NIU Today

In 2023, NIU’s Edible Campus program broke ground on more than 100 raised beds throughout campus as well as the 5,000-square-foot Anderson Market Garden. One year later, the campus – and many hearts and minds – have been transformed. “During the pandemic we learned how fragile our global food system is. Making our food systems...

Students from San Diego State University recently visited NIU as part of an exchange program that seeks to expose student groups that are underrepresented in the sciences to research projects, paths to graduate school and a network of supportive peers from other universities. The three-day late May visit, which also included a trip to the...

In July of 2021, NIU Associate Professor Courtney Gallaher stepped into a new role as NIU’s first sustainability coordinator. While sustainability efforts have been active across campus for at least a decade, the sustainability coordinator will help to unify the work of many different departments and organizations. For her first year, Gallaher has three main...

Human behaviors are complicated, messy and sometimes unpredictable. This means social and economic policies often have unanticipated effects, according to John T. Murphy, NIU research associate professor of anthropology and computational engineer at Argonne National Laboratory. Murphy also points out that cities such as Chicago are often studied in isolation, without taking into account their...

An all-star lineup of speakers is planned for NIU’s new series of Innovation Conversations, which launched last spring and brings in high-level experts to discuss sustainable food systems. “Food systems affect everybody—we all eat,” says Bryan Flower, assistant director of food systems innovation for NIU’s Division of Research and Innovation Partnerships (RIPS). “It’s time to start...

“Recycling is a complex process and is not particularly efficient in terms of energy and natural resource consumption,” says Courtney Gallaher, an associate professor in the NIU Department of Geographic and Atmospheric Sciences and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. “Many of our recyclable products are not recycled in the ways...

When NIU Biology Professor Holly Jones was awarded a $703,000 National Science Foundation Grant to study prairie restoration on a half-acre site north of the NIU Convocation Center, she and her colleague Melissa Lenczewski (a professor of geology) immediately saw an opportunity for collaboration. “We immediately asked, ‘Has anybody ever looked at the groundwater when...

DeKalb’s famous “flying ear of corn” long ago branded this region as a center of new ideas in American farming. Nearly a century later, the area’s premier agricultural heritage group is bringing national experts and local entrepreneurs together in a can’t-miss event about DeKalb County’s future. “An Evening With Innovators,” sponsored by the DeKalb Area...