Computer Science grad student wins 2nd in international contest

By Courtney Westlake



Tejesh Morla, a graduate student in Computer Science, recently won second place in the General Students category of the MySQL and GlassFish Contest sponsored by SUN MicroSystems. The contest challenged participants to create a web application using MySQL and Glassfish along with Java, Morla said.

"It's a global contest; anyone can participate," he said. "I found out about it because of an email sent by Dr. Ted Mims (computer science department chair)."

Morla's winning project was a basic web application that responds to customers' needs to register on a site to place and view orders, as well as administrators' needs to view and list all registered customers. He then created an in-depth blog entry that detailed the steps he took to develop his application and how he used MySQL and GlassFish in the process.

Morla says the project took a lot of time and research.

"It was a tough task," he said. "At one point, I thought I would never make it. I had problem where mySQL stuff was not syncing with the Java."

The contest began on September 2, and October 22 was the deadline to submit a project, Morla said. He found out he won 2nd place while he was on Thanksgiving break vacationing in Las Vegas.

"One of my friends always says there should be something in your resume which would tell the difference from others, so I thought I should participate in that to get some experience," he said. "I am very excited and can't believe that I happened to win."

Professor finds expression through poetry

By Courtney Westlake



While writing may not be the most lucrative of careers, Dr. Nancy Genevieve Perkins, associate professor of English, has found that writers, and especially poets, are constantly aware of what is going on around them, what is going on inside of them and are able to record it, which is a unique and interesting way of life.

“I don’t know how many of us will make a living at it, but it is a great life,” Perkins said. “Poetry I like because it distills and intensifies the emotions. One of the reasons we write is to explore both what we know and what others know and to try to come to the truth of the moment. I like exploring the terrains of the spirit and terrains of the outer world. I like the distillation and the intensity of poetry."

Perkins has written for as long as she can remember. In fact, she still has a copy of a book from her childhood that contains the scribbles of the words she used to “write” and then she would “read” her stories to her mother.

“There is not a time in my life when my family can remember me not writing,” she said. “As I grew up, I found genres - creative non-fiction, poetry and fiction. I choose a genre by what I have to say; I like to have a grab-bag of genres.”

Perkins began her undergraduate studies at the University of Kentucky before moving to Illinois to finish her bachelor degree at Illinois State University. She also earned her master’s and doctorate degrees at ISU and earned a Specialist in College Teaching from Murray State University in western Kentucky. While teaching English and directing the Writing Center at Eureka College, Perkins heard about a “wonderful job that would just be in creative writing and children’s literature” at UIS, she said, and started here in 2000.

“There are a lot of things to like about UIS,” she mused. “In the English department, we’ve had the online degree program, the Capital Scholars program and now there is a shift to having freshmen, which I adore. I like the energy of all of that.”

Perkins is teaching a class this fall in fiction writing, a graduate seminar in fiction writing and an online course in children’s literature.

“In my online children's lit class, I have students in Tokyo, Sweden and an island off Galveston - I have students literally all over the country, so that class is a great deal of fun,” she said. “I’m also teaching fiction writing, which is splendid. It’s compiled of people who have never written fiction before and those who are graduate students who have written a lot.”

Perkins will be taking a sabbatical during the spring semester to complete the third book in her poetry trilogy about NYX, the primal Greek goddess Night. Each of the three books focuses on a specific aspect of the goddess’ being. The first book, called NYX: Mother of Light, is about the “joys of being alive and celebrating the fact that we’re human, and it’s full of resolution,” and the second book, NYX: Daughter of Chaos, is full of poems of “things not resolved,” Perkins said.

The third book of the trilogy is called NYX: Sister of Erebus and speaks about the journey that Perkins has gone through recently with her mother who had Alzheimer's disease. Erebus is the mythological region of darkness where souls must journey from this world on their way to the underworld.

“I’ve been working on this book since 2001, and my mother passed away a year ago in September,” Perkins said. “I want to take and shape the poems I have into the stages of Alzheimer’s so people can know they’re not alone if they must also make this journey.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Perkins is also continuing to work on a project she laughingly calls her “life project”: a book on the early settlers of Woodford County, Illinois, which is about 90 percent complete, she noted.

Though Perkins is so busy that she is barely finding enough time to submit her poetry for publication and readings, she is still doing her best to make time for what she loves. She has been invited to be the featured poet in three different states, and she feels honored at the opportunities.

“It feels really nice that people are inviting me to be a featured poet and that people are giving me feedback about my poetry, saying ‘I like that, I understand it, and it’s what I’m going through right now’,” she said. “I’m doing all the things I like to do; it’s great."

To listen to Perkins read two of her recent poems, watch the video below:

English course inspires play-writing for Illinois Issues editor

By Courtney Westlake

It was at an alumni event several years ago when Beverley Scobell, projects editor for Illinois Issues magazine, first heard the story of New Philadelphia, a community that was established in Pike County by a free black man in 1836.

“I was captivated by the story; I couldn't believe I had lived this long in the state and not heard it,” Scobell said. “I pitched it as an idea for the magazine about the archaeology being done there.”

Then, after reading the book about the community, called “Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier” by Juliet E.K. Walker, and taking an English class at UIS, Scobell decided to turn out a new form of writing to express her thoughts about the subject: play-writing.

“I thought it was such a story of courage, that it was an incredible love story of a man who so wanted not only his own freedom but also the freedom of his entire family,” she said. “He came to an Illinois frontier not particularly welcoming to African-Americans and established this town. It became a multi-racial town. It apparently was a town where people of all different kinds of backgrounds got along.”

