prevailing stereotypes that pigeonhole artists and scientists in separate corners of the intellectual ring, that old typecasting doesn't necessarily hold up in today's world.
"The realm of the aesthetic is part of the arts, but also part of the changing work we do in the sciences and the humanities," Duke said. "It is our aesthetic ways of thinking that kick in when dealing with large amounts of information," she said, repeating an anecdote about Albert Einstein to illustrate her point. Einstein, she said, supposedly played the violin while problem-solving.
Among the other results of the EWG's work will be a series of collaborative projects collectively titled "Presence, Practice and Technology." These projects, to take place over the next several months, involve three visiting artists: Cecilia Vicuña, Joe Goode and Fred Wilson. The artists, all known for pushing established boundaries and defining their art with broad, multimedia strokes, will lend their time and talent to other campus units during their residencies and will work on collaborative projects with faculty members and students in several departments. They also will take advantage of resources available at the university and the museum, but not all of them will mount public exhibitions in the traditional sense -- at least not at the time of their visits. (See related story.)
Another EWG project that will include public exhibitions is "Traditions in Asian Art I." A series of small shows are planned as a part of this project, with the first, "Kashmir Shawls and Indian Miniatures," running Sept. 18 through Jan. 9. The show is the result of a collaboration involving Insook Choi, a research scientist and composer at Beckman Institute who has composed original music to accompany the installation; Pradeep Dhillon, professor of educational policy studies; and museum curator Eunice Dauterman Maguire.
"Also very much in the spirit of EWG's efforts to make the museum more of a forum for discussions around the campus," Duke said, is a Nov. 3 program, "The Changing Sound Worlds of John Cage." Organized by UI music professor and Cage scholar David Patterson, the program involves several students from the School of Music and dance department. The event will take place at 7 p.m. in the museum's East Gallery.
Among the many changes taking place at the museum, two of its former galleries have been adapted to serve new functions. The former Light Court Gallery adjacent to the Palette Café is now an Information Center. It is outfitted with a computer that provides access to the museum's Web site; membership materials and catalogs; and information about various exhibitions and projects.
The East Gallery, which formerly housed short-term exhibitions, has been subdivided into two flexible spaces, which, for the most part, will be used to accommodate performances by visiting artists and speakers. Also, a lower-level gallery has become the Collections Research Lab. It now serves as a research space, which can be reserved by classes or other groups, to study the museum's collection. The space includes online access to the collection.
Also new is a yearlong installation, "The Poetics of Space: Modern Glass and Paintings from the Permanent Collection," located in the light-filled bow of the museum's Kinkead Pavilion.
Duke said all this rearranging, re-thinking and re-inventing "is not an abberation, but, in fact, a new direction."
"We have been doing a lot of work at national conferences, and this represents part of a much larger movement afoot nationally -- to start thinking differently about how to serve our audiences better."
The museum's curatorial staff is available to give guided tours to small groups of visitors. To arrange tours, contact Diane Schumacher, 333-9866, at least two weeks in advance.
The Krannert Art Museum is shifting gears this season, and a trio of visiting artists will be driving some of the changes ahead. All will be on campus as Miller Endowment Visiting Scholars. Their visits are co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation, College of Fine and Applied Arts, School of Art and Design, Media Narrative Center, Francis P. Rohlen Visiting Artist Fund, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, and other campus units.
Cecilia Vicuña, a Chilean-born poet and installation/performance artist now based in New York. In addition to her MillerComm presentation Sept. 21 (see calendar), she will work on her project "On Behalf of the Seeds," which was conceived nearly 30 years ago as a way to try to preserve parts of the ecosystem in her native country. Alarmed that a number of native plants species and forests were disappearing, Vicuña embarked on a one-woman campaign to help people regain a healthy connection with the land and its plants. The Chilean Ministry of Education will host her project in Santiago next year, but Vicuña hopes to tap into UI expertise and resources that will allow her to conduct Web-based outreach as well.
Joe Goode, a San Francisco-based performance artist. Good will work with museum staff members, students and faculty members in several departments in preparation for a performance/installation scheduled at the museum Oct. 22-Nov. 7. He plans to create a tranquil, relaxing space that also will include a few surprises and sensory experiences designed to alter visitors' perceptions slightly. Goode plans to work directly with dance professor Linda Lehovec and a number of dance students and other volunteers on the performance aspect of the piece. Persons interested in participating may contact Lehovec at lehovec@illinois.edu, or Linda Duke, l-duke@illinois.edu.
Fred Wilson, a New York-based artist and curator. Wilson is known internationally for his museum "interventions," in which he rearranges and reclaims items from a museum's collection to emphasize specific cultural and social themes. Wilson will be on campus for two weeks during the academic year. His work will include creation of a Web project that incorporates items from the museum's collection. He also will begin to plan a gallery installation. Additionally, he is scheduled to give a public talk at Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities' spring conference, "Institutions of the Visual," and participate in the School of Art and Design's visiting artists program.
It took Roxey about 30 seconds to enter the room and alert her handler that narcotics could be found behind a cushion on the couch.
The specially trained dog then went to a table in the room where she pointed out a cap with drug residue. And then she led the way to a desk, where at her insistence, the police officer found a pipe with drug residue inside a drawer.
Roxey is a new member of the UI Police Department who has already earned the respect and appreciation of her fellow officers.
In her first 30 days with the UIPD, the dog and Beckman responded to about 40 calls. She found illegal drugs resulting in arrests, tracked suspects who fled from vehicle stops, tracked a kidnapping suspect and a bank robber.
