News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Nutrition and neuroscience are the major themes that will be examined at a conference on aging June 17 and 18 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - More than 1,000 Illinois firefighters and emergency personnel will be in Champaign-Urbana this week for the 79th annual Illinois Fire College, hosted by the University of Illinois Fire Service Institute.

Unique gifts showcase UI talent, honor Zapf and Bourgeois

On the Job: Phyllis Jones

Educational quality will be compromised by the measures that the UI will be forced to undertake to absorb the $72.5 million decrease expected in its FY04 budget, President James J. Stukel said. Stukel, who spoke during the May 15 UI Board of Trustees meeting in Urbana, said that while state funding has been on the decline for more than a decade, the rescissions imposed in FY02 and FY03 along with the decreased funding expected in FY04 imperil the university's educational mission. 

The Urbana-Champaign Senate voted to adopt a policy governing alternatives to animal dissection in undergraduate courses during its May 5 meeting, which was convened to address unfinished business from the April 28 agenda.

Some Illinois faculty and staff members and students have found that tae kwon do can be much more than a means of self-defense.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Paintings, pop-up books and installation work are among the artforms featured in three new exhibitions on view May 9 through June 7 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Jessica Lewis Watson is a secretary III at the Children's Research Center and has lots of stories to tell.

An International Support Fund has been created to provide emergency financial assistance to faculty and staff members and students who incur unforeseen expenses because of immigration and travel regulations. Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Provost Richard Herman announced the creation of the fund in an April 9 mass e-mail.

At the April 28 meeting of the Urbana-Champaign Senate held at Foellinger Auditorium, Senators Ron Peters, professor emeritus of labor and industrial relations, and Al Kagan, professor of library administration, expressed concerns that the shortened contract period the administration has proposed for academic employees this year will adversely affect academic employees’ service dates and pay.

The identity of "Deep Throat" is no longer a mystery, at least not for one investigative journalism class at the UI.

Academic faculty and staff on the Urbana campus who anticipate cash-flow problems when their pay date changes this fall will be able to get assistance from a short-term transitional payment program offered by the university.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The 132nd commencement of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be held in two ceremonies May 18 at the Assembly Hall, 1800 S. First St., Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Fourteen faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, four academic professionals and five teaching assistants will be honored for excellence in teaching and advising Monday (April 28) at the annual Instructional Awards banquet in the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The former president of the Republic of Zambia will share his recollections of the liberation of southern Africa during a visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on May 2.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Illinois state senators and representatives will have the chance to don emergency suits and gear during demonstrations Friday (April 25) at the Illinois Fire Service Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Award-winning photojournalist James Nachtwey will visit the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus Tuesday (April 29) to discuss his experiences covering conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda and Somalia.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - An expert on civil rights and family law at Harvard Law School is scheduled to speak Tuesday (April 29) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The identity of "Deep Throat" is no longer a mystery, at least not for one investigative journalism class at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Over the past decade, the World Wide Web has become a ubiquitous presence and a multi-billion-dollar industry, according to analysts. And one catalyst for the Web's explosive growth came from the UI's Urbana campus. Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser made available to the public at large, was developed by a software development group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Although the Internet had been in existence for many years when Mosaic debuted in 1993, Mosaic helped it evolve into an information superhighway by sparking the public's interest in exploring this new frontier. "NCSA became part of Internet history when it released Mosaic and the general public began to discover the Web," said NCSA Director Dan Reed. "Today's browsers still depend on that original bit of ingenuity." In the early 1990s, the network of computers that made up the Internet and the data they contained were largely the realm of universities, information technology professionals and the military. Simply locating and accessing information on the system could be a daunting task for nontechnical people who lacked proficiency with Unix software. "It was the dark ages," said Michelle Butler, technical program manager at NCSA and one of the many staff and students connected with the Mosaic project. "You couldn't get to any information out there at all. There was no way to search it or list where things were at. There was no common spot to get data from or a common format for data. There was no reason for the regular person to use their home computer to access the Internet because there was nothing out there for them." The prototype for Mosaic was developed during 1992 by a group of NCSA staff and students who were intrigued by two recent developments in computing: the hypertext protocol, a system of electronic links for structuring and displaying documents, and a program called the World Wide Web, a system for linking computer systems and sharing documents over the Internet that was developed in 1989 by a software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Research Laboratory, in Switzerland. The NCSA team visualized greater potential applications for these mechanisms and incorporated them into a software program that was given the name Mosaic. When Mosaic made its 1993 debut, it opened up the Internet for nontechnical consumers by simplifying access. Users did not need to be proficient with a slew of cumbersome, single-purpose applications; even neophytes could "surf" Internet pages with relative ease, thanks to hyperlinks - electronic links that allowed users to jump between documents and parts of documents. Behind the scenes, Mosaic could interface with protocols such as FTP, Gopher and Telnet to find and retrieve information. Files Mosaic could not handle internally, such as sound files and JPEG images, were automatically routed to external players or viewers. But perhaps what really sparked the public's imagination was Mosaic's graphical capabilities, which delivered full-color images, sound and textual formatting, adding exciting dimensions to Internet materials. Once users discovered that perusing documents in cyberspace could be fun and relatively easy, more people started getting interested in using the Internet and the number of Web pages available began to multiply exponentially. Businesses also began taking notice of the Internet and its potential as a marketplace and advertising medium. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the scripting language Mosaic used to create the graphical and textual effects, started becoming the standard protocol for Web pages. Until that time, users often encountered problems loading and viewing pages when the coding was incompatible with their browsers. "Mosaic actually evolved the entire Internet," Butler said. Although other browsers existed at the time, Mosaic was the first widely distributed product. Noncommercial users could download it free from the NCSA site. The X (Unix) platform version was released in April 1993, and versions for Windows and Macintosh followed in December, providing the browser to users with all sizes of computer systems. Within a year of Mosaic's release, the NCSA Web site recorded more than a million downloads, and that number doubled again by 1995, with new users acquiring the popular browser at the rate of 70,000 per month. "We couldn't keep the server up to hand this code out fast enough," Butler said. In 1994, NCSA began transferring Mosaic to the commercial sector via Spyglass Inc., and licensing agreements with more than 100 software development companies, including Microsoft, which incorporated it into Internet Explorer. Although NCSA no longer supports Mosaic, documentation and information are still available in the archives on NCSA's site. The 10th anniversary of Mosaic's release will be commemorated April 29 with a symposium featuring a panel discussion by several computing experts, who will talk about Mosaic's impact and the future of computing.

