PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 12, Dec. 15, 2005

brief notes

Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award
Nominations sought to recognize staff
The 22nd annual Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award Program is now accepting nominations. The program is designed to recognize outstanding contributions to the work of the university by staff members.

Up to eight support staff members will be honored this year with a plaque of appreciation, a $2,000 award and a recognition dinner in April. A permanent plaque in the Personnel Services Office commemorates recipients for each year.

Any member of the campus community may make nominations. Nomination materials and a program description may be obtained at the Personnel Services Office, or by calling 333-2137. Information also is on the Web. Nomination papers are due Jan. 3.

I space
Exhibition focuses on inmates’ inventions
After an extensive tour throughout Europe and the United States, the exhibition “Prisoners’ Inventions” will return to Chicago for a homecoming show through Jan. 28 at I space, the UI’s Chicago art gallery.

A collaboration between the Chicago-based group Temporary Services and Angelo, a prisoner incarcerated in California, the exhibition includes drawings, blueprints, a replica of Angelo’s cell and recreations of the prisoners’ inventions by Temporary Services members Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin and Marc Fischer. The group previously co-edited a book of Angelo’s writings and drawings.

Featured inventions include a number of innovative products fashioned from materials at hand and created to make prison life more tolerable. Inventions range from cooking appliances and cigarette lighters to chess sets, condoms and a tattoo gun.

Several events are planned at the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition. More information is at the I space Web site.

I space gallery, located at 230 W. Superior St., Chicago, is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Faculty/Student Senate
Seminar on Shared Governance is Jan. 23
The campus Senate Executive Committee is sponsoring a Seminar on Shared Governance, from 1 to 3 p.m. Jan. 23 on the third floor of the Levis Faculty Center.

Vernon Burton, committee chair and professor of sociology and a senior research scientist in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, will host the event. Guest speakers include individuals well-versed in academic governance from a variety of perspectives.

Recommended books for children
Annual book gift guide now available
Creatures ugly, endearing and dangerously curious, including a monster named “Bobo,” a legendary “She” sea spirit and a “Traction Man,” are among hundreds of protagonists book experts are recommending kids get to know this year, and they all appear in the 2005 edition of the “Guide Book to Gift Books.”
The annual annotated list of recommended books for children – from babies to 18-year-olds – can be purchased and downloaded for $3.50, payable by credit card.

Published to coincide with the winter gift-giving season, the 20-page guide is useful year-round, says Deborah Stevenson, editor of the Guide Book and of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books at the UI, which publishes the guide. The Center for Children’s Books (CCB) also is at Illinois.

The guide discusses more than 250 of the best recent titles. UI children’s literature experts, including Stevenson, compiled the guide based on their recent full book reviews.

“We make a point of being broadly representative in the Guide Book, so that all kinds of reading tastes are tempted,” Stevenson said. “While we’ve got plenty of imaginative fiction, nonfiction is well represented. I think it’s particularly important to include nonfiction because there are so many splendid, compelling, useful, quirky, entertaining books in that field these days, and I think it too often gets overlooked.”

Stevenson, who also is a professor of library science at Illinois, says she’ll never have just one favorite among those featured, however she concedes she’s “particularly fond” of Mini Grey’s “Traction Man” – “a very funny story in picture-book format for middle-graders, which features a boy’s action-hero toy whose fight against evil is hampered by having to wear a knitted green romper suit with matching bonnet – a gift from the boy’s Granny.”

Campus Recreation
Holiday open skate times announced
Campus Recreation will host several open skates with a holiday flair at the UI Ice Arena this month. Decorations, visits from Santa and lots of hot chocolate are only part of the holiday festivities.

Campus Rec Moonlight Skates are: 1:30 to 4 p.m. and 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Dec. 17 and 1:30 to 4 p.m. Dec. 18. Admission is free for UI students and Campus Rec members, with skate rental costing $1. General admission for nonmembers and the community is $4 for skaters under 13 and $5 for skaters 13 and older, with $2 skate rentals.

For more information call 333-2081.

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