Congrats to Mike Plecki ’18, who won the Khan Cup at Urbana Country Club along with his father. Read the full article here.

Jacob Taitel ’18 has published a method scale book, Beyond the Scale: For Tuba. This was a project that he was awarded research honors his senior year. He is working on publishing a version for all the brass.  You can find his book here.

Teaching Titan Graduate Shannon Green ’18 has written a children’s book! She shared the following information about it:

Scottie on the Space Station is an educational story for children in the early grades which exemplifies how to speak to people with disabilities, but in a fun, imaginative way. This story is a personal one for my sister and me because we grew up with Scottie and had to repeatedly teach others that it is ok to just talk, befriend, and play with him. My sister (and co-author), Kaela, and I wrote this picture book in the hopes that it can be a reference for teachers and parents to review inclusion and diversity (something I think is desperately needed in these times). We added the space station element because our father and, previously, my sister worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and are space enthusiasts; an enthusiasm we wish to spread to the younger generation.

You can buy the book on Amazon here!

Victoria Drake is one of the co-authors of the work Randomized Controlled Trial of a Prefeeding Oral Motor Therapy and its Effect on Feeding Improvement in a Thai NICU. Victoria and other co-authors worked alongside Illinois Wesleyan Associate Professor of Nursing Brenda Lessen Knoll ‘89. The work was nominated for the 2020 Best of Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing Writing Award.

Wow! Congratulations, Victoria!

Zach Silver ’18 has been working with Laurie Santos, director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory and the Canine Cognition Center at Yale University. Zach is a graduate student interested in how nonhuman animals learn from and about human agents. He also provides original music for Santos’ podcast The Happiness Lab.

Thank you very much to Jacob Taitel ’18, who returned to Illinois Wesleyan February 8th and 9th to give a Tuba recital and a masterclass to our tuba/euphonium  students. He is pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Tuba Performance at the University of Michigan starting next fall. Go Jacob!

Jacob appears in the middle with the red tie.

Thank-A-Giver Day (TAG Day) is Monday, February 10. This day provides the IWU campus community with the opportunity to thank donors who support Illinois Wesleyan. IWU celebrates each year in mid-February because it marks the symbolic point during the academic year – about 70% of the way through – when we rely on support from alumni and friends, our endowment, and external grants.  

If you would like to be celebrated as a donor today, you can make a gift at iwu.edu/give.