"So, we've been busy," Beckman said. "I think our first weekend, we were used probably half a dozen times in a day. And I think we're going to get used more and more as people get used to us being here and see that we can be beneficial."
Roxey joined the force in late June. UIPD officials decided that having a dog trained for sniffing out drugs and tracking would increase the investigative powers of the department. And as expected, the dog has proven to be a great time saver for the officers. For example, when directed, Roxey can approach a vehicle and within seconds alert officers if narcotics are inside, even if all the windows of the vehicle are closed. Roxey's trained also to find things left behind by suspects or victims, such as a gun or drugs discarded by a fleeing suspect.
But Roxey's not aggressive. She's social and likes to be out and about among people. She's friendly, Beckman said.
Yet she's serious about her job, Beckman said
"She likes to work. And when you tell her she's going to work, she's ready to go," Beckman said. "She doesn't want to wait around. She wants to get in there and get to work and find her stuff and get her reward."
The reward, by the way, is a simple toy. But the only time Roxey gets the toy is when she has successfully completed her job.
Roxey is a native of Belgium and since she's only been in the United States since April, she doesn't know much English, so Beckman gives her commands in Dutch. Roxey was trained at the Vohne Liche Kennel in Indiana. Beckman was selected from among several UIPD officers for the job of handling the dog, and he attended a two-week special training session with her.
He said he selected her from a group of three available dogs.
"I picked a male dog first, and I was pretty convinced I was going to take him," Beckman recalled. "Then they brought Roxey out and it didn't take long for her to win me over. She walked out and was her happy little self and jumped up on me and we went over to sit down to see how she would react with some things and she was all over me.
"I think she kind of picked me out," he laughed. "I didn't have much choice. But she was a good pick for me. We work really well together."
He continues to work with her almost daily on tracking, sniffing or her agility. She lives with Beckman and his wife at their home.
"My wife likes her, but Roxey pretty much doesn't pay any attention to anybody but me," Beckman said. "She just locks on me. It's a relationship that builds over time, and it's building more and more each day."
The Champaign and Urbana police and Champaign County sheriff's departments each have working dogs, but this is the first dog the university police have had. Roxey and her training cost the department about $7,000, paid for courtesy of confiscated drug money, as well as $1,500 from the UI Housing Division as a partner in the program.
"We're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Beckman said. "She doesn't want a day off, she wants to work. And when she gets done working and we've been home for three or four hours and we get called back in for something, she's ready to go. She doesn't mind coming in with little sleep and working extra hours.
"It's an administrator's dream," Beckman joked. "All she gets for it is a toy, some food and a place to stay. And that part of it makes a lot of people happy."
"But I think we're going to keep getting more and more use and be more beneficial to the department as time goes on," Beckman said.
The Roxey file
Abraham Lincoln will oversee an upcoming exhibition in his honor at the UI Library.
An extremely rare plaster life mask of the 16th U.S. president, made shortly before he was nominated for the highest office in the land, will be on display in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library during the library's fall exhibit, "Learning About Lincoln at the UI at Urbana-Champaign."
A life mask of Lincoln's feisty debating opponent, Stephen A. Douglas ("The Little Giant"), also will be on display. Leonard Volk (1828-1895), who was related to Douglas by marriage, made both masks. The Lincoln mask belongs to the UI chapter of the Zeta Psi fraternity, which received it as a gift from Henry Theodore Thomas in 1909. Douglas sent Volk to Rome in 1855 to perfect his craft. After Volk returned home in 1857, he settled in Chicago and created the mask of Douglas. The following year, Douglas introduced Volk to Lincoln, who sat for the sculptor in 1860.
Lincoln sat for Volk an hour a day for five or six days (perhaps March 30 to April 6, 1860), before court reconvened, when Lincoln was in Chicago arguing the Sandbar Case, the last case he would argue in Chicago. Volk later traveled to Springfield to cast Lincoln's hands, but Volk didn't complete the full plaster statue of Lincoln until 1876. It stands today, as it originally did, in the rotunda of the Illinois State Capitol.
Volk developed something of a cottage industry around Lincoln and Illinois politics. Prior to working on the full-size statues, he made and sold statuettes of Lincoln and of Douglas.
In addition to the masks, dozens of rare and rarely seen Lincoln letters and photographs and many other documents and artifacts, all drawn from the UI's world class collection of Lincolniana, also will be on display. Among them is a wooden ox-yoke Lincoln made when he was living in New Salem, Ill. The frame in which the yoke is contained was constructed of wood from the original flooring of Lincoln's Springfield, Ill., home. Also on display will be a letter from Lincoln to Jesse Pickrell, dated Sept. 15, 1856, which reflects one of Lincoln's first attempts to recruit supporters for the new Republican Party: "Please do this quietly, and say nothing about it. "
Visitors to the exhibit also will find a photograph of Lincoln, made from an 1858 ambrotype. For the sitting, as the story goes, Lincoln borrowed a jacket from a much shorter man, so the jacket sleeves pulled up well past his wrists. According to a friend, Urbana Judge J.O. Cunningham, Lincoln got the giggles during the photo shoot, causing him to overcompensate with a strained appearance around the mouth. Cunningham made the frame for the photo, purportedly from an oak tree in his yard.
Barbara Jones, librarian of the Rare Book and Special Collections Library, said that a great many elements surrounding the UI -- its founding, environs, scholarly production and Library -- are "rich with the legacy of Abraham Lincoln." Many of the items in the show, therefore, reflect and document Lincoln's influence on the university since its founding in 1867.
