Knox Faculty Receive Fulbright Fellowships

The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Cultural Affairs has awarded two Knox College faculty highly coveted Fulbright Scholar Fellowships to lecture and conduct research overseas. Karen Kampwirth '86, professor of political science and chair of the Latin American Studies program, will teach at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Jeremy Day O'Connell, assistant professor of music, will study music and linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from August to December 2009.

Read more about their research and the fellowships.

Flunk Day 2009

Students celebrated this year's Flunk Day on May 6 with the infamous mud pit, inflatables, trampolines, a foam pit, mechanical bull, and all-campus picnic. The afternoon included the students facing off against the faculty and staff in a "Friars vs. Faculty" softball game. The students returned to class Thursday celebrating their first win in years, 11 to 9.  

• View Photos from Flunk Day
• View a Video of Flunk Day on YouTube
• Share Your Memories of Flunk Day on the Knox Facebook Page

Commencement is June 6

This year's Commencement ceremony will be on Saturday, June 6, on the South Lawn of Old Main at 10 a.m. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who has conducted nationally significant investigations into terrorism financing, public corruption, corporate fraud, and violent crime, will deliver the Commencement address. Fitzgerald, along with renowned cultural historian Garry Wills and noted geneticist and Knox Professor Billy Geer, will receive honorary degrees. Learn more about the schedule for the weekend and available accommodations.

Special events for alumni include:

• A celebration of Professor Geer, who taught biology at Knox from 1963 until his retirement in 2000, and a Fly Lab Reunion. See the schedule and register for the Reunion. 
• The annual Fifty Year Club luncheon. Register for the FYC luncheon.

Can't make it back to campus for Commencement? Visit the Knox Web site on Monday, June 8, to watch or read transcripts of the Commencement address and presentation of honorary degrees. The Knox Facebook Page will also be updated regularly with current information and photos from the event.
 
Campus News 

Hallway Becomes Marketplace for Causes, Projects
"Have you bought your Flunk Day shirts yet?" Above the shouts and bits of laughter heard through the Seymour Union Gallery, students are selling t-shirts to raise funds for campus recreation. At the Sigma Chi table, colorful jewelry is spread, catching the eye of potential customers to support "Beads for Life," an organization that benefits people in Uganda. This is "tabling." Several times a week, it transforms the gallery from a window-lined hallway into a lively marketplace where students promote causes, get signatures on petitions, and raise money for local and global charities. Read more about tabling in the gallery.

Initiatives Keep Knox Green
The decision to go trayless at Knox is paying off big, both in dollars saved and fewer resources lost. According to The Knox Student, dining services estimates 30% less food waste and 9,240 gallons of water saved this year, resulting in a savings of $32,000 to the College. And students are also being encouraged to get their food "to go" without guilt, utilizing reusable clamshell containers instead of styrofoam for carryout food. Read more about the initiative in Ode Magazine.

The clamshell containers and natural cleaning products, along with military showers, organic gardening, and environmental ethics are all just a part of life at Eco House, a special theme house on the Knox campus. Read more in the Peoria Journal Star.

Campus Lectures Promote Doing More With Less
The "growth imperative" -- the belief more is always better than less: more hours worked, more stuff produced, more stuff sold -- is ultimately unworkable, according to author and documentary producer John de Graaf. Not just because we can't afford it, de Graaf said at Knox on April 14, but because the Earth can't sustain it. Read more.

A week later, former director of the Australia Institute think tank and Australian National University Professor of Public Ethics Clive Hamilton delivered a lecture on "Growth Fetishism and the Climate Crisis" and spoke steadily and earnestly about how the world's preoccupation with gross domestic product was getting in the way of the bigger picture. "GDP is not a measure of happiness," said Hamilton. Read more in The Knox Student.

More campus news and features.

Student News

Fraternity Project Leads to New Maps for Third Grade Classrooms
Some 75 "priceless" paintings, made by third-grade students at Silas Willard elementary school in Galesburg, were displayed and sold at a silent auction earlier this month on the Knox campus. The students made the paintings with the help of more than 20 members of the Knox College chapter of Sigma Chi, who have been volunteering in the four third-grade classrooms at Silas Willard since the start of the school year. Money generated from the auction will be used to purchase maps and atlases for each of the third-grade classrooms at the school. Read more in The Register-Mail.

