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2009 Illinois State Writing Project Summer Institute Fellows
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The Illinois State Writing Project hosted its 2009 Summer Institute on campus from June 15 to July 3. This project allows teachers of all disciplines and all levels to meet, read, write, develop, and demonstrate expert teaching practices and is cosponsored by the National Writing Project and Illinois State University. Janice Neulib and Janice Wirsing, director and co-director of the project, led the fellows in many activities such as field trip outings, more commonly referred to as writing “crawls,” and teaching demonstrations. This year, the writing crawls were held at The Bloomington Museum of History and the Evergreen Cemetery in Bloomington, where members of the project were inspired to write many short stories, poems, and memories.
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Joseph Zompetti
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School of Communication associate professor Joseph Zompetti has recently been appointed interim president of the International Debate Education Association (IDEA). Stationed in Amsterdam, IDEA is affiliated with the Open Society Institute, which works to increase and promote critical thinking, public and educational debate, democratic values of civil society, protection of youth’s rights, and youth activism in alternative education. With over 80 member countries, IDEA promotes debate and critical thinking all over the world. Zompetti has been involved with IDEA since 2002. Since becoming involved with IDEA, Zompetti has served on the Board of Directors and has trained debaters in Slovakia, Estonia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and Japan. “Serving as the president of IDEA is a tremendous honor for me,” Zompetti said. “The mission of IDEA is extremely important as we try to educate students from the four corners of the globe. I’m just extremely happy to be a part of it.”
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| Salvatore J. Catanzaro |
Salvatore J. Catanzaro, Executive Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, has been selected for fellow status in the Association for Psychological Science (APS). APS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national and international level. Fellow status is awarded to APS Members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application. As a fellow of APS, Catanzaro is in the company of the most prominent psychologists in the discipline, joining departmental colleagues Michael Leippe, Glenn Reeder, and John Pryor. His new Fellow status will be announced in the September issue of the APS Observer.
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| Hugh Burns and Angela Haas |
Angela Haas, Assistant Professor of English, received the Hugh Burns Award for the outstanding dissertation in computers and writing studies at the recent Computers and Writing Conference on June 19 in California. Haas completed her dissertation at Michigan State University in 2008 under the direction of Malea Powell. Jeff Grabill, Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, and Terese Guinsatao Monberg were also on the committee.
At the awards ceremony the selection committee noted, “Her dissertation, A Rhetoric of Alliance: What American Indians Can Tell Us About Digital and Visual Rhetoric, presents wampum beads as proto-hypertext and thus challenges computers and composition scholars to think imaginatively about different technologies of memory.” The selection committee also remarked that they look forward to Haas’ work in the future. “We celebrate this ambitious dissertation and look forward to the further development of this line of research, which Dr. Haas rightfully argues will require us to shift our perspective, to acknowledge multiple narratives of technological creation and emplaced use, and to represent people using technology in ways that allow more of our students to recognize themselves as participants in techno culture.” The award is named for Hugh Burns, who wrote the first dissertation on using computers to teach writing.
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The Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (JAMT) has been ranked fourth among archaeology journals in impact factor for the five-year period ending in 2008 by the ISI Web of Knowledge, an extensive research platform. The journal is co-edited by James M. Skibo, Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University. The journal publishes articles on the history of archaeology, method or theory-focused case studies, and significant explorations on the cutting edge of the discipline. Skibo also edits a highly regarded book series in archaeology, Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry, published by the University of Utah Press. “Jim Skibo is an excellent example of the high quality of ISU’s faculty,” said Department of Sociology and Anthropology chair Fred H. Smith. “He is one of the most respected Americanist archaeologists active today, and his success as editor of JAMT is only one reflection of his many professional accomplishments.”
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Mercury II Solar Car
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This summer a team of ISU students participated in the 2009 Formula Sun Grand Prix, a closed-track race for solar-powered cars, in Cresson, Texas. The team earned fifth place, completing 310 laps in the three-day competition. The Grand Prix is held every other year, in the off years of the North American Solar Challenge, in which the team participated last summer. The team, a multidisciplinary group consisting of twelve students and four faculty members/staff advisors, dedicated hundreds of volunteer hours to designing and building Mercury II, their hyper-mileage, solar-powered car. Construction of the car was an ongoing project over the course of several months. The cockpit and several other parts from ISU’s 2005 NASC entry, Mercury I, were used as the basis of the redesigned solar vehicle. An improved solar array, consisting of nearly 500 photovoltaic cells, covered the car’s top surface and provided energy to move the 880 pound vehicle (combined weight of car and driver) can reach a speed of up to 65 mph.
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Richard Newby, Associate Professor Emeritus of English at Illinois State University, has published a revised edition of Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti (AuthorHouse, 2008), an account of the notorious 1921 murder trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Both Sacco and Vanzetti, who were Italian immigrants to the United States, were tried, convicted, and executed for murdering two men at South Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1920. Exhaustively researched and thoroughly documented, Newby's 664-page book suggests that Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted on solid evidence. His text challenges the common revisionist assumption that the “Red Scare” of 1919 created a jury bias against the two self- styled militant anarchists. Newby found that most textbooks, and even the Encyclopedia Britannica, were biased in their portrayals of the case. His volume includes evidence which no textbook has ever printed before, including a 1921 letter found in the Harvard Law School Library about Vanzetti’s revolver which, Newby contends, shows Vanzetti’s guilt.
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| Heidi Harbers |
Heidi M. Harbers, Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, joined the ISU faculty in the Fall semester of 1997 after spending three years at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching courses on phonetics and phonological disorders, Harbers and her students conduct research on phonological awareness and literacy skills of preschool and school-age children with and without communication disorders. “I recently completed a cross-linguistic study with Dr. In-sop Kim and several students,” Harbers said. “[The study] examined the phonological awareness skills of monolingual and bilingual adults who speak English, Spanish or Korean as their primary language.” Additionally, another area of her research concerns students’ attitudes and perceptions about dialects.
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August 17 - Fall semester classes begin.
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