This includes archival photographs of a series of terra cotta relief panels, which depict Lincoln's life and surround the second-story exterior of the UI's Lincoln Hall. On the panels Lincoln is shown as a rail-splitter, a river boatman, a circuit rider and a savior of the slave, among other things. Begun in 1909, Lincoln Hall was conceived as a memorial to the "Great Emancipator."
In addition, items from the personal papers of two of the nation's most famous Lincoln scholars -- UI history professor James G. Randall (on the faculty from 1920 to 1950) and journalist-poet-author Carl Sandburg -- also will be on display.
Randall published a four-volume biography of Lincoln in 1945 and 1952 (the final volume was published posthumously in 1955). Sandburg wrote the monumental six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1940.
Many items for the exhibit are, in fact, drawn from Sandburg's extensive Lincoln library, which is contained in the larger Carl Sandburg Collection of the Rare Book and Special Collections Library. The Sandburg-Lincoln items include original drafts of several poems Sandburg wrote about Lincoln, two of which were found in an envelope that Sandburg had labeled "to be published after my death." The poems had been stowed in a safe-deposit box in Asheville, N.C., along with many other items, and were released by the Sandburg Family Trust in 1994 to the university's Sandburg Collection.
According to UI English professor George Hendrick, Sandburg had, in his early professional life, "presented Lincoln as a man of the people who arose from the poverty of the frontier to great eminence."
Exhibition at the Rare Book and Special Collections Library
(346 Main Library)
Sept. 23-Dec. 23
No admission price/Open to the public
Weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 25 only: 8 a.m. to noon
Groups should call in advance, 333-3777.
Farmers and agricultural extension agents in India soon will be able to communicate more efficiently with each other about new ideas, thanks to technological roots planted by an Indian scientist visiting this summer at the UI.
A Web site offering "A Gateway to Indian Agriculture" was created as part of India's efforts to decentralize the government-run extension service and improve technology transfer, said Sandhya Shenoy, a senior scientist with India's National Academy of Agricultural Research Management. She spent the summer studying graphic design in the Agricultural Instructional Media Laboratory (AIM Lab) in the UI College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
Shenoy left the UI Aug. 17 after a three-month stay as a visiting fellow of the World Bank and United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. She will manage the Web site from her office in Hyderabad, India, with continued assistance from the AIM Lab.
The lab also created a plan to strengthen the use of the Web at 40 Indian extension centers, said John Schmitz, manager of the AIM lab.
Shenoy and colleagues have traveled to some of her country's 600,000 villages, talking with farmers to learn more about their needs and teaching them new techniques. Extension agents under India's centralized system often were slow to learn about new research findings, and as a result new ideas often filtered down slowly, if at all, to farmers.
The "farmer-friendly" Web project, Shenoy said, will help to get information more quickly to those who need it. Also, by speeding the flow of knowledge, she said, it is hoped that more people, especially women, will want to pursue careers in agricultural extension. "This is a very modest attempt to bridge the gap on technology transfer," she said. "There have been no proper incentives to be in extension. There has been very little technology transfer information for extension agents. Many times progressive farmers know more than do the extension agents."
Shenoy recently completed a comprehensive survey of Indian women in agriculture. With a rising number of women farmers, she said, there is a large need for women in extension.
The AIM Lab has designed a variety of Web sites for more than five years. Lab designer Mary Connors, who worked closely with Shenoy, lived in India for several years, and current student staff members from Kenya, Nigeria and Argentina have worked on Web sites with international focuses.
"The lab was a good match for Dr. Shenoy's needs," Schmitz said. "She was able to learn about cutting-edge uses of the Web for agricultural extension."
The prototype is at: http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/aim/diglib/india/
All of the UI's 84 academic units have designed plans to evaluate how well they are educating their students.
These "outcomes assessment plans" are an essential part of the picture the university will present to visitors from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), who will be on campus Sept. 27-29 to determine whether the UI continues to meet the criteria for renewal of its NCA accreditation.
The NCA, which evaluates the UI about every 10 years, began including the assessment of student academic achievement in its accreditation criteria about five years ago -- about the same time the UI appointed a task force to examine its undergraduate and graduate programs and research centers.
"The assessment initiative has brought faculty members together to discuss what their majors need to know and what they should be learning in their time here at Illinois," said Assistant Provost Karen Carney. "In some units, this may not have been done for some time."
Dan O'Keefe, professor of speech communication and assessment coordinator for his department, said the process resulted in important changes.
"Stimulated by the assessment enterprise, we developed a revised structure for the major," he said.
Speech communication faculty members looked closely at their graduate and undergraduate programs. They decided that only the undergraduate program needed significant change. To ensure that students master communications skills, the department plans to require its majors to take classes in persuasion and argumentation. A survey course, which provides broad knowledge of communication theory and research, also will be required.
"This makes sure they get what we want them to get," O'Keefe said. "We're very pleased with how things have turned out."
The assessment coordinators of other units are still looking at the results of their work; many departments are yet to decide if their assessments will lead to any changes.
"We just completed our assessment plan last spring," said Narayana Rao, professor and associate head of electrical and computer engineering. "We are just beginning to implement it."
Rao said a student survey was taken as part of his department's self-examination.
"The results of the survey show that we're doing a pretty good job in teaching technical skills, but we need improvement in communication skills," he said. "That's the fundamental result so far."
Rao said that while the faculty will consider ways in which engineering students can learn how to communicate effectively -- perhaps by requiring specific classes in other departments -- he doesn't expect a departmental overhaul.
"We continuously make changes," he said. "This process allows us to do it in an organized manner."
Sharon Michalove, assistant to the head of the history department, said her department worked on an outcome plan for about a year.
"Last year we wrote the plan," she said. "This year we are supposed to implement it."
