PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 26, No. 19, May 3, 2007

brief notes

WILL-TV/WILL-AM
Herman to discuss campus issues May 7
UI Chancellor Richard Herman will join host David Inge at 9 p.m. May 7, for a televised conversation in the WILL-TV studio about issues facing the campus. Viewer calls and comments are welcome.

The program will be simulcast on WILL-AM (580), and repeated on WILL-AM at 5 p.m. May 12. Questioning Herman in addition to Inge will be News-Gazette reporter Christine des Garennes and WILL-AM news director Tom Rogers.
Herman was appointed chancellor in May 2005.

Contemporary string quartet
JACK performs May 4
The JACK Quartet, which won the prestigious Kronos Young Artists Concert Award for an April 28 debut concert at Carnegie Hall, will play the same program at the UI on May 4. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Music Building Auditorium and is free and open to the public.

The JACK Quartet is one of the country’s top young string quartets specializing in contemporary music and comprises violinists Ari Streisfeld and Christopher Otto, violist John Pickford Richards and cellist Kevin McFarland. The string quartet has given high-energy performances in Europe and North America, including appearances at the Lucerne Festival, the University of California at San Diego and Festival Internacional de Musica Contemporanea de Michoacan.

Otto graduated from University Laboratory High School, where he studied violin and took composition lessons with Zack Browning at the UI. Otto went to Eastman School of Music for his undergraduate degree and is now at UCSD, studying composition and violin.

The Carnegie Hall and UI performance features IannisXenakis’ “Tetras,” plus works by Northwestern composition faculty members Aaron Travers and Aaron Cassidy, as well as the Midwest premiere of Helmut Lachenmann’s “Grido” and “Third String Quartet.” Lachenmann said that the quartet’s members “demonstrate simultaneously a high level of artistry and accountability in their brilliant understanding of the works of the tradition as well as of the present.”

The JACK Quartet will read works by student composers at 10 a.m. May 5 in the Music Building Auditorium. The public also is welcome at that event.

University Library
Online log-in procedures change
There are changes in log-in procedures for those who use the University Library’s Online Research Resources.

For on-campus users, access to licensed electronic databases and journals has been broadened to include a number of new Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. This means that more campus users who need to access electronic content – newspaper articles and court cases from Lexis-Nexis; magazine articles through Ebsco; or scientific research through Thomson Scientific, for example, will no longer have to log in.

Off-campus users that have a wireless network (whether it’s UIUCnet Wireless on campus, a personal network at home or public WiFi at a coffee house) will be required to log in using a University NetID and password to access ORR content. The Library’s ORR databases are subscription-based and access is restricted to UI students, and faculty and staff members.

For questions about access to the library’s electronic resources, contact the Information and Reference Desk at 333-2290 or reflib@illinois.edu.

Parkland Planetarium
Families may ‘investigate space’ May 3
WILL-TV, the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum and the William M. Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College invite families to explore the galaxy, learn how astronauts live, and try their hand at building a better rocket during “Investigations in Space,” an evening of family activities.

At the free event at the planetarium from 6 to 8 p.m. May 3, planetarium director Dave Leake will present an interactive dome show that will be child-centered, but fun for all ages. Shows start every 30 minutes.

Other family activities include an invention station where participants will try to build a better rocket, and an engineering station where children can use cups and cardboard to see how tall they can make a rocket ship. They can also test their knowledge of space and meet walk-around character Curious George. The Orpheum, the Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society, Central Illinois Aerospace and the Illinois Space Society will lead the activities along with WILL-TV.

The planetarium is located next to the theater on the west side of the Parkland College campus, 2400 W. Bradley Ave., Champaign. Visit www.parkland.edu/coned/pla/dir.html for a map and directions, or call 351-2568. For more information about the event, contact WILL-TV’s Molly Delaney at 333-1070 or delaney1@illinois.edu.

Krannert Center
Mechanical design competition is May 5
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts will host the first Midwest Mechanical Design Competition on May 5. The competition begins at 1 p.m. on the east terrace of the Krannert Center. This year participants will compete in designing and building tennis-ball cannons. Students will compete for longest shot, most accurate, best aesthetic design, best proposal and best overall design. Participants are able to choose the materials, construction and method of propulsion with one exception: They have to find a creative way to launch their tennis ball without pyrotechnics or explosives. The most successful designs will win certificates, and the overall winner will receive a plaque and $100. Members of the public and the media are welcome to attend, but asked to enter the east terrace from the lobby of the Center.

This challenge began as a final project for technical direction students, and has evolved into a competition that welcomes students from other curriculums as a way of sparking creative ideas within other theater majors. The deadline to enter the competition this year has passed. Registration for next year will start in August.