Garry Barton '09 and his brother, Aaron. Photo courtesy of Bill Gaither/ The Register-Mail.

Gale Scholar Paves Way for Brother
On June 6, Garry Barton will be one of four George Washington Gale Scholars to graduate from Knox, eight years after he began his affiliation with the program that helps low income first generation students attend Carl Sandburg College then Knox College tuition-free. He will graduate with a bachelor's in economics with a business management minor. And his brother, Aaron, in his second year at CSC, is following in his footsteps. Read more in The Register-Mail.

Fifteen new Gale Scholars were inducted into the program on Wednesday, May 11, at the Suitts Center at the Gale House, home of Galesburg and Knox College founder George Washington Gale. Learn more about the induction.

Knox Students Win Awards at ISAS
Seven Knox students received awards for their research presentations in cell, molecular, and development biology; environmental science; health sciences; and microbiology at the 101st Annual Meeting of the Illinois State Academy of Science held at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Katherine Chi '07, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois, also won an award for her botany research presentation.

Students Present Summer Research Projects
Knox's McNair program, designed to encourage intellectual pursuits, offers its participants unique opportunities to engage in original research. This summer, 11 sophomores and juniors, with the help of McNair Program funding, will embark on projects exploring everything from amino acids to unicorns. Read more in The Knox Student.

Students March In Chicago for Workers' Rights
May Day is known in many countries as a day to support workers' rights, as well as immigration rights and reform, and in some places is synonymous with International Workers' Day. At this year's May Day National Immigrant Mobilization march in Chicago, Knox students participated in the fight for workers' rights with activists and immigrants. Read more about the students' experiences in The Knox Student.

More student news and features.


Alumni News

Less than 1,000 Alumni to Go!
More and more alumni are stepping up to meet Duke Petrovich '74's challenge to maintain Knox's 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 May 18, 4,034 alumni have given to Knox -- that means there are less than 1,000 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.

Why do you give to Knox?
Each of the more than 4,000 alumni who've given to Knox this year has an individual reason for supporting their alma mater. Maybe they were a scholaship recipient, received life-changing advice from a professor, or  simply want to help Knox receive an extra $100,000 this year. Read why Knox alumni give to Knox.  

Let us know why you give to Knox. E-mail us at gizmogram@knox.edu.

Hey Class of 2008!
You don't want to miss Flunk Day, do you? If Knox doesn't have your current e-mail address on file, you won't recieve the annual Flunk Day e-mail. Remember, your knox.edu e-mail address is about to expire. If you have a new e-mail address -- or are about to get one -- please let us know. Drop us an e-mail or log on to the Knox Online Community.

Alumni Notes

W. Dudley McCarter '72 has been selected by the University of Missouri and the Mizzou Alumni Association as the Distinguished Alumnus of 2009. Dudley was selected on the basis of his professional accomplishments, community, and charitable activities and service to the University.

Biology Professor David Krohne '74 gave the Chapel Talk on "The Nightmare of Sustainability" at Wabash College on Earth Day. Read his remarks.

An interview with Megan Williamson '82 was recently featured in the painter blog MW Capacity.

Ken Czerwinski '87 was featured in an article in the Las Vegas Sun on the radiochemistry program he started there five years ago.

Derek Bell '94 has been named Cornell College's head men's and women's soccer coach. Bell has more than 15 years experience as a coach and collegiate player. Read more in the Mt. Vernon-Lisbon Sun.

Brian Skaret '98, U.S. Department of Justice, successfully prosecuted a death penalty case against a former U.S. soldier charged with committing murder, aggravated sexual abuse, and obstruction of justice while serving in Iraq. Read more at MSNBC.com. 

Erika Frahm '02 has been recognized for her work at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin. She received the highest staff excellence award presented by the College of Natural Sciences.

