October 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Jamie Rogers, a senior chemistry major from Elmwood, Ill., has been chosen as one of 11 finalists for the Frank and Sara McKnight Prize in Undergraduate Chemistry.

The prize, established by Dr. Steven McKnight, chairman of University of Texas Southwestern’s Department of Biochemistry, and awarded by the university, acknowledges undergraduate achievement in chemistry research.

In November, Rogers will attend the UT Southwestern Biochemistry Research Retreat in New Braunfels, Texas to present her research along with the other finalists in a poster session. The prize’s selection committee will judge the finalists on their presentation as well as the gravity of their research.

“Being a finalist for this highly competitive award is an honor in itself,” says Ram Mohan, professor of chemistry at IWU, who supervises Rogers’ research in his lab.

Rogers’ research explores replacing toxic chemical processes with more environmentally friendly ones, particularly by utilizing the element Bismuth. In her nominated research project, Rogers used bismuth-based catalysts to replace more toxic catalysts previously used to synthesize molecules of interest to the pharmaceutical industry.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Heading into next week’s debate among Democrat presidential candidates, a new statewide survey conducted by Illinois Wesleyan University showed Sen. Barack Obama as the clear – but not overwhelming – favorite among Illinois voters.

Choosing between Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, 36 percent of Illinois voters surveyed last week favor Obama, 26 percent favor Clinton and 16 percent choose Edwards.

The Republican side lacked a clear favorite, with voters closely divided between top choices Sen. John McCain (21 percent) and Rudy Giuiliani (23 percent).

The poll demonstrated unpopularity for President Bush, with 69 percent of voters disapproving of his performance. Illinois’ Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich is also unpopular, with a 60 percent disapproval rating.

Illinois voters are strongly opposed to the Iraq War, with 59 percent saying it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq, and 52 percent believing the United States should withdraw troops as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable.

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Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns will discuss his new historical series on World War II during “An Evening with Ken Burns” on Thursday, Nov. 1 at Illinois State University. The event will take place at 7 p.m. in the Bone Student Center Braden Auditorium.

Burns will also speak at 2 p.m. that afternoon in Illinois Wesleyan University’s Hansen Student Center, 300 Beecher St., Bloomington. Both events are free and open to the public. Burns’ appearance is part of the Stevenson Lecture Series and a highlight of Illinois State University’s 150th Celebration.

Burns’ latest documentary production, The War, recently premiered on PBS. The seven-part series focused on how World War II impacted the lives of American families. Burns has been making films for more than 30 years and has produced some of the most outstanding documentaries in American history. His films include Jazz, Baseball and the highly-acclaimed series The Civil War.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – In the spirit of Homecoming, The Ames Library has announced the creation of a new digital image collection titled The Historical Photographs of Illinois Wesleyan University, comprised of nearly 200 foundational photographs documenting the 157-year history of IWU.

All images collected within The Ames Library’s digital collections are available for public use for educational purposes.

Selected from the University Archives, photos of students, alumni, faculty, student groups, athletes and buildings illustrate the evolution of student life and the formation of campus identity through the years. The online album will be continually updated with images documenting the growth and changes to the University.

The Ames Library is also using image databases such as ARTstor and Saskia to develop other digital image collections, including galleries devoted to student art, letters written by an alumnus during WWII, issues of the Argus student newspaper dating back to 1894, and a gallery of photos and descriptions of the Native American pottery on display in the John Wesley Powell Rotunda of The Ames Library (1 Ames Plaza, Bloomington).

The Historical Photographs gallery can be found online at http://www2.iwu.edu/library/services/historical_photographs.shtml, and other digital image collections can be found at http://www2.iwu.edu/library/resources/DigitalCollections.shtml.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Studying the market trends, researching companies on the S&P 500, considering long-range performance – these are all practices of any investment analyst. The only difference in this case is that the analysts are students.

The Illinois Wesleyan University class in Portfolio Management challenges students to research and evaluate an investment portfolio. Unlike other college portfolio classes, the stocks these IWU students manage are real.

“Students learning to understand investing through classes is growing throughout universities across the country, but many of them have undergraduate students use phantom funds,” said Elisabeta Pana, assistant professor of finance at IWU. “Our students have made educated suggestions to an actual Client Board. This is not a hypothetical situation.”

The portfolio fund at Illinois Wesleyan is in the form of an endowment, donated in the early 1990s by Savannah, Ga. businessman C. Leroy Benner, who learned of IWU from his friend, 1949 alumnus Jack Liston. The two decided to provide more than $100,000 for a fund where students could learn the real impact of investing. Other donations followed, including a recent gift from the Benner estate. Students began analyzing the portfolio in 1995, and after 12 years of student management, the fund now tops more than $1 million.

“This is a great opportunity,” said senior business administration major Michael McQuillan. “I’m looking forward to going into job interviews and telling them I’ve already worked on a million-dollar account.”

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