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PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 14, Feb. 2, 2006

brief notes

Second Sunday concert
Trio to perform Feb. 12
This month’s WILL-FM Second Sunday Concert will feature a performance by Trio du Soleil, three music faculty members at Arizona State University. The concert begins at 2 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion and will be broadcast on WILL-FM (90.9 /101.1 in Champaign-Urbana) at 7:06 p.m. March 5.

Pianist Robert Hamilton, violinist Danwin Jiang and cellist Thomas Landschoot will perform. Jiang, a former visiting faculty member at the UI School of Music, is a past Second Sunday Concert performer who has soloed with dozens of symphony and chamber orchestras across North America. Landschoot regularly performs as a soloist in recitals and concert halls across Europe, Japan and the United States. Hamilton has performed with the Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, National Symphony, Phoenix Symphony and St. Louis Symphony.

WILL-TV
President White discusses first year
UI President B. Joseph White joins WILL-TV’s John Paul in the WILL studios for “A Conversation With President B. Joseph White” at 8 p.m. Feb. 14.

The discussion, also including a UI student journalist, will focus on White’s first-year challenges and successes as president.

College of Fine and Applied Arts
Dance and lecture program is Feb. 2-4
The UI department of dance will help celebrate the College of Fine and Applied Arts’ 75th anniversary year with a dance and lecture program Feb. 2-4 that pays tribute to the work of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham.

The Festival Dance 2006 concerts, set for 7:30 each night in Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’ Colwell Playhouse, will feature a Cunningham “MinEvent” – a shorter version of the chorographer’s “Event” collage of excerpts from his repertory. Former Cunningham dancer Banu Ogan has staged the pieces on the program, from dances choreographed between 1953 and1983.

“Cunningham’s affiliation with the UI at Urbana-Champaign dates from 1959 when he agreed to join the dance program for a four-month guest artist residency – the first of its kind in a university setting,” said Sara Hook, interim head of the department.

The festival program, which is dedicated to former FAA dean Kathleen F. Conlin in honor of her leadership of the college from 1996-2005, also will feature new works by faculty choreographers Linda Lehovec, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Cynthia Oliver and Renée Wadleigh.

In addition, the celebration of the dance department’s relationship with Cunningham will include talks by Roger Copeland, professor of theater and dance at Oberlin College. Copeland, author of the recently published book “Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance,” will host a “Talk Back” session following the Feb. 2 festival dance concert. He’ll also discuss his book at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 3 in a free, pre-performance Lorado Taft Lecture in the Tryon Festival Theatre foyer, and will do a book signing following the performance.

Music Library
CDs and DVDs available for check out
Effective immediately, anyone with a valid borrower ID can check out CDs and DVDs from the Music Library for up to one week. Previously, these items were only loaned to music graduate assistants, teaching assistants and faculty members. This service will be offered on a one-semester trial basis and be extended if it is successful. For more information, contact the Music Library at 334-4070.

WILL-TV
Republican gubernatorial forum is Feb. 10
WILL-TV will host a forum for the five Republican Illinois gubernatorial candidates at 8 p.m. Feb. 10. WILL-TV’s John Paul will moderate with Jak Tichenor of WSIU-TV and Rick Pearson of the Chicago Tribune’s statehouse bureau will question the candidates. WILL-AM (580) will broadcast the forum live.

Public television stations statewide will broadcast the hour-long forum, one of a few televised joint appearances by the candidates before the March 21 primary.

WILL-TV is working to set up a forum for the Democratic candidates for governor later this month.

Republican candidates are Bill Brady, Ron Gidwitz, Andy Martin, Jim Oberweis and Judy Baar Topinka. Democrats are incumbent Rod Blagojevich and Edwin Eisendrath.

Provost/Center for Teaching Excellence
Annual faculty retreat to be Feb. 10
The Annual Faculty Retreat on Active Learning will be Feb. 10 in Illini Union rooms A and B. The event brings faculty members from across campus together to learn about and discuss best practices in teaching at the college level.

