BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Whether it is majestic mountains, lush rice paddies or ancient temples, the word China invokes images both striking and intriguing. With the introduction of Chinese language classes this fall at Illinois Wesleyan, students are making a deeper discovery of China, a country that is a combination of thousands of years of history, and at the same time a modern global power. We asked professors who have knowledge of China to share their favorite places.
Category Archives: Features
Collection of Political Paraphernalia a Reminder That Every Campaign is Historic
Wesleyan University students, faculty and staff join the rest of the world in anxiously awaiting the results of the 2008 election. A collection of campaign memorabilia dating back to 1904, which is on display in The Ames Library rotunda (1 Ames Plaza, Bloomington), offers a reminder to campus that win or lose, political campaigns are historic in their own right.
More than 100 buttons, ticket stubs and other campaign items make up the display, from a time when holographic imaging was the latest technology. Campaign buttons span the last 25 presidential contests, documenting the unsuccessful – Barry Goldwater ’64, the Rev. Jesse Jackson ’88 – and the victorious – Clinton-Gore ’92, Bush-Cheney ’00 – in equal measure.
The collection belongs to Steve Peterson, a member of Illinois Wesleyan’s Physical Plant staff and self-proclaimed “political junkie.” Peterson, who spent 18 years as a political commentator on a local radio station, inherited the first pieces from his grandmother but said the advent of eBay has made his collection balloon to more than 300 items.
“I used to pick up these things one at a time. I’d go into an antique store in New Orleans, and I might spend 80 dollars on an inauguration press pass,” said Peterson. “Some collectors pay thousands of dollars for a spoon used by Andrew Jackson,” but Peterson likes his postcard from former President Theodore Roosevelt just fine.
It’s “Celebrate Your Roommate Week”
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – It can be a challenge living with a stranger, but at Illinois Wesleyan students have met that challenge. Kim Stabosz, class of ’09, and Erin Wondrak, class of ’09, have been living together since freshman year.
Stabosz said she was nervous about the initial meeting, which did not go quite as expected. “The entire time Erin was pretty silent, and I freaked out because I didn’t know why she wasn’t talking. I was so scared she was going to be quiet,” Stabosz said.
Needing an escape from parents and siblings who were helping them move in, the newly formed pair explored their residence hall. “The second we were away from our parents it was instant relaxation and we just clicked,” said Wondrak and the bonding began.
The Office of Residential Life (ORL) (http://www.iwu.edu/~orl) has a responsibility to pair compatible students as roommates. To promote positive roommate relationships, ORL’s First-Year Experience (FYE) Program is hosting its second annual “Celebrate Your Roommate Week” Oct. 13 to 17 (see schedule of events) to remind students that having a roommate should be a pleasurable part of the college experience.
“The event was created to help students understand how to value their roommate. Conflicts may arise around this time of year, and we are hoping this will progress communication,” said Stacy Ploskonka, Gulick Hall residence director. “Celebrate your roommate week is about ensuring that there are good relationships between roommates and encouraging them to get to know each other better.”
ORL looks for similarities when matching roommates. Stabosz and Wondrak discovered they both had a passion for dance, so they auditioned for the dance team and the Student Choreographed Dance Concert (SCDC) together. They watched many movies together as well, including, The Princess Diaries, and they would talk for hours at night.
According to ORL, the roommate matching process begins early in the summer. First-year students are mailed a letter asking them to fill out a survey online about their lifestyle habits and their interests. The survey includes categories of questions about bedtime, cleanliness, smoking, social environment and pet peeves. Students are sent basic contact information about their roommate so they can begin talking before they arrive at Illinois Wesleyan. ORL suggests that students talk to their roommates before they officially move in together.
“We use a listing of about 20 different preferences that have been determined as key concerns for students. Differences in lifestyle preferences such as drinking and smoking habits or living habits such as cleanliness or desired temperature in the room are issues that can easily cause roommate conflicts,” said Terrance Bond, assistant director of Residential Life. “By asking some of these questions up front, we can attempt to pair students with others who closely match their individual preference.”
Political Internships Offer Proving Ground
BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— With the 2008 presidential election only a few months away, the world of politics is earning an even brighter spotlight than usual. This summer, some Illinois Wesleyan University students are a close look at that spotlight through political internships.
An internship for Illinois State Sen. Bill Brady [R-44th District] is offering IWU senior Dan George insights. George, a music major from Schaumburg, Ill., said he is learning that government has less to do with political wrangling, and more to do with understanding the needs of people. “As an intern for Senator Brady, I am usually the first contact for his constituents,” said George. “If a resident of the district calls the office to comment on the quality of the roads, I will see that the message gets to the Senator. If someone stops into the office to advocate for the elderly, I will talk with the person to make sure his or her needs are met.”
Brady, who is a 1983 Illinois Wesleyan graduate, said he has found interns vital for research as well as providing another means of support for constituents. “Our interns assist constituents on a day-to-day basis with issues and solving their needs,” said Brady, who has utilized the research of interns on projects such as enhancing retired teacher pensions and promoting higher education projects.
