The Operating Staff (Civil Service) Dependent Scholarship Fund was established to award financial assistance to children of operating staff employees or retirees while they attend Northern Illinois University. Further information is available on the OSC website.
To apply, students should apply at the NIU AcademicWorks website by Tuesday, Jan. 31.
Jocelyn Santana has had a busy year, but she’s just getting started.
Santana spent nine years working in NIU Career Services before transitioning last February to the Office of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, where she is the first person to hold the role of training and development specialist. It is Santana’s responsibility to develop diversity education programs for NIU students, faculty and staff.
In shaping her role, she said she looked to the vision of the administrators who created the position, her own experience and to Chief Diversity Officer and Senior Associate Vice President for Academic Diversity Vernese Edghill-Walden’s diversity plan for the university.
“This past year, we have worked with many campus partners to continue supporting our community,” Santana said.
She has conducted diversity workshops for students in residence halls, classrooms and student organizations. A student-conduct education workshop for staff and adjudicators introduced her to a number of faculty and staff who invited her to their colleges and departments to conduct further training.
None of the workshops are cookie-cutter. Santana said when a workshop is requested she starts by investigating the audience and needs so she can create an appropriate curriculum.
“Sometimes we may discuss the impact of microaggressions,” she said. “We may also work on raising self-awareness and developing understanding about oppression.
“Sometimes it’s about raising self-awareness and developing understanding about power and privilege,” she continued. “Often, learning takes place through exercises that facilitate an understanding and discussion around personal experiences.”
Last year, Santana revamped a program customized to students who want to pursue social justice work as a career. The program, Conversations on Diversity+Equity (CODE), supports growth and an understanding of self and others. She is currently working on a curriculum for employees sparked by a retreat last semester for faculty and staff who actively advocate for equity and inclusivity throughout campus. She hopes to continue workshops this semester using the new curriculum. She also has a goal to do more work this year with student organizations.
“Sometimes it feels like ‘diversity’ is just a buzzword, and that dilutes the power of it,” she said. “I’d like to encourage our community to commit to engaging in the actual work of awareness and inclusivity and to encourage people to not be afraid to connect and talk, because that is how we will move forward.”
Music Ensembles
NIU students, faculty and staff are invited to try CSA Steelband for free at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, in the NIU Music Building room 154C.
Directed by Yuko Asada, CSA Steelband welcomes members ages 12 to adult. No previous experience is needed, but students should be able to read music. The group rehearses on Mondays from 6:30 to 7:25 p.m.
NIUkulele Ensemble, directed by Eric Schroeder, is for beginning and intermediate ukulele players ages 9 to adult. All types of ukuleles are welcome, and everyone must have an instrument. The group meets on Mondays from 7:30 to 8:25 p.m. beginning Jan. 23.
CSA Guitar Ensemble meets Wednesdays from 8 to 8:55 p.m. beginning Feb. 8. Directed by Quentin Dover, the ensemble builds confidence and skill on the instrument for beginning and intermediate guitar players ages 14 to adult.
CSA Symphonette invites string players ages 8 to 16 to rehearse together on Tuesdays from 4:30 to 6 p.m. under the direction of Linc Smelser. This group plays lively and challenging music and performs in concert twice during the year. The first rehearsal is on Jan. 31.
Art EXPRESS FOR KIDS
This popular class for ages 4 to 12 meets on six Saturdays from 1 to 3 p.m. beginning Feb. 4. Students learn about art and the world as they create original arts and crafts. Taught by NIU art education students supervised by an NIU School of Art instructor, Art Express has a new theme every semester. Classes are organized by age and limited in size. Class fee is waived for all Huskie families.
MUSIC CLASSES FOR OLDER CHILDREN AND ADULTS
Group Guitar for Kids Teacher Aerie Bernard introduces children ages 8 to 12 to guitar playing through a fun approach. Exposure to music fundamentals allows students to begin building skills which can lead to confident and comfortable playing. Meets on Wednesdays from 6 – 6:55 p.m. starting Feb. 1.
Guitar Basics and Intermediate Guitar These classes for students from age 13 to adult are taught by Quentin Dover on Wednesday evenings. Guitar Basics meets from 6 – 6:55 p.m., and Intermediate Guitar meets from 7 – 7:55 p.m. Both classes begin on Feb. 1.