Tim Lord '03's latest play, We declare you a terrorist . . . , received a reading at New York's Public theatre this past January and will be part of the 2009 New Harmony Project in Indiana. The play will be produced as part of the 2009 Summer Play Festival in New York, which takes place at the Public theatre.

Manasi Venkatesh '06, a third-year law student at St. Louis University, was featured in the Leaders of Tomorrow section of the St. Louis Daily Record & Missouri Lawyers Weekly. Last fall, she ran the Chicago Half Marathon with fellow law student Elizabeth Grana '06.

Dwight "Ike" Glinsmann '08 extended his contract with the JET Programme, where he currently teaches English to middle and elementary school students in Iijima, Japan. He will start his master's in public policy at the University of Wisconsin Madison in Fall 2010.

Bethany Vittetoe '08 received the Mueller Fellowship to attend the University of Wisconsin Madison for agricultural and applied economics.

Eric Feltes '09 has been hired to teach Spanish and theater at Oswego High School. Feltes talked about his high school theater experience in the Beacon-News.

Read and post Class Notes in the Knox Online Community.

 
Faculty & Staff News

Rosenfeld Awarded Residence Fellowship
Natania Rosenfeld, associate professor of English, has been awarded a fellowship by the Jentel Artist Residency Program. The program brings together an elite group of just six artists -- two writers and four visual artists -- for four weeks at the Jentel Foundation facility in the Piney Creek Valley of Wyoming.

Rosenfeld will attend the residency this summer. "I plan to work on a novel about a Polish gentile couple who hide two Jews in their home during World War II," she said. "It's an ambitious project that spans from World War II and the Holocaust, to post-war Poland in the 1990s and early 2000s." Read more about Rosenfeld and the fellowship.

Faculty & Staff Notes

Assistant professor of English Monica Berlin '95's "Triple Elegy" was recently published in Rhino 2009. Her essay, "The Eighteenth Week," was awarded the 2009 Thomas R. Hruska Nonfiction Prize, judged by Diana Joseph, and will be published in a forthcoming issue of Passages North.

In economic terms, says Tim Kasser, professor of psychology, a job or market loss that is seen as isolated and temporary will probably not lead you to rethink your spendthrift ways. Read more in Money Magazine. 

Schahrazede Longou, visiting instructor in modern languages and literature (French), presented the paper "Le séisme au centre de la création littéraire chez Maïssa Bey: Quand « la réplique » se fait double" at the 35th annual African Literature Association conference held in Burlington, Vermont, in April. 

Frank McAndrew, Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology, will present a paper at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Fullerton, California, May 27-31. The title of the paper is "The Selfish Hero? A Study of the Individual Benefits of Self-Sacrificial Behavior by Members of Small Groups."

The May 2009 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education features two articles written by Knox faculty and co-authored by Knox graduates: "Determination of Myoglobin Stability by Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy: Classic and Modern Data Analysis" by Andrew F. Mehl, professor of chemistry, Mary A. Crawford '89, associate professor of chemistry, and Lei Zhang '06; and "A Mechanistic Study of Terbium Phosphorescence Quenching" by Judith L. Jenkins '02 and Lawrence E. Welch, professor of chemistry. Zhang, a biochemistry major, works in Chicago. Jenkins, a chemistry major, is working on her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Arizona in Tuscon.

Robin Metz, Philip Sidney Post Professor of English, will be one of two featured poets to present his work at The New York Public Library on May 27. On May 28, he will be a featured performer at Baruch College, Manhattan. On May 31, he will present a series of poetry readings at Greenwich Village sites associated with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Metz's poetry was recently published in The Seventh Quarry and Convorbiri Literare.

Jim Nowlan, adjunct distinguished professor of public policy, says the drawing of Illinois districts, from which lawmakers are elected and happens once every 10 years, should be reformed. Read more at WGIL.com.

Duane Oldfield, associate professor of political science and international relations, chaired a panel on evangelicalism in comparative perspective and presented a talk titled "The Shifting Transnationalisms of the Christian Right" at the Midwest Political Science Association Convention in Chicago.

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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