Carbondale Calendars and Events
Edwardsville Calendars and Events
East St. Louis Calendars and Events

SIUC marks the first day of the 2008 fall semester on Aug. 18.  More than 20,000 students are expected to be enrolled for classes when the academic year gets under way.  Students who live on campus will begin moving into University housing units on Thursday Aug. 14, with the vast majority of the students expected on campus the following day, Friday Aug. 15.  There's still time to enroll for the fall semester.  Contact the SIUC Admissions Office at (618)536-4405 or visit http://admissions.siu.edu/  for more information.

Nonstop Rock will rock the block for late summer fun and entertainment as part of a celebration welcoming back SIUE students at the intersection of Second and St. Louis streets in downtown Edwardsville on Sept. 5.  SIUE students, faculty, staff and the community are invited to start the party at 6 p.m. with no admission charge.  A DJ will play music from 6-8 p.m. and Nonstop Rock will play from 8 p.m. to closing with great rock-n-roll music for dancing.

Patsy A. Reynolds is the new director of Undergraduate Admissions at SIUC.  Reynolds will begin her new duties Aug. 13.  She amassed 20 years experience in admissions at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, beginning as undergraduate admissions officer and then becoming associate director of admissions and later director of admissions.  She held the director position from 1984 until 2001.  As director, she co-authored and updated annually the university's five-year enrollment plan, established and implemented numerous enrollment management strategies and managed the admissions process.  She was involved in creating the state's first "guaranteed" scholarship for minority students.  With Reynolds as director of admissions, UTC recorded a record-setting freshman enrollment and was the only four-year Tennessee state university consistently meeting the state-mandated undergraduate minority enrollment goal.  Reynolds earned her bachelor's degree in comprehensive social sciences at Illinois State University in Normal in 1976 and her master's in community counseling in 1983 at UTC.

SIUE and area merchants are preparing to welcome back some 13,500 students attending SIUE who will begin returning to campus Friday, Aug. 22.  Cougar Welcome 2008 activities will kick off with students moving in to residence halls and apartments and will end Friday, Sept. 5, with the annual Block Party in downtown Edwardsville from 6 p.m. to midnight.

Enrollment growth, along with an increased recruitment and retention effort, is among the goals Gary P. Kolb is focusing on as the new permanent dean of SIUC's College of Mass Communication and Media Arts.  Kolb, 56, became interim dean in May 2007.  The appointment, effective in July, requires ratification by the SIU Board of Trustees.  Kolb was among three finalists for the post.  He succeeds Manjunath Pendakur, who left to become dean of the Dorothy Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla.  The college offers undergraduate degrees from the departments of Cinema & Photography and Radio-Television, and from the School of Journalism and graduate degrees at the college level.  The college also is home to WSIU Public Broadcasting and the Global Media Research Center.

The Gardens at SIUE is the newest recipient of the City of Edwardsville’s Green Thumb Award, a designation that rewards “the great potential The Gardens has to be a destination and community resource.”  The Green Thumb Award honors The Gardens for its civic contributions, which have included an educational Arbor Day event, a plastic pot recycling program, and plant identification efforts.  Gardens Director Doug Conley said winning the Green Thumb Award not only validates the work that has been done but also adds a cachet similar to that of the Missouri Botanical Gardens recognition.

A graduate student at SIUC this fall will study the ongoing political evolution of Romania as a winner of a J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship award.  Charles D. Harris, a doctoral student in political science at SIUC, also will serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, working to improve the English skills of Romanian students and their knowledge of the United States.  He will work at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, where he also will work on acquiring Romanian language skills.  Harris said he began working on the application for the Fulbright last summer and received word of his success during a difficult time in his life.  The presidentially appointed members of the Fulbright Scholarship Board selected Harris for the award, which is funded by the U.S. government, private contributions and foreign countries.  The award carries a prestigious legacy, with many recipients going on to become leaders in government and higher education.  Fulbright scholars have won almost 40 Nobel Prizes.  In its more than six-decade history, about 300,000 scholars have received the award.