Group piano classes for adults meet on Monday evenings starting Jan. 30. CSA instructor Jaina Krueger teaches Square One Piano: Group Basics Class from 6:15 – 7:00 p.m. for beginning students and Piano Forte: Building Piano Skills from 7:15 – 8:00 p.m. for intermediate players. Both classes accept students from age 13 to adult, and early registration is encouraged.
QI GONG
In Qi Gong (or Chi-Kung), students learn 24 postures that can be done at one time or interspersed amid rehearsals to renew energy and release tension. Qi Gong improves relaxation and concentration when practiced immediately before a performance. Eric Schroeder leads this class for ages 12 to adult, meeting on six Mondays from 5 to 6 p.m. starting Jan. 23.
The NIU Community School of the Arts is sponsored by the College of Visual and Performing Arts and is located in Music Building room 132. More information and registration forms can be found online or call 815-753-1450.
NIU’s spring 2017 career events offer students and job seekers the chance to impress and network with potential employers. This spring features NIU’s Internship Fair, Full-Time Job Fair and Educators’ Job Fair.
A “Career Fair and Internship Prep Workshop,” offered through NIU Career Services, is planned to help students in preparing for the career events.
Career Fair Success Tips
For more information, call 815-753-1641 or email careerservices@niu.edu.
Internship Fair
Tuesday, Feb. 21, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., NIU Convocation Center
More than 100 employers will be present to connect with NIU students from all majors seeking internships. A list of participating employers can be viewed at careerfairs.niu.edu.
Admission and parking is free for this event. Huskie Bus routes 2R and 2L are also available. Students can pre-register online at careerfairs.niu.edu; pre-registration is not required to attend. Dress professionally and bring several copies of your resume.
Full-Time Job Fair
Wednesday, Feb. 22, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., NIU Convocation Center
More than 175 employers will be present to connect with NIU students/alumni from all majors seeking full-time jobs. A list of participating employers can be viewed at careerfairs.niu.edu.
Admission and parking are free for all current NIU students and alumni. Huskie Bus routes 2R and 2L are also available. Students can pre-register online, but pre-registration is not required. Dress professionally and bring several copies of your resume.
Educators’ Job Fair
Monday, Feb. 27, NIU Convocation Center
Open session from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for NIU students and alumni; 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for other candidates. From 1:30 to 4 p.m. there will be pre-scheduled interviews by invitation only.
Admission is free for NIU students and alumni and $10 for all other candidates. Pre-registration is available online. Dress professionally and bring several copies of your resume. A list of participating employers can be viewed at careerfairs.niu.edu.
More than 100 employers are registered to attend the fair and are in search of NIU students who desire careers in the field of education.
Career Fair & Internship Prep Workshop
Tuesday, Feb. 14, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Holmes Student Center Sky Room
This preparation workshop is designed to help students make the most of the internship and job fairs by providing strategies for connecting with employers and making the best possible first impression. Career Services professionals and employers will assist students with putting the final touches on their elevator pitches and share strategies on finding, researching, preparing for and interviewing for internship opportunities.
Transfer students from community colleges will get the financial assistance that they need to complete their degrees, thanks to a generous $500,000 donation from the CME Group Foundation.
Over the next two years, the funds will support 13 Northern Illinois University students who are accepted into a field of study that leads to a financial industry career. The scholarship recipients must have at least a 3.25 GPA, show Pell Grant eligibility and represent a minority. The scholarships will cover tuition and room and board.
As one of the first five CME Group Foundation scholars, Luis Arredondo said that coming to NIU happened because he was willing to take a risk.
“When I was in community college, I actually was not planning on getting a bachelor’s. I was going to stop there and do information technology work,” Arredondo said. “Part of the reason was because of the money.”
Arredondo had gained exceptional technological skills by working for five years, earning IT certification and completing programming classes to get his associate degree in computer information systems from Morton College in Cicero, Illinois, his hometown.
However, he thought he could do better with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Northern.
Both finance major Mark Gonzalez of Chicago and accounting and finance major Remigio Nanez of Mendota, Illinois, said their fathers wanted them to become auto mechanics to have a guaranteed job. Like Arredondo, they decided to be the first in their family to pursue an undergraduate degree.
Besides free schooling, the students are entitled to special support services, including research, networking and leadership opportunities and business etiquette instruction. They are in a living-learning community at Gilbert Hall so they can socialize and study together and have greater access to professors. Other majors qualifying for the program include applied math, economics, and operations and information management.
