PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 27, No. 14, Feb. 21, 2008

Brief Notes

‘One Book, One Campus’

‘Wicked’ author to speak Feb. 26

Gregory Maguire, author of “Wicked: The Life and Time of the Wicked Witch of the West,” will speak at 7 p.m. Feb. 26 in Foellinger Auditorium as part of the “One Book, One Campus” program sponsored by the Illini Union.

The program aims to provide a shared experience for the community through reading the same book and engaging in dialogue. Through lectures, book discussion groups and other activities, readers are able to learn about themselves while experiencing a unique sense of community.

Maguire received his Ph.D. in English and American literature from Tufts University. His work as a consultant in creative writing for children has taken him to speaking engagements across the United States and abroad. He is a founder and co-director of Children’s Literature New England Inc., a non-profit educational charity established in 1987. The author of numerous books for children, Maguire also is a contributor to “Am I Blue? Coming Out From the Silence,” a collection of short stories for gay and lesbian teenagers.

Maguire’s other works for adults include: “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister” (1999), “Lost” (2001), “Mirror, Mirror” (2003) and “Son of a Witch” (2005).

Research Symposium

Submit proposals by March 16

An undergraduate research symposium will showcase the best faculty-mentored research, scholarly and creative activity of UI students on April 29 at the Illini Union. Deans, directors and department heads are asked to encourage students and student-faculty teams to propose presentations, posters and installations.

The deadline for proposals is March 16. Details about the symposium and a link to the online proposal form are available at www.provost.uiuc.edu/committees/ugresearch.html.

Questions about the symposium may be directed to ugresearch-symposium@uiuc.edu.

At the request of the Office of the Provost, a committee led by Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, head of the department of kinesiology and community health, is surveying campus units about the range of mentored research, creative and other scholarly projects students are involved in. The report on the survey results should be completed by the end of the semester.

Center for Children’s Books

Gryphon Award winners announced

“Billy Tartle in Say Cheese!” has won the 2008 Gryphon Award for Children’s Literature. The book for readers ages 4 to 8 was written and illustrated by Michael Townsend, and is his debut as a children’s author.

The award, which includes a $1,000 prize, is given annually by the Center for Children’s Books at the UI. The center is a unit of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

The prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding English language work of fiction or non-fiction for which the primary audience is children in kindergarten through fourth grade. The title chosen best exemplifies “those qualities that successfully bridge the gap in difficulty between books for reading aloud to children and books for practiced readers,” said Christine Jenkins, director of the Center for Children’s Books and a GSLIS professor.

According to Jenkins, “Billy Tartle” (Knopf, July 2007) “is a compelling and humorous anti-boredom fantasy of the ultimate school picture day told in an exuberant graphic novel format.”

Two Gryphon “Honors” winners also were named: “Rufus the Scrub Does Not Wear a Tutu,” by Jamie McEwan, illustrated by John Margeson; and “Spiders,” written and illustrated by Nic Bishop.

“Taken together, these books represent a diversity of genres, styles and formats that will appeal to a broad range of young readers,” Jenkins said.

The Gryphon Award was established in 2004 as a way to focus attention on transitional reading – “an area of literature for youth that, despite its importance to the successful transition of children from new readers to independent lifelong readers – does not receive the critical recognition it deserves,” Jenkins said.

The award committee consists of members drawn from the youth services faculty of GSLIS, the editorial staff of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, local public and school librarians, and the library and education community at large.

To learn more about the award and previous winners go to http://ccb.lis.uiuc.edu/gryphon.html.

The award is sponsored by the Center for Children’s Books and funded by the Center for Children’s Books Outreach Endowment Fund. Income from the endowed fund supports outreach activities for the CCB in general and the Gryphon Award for children’s literature.

Office of Business and Financial Services

Survey to evaluate office’s performance

The Office of Business and Financial Services would like feedback and recommendations on the services it provides to faculty and staff members, students and departmental business units. The office’s Customer Satisfaction Initiative is intended to help meet the UI strategic planning goals by improving administrative services.

Through focus groups and surveys, the initiative’s project team is seeking input on its core services, including accounting and financial reporting, business travel and employee reimbursements, payroll and benefits, purchasing and strategic procurement, payments to vendors and students, student and general accounts receivable billing, cashier operations, and campus-based student loan processing. In addition, pre- and post-award administration of grants, contracts and sponsored-research programs will be included in the survey.

In the coming weeks, the office will send the electronic survey to a random sample of faculty and staff members and students to assess the level of satisfaction with administrative services as well as solicit ideas for improvement. Feedback is important for this initiative to succeed.

If you do not receive a survey but would like to provide feedback to OBFS, there is an anonymous feedback form on the CSI Web site: www.obfs.uillinois.edu/csi/. Contact Cathy Harney at charney@uillinois.edu with questions.

College of Engineering

Open house aimed at ‘Sparking Curiosity’

“Sparking Curiosity” is the theme of this year’s Engineering Open House. On March 7-8, visitors of all ages will converge on campus to see and experience the technological achievements of students in the College of Engineering. From high school- and college-level robotics competitions, to Rube Goldberg machines, to more than 190 student exhibits, there is a lot to see and do. This is the largest student-run event at the UI with more than 20,000 visitors each year. The open house is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 7 and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 8. For more information, visit eoh.ec.uiuc.edu or call 244-3828.

