Sue Dalton NIU is now a distribution center for free iBill currency readers that enable people with visual disabilities to sort their paper money. The designation from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing comes thanks to the work of Sue Dalton, an instructor in the Department of Special and Early Education. Dalton believes that the devices, powered...

NIU’s College of Engineering and Engineering Technology (CEET) announced that Associate Professor Shun Takai, Ph. D. was named its 2021 Faculty of the Year for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. The goal of the award is to recognize a faculty member that has excelled in teaching effectiveness, educational research, lab innovations, and much more. Faculty are nominated...

The Communicative Disorders Student Association (COMDSA) was recognized for their contributions to NIU and the community as winners of the 2021 Kevin D. Knight Outstanding Student Organization Award. The Kevin D. Knight Awards are presented annually and commemorate the life of Knight, an NIU alumnus who embodied what it means to be a student leader. For the Outstanding...

A collaboration between public radio station WNIJ and students in NIU’s data visualization courses helps to build student portfolios and improve reporting in the region. In early 2016, local public radio station WNIJ obtained a data set related to overdose deaths in a northern Illinois county. WNIJ reporter Jenna Dooley (who has since become the station’s...

Northern Illinois University College of Law alumna Sonni Choi Williams, ’99, was elected Third Vice-President of the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA).  Sonni is now in succession to become the first woman of color, first person of Asian American heritage, first person of Korean heritage, and the sixth woman president of the ISBA in its 144-year...

First-year law student Matthew Novotney had no idea what was about to happen when he was asked to join a Zoom call with NIU College of Law Dean Cassandra L. Hill. He thought he was there to discuss his 1L experience as a law student, but he quickly learned that story was just a ruse...

Paige Bohne and Janet Guadarrama Fifteen newly minted teachers are ready to return to the school districts where they grew up and, thanks to a partnership between Elgin Community College and Northern Illinois University, never really left. The students completed their first two years at ECC and then, with no relocation or commute required, earned their B.S.Ed. degrees...

LaVerne Gyant This wasn’t the life LaVerne Gyant had sketched out for herself. She had grown up in Chester, Pa., designing her own clothes – and, under the loving tutelage of her grandmother, Lottie Ennett, sewing those garments by hand and by machine. Yes, fashion was what she loved, and when she enrolled at the nation’s oldest...

A.J. Dick, an NIU student pursuing his doctorate in physics, has won a prestigious graduate student research award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE announced recently that Dick is among 78 students from across the nation to be selected for its Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. The research projects...

The head of NIU’s research and innovation enterprise delivered virtual testimony last week to members of Congress who are considering a substantial budget increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Gerald C. Blazey, NIU’s vice president for Research and Innovation Partnerships, was among five research experts called to testify during a U.S. House of Representatives...

Julie Chavez School occupies a special place in Julie Chavez’s heart. “I had quite the unstable childhood, and school was really my safe place. I had a meal; I had teachers who cared about me; it was structured – I just really thrived in that environment,” says Chavez, a senior Elementary Education major from Aurora. “With everything...

Alyssa Lazzerini started on a different path before earning her bachelor’s degree in public health. Alyssa Lazzerini, ’15 “I initially went to another college to get a degree in nursing, but I wasn’t very passionate about it,” Lazzerini said. With an interest in working with the community, she started looking into public health—the promotion and...