Jeanne Vitoux is a veterinary dental technician at the UI Small Animal Clinic, president of the Academy of Veterinary Dental Technicians, and a mentor and tutor in the veterinary technician program at Parkland College.

Graduate programs across a wide range of disciplines fared well in the 2004 rankings released April 4 by U.S.News & World Report. UI units ranked in the top 10 nationally in the rankings include engineering (5), accountancy (2) and educational psychology (4). This year, the magazine issued new rankings in business, law, medicine, health disciplines, education and engineering. The publication did not issue new rankings in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. For the first time, the magazine ranked master of fine arts programs. How other UI units (and specialties within units) fared in the rankings:

Eight staff employees will be honored with the Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award at a banquet beginning at 5:30 p.m. April 17 at Peabody Private Dining Room. The award recognizes exceptional performance and service to the UI. At the honors banquet, each recipient will be awarded $2,000 and a plaque. Recipients’ names also are inscribed on a plaque displayed in the Personnel Services Office.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Even as many schools face tightening budgets, their recruiters will be out in force Thursday (April 17) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for the annual Teacher Placement Day.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A poet, critic and scholar of international and African contemporary art will deliver a lecture Thursday (April 17) as part of the "Exploring the Human Experience: Beyond Differences?" initiative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Hair sample thought to be Beethoven's

Colin Favret is the insect collection manager for the Illinois Natural History Survey and a UI grad.

Children rely on the cues they get from their parents, so mothers and fathers who feel jittery about war with Iraq should confront their own fears and get ready to talk with their children, said Aaron Ebata, family life expert at the UI.

There’s one more item to add to the list of completed campus renovations for the year – the campus Web site.

In anticipation of potential multimillion-dollar reductions in state appropriations during the current and coming fiscal years, Chancellor Nancy Cantor has appointed an advisory committee that will recommend strategies for reducing administrative expenses by streamlining operations and pooling resources.

Jennifer Carson is a wellness promotion specialist and stress management coordinator at McKinley Health Center.

At its March 13 meeting, the UI Board of Trustees authorized university officials to negotiate the sale of up to 1,300 acres of farmland near Allerton Park to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for prairie restoration.

When times are tough, who will speak up for the University of Illinois?

Two resolutions passed by the Urbana-Champaign Senate March 17 aim to enhance benefits for university employees.

If the University of Illinois has to cut 4.25 percent from its FY 03 operating budget, it will mean a $6.8 million cut for Urbana, a $6.4 million cut for Chicago, and a $482,000 cut for Springfield. These reductions are on top of $13.7 million in deferred maintenance money held in University Administration and $4 million cut from UA spending.

The UI, facing a $130 million state budget cut over two years, is "on the brink" and has exhausted all its fiscal flexibility, says UI President James J. Stukel.