The history department used a student focus group to discover what was important to them. Michalove said they were interested in improving skills to help them in the job hunt, such as research, communications and human relations.
A graduate of the department's undergraduate and graduate programs, Michalove said the assessment made the faculty members and students think about what it means to be a history major.
"We are not a training program like accountancy, so our assessment is going to seem more general."
She said her department has done surveys before, but this is the most thorough examination of the department she has been a part of in 10 years. The writing of the plan is just the beginning.
"The faculty will do self-assessments, newer faculty will be doing teacher portfolios [assembling syllabi, exam samples, student work samples, etc.], plus we'll be doing surveys of seniors," Michalove said. "It really does increase the work in the department."
She said she believes the university is taking this very seriously.
"For the first time someone is asking us to state our goals and put them on the Web," she said.
The Web address for outcome assessment plans is: www.oir.uiuc.edu/assessment.
The Outcomes Assessment Committee, chaired by professor Lizanne Destefano and consisting of 20 faculty members and administrators, has overseen the process of writing the evaluation blueprints.
Committee member Carol Livingstone, assistant provost and director of the Division of Management Information, said it is too early to tell if many departments will benefit significantly from their plans.
"We observed a lot of resistance at the beginning on the part of the departments to do this," she said. "They saw this as another administrative requirement. But once the faculty started understanding the assessment process many of them realized that it was a great tool for improving their programs."
Livingstone said outcome assessments can help departments fulfill their mandates to truly educate.
"Our goal is not just to graduate students or for students to get high grades," she said. "We have to make sure the programs are accomplishing their goals and that the students are meeting the expectations of the faculty for particular educational programs."
A team representing the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA) will visit the Urbana campus Sept. 27-29 to review its accreditation status. Faculty and staff members and students are invited to attend open meetings with the NCA team:
For further information, go to www.provost.uiuc.edu/accreditation, or phone the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, 265-0451.
By Huey Freeman
UI physics professors David M. Ceperley and Dale J. Van Harlingen have been elected as fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a group that brings together leaders from government, universities and the arts.
Van Harlingen said he was surprised to receive word of his election.
"What impressed me is the list of people who are in it," he said. "It's a diverse set of people. That really makes it special."
Former UI Vice Chancellor Robert Berdahl -- now chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley -- also was elected to the academy this year as an administrator.
The UI is the only institution with more than one faculty member elected in physics this year.
Ceperley said he was grateful to colleagues who nominated him for the honor.
"It represents recognition at the national scale," he said. "Somewhat like getting tenure at a good school like the UI."
Ceperley's fields of research include theoretical condensed matter physics and computational physics.
He is known for helping to develop methods for microscopic simulations of quantum systems. Ceperley said his techniques are used by physicists, chemists and engineers to predict the behavior of matter.
Van Harlingen, an American Physical Society fellow, has conducted research in low-temperature physics, super-conductivity and microfabrication of superconductor devices.
Van Harlingen said he believes he was nominated for the academy because of his work on high-temperature super-conductivity. Because of those experiments, in 1998 he and UI professor Donald Ginsberg shared the Oliver Buckley Prize, the top prize of the American Physical Society.
The 153 fellows elected this year will join the society's approximately 4,000 fellows, including 160 Nobel laureates and 65 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, the academy brings together scientists, artists, business people and political leaders to discuss ideas and advance knowledge in the public interest.
The UI will ask the state for a $65 million increase in its operating budget to start out the millennium.
The preliminary budget figures for FY2001 were released at the UI Board of Trustees meeting Sept. 1 and 2 in Chicago.
The FY2001 budget includes a "rather moderate" 6.9 percent operating increase over the previous year, said Sylvia Manning, university vice president for academic affairs.
The UI's entire budget for the year is estimated to be $2.3 billion.
Although the state is doing well financially, university officials did not feel it would be beneficial to ask for what it ideally needs, a 16.5 percent increase.
Instead, the university opted for the more realistic 6.9 percent increase.
UI President James J. Stukel said the university should take the state's financial picture into consideration when asking for spending monies.
On the capital projects side of the FY2001 budget, repair and renovation of the three campuses will take precedence in the upcoming century with more than $10 million allocated. About $5.3 million has been earmarked for the Urbana campus.
Urbana projects include $865,000 for remodeling the Environmental and Agricultural Sciences Building, $815,000 for renovation of the Main Library and $530,000 for remodeling the Education Building.
The trustees also received a final financial picture of this year's fiscal year.
Taking a look at revenues from FY2000, the university managed to double its contribution from what the state provides, said Michael Provenzano, assistant vice president for business and finance.
"For every dollar the state provides, the university brings in two from other sources," he said.
Stukel pointed out that federal support for the UI also is large.
He also said that although the university was able to complete or begin several priority capital projects, more needs to be done.
"We simply need better and more facilities to sustain our growth rate," he said.
The university FY2001 budget has to be approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the state legislature.
FY2000 BUDGET
Expenses
Instruction/services for students $868 million (37%)
Public service (including health-care services) $563 million (24%)
Research $478 million (20%)
Academic support $165 million (7%)
Income sources
State of Illinois $714 million (30%)
Sponsored projects $666 million (28%)
Student tuition and fees $599 million (25%)
Departmental activities $397 million (17%)
A $6.5 million bequest from Leiby S. Hall of Decatur has allowed the UI to award 40 major scholarships to students in the College of Commerce and Business Administration on the Urbana-Champaign campus. The estate gift also establishes the Leiby S. Hall Distinguished Endowed Chair in Economics.
