Category Archives: Speakers

Kinzinger: We Can Face Nation’s Financial Mess

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Community leaders gathered to hear about issues affecting the nation at a luncheon with U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-11th District) on Thursday on the campus of Illinois Wesleyan University.

The luncheon in the Hansen Student Center was sponsored by the Illinois Wesleyan Associates. “The Associates are comprised of local leaders who are at the forefront of business,” said Illinois Wesleyan Director of Government and Community Relations Carl Tiechman. “Speaking with Congressman Kinzinger offered them more information about what is happening in Washington, D.C.” The Associates, founded in 1953, consists of business and professional leaders interested in the advancement and support of private higher education through scholarships and internships.

Kinzinger, who is a member of the U.S. Energy & Commerce Committee, spoke on the current financial crisis, and the effects on the federal budget. “We’re in a financial mess,” he said. The Congressman warned the audience that cuts “are going to hurt” as the federal budget restricts spending, but he believes the direction is a positive one for the nation. “The dialogue in Washington has changed,” he said. “We are no longer talking about how much to spend, but how much to cut.” Addressing members of the Associates, as well as local and state political leaders who also attended the event, Kinzinger emphasized the “importance of creating an environment for jobs to flourish,” he said.

Professor Munro Named Kemp Award Winner

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Illinois Wesleyan University Professor of Political Science William Munro has been named the 2012 winner of the Kemp Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence on Wednesday, April 13, at the annual Honors Convocation in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall.

One of the highlights of the academic year, the Convocation is a chance to celebrate the scholastic achievements of the students and faculty on campus. The Kemp teaching award, which is the University’s highest teaching honor, is bestowed annually to a faculty member at the Convocation. Rene Shaffer attended the ceremony to represent the Kemp family, which has a long history of supporting Illinois Wesleyan.

The Convocation, which also honors students and faculty of national and international honors societies, included reminiscences from Student Senate Vice President Melissa Solis ’11, and an invocation from student Hillel member Amanda Packman ’11.

Guggenheim Fellow to Speak at May 1 Commencement

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University’s 161st Commencement will be Sunday, May 1 at 1 p.m. on the Eckley Quadrangle, with nearly 460 graduates expected to participate. During the ceremonies, honorary doctor of humane letters degrees will be presented to poet and Guggenheim Fellow Linda Gregerson and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Almudena Carracedo.

Gregerson, a 2007 National Book Award finalist, will deliver the address “Just in Time” for the ceremony after receiving her honorary doctorate from Board of Trustees Chair George Vinyard. The poet has an abiding connection to Illinois Wesleyan through her daughter, who will graduate with the class of 2011.

The Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, Gregerson teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature. A celebrated poet, Gregerson’s works include Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Waterborne (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) and The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). Magnetic North was a finalist for the National Book Award, and she won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Waterborne. The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep was a finalist for both The Poet’s Prize and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Poet Calls for Empathy in Founders’ Day Address

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Imagination and empathy are, perhaps, our last hope, said Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham during her address at Illinois Wesleyan University Founders’ Day Convocation on Wednesday.

The Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, Graham lamented that in this lifetime, we are forced to imagine connections to places and even people. “To see what it is we are, to see what it is we have, and to see what it is we stand to lose, we have to use our imagination,” she said.

Graham challenged the audience, as members of a pivotal generation, to ask themselves if they will settle for imagination instead of reality – for viral posts of cute animals while the real creatures go extinct, or for a view of the ocean, knowing just below the picturesque surface the reefs are choked and toxic. “Is the world still the world if it is silent?” she asked.

For current generations, said Graham, imagination is no longer isolated to pure invention. It is now a vital connection in a world in which we are isolated from ourselves and from one another. “Imagination is the only instrument we have in which we are brought to actual fact – to see in the face of another – the there that is there,” she said, noting we must rely on our imaginations to break down the barriers of an instant society.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet to Address Founders’ Day

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham will address the Illinois Wesleyan University Founders’ Day Convocation at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 23, in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall (1210 N. Park St., Bloomington). The event is free and open to the public.

Founders’ Day honors the 30 founders who signed the charter for the University in 1850. In celebration, The Ames Library will hold its annual exhibit highlighting the documents from the University’s founding, including Illinois Wesleyan’s “birth certificate.”