Library

Bronze tablets digitized, prints available

The 80 bronze tablets in the main library hallway, which hold the names of UI undergraduate students ranking in the top 3 percent of their graduating class, have been digitized. Future tablets also will be digitized, and the digitization of the 2007 tablet is in progress. The images are online at http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/bronze and the names on the tablets are fully searchable.

The Illini Union Bookstore will sell full-size prints of the tablets. An unframed print is $60; a framed version will be offered for sale soon. The library will receive about $25 from the sale of each print, which will support digitization work in the Library. There is a link from the digital collections page to the new Bronze Tablet print order page at the bookstore.

Survey Research Laboratory

Free seminars on research methods

The Survey Research Laboratory is offering four introductory seminars on survey research methodology this semester. The series is free to UI faculty and staff members and students but attendance for each seminar is limited and advance registration is required. All seminars are scheduled to meet from noon-1:30 p.m.:

•           “Sampling Rare Populations,” Feb. 27 in Room 196 Lincoln Hall.

•           “Questionnaire Design Clinic,” March 5 in 196 Lincoln Hall.

•           “Survey Data Analysis,” March 12 in 196 Lincoln Hall.

•           “Cross-Cultural Survey Measurement,” March 25 in 229 Natural History Building.

To register and for more information, go to www.srl.uic.edu/SEMINARS.htm.

National Writing Project

New writing network established at UI

The UI has received a grant from the National Writing Project to establish the University of Illinois Writing Project. Local teachers from all disciplines and at all levels of instruction are invited to apply to the 2008 Invitational Summer Institute. The application deadline is March 15.

The project is a professional development network of teachers of writing at all grade levels, primary through university, and in all subjects. The project aims to improve student achievement by improving the teaching of writing and improving learning in the nation’s schools and serves more than 100,000 teachers at about 200 sites.

In November 2007, the UI was named a new site of the project with the support of Champaign Unit 4, Urbana Unit 116, ROE SchoolWorks and the National Council of Teachers of English. It is one of three new sites in Illinois, along with Eastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University, joining existing sites at Illinois State University, UIC and National-Louis University.  

The project is a cross-college effort between the colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Center for Writing Studies and English) and of Education (curriculum and instruction). As part of the National Writing Project, the local project is currently recruiting the area’s strongest teachers who wish to learn about best practices for teaching writing, become more confident about their own writing, demonstrate effective classroom strategies and become part of a national community of professionals.

The first UIWP Invitational Summer Institute will be June 9 to July 3. More information about the UIWP and the Invitational Summer Institute is available at www.uiwp.uiuc.edu.

Office of Continuing Education

Workshop features Elluminate tool

The Office of Continuing Education will host a workshop showcasing its technological capabilities on Feb. 26 as part of the campus’s InnovationWeek effort.

The office provides leadership for lifelong learning and distance education and helps units design and present credit and noncredit programs to diverse audiences. Many different technologies are used to carry out this mission. For InnovationWeek, the office has chosen to feature a cutting-edge technology named Elluminate.

Elluminate is a synchronous tool designed for distance education and collaboration in academic situations. It provides a virtual classroom environment, in which students in different physical environments can interact in real-time without ever leaving their home or office.

Working with Elluminate allows the office to help units enhance learning opportunities for existing students, reach out to new students, and leverage limited teaching resources.

Using Elluminate can facilitate tutoring and mentoring, assist with event management, provide professional development opportunities for staff and faculty members, and more.

The Elluminate workshop is from 2 to 3 p.m. Feb. 26 at 508 S. Sixth St., Champaign. Contact Tony Suttle by Feb. 22 at 244-7722 or suttle1@uiuc.edu to attend. For more information about Elluminate, visit www.tec.uiuc.edu/iweek.

Ann F. Baum Elder Law Lecture

Guest lecturer discusses ‘Aging in Place’

The UI College of Law and the Elder Law Journal will host professor Jon Pynoos from the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California on March 3. Pynoos will deliver the 2008 Ann F. Baum Memorial Lecture on Elder Law at 12:30 p.m. in the Max L. Rowe Auditorium of the Law Building. A reception will be held following the lecture in the Peer and Sarah Pedersen Pavilion. The event is free and open to the public.

Pynoos will deliver the lecture, “Aging in Place, Housing, and the Law,” discussing the increasingly important aspect of public policy known as “Aging in Place” – the desire of older people to stay in their own housing and communities as long as possible.

“Aging in Place” is often hindered by housing which, in spite of legislation, remains inaccessible and unsupportive, pushing frail older people toward settings such as nursing homes. Pynoos argues that in order to make “Aging in Place” a reality, new policies are needed to modify existing housing, create housing based on principles of universal design, and provide a range of housing types in communities.

This lecture is named in honor of Ann F. Baum (1922-2005) and seeks to promote the discussion of a broad range of issues relating to the intersection of public policy, the law and the elderly.

Archaeological Institute of America

Spring lecture series begins Feb. 28

The Archaeological Institute of America is sponsoring a series of lectures this spring on campus. All lectures –  free and open to the public – begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Krannert Art Museum Auditorium.

Lectures:

• Feb. 28, John Senseney, UI professor of landscape architecture, “Hellenistic Architecture and Architectural Hellenization in Rome.”

• March 27, William Aylward, professor of classics, University of Wisconsin at Madison, “Rescue on the Euphrates: Results of Excavations at the Roman Frontier City of Zeugma.”

• April 9, John Papadopoulos, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California at Los Angeles, “Arthur Evans, the Palace of Minos at Knossos & the Dawn of European Civilization.”

The series also is sponsored by the department of the classics and Krannert Art Museum.

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