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  • Staying Creative During Quarantine

    Jul 6, 2020 3:00 pm

    Staying creative during quarantine can be challenging. New work conditions with more, or less, distractions and commitments, fewer in person arts and entertainment opportunities in your community, and an atmosphere of stress and uncertainty can all negatively affect creativity. In this interview, Nic Morse, Digital Media Specialist (and our in house illustrator!) checks in with Vincent Carlson, a PhD student in Theatre at Illinois to chat about what creativity and engagement with the arts looks like for him during COVID-19.

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  • On the Job Hunt: How to Keep Your Options Open

    Jun 30, 2020 7:15 pm

    In the coming months, facing uncertainty head-on and doing what you can to prepare for multiple possible job outcomes is the best thing you can do for your future self, advises Derek Attig.

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  • Working from Home with Kids

    Jun 8, 2020 7:45 pm

    The past several months have presented many of us with new challenges: stress and uncertainty, eroding boundaries between work and the rest of our lives, new and often not ideal workspaces, isolation, and more. Add kids to the mix, and things get even more challenging. 

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  • How to Enhance Your Personal Brand Online this Summer

    Jun 2, 2020 2:15 pm

    Remember in the early 2000s when we used to create online pseudonym usernames like “plantlover101” or “sillys0pran0” for internet safety? Fast-forward to 2020, where personal branding is now one of the best tools to market yourself. Long gone are the days where you’ll be advised to hide social media accounts from employers - and why should you? They paint a picture of who you are as a scholar and as a person, too. But personal branding is a scary term. How do you embody a form of corporate personhood without hiding your authentic and multi-faceted self? The answer sounds too good to be true: You don’t have to!

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  • Radical Healing / Collective Thriving

    May 18, 2020 3:00 pm

    Getting work done looks very different today than it did at the beginning of the Spring semester. For Amir Maghsoodi, PhD student in Educational Psychology, the shift from in-person, clinical counseling training has offered time to deepen his social justice work with the Radical Healing Collective, a group of psychology scholars who work in issues of culture, ethnicity, and race. 

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  • Where Are They Now? Rick Deja

    May 13, 2020 12:15 pm

    Landing a teaching role outside of the US was always a goal for Rick Deja (PhD, musicology, '16). So when he was offered a job teaching in South Africa, he simply couldn’t pass it up. Deja is currently a lecturer (the equivalent to an assistant professor position) in ethnomusicology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he teaches courses on music and culture from Africa and other world regions, advises graduate students’ research and writing, curates a collection of traditional and historical instruments, and leads a student music ensemble performing Pan-African Jazz and Popular music.

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  • Staying Active while Sheltering at Home

    May 12, 2020 10:00 am

    Many of us grew up with a very rigid conception of ‘exercise’ that involves participation in a ‘formal’ exercise program, or joining a gym or fitness club, this kind of exercise almost always involves wearing special clothes, traveling to an exercise facility, and finding time in a busy schedule to fit it all in. There are countless enjoyable and creative ways to build physical activity into a daily routine, even during the cornavirus.

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  • Coping with Compassion Fatigue

    May 6, 2020 12:45 pm

    Dr. Tara Powell's recent Zoom workshop on "Self-care, Preventing Burnout and Compassion Fatigue" struck a chord with over 1000 people in the university community, maxing out the potential registrants for a Zoom meeting. That's not surprising during these strange times when many people are doubling down on efforts to check-in (virtually or in-person) on friends and family members who are struggling. Powell offers some tips for those in caregiver roles during the COVID19 pandemic, but they are applicable in our everyday lives as well. 

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  • Resilient and Ready to Lead, Teachers Make the World a Better Place

    Apr 20, 2020 1:15 pm

    In a time of uncertainty, as instruction and learning transition to digital technologies, College of Education students have an important message to share.

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