2005 Edition - Contents

The 2004 Outstanding Dissertation award went to microbiologist Kelly Bender for work that will aid in the cleanup of a widespread environmental contaminant.

Perchlorate, used by various industries and by the military in solid rocket fuel, poses long-term health risks. Cleanup of sites contaminated with this chemical is difficult for a variety of reasons.

As part of an SIUC team that isolated bacteria capable of breaking down perchlorate even in oxygen-deprived environments such as subsoil, Bender broke new ground by showing how these bacteria work at the genetic level.

She identified and sequenced the genes that trigger production of the enzyme that breaks down perchlorate, as well as several other genes that seem to play supporting roles in the process. She also developed a molecular technique to rapidly detect whether any species of perchlorate-degrading bacteria is present at a given site. That information will help determine site suitability for bioremediation.

A patent application has been filed on the technology, and a license was recently granted to BioInsite Inc. for its commercialization.

The SIU Alumni Association's 2004 Outstanding Thesis Award went to Hilla Medalia, a documentary filmmaker, for her film "Daughters of Abraham." Shot on location in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the documentary explores the lives of two teenage girls: a Palestinian who became a suicide bomber, and one of her Israeli victims.

"Daughters of Abraham" won a 2004 Angelus Award and was shown at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Medalia earned her master's degree in professional media practice.

—Marilyn Davis, ed.

Three students were awarded $15,000 Morris Fellowships for doctoral study at SIUC during 2004-05.

Kenna Bolton graduated in spring 2004 from Marquette University in Milwaukee with a bachelor's in psychology. As an undergraduate, she served as a research assistant in three studies; worked at a women's center, a group home, and a mental health clinic; and volunteered as a "big sister" and as a sexual violence peer educator. Bolton's research interests focus on antisocial personalities, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse. She hopes to conduct research, supervise clinical graduate students, and teach when she finishes her doctorate.

Tamira Brennan earned her bachelor's in anthropology in 2002 from the University of Illinois. Following her graduation, she worked as a crew chief for the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program. Brennan is particularly interested in the Mississippian culture, whose temple mound builders flourished in the Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois river valleys 1,000 years ago. She will focus on social interactions within and between chiefdoms, using analyses of stone, pottery, and animal remnants as research tools. She hopes to work in cultural resource management upon finishing her degree.

Cy Mott earned his bachelor's in biology in 2001 from East Stroudsburg University and his master's in biology in 2004 from Shippensburg University (both in Pennsylvania). As an undergraduate, he conducted research on community ecology and predator-prey relationships in larval salamanders. At SIUC, he will focus on conservation biology, ecology, and tropical reptiles and amphibians. He is particularly interested in the effect of human influences on the ecology of such creatures. He hopes to teach and conduct research at a university after completing his doctorate.

An SIUC graduate student who hails from Cameroon received two prestigious research awards in 2004. Geraldine Nzokwe, who is working towards her master's degree in geology, received a $1,300 graduate student research grant from the Geological Society of America and a $1,000 Hugh E. McKinstry Student Research Award from the Society of Economic Geologists.

Nzokwe, whose faculty mentor is Eric Ferre, is only the second geology department student in many years to receive the GSA award, and one of only 16 students nationwide in 2004 to receive the Society of Economic Geologists award.

Nzokwe does field research in New Caledonia, a South Pacific island, where she studies soil layers produced from weathered rocks called peridotite. This type of rock outcrops over large areas, where it is subjected to weathering in New Caledonia's hot, humid climate.

The magnetic and infrared spectroscopic properties of these soil layers are similar to those of disintegrated and decomposed rock fragments and soil on the surface of Mars. Those similarities provide tantalizing evidence that the climate on Mars has not always been dry and cold, and that standing water was also present on the surface.

Nzokwe's research will provide the first magnetic mineralogy database on peridotite laterites. Such information will be extremely valuable for paleoclimatic studies both on Earth and on Mars.

