Author Archives: Ann Aubry

Beyond Blu-Ray: Senior Researches Blue Lasers

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University senior Dan Haeger spent a ten-week summer internship at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) investigating various ways to manufacture blue lasers so that their products can be more consumer friendly. Blue laser devices are being developed by researchers as the next step in cutting-edge electronics, with the hopes of replacing red laser products such as DVD players.“We’re trying to make a certain generation of electronics cheaper and more affordable for the public,” says Haeger, a physics and economics double-major from Wheaton, Ill.

According to Haeger, blue lasers provide the latest advances in technology, but they are more expensive to manufacture than red lasers. Blue lasers currently cost around $200-$300 to produce, while the price of red lasers is drastically lower at $0.99. Prior to the mid 1990s, popular electronics such as DVD players, laser printers and medical equipment commonly used red lasers because of their availability. Over the past five years, however, red laser products have been replaced by blue laser technologies to provide consumers with higher sound and image quality with more storage capacity.

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Sophomore Selected to Study at Oxford

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Anne Marquette, a sophomore psychology major with an English minor, has been selected to study at Pembroke College in Oxford, England. As part of the Pembroke College Visiting Students Programme, Marquette will spend the 2008-2009 academic school year at the university.

Marquette, a native of Naperville, Ill., says she is ” really grateful for this opportunity and is looking forward to the chance to study psychology and English literature at this prestigious university.”

Founded in 1624, Pembroke College admits less than 100 undergraduate students each year from schools throughout Great Britain and a small number of students from other countries with a total enrollment of approximately 400 students. Pembroke is one of 32 colleges that make up Oxford University, which has a relationship with 13 U.S. colleges and universities: Brown, Bryn Mawr, Boston College, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, George Washington, Hamilton, Haverford, Illinois Wesleyan, Swarthmore, Tufts and the University of Pennsylvania. Illinois Wesleyan students have studied at Pembroke College since 1997.

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Illinois Wesleyan Ranks High for Students Abroad

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University is opening international doors.

The University ranked in the top 40 of the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) most recent Open Doors report, which looks at the number of total students studying abroad and international students and scholars coming to the United States. Illinois Wesleyan ranked 37 in the nation among baccalaureate institutions for the total number of students studying abroad during the 2005-2006 academic year.Open Doors is an apt title of the report because of the opportunities students receive, said Stacey Shimizu, interm director of the International Office at Illinois Wesleyan. “We’re preparing students for global citizenship, and studying abroad is a key tool for that,” Shimizu said of students who take part in study programs and faculty-led coursework abroad. This semester, there are 56 students spending semesters studying abroad, and 52 students from other countries studying at Illinois Wesleyan.

Studying abroad can come in the guise of a year-long exchange, a semester in foreign halls through the multitude of programs with the International Office, or an intensive few weeks with a May Term travel course. “They have access to so many programs here, that students can fill almost any need,” said Shimizu. During their travels, students find themselves immersed in new cultures and ancient histories. From the mountains of the Middle East to the wetlands of Australia, many students discover their future in traveling abroad, or simply discover something about themselves.

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Managing Multiple Medications: Nursing Study Follows Those Who Do Well

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— As the proportion of older adults rises in the United States, a growing number of patients must learn to juggle multiple medications with potentially complex dosage schedules, while also facing age-related changes that may hamper their ability to manage medication.

Millions of people in the United States gamble with their health each day by not taking prescribed medications correctly. The World Health Organization predicts only 50 percent of patients typically take medicine as prescribed.

A study by Illinois Wesleyan University nursing faculty suggests health care professionals can look at an older patient’s lifestyle to understand whether they may be successful in managing their prescriptions and needed medications.

The IWU study results, which will be published in April in Advancing in Nursing Science Quarterly, present characteristics of patients who successfully manage their medicine. “There are certain features that seem to influence whether or not someone will manage their medicine well, which we call ‘living orderly’ or ‘aging well,’” said associate professor of nursing Kathy Scherck.

Scherck along with Susan Swanlund, assistant professor of nursing, and Sharie Metcalfe and Shelia Jesek-Hale, both associate professors of nursing, studied a group of older adults in order to assess what problems they might be having managing medicine on their own. “What we found surprised us,” said Swanlund. “We found a group of people who were all successful at self-management. This presented a possible guideline for healthcare providers to note who might do well, and conversely, who might need more assistance, with medication.”

