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Dean's Column
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My first semester as Dean has been a great introduction to the wonderful faculty and students that embody the College of Arts and Sciences. The positive energy on the SIUE campus is exciting and palpable.
At the same time, we face challenges that will continue to impact the courses and programs we deliver to our students.Now, more than ever, we need innovative solutions at both the local and global levels due to the challenges we face. Yet, the creativity of our faculty and students that I have already witnessed is up to the task.
Within this newsletter, you will meet some of these creative faculty and students who make up our College. From faculty who are researching important implications of climate change across the world, to a student who is pursuing his dream of one day playing jazz piano in the Lincoln Center, the diversity of talent is clear. From current students to Hall of Fame alumni, the strong academic history and tradition of the departments in the College of Arts and Sciences is on display.
In order to meet the ever changing needs of our students, we have identified four fundraising priorities within the College. Take a moment to review these priorities below. I invite you to join us in supporting these campaigns at whatever level is comfortable for you. Let’s join forces to take the College of Arts and Sciences to the next level!
As I continue in my first year as Dean, I welcome the opportunity to continue to meet and interact with the members of our community. Don't hesitate to email me at if you have questions or comments about our programs. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Gregory Budzban
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences |
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CAS Welcomes Two New Members to SIUE Alumni Hall of Fame |
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SIUE honored eight remarkable graduates at the 2015 Alumni Hall of Fame ceremony Friday, Oct. 2, in the Morris University Center. These alumni have achieved exploits in their respective fields, are role models and are testament to SIUE’s educational excellence.
Read more about Richard Bragga and Terry Turchie, the most recent College of Arts and Sciences alumni to earn this achievement.
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Richard Bragga, BA Mass Communications ’77, MA Mass Communications ’82
Rick Bragga is the president of Philanthropy 1, a philanthropic services and communications company. He is the only person to be awarded the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy’s (AHP) three top honors for leadership, writing and research. He has led and participated in charitable teams raising more than $350 million, authored numerous AHP journal articles, and presented more than 50 regional and national education sessions.
“I had an incredible experience at SIUE, and I followed a non-traditional path for a mass communications major,” Bragga said. “Communications gave me the base skills to do what I do.”
Bragga supports his community through the Boy Scouts, serving on the National Advisory Council, Southern Region Board and as chair of numerous other committees.
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Terry Turchie, MS Government ’76
Terry Turchie graduated from California State University at Sacramento in June 1972 with a bachelor’s in criminal justice. He earned a master’s in government from SIUE in 1976. He joined the FBI in a clerical capacity in July 1972 and was appointed as an FBI special agent in February 1976. He spent 30 years in the FBI, working in the Portland, New York City, San Francisco, Sacramento, Charlotte and Atlanta field divisions. After retiring from the FBI in 2001, he worked as the senior counterintelligence officer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 2008, Turchie co-founded TK Associates, a San Francisco risk management firm. He frequently serves as a consultant to corporate and law enforcement organizations.
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SIU BOT Approves Cobb as SIUE Interim Provost |
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The Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees today approved Denise Cobb, PhD, as interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs for the Edwardsville campus. The board held its regularly scheduled meeting on the Carbondale campus.
>>Read More |
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CAS Announces New Fundraising Priorities |
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The College of Arts and Sciences offers more than 50 degree programs. As a result of the vast size of our unit, we have established four fundraising priorities in the areas of: Humanities, Social Sciences, the Arts, and Mathematics & Science. Explore what each of these projects can offer our current and future students.
The IRIS Center (Humanities)
Media Integration Lab (Social Sciences)
Architectural Plans for Center for Performing and Visual Arts (the Arts)
Math & Science Scholarships
>>Learn More
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New Online Scholarship System for SIUE |
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With a commitment to support exceptional academic talent, SIUE makes it easy to apply for scholarships quickly online. For students receiving aid in 2015-16, the average financial aid received from all sources was $12,280.
Through the SIUE scholarship management system, all students can browse and apply for more than 450 scholarships available in the various schools, departments and units at SIUE. This system offers information on various external or outside scholarships available as well.
>>Search SIUE Scholarships today!
>>Great News for SIUE Alumni: SIUE Offers In-State Tuition for Family Members
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Great Rivers Math Teachers’ Circle |
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 The Math Teachers’ Circle Network is a project of the American Institute of Mathematics. SIUE’s Tammy Voepel, associate professor of mathematics and statistics; Adam Weyhaupt, chair of the department of mathematics and statistics; and Sharon Locke, director of the SIUE Center for STEM Research, Education and Outreach have partnered with two area math educators to establish the Great Rivers Math Teachers’ Circle (MTC). The group is open to interested middle school math teachers.
“The MTC will allow teachers to be engaged in solving problems, hopefully increasing their love of mathematics,” said Voepel. Each session will include dinner, followed by an intriguing assortment of rich mathematical problems and ideas for teachers to explore. RSVP today for the Great Rivers MTC.
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Friends of Art Auction Slated |
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SIUE’s Friends of Art (FOA) will host their annual Art Auction Wednesday, March 16, in the gallery of the Art and Design West Building. This 39th annual event will feature a variety of art pieces available to the highest bidder in both a silent and live auction.
“Alumni, friends, faculty, students and community members generously donate artwork,” said FOA President Andi Smith. “The FOA organize and staff the event, and everyone thoroughly enjoys bidding on all the amazing artwork,” she added.
Approximately 120 items will be up for bid on the live auction, with another 50-60 items available in a silent auction. Smaller individual items can also be purchased at a special “cash and carry” section.