They also will be considered for summer internships at CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace.
A study released by The Education Trust in December 2015 shows that while colleges are increasing graduation rates across the board for all races, minorities are still trailing. The graduation rate for white students in 2013 was 64 percent, compared with 50 percent for minority students, according to the study.
The scholarship program sponsored by the CME Group Foundation will help students complete their degrees, achieve career success and relieve financial constraints.
“For example, our scholarship program can provide emergency funds to ensure that we’re not losing students due to unexpected financial pressures at home,” said Jim Oliff, chair of the CME Group Foundation. “Even with the help of Pell Grants or other resources, unexpected events can create financial strains that cause students to drop out of college. We recognized that need and structured our program to ensure that the flexibility is there to help these students accordingly, not only when tuition is due.”
Director of Student Involvement and Leadership Development Jill Zambito learns what it’s like to conduct a traffic stop with help from NIU Police Officer David Jadran during the 2016 Citizens Police Academy.
What are standard protocols for police officers during traffic stops? How do evidence technicians process a crime scene? What’s it like to be incarcerated at the DeKalb County Jail?
Those who participate in the Northern Illinois University Department of Police and Public Safety (NIU PD) Citizens Police Academy will learn the answers to these questions and more.
The Citizens Police Academy is part of the NIU PD’s expansion of community-based efforts under the leadership of Chief Thomas Phillips. The 11-week program was started last spring to build positive relationships and open the lines of communication between the community and the police department. The academy is free and open to all members of the NIU community.
The academy will meet from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays from Jan. 25 through April 12. The registration deadline for the first week has passed, but there is still an opportunity to sign up for the remainder of the academy.
Each week, the academy will address different topics:
If you are interested in learning more about the NIU PD Citizens Police Academy please contact the department at niupd@niu.edu.
On Saturday, Jan. 28, the NIU Art Museum and the Pick Museum of Anthropology will present an opening reception titled Guatemalan Museum Day at NIU.
From 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., sample Guatemalan food at the Pick Museum in Cole Hall. Pick Museum Director Jennifer Kirker-Priest will then lead a guided tour of the museum’s new Guatemalan exhibit, “Push Factors.”
From 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., NIU Art Museum Director Jo Burke will lead a guided tour of the Art Museum in Altgeld Hall, where Guatemala-themed displays “Visiones e Historias,” “Bearing Witness,” and “Huipiles” are on exhibit.
Also, on Wednesday, Jan. 25, Jeffrey L. Kidder, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at NIU, will present a lecture, “Sociological Perspectives on the Significance of Space and Place in Performance Art,” in Altgeld 125. Kidder’s essay on the social significance of space appears in the accompanying exhibition catalog for “Bearing Witness,” part of the “(Re)Presenting Guatemala” exhibit.
Student Involvement & Leadership Development (SILD) is sponsoring a massive poster sale in the Promenade Lounge of the Holmes Student Center, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday, Jan. 23, through Friday, Jan. 27. Representatives from the poster company Beyond the Wall will be selling decorative posters, vintage posters, movie posters and so much more to decorate your dorm, apartment and office.
Proceeds go toward SILD leadership programming.
If you have any questions, please contact Leadership & Student Organizational Services within SILD at 815-753-6505 or leadership@niu.edu.
One day, when Dr. Gregory Beyer was a graduate student studying percussion in New York City, he was browsing at the famous 46th Street institution Drummer’s World when he heard an amazing sound coming from the back room. He followed the sound and found a lifetime of musical passion.
Beyer will share that story and discuss the journey it launched when he appears on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday this weekend, Jan. 22. The show will air from 7 to 9 a.m. locally on the NIU-based NPR station, WNIJ (89.5 FM).
The instrument he heard that day nearly two decades ago was a berimbau, a centuries-old Afro-Brazilian musical bow. The instrument has gradually become the center of his studies and is now the focus of his not-for-profit organization, Arcomusical. The organization advocates for the artistic development of the instrument through research, composition, publication, community and performance.
The performance element has taken Beyer and his sextet Projeto Arcomusical, which includes recent NIU graduate Alexis C. Lamb, ’16, across the country and to Brazil, where the group’s innovative compositions drew standing ovations.
“When we play in the U.S., people are curious about the instrument,” he said. “In Brazil, everyone knows the berimbau – it’s an icon of Afro-Brazilian culture – but nobody expects what we play. They were very moved.”
