2019-09-30
- As he was transitioning out of his position as head of the Department of Political Science, Robert Pahre had no idea that his term would end with a surprise gift that would allow him to quite literally “pay it forward.”
At the department’s first ever alumni...
LAS News Archive
2019-09-27 - I am in Govindjee’s office suite and I don’t know where to look. Govindjee, a professor emeritus of plant biology who goes by the one name only, is a collector. There are layers of history here: artifacts and papers, books and photographs. There also...
2019-09-23 - Three departments in the College of LAS are part of a new nationwide initiative to change the culture surrounding doctoral education and career pathways. Led by the Association of American Universities (AAU), the PhD Education Initiative promotes student-centered...
2019-09-20 - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is generating new sources of revenue while continuing to invest in education, research, and public engagement. Through the Investment for Growth initiative, 18...
2019-09-17 - Earlier this year, Erin Joe, after serving for more than two decades in the FBI, was named the director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, where she leads efforts to analyze and understand cyber threats to the United States. Making...
2019-09-13 - Two professors in the College of LAS have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Brian Allan, a professor of...
2019-09-12 - With more than 50,000 total students for the first time in university history, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has welcomed a record-breaking freshman class for the start of the 2019 academic year. The new freshman class is also the largest, most academically talented and most...
2019-09-11 - For many students, Altgeld Hall is just a place to learn mathematics, observe historic architecture, and listen to the chimes, but for two alumni it symbolizes the beginning of their very own love story. Betsy Alderman (BS, ’12, mathematics) and Nathan...
2019-09-06 - One morning last summer, a half dozen Illinois students climbed into cars and drove east of campus. They passed a few miles of houses and farmland before they turned onto a country road and parked near something unusual, at least for these parts. It was a forest. They put on their boots. They had...
2019-09-06 - It’s tempting to think of professors of days gone by as stiff as the stone from which their busts are often hewn. But William Abbot Oldfather was not—as comedian Tom Lehrer once famously lampooned college elites—an “ivy covered professor in ivy covered halls.” He was adventurous, opinionated,...
2019-09-06 - Mei-Po Kwan had spent years using research methods that some believed to be incompatible before she stood on a sidewalk in Humboldt Park, Illinois, arming people with daily activity diaries, sound level monitors, and pollutant sensors—tools to map the patterns of their lives and what they were...
2019-09-05 - You might call it Quad Day for the humanities. The first ever Humanities Expo was conducted last week at the Foreign Language Building, where almost 50 registered student organizations and academic units set up booths and tables for students to learn about majors, careers, and other...
2019-09-04 - The University of Illinois has created a new institute within the College of LAS to strengthen research, teaching, and outreach that deepens understanding of cultures and societies around the world. The Illinois Global Institute (IGI), which launched in...
2019-08-30 - Fifteen faculty members have taken new leadership positions in departments and other academic units within the College of LAS this fall. Feng Sheng Hu, the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS, said that the leadership changes are a normal and healthy transition as the new school year...
2019-08-30 - One of the region’s most prestigious honors for a life sciences researcher has been awarded to Martin Burke, a professor of chemistry and associate dean for research at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine...
2019-08-23 - Sept. 1 marks the 80th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland and the start of World War II in Europe, and world leaders will gather to mark the event. But what led Germans to embrace Nazi rule more than six years earlier, which would lead them into the war? University of Illinois...
2019-08-20 - Anyone who thinks space is the final frontier should familiarize themselves with the research of Lijun Liu, professor of geology and a GeoThrust Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois. He knows that there’s a lot we don’t understand right...
2019-08-16 - When Aida Guhlincozzi and Julia Cisneros were younger, they each attended science camps that helped spark their interest in the geosciences. As they moved up the academic ladder, however, and each finished their undergraduate degrees at Texas A&M before coming to graduate school at Illinois,...
2019-08-14 - The majority of brain activity is considered spontaneous because it does not occur in response to an external event. Researchers do not know how this inherent activity, whose spatial pattern is called the functional connectome, influences cognition. As a result, its role in mental disorders remains...
2019-08-12 - The Department of Energy has selected 73 scientists from across the nation, including University of Illinois chemical and biomolecular engineering professor David Flaherty, to receive significant funding for research as part of its Early Career Research...
2019-08-09 - Editor's note: Anyone familiar with the research of Bruce Fouke would associate him with hot springs, kidneys, and coral reefs before they’d associate him with student-athletes. The geology and...
2019-07-30 - Infants 17 months of age expect leaders – but not others – to intervene when one member of their group transgresses against another, a new study reveals. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to growing evidence that children in their second year of...
2019-07-30 - Mathematics professor Bruce Reznick doesn’t drink much beer, though he does have a certain joke about it he likes to tell. “Every time you see me not drinking a can of beer, the beer I'm not drinking is Champagne Problems,” Reznick likes to say. That’s because Reznick, who has been at the...
2019-07-30 - Last year, Jane Desmond, a professor of anthropology and director of the Summer Institute in Animal Studies at Illinois, wanted to publicize her concern and research findings about the plight of police dogs sniffing out opioids as they search for drugs....
2019-07-29 - Seven alumni from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have named recipients of the college’s 2019 annual alumni awards. The alumni represent a variety of backgrounds and degrees, and their achievements have clear links to their experiences at the University of Illinois. The recipients will...