News Bureau

Stephen Rugg, vice president for administration, presented a draft update to the Urbana Campus Master Plan at the Dec. 6 meeting of the Urbana-Champaign Senate. Rugg told senators that the plan is being updated to integrate a variety of facility-related planning efforts that have been under way on campus during the past year.

The tuition that incoming freshmen and transfer students pay at the Urbana campus will do more than pay for these students’ education: It will benefit UI students for years to come by funding badly needed upgrades in classrooms around campus.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Dribbling, passing and shooting could become much smoother moves for wheelchair basketball players if a student-designed chair featuring a hands-free braking and turning system makes its way to the marketplace.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - "The Illinois Promise," a program announced today at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will ensure that high-achieving in-state students from low-income families will be able to attend Illinois.

UI Library opens high-density shelving facility

Retiree profile:

Graduate College to examine why some don't complete doctoral study The UI Graduate College has been awarded a $100,000 grant by the Council of Graduate Schools to examine the problem of graduate students who begin doctoral programs but who leave without completing their degrees. The UI is one of 21 institutions nationwide chosen to participate in the $2.6 million, three-year project. Working with the Graduate College on the project are doctoral programs in animal sciences, chemistry, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, educational psychology, electrical and computer engineering, English, French, history, mathematics, mechanical and industrial engineering, microbiology, neuroscience, physics and political science. The goal of the project is to significantly increase degree completion by developing "best practice" models that can be promulgated throughout the graduate community. The project is supported by a grant from Pfizer Inc. and the Ford Foundation. The participating schools are to collect and submit data on doctoral completion and attrition; implement interventions in areas such as selection, mentoring, financial support, program environment, and curricular processes; and develop rigorous assessment strategies to measure the impact of these interventions. "Doctoral education has much to gain from participation in this program, as our graduate programs recognized immediately when we approached them about it," said Richard Wheeler, the dean of the college. "I am very pleased that every department we invited to join us in this study agreed to do so with enthusiasm."

Dan Erwin is a cook at Florida Avenue Residence Halls, who also runs his own bakery business.

What do winners of an Oscar, a Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer Prize, a U.S. National Medal of Technology, and the Indianapolis 500 have in common with an Alfred Hitchcock movie actress and the original Vampirella? They are just a few of the people who posed with soybeans for “Recipes From the Soybean Farm.” The book is the latest venture for Don Chambers, a broadcast animator at WILL-TV.

The Urbana campus has launched a five-year plan for modernizing and upgrading its voice and data communication networks.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The work of Chicago architectural firm Brininstool + Lynch will be featured in a new exhibition at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Fond farewell The campus honored James Stukel and his wife, Joan, for his nearly 10 years as president of the three-campus University of Illinois at a reception Nov. 10 at the Illini Union. He became president in 1995 after serving as chancellor and an administrator at UIC. The Stukels' affiliation with the university goes back to 1961 when Jim Stukel entered the College of Engineering as a graduate student. After earning his master's degree and doctorate, he joined the faculty. Joan Stukel, who had a career in pharmacy and business, earned an MBA and three of their four children also earned degrees from the UI. Interim Chancellor Richard Herman, who co-hosted the event with the board of trustees, presented the Stukels with a sculpture by artist Alex Fekete, a professor of art and design.

Creative solution allows flight instructor back into the cockpit

Welcome to the academy Promoted and newly tenured faculty were honored Nov. 9 with a reception at Grainger Engineering Library Information Center and a book plating, sponsored by Acting Provost Jesse Delia and University Librarian Paula Kaufman. Participating faculty members were asked to select books, either extant volumes or new additions to the university's collections, of personal significance to them and explain their rationale in 50 words or less. The 54 volumes chosen were embossed with commemorative bookplates for the 77 faculty members who participated; the books are on display in the library's main corridor. The program is in its fifth year.

Employees complete ethics training as required by new law

Class schedules now online Only limited paper copies available in fall

Life on Earth: New course focuses on sustainability

Dress rehearsal Ronald Romm (left) and Michael Ewald, professors in the School of Music, practice a number for the "Stars, Stripes, Sousa" halftime show during the UI vs. Indiana football game on Nov. 6. Romm and Ewald are playing e-flat cornets, also called over-the-shoulder horns, from the 1850s, which are part of the university's collection. The concert was one of many events held on campus during November as part of a monthlong sesquicentennial celebration of John Philip Sousa's birth.