Projeto Arcomusical’s album “MeiaMeia,” a composition cycle that Beyer and Lamb co-composed, is selling well and is being played nationally and internationally on shows that focus on world music. It is available for purchase from Amazon and iTunes.
This spring the group will tour the Midwest and East Coast with stops at universities such as UW-Madison, Bowling Green, Baldwin-Wallace Princeton, The Juilliard School, UMASS-Amherst and the Boston Conservatory. The end of the tour will allow Beyer to go full circle, as the group will perform in a percussion festival at the well-known Brooklyn music theater National Sawdust.
The Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Basics Workshop is a workshop organized to increase students’ familiarity with the GRE and provide a detailed overview of the GRE test. Each one-day session will cover the same materials including what the GRE is, types of questions, sections offered and basic study tips.
Students are encouraged to register for only one session. Registration can be done online at http://go.niu.edu/GREbasics. The fee is $25 and must be paid by cash or check in advance of the event to the Office of Student Engagement and Experiential Learning, Altgeld Hall 100. Students attending a one-day session will receive the GRE Test Prep Book free.
There are two session times available: Session 1 will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7 and Session 2 will be held from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Feb. 8. Both sessions will be held in Altgeld Hall 125.
In August 2016, the Illinois Preventing Sexual Violence in Higher Education Act went into effect. To comply with this law, all students and employees must complete Title IX training. Affirmative Action and Equity Compliance (AAEC) has created an online training module utilizing the Blackboard system.
Students have until March 10, 2017 to complete the training.
Employees will complete the training between March 13 and May 31, 2017. The employee window will not be opened until March 13, 2017.
Visit the AAEC website to view a list of frequently asked questions and access the training.
If you have technical difficulties please contact the DoIT Service Desk at ServiceDesk@niu.edu.
For other questions contact AAEC_training@niu.edu.
Join the Pick Museum of Anthropology from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 28, for the opening reception of its newest exhibition, “Push Factors: Perspectives on Guatemalan Migration.” The exhibition highlights how resource exploitation, genocide, poverty, drought, femicide, gangs, corruption and racism in Guatemala led to mass migration following the country’s 36-year civil war.
Curated by Heidi McKinnon, executive director of Curators Without Borders, the exhibition includes works by three photographers: James Rodríguez, an award-winning documentary photographer whose work focuses on documenting post-war Guatemala; Rodrigo Abd, an Associated Press staff photographer whose work focuses on Latin America and the Middle East and who has won both a World Press Photo award and a Pulitzer Prize for his work in Syria; and William Plowman, a member of the White House Press Corps and a staff photographer for Meet the Press whose work focuses on issues of political, economic, social and humanitarian import around the world, such as the birth of South Sudan.
McKinnon and the three photographers will present a panel discussion at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, in Cole Hall room 100 about documentary photography and representing human rights work in art and exhibits.
Drawing from its permanent collection, the Pick Museum incorporates contemporary Guatemalan textiles with this photographic exhibition to bring contemporary Guatemala to life. Maya spirituality and ritual preparation for migration are presented in rich scenes. Documentary video and woven decorative textiles introduce contemporary K’iche Maya weavers contending with global markets. Materials recovered from archaeological work in the Sonoran Desert personalize the migration experience. “Push Factors” is designed to be a starting point for community dialogue on migration issues prevalent in popular discourse today. Through imagery and discussions on the causes of migration, “Push Factors” asks visitors to rethink migration and encourages tolerance of both documented and undocumented migrants.
“Push Factors” is part of a series of exhibitions exploring the history and identity of Maya people in Guatemala. “(Re)presenting Guatemala” includes exhibitions at the Pick Museum and the NIU Art Museum. The Center for Latino and Latin American Studies and the student organization DREAM Action NIU are partnering with the Pick Museum to host weekly tours and draw attention to undocumented students at NIU.
At 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9, in Cole Hall room 100, NIU alumnus Joel Palka will present a talk titled “Maya Pilgrimage and Migration in the Lacandon Rainforest of Mexico.” Palka, a professor of anthropology and Latin American studies at University of Illinois at Chicago, will explore how religious beliefs impact migration for the Maya. Cultural and archaeological evidence indicates that pilgrimage ritual established ties to gods and ancestors residing in ritual landscapes, which attracted Maya populations seeking their guidance and protection in a new land.
