IN THIS ISSUE: ACES | CAMPUS | FAA | LIBRARY
agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
The Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research presented the 2008 Donald A. Holt Achievement Award to the Illinois Center for Soy Foods at the organization’s annual meeting Feb. 12 in Springfield. Each year, the council recognizes a research team that has demonstrated outstanding and innovative team research and outreach. The award is named in honor of Holt, a longtime advocate for practical and sound food and agricultural research.
Led by UI researchers Keith Cadwallader, Barbara Klein, Pradeep Khanna and Karl Weingartner, the center’s team of 15 faculty members and academic professionals have used their expertise in food chemistry, nutrition, management and food technology to undertake a variety of successful projects and activities to promote soy foods.
“Over the past seven years, this research team has provided the necessary expertise and leadership to position the center as the world leader in soy foods research, education and outreach,” said W. Lyle Roberts Jr., chief executive officer of the Illinois Soybean Association.
campus award
The UI’s Urbana-Champaign campus has been selected to receive the 2008 Sen. Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization.
The award, presented by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, recognizes the university for “outstanding and innovative efforts in campus internationalization.”
NAFSA is the world’s largest non-profit association dedicated to international education. The award honors the memory of Simon, a lifelong advocate of international education who, until his death in 2003, supported efforts to expand U.S. students’ participation in study-abroad and exchange programs.
The UI is one of five universities receiving this year’s Simon Award, and will be featured with the other institutions in the NAFSA report “Internationalizing the Campus 2008: Profiles of Success at Colleges and Universities.” Others recipients are Goucher College, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Pittsburgh State University and Valparaiso University.
William Brustein, the UI’s associate provost for international affairs and director of International Programs and Studies, said Illinois’ status as the only institution in the United States to rank in the top five in three key metrics of campus internationalization was a key reason for the recognition. Illinois ranks second in the number of Title VI U.S. Department of Education National Resource Centers (with eight), fourth in the number of international students on campus, and fifth in the number of undergraduates who study abroad.
fine and applied arts
Dianne Harris, professor of landscape architecture, was named editor for a new series to be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Books in the series will focus on social justice, human rights and histories of the built environment and visual culture.
university library
Jane Block, head of the Ricker Library of Architecture and Art at the UI, will be honored by the Belgian government for her scholarship on the art and culture of Belgium.
Block will be granted the honorary title of “Officer in the Order of Leopold” and will be presented with a civic decoration and certificate signed by King Albert II during a private ceremony at 12:30 p.m. March 7 at the Sofitel Chicago Water Tower hotel.
Renilde Loeckx-Drozdiak, the consul general of Belgium in New York, will present the honors. Paul Van Halteren, the honorary consul of Chicago, also has been invited.
Block, the Andrew Turyn Professor in the University Library, has focused her scholarship on various aspects of European progressive art in the decades before and after 1900, with a particular emphasis on developments in Belgium.