A National Science Foundation program aimed at increasing the number of minority students who earn doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is providing nearly half a million dollars to support 12 students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2004-05.

The students, all in master's or doctoral programs, are receiving stipends of $30,000 each, with an additional $10,500 per student coming to the university to pay for tuition, health insurance, and other fees. Assuming that the students make good academic progress, the NSF will fund both the stipends and supplemental awards for a second year.

The awards are large because minority students frequently hesitate to take on the debt involved in going to graduate school. "With these populations, that's often a huge financial burden," said Karen Renzaglia, who wrote the proposal for the "Bridges to the Doctorate" grant.

"These sizable fellowships eliminate that burden so there's nothing to get in the way of them concentrating on their studies and performing at the highest level. As a university, we have also made a commitment to continue to support them (past the second year provided by the NSF) as long as they are making satisfactory progress, though the support may not necessarily be at the same level (as the NSF fellowships)."

SIUC has a long tradition of helping minority students earn graduate degrees. For the last 10 years, it has offered such students a two-year financial assistance package that includes tuition and a stipend under its PROMPT program, an acronym that stands for Proactive Recruitment of Multicultural Professionals for Tomorrow.

"We are recognized as an institution that can run these kinds of programs and be successful at it," Renzaglia said. "We are not an historically black institution, but we have done really well in that area."

SIUC graduate students hosted the 25th Midwest Ecology and Evolution Conference in March 2005 at the Carbondale Civic Center. Students from 45 colleges in 10 states gave presentations and displayed posters summarizing their research in paleoecology, climage change and conservation, biodiversity, behavioral ecology and evolution, and population biology and genetics.

The two-day event was co-chaired by Kurt Regester, a doctoral student in zoology, and Brian Benscoter, a doctoral student in plant biology. SIUC sponsors of the conference included the Graduate School, Office of Research Development and Administration, Departments of Plant Biology and Zoology, and College of Science.

—Marilyn Davis, ed.

Long known for building locks and dams, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is switching gears with a little help from SIUC. A new, intensive concentration in the master's program in water resources and planning is now available here and at four other universities across the country. It will give mid-career engineers the economic, ecological, policy, and decision-making skills they'll need to steer the Corps toward an emerging focus on environmental management.

"The Corps' new mission takes it into ecological realms: fixing rivers (for example, restoring such natural features as meanders), restoring wetlands, managing for water quality," said Christopher Lant, chair of SIUC's geography department. "This, in turn, brings it into complex relationships with local entities and groups with competing interests. To fulfill that mission requires people who are trained differently than they once were."

The new concentration includes courses in philosophy, policy, social decision-making, economics, ecology, hydrology and quantitative methods. The engineers will complete half those hours in a single semester on campus, taking the rest as distance-learning courses or as transfer credits from colleges and universities closer to home. An advisory committee made up of members from the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR), a 90-member international partnership based at SIUC, developed the curriculum.

SIUC has become the only university in Illinois offering a master's of public health degree in community health education.

The 43-credit-hour program, housed in the Health Education and Recreation Department, includes a six-hour practicum in community health education. The curriculum follows accreditation requirements of the Council on Education for Public Health, a national oversight organization.

With the program's kick-off, SIUC joins a select group of only 17 other U.S. universities—outside those with schools of public health—offering such a council-approved master's program.

Officials expect an enrollment of 45 students in the program within five years. Degree candidates prepare to become community health educators able to assess community needs and to plan, implement, and evaluate programs designed to address those needs.

Besides training much-needed public health professionals, officials expect the program will expand collaborative research and funding opportunities at the university.

The doctoral program in health education at SIUC ranks in the top half of peer programs at 24 universities across the nation, according to a study published in the May/June 2004 issue of the American Journal of Health Education. SIUC ranks 11th in a field of 24, and ahead of programs at Johns Hopkins, Purdue, the University of Florida, the University of Missouri, and similar institutions.