Scobell took a course taught by Dr. Marcellus Leonard, who is now the director of First-Year Programs at UIS. While in the class, she wrote her play about the Springfield Race Riots and New Philadelphia, a story which is not historical but is based on fact, she said. Scobell's play is from the point of view of the “spiritual descendants” of New Philadelphia, families of different races who are caught up in the violence of the Race Riots. A character, Aunt Lucy Ann, the family storyteller, tries to calm the children with the story of New Philadelphia, a place “where character was more important than skin color,” Scobell said.

“I thought the play might be a way to introduce schoolchildren to a part of Illinois history,” she said. “The story I was trying to tell was of New Philadelphia, but the technique I was using was the 1908 riots. Until recently, these two events in our past have not been well-known.”

Leonard recognized the timeliness of the play, Scobell said, and suggested that the UIS TV station produce it as readers’ theatre. Over the summer, volunteers dedicated their time to work on it, and it was filmed a couple of months ago. It will be aired in the near future.

“Characters kept talking to me, and I would go to work on it and find a new name,” Scobell said. “As everybody tells me, I have way too many characters, and it jumps around to different time periods, so it is a director's challenge, if not nightmare.”

Scobell said she is nervous about seeing her new story acted out but is looking forward to seeing the finished product.

“This is a totally new process for me. The kind of writing I do at Illinois Issues is reporting, putting facts together, but I hadn't really done anything creative,” she said. “It's one thing to write it on your computer at home, but another thing to have people read it and speak the lines. It’s exciting.”

Professor fosters education of Latino and immigrant issues

By Courtney Westlake

photo

Before Dr. Hinda Seif returned to grad school, she spent a number of years doing social justice work, and much of this work involved working with immigrant families. She was so interested in their stories, she became motivated to record those stories and learn more about “the context for how immigrants ended up coming to the United States,” she said.

That experience led Seif to pursue a doctorate from the University of California-Davis in anthropology with a focus on immigration issues. After receiving her Ph.D., she spent a year at the U.S.-Mexico border thinking through international migration issues with scholars from many other countries as a fellow at the University of California San Diego’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, and she also worked on immigrant students and college access at University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Latino Policy Research.

Now going into her second year teaching at UIS, Seif believes the university is an ideal fit.

“When I interviewed here, I was so impressed by the camaraderie. I loved the fact that we are a public university with small classes where I really get to know students that I’m working with,” Seif said. “A big draw was the location in the state capital because I’m interested in learning about and researching Latino and immigrant politics. Illinois is a state where Latinos and immigrants are having more and more impact on state politics, so it seemed perfect for me to be at UIS.”

This fall semester, Seif will be teaching courses in the sociology and anthropology curriculum and also the women’s studies curriculum. She teaches courses on cultural diversity in the U.S. as well as Women, Gender and Society, which is a core course for the Women’s Studies minor.

And a new course, which she first developed during the spring semester, fulfills the Comparative Societies requirement and is called “Women and Gender in Mexico and the U.S.”

“I think it is a unique course because this comparative societies requirement challenges us as professors to think about some of our favorite topics in this comparative fashion,” Seif said. “Usually when people teach about gender and women in this country, we focus on the United States or an entirely different country. Actually comparing the lives of women and gender roles in the two countries is a really interesting challenge.”

“I think it helps students think through not only what their lives are like as gendered individuals, but how they might have been different if they grew up in another country like Mexico,” she added.

The Latino population, which is the largest minority group in the United States, makes up about 14 percent of the population in Illinois and about 25 percent of the population in Chicago, Seif said. She is excited about diversity issues and is looking forward to continuing to help students think about different communities across the state, the country, and the world and broaden their horizons.

Seif is also joining with other campus faculty to welcome Latino students to our campus. Starting fall 2008, she is the faculty adviser for the campus student organization OLAS, or the Organization of Latin American Students.

“In fields that range from business to education to social work, employers are looking for students who are sensitive to diversity and can operate in a global economy,” she said. “I'm looking forward to learning with my students about diverse Latino communities in Illinois, like the one in Beardstown.”

Director of first-year programs passes on love of learning

By Courtney Westlake

video

photo

In 1981, at the age of 41, Dr. Marcellus Leonard was working in retail and found himself out of a job.

He decided to take a college course in creative writing with no plan to obtain a degree. Eight years later, he walked out of Illinois State University with a Ph.D. in the teaching of writing.

“I discovered not only that I was a pretty good student but also that I loved writing and was pretty good at teaching others how to write,” Leonard said. “I decided to take maybe a course at the graduate level and found it came easily so I got a master's as well. I went to the doctoral program at ISU and found that I loved it even more.”

With a Ph.D. in hand, Leonard moved to Springfield to begin a new career with Sangamon State University 19 years ago and eventually became the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at UIS.

Before returning to college, Leonard said he didn’t quite grasp what it meant to “be an intellectual.” But learning about himself, gaining knowledge in his studies and communicating to others how to write raised his self-confidence, and he wanted to share that with other young adults.

“The CTL fits my plan very well,” he said. “Here we help people; we challenge students to do better in writing, math, chemistry, study skills, time management and more.”

The center holds academic sessions when students can come to practice what is taught in their classes, Leonard said.

Building off of several introductory classes in English, chemistry and biology, students come to the CTL after they have gone to class, and a graduate assistant who sat in on the same class with the same instructor holds a session in that course. Students are able to review homework, discuss aspects of the class they find challenging and ask questions.

The center also offers one-on-one tutoring with graduate assistants, student tutors or even the CTL staff. Leonard, a poet and author himself, has a passion for helping students to gain writing skills and appreciate the art of writing.

“I’ve always enjoyed helping people to put their writing together,” he said. “I personally write essays, poetry, nonfiction. I’m very much in love with words and painting with words and helping students to paint with words. I try to get them to see that writing is less of a chore and assignment and more of an expression of self.”

