Prairie Burn 2009

Knox College students torched more than 20 acres of grassland in the annual Prairie Burn, held April 18 at Green Oaks,  Knox's biology field station and the oldest prairie restoration in the region. The weather was cool and damp with a light wind, making it relatively easy to limit the fire to this year's designated burn area. Stuart Allison, professor of biology and director of the field station, delayed the annual spring prairie burn this year by a few weeks, hoping to make a dent in some non-native plant species that are invading Green Oaks.

• See photos from the event.
• Watch a Video of the 2009 Prairie Burn.

 
Campus News 

Knox Welcomes Earth Week 2009
Knox extended the annual celebration of Earth Day from a single day to an entire week, offering lectures, expos, music, and more. Starting with the annual Prairie Burn at Green Oaks on Saturday, April 18, celebrations continued with a concert by local Galesburg band, Hen House Prowlers, a lecture by Australian Clive Owen on the climate crisis, the third annual Green Solutions Expo, and much more. Earth Week events were sponsored by the Presidential Task Force on Sustainability and the departments of art, environmental studies, psychology, and theatre; student clubs including KARES, Food for Thought, WVKC, Student Pagan Alliance, Knox Garden Club, Chemistry Club and Human Rights Center; and outside organizations The Center in Galesburg and the Galesburg Environmental Task Force. 

Horowitz Draws Students, Faculty, Community to Campus Lecture
Conservative author and commentator David Horowitz spoke on the liberal bias in the American university system to a crowded audience in Kresge Hall on Monday, April 6. The topic was the subject of his latest book, One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine our Democracy. The event was well attended, with a mix of students, professors, and members of the Galesburg community. The event was sponsored by the Knox Republicans and funded by the Intellectual Diversity Foundation (IDF).  Read more about Horowitz's lecture in The Knox Student.

Knox Celebrates Life of Tim Heimann '70
More than 1,000 people attended the memorial service for former Knox College men's basketball coach Tim Heimann, who died March 13. Speakers were Topper Steinman '70; Knox College President Roger Taylor '63 and Vice President for Advancement Beverly Holmes; retired athletic director Harley Knosher, who coached Tim during the 1960s, then coached with him for the next three decades; and three alumni -- David Anderson '89, Kevin Marshall '82, and Sonja Johnson Crain '84 -- who read the reminiscences that they wrote about Tim. View photos and listen to the speakers' remarks. 

Knox Offers Veterans Free Tuition 
Veterans returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other duty stations will be able to attend Knox College tuition-free under the Veterans Administration's new Yellow Ribbon program. "Veterans who have served our country deserve the best our country has to offer -- that includes the opportunity to attend the college of their choice," said Knox President Roger Taylor '63, who, as a veteran of Vietnam, attended Northwestern Law School on the GI Bill. "Educating our nation's veterans is a privilege. I'm glad we are able to help them take advantage of the challenging, personalized education that Knox offers."

More campus news and features.


Student News

Lawson Jumps From Swimming Pool To Frying Pan
Picture riding the lid of a turkey roaster pan down a roller coaster rail. That is the kind of rush that Knox junior Fayne Lawson gets when thinking about his dream job -- smoke jumper for wild fires. Last summer, Lawson got his first taste of firefighting, working as a seasonal wild firefighter for the United States Department of Agriculture in Colorado. Read more about Fayne Lawson.

Football Team Helps With Annual Easter Egg Hunt
Members of the Knox College Football team helped hide more than 10,000 eggs and handed out candy to participants at the Galesburg community Easter egg hunt last month. Team co-captain Jordan Raess, a 22-year-old junior from Aurora, said the team enjoys helping out in the community. "We love doing this. It's fun watching the kids storm the field," he said. Read more in The Register-Mail.

Students Participate in Community Garden
Knox students joined other local organizations to clear areas for six community gardens in Galesburg through a project called Galesburg Neighborhood Gardeners. Community gardens have previously been established near Knox College and serve as models for the new gardens. Read more in The Register-Mail.

Knox Senior Livens Up the Stage
There is something funny about Knox senior Pam Schuller. At least she hopes there is. "My jaw dropped," she says with an animated replay, when comedian Jerry Seinfeld had the last laugh -- performing on the same stage after her own punchlines. For Schuller, years of slogging it out in stand-up comedy venues for free may be paying off in what could be a lucrative and even liberating way. Read more about Pam Schuller.

Gale Scholars Program Invaluable
The first-class education Nicole Chase of Galesburg received for free helped her get a leg up in life after graduation, thanks to the George Washington Gale Scholars program. If it weren't for the opportunities afforded to her by the unique partnership among District 205, Carl Sandburg College, and Knox College, Chase knows she wouldn't have been able to get the education she received. Read more about Chase in The Register-Mail.