Ratings were based on the five-year period from January 1997 through December 2001. Criteria included the number of faculty publications in peer-reviewed journals, the number of faculty-held editorships in health education-related journals, external grants, doctoral students' activities, student/faculty ratios, student support, and mentoring/job placement available to students.

David Birch, chair of the Health Education and Recreation Department and a past president of the American Association for Health Education, notes that seven of the universities in the study offer doctoral degrees through their respective schools of public health, which have access to federal funding available only to such schools. He's especially pleased with SIUC's rankings when those seven programs are removed from the mix.

SIUC has conferred more than 100 doctoral degrees in health education in the past 15 years.

The Teaching Fellows Graduate Program at SIUC, a graduate teaching program that involves collaboration with local school districts, has been named a Distinguished Program in Teacher Education by the Association of Teacher Educators. The program, within the College of Education and Human Services, started in January 1999, and places certified graduate students from a variety of teaching programs with mentoring public school teachers in the classroom four days a week for a school year.

There are relatively few programs like this in the nation for graduate students, says program director Lynn C. Smith, an associate professor in the Curriculum and Instruction Department. The model for the program was a small teaching fellows program that Dean R. Keith Hillkirk worked with at Ohio University prior to 1998. SIUC secured funding for the program from the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

Eighteen students are in the program, which has a professional development school partnership with the Carbondale Elementary School District, Giant City Consolidated School District, Murphysboro Community Unit School District, and Unity Point Community Consolidated School District.

SIUC moved up another four slots—from 104th to 100th—in the National Science Foundation's latest ranking of academic research and development expenditures at public universities and colleges. SIUC also moved from 145th up to 138th among all U.S. universities, public and private.

The NSF bases its annual assessments on total research and development funds expended in science and engineering fields over the fiscal year. These funds come from grants and contracts received from national, state, corporate, and nonprofit agencies and organizations, as well as from institutional sources. This year's ratings reflect money expended during the 2002 fiscal year, which began in 2001.

This is the fourth year in a row that SIUC has improved its ranking. SIUC researchers expended $53.6 million during the assessment period—a 24 percent increase over the 2001 fiscal year, and a record for SIUC.

The NSF ranking is an important measure as SIUC moves toward its goal of becoming one of the nation's top 75 public research universities by 2019, when the University observes its 150th anniversary.

Because the NSF rankings carry a lot of clout nationally, placing well means doing well. "It helps us attract the best students, particularly at the graduate level, and increases the value of the degrees of all our students," said John Koropchak, vice chancellor for research and graduate dean.

Grants and contracts also are a huge financial boost to the University. They provide, among other things, assistantships for graduate students and a source of funds for faculty and student travel to professional meetings, as well as seed grants to help new faculty do the pilot work necessary to apply for the big money. "These funds help us to support the full breadth of scholarly and creative activities all across the campus, from art to zoology," Koropchak said.

Several new interdisciplinary research centers were approved by the Graduate Council and higher administration in recent months. They are:

SIUC's Morris Library has enhanced its ranking in the prestigious Association of Research Libraries. In 2004, Morris Library—a member of ARL since the 1960s—recorded the largest improvement of any of the 123 member libraries, jumping from 98th to 79th place. The shift was due mostly to a change in reporting electronic serials to bring Morris Library in line with the reporting practices of peer libraries.

Jesse Trushenski, a doctoral student in zoology, was awarded a two-year, $60,000 fellowship from the National Sea Grant College Program. The fellowships, which go to only five students across the country, team students with industry scientists to work on solving real-world problems. Trushenski will work with researchers from Archer Daniel Midland Co. to improve the immune systems of fish through diet.

With support from a Gerald Howard Read International Seminar Scholarship from Phi Delta Kappa International, a professional education association, curriculum and instruction doctoral student Theresa Robinson visited Brazil, Chile, and Argentina in July 2004 to participate in seminars and meet with educational administrators.