Helping students to explore and learn to enjoy writing, math and other academic skills is just one way the Center for Teaching and Learning welcomes and mentors students. The department, filled with comfortable couches and study areas, also serves soups and stews and other snacks occasionally during study sessions that are held throughout the year.

“I think it's a wonderful program we have here,” Leonard said. “From every center that I have visited, including my own alma mater of Illinois State, they can't touch us. This is all in the interest of creating the home and hearth hospitality that will tell students that you are welcome here, and we will nurture and help you if you want to help yourself."

In keeping with the hospitality and welcoming atmosphere of UIS, Leonard will be taking on a new role at the university as the director of first-year programs starting this fall. As the director, he will be working with various offices around campus such as the Diversity Center, Disability Services, Counseling Center and more.

“We want first-year students to be successful at every level,” Leonard said. “We have programs that are designed to help students be successful and I have been fortunate enough to be the person selected to help coordinate this effort. It’s an honor to be part of this effort at the University of Illinois at Springfield.”

Professor spurs academic examination of Bob Dylan

By Courtney Westlake

video

College English classes typically focus on works by Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and other well-known artists and writers. But Bob Dylan?

Dr. Bill Carpenter, assistant professor of English at UIS, created a summer English course focused on the works and lyrics of Bob Dylan, called “Bob Dylan’s America,” that was first offered in the summer 2007 and is being offered again this summer as part of the ECCE requirements.

The class came about because, Carpenter said, he had an idea about putting Bob Dylan in the center of a study about American communities and looking in depth at the way in which Dylan interacted with different communities. He wanted to give students insight to a cultural icon they may not have “immediate access” to.

"This is a class I always wanted to teach," he said. "I always thought it'd be really fascinating to get people talking about Bob Dylan the same way we talk about T.S. Eliot or Dante or Shakespeare. Plus I'm a big Dylan fan and really curious about the effects he's had on American culture and the way in which American culture perceives him."

Carpenter, who created the first-year writing curriculum when he first came to UIS a couple of years ago, said he truly enjoys this unique course and the students it brings into his class.

“The students come from all over and have different levels of experience,” he said. “Some have never listened to him, but some are big fans, so it's nice to bring them all together and have those different ranges of knowledge work together.”

The course’s main focus is to study the connection between Dylan and groups such as civil rights activists, the folk revival, Evangelical Christians and the Millennial Generation. There are a couple of goals for the course as well, Carpenter said.

“I want to have the students work together to create kind of a community-based knowledge about Bob Dylan and American culture,” he said. “They have to work at finding resources and creating interpretations and sharing them with each other so they can talk about what they see happening in the works and in the history and the context.”

“And,” he added, “I'm also really trying to get them to see, and then ultimately go out and show other people, that you can take artists and works that aren't necessarily thought of as ‘classic’ or ‘high art’ but you can look at them as if you are intellectuals. You can deal with that work in very intellectual, critical, academic ways. So I'm trying to reinvent the literary canon in addition to just teaching them about someone I like to listen to.”

And not only is Carpenter encouraging the critical analysis of Dylan and his works, he is doing it in unique ways, namely through social media tools.

“I blew my students away the other day because I used the SmartBoard in the classroom,” he laughed.

One of his most recent classroom activities involved the use of laptops and the World Wide Web. His students found works of poetry on the Web and created their own versions with certain words or phrases hyperlinked to connect to other resources or Web pages. The final products were then posted to Blackboard.

“It’s all a way of demonstrating that web of knowledge we already exist in,” Carpenter said. “It’s also to show that none of these authors exist in a historical vacuum. They’re all part of a larger system of interactions and connections. So hyperlinks and social media really help materialize those kinds of relationships for them.”

Knowledge has everything to do with connection – how facts and ideas link up with other facts and ideas, Carpenter said. Teaching about Dylan in this way allows students to connect Dylan to other events, people and cultures in a critical way.

“We’re now dealing with a group of students for whom the world has never not been connected and linked,” Carpenter said. “Using social media is a way for knowledge to be created and disseminated. The Internet gives us a very interesting means to talk about community.”

Campus guest discusses Creole culture

By Courtney Westlake

video

UIS Music hosted guest Dr. Sybil Kein, Creole scholar and composer on Friday, May 2. Kein presented a public lecture titled "Gumbo People: Celebrating and Teaching the Creole Culture of New Orleans," on Friday afternoon, which featured poetry, folklore and personal stories collected from Creole muscicians, entertainers and other historical and cultural figures.

Kein, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, is a recognized expert in Creole culture and history, as well as a musician, composer and poet. She has numerous books and CDs to her credit and recently served as a translator and dialect coach for the Screen Gems production Bolden, a film about early jazz in New Orleans.

Kein discussed where many beliefs about different races came about, and how various races were "assigned" a color at some point in time, such as black, red, yellow and white. People need to understand that many beliefs about race were invented in the beginning and are still fiction.

"The key word in all of this is 'folklore,' but it has stuck," Kein said.

Kein described her family tree dating back to her great-grandparents, with roots in the Jewish religion, France, Ireland and more. Multicultural is really the definition of Creole, Kein said.

"We have 17 million multicultural people in the United States. As Creole people in the culture and language, we are more than 55 million in the world," she said. "And one of the things I like about the news laws is that the law cannot tell you who you are. It's up to you to decide who you identify with in your ancestry. If you have that culture, that is a part of you."

Earth Day presenter encourages action for sustainable Future

By Courtney Westlake

video

UIS celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22 with a presentation on "Education and Action for a Sustainable Future" given by Dr. Debra Rowe, president of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, on Tuesday evening in Brookens Auditorium.

Earth Day, an annual event since 1970, is a chance for people around the world to celebrate the planet and our responsibility toward it. (For more information about Earth Day, go here.)

