NIU’s Office of Sponsored Projects will host an informal discussion on budgeting principles that are used when developing budgets for sponsored projects.
Topics covered will include hidden costs, such as application of Facilities & Administrative (F&A) costs, fringe benefit costs and how to budget for external collaborators.
The discussion will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30, in the Heritage Room of the Holmes Student Center.
For more information, call (815) 753-1581.
The following is a list of recent grants to NIU faculty researchers, including John Lewis, Promod Vohra, Gaylen Kapperman, Clyde Kimball, Mansour Tahernezhadi, Dhiman Chakraborty, Federico Sciammarella, Lesley Rigg and Nicholas Pohlman.
Posted Sept. 9, 2010
Associate Vice President for University Outreach John Lewis has received $9.4 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to support multiple research projects related to cancer treatment using proton beam therapy. The grant will support the development of a Proton Computed Tomography (pCT) detector system for installation at the Northern Illinois Proton Treatment and Research Center (NIPTRC) and will also study the effects of proton and photon therapies for increasing cancer survivorship.
Dean Promod Vohra of the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology has received $1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct research in the composition and development of small scale bio-fuel production facilities to satisfy the needs of individuals’ who live in rural communities or areas not located near agricultural facilities. The project will also focus on how bio-fuels interact with engine materials and power production. Lessons learned from this research will be used to develop new educational programs in energy development and conservation.
Professor Gaylen Kapperman of the Department of Teaching and Learning has received $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to train graduate students to provide rehabilitation services for blinded veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Distinguished Research Professor Clyde Kimball of the Institute for Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology and the Department of Physics has received $486,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to establish a high-speed/large memory desktop supercomputing cluster for simulation and modeling of dynamic processes important for energy and industrial applications.
Associate Dean Mansour Tahernezhadi of the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology has received $250,000 from the Illinois State Board of Education as part of its Illinois Math and Science Partnerships program, to support a master’s degree program in engineering and technology targeted toward certified teachers in middle and secondary schools in Rockford and Aurora.
Professor Dhiman Chakraborty of the Department of Physics has received a subcontract for $122,760 from California State University, Fresno, as part of a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant. The project, which was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, supports the purchase and installation of instrumentation at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The instrumentation, part of the ATLAS particle physics project, will be used to collect data resulting from head-on collisions of protons at extremely high energies in the search for new discoveries about the basic forces that shape the universe.
Assistant Professor Federico Sciammarella of the Department of Mechanical Engineering has received $16,104 from the National Science Foundation to support a workshop on research and education in advanced manufacturing between NIU and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in the Republic of South Africa.
Associate Professor Lesley Rigg of the Department of Geography has received a $15,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to promote the participation of early-career faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students in the Biogeography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers at the Fifth International Biogeography Society conference in Crete, Greece, next January.
Assistant Professor Nicholas Pohlman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering has received $14,300 from the Illinois Department of Agriculture to support research on the transport and processing of granular materials used as fuel in the generation of energy from biomass to make them more efficient to transport without the need for additional processing.
Posted Aug. 20, 2010
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Christopher McCord, Women’s Studies Director Amy Levin, Associate Professor Brianno Coller in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Professor Lesley Rigg in the Department of Geography will receive $161,284 from the National Science Foundation, effective Sept. 1, to fund planning efforts for the submission of a full proposal to NSF’s ADVANCE program. The program focuses on increasing the participation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.
Assistant Professor Minmei Hou in the Department of Computer Science has received a three-year, $316,455 Academic Research Enhancement Award from the National Human Genome Research Institute.The project’s goal is to improve computer methodology for detecting small realignments or rearrangements in genetic sequences.
“Current DNA sequencing methods rapidly produce data with high precision, but current computer software that pieces those large volumes of data together into genomic sequences often misses such fine-scale detail,” Biological Sciences Chair Barrie Bode said. “This research project is significant in that it will provide improved fidelity in reading and interpreting entire genomes and facilitate more useful comparisons, both between species and within single species.”
Associate Professor Philippe Piot in the Department of Physics has received $590,910 from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The grant funds work on techniques in particle acceleration that could pave the way toward a table-top accelerator-based light source that could be used for remote detection of fissionable materials.