This summer, Illinois Wesleyan junior Monica Shah is seeing not only how political offices run, but campaigns as well. Shah began the summer as an intern for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s [D-Illinois] Chicago office, working with day-to-day operations. Now she is an intern with his presidential campaign. “The word ‘excitement’ does not quite cover it,” said Shah, who is from Downers Grove, Ill. “It’s amazing to speak with so many people who call in to voice their opinion on different decisions or acts, and to know that people are not apathetic, and really are concerned with issues.”
An internship in politics is the first step toward a career in government after graduation, as Illinois Wesleyan alumnus Clint W. Sabin can attest.
Alumna, Students Offer First-Hand Insights Into Ecuador’s Challenges
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The small, South American country of Ecuador made the news last week as the government seized nearly 200 businesses to collect debts from a bank collapse. This move has given rise to fears of a dictatorship surfacing in the democratic republic that has substantial petroleum resources and draws in millions of dollars in foreign investment. However, the news did not shock Illinois Wesleyan University student Rachel Hodel, who spent this past spring studying abroad in the coastal village of Olon, Ecuador.
“It does not surprise me at all,” said Hodel. She believes many of the nation’s problems stem from a high percentage of people there who live in poverty. “In a country that deals with poverty everyday, everyone is struggling and people talk of corruption everywhere,” she said.
For nearly 30 years, Ecuador has been ruled by a civil government that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Factbook said is “marred by political instability.” The economy has suffered as well, with a bank crisis in 1999 that led to the adoption of the U.S. dollar as currency in 2000. Although the move helped stabilize the economy and attract more foreign investors, there was also a downside, according to Kim Priebe. A 2003 Illinois Wesleyan graduate, Priebe taught English classes in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, from 2005 to 2006 as an instructor for World Teach, an organization out of the Harvard Center for National Development.
Once a retreat for Incan royalty, Vilcabamba is a village in the southern region of Ecuador, located in a scenic area known as the Valley of Longevity because of the wide belief that its residents commonly reach 100 years old and beyond. When a New York Times article on Vilcabamba referred to the village as “a jewel,” “suddenly English-speaking investors were pouring into the place,” said Priebe, along with a wave of international settlers who were older and wealthy.
Summer Music Camps Introduce Students to Campus Life
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The idea of summer camp brings to mind images of paddling canoes and roasting marshmallows, but at Illinois Wesleyan University, summer camp means days filled with the sweet sound of strings, the rumble of pianos and the intense training that music camps bring.
Each year Illinois Wesleyan holds summer music camps that draw junior high and high school students from across the nation to the campus. During their two- or three-week stay, campers do more than learn how to perfect their performance; they discover the University.
“For many students, this is their first exposure to college life,” said Illinois Wesleyan Professor of Composition and Theory and Director of the School of Music Mario Pelusi. “Students live in the residence halls, eat in the dining hall and work closely with IWU professors and guest instructors. We have many students attending as college students specifically because they attended one of our programs.” Pelusi estimates that approximately 60 percent of the participants who attend his Summer Music Composition Institute, one of the School of Music’s three summer music programs, apply to and eventually attend Illinois Wesleyan.
“When the students come, they meet the wonderful faculty and see the beautiful campus, and they want to return,” said Associate Professor of Music Nina Gordon, who founded the Cello Camp nine years ago at Illinois Wesleyan, followed by the Illinois Chamber Music Festival and Camp three years later with adjunct faculty member Lisa Nelson. “There is a direct connection with many of the campers who choose to become students.”
Alumna Pursues Passion for Girls’ Education, Healthcare in Africa
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. –Illinois Wesleyan University alumna Shannon O’Rourke, an international studies and political science double major while at Illinois Wesleyan, took an off-beat route to her interest in Africa.
“I actually realized I wanted to go to Africa when I was studying abroad in Switzerland during my junior year,” said O’Rourke, a 2007 Illinois Wesleyan graduate who recently returned from spending six months in Senegal on a Rotary Cultural Ambassador Scholarship. While in Switzerland, her study abroad research project involved working with a World Trade Organization representative from Tanzania. “Something simply clicked in my head and I thought, ‘I am going to go to Africa.’”
O’Rourke discovered the Rotary scholarship, which would allow her to study Arabic in Tanzania or French in Senegal. “I’d already studied French in college and high school for a few years, so I decided on Senegal,” she said.
The scholarship required her to study 225 hours of French with a professor at a small language school in Senegal’s capitol city of Dakar. Driving from the Dakar airport with her host family, O’Rourke realized she had stepped into a new world. “I spent the entire 20-minute drive staring out the window because everything looked so different. I had never seen anything like it.”
Human Encroachment on Coasts Worsens Impact of Natural Disasters
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The 2008 Cyclone Nagris in Myanmar, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2004 tsunami in Thailand – all these natural disasters have something in common, they all occurred around vanishing ‘bio-guards.’ An Illinois Wesleyan University professor believes the planned destruction of these bio-guards is contributing to the catastrophic nature of some coastal storms, and jeopardizing human lives.