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Students Heading to New Orleans for Alternative Spring Break

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – At 5 a.m. on Saturday, March 15, 50 Illinois Wesleyan University students and 10 faculty and staff members will board a charter bus headed for their spring break destination: a work site in a New Orleans district heavily hit by hurricane Katrina. They will volunteer with Operation Nehemiah through Friday, March 21.

Upon arrival, participants in the program known as Alternative Spring Break (ASB) will explore the Ninth Ward and French Quarter regions of New Orleans in which they will work, said ASB sponsor Kevin Clark, assistant dean of students.

Most of the volunteers will perform a variety of tasks that will change daily, but special arrangements have been made for a group of nursing students and Associate Professor of Nursing Kathy Scherck. “They are going to work specifically with healthcare issues,” said Clark. “They will be able to go into the community and use the skills they have from classroom training and clinical experience.”

“We don’t know exactly what we will be doing while we are there so I am keeping a really open mind to everything,” said Sara Baldocchi, a senior psychology major from Glen Ellyn, Ill.

The trip was arranged through Break Away, a service trip organization company that provides a list of sites across the country and the world that want to work with or have worked with colleges or universities. ASB programs have been available at schools across the United States for a number of years, but the program was inaugurated at Illinois Wesleyan last year when Clark, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Danielle Kuglin, and a student organized an ASB trip to Pascagoula, Miss.

ASB publicity began at first-year orientation and during the first week of classes last August. “I think catching students right away made a difference in the number of volunteers,” said Clark, who expects that the program will continue to grow in future years.

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Beware? The Ides of March is Coming

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Beware! March 15 is right around the bend, and with it the infamous Ides of March. We all have heard the phrase “Beware the Ides of March,” but is the date really that threatening?

“Historically, the Ides of March was a day to settle accounts, a day when bills were due,” said Jason Moralee, assistant professor of history at Illinois Wesleyan University, who noted we usually associate the day with a settling of another kind of account – the assassination of Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.

According to Moralee, whose focus is ancient Rome, Caesar was the last in a line of generals who ruled the late Roman republic. “These men had used their glorious victories to carve out political power, and many thought Caesar went too far.” After squelching a civil war, Caesar had been declared Dictator Perpetuus, or perpetual dictator, and renamed monuments in honor of himself, said Moralee. “This was just too much, and those who conspired against him took up the motto libertas! or liberty.”

The fact that the assassination took place on the 15th of March could have been a symbolic “settling” of Caesar’s acts of tyranny, or it could have simply been a matter of timing. Caesar was planning on leaving for a military campaign shortly after the Ides. Moralee thinks both explanations are right – the day had symbolic and practical significance. “I always like the really practical explanations. Even historical figures generally thought in practical ways,” he said.

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Lost Actor Visits Illinois Wesleyan

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Actor Terry O’Quinn is in an elite circle. Not just because millions of people tune in each week to see him on the hit ABC television series LOST, but because he can call himself that rare honor – a working actor.

“Work. Work when you can, any way you can,” said O’Quinn, sharing his insights on the acting profession to a room full of theatre students at Illinois Wesleyan University on Tuesday. The actor addressed three classes and an open forum Monday and Tuesday before returning to Hawaii to resume filming of the television show.

O’Quinn is the older brother of Illinois Wesleyan’s Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Thomas Quinn, and offered to speak to his brother’s theatre classes during a visit. “His wife’s family lives on the East Coast, so he’s flying back and forth all the time,” said Quinn. “The trick was just getting him to land.”

Sitting in a circle with nearly two dozen students in the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre, O’Quinn fielded questions and gave honest answers about everything from entering the acting profession, to working for television verses theatre, and being recognized.

“You know you are getting more famous when people say your name or even your character, ‘Are you Terry O’Quinn?’ or ‘Are you John Locke?’” said O’Quinn, who had to change his name because another actor already has his name, Terrance Quinn, registered with Actors Equity. “I used to get people coming up to me and saying, ‘You look familiar. Do you shop at Wal Mart?’” For O’Quinn, the recognition is not the reward of acting. “Really, I think of fame as distracting, it’s something you have to get around,” he said.