Assistant Professor James Horn in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has received $69,354 (the first installment of a four-year, $293,881 award) from the American Heart Association. The grant will support a study of the physical and chemical mechanisms by which antibodies recognize and bind to small target molecules, and also of ways to develop new antibody fragments that can be used to target specific molecules or structures for pharmaceutical or biological research.
Assistant Professor Dmitry Kadnikov in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has received $71,500 (the first installment of a three-year, $214,500 award) from the Greater Midwest Affiliate of the American Heart Association. The grant supports efforts to develop selective modulators that would activate only genes involved in transport of cholesterol out of liver cells, but not genes involved in the synthesis of fatty acids.
Distinguished Research Professor Peter Meserve in the Department of Biological Sciences has received $22,607 (the first installment of a four-year, $42,317 award) from the National Science Foundation. The grant will help him continue a 20-year study of interactions between plant and animal communities in a semi-arid region of Chile. The project, carried out in collaboration with Chilean researchers, also looks at the effects of climate change on the region and is expected to provide a baseline for comparison with other similar regions around the world.
Assistant Professor Christina Papadimitriou in the School of Nursing and Health Studies has received $65,000 from the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research at the U.S. Department of Education for research on the improvement of client-centered care for individuals with spinal cord injuries in inpatient rehabilitation centers.
Associate Professor John Bentley in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures received $6,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend program to use philological, linguistic and literary data from ancient Korean and Japanese texts to create a convenient dictionary of ancient Japanese for students and scholars of Asia. The Japanese language is a linguistic museum, preserving as it does Chinese linguistic data that has disappeared from other countries. Scholars and students who study Asia will now have access to a compact resource for historical linguistics.
Professor John Schaeffer in the Department of English received $50,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write a book on Giambattista Vico, which resolves the debate over natural law without provoking other debates over reason, religion, public good or individual rights.
Assistant Professor Ismael Montana in the Department of History received $11,000 from the British Library to rescue endangered archival materials and historical manuscripts threatened by overuse and the hazards of the tropical weather in northern Ghana. The materials will be digitized and made available to scholars and library patrons in Ghana, Britain and here at NIU. NIU and the British Library will be co-repositors of this digitized material.
Deb Pierce
ELS Language Centers (ELS) is pleased to join the NIU community and to contribute to the international diversity of the region.
Opening this month, ELS offers multiple levels of English as a Second Language (ESL) to international students from abroad. The third floor of the Student Health Services building is home to ELS with offices, classrooms and a language laboratory. ELS international students will have the opportunity to reside in NIU Residence Halls or participate in a home stay program in DeKalb while taking ESL courses.
Students who opt for the home stay program live with nearby American families, allowing for additional opportunities to enhance their English speaking abilities, and enjoy numerous American customs. ELS is actively recruiting families for the home stay program. Contact dek@els.edu or (815) 753-4600 for information on hosting an international student in your home.
ELS operates continuously in four-week sessions, consisting of six classes per day, 52 weeks per year. Students participate in various classes that focus on structure and speaking practice, language studies and reading and writing. Students also may choose to take skills enhancement classes that focus on conversation, listening comprehension, American culture, public speaking and current events.
“Bringing ELS to our community is an important aspect of Global NIU,” said Deb Pierce, NIU associate provost for International Programs. “Their strong program in intensive English will make NIU more accessible to international applicants who haven’t yet developed strong English proficiency, while the outstanding promotional capacity of ELS will bring to DeKalb increasing numbers of diverse students from around the world.”
With more than 50 locations nationwide, ELS is the largest network of U.S. campus-based English language instruction centers in the world. Since opening its first center in 1961, ELS has helped more than 1 million international students from more than 140 countries learn English. Building on its many years of experience in preparing international students for university study in the United States, ELS has developed its own unique curriculum, textbooks and branded language-learning software.
Pierce described the connection between NIU and ELS as a proactive public/private partnership.
“Although ELS as an organization is separate and distinct from NIU, its location here in DeKalb will give us a great opportunity to let their students know about NIU’s academic strength and welcoming environment,” Pierce said.
