Harper Named Lewis Chair of Biology

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University’s Professor of Biology R. Given Harper has been named the George C. and Ella Beach Lewis Endowed Chair of Biology. Endowed professorships and chairs honor faculty members who have distinguished themselves in terms of teaching, research and service.

An avian ecologist with diverse research interests, Harper’s scholarly work ranges from documenting DDT and heavy metal contaminants in North American gray wolves, to estimating the breeding populations of red-tailed hawks and American Kestrels in Illinois. He has been called upon to offer expert testimony during legislative hearings on the impact of development on wildlife, such as strip-mining affecting the nesting of eagles in rural Illinois. National and area media have sought his input on topics that can vary from contaminants found in migratory birds to the effects of climate change.

Myscofski Named McFee Professor of Religion

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University’s Professor of Religion Carole Myscofski has been named the McFee Professor of Religion. Endowed professorships and chairs honor faculty members who have distinguished themselves in terms of teaching, research and service.

Professor Myscofski teaches courses that focus on areas such as myth and ritual, women and religions, the religions of Native Americans, Africans, Latin Americans and cults in America. Her scholarly works have been honored with numerous grants and fellowships, including two from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.

Senior receives ASIANetwork honor

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University senior Chao Ren was recently selected as the winner of the ASIANetwork’s first annual Marianna McJimsey Award: 2011 Student Paper Competition.

Ren will receive the award for his paper, “Revisiting Tagore’s Visit to China and India in the Early Twentieth Century,” at the ASIANetwork Annual Conference April 15-17 in Oak Brook, Ill. The paper will also be published in the spring 2011 edition of the journal ASIANetwork Exchange.

According to their website, the ASIANetwork is a conglomerate of over 170 colleges in the United States. The organization attempts to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education in order to help prepare succeeding generations of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies play prominent roles.

Professor Honored by Choral Association

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University Assistant Professor of Music Brian Russell was recently awarded the American Choral Directors Association’s (ACDA) Julius Herford Prize for his dissertation titled “The Psalm Settings of Telemann: A Study in Performance Practice with Critical Editions of Seven Psalms for SATB Voices and Orchestra.”

Nominations for this award are accepted annually for doctoral recipients who procured their degree in the year prior to their nomination. The winner is someone whose dissertation, document, thesis, or treatise can be considered to be an “outstanding doctoral terminal research project in choral music,” according to the Julius Herford Prize Subcommittee of the ACDA.

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.

Students Named New Weir Fellows

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Two Illinois Wesleyan University students have been named the 2011 Weir Fellows. Senior Kaitie Fancher of Noblesville, Ind., and junior Matt Hill of Lake Forest, Ill., were honored for their commitment to community service.

The $1,250 fellowships are distributed through Illinois Wesleyan’s Action Research Center (ARC), which links Illinois Wesleyan students with research projects with not-for-profit organizations. Students chosen as Weir Fellows must have previously worked closely with community partners and proposed collaborative projects with them. Both fellows have projects planned with the Western Avenue Community Center, a local not-for-profit organization.

Retirees Coffee Club Revisits Wesleyan of Yesteryear

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – On a snow-covered morning, a group gathered at Illinois Wesleyan University’s Hansen Student Center. They gravitated toward a large, round table in the middle of Centre Court, with steaming cups of coffee in hand. Those seated around the table collectively represented nearly 260 years of dedication to Illinois Wesleyan. Known simply as the Retirees Coffee Club, they are individuals who have helped shape the University.

“We sit here and solve all the world’s problems,” joked Jim Routi ’63, who retired as dean of university admissions in 2003 after 40 years of working at IWU. “Really though, this gives us a chance to get together and talk.”

The Retirees Coffee Club meets every Wednesday at Hansen. The only requirement to sit at the table is to have retired from Illinois Wesleyan, though longtime friends are always welcome. The number of people who attend varies from week to week, however that day, eight braved the cold. Over the music humming on the sound system and the whirl of the espresso machine at Hattie’s, snipits of conversation were caught that ranged from travel plans to the new health-care legislation.

Passion Meets Purpose for Alum’s Work in Community Development

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University alumnus Juan Salgado ’91 has conversed with the presidents of nations, worked closely with heads of major corporations, and been honored by the city of Chicago. Yet for Salgado, the work he does as the CEO of the Instituto del Progreso Latino is all simply part of doing what he loves.

“You never know where the work you do will take you,” said Salgado. “You just have to stay grounded and do something for which you have a passion.”

The Instituto, which Salgado has led since 2001, creates educational and workforce opportunities for Latino communities in Chicago. The not-for-profit was given an Award of Excellence from the U.S. Department of Labor in 2008, and in 2009 the Instituto was selected as the National Council of La Raza’s Affiliate of the Year.

Instituto’s mission is close to Salgado’s heart. Growing up in Calumet Park, Ill., he lived in a mostly white, working class neighborhood with pockets of long-standing Latino families. “My grandfather moved there from Mexico in 1918, and we grew up a block away from where my grandfather settled. So we had been there for almost a century,” said Salgado, who noted the neighborhood went through the phenomenon known as suburban flight, when many families moved to the suburbs. “By the time I went through high school, there were very few white families left,” he said. With resources being channeled to other communities, Salgado watched his neighborhood’s opportunities fade. “Even from a young age, it was already in my mind that I wanted to work with working class communities, promoting upward mobility and job formation in neighborhoods,” he said.

Professor Awarded Nurse Educator Fellowship

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University’s Assistant Professor of Nursing Susan L. Swanlund has been awarded a State of Illinois Nurse Educator Fellowship from the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

The purpose of the Nurse Educator Fellowship Program is to ensure the retention of well-qualified nursing faculty at institutions of higher learning that award degrees in nursing.

Swanlund received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Illinois Wesleyan in 1980. She went on to earn a master’s in nursing at Texas Woman’s University in 1988, and a doctorate in nursing at Saint Louis University in 1998. Before joining the Illinois Wesleyan faculty in 1995, Swanlund taught at the Mennonite College of Nursing in Bloomington, where she received the Dr. Kathleen A. Hogan Teaching Excellence Award. She also has experience as a staff nurse at the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis; in the operating room and post-anesthesia recovery room at Brokaw Hospital in Normal; and at Baylor University Center in Dallas. Swanlund later was operating room supervisor and then director of the Cataract Surgery Center in Dallas.

21st Annual MLK Gospel Festival at Illinois Wesleyan Jan. 17

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — The twenty-first annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Gospel Festival will be held on Monday, Jan. 17 at Illinois Wesleyan University. Free and open to the public, the event will run from 3 p.m. until 9 p.m. in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall (1210 Park St., Bloomington).

The celebration in honor of the birth of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., will include performances by the United Community Gospel Singers Mass Choir, Gayles Memorial Mass Choir (Aurora, Ill.), the Fantastic Jones Family (Springfield, Ill.), the Mt. Pisgah Adult Choir, Praise Dancers and Sunbeam Choir, Union Baptist Church Adult Choir, Integrity Singers (Peoria, Ill.), Illinois Wesleyan Chapel Gospel Choir, Illinois State Interdenominational Youth Choir.

Also performing will be the Loving Missionary Baptist Choir, JAM Production Choir, Boys and Girls Club Choir, Crosswinds Prairie Dance Team, The Hour of Deliverance Youth Choir, and the City of Refuge Adult Choir.

IWU News Blog

Headlines From Illinois Wesleyan University