A proposal by Gov. Rod Blagojevich that state universities and other state agencies cut 8 percent from this year's budget would mean layoffs for student workers, graduate assistants and employees, cutbacks in undergraduate courses and library services and would jeopardize the university's ability to compete for research funds. That's the message the UI Board of Trustees heard from all three chancellors and top administrators at the March 13 trustees' meeting in Rockford.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Architecture - both historic and futuristic - will be featured in three new exhibitions opening this month at I space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Suzi Millas is the assistant to the director in the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Several types of crimes increased markedly in the University of Illinois reporting district during the Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2002, period, according to the most recent crime report.

Native American House opens in temporary location

UI officials work to resolve pig dispute The UI is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to resolve an issue that arose as a result of a Feb. 5 FDA report about what the agency said was a potential violation of regulations regarding the sale of the offspring of transgenic pigs. The 386 pigs the UI sent to slaughter between April 2001 and late January 2003 were not transgenic animals, according to the UI scientists involved in the research. In fact, two sets of four tests were performed on the pigs to make certain they were not transgenic, the researchers said. The testing procedures had been shared with FDA officials in 2001, and the research project had been approved by two university oversight committees - the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and the Biological Safety Committee. The researchers began a series of studies in 1999 that involve gene insertion into pigs, the goals being to increase milk production in sows, improve digestive health in pigs and produce healthier animals without drugs. The researchers have worked closely with the FDA since the studies began. One of the issues to be resolved is the term investigational animals, a term the FDA has used regarding the 386 pigs in question. The UI researchers did not consider the pigs investigational because tests showed them to be non-transgenic. The FDA said it believed that based on its current information, the pork from the animals does not pose a public health risk.

As the world of business changes, so does the UI College of Commerce and Business Administration. The college has developed a blueprint for a new model of business school where teamwork, entrepreneurship, technology and diversity will be emphasized in an ongoing program of self-improvement. "Our goal is that our students, when they enter an organization, are able to hit the ground running, not just in academic and analytic skills, but in interpersonal and practical business skills," said Avijit Ghosh, dean of the college. To better reflect its mission, the school is changing its name to the College of Business. The proposal was passed by the UI Board of Trustees at its meeting Feb. 12. "We teach about business," Ghosh explained. "Commerce is not a word in common parlance today." Under the proposal, the word "administration" will be dropped because "it does not give the sense of entrepreneurship we want to create." Undergraduate curriculum should reflect the fact that navigating rapid economic change has become critical in business life. Ghosh also believes learning to work together in a business environment that is "inherently global and diverse" is crucial for future leaders. "Business leaders need to have interpersonal skills along with analytic skills. Our students need to learn how to interact with each other and do successful group projects, which includes learning shared accountability and responsibility as a way of working with diverse groups of people." Ghosh said Illinois will develop vigorous student internship programs, not only in the summer, but also during the academic year, by working with Champaign area businesses. In "An Agenda for Excellence," a paper outlining the college's goals, Ghosh wrote of the need to expand or create programs in private equity, new venture creation and the digital economy. The business school hopes to marry its traditional strengths in finance, accounting and marketing with the university's strengths in technology and science. This means not only working with the engineering and agriculture colleges, but also helping students participate in incubator companies at the university's research park. Ghosh emphasized that changes in undergraduate and MBA (master of business administration) curricula will be gradual, taking the proven course work of the present and directing it to new horizons. He cites, for example, a marketing course that will teach not only the fundamentals of selling retail goods, but also new technology products. "Our overall vision is to emphasize professional business education," he said. There are "tremendous possibilities" to organize symposia and seminars to promote interaction among students, faculty and industry professionals. The impetus for greater technology training comes in part from feedback by corporate recruiters and in part by observing changes in the marketplace. "We have a philosophy of continuous improvement. This is how business organizations work, and this is how we need to work." New initiatives under way to improve education and research include developing accounting methods for better measuring business "value drivers" such as technology, processes and other intangible assets. This research is being funded by a $2.8 million pledge from the accounting firm KPMG. In addition, the college has opened the Center for Enterprise Development at the Illinois Research Park and Incubator and the Office for the Study of Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Finance. The technology and management minor for undergraduates in business will be expanded in future years, said Ghosh, as will international business education conducted through course work. The college's blueprint paper noted that "today's business leaders must make all their decisions with a global perspective. To prepare such business leaders, the college needs to ensure a global perspective in all its academic programs."

"My life has been ruled by music," says John Tubbs, a multimedia communications specialist in Information Technology Communication Services (ITCS) in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

Plans for the $15 million Alice Campbell Alumni Center on the Urbana campus were unveiled at the UI Board of Trustees meeting Feb. 12 in Chicago.