When ELS students reach the required level of proficiency in English, Pierce hopes they will enroll at NIU as fully admitted graduate or undergraduate students. “Having the ELS students nearby, and eventually admitting them to our programs, will significantly add to the diversity and the global profile of our campus,” she said.
Teri Laliberte is serving as the center director for ELS/DeKalb.
Laliberte brings many years of experience to ELS and holds the M.A. in applied linguistics/TESOL from the University of Georgia. She has accumulated more than 20 years of teaching and administrative experience, having taught as a USAID Fellow in Turkey and with USAID in Poland. In 2008 she opened the ELS center at the University of Cincinnati, which is now one of the largest centers in the ELS family.
For more information about ELS/DeKalb, or to host an international student, contact Laliberte at (815) 753-4600 or via e-mail at tlaliberte@els.edu.
The NIU Study Abroad Office will hold its 18th Annual Study Abroad Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, in the Duke Ellington Ballroom of the Holmes Student Center.
All students who would like to learn more about the possibility of studying abroad are invited to attend. Students will have the opportunity to meet with host representatives of study abroad programs in about 75 countries.
The representatives include NIU faculty members who direct short-term study abroad programs worldwide and agents from independent study abroad organizations. All NIU study abroad programs make it possible for students to earn NIU academic credit while participating in a program abroad.
NIU Student Financial Aid Office staff members will be present to answer questions about financial aid and to provide information on loans and scholarships. Representatives from NIU’s Career Services, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Center for Black Studies, Latino Resource Center, Health Services and other campus departments also will be on hand.
“The fair serves as a ‘one stop shop’ by providing opportunities to meet with key people who can make study abroad a reality for students. This includes the chance to talk to Study Abroad Office staff, NIU faculty program directors, and study abroad providers,” said Anne Seitzinger, director of the Study Abroad Office. “Representatives will help students identify programs that best fit their majors or career interests. There are dozens of options that allow students to find a program in their major area of study, or they can explore options where they might earn credit toward NIU general elective requirements.
“Some students prefer a summer, semester or academic year program that offers a variety of courses, such as programs in France offered by the Institute for American Universities, programs in China offered by the School for International Training, or programs in Australia offered by AustraLearn, just to name a few. Others might want to focus on a specific topic, such as a Shakespeare in Oxford, England, business seminars all over Europe, or mental health and community psychiatric health care services in Ireland,” Seitzinger added. “It’s imperative that NIU students understand their profession or area of study from a global perspective.”
The fair will feature voting for the Study Abroad Office Photo Contest, and all attending the fair will receive free goodie bags and have a chance to win one of several excellent raffle prizes. Raffle and photo contest prizes have been donated by program providers, area businesses, as well as several offices on campus.
Each year, the Study Abroad Fair attracts about 600 NIU students seeking study abroad experiences outside the United States. The NIU Study Abroad Office helped more than 300 students to participate in such programs this past year.
“Students who attend the fair will learn about programs and financial aid and loan options that will allow study abroad to become a reality,” Seitzinger said. “Students can also talk to study abroad alumni who will be present to provide first-hand information and offer guidance and encouragement.”
The fair is for faculty and staff as well as students.
“Faculty members will learn how creating their own study abroad programs can benefit them both personally and professionally,” Seitzinger said. “Directing an NIU study abroad program provides faculty-development opportunities as well as the means for internationalizing on-campus courses. We hope more faculty will consider attending this year’s fair.”
Students who aren’t able to attend the fair can plan to attend an informative presentation and question-and-answer session titled, “Study Abroad 101: First Steps to Study Abroad.” Study Abroad 101 content is the same at each session, so students need only attend once to learn the basics. The presentation will be offered every Wednesday and Thursday at 3:30 p.m. in the NIU Study Abroad Office.
Both the Study Abroad Fair and Study Abroad 101 are free and open to the public. For more information, visit the NIU Study Abroad website, send an e-mail to niuabroad@niu.edu or call (815) 753-0700.
