Results tagged “universityofillinois”

College basketball season kicks off this week, with a number of our local teams taking the court for the first time. What's in store for some of our area's most prominent programs?

As was indicated last week, the Graduate Employees' Organization at the University of Illinois has gone on strike after negotiations with the school broke down. The two sides were at odds over free tuition for graduate and teaching assistants. An agreement was apparently reached over the weekend, but the school claims the union made additional demands after that agreement was reached.

In less than a week, graduate teaching and research assistants at the University of Illinois may go on strike for the first time ever. According to The News-Gazette, on Monday, the Graduate Employees' Organization voted overwhelmingly in favor to authorize a strike against the UI Board of Trustees if an agreement can't be met. The GEO has been negotiating with UI administrators for over six months, seeking a contract "that would set the minimum salary for a 50 percent nine-month appointment at the UI's estimate of a living wage for a graduate student, as well as protect tuition waivers for TAs and GAs."

Updated studies show that by 2015 some outlying suburbs could face a long-term water shortage according to Crain's. Water supplies are not going to dry up but projections by the University of Illinois Water Survey show that water supplies won't be able to keep up with population growth. As a result, pumping water from them will become cost-inefficient said Josh Ellis, a water policy expert at the Metropolitan Planning Council. He told Crain's:

Communities served by Lake Michigan face the same long-term problem. From drinking water to the reversal of the Chicago River, the Chicago region is now diverting 85% of the lake water that a Supreme Court decision allows; without conservation, that limit could be reached in 15 years.

The University of Illinois' board of trustees named former president Stanley Ikenberry as interim president on Saturday, Chicago Breaking News reports.

Gov. Pat Quinn said he expects University of Illinois president B. Joseph White to resign today in the wake of the school's clout controversy. Quinn said, "He's let me know that something is imminent and I think that'll happen today," adding, "This is totally voluntary." The Tribune has more here.

The Clout College mess at the University of Illinois is proving costly thus far. According to a report in today's Tribune, the school has already spent about $440,000 in legal bills. School spokesman Thomas Hardy told the Trib, "Nobody is staffed up for a tsunami, but once it hits, you go out and get the resources to be able to respond. I would expect that additional bills that we receive will also be significant."

• The threat of the city closing multiple mental health clinics is once again rearing its ugly head.
• Chris Kennedy may not be running for public office next year, but he has been to the University of Illinois board of trustees by Gov. Quinn.
• There's been a shuffle in the plans to build a museum in Gary in honor of Michael Jackson.

• Two men were charged with the murder of retired Bartlett attorney Carl Kuhn; the men allegedly suffocated Kuhn to death and stole his extensive gun collection.
• The Sun-Times has the uplifting story of 11-year-old "hero" Adonis Bell.
• A pair of University of Illinois trustees refuse to go gentle into that good night in spite of pressure from Gov. Quinn.

• Michael Jackson's death has been ruled a homicide.
• It was a clout-y first day of the Fall 2009 term at the University of Illinois today.
• Bensenville's village president has conceded the fight against O'Hare expansion but is still expressing concern for effects on the city's maintenance.

Remember all the hub-bub a few weeks back over the Obama-as-Dark-Knight-Joker posters? It seems the LA media has caught up with the creator of the posters and he's Firas Alkhateeb, a history major at the University of Illinois. It all started with a Photoshop exercise using an old Time Magazine cover though he's not responsible for those posters. According to him, someone lifted the image from his Flickr for those; Alkhateeb abstained from voting this past November and cites Dennis Kucinich as the candidate he was most likely to support.

The Clout College controversy at the University of Illinois has claimed a victim: Niranjan Shah, chairman of the school's Board of Trustees, has resigned his position. Shah's held the position for less than a year. [Tribune, Sun-Times]

The Chicago Tribune's investigation into the University of Illinois has now reached State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. Giannoulias' adviser Endy Zemenides allegedly helped get a student off the wait list and into school and in turn, a Greek Orthodox priest, a family friend of the student who had reached out to Zemenides, held a fundraiser for Giannoulias that earned over $120,000. Giannoulias is currently eyeballing a run at Sen. Roland Burris' senate seat. His campaign distanced Giannoulias from the student, saying he knew nothing of the request, and Giannoulias has not been connected to any other student on the list.

The Clout List scandal at the University of Illinois continues to grow beyond Ron Santo and undergrad. The Chicago Tribune reports that the law school at U of I admitted an unqualified student in return for promised jobs for outgoing graduates.