Rowe is a faculty member and administrator at Oakland Community College in Michigan, where she creates and teaches interdisciplinary projects about futuring, environmental sustainability and a more humane society. She is also a senior fellow with the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, national co-coordinator of the Higher Education Association's Sustainability Consortium, founder of the Disciplinary Associations' Network for Sustainability, and senior adviser to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

As president of the U.S. Partnership, Rowe works with educational institutions across the country to integrate a sustainable worldview into formal education at all levels. "Sustainable development," as defined by the United Nations 2002 World Summit, is that which would improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future.

Rowe discussed topics such as what sustainability is, what the challenges in creating sustainability are, what solutions already exist, what national trends are occuring and resources for the attendees.

"This isn't about saving the planet; the planet's going to be fine," she said. "It's just a question of what kind of species is going to be able to survive on the planet and with what quality of life."

United Nations declared a decade of development for sustainable development starting in 2005. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, every ecosystem is degrading. Nearly half of the world's major rivers are going dry or are badly polluted, the fishing areas are collapsing or in decline, and there is dangerous climate change, Rowe said.

"With each breath you take, with each drink of water, each piece of food, you are receiving life-sustaining gifts from the ecosystem, and you're not paying the full price the way our economic system is structured," she said.

In higher education, we learn knowledge, values and skills, Rowe said, and we need to do two things with those.

"We need to change private choices and behaviors, or our habits," Rowe said. "And the second thing we need to do is change our public choices, our laws."

UIS celebrates Health Awareness Day

By Courtney Westlake

video

The campus community was able to get their health in check on Wednesday, April 2 during Health Awareness Day at UIS.

There were several speakers throughout the day in PAC room F. Cindy Ladage kicked off the event with a presentation about radon, and then Drs. Jim Bonacum, Hua Chen and Michael Lemke conducted a program about the Emiquon Project at 12 p.m. Finally, Dr. William Warren spoke about global warming and public health.

"Emiquon is one of the largest restoration projects in this country," Lemke said during his presentation. "Restoration ecology is not as simple as it might sound. You can't just add water into lakes and expect them to be the same. There are a lot of things that go into the study and restoration of these areas."

After Lemke explained the work going on at Emiquon (to read more, go here), Chen discussed the implications of the restoration on the climate, and Bonacum added perspectives about overall climate change.

During her presentation, Ladage, from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, spoke about what radon is and why residents should be concerned about radon present in their homes. Radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that enters the home through any opening between the building and the soil, Ladage said.

"The only way to tell if you have high levels of radon is to test for it," she said. "Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer next to smoking; it's a proven carcinogen."

There was also a variety of health information on topics such as smoking cessation, back care, skin care and more offered throughout the event, which lasted from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Area healthcare facilities set up booths for free health screenings, including cholesterol and blood sugar, vision, bone density and stress.

Online course receives Humane Society award

By Courtney Westlake

WATCH THE COURSE INTRODUCTION>

Throughout history, human beings have defined our humanity primarily in reference to animals. After all, Psalm 23 in the Bible begins “The Lord is my shepherd…,” making it necessary to understand the relationship between shepherds and sheep to understand the passage.

“Without animals we could not be ‘human’,” said Dr. Boria Sax. “They have given us a repository of vivid metaphors, images, relationships, aspirations and ideals that pervade human culture. But to preserve its vitality, culture must retain contact with that source.”

Sax, an adjunct faculty member in the philosophy department at UIS, had written many books on human-animal relations before he was asked by Dr. Peter Boltuc to design an online course for UIS focused on philosophy and animals in 2006. In 2007, he revised the course to a broader focus and renamed it “Animals and Human Civilization.”

In recognition of academic excellence of the course Sax created focusing on the relationship between people and animals, the course won a Distinguished New Course Award in the national Animals and Society awards program of the Humane Society of the United States in December. Selections are made based on depth and rigor within the topic, impact on the study of animals and society, and originality of approach.

“I was extremely pleased; no external vindication can ever substitute for a personal faith in what one does, but, in any case, I am deeply honored to receive the award,” Sax said. “Human-animal relationships are getting a lot more attention recently in almost all fields from social work to computers and philosophy.”

Sax said he believes it is extremely important to study the relationship between humans and animals in order to get a better sense of who we are as humans. His course examines social, religious and philosophical perspectives on animals from pre-Biblical times to the present, especially the ways in which animals have provided essential metaphors for social divisions along lines of tribe, gender, class, race and other categories, he said.

For example, as Sax points out, warriors have always identified with predators such as the lion, but in Christianity, God is symbolized by the sacrificial lamb. Also, wealth in the Bible is measured by herds of animals, not money.

“Human relationships with animals are characterized by an extraordinary combination of passion and intellectual complexity,” Sax said. “That makes these relations an ideal subject for reflection by students who are developing their analytic and writing skills.”

For receiving the honor, a monetary award will go to UIS. Sax said he hopes UIS will bring in speakers, such as Native American storyteller Joseph Bruchac, who might provide interesting perspectives on human-animal relations.

“Over a decade ago, I started an organization called NILAS (Nature in Legend and Story). I would be especially pleased if the speakers and the prize money might be used to establish a presence for NILAS on the campus of the State University of Illinois at Springfield,” he said.

Graduate student begins novel research with award

By Courtney Westlake

video

As if balancing graduate level class work, a teaching assistantship and raising her five-year-old daughter isn’t enough, biology graduate student Ryan Roy will soon be putting her knowledge to the test through a novel investigation in microbiology.

Roy was recently named the recipient of a Grants-In-Aid of Research Award from Sigma Xi, a prestigious scientific research society. The Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research program has a highly competitive application process, and only approximately 20 percent of applicants receive any level of funding, said Dr. Mike Lemke, professor of biology at UIS.