David Hedin
by David Hedin, NIU Board of Trustees Professor of Physics
NIU physicists and students played a major role over the years in the design and construction of elements of a detector at Fermilab used to identify subatomic particles known as muons. That science is now helping scientists shed new light on what the New York Times calls “one of the biggest mysteries of cosmology”—why the universe is made up of matter.
Fermilab made news worldwide in May, announcing that scientists in the DZero collaboration there had discovered a potential clue in the matter-antimatter mystery that has challenged the great minds in physics for decades.
Two thousand years ago, natural philosophers conjectured that the underlying structures of our universe were symmetric, such as circles or spheres.
We now know it is the asymmetries in nature that define its history and our existence. In fact, a perfectly symmetric universe would be lifeless because equal amounts of matter and antimatter would have annihilated each other in the first instance of creation.
Yet the Standard Model of Physics, which is the best explanation scientists have of the origins of the universe, doesn’t explain matter’s dominance over its antithesis.
Somehow, when our universe began about 13 billion years ago in a state of very high temperature and density (the so-called Big Bang), matter began to dominate, albeit ever so slightly.
A very tiny amount of matter, a fraction of less than 1 in a billion, survived to form all the stars, all the planets, and all of us. Without this asymmetry, we would not exist.
For more than 50 years, experiments at particle physics centers such as Fermilab have tried to study particle-antiparticle differences. Such differences have been observed but were too small to explain the dominance of matter.
The new result from the DZero experiment, however, found evidence of a much larger effect.
DZero collaborators studied seven years’ worth of data with more than 200 trillion proton-antiproton collisions. They found a 1 percent difference between the production of pairs of muons and pairs of antimuons in the decay of subatomic particles known as B mesons. If the excess holds up, this result from DZero could point to new physics that could explain the excess of matter in the early universe.
The design, construction and operation of the DZero detector requires the dedicated work of a collaboration of about 500 physicists, and NIU students and faculty have been members of the collaboration since 1986.
I helped design and construct the muon system and led the group responsible for the software algorithms used to define muons for 16 of the past 25 years. Further, between 1987 and 2001, more than 90 NIU students worked on building and testing muon system components.
NIU also made significant contributions to the system used to collect data and quickly identify collisions containing muons. The group that designed the system was led by Distinguished Research Professor Gerald Blazey. In fact, optimizing the data-collection efficiency was Blazey’s highest priority while he was co-spokesperson of DZero from 2002 to 2006.
Additionally, Physics Professor Michael Fortner and Research Scientist Sergey Uzunyan built a component of the muon logic circuits.
High energy physics experiments such as those at Fermilab are often referred to as “big science.” They are massive and often expensive undertakings, but there are big payoffs, too. These experiments are helping us answer age-old questions and better understand the building blocks of our universe.
David Hedin is the founding faculty member of NIU’s experimental high energy physics group and has been conducting research at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory since 1976.
Northern Illinois University, which just this month opened a new one-stop services office for veterans, has been named among the top military friendly schools in the country.
For the second consecutive year, G.I. Jobs magazine editors placed NIU on its list of colleges that provide extensive services and support to veterans and students currently in the military.
G.I. Jobs is a national monthly magazine that publicizes jobs and education opportunities for veterans and people still in the military. Of the 8,000 colleges considered nationwide, NIU was among 1,120 institutions to receive the honor, said Dan Fazio, the magazine’s managing editor.
NIU has demonstrated that it recognizes the unique needs of students who have served in the military or who are currently serving in the military, Fazio said.
“We sent out surveys and carefully analyzed the results,” Fazio said. “Northern Illinois University is among the friendliest as far as the services to students connected to the military. We weighed the services schools offer to veterans, things like veterans clubs, military discounts, and staff devoted to helping veterans.”
The magazine also considers availability of scholarships, class schedule flexibility and the different levels of degrees offered at the school.
NIU’s new Military Student Services is a good example of the university’s commitment to veterans and their classmates who are still in the military.
Located in Room B-111 of Gilbert Hall, the office provides those students with a one-stop place to go with questions on available services and programs, said Kelly Wesener, NIU assistant vice president for student services.
