Articles by University Communications

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Mortar Board has announced that Illinois Wesleyan University has been selected to host the 228th chartered chapter of Mortar Board, a prominent national honor society for college seniors.

The group will officially become a chartered chapter at a special installation ceremony held on Sunday, Nov. 8 at 1 p.m. in the Davidson Room of the Memorial Center (104 E. University St., Bloomington). Twenty-two collegiate members and will be inducted into the society.

Mortar Board is a prestigious national honor society that recognizes college seniors for outstanding achievement in scholarship, leadership and service. Since its founding in 1918, the organization has grown from four founding chapters to what will soon be 228 chartered collegiate chapters with nearly a quarter of a million initiated members across the nation. The chapter will be named “Egas,” in honor of IWU’s inactive senior women’s honor society, established at the University in 1937. All of the chapter’s 220 former members will also be invited to become full members of Mortar Board at this time.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Pratt Music Scholars of Illinois Wesleyan University’s Preparatory Music Program have been invited to the White House on Nov. 3 and 4 to participate in activities surrounding the Classical Music Performance. The performance is a part of the White House Music Series organized by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Members of the community are encouraged to attend the trip’s send-off on Nov. 3 from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Supporters will meet in the Bloomington-Normal Airport visitor waiting area where there will be a banner, signs, balloons and treats. All are encouraged to wear something red, white or blue to help students identify their supporters.

While in Washington, D.C., the students will take lessons from musicians Awadagin Pratt, Joshua Bell, Alisia Weilerstein and Sharon Isbin, after which they will attend an afternoon concert at the executive residence.

Awadagin Pratt, the award-winning concert pianist with roots in Bloomington-Normal, helped arrange for the students to be invited to the event. He founded the Pratt Foundation in 1997. The Pratt Music Scholars are supported by funds provided by community members as well as corporate sponsor State Farm® and the foundation has raised about $200,000 to date. These funds provide music lessons with Illinois Wesleyan music instructors through the Illinois Wesleyan Preparatory Music Program as well as make certain that the students have music and instruments as needed.

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The idea of a national constitution may bring to mind images of stately leaders inscribing the words that will steer the course of a country for centuries. That image is a myth, said Illinois Wesleyan University 2003 alumnus James Melton.

A new book co-written by Melton aims to dispel notions of a constitution as something unchanging or permanent. “We tend to look at constitutions as if they are written in stone, yet the expected lifespan of a country’s constitution is around 19 years,” said Melton, who offered his insights to the Illinois Wesleyan campus at a lecture recently in Beckman Auditorium of The Ames Library.

Melton discussed the book, The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-written by law professors Tom Ginsburg of University of Chicago Law School and Zachary Elkins of the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and Melton. For the past five years, the three scholars, along with a team of researchers, have been collecting data on all formally written constitutions of independent nations since 1789. Their observations and findings make up the new book, which was released this month. Speaking about The Endurance of National Constitutions brought Melton back to Illinois from the ancient city of Lucca, Italy, where he now works as a postdoctoral fellow with the IMT (Institutions, Markets, Technologies) Institute for Advance Studies.

In the book, the trio explores what political conditions create an enduring constitution. Each constitution is set against an extensive 669-question survey to analyze how well it meets the book’s criteria for a lasting constitution, which includes how flexible the constitution is for future change, how ideas were included in the drafting process and throughout the life of the constitution, and how great the level of detail was in created the groundwork for the document.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The Iranian presidential election was a topic of international discussion and dispute this summer. The election garnered worldwide attention, especially after protestors took to the streets of Iran disputing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Information about the election was limited for international observers. All foreign press was expelled from Iran during the election. While the election proceedings were closed to the rest of the world, Illinois Wesleyan University junior Sara Ghadiri was able to spend the summer in Tehran and witness first-hand the election fervor.

Ghadiri, whose father was born in Iran, claims dual-citizenship and was therefore able to vote in the presidential elections. As a political science major, Ghadiri was excited by the amount of political activism that occurred in Iran during the election. “People of all convictions, all social classes and all beliefs came to the polls. I was so amazed to see the mass turnout, what ended up being over 70 percent of the eligible voting population,” said Ghadiri.

Iranian citizens also became active in the campaign process. “Pre-election, I can tell you that the atmosphere was absolutely electric. There were people in the street every night handing out posters and flyers,” said Ghadiri, “So many people were involved in campaigning that it was impossible to walk down the street in Tehran without seeing someone handing out literature, a newspaper or a green piece of ribbon or cloth.” Green was the color of Mousavi’s campaign advertisements, while Ahmadinejad chose red.

Ghadiri collected many of these campaign materials and brought them back with her to the Illinois Wesleyan campus in order to analyze them. “My research is still in data collection phase now. I have collected, cataloged and translated everything I brought back,” said Ghadiri. Her ability to read and speak Farsi, the official language of Iran, has been helpful in her analysis of campaign materials. “I am now working on a thesis synthesizing my research. I have been working with both Professor Jim Simeone and Professor Kathleen Montgomery on the project, so it’s still evolving,” said Ghadiri.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Numerous alumni of the Illinois Wesleyan University music and theatre departments have made the transition from the cozy, quaint McPherson Theatre and the ornate, chestnut stage of Westbrook Auditorium, to the lights of Broadway and the red carpet of Hollywood. This year the departments boast two more successful alumnae, recent graduates Lisa Karlin ’06 and Bryonha Parham ’07.

On Nov. 15, the young women make their Broadway debut in Ragtime revival at the Neil Simon Theatre in New York City.

The musical transports its audience back to the early 1900’s and intertwines the lives of three distinctly different groups of people. In the performance, Karlin plays a female swing lead, covering multiple female roles and Parham plays the friend of the female lead.

Both alumnae graduated with bachelors of fine arts in music theatre and spent their four years at Illinois Wesleyan immersed in the theatre department.

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