Jesse White to Speak at Fellowship Dinner

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White will be the keynote speaker at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellowship Dinner on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 5 p.m. The Jesse White Tumbling Team will be featured, as well.

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).

White was first elected to the office in 1998 as Illinois’ 37th Secretary of State and is the first African-American to hold the position. Before he was in office, White founded the internationally known Jesse White Tumbling Team in 1959. The group serves as a positive alternative for children residing in and around the Chicago area. Over 13,000 young men and women have benefited from the program since its inception. Making over 1,500 nation-wide appearances each year, the team has been featured during half-time shows for the National Basketball Association, and tapings of Late Night with David Letterman and Good Morning America, as well as a number of other programs.

Wesleyan to Host 22nd Annual MLK Gospel Festival

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The twenty-second annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Gospel Festival will be held on Monday, Jan. 16 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 Gospel Singers of Bloomington/Normal Mass Choir, The Hour of Deliverance Youth Choir, Boys and Girls Club Choir, the Rev. Frank and Mrs. Bettye McSwain, Elder Homer Calhoun, Gayles Memorial Mass Choir and Praise Dancers (Aurora, Ill.), The Fantastic Jones Family (Springfield, Ill.), Illinois Wesleyan Chapel Gospel Choir and the Rev. Spencer Gibson and the Integrity Singers (Peoria, Ill.).

Also performing will be Mount Pisgah Sunbeam Choir, Union Missionary Baptist Church Junior Gospel Quartet, Union Missionary Baptist Church Adult Choir, Illinois State Interdenominational Youth Choir, Loving Missionary Baptist Church, Jam Production Choir, Mt. Pisgah Praise Dancers and Mt. Pisgah Adult Choir.

Power of Poetry Slams onto Campus

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – When one thinks of traditional poetry courses, quiet classes spent analyzing meter, form, and imagery come to mind. However, there has been a relatively recent movement to educate people on contemporary forms of poetry, such as slam poetry.

Slam poetry, or the competitive art of performance poetry, originated in 1984 when construction worker Marc Smith started a poetry reading series at a Chicago jazz club, looking to breathe life into poetry. The experiment spread to other clubs in Chicago and eventually to Ann Arbor, San Francisco and other major cities with nation-wide slams throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Slam has been well publicized in the media through television shows such as HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and the 1998 film, Slam. Some people think slam is brash, perhaps even abrasive, but others find it moving and persuasive and “the obvious power of slam poetry puts to the test the power of other kinds of poetry,” said Associate Professor of English Michael Theune.

Hansen Student Center to Receive Lighting Upgrades

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – On Sunday, Nov. 20, the Illinois Wesleyan Student Senate approved funding for upgrades to the Hansen Student Center. The majority of the funds will go toward new stage lighting equipment, including new, more sustainable, LED fixtures. With the new LED lighting, 85 percent more energy will be conserved, the plastic of the fixtures will not need to be replaced and fewer bulbs will need to be changed.

The new upgrades will improve lighting for events held at the student center, largely benefiting student organizations, such as Dance Cohesion and the Musical Theater Society, both of which rely heavily on lighting technology for their respective shows. Senior physics major and Hispanic studies minor Derrick Rohl notes the versatility of the new fixtures. “This technology allows us to produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 million colors with each fixture. This will give the crew and performers a new degree of creativity for working events at Hansen,” he said. Rohl has worked on the project alongside sophomore theater design/technology major Matt Hohmann.

According to Colin Stewart, director of student activities and leadership programs, Rohl and Hohmann have invested a great amount of time on the lighting project from the very beginning. Their tasks have involved a great deal of technical work, including finding available circuits and working with Physical Plant to determine the amount of power and electric currents necessary for the system, as well as making sure the project stays on budget. Stewart is excited to see students like Rohl and Hohmann, as well as members of the Student Senate who passed the funding, working for the benefit of their peers

Unique Sculpture to Illuminate Campus

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Over a decade ago, in 1998, the Illinois Wesleyan School of Art was given an endowment gift of $2 million by B. Charles Ames ’50 to name the art building after his wife, Joyce Eichhorn Ames. Over the years, Mrs. Ames, class of 1949 and a former art student, wondered if anything could be done to distinguish the building, utilitarian in nature, as a recognizable school of art. The plans that followed can now be seen from the Robert S. Eckley Quadrangle – a glass rotunda entrance that houses a unique sculpture by artist Lyle London of Tempe, Ariz.

The more than 2,400-square-foot glass rotunda will serve as the new entryway to the school of art building. With a substantial amount of work finished on the outside of the rotunda itself, the sculpture can now be placed within, as art students and faculty, as well as London, began working together this week to suspend it from the center of the glass tower.

Funded by trustee emeritus Flora Harris Armstrong, class of 1943, as a gift to the University, the work is an abstraction, taking the form of three interwoven, tapering helices. It is constructed from stainless steel and dichroic glass.

Contorno ’12 Named Lincoln Laureate

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— Senior Lauren Contorno has been selected as Illinois Wesleyan University’s recipient of the 2011 Lincoln Academy of Illinois Student Laureate Award. The award recognizes outstanding academic achievement and extracurricular activities among college seniors

Contorno and 50 fellow student laureates were honored in a ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 5 at the Old State Capitol State Historic Site in Springfield, Ill. Accompanied to the event by Associate Provost for Academic Planning and Standards Frank Boyd, Contorno received a Student Laureate Medallion, an honorarium check and certificate of achievement.

