News Bureau

Survey seeks to find out what is needed to improve lab safety

CITES offers free software, workshops to promote computer safety

IIllini Union offers baked goods for Thanksgiving holiday

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Sheila Maxwell has been a nursepractitioner at McKinley Health Center since 1995. Maxwell enjoys teaching students to be good stewards of their health.

On Nov. 11, the NCAA agreed with the UI Board of Trustees that the use of the nicknames “Illini” and “Fighting Illini” are not reasons for including the university on the list of schools subject to its policy banning Native American names and symbols. 

Herman calls for input on Assembly Hall renovations

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Campaign to fund instructional building for College of Business

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UI joins alliance to find cures for infectious diseases

Known to many as "Mike the light bulb guy," Mike Wood works as a laborer-electrician in the Facilities and Services Division.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Trans States Airlines, which does business as American Connection, is suspending service at the University of Illinois Willard Airport as of Nov. 1.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A team of students and faculty members from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be traveling to Macomb, Ill., Nov. 4-5 to participate in planning and design meetings that will focus on rethinking the use and design of Macomb's West Jackson Street (Illinois Route 136).

SUAA looks out for current and future retirees' benefits

Arts, technology searching for common space

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UI Committees 2005-06

Jeff Carpenter is a multimedia specialist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

The UI has appealed the National Collegiate Athletic Association policy that labels the Urbana-Champaign campus’s use of the names Illini and Fighting Illini and the Chief Illiniwek tradition “hostile and abusive.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - What makes news in American Indian communities? What are the issues that affect them? How should those issues be covered?

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Is the Champaign-Urbana community all that it can be for raising children and fostering their growth and education?

University and city officials are looking at ways to keep pedestrians safer on campus following the death of freshman Sarah Channick of Deerfield, who was struck and killed by an MTD bus while crossing Sixth Street at Chalmers on Sept. 29.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A variety of topics will be explored in a series of November lectures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - among them a journalist's take on America at home and abroad, Homer's lessons for the modern military, diploma mills, naturalists and their letters, and what bees can teach us about brains and behavior.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Yossi Klein Halevi, a prominent Israeli journalist and author active in Middle East reconciliation efforts, will speak at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 27 in the auditorium at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, 405 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - To observers of cultural phenomena, the dawn of the 21st century may not necessarily be the best or worst of times. But it could be among the most culturally confused and conflicted eras to emerge in recent history, considering society's mass-fascination with reality TV programs and Web cams, on one hand; and, on the other, its ever-present obsession with security, fueled by global fears of terrorism.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Japan House, a University of Illinois educational and cultural center focusing on Japanese tradition and art, will welcome visitors to its annual fall open house on Oct. 22 (Saturday) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The open house is free and the public is invited to tour the house and gardens at 2000 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Aggravated assaults and batteries increased by about 28 percent in the University of Illinois reporting district during the Sept. 1, 2004 to Aug. 31, 2005, reporting period, according to statistics released this week by the University of Illinois Division of Public Safety.

$151.5 million in private gifts support UI programs Gifts to the UI and the UI Foundation for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2005, totaled $151.5 million, according to Stephen K. Rugg, UI chief financial officer and treasurer of the UI Foundation. Of the $151.5 million received, $36.9 million was given to the UI directly and $114.6 million was contributed through the foundation. Rugg announced the private gift figures during the business session of the foundation's 70th annual meeting, held Sept. 23. The foundation is the private gift procurement arm of the UI. Of the $151.5 million in private support received last fiscal year, $55.4 million, or 36 percent, came from alumni and friends, $45.1 million (30 percent) was from corporations, $36.1 million (24 percent) was from foundations and $14.9 million (10 percent) was from associations. Private gifts support a number of programs across the campuses at Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign. Last fiscal year, $30.4 million of the $151.5 million raised was added to the endowment. Student financial aid in the form of scholarships, fellowships and student loans received $4.9 million in contributions. Donors to the UI provided $22 million to academic divisions, $41.3 million for research, $10 million for buildings and equipment, $12.6 million for public service and extension, and $3 million for faculty and staff compensation. Gifts to UI athletics at all three campuses increased by $1.5 million over the preceding year totaling $7.1 million. Of the $151.5 million received last year, 77 percent or $116.1 million was designated by donors for current use. Those funds provided support to a number of programs across all of the university's campuses. Twenty percent or $30.4 million was invested in endowed funds, which are held in pooled investment accounts under the policy supervision of the Investment Policy Committee of the Foundation Board and the Finance and Audit Committee of the UI Board of Trustees. Earnings from endowed funds help support an array of university endeavors, including student financial aid, faculty and programs. Such investments also provide specified annuity and life-income funds for many donors. The UI's combined active and deferred endowment stood at $1.656 billion as of June 30, 2005. The active endowment, which represents 69 percent of the university's endowment picture, grew to $1.148 billion by the end of last June. Also included in the UI's total endowment is $374.3 million designated as revocable deferred gifts. Another $133.1 million of the endowment is in charitable trusts and other irrevocable gifts held by the UI Foundation and others. The foundation's endowment goal is to provide a distribution to the university each year to meet its spending needs coupled with a desire to protect the purchasing power of the endowment against inflation. Over the past 10 years, the investment return allowed the Foundation not only to meet the spending and inflation objectives, but also permitted a net real return to the endowment of 1.6 percent. Growth of the endowment during the past decade, Rugg said, has enhanced many important academic efforts at the UI. For instance, the library's endowment has risen from $10.3 million in 1995 to $29.6 million as of June 30 this year. Endowment for professorships has increased from $26.2 million to over $74.9 million. Graduate fellowships have climbed from $29.1 to $79 million. Endowed chairs have soared from $35.4 million ten years ago to $120.8 million by the end of FY 05. And undergraduate scholarships and student aid endowment jumped from $41.7 million to $154.9 million over the past 10 years. "Total market returns," Rugg said, "combined with new-gift development have produced a total endowment today that is nearly three times what it was 10 years ago, rising from $589.9 million to $1.656 billion. That translates to total endowment growth of 11 percent annually over the past decade."