Lisa Burdin is a secretary IV in the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering.

Across-the-board tuition increases are needed during the coming fiscal year for the University of Illinois to meet more than $47 million in new expenses, according to a report presented to the board of trustees last week.

UI tutors make a difference in Champaign-Urbana community

Staff members recognized for long service and retirement

Gil Heitka is a motorcycle safety specialist in the department of community health.

The departments of kinesiology and community health in the College of Applied Life Studies may be merged if a proposal passed unanimously by the Urbana-Champaign Senate also is approved by the UI Board of Trustees.

While millions of Americans were out casting their votes for U.S. president, university officials announced the next UI president. B. Joseph White, who will become the 16th president of the UI, was introduced to the Urbana-Champaign campus Nov. 2 at a late-afternoon news conference at the Illini Union, following an announcement earlier in the day in Chicago.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard University, will deliver the annual David C. Baum Memorial Lecture on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights at the University of Illinois College of Law.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Is access to fresh water an inalienable human right? Or is water merely another marketable commodity?

Campus network security is more than fighting spam

UI Committees 2004-05

Tracy Osby is public functions supervisor in the Facilities & Services Division

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new exhibition originating at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Krannert Art Museum seeks to reintroduce the public to the work of self-taught African-American artists Bill Traylor and William Edmondson by emancipating them from their "outsider" status and placing their art back in the context in which it was first discovered and acknowledged more than a half century ago.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Thom H. Dunning Jr. today was named director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval of the university's board of trustees.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Campus administrators, faculty and students will break ground at noon Wednesday (Oct. 13) for the construction of the Asian American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Laura Battle is a program administrative assistant with the Building Research Council in the School of Architecture.

Saying that public universities are entering “a new financial environment” and a decade of turbulence that will create “a new order of excellence for the first time in 50 years,” Interim Chancellor Richard Herman outlined his vision for ensuring that the Urbana campus emerges as a pre-eminent institution during the coming decade.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The world is beating a path to freshmen at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Japan House, an educational and cultural center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will host its annual fall open house on Oct. 23.

Paul Kelter, a professor of chemistry and director of general chemistry, and Lenny Pitt, a professor of computer science, have been named Distinguished Teacher/Scholars.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The war in Iraq, the "care sector" of the economy, the politics of water, and the preservation of music will be the topics of four late fall lectures in the Center for Advanced Study/MillerComm lecture series at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A $10,000 gift from Nicor Gas will support one of the inaugural fellowships in the new Civic Leadership Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Alberto Carrasquilla, the minister of finance of Colombia, will present a seminar and lecture on Oct. 5 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Gender-related topics will be explored in two symposia at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in October.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Robberies and criminal sexual assaults were up significantly in the University of Illinois reporting district from Sept. 1, 2003, through Aug. 31, 2004, according to statistics released this week by the University of Illinois Division of Public Safety.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Eligible University of Illinois employees will have a new option for providing care for their mildly ill children beginning Oct. 1.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Civitas, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Community Design Center, will host a grand opening at 112 W. Main St., Urbana, from 6 to 9 p.m. Oct. 1.

Larry Nelson is a systems programmer who works for Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services in the High Energy Physics Group at Loomis Laboratory of Physics.

Already more than a month into the 2004-05 fiscal year, the UI Board of Trustees approved an operating budget of $3.38 billion for FY05 and an operating budget request for the coming fiscal year increasing that budget by $87.8 million.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Africa and Asia were the spiritual compass points for the first two parts of Ralph Lemon's monumental multimedia work "The Geography Trilogy." And now, for the last leg of the journey - and the final installment of his trilogy - Lemon puts his American homeland on the map with the world premiere of "Come home Charley Patton" Sept. 21-22 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

While the farmers in downstate Illinois are preparing for this fall’s harvest, on the UI’s Urbana campus there is already a bumper crop – of freshmen, that is. According to preliminary enrollment reports, there are approximately 7,258 freshmen on campus this fall, a record high for the campus and an increase of more than 436 over last year’s freshman class. Total undergraduate enrollment for fall 2004 is 29,246, up slightly from 28,589 in fall 2003.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Illinois college students preparing to apply to law school are invited to attend Law School Day at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Sept. 22.