“We provide services such as academic support, mental health assessment and individual advocacy,” Wesener said. “We opened this office after recognizing more and more veterans are returning to college campuses. NIU is committed to ensuring their needs are met so they can reach their academic goals.”
About 700 veterans receive military educational benefits and approximately 800 veterans attend NIU.
The new office is being applauded by veterans and student soldiers of all ranks and ages, said Jose Alferez, president of the NIU Veterans Club.
“We have veterans on campus who served in the Gulf War,” he said. “Many have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of them don’t know where to go when they have questions about benefits or if they have problems with their classes. This will certainly help.”
NIU has a long-standing reputation of supporting veterans and students in the military, Alferez said.
“We’re proud of the services we offer our students,” said Scott Peska, director of NIU’s Military Student Services.
“With the new office, we’ll have an opportunity to better coordinate our services and meet the unique needs of veterans,” he added. “For example, for students who are in the military and are deployed in the middle of a semester, we’ll help them work with their instructors and navigate the withdrawal procedure and re-entry process so they won’t lose progress toward earning an NIU degree.”
Currently, veteran financial aid benefits are still being processed in Room 245K of Swen Parson Hall and that operation will join Military Student Services in Gilbert Hall later this semester.
The hours of the Military Student Services office are from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The telephone number is (815) 753-0691.
by Gerard Dziuba
Not only does NIU English instructor John Bradley have a new collection of poetry, but he also has another award to go along with it.
John Bradley
The Cleveland State University Poetry Center has given its 2009 open competition award to Bradley for his latest book, “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.”
“It’s an honor to have been selected,” Bradley said.
His was among 750 manuscripts submitted to the four-judge committee at Cleveland State University Poetry Center, said Krysia Orlowski, a publicist for the center. Two awards were given. Committee members based their decision on originality and readability.
“John Bradley’s manuscript really stood out to committee members,” Orlowski said. “They based their decision on his unique sensibility and keen sense of the prose poem form.”
Poets published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center have gone on to win the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prizes, Orlowski added.
Poem titles in Bradley’s new book include “Parable of the Hair Chair,” “You Too Can Apologize to the Moon” and “Chimney Sleep.”
Bradley, who won the 2008 Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction award, has been teaching first-year composition and a variety of other courses at NIU since 1992. He often teaches English courses in the CHANCE program.
Bradley’s poetry has gained national recognition in the past as well. His 1989 book of poetry titled, “Love-In-Idleness,” won the Washington Prize, and he was a 2005 recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in poetry.
“I’ve always enjoyed writing poetry, especially the prose poem style,” he said.
His interest in poetry reaches back to 1972, when he attended his first poetry class in a Minneapolis bookstore. He liked what he read, swallowed his fears, and entered his first workshop. Since then, he as written four full-length books and edited three anthologies.
“Writing poetry is something I do for my own enjoyment,” Bradley said. “I could never support myself on it. You have to be famous like Rita Dove or Billy Collins to make a living from it.”
Bradley also is the editor of a collection of reflections on the nuclear age, “Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age,” and a similarly themed collection of essays, “Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader.”
by Gerard Dziuba
Community organizers from the Phillippines participated in a three-week summer workshop led by NIU faculty who have expertise in conflict resolution and cultural diversity training.
Trained by experts at NIU, community organizers from a conflict-torn region of the southern Philippines are now teaching their neighbors to look at the bigger picture, resolve differences peacefully and be more active in mainstream society.
The activists participated in a three-week summer workshop led by NIU faculty who have expertise in conflict resolution and cultural diversity training.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs provided a $350,000 grant in support of the program, titled “The Past is Always Ahead of Us: Empowering Indigenous and Minority Leaders in the Southern Philippines.”
The 11 participants arrived on campus in late May, exchanged ideas with peers and learned that arguments and violence are not the best tools to solve differences or improve lives.
The grant also will support travel by NIU educators to the Philippines next year to conduct follow-up training, said International Training Office Director Lina Ong. Another group of Philippine activists is scheduled to arrive in DeKalb in October for more leadership-building workshops.
