Category Archives: Faculty

Professor Takes Students to France Via Internet

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Right now, Illinois Wesleyan University Associate Professor of French Christopher Callahan should be walking up the steps to the Solesmes Abbey with the chants of the Benedictine monks echoing all around. Callahan planned to bring students to France and England to explore Gothic and Romanesque cultures, but he was halted in his plans by the high cost of travel.

“We could not make the trip financially feasible. The dollar is not doing well against the cost of the euros and pounds,” said Callahan from his office overlooking IWU’s Eckley Quadrangle in Bloomington, Ill., which is a long way from the castles and abbeys where he hoped to travel with students this spring during the University’s May Term. “It’s difficult for Americans to get abroad right now.”

Callahan estimated it would take 24 students to make the trip affordable, but fell short of that. Instead of canceling the class, he decided on another option. While researching material for his class, The Plantagenet World: France and England 1100-1400, Callahan discovered Web sites that included virtual tours.

Now sitting at his computer, he uses the mouse to pan 360 degrees to tour through the breathtaking Conques Abbey in southwestern France. The image on the screen angles up to the impossibly high ceilings and Romanesque arches. “With the help of the Internet, we can even go where tourists usually don’t,” said Callahan, maneuvering the image to peer down from a balcony onto the altar below.

Callahan plans to take his class on several virtual tours, including sites in Paris, London and the Loire Valley of France. “This is something that was not conceivable even two years ago,” said Callahan.

New Study Examines Impact of Islamic Religion on Muslim Youth

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – In the days since al-Qaeda became a household word, Westerners have grappled with the distinction between radical Islam and Islam as practiced in mainstream Muslim culture. To gain insights into the impact of religion on Muslim youth, the first phase of a long-term study has found that social success is strongly linked to religious involvement within the Islamic majority nation of Indonesia, according to the study’s co-author Doran French, professor and chair of psychology at Illinois Wesleyan University.

This study of Muslim 13-year-olds found a correlation between religious involvement across many indices of social competence or success. French and his collaborators found that adolescents with higher degrees of spirituality and religious practice were more popular with peers, had greater academic achievement, displayed more prosocial behavior (being helpful to others), had greater self-esteem, and were more able to regulate their behavior. Those with higher religious involvement were less likely to exhibit deviant behavior or experience negative “internalizing behavior” such as depression or anxiety.

French suggested that a key to interpreting these findings is understanding the context of a homogenously religious culture, where religion permeates society and is a public, community identity rather than a compartmentalized, private experience as in the U.S. For example, he said, the team’s research assistants would stop meetings to observe the call to prayers, for which television shows also are interrupted.

“I think within a homogeneous religious society, being a competent person, being a successful person also means being a religious person,” French said.

New Study Highlights Latina Perceptions of Health

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The Spanish-speaking immigrant population is growing at staggering rates in the United States, climbing more than 50 percent in 10 years according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau numbers. And healthcare professionals are looking for different ways to communicate the idea of a healthy lifestyle to this burgeoning patient segment.

Work by Illinois Wesleyan University’s School of Nursing Director Donna Hartweg and Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Christina Isabelli-Garcia that gives healthcare communication a boost is drawing international attention. An ongoing study by the two women is asking Latina women the question: What does it mean to be healthy?

“If healthcare workers better understand what women feel when they come into this country, they will be able to better guide them about a healthy lifestyle,” said Hartweg, who compiled data based on focus groups led by Isabelli-Garcia.

Professor’s Work Selected for Annual 10-Minute Play Festival

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – An original play written by Illinois Wesleyan University Professor of Greek and Roman Studies Nancy Sultan has been selected to be produced at Heartland Theatre in Normal as a part of their annual 10-Minute Play Festival.

Sultan’s work, titled Pas de Deux, is one of eight finalists chosen from 165 submissions through three phases of blind judging, the last of which was judged by a published New York playwright. The theme for this year’s festival is “One Shoe.”

Pas de Deux is about the life of a homeless couple and how it is transformed into a wonderful fantasy world when the wife finds a discarded shoe. The performances of the piece will be at the festival, which will run through the weekends of May 31- June 17.

Five Students to Study in China Through ASIANetwork Grant

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Five Illinois Wesleyan students and one faculty member have been awarded the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows grant, and will travel to China for several weeks this summer for a research project. It is the fourth time the University has received the ASIANetwork grant. Other recipients have taken students to India, Indonesia and China.

The nearly $22,000 grant will allow the group to study aspects of city planning in China that took place in the years immediately following the Chinese Revolution in 1949 by traveling to Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

“In the late 1940s, there was widespread hunger, a high percentage of illiteracy, homelessness, and inadequate sanitation and medical care,” said Thomas Lutze, associate professor and chair of the History Department at Illinois Wesleyan, who will lead the students in the study. The students will each take on an aspect of city planning that was implemented after the Revolution.

Students Get Legal Lessons in Simulated Trial

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Robert Kearney’s final exam gets taken to court – literally.

As the final examination for the Illinois Wesleyan professor’s business law class, students take a real case and argue it in front of a real judge. “We take cases that are ripped from the headlines, just like ‘Law & Order,’” joked Kearney, associate professor and chair of business administration who has been teaching at Illinois Wesleyan since 2002. “It’s much more interesting to do a companion case to something real and truly complex.”

This year, the class will argue the case of the Chicago “cable murders,” in which a cable installer was accused of raping and murdering two women while installing their Comcast cable systems. The students will deal with the suit against Comcast and a subsidiary contract company that employed the installer. The trial will be 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 25 at the McLean County Law & Justice Center (115 E. Washington St., Bloomington).