The art auction is the largest single annual fundraiser organized by the FOA. Proceeds are used to fund student scholarships, visiting artists, student travel and other needs in the Department of Art and Design. More than two dozen activities were supported through last year’s auction. Many art and design graduates use the event as a way to “give back” to their former program.
“Fundraising is always hard work,” Smith said, “but every year we receive donations of artwork for our event from our alumni. Some have donated consistently for more than 20 years, shipping their work at their own expense. They benefitted from FOA-funded programs when they were students at SIUE and want to be sure current students enjoy those same opportunities.”
Doors for the art auction will open at 6 p.m., with the live auction by Ahrens & Neimeier auctioneers getting underway at 7. Admission will be $7 but is waived for students, Friends of Art members or those who donate items for the auction. There will be hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar. Attendees may preview the items they want to bid on in advance from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 15 and during the afternoon of March 16.
For more information, email FOA, visit the website, or find them on Facebook.
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SIUE Professors Link Violence to Climate Change |
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Two SIUE faculty members have published an interdisciplinary study showing a correlation between warming trends and violence. “Climate change and interpersonal violence: a ‘global’ estimate and regional inequities” by Dr. Dennis Mares and Dr. Kenneth Moffett was published in the November 27, 2015 edition of Climatic Change. They are both associate professors; Mares is in criminal justice studies while Moffett teaches political science.
Mares and Moffett examined temperatures and homicide rates in 57 countries over a 13-year period. Their findings indicate that as the temperature increases, so does the murder rate. The ratio is a 6 percent increase for each Celsius degree. Included in the variables studied were male youth unemployment, immigrant population, and the consumer price index.
"We have two reasons for believing that this connection exists,” Moffett explained. “First, higher temperatures encourage people to leave their homes and go elsewhere. This results in higher rates of violent encounters, because there are more opportunities for them. Second, higher temperatures increase irritability.
"Interestingly, though, this effect is not constant across different regions of the world. The effect is most concentrated in Africa, where we see an almost 18 percent increase in the homicide rate with each degree Celsius increase in temperature. On the other hand, this effect is muted somewhat in North America, where we observe a roughly 3 percent increase,” he said.
"Consequently, some of the countries that are the most disadvantaged are the ones that face the worst consequences as global temperatures increase," Moffett concluded.
Their findings were released just before the opening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which drew leaders from nearly 200 countries to France to discuss the topic. As a result, their study received much attention.
"We got a lot more publicity than we expected, and very quickly after our research came out,” Moffett said.
In addition to the St. Louis area market, Mares and Moffett were featured in a Minneapolis newspaper article, and contributed a piece for a blog for the Washington Post.
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Lice Research Lands SIUE Professor in the News |
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Dr. Kyong Sup Yoon’s 2015-16 academic year got off to a lousy start. That is nothing unusual, since this assistant professor has studied head and body lice for 15 years. But his research on the parasitic insect received world-wide attention.
The most recent findings of Yoon and his graduate studies mentor, Dr. John Marshall Clark of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, were presented at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in August 2015. They collected more than 100 lice samples from roughly 30 states--the largest such sampling in the United States. Their study shows that common head lice are adapting and becoming resistant to the common over-the-counter treatments that contain natural pyrethrins or synthetic pyrethroids. In at least 25 states, lice populations have mutated and developed genetic resistance to these insecticides.
Yoon, a neurotoxicologist with a shared appointment in SIUE’s biological sciences and environmental sciences programs, explained that this is not an unexpected phenomenon.
“Insects will develop additional adaption mechanisms, even beyond evolution,” he said. “Pyrethroids are relatively safe insecticides but were used without proper resistance management. They have lost efficacy, and couple of new FDA approved products are already available.”
Additionally, a handful of new formulations are currently being evaluated in various stages of clinical trials.
Although Yoon’s work on this study involved dead specimens, he has conducted a great deal of research with live lice. Few labs conduct research with this living parasite, as the insect feeds exclusively on human blood. An artificial membrane has been developed to keep strains of different louse colonies alive so they do not need to live on human hosts. Yoon and his colleagues have networked with professional “nitpickers” (delousing services often headed by former school nurses) to supply samples from different regions of the United States.
Yoon said he was surprised by the attention his lice study received but credits it to coinciding with the start of the new school year. Reporters interviewed him about the study for almost a month, with calls coming from as far away as the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
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Innovative Final Exam App Created at SIUE Provides Unique Academic Experience |
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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Mark Poepsel, assistant professor of mass communications in the College of Arts and Sciences, is constantly looking for innovative ways to teach students and provide experiential learning in a rapidly changing field.
>>Read More
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Lincoln Academy Honors SIUE’s Pritsolas among Elite College Students |
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 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Joshua Pritsolas, a senior geography major from Glen Carbon, has been honored by the Lincoln Academy of Illinois for his excellence in curricular and extra curricular activities. He was among the state’s most outstanding students celebrated at the annual Student Laureate Convocation on Saturday, Nov. 7 at the Old Sate Capitol in Springfield.
>>Read More
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SIUE Music Student “On Cloud Nine” Playing for The Temptations |
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More than 30 years ago, Tim Chandler remembers hearing the melodious hit tunes of “My Girl,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “The Way You Do the Things You Do” and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” that came from his parent’s vinyl records. But the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville piano jazz performance student never thought he’d have the chance to play for that legendary Motown group – The Temptations.
>>Read More
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