UI officials announced the landmark bequest Sept. 10 at a luncheon on the Urbana campus honoring Hall, an Illinois alumnus and Decatur businessman who died in 1998 at age 66, and the scholarship recipients. The Hall Endowment is the largest single gift ever made to the university for scholarship support, according to Chancellor Michael Aiken.
"The Hall Scholarships are providing significant support for gifted junior and senior students in the College of Commerce and Business Administration," Aiken said. "We also are very excited that a Leiby S. Hall Endowed Chair in Economics will be created. These gifts, coupled with Mr. Hall's loyalty and dedication to his alma mater, are making a profound impact on this campus."
The Hall Scholarships provide students a minimum of $5,000, which they can use to help pay for tuition, room and board, books, fees or supplies. Some additional grants also have been awarded for foreign study.
Howard Thomas, dean of the college, noted that initiation of the Hall Scholarships increases the number of recipients of privately funded scholarships for undergraduates in the college by nearly 50 percent.
"Leiby believed that how you live and how successful you are depends on what you learn," Thomas said. "It was very important to him that hardworking students, despite their external circumstances, be given an opportunity to further their education and to complete their degrees at the UI."
"With his bequest both for an endowed chair in economics and for the most endowed scholarships created by one gift in the history of the university, Leiby Hall has left a lasting and dynamic impression on business education at Illinois," Thomas said.
An extensive stock portfolio forms the major part of the endowment, according to Harold Alsup, trustee of the Leiby S. Hall Endowed Fund and executor of the Hall estate. As the endowment grows in value, the number of scholarships also will increase. "
Hall belonged to one of Decatur's pioneering families. In the 19th century, his great-grandfather, Isaac Shellabarger, founded Shellabarger Mills, which became the largest industry of its kind in Illinois.
After earning a bachelor's degree in marketing from the UI in 1954, Hall entered the Army and became a commissioned officer. Later he worked for Shell Oil as a field consultant. In 1959, he purchased Decatur Yellow Cab and also began working as a real estate broker.
Soon after, he founded TCF Industries, an emergency delivery service for industry. He remained active in Decatur business and community affairs until his death.
According to Alsup, Hall also continued a lifelong dedication to the UI and made the decision to support his alma mater financially nearly 20 years ago.
"Leiby loved the university," Alsup said. "And he did a wonderful thing. He put his money where it will do a tremendous amount of good."
The UI at Urbana-Champaign received a five-year, $4.5 million award from Ford Motor Co. Sept. 15. The award supports a new Illinois-Ford partnership in the areas of student scholarships, fellowships and instructional facilities.
The award is the largest corporate gift the campus has received and will benefit many disciplines, including science, engineering, business and commerce. The announcement of the award from the Ford Fund was made by Chancellor Michael Aiken and Bill Powers, vice president-research of Ford, at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
"The support that Ford has committed to this campus will allow us to prepare the leaders of the 21st century," Aiken said. "We are delighted with our new Ford partnership, which represents education in its broadest sense. Our students will enjoy many benefits from Ford financial support and direct interactions with the company."
The Ford award will provide undergraduate engineering scholarships, undergraduate business scholarships and graduate engineering fellowships. Ford also will support additional scholarships, aimed at under-represented groups of students, through the university's Minority Engineering Program and Women in Engineering Program.
"Ford enjoys a long and multifaceted relationship with Illinois," Powers said. "As a result of on-campus recruiting, hundreds of Illinois alumni are now Ford employees. In continuing education and distance learning, Ford and Illinois work together on both course content and on Internet-delivery systems. In research and engineering, Ford and Illinois professionals work side by side on cutting-edge technology."
"In the past, these activities were viewed separately," Powers said. "The new partnership brings them together. The partnership is about more than money. It is about a systems approach to scholarships and recruiting; to performing research and implementing technology; to developing courses geared for the Web."
"This historic gift is the capstone of a long-established relationship between Ford Motor Company and the College of Engineering," said William R. Schowalter, the dean of the College of Engineering. "Hundreds of our students over the years have benefited from Ford's commitment to engineering at Illinois. A wide array of scholarships, fellowships, instructional labs, research projects and program offerings will result from this strategic and mutually beneficial partnership."
"The 21st century presents enormous challenges for the global auto industry," Powers said. "Ford looks to its most valued resource, its employees, including Illinois alumni and future Illinois hires, to meet this challenge."
Ford gift supports:
- A major portion of the award will create the FAST Lab in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering. The lab will help prepare engineering students for automotive careers. Ford's gift will be used to modernize laboratory space and provide state-of-the-art facilities. The facilities will feature engine test cells and emissions-monitoring equipment linked to external computers that can compare test data to simulation models.
Ford will become a primary sponsor of the university's Camp 21st, a middle-school camp for girls interested in math and science. The one-week residential program gives girls in the seventh and eighth grades an opportunity to experience life in a university residence hall while they explore math, science and engineering disciplines through academic, social and recreational activities.
Ford funding also supports the Anderson Laboratory for Global Education in Engineering, which develops courses for worldwide distribution through telecommunications. The award will establish and staff a student hotline to address system-related issues, develop student support materials in various media, and produce informational materials regarding the College of Engineering's online initiative.
Carl Woese, UI professor of microbiology and holder of the Stanley O. Ikenberry Endowed Chair, will speak on "What's in a Genome" at 4 p.m. Sept. 16. Norman R. Pace, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will discuss "The Natural Microbial World: Who's Out There?" at noon Sept. 17. Both lectures, which are free and open to the public, will be in the auditorium of the Medical Sciences Building.
Woese is known for his work with the archaea -- tiny organisms with simple genetic makeup that live in harsh environments -- and his successful effort to rewrite the tree of life, with the archaea as a third kingdom of life on Earth.