"Sigma Xi is something that Dr. Lemke always encourages us to apply for," Roy said. "There are two opportunities a year, and I think the most money you can get is $1,000. It just happened to work for me this time; I was excited."

Though Roy has an undergraduate degree in math, she discovered a new interest in the field of biology while working in a hospital biology lab. After taking a few classes at UIS, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in biology.

Now in her second year as a grad student, Roy is focusing her research on simulating natural chemical (reduction - oxidation) conditions in the laboratory and assessing parts of the microbial community that may be enriched under different redox potential.

The rationale for Ryan's work is based on the fact that many conditions have been used to culture bacteria through simulating natural environment gradients, although cultured bacteria rarely exceeds one percent of the environmental assemblage. Culturing is important to the field of microbiology because it is the basis for the naming of new species, revealing the functional role in the environment and adding definition to unknown DNA sequence in databases, Lemke said.

"You can see (redox potential) in the soil, water and sediment, how it is a gradient and runs from a very positive redox potential to a very negative redox potential," Roy said. "But they don't usually use that as a culturing parameter for bacteria, so I'm just going to take what we know from nature that exists and try to use that to culture more bacteria because we don't have very many culturable bacteria."

By increasing culturability of environmental samples, more studies can follow on the isolation of novel cultured bacteria to name bacterial species and explain the bacterial function within their environments. Roy will begin her work probably within a month or so, she said.

"I’m waiting to get a couple of things in, like a redox probe, and trying to get organized right now," she said. "Hopefully it won't take too long to actually run experiment, and hopefully it will run smoothly. It shouldn't be too expensive of a project to run."

She is excited to know that she doesn’t need to worry about finding the funds to run her project now, though, thanks to the Sigma Xi Grants-In-Aid of Research Award.

"It's a little bit of relief just to know have some money I can use and not worry about ordering something if I need it for my research," she said. "It’s nice for the lab; just to have extra awards under Dr. Lemke's belt is good for him and good for the lab in the future. The more things you win, more things you can get, so hopefully it means something for the lab."

Professor notes importance of women in history

By Courtney Westlake

video

Though there weren't many women in the field, Deborah McGregor decided that she would get her Ph.D. in history when she was 12 years old.

She managed to finish everything but her dissertation when she realized she needed a change, so she got married and started a family. The move, though delaying her degree, ended up benefiting her, however, because when she returned to school to obtain her Ph.D., a focus on women's history began to surface from the overall field of history.

"At that time, women's history started to emerge, so I had that option for my emphasis. So I was actually fortunate," McGregor said. "It was not until the 1970s that people became aware of women's rights as an issue."

McGregor, who has been teaching at UIS since 1986, developed a strong interest in several topics within women's history, including health and healing, the history of medicine and the history of childbirth.

"In a very immediate sense, I have an interest in childbirth because it was part of what happened in my life," she said. "It was really interesting to think about the history of childbirth, and I had never really read about it. Childbirth was not really a topic in women's history for a while. But it was a connection for me between real life and scholarship; I'm glad I made that choice."

McGregor has written several publications about the history of childbirth in the 19th century, as well as the history of gynecology and obstetrics. She is also the author of the book, "From Midwives to Medicine."

McGregor, whose husband Robert McGregor is also professor in the history department at UIS, teaches a broad range of classes since she came to UIS with joint appointment in general history and women's history. Topics she has taught include 19th century history, history of the family, U.S. women's history, and minority women, as well as several general education classes and seminars for graduate students in history.

And though she has studied and researched women's history in depth, McGregor acknowledges that she is always learning more. While she was teaching the course "Who Am I?" for a class of Capital Scholars, she realized how closely related identity and history are, she said.

"History is about identity; I believe that more and more. We come out of our past -our family past but also social past, political past and economic past," she said. "Without women being in history, we'd have a hard time understanding who they were."

McGregor said throughout the years, she has noticed an increasing interest from students in women's history and related topics, especially this academic year, and she hopes it will continue.

"This semester, I feel so much interest, which is exciting. The feeling I get from my classes is very positive," she said.

The Prairie Star takes over the radio

By Courtney Westlake

video

The brightly shining Prairie Star became radio-active today.

With support from the UIS Communication Department, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Division of Student Affairs, a new Internet radio station, called the Prairie Star, began broadcasting 24 hours a day today, February 14, from the UIS campus.

WUIS, a popular campus radio station and NPR affiliate, will continue its award-winning music and information programming, but the Prairie Star was created to provide a learning venue and creative outlet for UIS students, said Dr. Jim Grubbs, associate professor of communication at UIS. Last fall, the necessary funding was met to start the station with the proper equipment, music and programming.

"The Prairie Star is an idea that has been in process for about a year and a half," Grubbs said. "We were looking for something that could serve as a working laboratory for students, where they could get hands-on experience."

During business hours, the Prairie Star will play a broad, eclectic mix of favorites from the 1970s through today’s "lighter" hits along with full-length news and information features at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. that will come from several station partners, Grubbs said. There will also be mini-features every hour on the half hour.

"Then when we get to 3:00 in the afternoon, we send all the adults home and let the students take over," Grubbs laughed. "We're really going for an alternative rock format at that point. Part of the vision I see for us is to truly become a college station and to really be something you don't find anywhere else."

The weekends will bring a mix of specialty programs including music genres of root, folk, classical, traditional and classic and modern jazz.

Future goals for the station include moving into an expanded production facility, where students can come in and produce shows, Grubbs said.

"What we're really going for is a sense of community. Yes, primarily for students; that's why we're here," he said. "We want it to be fun, and we're looking for people to become involved who want that. For our students exploring career goals, we want to serve them too."

