June 2008

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The idea of summer camp brings to mind images of paddling canoes and roasting marshmallows, but at Illinois Wesleyan University, summer camp means days filled with the sweet sound of strings, the rumble of pianos and the intense training that music camps bring.

Each year Illinois Wesleyan holds summer music camps that draw junior high and high school students from across the nation to the campus. During their two- or three-week stay, campers do more than learn how to perfect their performance; they discover the University.

“For many students, this is their first exposure to college life,” said Illinois Wesleyan Professor of Composition and Theory and Director of the School of Music Mario Pelusi. “Students live in the residence halls, eat in the dining hall and work closely with IWU professors and guest instructors. We have many students attending as college students specifically because they attended one of our programs.” Pelusi estimates that approximately 60 percent of the participants who attend his Summer Music Composition Institute, one of the School of Music’s three summer music programs, apply to and eventually attend Illinois Wesleyan.

“When the students come, they meet the wonderful faculty and see the beautiful campus, and they want to return,” said Associate Professor of Music Nina Gordon, who founded the Cello Camp nine years ago at Illinois Wesleyan, followed by the Illinois Chamber Music Festival and Camp three years later with adjunct faculty member Lisa Nelson. “There is a direct connection with many of the campers who choose to become students.”

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Nearly 40 Illinois Wesleyan faculty and staff gathered last week for Globalizing the IWU Campus, a three-day, on-campus workshop aimed at further integrating a global view into the campus culture.

“When you talk about a ‘global view,’ you are talking about internationalization, which means infusing into the life of the University community the knowledge, attitudes and actions necessary for living in our complex and evolving world,” said the workshop’s keynote speaker, Uliana Gabara, dean of international education at the University of Richmond. “It’s more than simply sending students to study abroad. It’s developing a culture that aims to see study abroad as an extension of what they are seeing and learning on campus.”

Workshop participants discussed how the University should continue to evolve as a global campus, and attended sessions exploring what students need in facing today’s world. “It says right in our Mission Statement that the University ‘affords the greatest possibilities for realizing individual potential while preparing students for democratic citizenship and life in a global society, but the idea of internationalization permeates every part of our mission, from having a ‘spirit of inquiry’ to ‘fostering creativity,’ and it engages everyone in the campus community,’” said Associate Professor of Political Science William Munro, director of the Illinois Wesleyan International Studies Program and member of the workshop organizing committee.

The workshop came at a time when students across the United States are working to learn more about the world they will inherit. The number of U.S. students studying abroad is rising, said Illinois Wesleyan International Office Director Stacey Shimizu, who added that the University is following this trend, recently ranking in the top 40 of the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) Open Doors report. “Most students find they want and need to understand emerging cultures to compete,” said Shimizu.

More than a chance for students to learn about other cultures, global awareness and intercultural skills can be viewed as a necessity for the United States to flourish in a post-September 11th world. “Many in Congress believe we need to establish study abroad as a national goal for our students,” said Sara Nelson, a 2001 Illinois Wesleyan alumna who addressed the workshop. Nelson works for U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, co-sponsor of the Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, which is attempting to set a goal of sending 1 million U.S. students to study abroad over the next 10 years. “The act was a direct response to 9-11, when we realized we need to know more about the world around us,” said Nelson, who noted the bill is named after Durbin’s mentor and friend, the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon. “It was Simon who said, ‘the future depends upon globally literate students,’” she added.

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Kevin Bryant, 21, who graduated from Illinois Wesleyan last month and was a three-year varsity basketball player for the Titans, passed away on Sunday, June 8, as a result of injuries suffered in a whitewater rafting accident in Colorado last week. He was taken off life support Sunday at the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colo.

Bryant, a Batavia High School product, finished his IWU playing career in March and averaged 1.9 points in 28 career games and started two games in the 2006-07 season when he averaged 2.9 points and 1.2 rebounds.

Bryant’s visitation will be Thursday, June 12 from 2 to 8 p.m. at the Healy Chapel, 370 Division St., Sugar Grove. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 13 at Holy Cross Catholic Church, 2300 Main St., Batavia.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University President Richard F. Wilson announced Tuesday that Chemistry Professor Ram Mohan has been awarded the Earl H. and Marian A. Beling Professorship in the Natural Sciences at Illinois Wesleyan.

“Endowed professorships honor faculty members who have distinguished themselves in terms of teaching, research, and service,” said Wilson. “Dr. Mohan is a recognized scholar, both nationally and internationally, and is an exemplary teacher and mentor for students at Illinois Wesleyan. We are pleased to recognize his accomplishments in this very special way.”

“I am both deeply honored and humbled to be named the Beling Professor,” said Mohan, who has been teaching at Illinois Wesleyan since 1996. “It offers great encouragement and validation for the work I have been doing at Illinois Wesleyan with our own students.” Mohan’s celebrated research is geared toward discovering environmentally friendly synthetic methods for chemists to use at pharmaceutical and other companies. His work is known worldwide and published in international journals.

“The Belings, who are remembered as humanitarians and philanthropists dedicated to their community and education, established the professorship because of their admiration for the liberal arts at Illinois Wesleyan and because of the quality of the IWU faculty,” said Ben Rhodes, associate vice president for advancement at Illinois Wesleyan. Earl Beling, who died in 1977, was the founder of Beling Engineering Consultants, which had offices throughout the Midwest. A resident of Moline, Ill., Mr. Beling was a former president of the Illinois Association of School Boards, and was one of the founders of Black Hawk College. Mrs. Beling, who died in 1970, was known for her volunteer work, and held several leadership positions with the Central Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. –Illinois Wesleyan University alumna Shannon O’Rourke, an international studies and political science double major while at Illinois Wesleyan, took an off-beat route to her interest in Africa.

“I actually realized I wanted to go to Africa when I was studying abroad in Switzerland during my junior year,” said O’Rourke, a 2007 Illinois Wesleyan graduate who recently returned from spending six months in Senegal on a Rotary Cultural Ambassador Scholarship. While in Switzerland, her study abroad research project involved working with a World Trade Organization representative from Tanzania. “Something simply clicked in my head and I thought, ‘I am going to go to Africa.’”

O’Rourke discovered the Rotary scholarship, which would allow her to study Arabic in Tanzania or French in Senegal. “I’d already studied French in college and high school for a few years, so I decided on Senegal,” she said.

The scholarship required her to study 225 hours of French with a professor at a small language school in Senegal’s capitol city of Dakar. Driving from the Dakar airport with her host family, O’Rourke realized she had stepped into a new world. “I spent the entire 20-minute drive staring out the window because everything looked so different. I had never seen anything like it.”

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