Nancy Bitner, a master's student in educational administration, is currently serving as the first recipient of the Paul Simon Lieutenant Governor's Fellowship in Springfield, Ill. The one-year fellowship is allowing her to work with the Illinois State Board of Education, with the Rural Water Commission, and with domestic violence grants.

"Twin Cities," a one-act play by theater doctoral student Scott Irelan, was nominated for the Paula Vogel National Playwriting Award. Irelan also presented a paper at the Association for Theater in Higher Education conference in Toronto in July 2004 and three papers at the Mid-America Theater Conference in March 2004, one of which won the Young Scholars Theater History Debut award. He has contributed several articles to volume 8 of Interdisciplinary Biographical Dictionaries of the Western World's Great Cultural Eras (Greenwood Press, 2005).

Amy Pinney, a doctoral student in speech communication, won the Norman K. Denzin Qualitative Research Award at the National Communication Association conference in Chicago in November 2004. Pinney is the first recipient of this national award. At the same conference, Amy Darnell, also a doctoral student in speech communication, received the first Robin Scholarship in Performance Studies, which carries a $1,000 stipend. And a paper by master's student Jonathan Bender won the top Debut Paper Award.

Sandra Wiebe, a postdoctoral fellow in family and community medicine, won the Nelson Butters Award from the International Neuropsychological Society, given for the best paper submitted by a postdoc. Wiebe presented her paper, on cognitive development in children, as part of the keynote session at the annual INS meeting (2005, St. Louis).

Perry Hill, a doctoral student in higher education, served a 2004 summer internship with the Illinois Board of Higher Education, gaining experience in fiscal analysis, academic policies, grants administration, and public affairs.

Reuben Heine, a doctoral student in geography, was lead author of a paper in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (2004, vol. 94, no. 3). The paper describes a method he developed as a master's student for accurate, automated mapping of stream channels, an invention retained by SIUC for a possible patent application.

Audrey McCrary-Quarles, a doctoral student in health education, presented research on the topic of older drivers and their increased risk for crashes in a global health course in Cologne, Germany, in summer 2004.

Valerie Teo, a doctoral student in political science, presented a paper on foreign investment and democratization at the 4th EUROSEAS Conference (2004, Paris).

Saleem Rasheed, a doctoral student in rehabilitation, was co-author on a Journal of Rehabilitation Administration article (2004, vol. 25, no. 3-4) assessing Illinois vocational rehabilitation programs and home services programs.

Abani Ranjan Samal, a doctoral student in environmental resources and planning, presented papers at the 7th International Geostatistics Congress (2004, Banff, Alberta) and at the North Central Section meeting of the Geological Society of America (2004, St. Louis), and gave three invited lectures in January 2005 at the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, India. Samal also was awarded a Student Research Grant by the International Association of Mathematical Geology and organized the first IAMG student chapter.

Miriam Kritzer Van Zant, a doctoral student in plant biology, won a National Science Foundation Travel Fellowship to collect Mirabilis sp. in South America.

Scott Nolte, a doctoral student in plant science, was lead author on an article published in Weed Research (2004, vol. 44).

Zhigang Wang and Zhanyou Huang, a master's and a doctoral student, respectively, in mining and mineral resources engineering, were two of the co-authors on a paper published in Coal Preparation (2004, vol. 24, no. 1-2).

Heather Brostrand, a doctoral student in rehabilitation, received the National Rehabilitation Association's 2004 Graduate Literary Award for exceptional academic achievement.

Vishal Gupta, a master's student in mining and mineral resources engineering, presented a paper on which he was lead author at the International Seminar on Mineral Processing Technology (2005, Dhanbad, India).

Cory Byers, a master's student in professional media practice, won a 2004 Midwest Regional Emmy for best student production for the documentary "Beacon of Hope: The Cross at the Crossroads," co-produced with Brittany Dust, an undergraduate in radio-television. Byers also won a third place National Student Emmy in the news category for his work on alt.news 26:46 and won third place in the Broadcast Education Association 2005 student scriptwriting competition.

