NIU Today

On the heels of a record-breaking 2010 Northern Illinois football season on the field, a record-tying five Northern Illinois football student-athletes have been named to the Mid-American Conference’s Academic All-MAC football squad as selected by the league’s faculty representatives. Northern Illinois and Western Michigan led all MAC schools with five selections each to the 29-man...

They haven’t put NIU’s new 28-foot-long, 2,200-pound robotic submarine in the water yet, but geologists Ross Powell and Reed Scherer have already made a big splash. The submarine, which will be used to explore melting near the base of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, was a big hit as it was unveiled in mid-December at the American...

Michael C. Morris, a passionate teacher in NIU’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, died Sunday, Dec. 12, after a long battle with colorectal cancer. He was 49. Morris, who joined the NIU faculty in 1996 as an assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, earned his bachelor’s degree from Rockford College before receiving his master’s...

Northern Illinois University and DOER Marine today unveiled a new 28-foot long, cigar-shaped robotic submarine to be used in exploration beneath the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Bristling with high-tech instrumentation, the submarine is among the exhibits at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco this week during the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. The...

NIU’s Civic Leadership Academy will present a workshop Tuesday, Dec. 14, on “Cultivating Innovation: How to Foster an Innovative Environment in Your Organization.” This workshop focuses on the meaning of innovation as a problem-solving tool for public organizations. Participants will learn how such organizations can create management practices that generate more frequent innovations that are also successful....

An NIU alumnus and “great friend” to the sociology department has been nominated to a key post in the administration of President Barack Obama.  Obama nominated Andrew Traver, a native of Naperville, to head the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).  Traver, who currently serves as the agency’s special agent in charge...

NIU professor and historian Nancy M. Wingfield, selected  for a Fulbright Fellowship by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, is spending this fall semester in Ukraine researching humankind’s oldest profession: prostitution. Wingfield is currently hosted by Chernivtsi National University in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, where she is completing research on a book-length manuscript on prostitution in...

Over the last decade or so, the World Wide Web has created a seismic shift in one of the cornerstones of education: reading. Or, more precisely, how we understand what we’re reading. In this new age of information, it’s no longer enough to comprehend a single text, NIU researchers say. The ease of Internet access...

NIU’s Civic Leadership Academy will host a workshop Tuesday, Nov. 30, on “Home Rule: Unlocking the Structure and Impact.” This workshop will offer participants three unique and experienced views of local government Home Rule with particular emphasis on Illinois. The provisions of Home Rule in Illinois were established in the 1970 re-write of the Illinois Constitution. Home Rule gives units...

The parties were gathered Tuesday morning in the Lincoln Room at the Holmes Student Center: Japan, Micronesia, the United Nations, the World Wildlife Fund and the U.S. Department of State. Their task: to resolve a mounting depletion of Pacific fish population by getting everyone at the table to agree to the same plan of action...

NIU alum and Northern Illinois University Press author Kenneth Womack will read from and sign his new novel, “John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel,” from noon to 2 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, at Room 211 of Reavis Hall. Lunch will be provided. At 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12, Womack will read from and...

NIU Communication Professor Laura Vazquez will screen her powerful new documentary on homelessness at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20, in Wirtz Hall 101. The event is free of charge, and the public is welcome. It will be the first DeKalb screening of “on the edge.” The one-hour documentary focuses on the lives of seven women...