Pace, who received his doctorate from the UI, is known as a co-discoverer of the catalytic activity of ribonuclease P, a component of RNA.
The Doisy Lectures were established by Edward A. Doisy to honor his mother, Ada. Edward Doisy was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1943 for isolating and synthesizing vitamin K.
The symposium, "Zeugmatography and Beyond," coincides with Lauterbur's 70th birthday. He is the head of the department of medical information sciences and the director of the Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Laboratory at the College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign.
The symposium, to be held at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, has two objectives, according to its organizers. First, the symposium will bring together pioneers and leaders in the field of magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy for systematic discussions of the historical development, present status and future directions of MRI in the next millennium. Second, the organizers intend to use the symposium to honor Lauterbur for his groundbreaking contributions to the field.
William Edelstein, a physicist for General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y., will deliver the keynote speech Sept. 17 beginning at 9 a.m. in the Beckman auditorium; the topic will be historical developments in magnetic resonance imaging. Thomas Budinger, the chair of the department of bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley, will deliver a speech titled "To Ten Tesla and Beyond" at a dinner for invited guests on the 17th.
Lauterbur and his wife, M. Joan Dawson, a UI professor of molecular and integrative physiology, are among about a dozen other speakers scheduled to speak during the symposium.
For more information, call Debbie McCall, 244-0600.
The UI New Music Ensemble will perform the winning compositions of the 1999 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award: "A Vagrant on Every Floor," for solo violin (Dorothy Martirano, violin) by New York City composer Keith Moore and "0 to 33 in 1045.5," by Craig Walsh from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In addition, Martirano's "Ballad" for instrumental ensemble and night-club singer will be performed with New York City vocalist Donald Smith; Dallapiccolla's "Sex carmina Alcei" with vocalist Joan Marie Dauber; and "Lick," by Bang On A Can composer Julia Wolfe.
The Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award is an international competition for young composers that carries a cash prize and a performance of the winning composition. The competition is held in memory of Salvatore Martirano, a professor of composition at the UI from 1963 to 1995. Now in its third year, the competition has attracted more than 200 entries from 22 countries.
The 1999 competition represents an international collaboration between the Crash Ensemble and the UI. Preliminary screening of compositions was done by UI faculty composers with final selections being made by the members of the Crash Ensemble. In addition to the cash prize and the performance of the compositions by the UI New Music Ensemble, the compositions also will be performed in Dublin, Ireland, by the Crash Ensemble of Ireland.
On a small scale, not having water at your home can be a crisis -- imagine what it would be like if the water taps were turned off around the world.
Retired Sen. Paul Simon will talk about this topic at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at 149 Environmental and Agricultural Sciences Building. The student chapter of the International Water Resources Association is sponsoring his appearance with support from the Environmental Council and the department of civil and environmental engineering.
Simon is the founding director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and recently wrote his 17th book, "Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It," published by Welcome Rain Publishers. As a Senator from Illinois, he was involved in water issues as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The student chapter of the IWRA seeks to provide a campus forum for the interdisciplinary discussion of local, national and international water issues. The IWRA actively promotes the sustainable management of water resources around the globe.
The Environmental Council was established at the UI to ensure leadership of the university in environmental education, research and service. The charter of the council is to be a facilitator across UI for the pursuit of excellence in environmental education, research and service.
The Office of Academic Human Resources, Suite 420, 807 S. Wright St., maintains the listings for faculty and academic professional positions. More complete descriptions are available in that office during regular business hours. Job listings are also updated weekly on its Web site at: http://webster.uihr.uiuc.edu/ahr/jobs/index.asp. Any other information may be obtained from the person indicated in the listing.
faculty
Anthropology. Assistant professor. PhD required. Specialization in anthropological genetics or hominid evolution preferred. Should have an active research program and demonstrated excellence as a teacher. Available: Aug. 21. Contact: Richard Wheeler, department of anthropology, 109 Davenport Hall, MC-148. Closing date: Nov. 19.
Commerce and Business Administration, College of. Head, department of business administration. PhD required and evidence of demonstrated excellence in research, teaching and service sufficient to merit the rank of full professor. Available: Aug. 21. Contact: James A. Gentry, 333-7995. Closing date: Oct. 21.
History. Assistant professor, international/transnational, 19th and 20th century. PhD required; publication and teaching experience preferred. Innovative, comparative research and teaching experience dealing with political, cultural, social and economic relations between states, societies and regions desired. Salary competitive. Available: August. Send application materials to Diane Koenker, Search Chair, Department of History, 309 Greg Hall, MC-466, or phone 333-1155. Closing date: Nov. 19.
Integrative Biology, School of. Faculty (rank open). PhD required; postdoctoral experience preferred. Must have broad training in insect systematics and evolution, a demonstrated record of research excellence and productivity, and demonstrated record of or potential for obtaining external funding. Available: Aug. 21. Contact: Stewart Berlocher, 333-3044, stewartb@life.uiuc.edu. Closing date: Oct. 29.
Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Assistant professor, Brazilian literature and culture. PhD required. Should be native or speak native-like Portuguese, have an active and well-defined research and publication program, have the ability to teach both graduate and undergraduate courses effectively and direct student research. Ability to teach courses on film, literary theory or Spanish-language literary and cultural topics a plus. Available: Aug. 21. Contact: Ronald Sousa, 244-3250, kats@staff.uiuc.edu. Closing date: Nov. 18.
academic professionals
Alumni Association. Assistant director, alumni relations and special events. Bachelor's degree and three years' experience in a related field required. Knowledge of UI preferred. Must have strong written and oral communication skills and working knowledge of PC communications and application software. Available: immediately. Contact: Robert Heldman, 333-1472. Closing date: Sept. 30.