The keynote speaker will be Ken Bain, founding director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at New York University, author of “What the Best College Teachers Do,” and winner of the Virginia and Warren Stone Prize, an annual award by Harvard University Press for Outstanding Book on Education and Society. Bain’s research is a 15-year study of the thinking and practices of highly successful educators across disciplines. He found that these educators know how to engage, challenge and promote deep and sustained learning in their students. More important, they possess a special way in which they comprehend the subject and value human learning. Bain has won national awards and recognition for his teaching and research.

After Bain’s talk, there will be concurrent sessions featuring UI faculty members sharing practices from their own classrooms. During lunch a poster session will highlight the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research projects of faculty members and graduate students.

The retreat will begin with a welcome by Interim Provost Jesse Delia, who will present the 2005-06 Distinguished Teacher/Scholars to Cleora J. D’Arcy, crop sciences, and Gail E. Hawisher, Center for Writing Studies/English. Faculty members can register at www.conferences.uiuc.edu/facultyretreat.

Department of food science and human nutrition

Spice Box offers international cuisine
For the next four months, area diners will be able to experience Mediterranean, African, French and Colonial-American food at the Spice Box restaurant located in Bevier Hall.

Students in the food science and human nutrition hospitality management program are gearing up for another semester of Management of Fine Dining (FSHN 443). Students in the class each take a turn providing a fine dining experience in the Spice Box, including a theme and a guest chef.

“These meals allow our students to showcase their skills and coordinate the general operations of the meals, simulating situations that are likely to occur in the professional world,” said Jill North, Spice Box manager and teacher of the course.

Information on the meals, scheduled on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the meal themes and guest chefs is available on the department of food science and human nutrition Web site at www.fshn.uiuc.edu. Interested persons also can be placed on an e-mail list by e-mailing jnorth@uiuc.edu.

Each evening offers either a four-course meal, including salad, appetizer, entrée and dessert, or a special salad and pasta/casserole combination. A specialty alcoholic beverage also is offered. Price varies according to menu. The meals are available by reservation only. Reservations are available at 5:30, 6, 7, and 7:30 p.m.

To reserve seating, call 333-6520.

Illinois Department of Transportation
Design contest to showcase interstate
As part of a statewide effort to recognize and celebrate 50 years of the Eisenhower Interstate System in Illinois, the Illinois Department of Transportation is sponsoring a design competition for a mobile installation to be housed in an Airstream 28 travel trailer.

The competition is open to all UI students, faculty and staff members, and the winning concept will be awarded $1,000. Four honorable mentions will be awarded $500 each. The competition is organized and judged by faculty members of the department of civil and environmental engineering, the School of Art and Design and Krannert Art Museum.

In celebration of the anniversary, a re-enactment of the 1919 convoy of 81 military vehicles will cross the country from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. The original convoy took 62 days, and convinced Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower that an improved highway system was needed, a system that would come to fruition when he was elected President.

The state of Illinois will host the re-enactment convoy on June 26 in Chicago. In preparation for the event, the Illinois Department of Transportation has commissioned the UI to design and build a mobile installation that will be on display in Chicago, and a subsequent public tour across the state of Illinois.

Entries must be designed by UI students, faculty or staff members. Designs must be submitted to David A. Lange, 1116 Newmark Lab, MC-250, by Feb. 24. E-mail direct questions to dlange@uiuc.edu. For more information, visit www.engr.uiuc.edu/news.

Celebrating American Indian heritage
Concert, workshop are Feb. 11
The Spurlock Museum will host its annual “Winter Tales” celebration of American Indian heritage. At 2 p.m. Feb. 11, the museum will host a concert by storyteller Dovie Thomason of the Kiowa Apache and Lakota nations. Thomason, an award-winning storyteller, author and teacher, has been a featured performer at the grand opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, the Kennedy Center and the National Storytelling Festival. Admission to the concert is $5 and tickets are required. For tickets, contact the museum at 333-2360.

The museum also will host a storytelling workshop by Thomason the morning of the concert from 9 a.m. to noon. “Exploring the Landscape of Stories – Your Voice & Your Vision” will be inside the museum’s Learning Center. The cost of the workshop is $30 and pre-registration is required. For more information on the workshop or for a registration brochure, call Kim Sheahan at 244-3355.