Every actor looks at working on a hit show with a wary eye, said O’Quinn. “I’ve been acting for more than 30 years and this has never happened to me. And it will not happen again, I can almost guarantee it,” he said, though he joked he and fellow LOST actor Michael Emerson, who plays Ben Linus – the nemesis of O’Quinn’s character – could always spin off a show. “We could be detectives and solve really creepy crimes,” he said, alluding to the suggested supernatural elements of LOST.

A theatre actor for more than a decade before he started taking roles in television and film, O’Quinn said he loves the intimacy and immediacy of the stage. “Working in television can be fun, but theatre is so colorful and alive, with the audience reacting right there,” he said. “In theatre, you have one shot to get it right, that performance, that night.”

Stage actors can make great transitions to working in front of the camera because they understand that immediacy, said O’Quinn. “In television, hundreds of people set up a shot, you are pulled in and the director says go. Then, of course, you do the scene eight different times for camera angles. The benefit of stage training is that you are ready to go each time. There are a few actors who might think that film means you are more free to make mistakes, but mistakes just waste the time of hundreds of people.”

O’Quinn advised students to go into acting with full dedication. “Acting has to be your only alternative. You can’t go into it and have a fall-back profession waiting. If you only try halfway, you are going to fail,” he said, noting auditions have to be the same way. “If you are jumping from one building to the next, do not slow down before you jump. Jump. Jump hard.”

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Student Senate Hosts Gender Issues Week

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Judy Shepard, mother of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, will give the keynote speech on the acceptance of gay rights and equality on March 5 at 8 p.m. in the Hansen Student Center (300 E. Beecher Street).

This event is part of Illinois Wesleyan University’s annual Gender Issues Week which sets out to inform, educate and provide programs dealing with issues pertinent to women and men, and it is free and open to the public.

On October 8, 1998, Matthew Shepard, an openly gay man from Wyoming, was murdered in his college town of Laramie, Wyo. His death was the result of a hate crime and his mother, Judy Shepard, has since then committed her life to fighting for gay rights. His death was also the inspiration for the HBO movie turned play, The Laramie Project.

In May of 1999 Shepard testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act where she said, “I can assure opponents of this legislation firsthand, it was not words or thoughts, but violent acts that killed my son.”

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Speaker to Address Academic Freedom in a Post 9/11 World

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The pressures of patriotism are taking their toll on freedom, says writer John K. Wilson.

Wilson, author of the book Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Paradigm Publishers, 2007), will speak at Illinois Wesleyan University about the issues facing academic freedom after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. His talk is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5, in room C101 of the Center for Natural Sciences (201 Beecher St., Bloomington) and is sponsored by the Illinois Wesleyan University chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The event is free and open to the public.

Author of five books, Wilson compares “patriotic correctness” to political correctness. He charges that journalists and professors are coming under fire for questioning the government’s decisions or discussing military operations in an unfavorable light. “Today’s wave of repression in the name of patriotic correctness has only begun,” wrote Wilson.

Wilson is the founder of the Institute for College Freedom and coordinator of the Independent Press Association’s Campus Journalism Project. His works are often quoted in blogs and Web sites such as the Independent Media Center. He has also written Barack Obama: The Improbable Quest and Newt Gingrich: Capitol Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Now living in Chicago, Wilson is also the founder of the Indy, an independent newspaper for Bloomington-Normal.

Global Warming An Immediate Threat, Says Founders’ Day Speaker

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The moment is coming. The Earth is reaching a point of danger from which it cannot be rescued.

This was the message of James E. Hansen, an expert on climate change and the Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, at the address for Illinois Wesleyan University’s annual Founders’ Day Convocation Tuesday in Westbrook Auditorium.

“Change is essential if we are going to keep the planet that looks like the one we live on now,” said Hansen, who has been studying global warming for more than 20 years. An author of numerous articles and scientific studies on climate change, Hansen has testified his finding before Congress. His speech, titled “Climate Tipping Points: The Threat to the Planet,” called upon young people in the audience to slow the devastating damage being done to the planet through the use of fossil fuels.

“Fossil fuel interests think it is a God-given fact that we will burn all the fossil fuels in the next few decades,” said Hansen, “but we have free will. Young people can say, ‘Hey, not so fast, nice planet you are leaving us,’” said Hansen.

Hansen encouraged the audience, dominated by students, to advocate changes, such greater use of renewable fuels, the implementation of no-till agricultural practices and the building of coal-burning facilities that capture carbon. “The future is inherited by young people. They can influence elections and impact global change.”

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