Songwen Xie, a doctoral student in chemistry and biochemistry, received a travel award from the American Chemical Society to present a paper at the ACS annual meeting in San Diego in March 2005.

Sanjay Singh and Priyatansh Gurha, doctoral students in the molecular biology, microbiology, and biochemistry program, were lead authors on an article published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (2004, vol. 279, no. 46).

Anna Gregg, a doctoral student in political science, presented papers on aspects of post-Soviet Russia at the International Studies Association's Midwest Conference (2004, St. Louis) and at the 63rd annual national conference of the Midwest Political Science Association (2005, Chicago).

A paper presented at the 54th International Communication Association conference (2004, New Orleans) by Hyunmee Kang, a master's student in media theory and research, was named top student paper in the public relations division.

Benilda Beretta and Eric Gant, MFA students in photography, gave a presentation at the National Society for Photographic Education Conference (2005, Portland, Oregon).

Mary Cook-Wallace, a doctoral student in workforce education and development, presented a poster at the 2004 Syllabus Conference in San Francisco.

Joy Roach and Lance Hogan, doctoral students in workforce education and development, co-authored a paper on business teacher education in the NABTE Review (2004, vol. 31).

Steve Freeman, a doctoral student in workforce education and development, gave a presentation about rural community technology centers at the 2004 regional conference of the National Social Science Association in Baltimore.

Yun Shi, a doctoral student in workforce education and development, co-presented papers at the 23rd annual research conference of the Organizational Systems Research Association (2004, Pittsburgh) and the 2004 National Technical Preparation Network Conference (Minneapolis).

Bridgette Colaco, a doctoral student in international news/communication and media ethics, presented papers at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research annual conference (2004, Chicago), the Global Fusion Conference (2004, St. Louis), the Popular Culture Association annual meeting (2005, San Diego), and the Broadcast Education Association annual meeting (2005, Las Vegas). In May 2004, she was a panelist for "Spotlight on the International Press," a colloquium organized by the University of Chicago and the Chicago Tribune.

Erin Gibson, a master's student in professional media practice, was awarded the Helen J. Sioussat/Fay Wells Scholarship by the Broadcast Education Association.

Kay Shopinski, a master's student in plant science, won first prize for student presentations in the C7 section at the USA Crop Science Society National Tri-Society Meeting (2004, Seattle). Jawad Afzal, a doctoral student in plant science, also gave a presentation at this meeting.

Abdelmajid Kassem, a doctoral student in plant science, was lead author on two journal articles, one published in Plant and Soil (2004, vol. 260) and one published in the Journal of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (2004, vol. 2).

James Saldana, a master's student in interactive multimedia, had his film "Our Road to Kosovo" showcased in the Amnesty International Film Festival in St. Johns, Canada.

Kelly Harman, a master's student in civil and environmental engineering, was awarded a three-year research fellowship by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in September 2004. She will serve a research internship this summer at a site chosen by the department. She is studying the phenomenon of "progressive collapse" of infrastructure.

Laura Rowald, a doctoral student in applied psychology, presented a poster at the annual meeting of the American College Health Association (2004, New Orleans).

Richard Robinson, a doctoral student in broadcast communication and public relations, gave two presentations at the 2005 International Conference on Social Sciences in Hawaii.

Kwang Woo Noh, a doctoral student in global media and film studies, presented a paper on 1980s Korean cinema at the Popular Culture Association national meeting (2005, San Diego).

Cao Yong, a doctoral student in global media and political communication, presented a co-authored paper at the Seminar on Media and Transition in the PRC at the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy, in 2004. The paper was published in Mandarin in the Wuhan University Media Studies Quarterly (November 2004) and in English in the fall 2004 issue of the quarterly journal of the World Association of Christian Communication and Media Development.

Ayana Haaruun, an MFA student in photography, showed her film "First We Pray" at Women in the Director's Chair in Chicago in March 2005.

Robert Jenkot, a doctoral student in sociology, contributed several entries to the Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities (Sage Publications, 2005).