October 2007 Articles
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From the COD Faculty Association President by Glenn Hansen
Stopping Genocide in Sudan by John Frazier
Construction For All Seasons by Richard Jarman
The NEH Seminar: A Participant's View by Bob Dixon-Kolar
Killam to Exhibit in Dusseldorf by Marina Kuchinski
Faculty Road Runner Puts in Miles for a Great Cause by Tom Tipton
From the COD Faculty Association President by Glenn Hansen
Welcome to the first edition of our faculty newsletter for the 2007-08 academic
year. Thank you to the Communications Committee for publishing this newsletter. I hope
everyone's year
has started well and that any problems have been resolved. (If not, I
hope you are finding the support you need to resolve the issues. If it is a contract-related
issue, don't hesitate to talk to a Welfare committee member.)
October will be a busy month. We have elections for Vice President and Secretary as well as Senators from many divisions. This is an opportunity to become involved and set the direction for CODFA. The election will be held Oct. 24. The Senate will set the date of the forum at this week's meeting; I hope you will be able to attend.
At the October 18th Senate meeting, President Chand will be meeting with the Senate. We have a meeting with the President and Cabinet each term; this time we will be discussing the Institutional Priorities, faculty input during the planning process at COD, and other questions as time permits. Aside from this meeting, Nancy Stanko and I will continue our monthly meetings with the President, the biweekly meetings with VP Picard, and the Quality Improvement/Leadership Council meetings on the alternate weeks. While topics vary, this month we will certainly be talking about the hiring of replacement faculty. The statements made at the In-service Day are different than what we believed was the timeline for replacements. I will share that information when we have clarification.
On everyone's mind are the contract and the state of negotiations. The contract negotiations continue. Our team assures me that progress is being made as the discussions continue to move forward. Thank you to members of the Negotiations team who have dedicated many hours of work on our behalf.
Another major issue this month is the start of the BIC/SRC remodeling project. The architects are verifying the space and usage of the current BIC/SRC and will begin the process of planning for the future BIC/SRC. Two faculty committees will be seeking your input for the general classrooms and faculty offices. Additionally, you should be talking to your administrators about your discipline needs. The first feedback to the architects will be during the week Oct. 15.
As topics for discussion arise, the CODFA discussion board continues to be a important place to discuss issues and share information (see below for access information). This is particularly true for the CODFA PAC. Topics relating to the PAC must be on the discussion board. The discussion board is part of our CODFA site which is hosted on an outside service provider's server and is not related to any COD services or facilities. The PAC will start meeting this month with an eye on the 2009 BOT elections. When a date is set I will post it on the discussion board. Volunteers are always welcome!
I will continue to try to keep you informed of developments on important issues. If you ever have questions, please feel free to contact me or your Senators.
Stopping Genocide in Sudan by John Frazier
This summer I led a twelve-member international team from the United Nations, under
the auspices of the UNICEF and UNHRC, to lobby the United Nations ambassadors and
Sudanese government to stop the genocide in Sudan. This lobbying has been an ongoing
endeavor, as the genocide began nearly one decade ago with hundreds of thousands of
documented murders and rapes and one million displaced Sudanese refugees. The Sudanese
government agreed to the deployment of 20,000 soldiers in southern Sudan to help quell
the violence in December 2007. My involvement in this situation continues in hopes of
preventing a "final solution" from the Sudanese government before the deployment date.
Besides lobbying, the Sudanese Humanitarian Relief Project also developed educational and occupational programs for 1,500 Sudanese refugee children living in Chad and Kenya. Mostly orphans as young as eight years old, who have walked barefoot hundreds of miles, these children's families have been murdered or displaced throughout eastern Africa. With little hope of international adoptions at this age, these education programs to learn a job skill might be the difference between employment and poverty, happiness and sadness, or even life and death. These children join the other 10,000 children already in the Sudanese Humanitarian Relief Project programs in seven African nations.
Construction For All Seasons by Richard Jarman
It is said that there are two seasons in Chicago, winter and construction. Habituès
of I-88 can attest to that. At COD there appears to be only one. Construction. The
campus has been
consumed by a continuum of excavation as car parks metamorphose from one
layout into another (exactly why, I hear the cynics question) and new buildings begin the
slow process of emergence from their foundations. Observant members approaching the main
campus from the west would have been greeted a few weeks ago to the sight of a few rusty
spikes of metal poking into the sky. These have lately coalesced into a quite recognizable
frame of the new Health Careers and Natural Sciences Center (so named in the Facilities
Master Plan). Many have added their names in indelible marker to a freshly painted white
girder to serve as commemoration of this momentous development. A few short yards across
Lambert, the once-bucolic charm of the community garden has been replaced by something out
of the set of All Quiet on the Western Front, signaling the imminent arrival of the Technical
Education Center.
Construction consumes the college. Each month the Board of Trustees conducts a meeting dedicated to the Facilities Master Plan, of which the new buildings are just one component. A survey of the packages of these meetings, all faithfully preserved on the U drive should you care to peruse them, reveals how mind-bogglingly complex the whole business is. They can run to several hundred pages on a bad day. The budgets run to tens of millions of dollars for each project. Discussions are punctuated by change orders which can run to several hundred thousand dollars. At first glance these large sums can give the impression of a project run amok; but is that really the case?
