LAS News Archive

2023-04-14 - Faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants at the University of Illinois, including 11 instructors from the College of LAS, were honored recently for excellence in teaching, mentoring, and advising. These awards, sponsored by the Office of the Provost, are collectively known as the Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction. The Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate...

2023-04-11 - An ancient biological enzyme known as nickel-iron hydrogenase may play a key role in producing hydrogen for a renewables-based energy economy, researchers said. Careful study of the enzyme has led chemists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to design a synthetic molecule that mimics the hydrogen gas-producing chemical reaction performed by the enzyme. The researchers...

2023-04-04 - Venetria K. Patton, a professor of English and African American studies who has led the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences since August 2021, was commemorated as the Harry E. Preble Dean in a ceremony attended by friends, family, former students, and other colleagues from around the country. Speakers at the...

2023-04-03 - Chicago’s Joseph Frumkin (BS, ’13, integrative biology) is the guest engagement coordinator with Lincoln Park Zoo. From designing public education presentations to managing the fellowship program, Frumkin has found that informal education diving into animal care and conversation combines skills that he honed while studying at Illinois. Please...

2023-03-31 - In the decades following World War II, the intimate emotional life of families took on unprecedented social and political value in Western democracies. History professor Teri Chettiar looks at how the British government prioritized emotional well-being and viewed it as necessary for a stable democracy in her new book “...

2023-03-31 - Five University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. Two College of LAS professors have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. The award is presented by the University of Illinois...

2023-03-30 - Justine Murison, professor of English, researches and teaches 19th century American literature. She’s fascinated by what she calls "the meeting place of the material and the immaterial: the boundaries between, for instance, psychological emotion and physiological response, spiritual striving and bodily care, and imaginative reading and social...

2023-03-29 - An annual study of recent alumni reports that 94 percent of LAS alumni who graduated during the 2021-2022 period secured a first destination within six months of commencement. The average salary for new LAS alumni is $74,705. The data comes from the recently released Illini Success Initiative, a campuswide report that shines...

2023-03-28 - A series of eight videos available online highlights the research of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Craig Koslofsky on ways of marking and understanding skin in the early modern world. Koslofsky – who studies early modern European and global history – is writing a book, “The Deep Surface: Skin in the Early Modern World, 1450-...

2023-03-24 - The next, and past, big thing: The great woolly mammoth is back. This time it’s visible to all near the University of Illinois Main Quad. A new mammoth sculpture is rearing its head on the same ground where real mammoths wandered 30,000 years prior. That’s even older than the neighboring Natural History Building (NHB), built in 1892, from where the sculpture draws inspiration...

2023-03-24 - As a scholar of Africa and the African diaspora, Merle Bowen’s professional life has largely been focused on Black freedom in the context of land and labor. In her most recent book, “For Land and Liberty: Black Struggles in Rural Brazil,” the professor of...

2023-03-22 - Aaron Thompson has worked as the administrative aide for the Department of Statistics since September 2016. Since then, he’s taken on new tasks and earned recognition for a job well done. Thompson even admits that opening his email each morning is almost as exciting as that first cup of coffee. Briefly describe your responsibilities. I...

2023-03-13 - From 1914-1935, George Herman “Babe” Ruth consistently crushed the ball, breaking nearly every standing batting record and tallying a career 714 home runs. By many accounts, the Boston Red Sox star pitcher turned New York Yankee slugger is still considered the greatest baseball player of all time. But, should he be?

2023-03-10 - How cool is Dave Tewksbury? Very cool, and perhaps freezing, especially if it’s winter, because every day in any weather short of an ice storm the professor commutes to campus on his 15-year-old Trek 7000 bicycle. It’s not the transportation plan one might expect from a native Southern Californian in the Midwest, but then again, Tewksbury has taken quite well to Illinois. We’re now four...

2023-03-10 - Lockers slam. Backpacks swing over shoulders. Shoes slap as students cluster and close ranks, lone footfalls speeding up, slowing down, and falling in step. The need for belonging follows a distinct soundscape in school hallways. “We all feel the need to fit in socially, but teenagers feel this need more strongly than most,” said Haley Skymba, a doctoral student studying clinical psychology. “...

2023-03-10 - “Exhausting, hard work, and muddy,” are the words atmospheric sciences graduate student Leanne Blind-Doskocil uses to describe the Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms (PERiLS) campaign. “But so worthwhile,” Blind-Doskocil added, recently. Imagine one day you are chasing a tornado, and the next you are in class. That’s what it’s like...

2023-03-09 - There are walks in the park and then there are walks that affect the course of university history for the next 128 years, and the campus tour that a botany professor named Thomas Burrill gave to Eugene Davenport in 1895 was one of those. Nobody knew it at the time, however. Davenport was a talented, 30-something...

2023-03-09 - On a typical day, thousands of students, faculty, and staff crisscross campus, hustling from one class, project, meeting, and building to another. During daylight hours, crowds flow in and out of major destinations like Lincoln Hall, the Union, and the Library. It’s only when the sun sets and the sky darkens that the Observatory becomes a hub of activity. While the building is...

2023-03-09 - In 2022, the University of Illinois was named a First-gen Forward institution by the Center for First-generation Student Success, an initiative of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and The Suder Foundation, for its efforts to improve access to students who are among the first in their families to attend college. A large number of those efforts occur at...

2023-03-08 - Dawn Riley Duval arrived on the University of Illinois campus in 1992, ready to begin a track career that, 30 years later, would lead to her induction into the Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame. But her story began far away from Champaign-Urbana. Riley Duval (BA, ’96, English), an eight-time All-American and seven-time Big Ten champion...

2023-03-08 - Launching any new enterprise is difficult. Launching it in a pandemic is even harder. Just ask Kathryn Leskis, clinical director of the Illinois Neurobehavioral Assessment Laboratory. The lab, which offers a wide range of psychological testing and evaluation, saw its first client at the end of 2019, and was on track to have a great full...

2023-03-08 - You may have heard the term “Balkanism.” It was coined by Maria Todorova, Edward William & Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor Emerita at Illinois, as a way to explain how the Balkan region in Southeastern Europe is perceived as Europe’s “other”—an area that is seen to exemplify European backwardness and political unrest. Countries...

2023-03-07 - From the College of LAS to "Survivor" to college campuses across the country, Lisa Hennessy (BA, ’91, speech communication) believes she found her passion at the crossroads of storytelling and traveling. As executive producer for “The College Tour,” streaming on Amazon Prime, Hennessey...

2023-03-03 - Editor’s note: Kevin Leicht is a professor of sociology and the science team lead at the U of I System's Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago. He is co-leading the development of a software app that will alert clinicians to medical misinformation on social media. The project is funded by DPI...

2023-02-27 - For Rachel J. Whitaker, life tends to feel like it’s all hands on deck. Whitaker, a professor of microbiology, spends much of her time researching the evolution of archaea, bacteria, and viruses in the natural and clinical world—so much time that she tends to get caught up in her research. At a recent investiture ceremony, where...