Alumni Association. Director, Business Information Unit. Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree with extensive experience in management and use of information technology preferred. Should have a minimum of seven years' experience in a technology organization and five years' experience with significant responsibility for program, budget and personnel. Contact: Robert Heldman, 333-1472. Closing date: Sept. 30.
Beckman Institute. Research specialist, light microscopy. Bachelor's degree and experience in all aspects of light microscopy required. Experience with data analysis packages for light microscopy desired. Available immediately. Contact: Tricia Ware, 244-0170, pware@illinois.edu. Closing date: Oct. 1.
Beckman Institute. Research programmer, machine learning and imaging. Bachelor's degree in computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering or equivalent experience required. Must have experience in image processing, machine vision or machine learning, C programming and experience with UNIX. Available immediately. Contact: Tricia Ware, 244-0170, pware@illinois.edu. Closing date: Oct. 1.
Broadcasting, Division of (WILL-AM). Creative specialist. Bachelor's degree required. Some knowledge of agricultural issues and agricultural marketing and experience as a public affairs reporter and producer of information programs preferred. Experience in word processing and digital audio equipment and editing procedures preferred. Salary: $24,000. Available: Oct. 21. Contact: Charles Lindy, 333-0850. Closing date: Oct. 1.
Business Affairs--Business Systems, Office of. Research programmer. Bachelor's degree with a minimum of five years' related experience with microcomputers hardware and software installations, programming and managing local area networks. Should have good working knowledge of Microsoft NT Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server, Internet Information Server and Web programming languages. Available: immediately. Contact: Gloria Keeley, 244-5568. Closing date: Oct. 4.
Commerce and Business Administration, College of. Assistant director, International Career Services. Master's degree in counseling or other related field and three years' work experience in career counseling, recruiting, job placement or related work required. Background and expertise in working with international students and international employment issues a plus. Available: Nov. 15. Contact: Mary Martin, 244-6140. Closing date: Oct. 8.
Continuing Education, Office of. Head, Division of Summer Session and Special Programs. PhD and a minimum of 3-5 years' experience in higher education administration or faculty experience in program development for traditional and non-traditional students required. Must have proven ability to work successfully with a variety of university administrators to advance campuswide programs. Teaching and research experience and international experience preferred. Available: Jan. 21. Contact: Emily Mann Peck, 3331465, mlwatkin@illinois.edu. Closing date: Oct. 11.
Governmental Relations, Office of. Assistant director of state relations. Bachelor's degree required, advanced degree preferred. Should have three years' experience working in government or governmental relations at the state level, with knowledge of the processes and operation of the Illinois General Assembly strongly preferred. Contact: Stephen Rugg, 333-0600. Closing date: Oct. 15.
Governmental Relations, Office of. Assistant director of governmental relations. Bachelor's degree required, advanced degree preferred. Should have three years' experience working in government or governmental relations and should be familiar with the legislative and administrative processes at the federal level. Contact: Stephen Rugg, 333-0600. Closing date: Oct. 15.
Human Resources Department (Chicago). Associate director. Bachelor's degree in human resources training and development, education, curriculum development or related field with a master's degree preferred; three to five years' experience in human resource development program or related field. Contact: Phyllis McNulty-Hill, (312) 996-9305. Closing date: Sept. 27.
McKinley Health Center. Assistant director, Program Support Services. Master's degree in a health-related field required. Three years' experience in the operation of a quality/risk management program for a health care organization and certifications in Healthcare Quality and Records Administration preferred. Available immediately. Contact: David Lawrance, 333-2711, lawrance@illinois.edu. Closing date: Oct. 9.
Natural History Survey, Illinois State. Technical assistant, Human Dimensions Program, Center for Wildlife Ecology. Bachelor's degree in natural resources, wildlife ecology or related field required. Computer experience with d-Base, SPSS, Excel or related programs also required. Available: Oct. 4. Contact: Sue Key, PFR 630, 244-5121. Closing date: Sept. 20.
Natural History Survey, Illinois State. Aquatic ecologist. Master's degree in zoology, aquatic ecology or related field required. Must be familiar with operation of research boats, microscopes, computer systems and software for data analysis. Experience working on large water bodies, safety and/or first aid training, SCUBA certification, familiarity with ID of aquatic organisms, desired. Salary: $29,000-$35,000. Available: November 1999-March 2000. Contact: Susan Key, 244-7790. Closing date: Sept. 30.
Social Work, School of. Visiting specialist in education, Child Welfare Education Partnership. Master's degree in social work or related field and experience in child welfare and training adult learners required. Available: immediately. Contact: Liz Fairchild, 333-2260. Closing date: Sept. 30.
Supercomputing Applications, National Center for. System engineer. Bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering or related field and training in the management and support of individual technologies such as UNIX system administration required; two years' relevant experience and experience with networked environments and a wide variety of software and hardware preferred. Must have skills and knowledge in one or more of the following areas: software development, computer system management, performance analysis and tuning, network architecture, and the ability to diagnose complex hardware/software component and interaction problems. Available: Sept. 27. Contact: NCSA Human Resources, 333-6085, career@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Closing date: Sept. 24.
staff
Personnel Services Office, 52 E. Gregory Drive, Champaign, conducts open and continuous testing for civil service classifications used on campus. More information is available by calling 333-2137. Or visit its Web site at: www.pso.uiuc.edu.