Every item in the permanent collection of the University Museum at SIUC has a story -- not only about what it is, but also about how it came to the collection.  Now, with the help of a $149,962 federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, University Museum comes closer to the ultimate goal of bringing the collection into the digital world and making those stories accessible to the public.  The grant, written by Curator Lori Huffman, is to continue the standardization of museum collection records.  Museum staff will improve the records database, making entries as complete as possible.  Information in the records could be as basic as the birth and death dates for a given artist, or might be full research annotations.  The description of the grant makes clear that this collection management initiative is an ongoing project.  Ultimately, the museum will proceed with digital imaging in order to share the collection online.

A robot golf cart built by a team of SIUE School of Engineering faculty, staff and students won a technical award at a recent international conference on artificial intelligence.  The SIUE team's winning entry, Roadrunner, is a robot golf cart that uses color imaging technology to distinguish and maneuver multi-surface paths.  The award was given to SIUE at the Robot Exhibition of the Twenty-Third Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in Chicago in July.

Dr. Douglas Hood, associate professor of vascular surgery at the SIU School of Medicine, is one of the first physicians in the country to use a new medical device for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms.  Endovascular aneurysm repair was performed for two patients in Springfield earlier this summer.  The Talent abdominal stent graft, which is a fabric tube supported by a metal framework, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April 2008.  An abdominal aortic aneurysm is a dangerous bulge or weakening in the body's largest artery that can get so large that it ruptures.  An untreated AAA can result in death.  Treatment involves either a regular operation, in which the body is opened and major organs temporarily moved to access the aorta, or a minimally invasive EVAR procedure using stent grafts.  EVAR involves making small incisions in the patient's groin and inserting the device through the femoral arteries to reach the aneurysm.  By creating a new pathway for blood flow, the stent reduces pressure on the aneurysm which reduces the risk of rupture.  Some patients have not been eligible for the less-invasive option due to complications of their anatomy and the limitations of earlier devices.  The new device makes EVAR possible for another 20 percent of all patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms.

A recently released CD, Bad to the Bone, features the collaborative work of SIUE’s Brett Stamps, a music professor, and former student, Jim Owens.  Owens is a graduate of SIUE and SIU Carbondale.  The newly released CD is a smooth, soulful, sultry way for listeners to recharge their batteries.  Other SIUE greats on the CD include lecturers Miles Vandiver on drums, Zeb Briskovich on the bass and Jim Martin on lower brass, music professors Reggie Thomas on piano and Rick Haydon on the guitar, and SIUE trombone student Cody Henry.  The album is for sale through Stamps, whose office is Room 1103, Dunham Hall.  He also can be contacted at (618) 650-2026. The CD also is for sale through Webster Records, Inc., in St. Louis.

Recreational Sports and Services at SIUC has unveiled its new Web site just in time for the fall 2008 semester.  Launched Aug. 1, the site is online at www.reccenter.siu.edu.  With in-house hosting, the new site includes details on all of the upcoming Recreational Sports and Services activities as well as information about the SIUC Student Recreation Center.  It also features a web page language translator allowing international students, faculty and staff as well as parents and anyone anywhere in the world to view the site in their native language.  Gary D. Tisdale, assistant director of marketing for RSS, encourages people to keep an eye on the new Web site as more changes are coming.

Saluki football's season-opener against Hampton on September 6 marks the 5th annual Hawgs & Dawgs event.  Kickoff is set for 6 p.m at McAndrew Stadium.  For $20, a cycle rider will receive a game ticket, hot dog and soda, Saluki football/Harley Davidson t-shirt, the opportunity to form the Harley tunnel for the team before the game and a chance to ride their bike around the field at halftime.  The registration deadline for this year's event is Friday, August 29.  To register, visit http://siusalukis.cstv.com/ , download the order form and return it to Saluki Athletics.  All bikes are welcome.