Student Wins Technology Award
Senior Class President Michael Dooley is one of Illinois's most promising technology students, thanks to a class project designed to help teachers build on-line lesson plans. Dooley has been selected as a winner in the 2009 "Fifty for the Future" competition, sponsored by the Illinois Technology Association -- an organization of more than 500 Illinois-based technology companies. Read more about Dooley's award.

More student news and features.


Alumni News

Less than 1,500 Alumni to Go!
Alumni are stepping up to meet Duke Petrovich '74's challenge to maintain its 10-year alumni giving participation record. If 5,000 alumni give to Knox by June 30, Petrovich and his wife, Nancy, will give Knox an extra $100,000. As of April 21, 3,537 alumni have given to Knox -- that means there's less than 1,500 alumni to go! If you've given to Knox since July 1, 2008, you've already been counted. Thank you. But if you haven't given yet, please give today.

Alumni Notes

Attorney Samuel Shepherd Blane '42 retired in November 2008, ending a three-generation history of law practice by family members in Menard County, Illinois, that dated back to the end of the Civil War.

Honorary degree recipient Dwight "Rocky" Crandell '44 died April 6 at a hospice in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, from a heart attack. He was 86. A U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist, Crandell's persistent tracking of deep layers of mud led to a pioneering reassessment of volcano hazards in the Pacific Northwest and predicted the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Read his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

Swede '51 and Martha Jacobsen Roskam '52, along with their daughter and two grandchildren, recently traveled to Taichung, Taiwan, where they taught English as a Second Language at Chaoyang University.

Sandra Frum '70 was recently elected the Northbrook, Illinois, Village President.

Doug  Hill '77 and his daughter, Alycia, were featured in the Seattle University Online Magazine in a feature about their shared love of triathlons. Read the article.

Judge Margaret Ryan '85, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, talked with pre-law students on the Knox campus earlier this month. Judge Ryan served as a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, has been a litigation partner with two major law firms, and has served in a number of positions in the U.S. Marine Corps. Judge Ryan's terms included deployments to the Philippines during a coup attempt and to Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Nina M. Moore '87, associate professor of political science at Colgate University, has been appointed to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct for a four-year term.

Carol Bovard Craig '89, 2009 Alumni Achievement Award recipient, was named the 2009 Small Business Person of the Year by the South Florida Small Business Association. Read more about Craig.

John Gilbert McCurdy '95, assistant professor of history at Eastern Michigan University, saw his book, Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States, published this month by Cornell University Press. In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Read more about the book.

Rob Tunstall '06 was accepted into the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, Japan, an intensive training in advanced spoken and written Japanese administered by Stanford University.

Alex Keefe '06 won two Illinois Associated Press Awards for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Both stories were produced when Keefe worked as a reporter/anchor at Augustana Public Radio, WVIK-FM in Rock Island, Illinois, an NPR affiliate station. Keefe is currently attending the Medill School at Northwestern University. Read more about Keefe.

Sylvie Davidson '06 discussed her career as a professional actor in Seattle in the Kitsap Sun.

Brad Middleton '08 was promoted to legislative correspondent for U.S. Senator Richard Durbin. He is responsible for responding to all of the constituent correspondence dealing primarily with Judiciary issues such as immigration, anti-trust, civil rights, drugs/crime/prisons, DOJ oversight, free speech, guns, human rights, judicial nominations, religion, torture, and wiretapping.

Meghan Reardon '08 was selected as a recipient of the 2009 Community Arts Assistance Program Grant, awarded by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. 

Read and post Class Notes in the Knox Online Community.

Faculty & Staff News

Haslem, Bailey Appointments Announced
Lori Schroeder Haslem, associate professor of English, has been appointed to the position of associate dean of the College. She will succeed Stephen Bailey, who has served as associate dean since 1984 -- the longest serving associate dean in Knox's history. Bailey has been appointed director of Knox's new Center for Research and Advanced Study. Both appointments are effective January 1, 2010. Read more about the appointments.

The Center for Research and Advanced Study, which will help Knox students find opportunities and funding sources for research and advanced projects, is funded by a three-year, $228,750 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Read more about the Center.

Wilson Discusses Lincoln and Language
At the 2009 Burkhardt Lecture, funded by Richard '39 and Dorothy Johnson Burkhardt, co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center, Douglas Wilson, said that Lincoln "wanted to make himself understood by all classes . . . he wanted to be distinctly understood by common people." Journalists of the day, expecting to hear the flowery prose used by 19th-century politicians, termed Lincoln's speech "peculiar." Wilson said that in an era of eloquence, Lincoln developed "a discourse of plain language."