UI Library workshops
How to use library catalog and RefWorks
The UI Library will be offering workshops on how to use the library catalog and Refworks, a citation management software program.
Familiarity with the library catalog is necessary for successful research and coursework at UI. The workshop, open to students, and faculty and staff members, will demonstrate some of the basic and advanced techniques that can be used to search the catalog.

The “Library Catalog Workshops” will be in room 291 of the Undergraduate Library: 11 a.m. to noon, Feb. 1; 4 to 5 p.m., Feb. 8; 3 to 4 p.m., Feb. 9; noon to 1 p.m., Feb. 14; 1 to 2 p.m., Feb. 23; and 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., Feb. 28.

There also will be workshops on how to use RefWorks. This workshop will cover how to access RefWorks, import references from library databases and create bibliographies according to various citation styles.

The “Basic RefWorks Workshops” will be in room 291 of the Undergraduate Library: 1:30 to 3 p.m., Feb. 7; 1:30 to 3 p.m., Feb. 8; 3 to 4:30 p.m., Feb. 15; noon to 1:30 p.m., Feb. 21; 2 to 3:30 p.m., Feb. 22; 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., March 2; 1 to 2:30 p.m., March 15; 3 to 4:30 p.m., March 28; and 2 to 3:30 p.m., April 4.

Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra

Winter music festival begins Feb. 11
The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra and music director Steven Larsen present a new winter music festival featuring three unique concert experiences.

The first concert, “Reach for the Stars,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11 in the Foellinger Great Hall, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The Champaign-Urbana Symphony will perform some of the most distinctive musical pieces ever composed about the planets. In a special pre-concert discussion, UI professor emeritus of astronomy James B. Kaler will take the audience on a cosmic adventure with scientific explanations of the celestial bodies from which composers derived their grandest themes.

“Star Struck Strings” is at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Feb. 12 at Parkland College’s Staerkel Planetarium. The Bow-Dacious String Band, a group of student musicians led by violinist Robin Kearton, will perform a variety of popular musical selections as David Leake, coordinator of Staerkel Planetarium, leads a family-friendly tour of the night sky.

The Champaign-Urbana Symphony will perform again at “Out of this World: The Family Concert” at 3 p.m. Feb. 19 in the Foellinger Great Hall at Krannert Center. Kaler will lead an educational slide show voyage into outer space as Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” spotlights seven of the planets in the solar system. A complimentary education booklet will be provided for children.

The Department of Children and Family Services
Care-package program needs volunteers
Roberta Valdes, the program director of the Department of Children and Family Services’ Care Package Program for Youth, is seeking volunteers to support DCFS wards and former wards attending UI this semester. About 650 students, who are just out of foster-care or group-home living, are attending college in Illinois this year.

The Care Package Program offers the students personal contact and encouragement each month to help them through their school year. This assistance has a powerful impact on the students, and for some, results in lifelong support and extended family relationships.
Volunteers are needed to commit to ongoing contact with a UI student through sending care packages, exchanging e-mails and making phone calls. By matching students with academic and university professionals at the school they are attending, each student has an advocate and mentor within reach. Students can be matched one on one or be matched with a team of people from the same academic department or office on campus.

For more information or to volunteer, contact Valdes at 312-814-5013 or rvaldes@idcfs.state.il.us.

WILL-TV
‘Prairie Fire’ season begins Feb. 2
They’re loud. They’re fast. And they make leaping over a pile of cars look easy. Monster trucks have brought national fame to Champaign-Urbana’s Mark Hall, three-time driver of the year and four-time winner of the monster truck nationals.

WILL-TV’s “Prairie Fire” begins its 2006 season at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 2, with a look at Hall’s monster truck racing team, a visit with Revolutionary War re-enactors at Lake Shelbyville and a feature on the Lawn Rangers lawn mower precision drill team.

Hall and his crew chief, his brother Tim Hall, tell viewers how monster trucks are built, and take them on a tour of the semi-trailers that haul their trucks and act as a base of operations on the road. Host Alison Davis Wood follows Mark as he comes home with his truck Raminator to compete at the Champaign County Fair, where he duels it out with Bigfoot.

Next, participants in the Lake Shelbyville Muskets and Drums Muster talk about why they leave their ordinary lives to adopt the characters of people who lived during the Revolutionary War. And members of the Lawn Rangers explain the drill team’s history and traditions, while demonstrating their skill with mowers and brooms at the Arcola Broom Corn Festival.