“Bio-guards are natural barriers between the water and the coastline,” said Given Harper, chair of the biology department at Illinois Wesleyan and an instructor in the University’s Environmental Studies Program. Coming in the form of salt-tolerant plants and trees in the mangroves of Myanmar, or barrier islands and coastal marshes along Louisiana’s shore, bio-guards can help shield the land and people living there from the ravages of storms. “Scientific studies have shown that bio-guards are important in protecting people from the impact of hurricanes and cyclones,” Harper said.
After the cyclone devastated Myanmar in early May, leaving more than 80,000 dead and tens of thousands more missing, the secretary-general of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) said the tragedy was exacerbated by the double punch of people moving into the coastal areas and the loss of coastal bio-guards, such as the mangroves. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that since 1975 nearly 250,000 acres of Myanmar mangroves have been destroyed in the delta that was worst hit by the recent cyclone, and that vegetation might have provided a much-needed buffer.
According to Harper, the tightly knit roots and trees of mangroves act as a barrier that can deflect wind and some of the energy of a storm surge. “Coastal marshes can offer the same protection,” he said. “It has been estimated that 2.7 miles of coastal marsh will reduce storm surge by a foot. They simply absorb the energy from the wave.”
The natural barrier of bio-guards is disappearing as human encroach on coastlines for business and pleasure. According to the UN, more than 20 percent of the world’s mangroves have been lost over the past 30 years. “For mangroves, it appears that aquaculture – development for fishing and shrimping – and also tourism seem to be major factors in their depletion,” he said. Harper has witnessed the transformation of coastlands firsthand. Throughout the 1990s, he led several student study abroad trips to Queensland, Australia, during the University’s May Term.
Students Pursue Study Abroad in the Developing World
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – When junior Jacob Weis decided that he must study in Uganda, he looked to Illinois Wesleyan for his opportunity. “I transferred from another university to Illinois Wesleyan so that I could spend a semester in Africa,” said Weis, who will study this fall in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, and will also visit Rwanda as part of an Illinois Wesleyan-affiliated study abroad program, School for International Training (SIT).
SIT offers field-based, experiential programs for undergraduate students in nearly 50 countries on six continents. Weis chose Uganda after viewing the film Invisible Children, a documentary about the effects of the on-going civil war on the people of Northern Uganda.
Weis has spent his time at Illinois Wesleyan preparing for the trip, during which he will focus his studies on the Ugandan educational system. “I hope that through my studies I will be able to see what needs to change to help Uganda progress as a country,” said Weis. He plans to research Ugandan culture, educational opportunities, teaching style, opportunities for higher education, and how middle schools are run.
Illinois Wesleyan junior Angela Rumsey was also inspired to travel to Uganda after seeing the film Invisible Children. A Lombard, Ill. native, Rumsey traveled to Kampala, where she attended classes and completed a six-week internship through SIT during the Fall 2007 semester.
“I lived with a Ugandan family in Kampala, which is a very modern city, went to school on weekdays, hung out with friends—both Ugandan and American—and went out to eat,” said Rumsey. “In theory, all these things seemed like home, but they were still very different.”
The anthropology and international studies double major with a concentration in development studies chose the SIT program because “I was more interested in being active than just sitting in a different university,” said Rumsey. “I interned with Child Restoration Outreach, an organization that works with disadvantaged children, where I worked with them in classrooms, counseling sessions and just playing outside. It gave me experience that I could have never received just by going to class, even if it was in a different country and culture.”
The Phoenix Lives On as Haven for Student Expression
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Double the age of most current IWU students and the result will be the number of years the Phoenix, a student performance space located in the basement of the Memorial Center (104 E. University St., Bloomington), has been a part of Illinois Wesleyan’s campus.
Aptly named the Phoenix after a mythical bird that dies and is reborn out of its own ashes, the space has been through its own set of rebirths. Continuously evolving throughout its 42 years as a campus fixture from use as a coffeehouse to its current operation as a small theater, at one time the Phoenix even hosted disco-dance nights. Currently, the Phoenix is configured as an adaptable black-box theater, comprised simply of bare, black walls with minimal furnishings.
In recent years, the Phoenix has supplied a space for students of any major to stage a variety of creative presentations, particularly short plays and musicals. Unlike other performance spaces on campus, the theater is open for use by any student or faculty production, not reserved solely for use by the School of Theatre Arts.
Shows staged in the past school year have included everything from two short operas, A Hand of Bridge and Gallantry, to a musical, Edges. Other shows have included student adaptations of literary works in particular, James Billings’ The Nutley Papers and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
Born in 1966 as a student-run coffeehouse, the Phoenix provided entertainment including poetry readings, folk singers, speakers, and student performances. Reminiscent of the “beat” generation, the coffeehouse catered to an independent and expressive minded audience.
“It was a place for students to talk about issues and exchange their own ideas,” according to Professor Paul Bushnell, who began teaching at IWU the same year the Phoenix opened.