A native of Elburn, Ill., Contorno is a political science major at IWU and in the spring of 2011, she studied in a general studies program at The Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy. This past summer, she was a Catastrophe Services Intern at State Farm Insurance Company in Bloomington where she researched and wrote an extensive report detailing the correlation between climate change and severe storm trends and its possible effects on the insurance industry. Contorno, among other responsibilities, also wrote an all-department summary outlining State Farm’s catastrophe response plan.

Artist’s rendering of the new classroom building

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— The Illinois Wesleyan Board of Trustees approved construction of a new main classroom building that will be completed by the fall semester of 2013. The nearly $16 million building is a key priority of the University’s $125 million Transforming Lives fund raising campaign.

“We are indebted to the many alumni and friends here in McLean County and across the nation who have made this important project possible,” said President Dick Wilson. “This is our second major building project this year; we’re currently finishing construction on a new $2 million entry and interior renovation of areas within the Joyce Eichhorn Ames School of Art. Both projects are being funded exclusively through private gifts to the University”.

The 48,700 square foot classroom facility is envisioned as signature building that will anchor the north end of the Eckley Quadrangle, where Sheean Library has stood since 1967. In addition to state-of-the-art classrooms, study areas and research spaces, the building will be home to the departments of Business Administration and Economics. With the Sheean Library teardown completed over the summer, the start of construction on the new building will begin in about a month.

Educators Find iPad a Useful Aid in the Classroom

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Since the creation of the chalkboard over 120 years ago, the classroom has seen significant changes, each invention revolutionizing the way students learn. Today, the classroom continues to evolve and has been introduced to a new type of technology – one that is touch sensitive, lightweight and compact – the iPad.

A tablet device released by Apple Inc. in April of 2010, the iPad has been praised by many for its ability to perform a number of the same tasks as a laptop, with half the weight and twice the portability. Shortly after the iPad’s premiere, companies such as Verizon Wireless and Blackberry, among others, released similar products.

Critics of the iPad first saw it only as a larger version of the company’s earlier product, the iPhone. What some perceived as just another gadget, however, is quickly becoming a valuable tool for educators, from elementary school teachers to college professors, including a few at Illinois Wesleyan University.

According to Professor Jeanne Koehler, visiting instructor in educational studies, the iPad enhances pedagogy and eases the administrative tasks of teaching. With a variety of educational applications, or apps, ranging from math and engineering games to word puzzles, students of all ages can be engaged in a fun, hands-on learning experience. Even one of the iPad’s most popular games, Angry Birds, can have educational purposes, according to Koehler, with the goal of the game achieved through manipulating angles.

For the educator, the iPad also serves as a useful way to keep track of simple administrative tasks, such as taking attendance, recording student participation and creating seating charts. Apps such as Teacher Pal store all the information a teacher may need for the classroom. The convenience of having everything located in one place is an incentive for using the iPad, as Koehler has noted from personal experience.

Schulz ’71 Spins Her Way to Success

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – On October 12, Judith Schulz ’71 and 20,000 others across the world will throw their spinning tops, creating the characteristic gravity-defying rotation in honor of International Top Spinning Day.

International Top Spinning Day is held in celebration of the toy that has endured centuries. While some may have forgotten about these seeming antiques, participants in the upcoming festivities will range from as far as South Africa, France, Switzerland and Romania, reminding Schulz that, “the earth is just like a large spinning top, rotating around a single axis.”

In celebration of the rich history of the top and to educate people on the science behind these toys, Schulz created in 1987 The Spinning Top Museum, which she opened in Burlington, Wis. Over the past 24 years, the museum has evolved into an exhibition with over 2,000 items, hands-on games, experiments and tours. Schulz says that when she arrived at Illinois Wesleyan as an art education major, she never would have guessed how her four years at the University would influence her to one day open such a place with the most extensive collection of spinning tops in the world.

Students Find Ways to Be a Best Buddy

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – For the average college student, the many demands faced throughout the year – papers, presentations, exams – are more than enough. While each student finds his or her own way to deal with these stresses, some students have found enriching experiences through organizations such as Best Buddies International.

Promoting social inclusion and leadership opportunities through one-on-one friendships, as well as job opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), Best Buddies International is a not-for-profit organization found in all 50 states and 50 countries worldwide. Positively impacting nearly 700,000 individuals with and without disabilities, the organization was established in 1989 by Anthony Kennedy Shriver. What began with one chapter has now blossomed into a worldwide organization of 1,500 chapters, varying from middle schools, to high schools, to universities and communities through adult programs.

At Illinois Wesleyan, the chapter is comprised of students of all years and majors, and people with IDD, or buddies, from the community. Each buddy is paired with a college student; this year there are 14 matches and 19 associate members, who are not paired with buddies but still attend meetings and events. Recently, the group met in Buck Memorial Library for a Halloween party, which included trick-or-treating around the campus. Later in the year, they will attend a football game together and fundraise, as well. Outside of planned events, the group members and their buddies talk weekly and get together in order to create life-long friendships.

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