Over the past seven years, NIU’s Ong and Anthropology Professor Susan Russell, an expert on the Philippines, have led a series of similar leadership-development workshops for Filipino young people and adults. In all, they have received $2.2 million in federal grants for the programs and have trained 234 people.
Participants learn to look outside of their indigenous tribes, regions, cultures and country for solutions to age-old problems.
“They learn to collaborate among themselves, with members of other tribes and with the government to solve common problems,” Russell said.
By the end of the latest workshop, participants were anxious to return to their country and put their new knowledge to use.
“This program gave me a chance to make known the issues of our people and hear what other cultures are dealing with,” said Licelle Onggo, an organizer and government employee from Buhangin, Davao City. “In my region, poverty, education and cultural degradation are our biggest issues. Few people are passing their tribal customs and heritage down to their children, and schools are not teaching them to children.”
There’s a real fear that customs may fade with time and generations.
“My biggest challenge will be to find (elders) who are willing and trained to teach culture to younger people, so it will not be eventually lost,” Onggo said.
To keep tribe members sharp and to begin increasing pride and self-esteem among the remote cultures, tribes must throw out their suspicions of neighbors. They must work together to rationally and peacefully solve problems they all share, Russell said.
“Conflict resolution is my biggest concern,” said Abdul Atar, an organizer from Marawi City. “I can’t wait to return to my country and show people how to assert our rights in a peaceful way.”
by Gerard Dziuba
A pair of May NIU graduates have received Fulbright grants to teach and study in Austria.
Brandi Smith
Brandi Smith, 27, of Chicago, and Melissa Shalter, 27, of Ottawa, will travel to Austria in September to begin their teaching assignments.
Shalter, who earned her certificate to teach in secondary education, will work with high school students. Smith graduated with a dual degree in the German and Spanish languages and literature.
“I’ll be working as a teaching assistant in Vienna,” Smith said. “I’ll also be doing some research work in Austria. I’m excited. This will be the second time I’ve been to Austria.”
Both women applied for the grants because they wanted to continue the global education they received at NIU.
Melissa Shalter
“Working abroad is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Shalter said “I have been studying German since high school. I didn’t want to study Spanish because everyone was learning it. French is nice, but German is interesting.”
The Fulbright program is sponsored and funded by the U.S. State Department and is designed to foster cultural understanding between the United States and countries around the world.
“I’ve always wanted to live and work in a German-speaking country to gain a better understanding of the culture and language through everyday life,” Shalter said. “Although I’ll be teaching English, it will give me much more practice with German. I feel that it’s very important for me to do this before starting my teaching career so that I can be a more effective teacher.”
The NIU graduates are among 1,500 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2010-2011 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
The Fulbright program is highly competitive, and rarely are grants awarded to students who have graduated side by side and plan to travel to the same destination, said James A. Lawrence, who is with the office of Academic Exchange Programs in the U.S. State Department.
Applications by U.S. citizens for the English Language Teaching Assistantship Program are administered by the Fulbright Commission for the Austrian Ministry of Education, the Arts and Culture.
U.S. teaching assistants are assigned to one or two Austrian secondary schools and required to assist teachers of English in classroom instruction 13 hours per week. Applicants should have at least a bachelor’s degree and be interested in careers in education. Prospective teachers of German and graduates with a documented interest in Austrian studies are particularly encouraged to apply. A working knowledge of German is required and necessary to complete classroom work.
U.S. teaching assistants are employed from Oct.1 through May 31 of the school year. They are required to attend an orientation seminar held during the last week of September before beginning their assignments.
U.S. teaching assistants with a superior record of performance may apply to have their assistantships extended for a second year. Applications are accepted via the Internet. The deadline to submit an application for next year is Oct. 18.
Both women said they might want to extend their time in Austria.
by Gerard Dziuba
NIU Center for Southeast Asian Studies Director James Collins, Associate Provost Deborah Pierce and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Christopher McCord during a visit to Indonesia, where NIU is expanding its academic ties. (Photo provided by Christopher McCord)
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) two four-year grants totaling $2.4 million, up 45 percent from $1.7 million the center received in 2006.
The highly competitive grants were awarded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which gives funding to educational institutions every four years to promote the study and research of world languages and cultures.