To listen to the Prairie Star station, go here. Click on the image of Radio Star, which is the station’s mascot, and you can then choose either the MP3 or Windows Media Internet stream. Only an Internet connection and your favorite media player is required to tune in. For further information, visit http://www.uis.edu/campusradio/ or e-mail campusradio@uis.edu.

Science continues to fascinate professor

By Courtney Westlake

video

Dr. John Martin jokes that, like most children, he became fascinated with outer space when he was four years old, except that he has been "stuck" in that stage ever since.

"I've always been interested in astronomy; it's my first love," he said. "I had really educated parents who told me that 'you need to do the math, you need to do the science.' A lot more people start out in science than make it to the end. You've really got to love it."

Martin, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, has been teaching at UIS since fall of 2006. He said picking the niche of astrophysics - "that a lot of people don't find as interesting as I do" - worked to his advantage when UIS was looking to hire an astrophysicist.

Martin's primary research interest within the field of astrophysics is studying what stars are made of. He admits that stellar astronomy isn't as popular as other topics in the field, but there are still many problems left unsolved in astrophysics because they're difficult.

"I was interested in more challenging problems, and this field presented me with those challenging problems," he said. "I'm basically a chemist that works with stars."

However, it wasn't the research that brought him to UIS, Martin said. It was the teaching, which he found he loves.

Martin is currently teaching two introductory physics classes, and he is essentially the only physics program faculty. He also teaches an astronomy course every semester; this semester, the course is called "Survey of the Universe", which is open not only to UIS students, but community members as well.

"A great thing about UIS is that it has this public affairs and public education mission," Martin said. "When Professor Emeritus Charles Schweighauser started the class, he contacted conference services and said he would be teaching the class and if they wanted to sign people up for non-credit, that's fine. We've just continued that; I think it's a great idea. Some of these non-traditional students bring experience into the classroom that a lot of our traditional students really seem to benefit from."

Martin said he sees the basic level astronomy class as a good course to reach numerous students "who might not otherwise have good thoughts about science". The class is geared toward students who might not have a science background but are interested in learning some of the basics.

"I really think it's important that we have a citizenry in this country that is educated about science," Martin said.

Students in Martin's physics classes are usually part of a pre-professional curriculum, such as pre-med or pre-dental, he said.

"For those students, I want to get through the course with the problem-solving mindset of physics," he said. "Med schools want students coming in to have exposure to that. What I want most for them is to do great on the physics part of the MCAT."

To further these students' studies in physics and sciences in general, Martin said he hopes that the astronomy and physics departments will expand.

"When I look at peer institutions, all of them have at least a physics minor and many have a physics major," he said. "Down the road, I see maybe an expansion in astronomy-physics, so we need to add some faculty and hopefully adding, down the road, a physics minor. It would be nice to be able to offer that instead of just a concentration through liberal studies."

Couple takes the theatre program by storm

By Courtney Westlake

video

Having offices down the hall from each other is no doubt the closest Missy and Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson have ever worked.

As aspiring performers and then teachers, the couple struggled to remain even in the same city for years before coming to UIS to rebuild the university's theatre program from the ground up. Now, working alongside each other, they are excited about the opportunities at UIS.

Eric and Missy have both been engaged in theatrics since a young age. The couple met while attending the University of Nebraska and then married and had a daughter, Emma.

Several years ago, UIS decided to revamp its theatre program, and Eric took on the job single-handedly. Then, as it started to grow and gain interest in the community, the university hired Missy on, through her own credentials, as a second theatre faculty member.

"I always knew I really liked teaching and always knew I really liked acting and performing, and I feel like the luckiest person in the world that I get to do both," Missy said.

There are several theatre classes available at UIS currently within the Communication department. This spring, Topics in Dramatic Literature will be offered for the first time, with the topic this semester being Women Playwrights. Eventually, the Thibodeaux-Thompsons hope that the theatre program can offer a minor, and further down the road, students will be able to major in theatre.

The couple also directs performances at Studio Theatre. Recent plays include Picnic, Proof, Oedipus the King and Anton in Show Business. And on February 10 and 11, auditions are being held for Tennessee Williams' Period of Adjustment, with callbacks on February 12. Eric is directing the April production, and auditions are open to everyone.

"I love the mix of non-traditional students right alongside the traditional students; it's a nice melting pot," Eric said. "I think our audiences appreciate not having just 19 year-olds playing all the parts, and I think our 19-year-olds appreciate that too, because they can learn a lot working with very experienced people."

The Thibodeax-Thompsons said they have been more than impressed with the outreach from the theatre base in the community and the willingness of community members, UIS staff and faculty to step in, take roles and help out when they can and want to. The focus in the theatre program, though, will remain on the students.

"Through it all we really want students to remain the centerpiece of what we do," Eric said. "And I think we've been able to get more students recently because they're showing up at auditions and in the classrooms. The growth here hasn't skyrocketed, but it has been stair-casing in the right direction."

UIS also hopes to encourage students to pursue other interests in theatre, not only acting and performing but lighting, scenic design, costume design and much more. The backstage work is just as important as on-stage work, if not more, Eric said, and Missy completely agreed.

"One of the things I love so much about theatre, with no disrespect to other art forms, is that this is the only true collaborative art form," Missy said. "I can't do it by myself; I have to have other people that specialize and excel in their expertise. We see the actors and they get all the notoriety and attention, but it really is a very egalitarian process."

Professor shares philosophical concepts within political science

By Courtney Westlake

video

Dr. Richard Gilman-Opalsky was originally interested in philosophy as a career field and obtained both his bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy.

But it was as he was working to get his Ph.D. that he realized he "wanted to ask questions about politics that were being asked more in political science than in philosophy," he said.

"I wanted to look at actual social movements, look at examples of political action of various kinds, and, within philosophy, that's less common to do," Gilman-Opalsky said. "So I changed my discipline to political science, so I could do the research I wanted to do for my dissertation."

