(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) Holidays are a time for valuing friendships and Heidi delivers that message in a brightly wrapped package when A Season for the Child continues at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with stagings of the beloved Johanna Spyri tale at 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, in SIUE's Katherine Dunham Hall theater.
Heidi, sponsored by the SIUE Friends of Theater and Dance (FOTAD) and TheBANK of Edwardsville, will be staged by the Imaginary Theatre (ITC), the traveling troupe of the Repertory Theatre Company of St. Louis. Heidi tells the story of a young orphan who is sent to live with her crotchety, reclusive grandfather, but Heidi's kind soul and simple joys win the old man's affections.
A Season for the Child is in its 16th year of presenting family-oriented theater to Southwestern Illinois audiences. The series features professional theater troupes from St. Louis that stage adaptations of various children's stories, using interactive techniques that not only delight children and parents, but also provide a learning experience.
Tickets are $5 per person and may be obtained through the SIUE Fine Arts box office, (618) 650-2774. FOTAD offers its holiday show twice on Dec. 11 to accommodate those families that are busy during the holidays. Proceeds from the series benefit FOTAD's scholarship fund for theater and dance majors at the university.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) The annual Holiday Musicale, sponsored by the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Friends of Music, will be offered from 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12.
This event showcases the musical talents of SIUE music students and faculty.
Edwardsville families in three private homes will play host to musical groups as visitors enjoy an "open house" setting, with jazz musicians performing at a St. Louis Street home; string students performing at a residence in Steinmeyer, and vocalists performing at a Stonebridge home.
The homes will be beautifully decorated for the holidays, and guests will have the opportunity to enjoy light refreshments while listening to delightful holiday music. A drawing will be offered at each house for a holiday wreath, donated by area florists. All proceeds will benefit the Friends of Music Scholarship fund, which helps promising musicians with the cost of their music education at SIUE.
Tickets are $10 and will include maps to the individual homes. Tickets may be purchased at TheBANK of Edwardsville (main branch), from any Friends of Music board member, or at the individual homes the day of the Musicale. For more information, call the SIUE Department of Music, (618) 650-3799.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) Two Southern Illinois University Edwardsville faculty members, one of whom won a Fulbright Scholarship in 2002, will be the featured commencement speakers at fall graduation ceremonies Saturday, Dec. 18, in SIUE's Vadalabene Center.
Nearly 880 students are eligible to graduate during the ceremonies at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Speaking at the morning ceremony to graduate candidates in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Schools of Engineering and Nursing is Philosophy Professor John Danley. Mary Konya Weishaar, associate professor and program director for Special Education, will speak during the afternoon ceremony to graduate candidates in the Schools of Business and Education.
Student speakers addressing the graduating classes are Sherry McDowell, who will receive a bachelor of science in Nursing, during the morning ceremony, and Shaunte Griffin, who has completed a bachelor of science in Business Administration with a specialization in Human Resources Management, during the afternoon ceremony.
Danley joined the SIUE Philosophy faculty in 1976. He earned a baccalaureate in Philosophy at Kalamazoo (MI) College; a master of divinity in the Philosophy of Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York City; and a master's and a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Rochester (NY).
Serving as assistant chair, acting chair, and chair of the Department of Philosophy at SIUE during one six-year period, Danley has been very active in departmental, school, college, and university governance for the university, serving on several committees over the past 28 years. He is the author of one book and 19 professional journal articles, and has made numerous grant proposals.
Danley was invited to participate in the Ruffin Lecture at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia for four consecutive years. His areas of specialization are social and political philosophy, ethics, and applied ethics in business and engineering.
Before coming to SIUE, Weishaar was director of Special Education for Collinsville Schools and also had served as Special Education Supervisor for the Mid-State Special Education Cooperative for Montgomery County-Carlinville Special Education Area. She also has been a Special Education teacher and counselor for Southwestern Community Unit School #7 as well as a Learning Disabilities teacher for Villa Park Schools.
