2020-04-02
- “I used to think immigrants were a problem.”
When Ann Abbott read this introduction to a student’s final essay, she realized the Spanish in the Community curriculum may be one of the most unique and important experiences of which she’s been a part.
“Those words, ‘I used to’—that’s really impactful,” said Abbott, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor in the Department of...
2020-04-01 - Some buildings get all the glory. At U of I, Lincoln Hall has its presidential connection, Altgeld Hall has its chimes, English Building has its ghost. But what about the workhorses—the gritty brick behemoths whose claim to fame isn’t their name or design, but their practicality, and the fact that over the years they’ve served as everything from faculty offices to bowling alleys and war barracks...
2020-03-31 - “Shelter in place” is now the norm in much of the country, thanks to COVID-19. As a result, connections once made face to face are now happening electronically in both work and personal lives. John Caughlin heads the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and specializes in interpersonal communication and the...
2020-03-30 - A new artificial intelligence consortium that will include the University of Illinois has made fighting the COVID-19 pandemic its first order of business. The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, chaired by Thomas Siebel (BA ’75, history; MBA ’83; MS ’85, computer science) and co-managed by the U of I and the University of California, Berkeley,...
2020-03-26 - I’m standing on the edge of a high-rise in the middle of a city. I can hear the car horns, feel the traffic below and—just a few feet away—see the spiraling girder that’s my destination. Summoning my courage, I leap—and miss, plummeting rapidly towards the ground. Instead of making impact, however, I merely stumble embarrassingly across a patch of green foam as I take off my helmet and wait for...
2020-03-23 - I grew up on the Kenyan coast, in a town called Mabafweni, in Kwale County. My parents were teachers, but their income was not enough to sustain us and send us to school. So, we also farmed. I got up early every day to work on the farm before school. When I was a young person working on my family farm, I saw every year that halfway through the growing season, insects would come and take away...
2020-03-11 - According to Brendan Morris, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, treehoppers are the wackiest, most astonishing bugs most people have never heard of. They are morphological wonders, sporting bizarre protuberances that look like horns, gnarled branches, antlers, fruiting fungi, brightly colored flags, or dead plant leaves. Treehoppers suck on plant juices. They...
2020-03-09 - It may seem incredible in an age of polarized division, but Ned O’Gorman is making a proactive case for politics. His new book “Politics for Everybody” is true to its title. It’s a “defense of politics for people who have lost faith in it.” It’s also a call for renewed engagement in public life, though with an...
2020-03-09 - In the United States, voting for president is as old as the Constitution itself. The process by which presidential candidates are chosen by their parties, however, is much murkier, and marked by more than a century of shifting influence between political insiders and voters in caucuses and primary elections. In Illinois, for example, which has its presidential primary on March 17, primary...
2020-03-06 - A study of the early career paths of University of Illinois graduates reveals strong and steady success among new alumni from the College of LAS. About 89 percent of new LAS alumni are securing a first destination soon after graduation, according to the Illini Success initiative, a university-wide effort to better understand the early career paths of new alumni. First destinations include...
2020-03-04 - Before Julia Cisneros started working toward her PhD in geology at the University of Illinois, our understanding of sand dunes on the bed of large rivers was limited, and based largely upon observations in small rivers and laboratory experiments. After several years of research, however, Cisneros has developed a method that brings to light the...
2020-03-03 - The College of LAS has selected winners of this year’s teaching and advising awards. Professors, graduate students, a lecturer, and an advisor have been honored for their service. The LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching is being awarded to Andrew Gaedtke, a professor of English; Rana Hogarth, a professor of...
2020-03-02 - John Francis “Jack” Welch Jr., 84, the former CEO and chairman of General Electric Co., has died. He earned a PhD in 1960 in chemical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Welch went to work as a chemical engineer at GE immediately after completing his doctorate. He started in its plastics division and quickly gained prominence in...
2020-03-02 - Editor’s note: The novel coronavirus that first broke out in Wuhan, China in late 2019 has now spread to almost 70 countries, and the first case of possible community spread has been reported in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is monitoring the public health...
2020-02-28 - Cloud seeding has become an increasingly popular practice in the western United States, where states grapple with growing demands for water. Measuring how much precipitation cloud seeding produces has been a longstanding challenge. Researchers have developed a way to use radar and other tools to more accurately measure the volume of snow produced through cloud seeding. The findings of the multi-...
2020-02-25 - The numbers are in from the third annual Datathon at Illinois, and the competitive event to expose students to real-world problem solving in analytics is a growing success. Divij Ranjan, president of the Illini Statistics Club, which hosted the event with...
2020-02-21 - As a student, Carol Greenleaf (then Johnson) was sometimes late to her physical anthropology class. Walking across the Main Quad between classes took more time than she had. Somehow, however, there was always a seat available next to a fellow student named John Greenleaf. She just assumed that people had their favorite chair and this one happened to be...
2020-02-19 - The U.S. Census has gone through many trials since it counted 3.9 million people in 1790, but the upcoming 2020 Census may be one of the most difficult in a long time. With trust in government at a historic low, according to the Pew Research Center—and not to mention a growing U.S. population estimated at almost 330 million people—counting residents this year may be particularly challenging....
2020-02-18 - If someone had four weeks to walk the 550 miles from Chicago to Little Rock, they’d have to cover about 20 miles a day. For most people, this might seem impossible, but for Richard DePaolis-Metz, he’d just be sticking to his normal routine. DePaolis-Metz was the lead walker/runner for the College of LAS Student Academic Affairs Office (SAAO) that recently participated in the U of I’s Miles to...
2020-02-17 - Murals removed for restoration from the former home of the Department of Latina/Latino Studies and La Casa Cultural Latina at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been reintroduced to the university and the local community. A viewing took place at the Illini Union’s South Lounge, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana, which included an opportunity to...
2020-02-12 - Six early career professors have been recognized as Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors (LEAP) Scholars for their outstanding contributions and potential in research and teaching. The awardees are Marsha Barrett in the Department of History; Vincent Cervantes in the Department of Spanish &...
2020-02-12 - In a new study, researchers report they can manipulate how the brain encodes and retains emotional memories. The scientists found that focusing on the neutral details of a disturbing scene can weaken a person’s later memories—and negative impressions—of that scene. The findings, reported in the journal Neuropsychologia, could lead to the development of methods to increase psychological...
2020-02-10 - University of Illinois professor Stephen Long, a renowned researcher known particularly for his work in photosynthesis and addressing food insecurity, has been named an Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences. The Ikenberry Chair was established as an honor of the University of Illinois’ 14th president, Stanley...
2020-02-07 - A microscopic animal produces a compound that can paralyze parasitic worms that have infected over 200 million people worldwide, an interdisciplinary team of scientists from the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin reported in a recent PLOS Biology article. The discovery of the compound, known as Schistosome Paralysis Factor, could be critical for producing a treatment against...
2020-02-05 - The Department of Classics has received an estate gift of $750,000 from alumna Barbara Wallach (MA, ’70; PhD, ’74, classics) an emerita associate professor of classical studies at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. The estate gift will be used for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships, as well as a named professorship in...