Features
Stories of Us:
First appeared in NCTE Council Chronicle in September 2008
Jackson walks by Adam in the cafeteria and purposely spills his food on Adam. Later Jackson grabs Adam’s book and, despite Adam’s protests, throws it out the window. A teacher asks what is going on and Adam says “Nothing.” What sounds like a typical day in school is in...
No-Vacation Nation
First appeared in Perspectives in December 2007
It is no secret that Americans work more hours and have fewer paid vacations than any other developed country. For example, while European Union nations have a legally mandated two-week vacation policy and most workers get far more, the United States has no laws requiring paid vacation. Typically, employees have...
Jonathan Kozol: Bearing Witness
First appeared in NCTE Council Chronicle in November 2007
As a young teacher in the 1960s, all Jonathan Kozol wanted to do was to share his passion for great literature with his students. So he read them poems. He read poems by William Butler Yeats, and he read poems by Robert Frost. The principal applauded him. But then Kozol...
Chris Crutcher’s Stories Resonate with Young Readers
First appeared in NCTE Council Chronicle in September 2007
Nothing much surprises Chris Crutcher, author of numerous young adult novels, including Ironman, Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, and Stotan!. Having worked extensively as a therapist for those experiencing child abuse and neglect, Crutcher has seen the dark underbelly of life. “Working in the field of child...
The Tao of Fu
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in July 2007
In the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, followers strive to bring harmony to the universe through the balance of opposites. So too has Ping Fu, MS ‘90 ENG, carefully negotiated a balancing act in the course of her life. Moving from the violence of China’s Cultural Revolution to the positivity...
Elie Wiesel: Indifference is Not an Option
First appeared in NCTE’s Council Chronicle in June 2007
For more than half a century, Nobel Prize-winner and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel (pronounced EH-lee vee-ZEL), has used his voice and his influence to make sure the world never forgets the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II. “There may be times when we are powerless to...
Brainpower
First appeared in in June 2007
A mere generation or two ago, a strong back, stamina and loyalty were a guarantee of regular employment. But with the rise of the high-technology sector and the gradual shifting of the economy away from agriculture and manufacturing, brainpower is the name of the game these days. “We live in...
Raising a Joyful Voice
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in June 2007
The day I meet her, Ollie Watts Davis MMUS ‘82 FAA, AMUSD’88 FAA, wears an ivory pants suit, rings on four of her fingers, piles of bracelets on each wrist, red nail polish and matching lipstick. There is just no other way to say this: she is gorgeous. She exudes...
Acts Of Faith
First appeared in Illinois Alumni Magazine in June 2007
Eboo Patel ‘96 LAS has the radical idea that people from other religions shouldn’t kill each other. “Why are religious extremists getting to young people before we do?” he asked. “Why don’t we build a different pattern, a pattern of religious pluralism?” Patel, a Muslim, founded the Interfaith Youth...
Faculty Feature: Martha Gillette
First appeared in University of Illinois School of Molecular and Cellular Biology in April 2007
Martha Gillette’s grin can easily light up a room, but behind that thousand-watt grin is a determination that could stop a freight train. Although Gillette knew from a young age that she would be a scientist, she faced more than her share of obstacles in the course of her career....
Formative Assessment: Helping Students Grow
First appeared in in March 2007
What do class discussions, quick writes, reader response journals, quizzes, and writing conferences all have in common? They are all examples of the wide range of classroom-based activities that teachers use to measure how well their students are learning. “Students crave feedback,” says Shannon Davis, an English teacher at...
Poet Laureate Donald Hall Applauds Resurgence of Poetry
First appeared in National Council of Teachers of English, Council Chronicle in March 2007
Poet Laureate Donald Hall’s love of poetry grew from his fascination with horror movies. “I enjoyed the morbidity of them,” says Hall of his favorite flicks. Hall, who was named poet laureate last year, was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. When he was just a school boy,...
The First Amendment
First appeared in The Council Chronicle: National Council of Teacher of English magazine in September 2006
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Perhaps it is not surprising...
Firm Believers
First appeared in AARP The Magazine in May 2006
There’s no gentle way to put it: Bea D’Angelo was flabby. The owner of The Red Parrot, a popular beach restaurant in Hull, Massachusetts, Bea was so weak “she looked like a strong wind would knock her over,” recalls personal trainer Skip Tull. In 2003 Bea, then 55, hired Tull...
High Noon for Higher Education
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in May 2006
In 1636, a mere 16 years after landing on North America’s shores, the Pilgrims put themselves to another task — establishing Harvard University. More than 100 years later, founding father Thomas Jefferson declared, “If we’re going to have a successful democratic society, we have to have a well-educated and healthy...
There’s No Place Like Home
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in January 2006
First, you should know that architect Lori Naritoku ‘82 FAA, MARCH ‘84 FAA, was not too keen on this whole idea of talking about herself. What she does, she said, is not interesting. “I just kind of like doing my own little thing,” Naritoku said. “It’s not a big deal.”...
Fender Bender
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in November 2005
When David Spelman returned to his Urbana hotel after midnight, he found world-class musicians Mamadou Diabate and Juan MartÃn jamming in an alcove of the Historic Lincoln Hotel’s lobby. Another guitarist, Dan Zanes, was on the floor with a quiet smile on his face. Others sat on chairs or by...
Frank McCourt Is Forever a Teacher Man
First appeared in National Council of Teachers of English Chronicle in November 2005
Frank McCourt has become rich writing about being grindingly poor. Arriving in America as a teen, having survived a harrowing, poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland, McCourt, who never went to high school, enrolled in college to become a teacher. Many people will be familiar with at least part of his story,...