• Read more about Wilson's Burkhardt Lecture.
• Listen to the lecture.
  

Faculty & Staff Notes

Monica Berlin '95, assistant professor of English, had her work "What My Body Did" and "If Only Disappearing" published in the most recent issue of Fourteen Hills. "Measure By Hand" can be seen in the most recent issue of New Orleans Review.

Liz Carlin-Metz, professor of theatre, recently served as a consultant for Rasaka Theatre in Chicago for their Page to Stage New Plays Festival, where she adjudicated 10 new one-act plays.

Andrew Civettini, assistant professor of political science, presented two papers, "Feeling Our Way Through the Campaign Environment" and "A Survey Experiment Testing the Impact of Competing Frames of Self Identity, Self Interest, and Communal Identity on Public Opinion Attitudes Toward Intervention in Genocide and the Use of Coercive Interrogation Techniques" at the Midwest Political Science Association Meeting in Chicago. He also chaired a panel on ascriptive traits and candidate evaluation.

Jeremy Day-O'Connell, assistant professor of music, presented his latest research, "Beyond Verse and Chorus: A Taxonomy and History of Form in Pop-Rock," at the national meeting of the Society for American Music.

An article by Sarah Day-O'Connell, assistant professor of music, "The Composer, the Surgeon, His Wife and Her Poems: Haydn and the Anatomy of the English Canzonetta" appeared in Eighteenth-Century Music. At the national meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, she presented "Listening to Music in/of the Eighteenth Century: Destabilizing the Survey, Grounding the Topics Course." She has also received a Visiting Research Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. She will continue her work on Haydn's English and Scottish songs in connection with the institute's fall 2009 theme, "translations, adaptations, and modalities."

John Dooley, associate professor of computer science, had several book reviews published in his semi-regular column "Reviews of Cryptologic Fiction" in the April 2009 issue of the scholarly journal Cryptologia. Dooley and Yvonne Ramirez '08 published the paper "Who Wrote The Blonde Countess? A Stylomatric Analysis of  Herbert O. Yardley's Fiction" in the same issue. The paper was based on an idea that Ramirez used in her McNair Program research while a Knox student.

Gregory Gilbert, associate professor of art and art history, curated an exhibition, "Touched by the Hands of God: Michelangelo's Models," at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. The exhibit continues through June 7. Gilbert also wrote a catalog to accompany the exhibit. In February, Gilbert was filmed as part of a documentary on Michelangelo's models, which will be marketed later this year as a PBS television special.

Fred Hord, professor of Black Studies, recently gave two invited lectures at West Virginia University. He discussed "Black Presidential Politics and Cultural Centers" for the Center for Black Culture and Research. At the National Council for Black Studies conference in Atlanta, he made a presentation "Women Bridge Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement."

Sue Hulett, professor political science and international relations, had her letter to the editor, "Do Professors Fear 'Appearing Too Liberal'?" published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. She will present a paper, "The spiritual divide between college students seeking spiritual reflection and development and faculty uncomfortable with discussing religion in the classroom," at the June conference of the American Association of University Professors.

Tim Kasser, professor of psychology, recently gave a talk, "Materialism, Quality of Life, and Financial Planning," at The Planning Center in Moline, Illinois.

Robin Ragan, associate professor of modern languages, presented the results of her sabbatical research, "'Desarreglos propios del sexo': Advertising Menstrual Disorders in fin-de-siglo and Early Twentieth-Century Spain," at the 40th Annual Conference of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies in Kansas City, Missouri. 

Natania Rosenfeld, associate professor of  English, had her essay about love, fear, Proust, and climate change, "Immersions," appear in the current issue of the journal Lake Effect.

Stephen Schroth and Jason Helfer, assistant directors of educational studies, presented a paper, "Practitioners' Conceptions of Academic Talent and Giftedness: Essential Factors in Deciding Classroom and School Composition," at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, California. They also published, with Rick Dammer of Rowan University, the article "Using technology to assist gifted children's musical development" in Gifted Child Today and, with Daniel Gonshorek '11, two essays on Pierre Boulez and Michael Tilson Thomas in the book Heroes of Giftedness.

Jon Wagner, professor of anthropology, presented a paper, "Economics, Narrative Cognition, and the Lower Paleolithic Revolution," at the annual conference of the Central States Anthropological Society.

Contact Us
Submissions to The Gizmogram should be made to the editors at gizmogram@knox.edu. Submissions may be edited for space.

Editors
Megan Scott '96  & Cheri Siebken

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