NIU Today

“Fragments: Haiti Four Years After the Earthquake,”a new exhibit at the NIU Anthropology Museum, invites visitors to explore the lives and living conditions of Haitian people living “under the tents” since the 2010 earthquake. Visitors can enter a tent provided for people displaced from their homes by the earthquake and view artifacts of tent life....

Northern Illinois University physics professor Dhiman Chakraborty is preparing to reprise his popular talk on the mysterious Higgs boson for the DeKalb community. For decades, the Higgs boson was the holy grail of particle physics. Its detection confirms the existence of the Higgs field, which permeates the universe and gives particles mass. Without the Higgs...

Northern Illinois University faculty members have been named as recipients of three highly competitive funding awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. NIU received more grants in this latest award cycle than any other Illinois institution. NEH grants went to: Heide Fehrenbach, a Board of Trustees Professor of history, who received a $50,400 Fellowship...

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a Preservation Assistance grant to the NIU Anthropology Museum. Grant funds will support conservation training for museum staff, supplies to improve textile storage, and environmental monitoring kits. These competitive NEH grants are awarded after a rigorous peer-review process. The Textile Storage and Environmental Monitoring project, supported...

The NIU College of Law was named among the top five regional law schools for black students in the 2014 Lawyers of Color “Black Student’s Guide to Law Schools” edition. “Our goal at NIU Law is to create a community that is open, collaborative, inclusive and supportive of our students’ success,” said Jennifer Rosato, dean...

Got a New Year’s resolution in mind? NIU Psychology Professor Amanda Durik offers three motivational science-based tips that could help you accomplish your goals. Durik blogs on the topic this week on the Psychology Today website. (NIU psychology professors are regular contributors to the site.) She says accumulating research in the science of motivation suggests...

The NIU Department of Computer Science has issued its first certificate of study in mobile device programming, one of the most exciting new areas in the field of computing. NIU faculty partnered with Lextech Global Services to offer the series of courses teaching students how to write apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and...

NIU Chemistry and Biochemistry professor Oliver Hofstetter will continue his collaboration with Australian universities and police departments, developing antibodies for use in the visualization of latent fingerprints. Professor Hofstetter and his colleagues received about $330,000 in grants – $240,000 from the Australian Research Council and another for $90,000 from the Defence Science & Technology Organisation,...

The summer weeks are a great time for undergraduate students to participate in internships and research programs. These opportunities provide students the ability to apply theories and ideas learned in the classroom to hands-on work in the lab or conducting field work. One opportunity NIU undergraduate students can participate in is the Summer Research Opportunities...

Zhili Xiao, an NIU Board of Trustees Professor of physics, has accepted an appointment as interim associate dean for research and graduate studies. Xiao is stepping into a role that was filled by Lesley Rigg, who is now serving as interim vice president for research and graduate studies. Xiao’s appointment begins in January and will...

Last year, NIU students brightened the holidays for a group of adolescents who often goes forgotten during the season of giving. The students, who were enrolled in group-communication classes taught by Department of Communication professor David Henningsen, collected about 400 gifts for teens in the foster care system as part of an engaged-learning project. Students...

Northern Illinois University is now offering a new academic program that will put some undergraduates on the fast track to earn a law degree. The six-year Accelerated Law Degree program will enable designated political science majors to shave a year’s worth of time and expense off the typical seven years needed to earn both bachelor’s...