This is the fourth time CSEAS has received such funding since its designation as a National Resource Center (NRC) for Southeast Asian Studies in 1997.
The center, which will celebrate its 50th year at NIU in 2013, received 13 percent more in its NRC project funding for programs and operations, totaling $1,009,144, over the next four years.
“While most of the salaries for the center’s staff are paid wholly or partly by NIU through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, about 90 to 95 percent of the center’s non-salary, operating funds depends on this federal grant,” said CSEAS Director James Collins. “Workshops, conferences, travel subsidies, curriculum development, and outreach—all depend on this as well as partial staff support and four to five graduate assistantships.”
The second project through Title VI dramatically increases—by 75 percent—the funding allotted to the center’s administration of Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, totaling $1,446,000 over four years. These fellowships are awarded competitively to NIU graduate and (for the first time this year) undergraduate students studying Southeast Asian languages at NIU.
NIU currently offers Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Malay, Tagalog and Thai, with Vietnamese planned to be added in 2012. This year, the center is awarding 14 FLAS fellowships for graduate students and three fellowships for undergraduate students, seven more fellowships awarded than in the previous year.
Tuition waivers from the Graduate School have allowed the center to leverage FLAS funding to offer more fellowships to more graduate students, said Collins, a linguist who came to the center as director in August 2008 from the National University of Malaysia. “I think that significantly strengthened our proposal and that’s why we got a 75 percent increase,” he said.
The center competed for Title VI funds with seven other National Resource Centers at Cornell University and the universities of California (Berkeley), Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Washington, Collins said, emphasizing that the Education Department considered the grants not “renewals,” but essentially first-time proposals.
In that light, he said, the increases were especially significant, noting that the center’s 45-page NRC grant proposal received a 96 percent approval rating from the department’s independent, anonymous reviewers. The FLAS proposal received a 95 percent rating.
“That NIU can compete with well-known universities throughout the country and secure these awards means that NIU’s center has national recognition,” Collins said. “Securing the award constitutes a seal of approval for NIU’s efforts past and future to develop Southeast Asian studies in the U.S. The center has maintained a high, positive profile for NIU in the corridors of the U.S. Department of Education. We’re proud to do our part in raising the NIU banner in Washington.”
President John Peters praised the center’s continuing efforts to expand student opportunities and deepen academic ties with Southeast Asia at an Aug. 16 reception celebrating the new grants. “It’s an important region in and of itself, and we have a special role here at Northern Illinois University to attract students here, educate them and get them ready to contribute globally, particularly in that part of the world where we have a special relationship,” Peters said.
Also speaking at the reception, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Chris McCord, who traveled with Collins to Indonesia in 2009 as part of a U.S. State Department education mission to expand academic links with that country, noted that NIU clearly has “a seat at the table” providing high-level expertise and insight into the entire Southeast Asia region.
An interdisciplinary center, CSEAS is affiliated with more than 13 departments on campus and includes 33 faculty associates on its center council. It offers an undergraduate minor and a graduate concentration in Southeast Asian studies, and is working toward establishing an undergraduate major.
In addition to these Title VI grants, the center also has secured another Title VI Education Department grant—for $534,000—to develop an innovative multimedia Malay-English dictionary for online learners that will be housed at SEAsite, the center’s Web-based collection of materials on Southeast Asian languages and cultures.
This fall and spring, the center will host two groups of Southeast Asian high school students participating in the second round of its Southeast Asia Youth Leadership Program, which is funded solely by a $280,000 grant from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Matthew Streb
Matthew Streb, an associate professor of political science at NIU and frequent expert source in the news media on political matters, has been appointed to a year-long post serving as associate to President John Peters.
Patterned after American Council on Education fellowships, the new NIU one-year position is designed to provide a leadership development opportunity for junior and mid-career faculty members. It is an extension of the presidential academic leadership development initiative, launched in 2008 as a result of NIU strategic planning.
Streb was tapped to serve as the first associate to the president and is charged with developing a formal Associate to the President fellowship program that will include a recruitment and selection process open to NIU junior and mid-career faculty.