The building of the HCNS involves a lot more than putting up a garden shed. Each building involves a whole litany of different firms. How did they all come together and how do they work with each other? Am I the only one that is a little bit bemused by the whole thing? Yet I think it incumbent upon me to become better informed about how a new building comes into being. In future articles I intend to explore the roles and functions of the various players, using primarily the HCNS building as the basis. After all, I have already mentally picked out my spacious office somewhere amidst the rusty girders.
Construction photo by Aldo Blanco, courtesy The Courier.
The NEH Seminar: A Participant's View by Bob Dixon-Kolar
As an English instructor participating in the National Endowment for the Humanities
program, "Philosophical Ideas and Artistic Pursuits in the Traditions of Asia and the
West," I find the
seminar very satisfying. In administering the grant, co-directors
Keith Krasemann and Eva Maria Raepple place a high premium on dialogue. Foremost is the
dialogue of ideas between Eastern and Western ways of experiencing and thinking-through
life and art. At our opening seminar last spring, our guest presenters included philosopher
Roger Ames of the University of Hawaii; Stanley Mirashige, art historian at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago; and Wendy Doniger, historian of religion at the University of Chicago.
(A special treat for me has been the chance to interact with scholars like Doniger and Ames,
whose works I have been reading for years.) They led us in exploring a few key questions: What
can Indian myths teach about dreams and reality? What is uniquely "Chinese" in Chinese art?
What can Confucian ethics contribute to Western notions of right living?
Our guest scholars gave stimulating and challenging presentations. But what I most enjoyed were the "post-talk" discussions when members of our NEH cohort met to process what we were learning. Our interests and backgrounds differ, so each of us brings unique insights and perspectives to the conversation. (My study and practice deal with how to apply Daoist principles to manual crafts.). It was great fun to play ideas off one another and test them against our individual intuitions, thoughts and theories. Our next seminar will be in early October, and I look forward to more of this sort of dialogue with my fellow NEH colleagues. These spirited, affirming conversations-whether they take place in a seminar room or over margaritas at Cozymels-help me sharpen the questions I hope to examine this year.
Killam to Exhibit in Dusseldorf by Marina Kuchinski
Brad Killam, Assistant Professor of Art, will have his work on view at the Galerie Andreas Bruning, Dusseldorf, Germany beginning November 23, 2007. The exhibition will include fifty paintings and one sculpture. Brad is the newest faculty member at the art department and teaches painting, drawing, and design.
Faculty Road Runner Puts in Miles for a Great Cause by Tom Tipton
Whenever English Faculty member Danica Hubbard runs past Sts. Peter and Paul cemetery
in her hometown of Naperville, she stops to touch her mother's gravestone. And lately,
she's
been running there a lot. Danica has been training hard to prepare to run the Chicago
Marathon her debut marathon, on October 7th, 2007.
Danica will be wearing the team singlet of the American Cancer Society emblazoned with a picture of her mother, Mary Colwell, who lost her battle with lung cancer during the summer of 1990, one month shy of her 50th birthday. Danica wants to run to honor the memory of her mother, who was a teacher at the Illinois State Youth Center in Warrenville, a prison for young women. Danica describes her mother as "the strongest woman I knew on the face of the planet. She taught with grace and confidence."
Danica has drawn on her mother's strength through a tough summer training schedule that has included the predictable blisters, chafing, and aching legs. Still, one of her favorite memories was of a soaked 18-mile run in August. "We began at 6:30 a.m. with a light drizzle and about two hours later were drenched in a downpour. At first we would point out the puddles to one another and attempt to jump over the puddles or swerve around them. By the end of our run we were plowing right through the puddles because we were absolutely soaked. We began with 15 runners that morning and ended with 5."
But puddles have been the least of her hurdles. All along she has been trying to juggle her running with family time-she has two young daughters-and a hectic work schedule. "My biggest hurdle is time-carving out time to run without rushing or feeling like I should be somewhere else," says Danica.
The Glen Ellyn Runners, which she joined earlier in the summer, have been an inspiration to Danica, especially on the long runs. In fact she smirks as she tells of how two other runners screamed at her to keep going when she started to flag on the last mile of her latest 20 mile run. But it worked.
Danica feels that she has benefited immensely from her training. She feels healthier, and she is eating healthier. But she also feels that she is giving something back by running. "Our daughters have watched me run and are aware that I'm training for a marathon. They ask why I hobble down the staircase or have difficulty sometimes getting up from a chair. We have talked about establishing goals and reaching goals -it has made a positive impact on them," says Danica.
Once Danica crosses the finish line she will be able to check an item off her lifetime list of goals. She wanted to run a marathon before she turns 40 in March. But she has no plans to rest on her laurels. "Training for the marathon has pushed me in new directions and caused me to rethink how I run, where I run and why I run. I'm looking forward to a long future of putting one foot in front of the other," says Danica.
Would you like to read more about Danica's remarkable story and support cancer research? Go to www.charityrunner.org and search Danica Hubbard's name. She's raised over $1,250 so far.
Danica will join a long and growing list of faculty who have participated in endurance events including
- Christy Peterson, the Chicago Marathon, nearly qualifying for the Boston Marathon
- Ken Gray, the 2006 Toronto Marathon, and scheduled to run Philadelphia in November
- Ken Bretl, the Chicago Marathon
- Rob Bollendorf, the Chicago Marathon, three times
- Tom Carter, the Marine Corps Marathon and Grandma's in Minnesota
- Dave Rogers, the Chicago Marathon
- Bob Sobie, long distance cycling
- Linda Barkoozis, long distance cycling
- Tom Tipton, the Chicago Marathon
Did we miss you? Let us know your story!