Beth Martell, Krannert Center’s opera technical director, will run the competition. For more information, visit www2.kcpa.uiuc.edu/kcpatd/Physics/MMDC.htm.

Locally televised program
Globalization, world affairs discussed
The UI’s Office of International Engagement, Communications and Protocol, in collaboration with Insight Media, recently began producing a locally televised program that focuses on world affairs and globalization processes.

“Illinois International” is broadcast at 8 a.m. on Sundays on Insight Channel 2. A different topic is featured each month and rebroadcast on subsequent Sundays during the month. Episodes of the program also may be viewed on the Illinois International Web site, www.ilint.uiuc.edu/ilint_tv.php.

The show features a question-and-answer format, with host and IECP director Jacques Fuqua and various UI faculty members and international guests.

Illini Center in Chicago
Transmission course offered June 4-7
The 2007 Transmission Business School will take place June 4-7 at the Illini Center, 200 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago. This marks the 14th offering of the annual course on electricity markets and the transmission business.

“Transmission is at the forefront of the challenges faced by rapidly evolving electricity markets,” said George Gross, the UI professor of electrical and computer engineering who is the director of the school. “Our program is designed to provide professionals with a thorough understanding of the principal issues in the industry.”

Sixteen academic and industrial specialists will discuss regional transmission organization development, emerging transmission business structures, transmission congestion management, evolving electricity markets, integration of renewable resources and other topics.

In addition to Gross, lecturers will include Janet Gail Besser, vice president of the National Grid Co.; James R. Dalrymple, vice president of the Tennessee Valley Authority; Richard Doying, vice president of Midwest ISO; Thomas J. Overbye, an Illinois professor of electrical and computer engineering; Alex Papalexopulos, president of ECCO International; Harry Sing, senior market adviser at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Joseph L. Welch, CEO of ITC Transmission; and Bruce Wollenberg, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

The transmission business school is coordinated through IllinoiSeminars. More information is available at www.illinoiseminars.com/.

May 6-8 conference
Life in 15th-century England explored
Scholars will gather at the UI for a conference that will explore some of the spicier aspects of 15th-century England, including saints, sexualities, sieges and sins.

The event, which is open to the public and requires a registration fee, is scheduled May 6 through 8 in the Illini Union and in the Levis Faculty Center. It is held every three years on the Illinois campus.

Sponsors are the UI Program in Medieval Studies and the department of English. The Web site for the event is at https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rwb/www/15c/.

Co-organizers, both from the UI, are Robert Barrett, professor of English, and Michael Myers, lecturer in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. They have received strong support from Anne D. Hedeman, professor of art history at Illinois and director of the UI Medieval Studies Program.

Titles of papers to be delivered include “English Cuisine and Other Poisons,” “Sin Without Sanctions?” and “Aliens and Other Outsiders in Later Medieval Bristol.”

The keynote speaker is Pamela King, professor of medieval studies at the University of Bristol in England. Her talk is about rhetoric and English urban culture.

According to Barrett, all of the papers will deal “in one way or another” with the culture of 15th-century England.

“We don’t have a theme more specific than that because we want to foster a cross-discipline conversation, just as the previous conferences have done.”

Even so, the topic of urban life “does seem to have organically emerged as a cross-panel focus,” Barrett said.

According to Hedeman, medieval studies are doing quite well in the United States and at Illinois.

Nationally, there are approximately 90 programs, centers and regional associations dedicated to medieval studies, she said, and Illinois’ program, in its sixth year, “has already established rich research associations internationally, building on ongoing research collaborations between individual members of the program and their colleagues abroad.”

From 1999 to 2004, Illinois belonged to a “productive exchange” with medieval programs in Paris and Poitiers.

And for the past four years, Illinois’ medieval studies program has been involved in a research collaboration through the World Wide Universities Network, “which has brought us into a relationship with such well known medieval studies programs as those at the University of York and Leeds, the universities of Manchester and Bristol, and, on the continent, at Utrecht.”

“Because of the WUN exchange, seven Illinois graduate students have received funding to do research and work individually with internationally renowned scholars abroad,” Hedeman said, “and nine students from abroad have come to work with members of our group.”

Hedeman said that Illinois faculty members are also involved in diverse research projects with colleagues at WUN universities.

Interest in “things medieval” also is growing with Illinois’ undergraduates, Hedeman said, noting that this year, five students contacted her about wanting to minor in medieval studies. Later this spring, she and her colleagues will submit a proposal to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to establish a minor in medieval studies at Illinois.

Hedeman can be contacted at ahedeman@illinois.edu and 217-333-7103.

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