A report on honors, awards, offices and other outstanding achievments of faculty and staff members
engineering
Eric Michielssen, professor of electrical and computer engineering, was awarded the International Union of Radio Scientist's 1999 Koga Gold Medal for "contributions to computational electromagnetics, in particular the development of fast frequency and time domain integral equation analysis techniques and nature-driven synthesis methods." The Koga Gold Medal is awarded every three years to a researcher under the age of 35 for outstanding contributions to any of the branches of science covered by the Commissions of URSI.
fine and applied arts
Kathleen Conlin, dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts, has been elected to a three-year term as president of the National Association of Schools of Theatre, the national accrediting agency. She also has been elected to a two-year term as board member of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans.
During the summer she served as casting director for six productions at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. She also is directing for the festival, "The Lion in Winter," by James Goldman.
Conlin also has also been approved for membership in the Society of Staff Directors and Choreographers -- the professional theater directors union.
Lachlan Ferguson Blair and Louis B. Wetmore, professors emeritus of urban and regional planning, have been elected as fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. The recognition is granted to planners who have been a member of AICP and have achieved excellence in professional practice, teaching and mentoring, research, community service and leadership, and communication. This is the first year the designation is offered and it marks one of the highest honors the institute bestows on its members. As two of five Illinois members of the AICP College of Fellows, Blair and Wetmore will assist planners starting out in the profession, deliver presentations and workshops, and assist in the management of endowment and philanthropic programs.
liberal arts and sciences
Benita Katzenellenbogen, professor of molecular and integrative physiology and of cell and structural biology in the College of Medicine, is the 1999-2000 president-elect of the Endocrine Society. She formally began her duties during the society's annual meeting in June. The Endocrine Society is the world's oldest, largest and most active organization devoted to research on hormones and the clinical practice of endocrinology.
Katzenellenbogen's principal areas of scientific interest are reproductive endocrinology, the connection between hormones and cancer, and the molecular biology and physiology of estrogen and progesterone receptors.
A book by Louis Liebovich, research professor of communications research and professor of media studies and of journalism, has received honors for his book "The Press and the Modern Presidency: Myths and Mindsets From Kennedy to Clinton" (Praeger 1998). It was named one of the outstanding academic books of 1998 by Choice Magazine, a librarian's journal.
Yi Lu, professor of chemistry, was recognized with the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Each year, the foundation recognizes younger scholars in the United States for excellence in research and for outstanding performance as mentors and instructors. Lu earned this distinction for his work in structural characterization and engineering of metalloproteins and metalloribozymes.
Peter McCullough, professor of astronomy, has received a $309,612 Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation. The highly competitive program is a successor to the Presidential Young Investigator program and is targeted at young tenure-track faculty members.
Julian Palmore, professor of mathematics, was elected by the board of directors of the Military Operations Research Society to the position of vice president (professional affairs). He will remain editor of PHALANX, the Bulletin of Military Operations Research, a quarterly publication of MORS.
Andrea Press, professor of communications research and of speech communication and of women's studies, co-wrote "Speaking of Abortion: Television and Authority in the Lives of Women (University of Chicago, 1999). The other author is Elizabeth Cole, a professor of psychology and African American studies at Northeastern University.
Ralph S. Wolfe, professor emeritus of microbiology in the Center for Advanced Study, has been selected to receive the 1999 Procter & Gamble Award in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Wolfe is being honored for his groundbreaking work on how bacteria form methane. This research has provided the foundation for all investigations into specific ecosystems thriving without oxygen, and has been a foundation for subsequent investigations of anaerobic ecosystems and methanogenesis.
The American Concrete Institute has presented the 1998 Arthur R. Anderson Award to the Center for Advanced Cement-Based Materials (ACBM) for "noteworthy achievement in the materials science of concrete." ACBM is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, which is a consortium of the UI, Northwestern University, Purdue University, University of Michigan and the National Institute for Standards and Technology. UI faculty who are members of the center are James Kirkpatrick, professor of geology; Trudy Kriven, professor of materials science and engineering; David Lange and Leslie Struble, professors of civil and environmental engineering; Jennifer Lewis, professor of materials science and engineering and Beckman affiliate; Anthony McHugh, professor of chemical engineering; Francis Young, professor of civil and environmental engineering and associate director of ACBM; and Charles Zukoski, professor of chemical engineering and Beckman affiliate.
mckinley health center
Phillip Barkley, director of the McKinley Health Center, has been elected vice president of the American College Health Association. He assumed office on June 2 at the association's annual meeting in Philadelphia. Barkley previously served ACHA in many capacities, including as chair of the Clinical Medicine Section. He is past president of the Mid-Atlantic College Health Association. He was inducted as a ACHA fellow in 1998 and also served as a member-at-large on the ACHA Board of Directors. ACHA is a national nonprofit organization serving and representing the interests of professionals and students in health and higher education.
JOB: coin machine mechanic for campus housing for more than 23 years. He's the vending division's only full-time fix-it man.
WHAT DOES HE DO? He maintains 470 laundry machines, 26 snack machines, 18 bill changers and 5,000 telephones.
My basic day consists of two dozen service calls. They range from washers taking money but not washing, to snack machines that the products don't drop in. We replace phone jacks in student rooms. There are dryers that turn, but don't give any heat. We have electric, gas and steam dryers, so it's kind of challenging.
Herman Stanley Pryor, 73, died Aug. 25 at Provena Covenant Medical Center, Urbana. Pryor worked for the UI as an electrical engineering assistant for 20 years, retiring in 1991.
Constance Nicholas, 85, died Aug. 30 at the Champaign County Nursing Home, Urbana. Nicholas was an English instructor at the UI from 1951 to 1953.