Gilman-Opalsky obtained his Ph.D. in political science from The New School for Social Research and came to UIS in fall 2006. He has found that the priorities of the university and political science program are directly in line with his personal priorities, which include a number one focus on educating students and teaching the topics he is passionate about.

Gilman-Opalsky teaches classes that focus on topics like globalization and the future of democracy, introduction to political philosophy, ideas and ideologies, and democratization and the public sphere. The public sphere is one of Gilman-Opalsky's most central interests, and the course he teaches is built from the research he did while writing a book that is coming out next month called "Unbounded Publics: Transgressive Public Spheres, Zapatismo, and Political Theory," he said.

"Democratization and the Public Sphere is a course that says democracy is not just elections and voting," he said. "It has to do with culture. There are a lot of problems with elections; voting and elections are just one small part of politics. So that course is a semester-long investigation of a more robust notion of democracy."

Gilman-Opalsky said he finds UIS a "remarkable and rare fit" for his specific interests in political philosophy. He defines political philosophy as, very generally, asking political questions to which there aren't clear answers. The field doesn't focus on explaining or analyzing how things are, but "deciding how things should be," he said.

"Within political philosophy, we are concerned with some of the big moral and ethical questions of how things aren't but could be and should be," Gilman-Opalsky said. "What would be the best government? What would be the best society? Why don't we have it? Could we?"

"When you can say this is how things ought to be and then this is how things are, you can observe the distance between the two, and then get to the bottom of what obstacles are in the way of moving from point A to point B," he continued.

Because UIS is located in the state's capital, Gilman-Opalsky said he finds that many students are attracted to what he calls "practical politics" - working for the state government, working for a particular political party, lobbying and the like. So while his students might originally be unsure about looking at the philosophical side of politics, he said he has seen very positive reactions as they study the concepts.

"I think there tends to be a polarizing reaction," Gilman-Opalsky said. "But because we discuss exciting questions, provocative questions and controversial questions, I think students respond very, very well to courses in political philosophy."

Mims has seen tremendous growth in computer science

By Courtney Westlake

photovideo

Dr. Ted Mims first started out his career in computer science working with paper tape, and then punched cards. The next years brought the era of terminals before desktop computers and laptops finally began serving the needs and wants of the general public and causing great impact in the field of computer science.

Mims came to UIS in 1990 and now serves as not only a professor of computer science, but as the chair of the computer science department. Mims' college studies originally focused on math, but after teaching math at the high school level, he eventually made the switch to the field of computer science.

After obtaining a master's and Ph.D. in computer science and teaching at Louisiana State and Nicholls State universities, Mims moved to Springfield to be part of the computer science department here at UIS, in which student enrollment has skyrocketed.

"In 1990, we had approximately 45 graduates and 75 undergraduates," Mims said. "In the spring semester of 2007, we had 350 graduate students and 200 undergraduates. So we've had more than 500 percent growth since 1990."

Mims said he enjoys working with both the faculty and the students within the program.

"I really like the faculty; they're energetic and enthusiastic about teaching," he said. "We have excellent students. When I came here, the majority of our students were adult students in their 30's with fulltime jobs. Now we also have evolved into admitting lower division students who are younger, less than 30 years old."

Three years ago, the computer science online program began bringing in more non-traditional working students who hail from all over the country. Nationwide enrollment in computer science has dropped anywhere from 30 to 60 percent, but in adding an online program, enrollment has increased 50 percent at UIS, Mims said.

"The online program brought students," he said. "Those are some of the brighter students we have; they are working for companies in the aerospace industry and major computer corporations."

As for the future of the field of computer science, Mims anticipates that security will be an area of interest and that online classes will continue to flourish.

"It seems younger students want to take more online classes than classes on campus," he said. "And I think that the programming will remain but language will change. We teach Java now, but it will be some other language in a few years from now."

Several students in UIS' computer science program have been recognized for national awards, and partnerships that have been recently developed are also an asset to the program. In 2007, for example, a partnership was developed with State Farm Insurance to make UIS the 18th university from which State Farm recruits nationally.

"This opportunity allows our students to do internships at State Farm, and several students of ours have been hired for fulltime positions with them," he said. "So that's been a great partnership, and we look to expand those partnerships with other companies."

Wheeler Sees Dedication from Students in PAR Program

By Courtney Westlake

video

Charles Wheeler has his lack of baseball skills to thank for his journalism career.

"When I tried out for the baseball team in high school, they had a rule that no freshmen were cut...they made an exception in my case," he laughed. "But the administration knew I was a very avid sports fan, and the Joliet Herald News was looking for someone to cover Joliet Catholic High School sports. I was a sophomore in high school when I had my first byline in the Herald News."

Wheeler eventually moved from sports reporting into political reporting - "In a sense, covering politics is like covering a sports event, except the stakes are so much higher," he noted - and spent 24 years at the Chicago Sun-Times before taking a position as the director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at UIS in 1993.

"I was in the Sun-Times bureau at the time when the Public Affairs Reporting program started, and we had an intern the very first class and all the way through," Wheeler said. "I thought very highly of the program and enjoyed working with the interns and thought this was a way to work with all of them."

The highly-regarded Public Affairs Reporting (PAR) program at UIS is a one-year master's degree program in which students spend one semester in classes and then work for six months as a full-time reporter for a news organization in the State Capitol, under the direct supervision and guidance of the outlet's bureau chief. The program emphasizes the importance of informing readers, listeners and viewers about ongoing events and activities that impact on their daily lives, Wheeler said.

"I would say the one thing that sets us apart from any other program I know of is our internship," he said. "Our program offers these students the opportunity to show what they can do in a real-life setting under the deadline pressures and the complexity of state government, and as a result, they are able to walk away with proof they can handle any beat someone would give them."

