2017-03-01
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Stephanie Alumbaugh never forgot the day she presented a paper in junior high and was met with snickering and laughter. After that experience, Alumbaugh developed a fear of writing and presenting papers in public that stayed with her for years.
“That did not help my self-confidence, so I withdrew,” she said. “In school, I became just another student sitting there, filling a...
2017-03-01 - Life was hard in southern Arizona in the 19th century, and there wasn’t much reason to expect that a young boy named Wassaja would long be part of it when he was dragged into the mountains by enemy raiders in 1871. Certainly there was no reason to expect that 145 years later a building at the University of Illinois would be named in his honor. Last fall, however, Illinois...
2017-03-01 - Corin Chapman is putting her degree to work in a way that hits closer to home than most careers: She’s trying to save the life of her son. In 2014, Chapman’s son, Max, then 14 months old, was diagnosed with Peroxisomal Biogenesis Disorder, a rare disease with fewer than 100 known cases in the U.S. The disorder can lead to loss of vision and hearing, as well potentially life-...
2017-03-01 - Can anyone predict the future? If someone in 1867 had asked John Milton Gregory—this institution’s visionary, founding regent—what would happen over the next 150 years, would he have even guessed that Illinois Industrial University would switch names to the University of Illinois, much less that people in 2017 would carry entire libraries of information in their jacket pocket?...
2017-03-01 - Several units are planning a symposium to honor more than three decades of research, teaching, and service by Thomas Bassett, professor of geography and geographic information science, who is retiring from the University of Illinois. On Friday, March 10, the Department of Geography & Geographic Information Science, Social Dimensions of...
2017-02-28 - Central Illinois in 1867 was not an obvious place to plant a university that would change the world. Illinois had no public colleges and a short history of universal public schooling. Legislators wanted only practical instruction from their new institution. And the campus was in a muddy stretch of treeless prairie. Yet almost from the start, Illinois Industrial University –...
2017-02-27 - Great results come from great collaboration. CourseShare, a shared project of the Big 10 Academic Alliance, has provided students at Illinois and elsewhere with increased access to specialized language courses since its creation in 2005. Now, the program has expanded to include courses in literature and culture.“...
2017-02-24 - Researchers at the University of Illinois report they can alter blood cell development through the use of biomaterials designed to mimic characteristics of the bone marrow. The findings, reported in the journal Science Advances, are a first step toward developing more effective bone marrow treatments for diseases like leukemia and lymphoma. Blood cells flow throughout the body...
2017-02-23 - A professor of psychology at Illinois has been recognized as a rising star in her profession.Joey Cheng has been named a 2016 Association for Psychological Science Rising Star, an award reserved for outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their research careers. Cheng earned her doctoral degree from the University of British...
2017-02-22 - Four researchers from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences are recipients of 2017 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awards “honor early career scholars whose achievements mark them as the next generation of scientific leaders.” Awardees receive $60,000 to be used as they wish to...
2017-02-17 - Staff and academic professionals in the College of LAS are being recognized for dedicated service to students, fellow employees, and the mission of the college and university.Seven staff members and academic professionals will be honored at a ceremony on Tuesday, March 7. They include three recipients of an academic professional award, three recipients of a staff award, and one recipient of the...
2017-02-16 - Two alumni from the College of LAS have been elected into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), considered to be among the highest professional distinctions that can be obtained by an engineer.Dianne Chong (BA, ’71, biology), who went on to earn master’s degrees in physiology and metallurgical engineering, and a doctoral degree in metallurgy, at the...
2017-02-15 - If you think entrepreneurship is something that begins after a student earns his or her degree, think again. The iVenture Accelerator program has been growing in popularity since it launched in 2015, with its programming intended to allow students from across campus to create startup enterprises for their own ideas.The program has been successful,...
2017-02-10 - Emergency medical care is more advanced than ever, but advanced treatment still hinges on victims being transported to a hospital. However, a doctor and LAS alumnus is leading a program that takes a new approach: He’s basically bringing the emergency room to the patient. Kurt Bloomstrand (BS, ’09, molecular and cellular biology; MD, ’13)...
2017-02-08 - A professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois has received a competitive award for exemplary junior faculty from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Charles Sing will receive five years of support for his work after being selected for a 2017 NSF CAREER Award for his proposal, “Developing the design rules of charge...
2017-02-08 - College wasn’t always a good fit for Chris Nixon. Struggling with classes, he left Illinois, but after some soul-searching close to home and abroad, he came back to U of I and enrolled in a major that changed everything: anthropology. The journey back to Illinois, along with a pivotal course taught by Alma Gottlieb,...
2017-02-03 - Now and then a science story comes along that challenges what you’ve been told since you were a kid. This is one of them. For starters, water doesn’t necessarily freeze below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s been recorded in liquid form in clouds as cold as 22 degrees below zero. This scientific phenomenon is more than a rebuttal to popular belief—it’s the basis for a research...
2017-02-01 - In case you think the days of charting unmapped territory on Earth belong to the history books, let us introduce you to Patricia Gregg, a professor of geology who, along with several others from Illinois, recently returned from a deep sea expedition about 750 miles off the west coast of Mexico. Only about 10 percent of the ocean...
2017-01-30 - A professor of history at the University of Illinois is being recognized by the American Library Association for his effort to describe the unique challenges that arise when race and homosexuality intersect. Kevin Mumford, author of “Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis,” has...
2017-01-27 - Researchers from the University of Illinois and collaborating institutions predict that Midwest soil may lose as much at 15 percent of its stored carbon — and thus its agricultural fertility — over the next 100 years due to the effects of global climate change. During a three-year field trial at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, researchers exposed pockets of a...
2017-01-25 - A review of 207 studies involving more than 20,000 people found that those who engaged in therapeutic interventions were, on average, significantly less neurotic and a bit more extraverted after the interventions than they were beforehand. The review, reported in the journal Psychological Bulletin, challenges the idea that personality traits are established at birth or in...
2017-01-23 - What’s an effective platform for discussing moral theories, political reconciliation, and President Donald Trump? Colleen Murphy, professor of philosophy, political science, and law, knows one: Twitter, of course. Then again, if not for Trump’s famous Twitter account, the social media...
2017-01-20 - A report in the journal Science Advances details the grim realities facing a majority of the nonhuman primates in the world – the apes, monkeys, tarsiers, lemurs, and lorises inhabiting ever-shrinking forests across the planet. The review is the most comprehensive conducted so far, the researchers say, and the picture it paints is dire. “Alarmingly, about 60 percent of primate species are now...
2017-01-18 - Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural gave us “nothing to fear but fear itself.” John F. Kennedy’s gave us “ask not what your country can do for you …” But those are among the few inaugurals long-remembered in history. So how important are these speeches in setting a tone or direction that carries through? Communication...
2017-01-17 - When students return to classes today for the spring semester, they might not recognize their old classrooms. Years in the making, the Chemistry Annex renovations are complete. The ambitious project included a complete renovation and construction of a 9,600-square-foot addition to the building on the southeast corner of the building along Mathews Avenue. All told, the addition...