On Feb. 9, UI journalism student Abby Rhodes takes viewers along on her trip to Peru with other journalism students to learn what it’s like to be an international reporter. The show also looks at Pesotum farmer Eric Rund who connects farmers from North and South America, and visits Kenny Davis of Decatur, who entertains friends and family with his small-scale train layout in his back yard.

Other stories in this year’s eight-episode season include the Virginia Theatre, Flesor’s Candy Kitchen, the Cajun Connection Restaurant in Utica and the Champaign County Historical Museum.
For more information about each episode, visit www.will.uiuc.edu.

Physics and astronomy

Free Saturday lectures offered
The university once again brings physics and astronomy to the community with the continuation of the Saturday Honors Program in Astrophysics. All lectures are free and prior knowledge of physics, astronomy or computing is not necessary.

Lectures last approximately one hour and are followed by a question-and-answer session. All start at 10:45 a.m. in Room 141 of the Loomis Laboratory of Physics. Light refreshments will be served starting at 10:15 a.m. outside the lecture theater in Loomis Laboratory.
The next lecture, “Cosmology and Active Galactic Nuclei,” is on Feb. 11. Robert Brunner, professor of astronomy, will speak. A tour of various facilities of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the Beckman Institute will start at 1 p.m. On Feb. 25, the lecture, featuring Leslie Looney of astronomy, will be “Examining the Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Are We Alone?”
The program is sponsored by the department of astronomy, the department of physics and NCSA. For more information, call 333-0759 or visit www.physics.uiuc.edu/outreach/CTAhonors/index.html.

‘A Wake-Up Call for Mid-America?’

Forum to look at earthquakes
Should the October earthquake in Pakistan, and the widespread devastation it caused, raise concerns in the central United States?

A panel of experts will consider “The Pakistan Earthquake: A Wake-Up Call for Mid-America?” in a public forum at 4 p.m. Feb. 15 at the UI.

The forum, sponsored by the university’s Center for Advanced Study as part of its “Initiative on Megacatastrophes,” will be on the third floor of the Levis Faculty Center.

Panelists will discuss aspects of the science, policy and human behavior connected with earthquakes, looking at where they occur, the damage they can cause, how to prepare for them and how to respond after they occur. As part of that, the discussion will deal with the threat posed to a half-dozen states by the New Madrid seismic zone centered near the southern tip of Illinois.

The event is free and will include time for public discussion prompted by questions from the audience.

Scheduled to participate on the panel from the UI are Susan Kieffer, geology, serving as moderator; Irfan Ahmad, Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology; Robert Bauer, Illinois State Geological Survey; Max Edelson, history; Amy Gajda, journalism and law; Jerome Hajjar, Mid-America Earthquake Center; and Rob Olshansky, urban and regional planning.

For more information about this and other CAS events, check the center’s Web site at www.cas.uiuc.edu.

I space
Creative architectural projects featured
Innovative architectural projects will be featured in two new exhibitions on view Feb. 3-25 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the UI’s Urbana-Champaign campus.

  • “ACSA Award Winning Projects: 2000-2005 School of Architecture” features nine projects by nine current and former UI students. Illinois architecture professor and exhibition curator Kevin Hinders said the projects all received awards in competitions co-sponsored by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and other groups representing various construction-materials industries.
    The projects range from designs for an airport, museum and performing-arts center to designs for the city of Sedona, Ariz. Exhibiting designers are Matthew Booma, Renae Brossman, Nathan Charris, Man Chun Chan, Xuemei Li, J.C. Nelson, Elizabeth Ordner, Daekwon Park and James Seo. Faculty sponsors for the projects included Hinders and Osman Ataman, Kurt Baumgartner, Robert Dermody and Robert Mooney.
  • “Chicago Architectural Club Members Exhibition” is an annual show exploring Chicago architecture through a review of members’ current work. The exhibition includes sketches, drawings and photographs.

An opening reception is scheduled from 6-8 p.m. Feb. 3 at the gallery, 230 W. Superior St., Chicago. I space gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

‘Criminal Trafficking and Slavery’

‘Dark side of global migration’ examined
Scholars from throughout the United States will assemble at the UI Feb. 23-25 to address this year’s Joint Area Centers Symposium on “Criminal Trafficking and Slavery: The Dark Side of Regional and Global Migration.”