Peters is developing this new program to provide NIU faculty with an opportunity to obtain hands-on administrative experience for one year and expose them to all facets of institutional operations including academic, student affairs, finance, facilities, government relations, communications, board operations and fundraising. Streb will serve as a member of the President’s Cabinet during the year as well.
“Dr. Streb is an energetic and talented educator who already has demonstrated leadership abilities, including high-level communication skills and a gift for working with students, the media and the public,” President Peters said. “We hope this coming year will help Matt take those abilities to an even higher level.”
In the Chicago region and beyond, Streb is well known among members of the media who rely on his political research and expertise to provide context to news reports.
He is a weekly contributor to WROK radio in Rockford and frequent guest on WNIJ radio, the local NPR affiliate. Streb’s research and commentary also has been featured on C-Span’s Washington Journal and cited in such publications as the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Times, Washington Monthly and Chronicle of Higher Education.
Like Streb, President Peters also is a political scientist by training who specializes in American politics.
“In addition to politics, I’m fascinated with how universities work, and this new position will allow me to see all facets of the university,” Streb said. “While I will miss the classroom, the opportunity to work with and learn from President Peters was too great to pass up.”
Streb received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 2000 and came to NIU in 2005. For the past four years, he served as director of undergraduate studies in political science, where he led development of the D.C. Congressional Summer Internship program and helped revamp the department’s honors program and undergraduate assessment procedures.
A regular featured speaker at summer orientation, he teaches courses on Congress, political parties and elections, polling and public opinion, American electoral democracy and undergraduate research methods. Streb also has served as chair of the NCAA Certification Steering Committee and as a member of the Forward, Together Forward Scholarship Committee and the Academic Convocation Committee.
Streb is the author of two books: “The New Electoral Politics of Race” (University of Alabama, 2002) and “Rethinking American Electoral Democracy” (Routledge, 2008).
Matthew Streb
by Matt Streb, Associate Professor of Political Science
If you have paid even minimal attention to coverage of the upcoming midterm elections, then you have probably heard an anchor, reporter or pundit refer to 2010 as the “year of the anti-incumbent.”
It is understandable why such a perception exists. Consider the high profile losses in the congressional primaries of incumbents such as U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith in Alabama. In fact, to date, six incumbent members of Congress have lost in the primary. On top of that, U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas had a near miss, and polls consistently find that a majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Still, even in this year of political upheaval, it’s a safe bet that an overwhelming percentage of incumbents will be re-elected.
Sure, we will see more incumbents unseated than in 2004, when only five failed to win re-election. And we probably will see more than the 19 incumbents unseated than in 2008. But it is highly probable that more than 90 percent of incumbents will return to Washington, D.C., for the 112th Congress.
Indeed, the Cook Political Report, one of the authoritative publications handicapping congressional races, lists only 24 incumbents whose seats are labeled “tossups.” If each of those incumbents lost — something that is highly unlikely — the incumbent re-election rate would still be roughly 94 percent. In other words, few incumbents will need to go job hunting after November.
Why is this the case? How can so many incumbents win even when the public seems so thoroughly disgusted with Washington?
Some political scientists attribute the staggering re-election rate to the “incumbency advantage.” Incumbents have greater name recognition and, more importantly, more campaign money than most challengers.
Others argue that the redistricting process has led to few hotly contested elections because district lines in many states are drawn to protect incumbents.
Finally, although members of the public bemoan the current state of affairs, people are generally happy with the representation they are receiving from their individual members of Congress. Poll after poll, year after year, shows that constituents genuinely like their congressional representatives; it is the other 434 bums who are to blame for the problems facing the country.
In reality, the answer is some combination of all these explanations. Whatever the case, come November, don’t be surprised when the “year of the anti-incumbent” looks awfully familiar.
Matt Streb teaches courses and conducts research on Congress, American electoral democracy, political parties and elections, and polling and public opinion. He is the author of two books: “The New Electoral Politics of Race” (University of Alabama, 2002) and “Rethinking American Electoral Democracy” (Routledge, 2008). He recently was appointed to a year-long post serving as associate to NIU President John Peters.