Though this is the first time the class has tackled murder cases, the trials for the last four years have similar qualities. “I always pick cases that are business-related, involve deep pockets and have complex litigation,” said Kearney, whose past topics included a suit against the airlines for negligence in 9/11, and the Midway plane crash that killed a 6-year-old.

The business law class is unique and intense for students, said Kearney. The entire class is dedicated to one case with the 20 seniors planning and executing every part of litigation. “In law school, you take a class on how to file a complaint. You take another class on how to present yourself in front of a jury,” said Kearney. “In this class, the students spend four months doing everything an actual, practicing lawyer does. There is nothing like it in any law school I know, not to mention an undergraduate class.”

Sammie Robinson to Speak at Chamber of Commerce Luncheon

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Sammie Robinson, assistant professor of business administration at Illinois Wesleyan University, has been invited to speak at the McLean County Chamber of Commerce’s 2007 Administrative Professionals Luncheon on April 24 at the Doubletree Hotel and Conference Center (10 Brickyard Dr., Bloomington).

The Bloomington Chamber of Commerce hosts the event annually with State Farm Insurance Company and Connoisseur Media. This year, Robinson will address many influential administrative professionals on the theme “Shaping The Future.”

“The future is beyond our control, it is not promised,” Robinson said of the theme. “At best, we can make attempts to shape our future.” In her talk, she plans to address three major ways that people can mold their destinies. She will suggest that audience members seek truth by identifying personal touchstones of belief and self through honest recognition of personal worth. For Robinson, though, the most important way that people can shape the future is through finding what she calls their event. “We need to find that thing we do really well and make that our life’s work,” Robinson said. “My event happens in the classroom. My event happens when I connect with people.”

Marina Balina Wins Pantagraph Award for Teaching Excellence

Illinois Wesleyan Professor of Russian Studies Marina Balina was named as the 2008 winner of the Pantagraph Award for Teaching Excellence at the University on Wednesday, April 18, at the annual Honors Day Convocation in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall.

Listen to the Convocation.

“This is the highest honor that Illinois Wesleyan can give, and I am honored and thrilled and happy and overwhelmed,” said an emotional Balina as she received hugs of congratulations from fellow faculty members and staff.

The $1,000 teacher-scholar award is the University’s top teaching honor and is sponsored by the daily newspaper headquartered in Bloomington that services eight counties and more than 60 communities in Central Illinois. The honoree is selected by Illinois Wesleyan’s Promotion and Tenure Committee based on nominations received from members of the faculty.

A native of Russia who earned her Ph.D. at Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg), Balina joined IWU’s faculty in 1989 and is now a member of the University’s department of modern and classical languages and literatures. Along with teaching the German and Russian languages and Russian literature, she has published more than 20 articles and four books in three different languages, and earned an international reputation for work with children’s literature. She has been the recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the Austrian Ministry of Culture, the American Association of Learned Societies, the National Endowment of Humanities and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

New Spanish Class Encourages Community Interaction, Service

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – For Illinois Wesleyan University sophomore Danny Burke, the end of the semester will mean more than taking tests and heading home—he’ll have to say goodbye to Jorge, the third-grader he has mentored this spring as part of his coursework for Spanish 240: Spanish for Social Justice.

The course, offered for the first time this spring, is part of an effort by the Hispanic Studies department to “strengthen course offerings at the 200-level, as well as involvement in the community,” said Professor of Hispanic Studies Carolyn Nadeau. The 10 students in the class spend three hours each week using their Spanish language skills to serve the community in a variety of field projects.

Burke mentors for the Grade-school Achievement Program (GAP) at Bent Elementary School and helps at the Immigration Project at the Western Avenue Community Center. Other projects include State Farm’s PALS program (high-school tutoring) and working with families of pre-school children at Heartland Head Start.

Spanish 240 is comparable to the established 230 course, Medical Spanish and Cultural Competency for Healthcare, in which students learn the vocabulary to speak about medical issues and then apply their skills as volunteers in a local clinic. Instead of healthcare, the new course focuses on five other social justice issues: immigration, housing, education, employment and citizenship.

“This course is unique in that it offers students both theory in the classroom and practice in the community,” Nadeau said. “We are also serving as a model of possibilities for classroom collaboration with with IWU’s Action Resource Center.”

Father’s Memoir a Labor of Love for Retired Professor

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – It was a 12-year labor of love for retired Illinois Wesleyan University Professor George A. Churukian to bring his father’s memoirs to the printed page.

“At times I thought it would never get done,” laughed Churukian, who self-published the book Never Settle for Second Best earlier this year, “but it was a journey I’m glad I undertook.”

Churukian’s father, Giragos Missak Churukian, died in 1994 at the age of 97. A physician who immigrated to America from the small Armenian village of Kessab in present-day Syria in 1931, the elder Churukian left behind a brief account of his life. “Parts of it were good, and parts were very sketchy,” said Churukian of the handwritten manuscript. “But my father left a lot of papers and a 1927 diary that helped put things into place. I was able to flesh out a lot of information.”

Shortly after his father’s death, Churukian and his family began to wade through the manuscript and a treasure trove of papers. “It was incredible how much we found. He had his passenger lists from the boat trips to America. He had an original contract when he worked as a doctor for the government of Sudan in the mid-1920s,” said Churukian, who also pulled from personal experiences when he and his brother Peter journeyed to his hometown in present-day Syria with his father on separate trips.

IWU News Blog

Headlines From Illinois Wesleyan University