NIU Today

A production nearly seven years in the making finally has its opening night in sight. The Stevens Building is NIU’s home to the School of Theatre and Dance and the Department of Anthropology. The renovation project that was first approved for state funding in 2010 has taken a rather circuitous route. State budget-related shutdowns of...

NIU students Anthonie Tumpag and Shannon Thomas are off to participate in the Smithsonian Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. SIMA is a rigorous four-week training program in residence at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. The curriculum will combine formal classroom, lecture and laboratory sessions, as...

After 50 years at NIU, the Anthropology Museum has a new name. The newly dedicated James B. and Rosalyn L. Pick Museum of Anthropology honors the generous support of an NIU alumnus and his wife, marking a new era for the museum. “NIU offered me a new and exciting opportunity that led me to my...

A new student-curated exhibition inside Founders Memorial Library explores the material culture of indigenous and Muslim minorities found throughout the Philippines, a nation with a diverse history and people. Together, says curator Anthonie Tumpag, an NIU graduate student in anthropology, these people represent a glimpse into a vibrant heritage of the Philippines that once flourished...

The Illinois Association of Museums (IAM) continues to give critical acclaim and recognition to NIU museums, galleries and the university’s Museum Studies certificate of graduate study. Awards will come during the association’s annual Fall Conference, which begins Thursday, Sept. 24, in Springfield. This year marks the fourth year the association honors a graduate student in...

NIU graduate anthropology student Laurence Anthonie Tumpag was among 24 young Chicagoland Asian-American leaders honored Monday in Chicago. Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger led the celebration at the James R. Thompson Center which was held to coincide with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The program also featured performances by traditional Korean folk music drumming group...

Cultural anthropologist Judy Ledgerwood and public administration expert Kurt Thurmaier are this year’s winners of the Presidential Engagement Professor awards. Both are longtime NIU faculty members whose works exemplify the concept of university engagement as “a commitment to fostering reciprocal partnerships in which problems, solutions, goals and measures of success are jointly defined” and “external...

Krista Hegburg, a program officer in the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will deliver two lectures at NIU during the first week of November. Hegburg, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University, will speak on “New Perspectives on Gender and the Holocaust” at 4.30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov....

Founders Memorial Library is home this month to an exhibit titled “Ancestry Transcending the Oceans: An Exhibition of Madagascar and its Cultural Ties to Southeast Asia.” The exhibition, curated by anthropology graduate student Anthonie Tumpag and co-sponsored by the Asian American Center, is located on the fourth floor in the Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia...

NIU officials and partners will dig shovels into dirt at 11:45 a.m. Monday, Sept. 22, to commence construction of the new Stevens Building. The groundbreaking ceremony continues the long-awaited process to turn one of NIU’s most-dilapidated buildings into a modern learning and performing space for the Department of Anthropology and the School of Theatre and...

The earthquake in Haiti was one of the top five deadliest disasters in contemporary history, claiming more than 315,000 lives. The disaster was also one of the most widely covered events in modern history; international media attention helped raise $5.6 billion in funds in the two years following the earthquake. What happened? Where did the...