2015-04-01
- A walk with the affable Larry Harris, Jr., across campus is not for the shy of heart. He may not know all the 42,000 students who attend the University of Illinois, but as he waves and greets his way across the grassy Quad and through the corridors of the Illini Union, you get the feeling that given a bit more time, he just might.“There are a lot of people who go to this university,” says Harris...
2015-03-01 - Today we know better than to search for secret tunnels that lead to ancient cities and piles of treasure at the center of Earth, but the question of what lies some 4,000 miles below our feet is still one of humanity’s great mysteries. A research team at the U of I,however, is using seismic waves to shake loose new revelations about our planet’s core.Using a novel application of earthquake-reading...
2015-03-01 - Teaching a dog to sit, stay and come is one thing, but the Illini Service Dogs team is training their dogs to do everything from opening doors and flipping lights to helping a fallen person to his feet. Although fairly new to the university, the Illini Service Dogs organization is now well known across campus for turning dogs into service companions for people with disabilities. The all-...
2015-03-01 - Washington, D.C., can be an intimidating place even for seasoned professionals and politicians. For interns it can be even more daunting, which is why the Illinois in Washington program has been working since 2006 to ensure that U of I students interning in the nation’s capital have a fruitful experience. Illinois in Washington is available to all U of I students (though the majority are from...
2015-03-01 - In a world of tweets and text messages, it’s hard to imagine the effort that goes into writing long letters by hand, let alone one in which a man goes on for many pages, calling his lady “his heart’s life, his desire, his sorrow’s cure.“ Today, most text messages say all of that with a smiley face symbol.According to Martin Camargo, University of Illinois professor of...
2015-03-01 - What can emblems created hundreds of years ago tell us about how human society evolved? Quite a bit, actually—so much so that a small, energetic undergraduate student research project in the College of LAS focused on making emblems easier to study is drawing attention to not only the subject matter itself but how students can learn and help the study of humanities evolve.In addition to the...
2015-03-01 - Two professors in the College of LAS are recipients of 2015 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.Alison Fout, a professor of chemistry, and Ryan Foley, a professor of astronomy and of physics, are among 127 other career scientists and scholars from 57 universities chosen for the fellowship. The two-year program awards the fellows $50,000 to pursue their choice of...
2015-02-01 - Emerging humanities initiatives at the University of Illinois are receiving a boost thanks to a $2,050,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities announced. The grant, coming on the heels of another major grant to IPRH from the Mellon Foundation last year, will be used to create research groups...
2015-02-01 - There are certain corridors in academia where natural brilliance—an innate, high level of intelligence or talent—is considered to be the main ingredient for success. A researcher at the University of Illinois has raised the question of why women are underrepresented in these fields.A new study by U of I psychology professor Andrei Cimpian and...
2015-02-01 - Five students enrolled in the College of LAS have been awarded Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships to study abroad this spring semester, helping to make the University of Illinois one of the most represented schools in the program.Hei Chan (integrative biology), Ladonte Price (chemistry), Tatiana...
2015-02-01 - Long after the new walls have gone up, classrooms have been upgraded, and Lincoln Hall looks like new again, the renovation is receiving its last strokes of the brush. New art from Illinois artists has been installed in key areas of the revived building.Recently, in the Dean’s Suite on the second floor, Holly Wolf-Mattick (MFA ’02), of Woodstock...
2015-02-01 - While the recent Groundhog Day snowstorm was a headache to millions of people from Chicago to Maine, it was nothing but enlightenment at 40,000 feet, where University of Illinois professor of atmospheric sciences Bob Rauber was on the maiden scientific voyage of a new radar system that provided a view of snow like nobody has seen before.As the massive Nor’easter pounded Boston and other areas in...
2015-01-01 - Prestigious as it was, news in December that the University of Illinois had received five National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships wasn’t even the full story. Two recent graduates from the College of LAS were also named recipients of the fellowships. Additionally, three other alumni have been awarded Creative Writing Fellowships in Poetry from the National Endowment for...
2015-01-01 - Step by step, the University of Illinois has been building one of the best academic programs in Hindi in the nation. In its latest improvement, however, students and the instructor don’t even have to leave their seats.This past fall, Mithilesh Mishra, senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and director of programming in Hindi and Urdu,...
2015-01-01 - As the U.S. House of Representatives reconvenes this month, adopting rules of procedure are among the first orders of business. Pretty mundane stuff, it would seem—but in fact it determines the very balance of power throughout the entire federal government.Gisela Sin, a political scientist in the College of LAS, has analyzed more than a century of House...
2015-01-01 - Some issues require scholars in both the humanities and sciences to fully understand. As a new journal sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies reveals, the Black Death is one of those topics.“Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death” is the subject of a new journal, The Medieval Globe, created in hopes of...
2015-01-01 - Biofuels may be good for the environment, but farmers who decide to grow bioenergy crops face risk like any other commercial venture. Researchers at the University of Illinois, however, have made growing the crops easier by mapping where they thrive best.Atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain, along with agriculture and consumer economics professor...
2014-12-01 - Regardless of gender, youth who enter puberty ahead of their peers are at a heightened risk of anxiety, conflict with friends and family, social problems, and other problems associated with depression, according to a groundbreaking new study by a psychology professor at the University of Illinois.The study by Karen D. Rudolph and her colleagues is...
2014-12-01 - Five professors in the College of LAS have received National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships, a prestigious award given to faculty and scholars for advanced research. The U of I is the only institution to be awarded more than three of the fellowships for 2015. The grant recipients include Antoinette Burton, professor of ...
2014-12-01 - From Long-Hand to CalculatorsApplied mathematics professor A. H. Taub (at left) writes a shock wave problem on a chalkboard in 1948. Though chalk and erasers are still used in classrooms, these days students also rely on calculators and computers to solve problems.From Pencil and Paper to LaptopsIllinois students used to make sure they had plenty of paper for taking notes in lectures. Today, it’s...
2014-12-01 - Two professors in the College of Liberal Arts& Sciences are among the latest researchers elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a prestigious scientific society composed of those who have made outstanding contributions to their field.Brendan A. Harley, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Phillip...
2014-11-01 - A couple things dwell at the forefront of Merle Bowen’s mind these days, as terrible stories of Ebola have put nerves on edge around the world. One is that Ebola is indeed a deadly virus. The other is that fear of the affliction is only making matters worse. Bowen, director of the Center for African Studies and professor in the...
2014-11-01 - “Life is an adventure,” because you never know what path your career will follow, says Laura Bolton, one of six LAS award winners this year. Bolton majored in psychology but ended up becoming a leader in wound care management. Another 2014 award winner set his sights on music, but instead made significant breakthroughs in cancer treatment. A third recipient hoped to become an Air Force pilot,...
2014-11-01 - Olivia Widalski, a junior majoring in English in LAS, has landed a job that must sound as good as Shakespeare to her favorite English professor, Christopher Freeburg. She works in computer technical support.Granted, it’s just an after-school job on campus while she earns her English degree, but Freeburg’s class helps her deal with computer users in...
2014-11-01 - As a professor of mathematics, Jayadev Athreya knows a thing or two about numbers, but there’s one math question that eludes him: How many children have been exposed to the new and innovative programming of the Illinois Geometry Lab (IGL) since it launched in 2012? The lab director can only raise his palms. “It’s in the thousands,” Athreya...