In a sorta surprising - not to mention refreshing - announcement, Jeff Jordan, son of Michael Jordan, has announced his intentions to leave the University of Illinois men's basketball team to focus on academics. No, really. In a statement, Jordan the Younger said, "I loved playing for the Fighting Illini and appreciate the support I was given by my teammates, coaches and the great fans here. But I have come to the point where I‚m ready to focus on life after basketball. I will concentrate on earning my degree from the University of Illinois and the opportunities that await upon graduating." An upcoming junior, Jordan figured to see more minutes if he had stayed on. Of course, there's still another Jordan to carry the basketball mantle should he choose: son Marcus has committed to the University of Central Florida. [Sun-Times]

In it's battle to obtain documents from the University of Illinois in connection with their investigation of the Clout College Controversy, the Chicago Tribune has stumbled upon a strange example of what they allege to be shenanigans: Ron Santo. While Santo has nothing at all to do with the controversy, it seems the school blacked out Santo's name in documents it handed over to the Trib which the Trib claims "violated the spirit of the law," in terms of their investigation. According to the Tribune's story:

The Tribune isn't taking the battle for applicant data in the case of the University of Illinois's clout list lightly. Last week, they ran a list of state legislators complete with statistics on how many students each has helped. Now, they've filed suit against the University for the release of applicant data, including, "the immediate release of grade point averages and standardized test scores of the hundreds of college applicants placed on an internal list of well-connected students." School spokesman Tom Hardy said, "The university believes it has a strong legal case and we are prepared to make it."

When we mentioned the Trib's investigation into a "clout list" for admissions to the University of Illinois, several readers expressed what's best described as a lack of shock. Pulling strings to gain admittance to a college is certainly nothing new, but if Governor Quinn has his way, it'll soon be a thing of the past. Yesterday, Quinn announced a new seven-member "clout commission" to investigate the shenanigans going on at the University of Illinois which will be led by retired federal Judge Abner Mikva. The panel will be able to investigate the list and must issue a report to the governor within 60 days. Per the Tribune:

The controversy over clout is getting even deeper these days. Today, the Tribune published the results of its investigation into a "clout list" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It seems that students with certain power connections - like Tony Rezko - have circumvented admission requirements and received special consideration in being accepted to the school. The Trib sifted through 1,800 pages of documents in their investigation, which revealed, among other things:

Yesterday, we mentioned the University of Illinois's second place finish at this year's national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held at Purdue University (as well as Wheaton's Tom Hildreth being a member of the champions from St. Olaf College in Minnesota). Today, we have a video of the Illini's machine, called "The Scene of the Crime," showing us step-by-step how the U of I's contraption works. It's based on the board game "Clue" and it's purpose - for this year's competition - was to replace an incandescent light bulb with a more energy-efficient, light-emitting design. Awesome.

It is a glorious time of year to be a college sports fan. You've got your brackets picked, you've of course entered our Chicagoist Tournament Challenge, and you'll be giving the economy the middle finger as you watch non-stop hoops at work for the next two days. But what about the post-tourney let down? After a national champion has been crowned on April 6, where can you turn to fill the void of collegiate competition? Well, how about the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC)? It may not be a sport, per say, but the competition is fierce and the stakes are high. Hear us out.

The current financial crisis has reached a point to where even local colleges are beginning to feel the crunch. As more students are in need of financial assistance, the schools are dealing with shrinking endowments. With these endowments, which fund up to a quarter of the schools costs, bringing in smaller returns, the schools are having to rework budgets.

"Everyone's feeling pressure," says Will McLean, Northwestern's chief investment officer. The university's $7.2-billion endowment, which funds almost 20% of school operations, produced returns of 3% during the 12 months ended in August, compared with 22% in the year-earlier period.

Continue reading "Financial Slowdown Hits Area Universities"

Feel like expressing your political choice on the campus of the University of Illinois? Well, if you're an employee of the university, you can't. According to Inside Higher Ed:

The university system’s ethics office sent a notice to all employees, including faculty members, telling them that they could not wear political buttons on campus or feature bumper stickers on cars parked in campus lots unless the messages on those buttons and stickers were strictly nonpartisan. In addition, professors were told that they could not attend political rallies on campuses if those rallies express support for a candidate or political party.

Although these rules are not at present being enforced, the AAUP [American Association of University Professors] deplores their chilling effect on speech, their interference with the educational process, and their implicit castigation of normal practice during political campaigns.

Acclaimed novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home on Friday from an apparent suicide. Among his more renowned tomes were Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Wallace spent part of his childhood in Urbana; his father taught philosophy at the University of Illinois and his mother was an English teacher at Parkland College in Champaign. Wallace was teaching at Illinois State when Infinite Jest was released, earning him wide acclaim. Wallace and his wife were currently living in Claremont, California, where Wallace was a professor of English at Pomona College. Man, we are seriously bummed.

Bust out your puffy shirts, Jon Voight pencils, and garbage eclairs- the Seinfeld Campus Tour is coming to the University of Illinois next Thursday, September 18. Throughout the fall, a 60-foot, Seinfeld mini-museum bus is driving over 10,000 miles, stopping in 26 cities, and handing out 1,000 pounds of black-and-white cookies and candy. In an attempt to reach out to the 70 million people that make up the "millennial generation" the bus will have TV screens playing classic show moments, a "Kramer's Yogurt Bar" serving non-fat frozen yogurt, Seinfeld photos, laptops with Seinfeld MySpace and Facebook pages, games and prizes.