Friends, coworkers help staff member known for helping others

University shows Tulane physicist 'the silver lining'

Deneen Cordell is a clinical coordinator of the veterinary interdisciplinary pain service at the Small Animal Clinic in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The Marching Illini led the procession of nearly 500 students, faculty and staff members, alumni and 90 representatives of other American universities and learned societies clad in academic regalia from the Illini Union to Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 22. The occasion was the official inauguration of B. Joseph White as the university’s 16th president.

The Urbana-Champaign Senate passed a proposal at its Sept. 19 meeting that College of Engineering faculty members hope will enhance the standing and visibility of two engineering programs at the Urbana campus. The senate voted in favor of a proposal to transfer the industrial engineering program from the department of mechanical and industrial engineering to the department of general engineering to create a department that is tentatively being called industrial and enterprise systems engineering. MIE will be renamed the department of mechanical engineering.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Two concerts featuring musicians from the University of Illinois and the Champaign-Urbana community will benefit victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The first concert, beginning at 7 p.m. Friday (Oct. 7) in the Foellinger Auditorium, 709 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, features pianist Ian Hobson, the U. of I. Black Chorus conducted by Ollie Watts Davis, and the U. of I. Jazz Band. Tickets are $10 (minimum donation) and will be available at the door starting at 6 p.m. The concert is sponsored by the chancellor's office.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Hands down, walking is the easiest, most efficient and inexpensive form of physical activity known to promote human health, according to Weimo Zhu, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yet a large proportion of the U.S. population does not walk regularly and lives a sedentary lifestyle, he said.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - How can we predict and plan for the next Katrina-size natural disaster - be it hurricane, tsunami, flood, earthquake or even meteorite? What do these events reveal about social and economic disparities? How can we cope with and recover from such catastrophes?

UI employees required to complete ethics training

Arts-technology hybrids grow out of 'Seedbed'

'End of Cinematics' features Krannert Center as producing partner

Tony Suttle is an instructional media planner for Academic Outreach in the Office of Continuing Education.

A proposed conference center project at the Urbana campus was given the go-ahead by the UI Board of Trustees when it met Sept. 8 at the Illini Union in Urbana. The $11 million center, to be built south of Assembly Hall, would be connected to a $15.5 million hotel and restaurant complex planned at the site.

The UI is allowing students from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, states affected by Hurricane Katrina, to attend any of its three institutions for up to a year as non-degree students. More than 150 students have been enrolled at the three UI campuses thus far, including 47 undergraduates and several graduate students in law and business at the Urbana campus. Chancellor Richard Herman said that the campus will accommodate up to 60 displaced students.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Acting out of a sense of both personal trauma and political distress at the scope of the Katrina Hurricane catastrophe and what he calls the "failure of the response," a professor who taught at Tulane University in New Orleans has set up a public online forum to address the disaster.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The new Asian American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will celebrate its grand opening Friday with a ribbon-cutting at 3 p.m. at the center, 1210 W. Nevada St., Urbana.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The complex interplay between nature and culture in Illinois and "unbuilt" Frank Lloyd Wright homes will be featured in two separate exhibitions Sept. 9 through Oct. 22 at I Space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Campus does homework preparing for new strategic plan

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