U of I graduate instructors go on strike

Officials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say classes are continuing after graduate instructors went on strike.

The strike hasn’t been felt at the U of I Springfield because graduate assistants are handled differently at each campus.

“We do not have any graduate assistants not showing up for work today,” said Leslie DeFrates, assistant to the vice chancellor for graduate education and research at UIS. “We don’t use graduate assistants as instructors of record,” she said. “We do have teaching assistants, but they assist professors in areas such as tutoring and grading papers.”

DeFrates' comments were featured in an November 16, 2009 article in the State Journal-Register.

Download a PDF of the article:
20091116-SJR-U-of-I-graduate-instru.pdf

Oldfield is author of study on socioeconomic status and admission decisions

An article in the July 10, 2008, Daily Texan reported on a study conducted by Kenneth Oldfield, UIS professor emeritus of Public Administration.

Oldfield found that while schools are federally mandated to evaluate applicants to graduate programs based on race and ethnicity, few institutions also consider an applicant's economic status.

Download a pdf file of the article

20080710-DT-StudyonSocioeconomicStatus.pdf

UIS ranks high in survey of online degrees

UIS' departments of Computer Science and Management Information Systems are among the top online master's degree programs in the nation, according to a new survey completed by GetEducated.com.

A news release issued by PR Web on May 29, 2008, presents the results of the survey.

Download a pdf file of the release

20080529-PRW-BestOnlineDegrees.pdf