Isabel Allende
First appeared in National Council of Teachers of English Chronicle in September 2005
Anyone who has read Isabel Allende’s novels will not be surprised that she has what she describes as “an ear for stories.” “I can’t remember my children’s names, but I never forget a good story,” she says with her deep, warm belly laugh. And the world is a richer...
Purchasing Power
First appeared in in September 2005
When Mindy Conover Meads ‘74 ACES looks at a shirt, she’s probably not thinking about how it will look on her but how it will look on you. That’s because Meads, recent president and CEO of the clothing chain Lands’ End, has spent her entire career in the retail clothing...
Against the Odds
First appeared in Illinois Times in October 2003
It is a late September afternoon. Eighteen-year-old Johniesha Deberry is in labor. Her child wasn’t growing as expected, so birth is being induced. A fine-boned woman, with beautiful clear, black skin, Deberry wears a well-worn hospital gown. Her black hair, tinged with red, is tied in a high ponytail with...
Medical Students Value Diverse Environment
First appeared in Science & Spirit in September 2003
While diversity issues, from affirmative action to bilingual education, have garnered plenty of attention over the past several months, they have recently registered on the monitors in a different arena: medical school. A survey conducted at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine,...
The Nurture of Nature
First appeared in Science & Spirit in July 2003
What if there existed a simple object found in everyday life that could relieve stress and anxiety, promote healing and increase powers of concentration? It appears likely that such “magic bullets” do exist, and that they come in the forms of trees or shrubs or even philodendrons. Just as plants...
Focus on Conservation
First appeared in Lincoln Park Zoo magazine in March 2003
From elephants to spiders, many of the animals chosen for the Regenstein African Journey exhibits are threatened or endangered. In fact, each endangered animal housed in Regenstein African Journey has a connection to African conservation initiatives supported by Lincoln Park Zoo: this connection is the central message of each exhibit...
A Telling Effect
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in March 2003
Barry Bearak, MS ‘75 COM, doesn’t like to talk about himself. “It makes me self-conscious,” he said. “I get flustered.” On the other hand, he is very good at telling other people’s stories. Bearak, a New York Times staff writer who received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for...
Looking for the Edge
First appeared in Illinois magazine in December 2002
The dawn is dull, the day trying to decide if it will be spring or remain winter. The houses in this Champaign neighborhood are faded and worn, the sidewalks cracked and dingy and in this gray, muddy, early spring day there is little vegetation to enliven the scene. Photographer Larry...
A Place To Belong
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in May 2002
Once upon a time, Lynn Schreiber Price ‘77 COM was like every other kid in her Skokie, Ill., neighborhood. She attended Miss Kurzweg’s second-grade class at Middleton Elementary. She had two best friends, Barb and Darleen. Price’s mother, Jackie, was a homemaker. Price’s father, Alex, worked as a glazier, and...
Against All Odds
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in January 2002
The 1950s were somewhat of a quiet time in the United States. On the University of Illinois campus at Urbana, majestic elm trees graced the Quad; women wore sweater sets, pearls and bobby socks; men were mostly clean-shaven; and shirts were button-down. The idea of walking on the Quad grass,...
Magnificent Obsession
First appeared in in December 2001
It is 9:30 a.m. when archaeologist John Kelly’s pine-green Jeep Cherokee lumbers across the grassy field and comes to a stop at two tarp-covered trenches blocked by barricades and yellow tape. It’s quiet except for the whirring and buzzing of crickets and the distant, dull whine of traffic from Highway...
Count Her In
First appeared in Illinois Alumni magazine in January 2001
Suze Orman, ‘77 LAS, once limited her career goals to a single area: waitressing. “My grades were never great. I had a speech defect, so I couldn’t speak, and I had mild dyslexia, so I couldn’t read. I thought I was dumb,” she said. Now Orman, a Certified Financial Planner®,...
Like Magic: 1997 Beckman Institute Fellow Brendan Frey
First appeared in Beckman Institute Annual Newsletter in January 0001
In some ways, Brendan Frey, 1997 Beckman Fellow, became interested in machine learning because it appealed to his sense of magic. “To know the secrets of how something that is beautiful and magical works is, to me, like being a magician,” says Frey, who even as a child was interested...
David Becker, Little in Life More Valuable than Friendship
First appeared in Washington University Record in January 0001
It was a beautiful fall evening when David Becker threw out the first pitch at the St. Louis Cardinals game against the Dodgers. Fred Hanser, J.D. ‘66, chair of the St. Louis Cardinals and one of Becker’s first students, was behind the plate catching—at Becker’s insistence. Hanser signaled for a...
Mark Smith: Providing the Tools for Success
First appeared in Washington University Record in January 0001
From the first day the law school students arrive on campus, Mark Smith, J.D. ‘86, associate dean of student services, works to get to know each one. He introduces himself at the welcoming assembly; he wanders the hall checking in with students as they change classes; he talks to them...
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! How the Brain Processes Auditory Information
First appeared in University of Illinois Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology newsletter in January 0001
How do frogs in a pond resemble people at a cocktail party? In both cases communication is possible only if frogs and people focus in on a particular voice… or croak… and tune out other, extraneous sounds. Albert S. Feng, professor of physiology, biophysics, bioengineering and neuroscience, has spent the...
A World In Motion
First appeared in Washington University School of Law Magazine in January 0001
Immigration law has historically swung like a pendulum, pushed in part by public fears and hopes. When the economy is strong, immigration law is generous, when conditions are more stressful, restrictions on immigration grow. But even in the aftermath of the September 11 disaster, Stephen Legomsky, Charles F. Nagel Professor...
Sharing Space
First appeared in in January 0001
Like most people, astronaut Joe Tanner ‘73 ENG puts his pants on one leg at a time, but in his case, those pants belong to a space suit and weight 60 pounds. Last February, Tanner joined an elite group of astronauts — one of only 19 on active duty who...