The conference, free and open to the public, will focus on the scope of criminal trafficking and slavery – also known as T/S – and identify ways to eliminate or limit these growing criminal practices. Papers also will assess whether prevailing American and international efforts are sufficient to cope with T/S and to assist victims around the world.

Organized by the Center for Global Studies, the symposium takes place mainly in the Heritage Room, Isaac Funk Family Library for Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. Co-sponsors include International Programs and Studies and its cooperating regional and global centers; IPS’s Illinois International High School Initiative; and the College of Education.

A keynote talk presented by Susan Forbes Martin, executive director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, kicks off the event at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 23 at the Levis Faculty Center. The talk is co-sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study/MillerComm.

The program continues the next day, beginning at 8:45 a.m. with a welcome by Charles Stewart, interim associate provost for international affairs. Panel discussions are scheduled throughout the day, until 5 p.m., then resume at 9 a.m. on Feb. 25 and continue through 12:15 p.m.

Following the conference’s formal conclusion, a teacher’s workshop, geared toward K-16 teachers, and a youth forum are scheduled to take place from 1:30-4:50 p.m.

“T/S is a 21st century form of slavery – morally corrupt and illegal practices which exploit the underprivileged, who flow, often coerced by unscrupulous criminals, from poorer to more affluent nations,” said CGS director and conference coordinator Edward Kolodziej. Most of the victims of T/S, he noted, are women and children.

“Efforts to eradicate this blight appear to be losing ground to criminal elements,” Kolodziej said. “The latter profit from, and propagate the expansion of, what amounts to a globally dispersed system of exploitation with differential impact – all pernicious and heinous – across nations and regions.

“These complex, webbed systems of global crime violate fundamental human rights; threaten the security and welfare of national and international civil societies; and undermine the authority and capacity of national governments to protect their populations.”

Earlier this year, President Bush signed legislation authorizing increased funding for state and local law enforcement efforts directed at investigating and prosecuting traffickers, and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed similar legislation in 2005.

However, Kolodziej said, more academic attention needs to be focused on the issue.

“While the U.S. government and various intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations are now focusing on combating human trafficking,” he said, “the academy, particularly its major research universities, has not kept pace with the growth of T/S.”

To that end, he said, the conference aims to:

  • advance knowledge about the underlying causes of T/S;
  • evaluate current local, regional and global efforts – governmental and private – to eradicate or limit their spread;
  • identify cross-national strategies for strengthening law enforcement to cope with T/S; and
  • put a human face on T/S by assessing the scope of such exploitation and the adequacy and capacity of programs for addressing the physical and psychological needs of victims.

More information about the symposium – including a detailed program schedule – is available at www.cgs.uiuc.edu/resources/jacs/index.html.

Friday Forum and Know Your University

Lecture series topics announced
Topics have been announced for the University YMCA’s Friday Forum and Know Your University lecture series.

“Democracy at Risk” is the theme for the Spring 2006 Friday Forum lecture series. The series of talks run from 12:10 – 12:55 on Fridays during the semester at the University YMCA.

William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, will kick off the series with a lecture titled “Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights” on Feb. 3.

Also this month, Jonathan Allen, assistant professor of political science at the UI’s Urbana campus, will discuss “Democracy Human Rights, and Torture,” on Feb. 17.

The Spring 2006 Know Your University series will kick off on Feb. 7 with a talk on the new Civic Leadership Program at the UI’s Urbana campus by Jim Nowlan, program director. The KYU events begin at 12:05 on Tuesdays in Latzer Hall, University YMCA.

The series will include a performance and discussion of vocal music education by tenor/pianist Barrington Coleman, associate professor of voice and director of the Varsity Men’s Glee Club, on Feb. 14; and a lecture, “The University of Illinois: A Bright Future,” by UI President B. Joseph White on Feb. 21.

The full schedules for both lecture series are available on the Web at www.universityymca.org. The events are free and open to the public. Lunch is available through the Y Thai Eatery, but individual meals must be reserved at least a day in advance by calling 337-1500.

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