Graham is an internationally renown author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Sea Change (Ecco, 2008), Never (2002), Swarm (2000), and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Graham has also edited several anthologies, including Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language (1996) and The Best American Poetry 1990. Her works have been translated for publication in German, Spanish and Italian.

Author and Guggenheim Fellow to Give Reading

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The Illinois Wesleyan University English Department will welcome Linda Gregerson, a 2007 National Book Award finalist and a recent Guggenheim Fellow, to give a reading of her poetry on Thursday, Jan. 20, at 4 p.m. in the Merwin Gallery (6 Ames Plaza West, Bloomington). The event is free and open to the public.

Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature.

According to The New Yorker, “Gregerson’s rich aesthetic allows her best poems to resonate metaphysically.” Her works have appeared in such publications as The Best American Poetry, Poetry, Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares and The Yale Review. Among her many honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, three Pushcart Prizes and a Kingsley Tufts Award.

Civil Rights Scholar to Speak at Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellowship Dinner

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Civil Rights scholar and author Bob Zellner will be the keynote speaker at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellowship Dinner on Sunday, Jan. 23 at 5 p.m.

Co-sponsored by Illinois Wesleyan University and the United Community Gospel Singers of Bloomington and Normal, the event will be held in the Young Main Lounge of the Memorial Center (104 University St., Bloomington).

Zellner, former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), is the author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement.

Environmental Author, Alumna Speaks, Donates Papers to Special Collections

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Environmental author and activist Sandra Steingraber returned to her alma mater at Illinois Wesleyan University on Monday, Oct. 18 to donate her papers to a new special collection at The Ames Library, and to discuss her writings that bring awareness to the link between cancer and the environment. The struggle is a personal one for Steingraber, who not only is a noted biology researcher, but is also a cancer survivor.

Fighting a ‘chemical trespass’

Steingraber, a 1981 Illinois Wesleyan graduate who is the author of two books with a third to be published in 2011, led the audience in Hansen Student Center on a very personal journey. She condemned manmade toxins in the environment as a threat to her children, and all children. She called toxins, such as the chemical herbicide atrazine used heavily in Illinois as a corn herbicide, a “chemical trespass” and “violation” of the safety of children.

“There is a crisis arising,” said Steingraber, who is a scholar in residence at Ithaca College in New York, and is traveling around the Midwest to help promote a new documentary that follows her professional and personal challenges in battling cancer. “It is really a crisis of family life, which is robbing parents of the right to keep their children safe from harm.”

AAUP President to Discuss Academic Freedom

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), will speak to Illinois Wesleyan faculty and staff Thursday, Oct. 21.

His talk on “The Future of Higher Education,” which is free and open to the public, will be at 4 p.m. in room C101 of the Center for Natural Science (201 Beecher St., Bloomington).

Nelson’s visit is at the request of Joerg Tiede, IWU associate professor of computer science and president of the school’s AAUP chapter. Nelson will discuss the importance of preserving academic freedom in American universities, the central point of his latest book No University is an Island (NYU Press).

Nelson highlights trends in higher education such as a lack of tenure-track professorships and diminished faculty governance over areas such as curriculum. He believes these changes are damaging to academic excellence.

Environmental Author, Activist, Alumna to Speak on Campus

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Environmental author and activist Sandra Steingraber will return to her alma mater at Illinois Wesleyan University on Monday, Oct. 18 to talk about a new documentary, Living Downstream, that follows the struggle to bring awareness to the link between cancer and the environment. The struggle is a personal one for Steingraber, who not only is a noted biology researcher, but is also a cancer survivor. The talk will be from noon-1 p.m. at the Hansen Student Center (300 E. Beecher St., Bloomington). The event is free and open to the public.

Steingraber originally published her celebrated book Living Downstream in 1997, and it propelled her to national attention. She is eagerly sought as a national speaker, invited to communities all over the U.S. and across the Atlantic Ocean to speak on the silent dangers of environmental toxins – from Alaska where chemicals poisoned a salmon stream, to Ireland where farmers inadvertently poisoned their water supply with insecticides. She has earned many honors and accolades along the way, including being compared to environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

IWU News Blog

Headlines From Illinois Wesleyan University