Graduates and students within the PAR program have certainly showcased this each year by receiving numerous awards in an annual competition sponsored by Capitolbeat, the national organization of journalists covering state and local governments. Wheeler himself received top honors in 2007, for the fourth straight year, for magazine commentary, recognizing his contributions as a columnist for Illinois Issues magazine.

Along with continued success, PAR students and professors, as well as other media professionals, also face challenges and changes today regarding a huge push for multimedia reporting, Wheeler said.

"When I started as a reporter using typewriters, you didn't have to worry about shooting a picture or recording a tape," he said. "Nowadays reporters at some places are expected to go out with video cameras and get film or audio clips, and all of that goes on the Web. I think that's the big challenge for our program, and for other journalism education: to get people to be thinking in a broader concept about what the different ways are to be telling the story."

Because of the amount of internships available with news organizations, the program isn't able to grow much regarding the number of students it can accept. But it has grown more competitive, Wheeler said, and all of the students are extremely committed both in the classroom and within the internship.

"My hope is that the program continues to flourish and attract the kind of people that we've been able to attract," Wheeler said. "I tell people I'm the most fortunate college instructor in the whole world because all of the students I work with in the program are highly motivated and very talented. I don't have to deal with folks just trying to get a Gentleman's C; they are very committed, and that's a real pleasure."

Internationally-known Astronomers Encourage the Sciences at UIS

By Courtney Westlake

video

Dr. Roberta Humphreys has high hopes for the future of women in the sciences and encourages women to pursue their interests despite challenges, she said during a brown bag discussion that was part of two public presentations on Friday, November 9.

Humphreys' presentation was called "A Conversation on Being WISE: Women in Science and Engineering." Friday evening, at 7:30 p.m. in University Hall, room 2008, Dr. Kris Davidson will speak on "The Violent Supernova Impostor."

Davidson and Humphreys are both faculty members at the University of Minnesota, where Davidson is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Astronomy and Humphreys is Institute of Technology Distinguished Professor of Astronomy. Both collaborate with UIS Assistant Professor of Astronomy/Physics John Martin on ongoing research projects involving the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Chile.

Humphreys' seminar focused on how women can succeed professionally in scientific fields. She discussed her own experiences, as well as issues that women regularly encounter in academia and science, before opening the discussion to questions and comments from participants.

She also recommended several books, including "Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women" by Virginia Valian and "The Science Glass Ceiling" by Sue Rosser for further reading on the topic.

During her program, Humphreys offered a chart of numbers, showing a slow, but steady increase in the number of women pursuing their bachelor's, master's and Ph.D.'s in the sciences, including engineering, computer science, physics and more.

"When I got my Ph.D. in 1969, astronomy had the largest percentage of women, at 6 percent," Humphreys said. "Physics was at 2 percent, and math was non-existent."

Now, the culture is changing for the better, Humphreys said, and it seems every decade opens the door a little wider for women in all fields.

"Fields have become more family-friendly. But the question is, the numbers tell us things are changing, but is it a level playing field?" she asked. "I would say no, it isn't. But it will be someday. Eventually the numbers will rule."

Humphreys anticipates that women will begin to rise in leadership positions and change the policies. It all starts, however, with encouragement in the grade schools and high schools, she said.

"There is becoming a realization down through the grade schools, the middle schools and the high schools that they are going to need that preparation, not only for the sciences but to get into the best colleges," she said. "I think more and more that things are changing."

New Professor Uses Religion as Way to Explore World

By Courtney Westlake

video

Dr. David Bertaina has found that more can be learned from the study of religion than most people think, from understanding wars and historical events to comprehending and appreciating differences between various cultures.

Bertaina, a new professor to the University of Illinois at Springfield this fall, is the history department's first specialist in comparative religion. He received his Ph.D. in Semitic Languages and Literatures from the Catholic University of America in 2007 and previously taught courses on Islam at California State University in Chico.

Bertaina said he has always held a fascination with history, especially with both of his parents being teachers, and first studied traditional Western history. As he then began to study Christianity’s presence in the Middle East, he also became interested in languages in that particular area of the world.

“For my doctorate, I studied many Middle Eastern languages: Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic and Greek,” he said. “Plus some French and German had to be done for all of the reading. So I had an opportunity to delve into the literature and appreciate the historical development of the cultures.”

The history and literature of the medieval Middle East with an emphasis on Christian-Muslim dialogs is now Bertaina’s forte. Through extensive research on these subjects, Bertaina said he found his professional interest begin to expand into personal interests in other cultural aspects of the Middle East, primarily music.

“From the languages, I had an appreciation for the way of life and how they express themselves,” he said. “Expression relies on language, art and music, and I gained an appreciation for the many forms of music. It’s a way to look back into time.”

Bertaina is teaching two classes this semester. One of them is an online course on Islamic history. The other, called “Scriptures and World Religions,” teaches religion from the historical perspective and examines how religion developed in history, he said.

Bertaina said he hopes his students develop an understanding and appreciation for religion on a deeper level: each religion’s history, scriptures, culture and the way its followers view the world.

“I want my students to take away from my classes an understanding of a particular religious tradition – each religious tradition in its own right,” he said. “Every religion has a world view that is how they identify themselves and look at the world based upon their identity as a religious person, so it’s important to step into this religious world view.”

While UIS doesn’t have a specific religion department, Bertaina anticipates filling that void in the department of history.

“The University of Illinois at Springfield was interested in having someone in comparative religion because they saw a need for not only studying politics, but also the fact that religion is a reason and driving force behind politics today, behind issues of culture and behind issues of cultural wars,” Bertaina said. “(I want) to communicate to the students the complexity of each individual religious tradition, and also how they interact with one another and with other areas, such as the area of intellectual life or literature or gender issues.”