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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. –The Educational Studies Department at Illinois Wesleyan University has received a $25,000 grant from the William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank, Trustee and the Commerce Bancshares Foundation. The grant award will support the Promise and Potential Partnership between Illinois Wesleyan University and Bloomington Junior High School (BJHS). This partnership, administered by Professor Robin Leavitt at IWU and Counselor Mary Aplington at BJHS, was formalized in 2001 with a start-up grant from the State Farm Companies Foundation.

The primary mission of the partnership is to support the promise and potential of all students, particularly those vulnerable students who may be struggling in school and who may lack the social, structural or institutional support required to succeed academically. The secondary mission of the partnership is to prepare future teachers and other child and family professionals to work with diverse student populations. All IWU undergraduates enrolled in Education and Social Justice, and Studying Children and Adolescents spend two semesters mentoring and tutoring BJHS students. During each fall and spring semester, approximately 56 IWU student tutor-mentors contribute a total of more than 100 hours at the school working with pairs of BJHS students. More than 100 BJHS students participate in the program each year.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – A new joint initiative from Illinois Wesleyan University’s Action Research Center (ARC) has received a nearly $100,000 grant from the State Farm® Youth Advisory Board (YAB). The grant was announced Monday in Hansen Student Center on campus.

The Blank Canvas Program, an effort of ARC and Illinois State University’s College of Fine Arts (ISU), aims to cultivate the creativity of low-income, minority youth in Bloomington-Normal to help communicate the challenges they face in thinking about college, said co-creator of the program Deborah Halperin. “This project put the question to the very people targeted, ‘What would you do if you were in charge?’” said Halperin.

The grant is part of the $1 million the YAB is giving away this year nationally aimed toward closing the achievement gap in higher education. Over the past two years, the board has granted $12 million to service-learning projects across the United States and Canada, but this is the first to be awarded in McLean County.

Illinois Wesleyan University sophomore Karin Unruh is a member of YAB, which is comprised of only 30 students, ages 17 to 20, from across the nation. “It will be exciting and rewarding to personally experience the results this grant will have on our local community,” said Unruh, an elementary education and sociology double major from Algonquin, Ill.

Blank Canvas is the brainchild of Halperin and Dick Folse, an Illinois Wesleyan graduate who works for ISU’s College of Fine Arts. “The idea is to show the value of college and the college experience and expose young people to the arts,” he said. The grant provides four new computers with state-of-the-art design software, digital cameras and color printers to three community partners: the Jesus House, Western Avenue Community Center and UNITY Community Center.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – It was a day top celebrate the new and honor traditions past at Illinois Wesleyan University during Founders’ Day on Wednesday. This year marks the 160th anniversary of the 30 founders who gathered to sign Illinois Wesleyan’s charter.

At the Founders’ Day Convocation, President Richard F. Wilson said he believes the University is on course to fulfill the vision of the founders. “We must keep in mind their admonition which appears on the Founders’ Gate: ‘We stand in a position of incalculable responsibility.’ That instruction requires us to be vigilant about our work as teachers and scholars,” said Wilson.

In carrying on a responsibility to the founders, Wilson announced University alumnus and benefactor Byron Tucci has established a new endowed professorship for Illinois Wesleyan University. The 1966 graduate has created the Byron S. Tucci Endowed Professorship in honor of the faculty who assisted him. “Byron views this gift as a way to acknowledge the caring faculty members who make students the center of their attention and whose accomplishments over an extended period are key to the stature of the University,” said Wilson.

Speaking in Westbrook Auditorium on Wednesday as part of the Convocation, Dorceta Taylor connected struggles for sustainability with the history of inequality in the United States.

Hear her remarks (mp3)

“To have a sustainable society, one has to have a just society,” said Taylor, an associate professor of environmental sociology and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, who helped to develop one of the nation’s first environmental justice programs.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – University alumnus and benefactor Byron Tucci has established a new endowed professorship for Illinois Wesleyan University. The gift will be announced by President Richard F. Wilson on Wednesday at the annual Founders’ Day Convocation. It is the latest gift in the University’s Transforming Lives capital campaign.

Endowed professorships celebrate the combined talents of professors who excel in teaching and scholarly activity, said Wilson who added, “Endowments allow our faculty to remain on the leading edge of their fields and bring new knowledge into the classroom for students.”

Tucci, a 1966 Illinois Wesleyan graduate with a double major in business administration and economics, said supporting the professors is imperative for the long term health of universities. “There have been many outstanding people in my life,” said Tucci, “but the personal contact with the professors at Illinois Wesleyan served as a model for me that I have drawn upon throughout my life. It afforded me focus, direction, discipline, and the hard work ethic that led to success in business.” Tucci pointed to such faculty members as Greg Gardner, a retired accounting professor who took an interest in him while he attended IWU and he continues the relationship today. “The professors at Illinois Wesleyan made education personal,” he said.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Dorceta Taylor, environmental justice activist and program director for the Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative at the University of Michigan, will be the speaker for the 2010 Founders’ Day Convocation at Illinois Wesleyan University on Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 11 a.m. in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall (1210 Park St., Bloomington).

Taylor’s talk entitled “Environment, Social Justice and the Challenge of Sustainability,” is free and open to the public. The event honors the 30 founders who signed the charter for the University in 1850. In celebration of Founders’ Day, an anniversary cake celebrating the University’s 160 years will be served from 3-5 p.m. at Joslin Atrium of the Memorial Center. The Ames Library will hold its annual exhibit highlighting the documents from the University’s founding, including Illinois Wesleyan’s “birth certificate.”

Named in 2007 to Who’s Who Among American Teachers and Educators, Taylor has spent her career shedding light on the connections between nature, race and gender, making her a pioneer studying environmental justice. An associate professor of environmental sociology and Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan, she helped to develop one of the nation’s first environmental justice programs at the university.

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