In 2002, Weishaar lectured in Kiev at the University Ukraine under the Fulbright Scholar Program. She earned a bachelor of science and a master of science at Eastern Illinois University; she also received a doctorate at Saint Louis University. Her areas of expertise in Special Education include assessment, legal issues, and administration. She is the co-author of three books and 14 journal articles.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) Four rare murals, by the acclaimed Missouri artist Michael Chomyk, have been donated to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville by retired financial planner and real estate investor Heinz Peter, in honor of his mother, Elise Peter.
The murals, painted by Chomyk who died in 1993 in Ironton, Mo., at the age of 82, are the only surviving examples of his large-scale paintings from what was once a significant body of work, including a mural above the ticket area of St. Louis Union Station when it was a railroad terminal during the city's heyday.
"The importance of works such as these frequently is forgotten and the pieces are abandoned and destroyed as buildings change ownership and are either renovated or demolished," said Eric Barnett, director of The University Museum at SIUE. "The public should be grateful to Mr. Peter for working to save the paintings and donating them to a public institution."
Chomyk was one of a select group of artists chosen by the Works Progress Administration beginning in 1935 to create works that document the evolution of American trade, exploration, and achievement. Chomyk is listed as an artist with the WPA project in the book, The Federal Art Projects in Illinois, by George Mavigliano and Richard Lawson.
The murals donated by Peter depict the rise of St. Louis from its founding as a trading post to the time when the murals were painted by Chomyk in 1955 for the Farm and Home Savings & Loan Association in downtown St. Louis. Six of Chomyk's smaller works are in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Peter, who was born in Germany and educated in Switzerland, is an avid antique and art collector residing in Edwardsville. He donated the pieces to the SIUE museum so that they can be "kept together and enjoyed forever by the public.
"It gives me great pleasure to donate works of great historical value," Peter said, "especially from such an accomplished St. Louis artist."
Barnett said the murals will be cleaned, relined, and conserved over the course of the next several months. "We look forward to placing the paintings in a public space on campus so that the entire community can enjoy them," Barnett said.
(EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.) This past fall, the Information Technology (IT) Department at Royster-Clark Inc., in Collinsville, teamed with three graduate students from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Business to initiate a business process review of customer payments.
The focus of the project was improving operating efficiencies and funds available at Royster-Clark, a retail and wholesale distributor of mixed fertilizer materials, seed, crop protection products, and agronomic services to farmers. The company has more than 300 outlets primarily in the East, South, and Midwest.
Royster-Clark faced at least two challenges: receiving payments from 50,000 customers through two types of transactions and documenting and applying payment to a customer's accounts involving extra, unnecessary steps. Both of these challenges have financial impacts, such as delays in cash flow and additional costs to the company.
The SIUE graduate students-Gaston Reinoso, Mike Klaus, and Zhangfan (James) Lin-conducted nearly 50 interviews with Royster-Clark customers regarding payment of monthly statements. For more than two days, the students reviewed flowcharts, spreadsheets, and other data to identify processing efficiencies and ways to alleviate the delays.
One of the activities in which the students took part was a check float study. Four hundred checks were sent to 20 locations and were deposited over a five-day period. Each location received 10 checks and mailed two checks per day, one to a lockbox and one to a local bank depository or to the company's Collinsville office, whichever location was normally used. The bank float and the mail float were tracked to measure the length of time it took to reach the bank or the Collinsville office.
It was found that because of logistics and network traffic, a 10-mile destination for a letter could actually become a 100-mile trip.
As project coordinators, Timothy Schoenecker, associate dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Business, and Gertrude Pannirselvam, associate professor of Management, are pleased with the results of the students' experience. Not only were the students given a chance to put into practice what they have learned through coursework, but the company was able to benefit from the students' access to SIUE's academic library, where they could research practices of leading companies.
While the three graduate students have completed their portion of the project, more students from the School of Business will be working with Royster-Clark. Bob Paarlberg, managing director of Royster-Clark's IT department, said, "we want the SIUE School of Business to think of our office as a real life laboratory for their graduate school students. With this resource, we get to learn about emerging practices that are still in the incubator stage."