The Urbana-Champaign Senate reiterated its support of Chancellor Nancy Cantor at its Feb. 17 meeting at Foellinger Auditorium. Robert Fossum, professor of mathematics and chair of the Senate Executive Committee, presented a statement delivered by Acting Chairman Kenneth Schmidt at the Feb. 13 UI Board of Trustees meeting that apologized to Cantor and her family for the university’s inability to stop the recent billboard campaign against her. Schmidt also restated the trustees’ confidence in Cantor’s leadership, a sentiment echoed by a Senate Executive Committee resolution, which Fossum also read for the Senate and asked the senators to affirm by applause.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Reductions in the world's arsenals of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction are the ultimate goals of a new program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The latest floor plans for the upcoming renovations at Campus Recreation were unveiled at a Jan. 27 brown bag seminar at the Intramural Physical Education building (IMPE). Construction is scheduled to begin at Campus Recreation Center East (CRCE) late this spring, and when completed the facility will have a one-eighth-mile track, three racquetball courts, locker rooms, a leisure pool and a multi-activity court (MAC) usable for a variety of indoor sports. When the CRCE renovations are completed in summer 2004, the majority of work will begin at IMPE. The redesigned IMPE will expand by 120,000 square feet to include a one-sixth-mile track, a 42-foot climbing wall and a 166-seat auditorium. Amenities such as a juice bar, multipurpose rooms and lounge areas with computers are intended to make the facilities amenable to a broader spectrum of patrons, not just people interested in sports and fitness. "For every person that you see here at IMPE, there are probably two people who would like to come that don't," said Tony Clements, director of Campus Recreation. "These new facilities are really built for a capacity that's well beyond what we're doing now, which is 3,000 to 3,500 people at peak time. These will allow us to handle 11,000 to 13,000 people a day." The redesigned facilities also will incorporate lots of windows to capitalize on natural lighting and to enable passersby to view interior activities. Open floor plans also will maximize patron self- sufficiency so users can find activities without staff assistance. To minimize disruption in services while CRCE is being renovated, its fitness equipment will be relocated to Gym 4 of IMPE and IMPE's hours will be extended. Floor plans, a time line and other information is available on the Campus Rec Web site at www.campusrec.uiuc.edu/renovation/index.html.

Acting Chairman Kenneth Schmidt said there will be "no more business as usual" when he announced plans to review university operations and expenditures during a Jan. 23 UI Board of Trustees meeting conducted by teleconference. Schmidt announced the plans in a statement that referred to a Jan. 19 Chicago Tribune article that questioned the university's spending in recent years, particularly for board operations and trustees' travel. Schmidt said President James Stukel will review university operations not integral to board operations and work with the board to develop and refine policies. Board operations, particularly those highlighted in the Tribune article, will be evaluated by the chairman and secretary Michele Thompson before being brought to the board for policy development. Thompson also will gather data from peer institutions, other state agencies and boards for comparison, Schmidt said. "It is not my belief that a cookie-cutter approach to operations of governing boards is appropriate," said Schmidt, who is a physician. "It is not. Rather we are seeking information that would help us to define what in medicine is defined as 'best practices' and information that allows us to make apples-to-apples comparisons. No doubt we will find ways to improve. No doubt in some instances we will be validated." Alternate sources of funding for board operations besides public money also will be investigated, Schmidt said. Other trustees concurred with the plans, including Lawrence Eppley, who said the board should serve as an example for the rest of the university in promoting efficiency and economy. Thomas Lamont, who has served on the board since 1990, said that he was "shocked" by the expenditures for air travel given in the Tribune article because the board had been advised charter and commercial travel would be more economical than the board maintaining its own aircraft. "If we fell into something that has gotten out of line, we did so with the best intentions of saving money," Lamont said. Schmidt said all invoices for trustees' air travel from the past five years are being reviewed to evaluate travel patterns before formal policy is developed. Until then, air travel will be used "when clearly appropriate" but "when requested, alternatives will be sought," Schmidt said. "It is noted that the most well-intentioned practices can become a bad habit over time, and we must not let this inertia overcome us," Schmidt said. In other news, the trustees authorized Chicago campus officials to apply for a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund construction of a $200 million biocontainment laboratory on the Chicago campus. UIC researchers and other scientists at the national center would conduct collaborative research on life-threatening viruses and bacteria that might be used in bioterrorist attacks. If awarded, the NIH grant would cover 75 percent of the project costs, and UIC and any research partners would guarantee the remaining 25 percent. The trustees also authorized the execution of an intergovernmental agreement with the Illinois Medical District for the proposed project site on Roosevelt Road between Wood and Wolcott streets. The site's proximity to UIC researchers, major medical centers, FBI headquarters and the Illinois State Police Crime Lab would be optimal in the event of a biodefense emergency, according to a document on the UIC Web site that explains the project. The facility would be a Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory, the highest level of security, with access restricted by multiple security systems, including perimeter fencing, observation cameras and card-reader systems. Additional safeguards such as air-microfiltration systems, air-lock buffer zones and "space suits" for laboratory personnel would be incorporated to contain and destroy infectious materials. Five such high-containment infectious disease facilities are now operating in the United States and two other new laboratories are under construction. In other business: