Frankie Valli to make a song for all 4 seasons
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons will return to the IU Auditorium at 8 p.m. Saturday to play for an audience with members from an entirely new generation.
272 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons will return to the IU Auditorium at 8 p.m. Saturday to play for an audience with members from an entirely new generation.
Fine arts professor Tim Kennedy looks at a book on sale at Decorate Your Digs on Wednesday afternoon at the IU Art Museum. The event was a collaboration of the IU Art History Association and the IU art museum's works-on-paper department.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s student-run radio station, WIUX LP 99.1 FM, is one of 50 stations in the running for mtvU’s College Radio Woodie Award.“The exciting thing was we got picked for the list of 100,” junior Ryan Patena, general manager of WIUX, said. “I honestly have no idea how we got chosen.”Junior and IDS reporter Kelsey McArdle, who is music director for WIUX, said she received an e-mail about the nomination four days before voting for the top 50 closed.“Everyone’s really dedicated to getting people to vote,” she said. “Winning this award would kind of blow everyone’s mind.”WIUX was recently recognized on iTunes in the staff favorite section, Patena said. The station was one of 10 picked in October and November 2008, again in April and for the entire summer, he said.Hundreds of listeners are online at any given time, and WIUX has 10 to 15 times as many listeners because of iTunes recognition, Patena said.“Hits went up from 50 per day to 5,000 per day,” McArdle said.The variety of WIUX programs might be one of the reasons the station was nominated, McArdle said, representing every niche in the community.“We try to play what we like, but also what the community likes,” she said.Sophomore Madeline Dowling’s show airs from 2 to 4 p.m. Sundays. She described it as “songs people love, songs people didn’t know they loved and songs people forgot they loved.”“What makes my program different is I have Grandma’s pick of the week,” she said. “She’s my only consistent listener I’m sure of, and she doesn’t like most of the music I play. If I play a Dean Martin song for my grandma, she’ll be happy.”The nomination for the mtvU award could open up a lot of doors for the station by gaining the support of people interested in working with the best of the best, Dowling said, as well as catch the attention of employers.“We have the highest level of interest from students this year,” Patena said. “We had over 200 applicants for 120 to 150 time slots. We have a completely full 24-hour-a-day live DJ schedule for the first time in the past few years.”It is exciting for members of the station’s crew to be recognized for their hard work, Dowling said.“Just being nominated is huge,” Patena said. “It shows that the dedication is not going unnoticed.”WIUX already has good credibility, WIUX DJ and sophomore Adam Jennison said. Spreading awareness of the station is the best way to expand it, he said, and expansion at this point is the biggest thing.“I’ve been voting a lot,” Dowling said. “There’s no limit to how many times you can. I just leave the page up and click it 30 times while I’m on the phone.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Toast with a slice of cheddar cheese, scrambled eggs and Tabasco sauce. It may sound like an unusual combination, but it’s senior Anne Rathell’s hangover food of choice.“Yeah, it sounds disgusting,” she said. “I just eat it, and I feel better. Scrambled eggs aren’t heavy. Something heavy, greasy, it’s horrible for your stomach.”Everyone has a different hangover cure they swear by and different reasons to trust cures told to them by friends, family or strangers.“You have to take it with a grain of salt,” senior Nicole Lamb said. “If it worked for them, it’s worth a try.”There are, of course, the normal remedies that most people use: several glasses of water before going to sleep or after waking up, foods full of protein and lots of Tylenol. However, some college students find less typical remedies to try.Senior Matt Thomas said he trusted his brother’s remedy, a hangover cure called the “Wisconsin lunchbox,” because his brother is a pharmacist. The Wisconsin lunchbox, he said, is when someone drinks orange juice and beer first thing after waking up.Rathell said she studied abroad in Russia last year and while there, a friend told her of a hangover cure where someone mixes kefir, a Russian product she said is a cross between milk and yogurt, with pickle juice and drinks it.“He showed up to class still drunk,” she said. “I think half the class was still drunk. The teacher stopped the class and asked if they still were, then told them that’s what they need to drink.”Cole Parker, a law student at IU, said he prefers Rockstar energy drinks as his favorite hangover remedy. The B vitamins in the drink get rid of the headaches that come with a hangover, he said. Or instead of drinking Rockstar the next day, Parker said a good cure is drinking coffee and sitting around.“I heard a girl say she goes to the sauna and swims,” he said. “That’s too much moving.”While Rathell said she does not like eating greasy food the next day, senior Katie O’Leary said she prefers greasy foods, but nothing sweet. After processing large amounts of sugar the night before, she said eating sweet foods the next day makes a person’s body remember the alcohol and makes the person feel worse.Rathell said she does not have hangovers often; however, she gets them more now than when she first began drinking. To avoid them, she said she rotates between alcohol and water while drinking.“I’ve been ‘can’t-move hung over’ no more than three times,” she said. “For my worst hangover, it’s a tie. One time was my 21st birthday, mainly because people kept buying me shots. You can’t say no to free alcohol when you’re a poor college student.”Though everyone has their own cures they use or try, Danelle Seese, a Bloomington resident, said she thinks the cure is all in the person’s head sometimes.“Sometimes they just think it works,” she said. “It’s some kind of psychological thing.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Although Windows 7 won’t be released to the public until October, IU students can access the software now.Windows 7, the newest upgrade after Windows Vista, was released early at the IU Bookstore on Wednesday, said Sue Workman, associate vice president at the office of the vice president for information technology.“It won’t be released everywhere until October,” she said. “We actually got it earlier than we expected.”IU received the program early due to a campus agreement with Microsoft, Workman said. Every year, IU and Microsoft negotiate a deal about special pricing, she said, which includes upgrades such as Windows 7.“The $20 version here would be about $210 somewhere else,” freshman Dru Sappington said. “It’s quite a discount.”IU paid for a contract to make new programs as cheap as they are, Workman said. While other programs such as Microsoft Office are free, she said, operating systems are more complicated and need to be put on a media disk.“Its safer on a media and the better way to do it,” she said.Windows 7 is an improvement over Windows Vista, said Greg Moore, senior communication specialist for the University Information Technology Services, because older versions do not have as many features.“An advantage for students is the version they get is tricked out with everything. It has a new, more appealing look,” he said. “But the real advantages are under the surface.”Windows 7 has more security and is much more stable than previous upgrades, Moore said. It also uses libraries instead of folders, he said, making it easier to find documents faster.“I have a released trial version of it,” Sappington said. “It’s a lot faster and more clear than Vista. It only took me a day to learn.”With the early release, students can get a feel for the upgrade earlier, Sappington said. Students can test the program and play around with it before using it in classes, he said.The inexpensive availability of Windows 7 on campus is a great value for students, Workman said, because it gives them access to the latest operating system, which they may not have somewhere else.UITS informed students of the release Wednesday in their e-mail newsletter, Moore said, and saw people buying it right away.“There’s been a lot of buzz about it,” Moore said. “They just did a great job with it.”
Small student cast prepares fine details of on-campus indie film.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Empty crock pots and other dishes were the only items that remained on most tables, the food long gone.“This was 15 pounds of beef,” said Vera Heitink, co-chair of the United Presbyterian Church’s annual Ethnic Food Fair, pointing to an empty crock pot.People lined up at the door of the church Saturday, waiting to taste home-cooked ethnic dishes from around the world.“For the first hour, it was non-stop,” said Aline Haddad, a cook for the event. “They’ve learned to come quickly and fast. If they come late, all of the food is gone.”Aline Haddad, from Lebanon, said she makes the Middle Eastern dishes for the event with a friend from Jordan. Every year she said they always think they need to cook more food.Almost twice as many people came in the first hour, said Rachel Loop, one of the co-chairs of the event, and two-thirds more tickets were sold than last year.“I think the weather was a lot of it,” she said. “And there weren’t a lot of other things going on. But it’s the food that makes it successful.”Preparing the dishes for the event begins on the day before the event each year.“People do not know how much work is done making the dishes,” Heitink said. “I was sitting for two hours just peeling garlic.”Preparation is more of a social occasion, Loop said. While it is work, she said, it is also fun.One main problem the organizers of the event have is estimating how much of each dish to make, Loop said.“We run out of some foods,” she said. “That’s always something we try to figure out. Last year we had too much Korean food; this year we ran out.”One of the Church’s appealing qualities, Loop said, is the multicultural composition. The food fair demonstrates their ethnicity and celebrates their diversity, she said.Freshman Aida Haddad, a member of the church, said the food fair is a good way to show people the church.“Plus, my parents like to see a lot of kids around,” Aida Haddad said. Although many people who attend the event are members of the church, Loop said a lot of people who attend are neighbors from the area that walk there every year.“They don’t come to the church, but they always come to the festival,” she said. “I have two longtime friends that I’ve been friends with for 20 or 25 years that I can always be sure to see once a year, because they always come to this event.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The United Presbyterian Church will provide good food, good fun and good fellowship at the tenth-annual Ethnic Food Fair on Saturday.The church, located three blocks South of Forest Quad, will open its doors from 5 to 7 p.m.“The food fair reflects the makeup of this Church,” event co-chair Allen Pease said. “It gives people a chance to experience diversity in a pleasant atmosphere.”All of the food at the fair is homemade by more than 20 members of the church, Pease said. “But not baklava,” he said. “That’s too hard to make.”Church members will be at each station to answer questions about the dishes, Pease said.Vera Heitink, co-chair of the event, said she cooks the Indonesian food each year. Because her food is always the first to sell out, she said her booth has been moved to the last one in the row.“I make a special sauce,” she said. “They always come back for the sauce.” Pease said the church has become more ethnically diverse over the last 30 years because of its welcoming atmosphere. “We have people from most every continent,” said Alejandra Haddad, a member of the church who will contribute Colombian dishes.The Ethnic Food Fair brings people of different ethnicities together to sit and talk with each other, Heitink said.Tickets will be sold for the event at the church office and will cost $10 for adults and $5 for students and children six and older. Children five and under are free. In addition to the food, the church will also sell cookbooks with recipes donated by members over the last 35 years, Pease said.“There are over 800 recipes in the book,” he said. “But we aren’t serving 800 dishes this weekend.”Money collected from the event will go to the International Christian Fellowship, Pease said. The money is spent on events and activities of the church itself as well as being donated to missions, such as an eye clinic in Honduras, that are sponsored by the church, he said.Each year, between 200 and 300 people attend the event, which is about half church members and half community members, Pease said. Last year the church sold about 40 tickets to IU students, he added.“We wish we had more students,” Haddad said. “We almost try to be a home away from home for the students.” In order to get all of the food ready to serve the crowd, Heitink said she will begin preparing the food the day before. “My house will smell from the bottom to upstairs,” she said. “There is a lot to do, but I’m excited.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Accidents are uncommon at senior Kinsey Gray’s job with Recreational Sports, but people have not failed to make things interesting during her shifts.“One time this guy worked out while he was high and passed out and broke his nose,” she said.The student was using the squat machine in the equipment room of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, she said. He became dizzy and passed out, falling on his face and jamming his nose upward. Gray said when she asked the student’s friends if she could call an ambulance, they refused the offer and rushed the student to the bathroom.“I radioed the team leader to check on him,” Gray said. “And she said the guy smelled like he had been smoking. They left before we could get any information.”Gray began working for Recreational Sports two and a half years ago and said she does not see accidents on a regular basis.The most common accidents occur when people try to lift too much weight, think they can run faster or longer than they can, do not eat all day beforehand or are new to working out, Gray said.“Accidents happen when people aren’t following policy or aren’t using the equipment right,” senior Claudia Burns, a Recreational Sports employee, said. “We had a guy crush his toe while using the bench once. It looked really awful. He was wearing loafers.”Junior Cameron Davis, a Recreational Sports employee, said people often have accidents when they do not clip their weights while using the bench. One person who did not use clips put five plates on each side of a squat rack, he said. The student fell backwards and dropped all the weights to the floor.“The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen was two big guys come in with a girl dressed in all black,” Davis said. “The girl had a ring on the front of her neck. One of the guys took the cable from the cable machine and attached it to the ring on her neck. The girl got on the shoulders of the bigger guy and he used her as a weight to do crunches. That never came up in training.”Susie Mahoney, assistant director of informal sports and equipment operations for Recreational Sports, said peoples’ pants have fallen down while running on the treadmill because they are too loose or because they get stuck in the machine.Junior Drew Simmonds, who works mostly by the basketball court at HPER, said he has not seen many accidents. However, during freshman orientation this year, a student playing basketball blocked a pass, hitting another student in the face and breaking his nose.For the number of people that utilize equipment at HPER and the SRSC, Burns said there are a low number of incidents.“They happen more so at the beginning of the year or right before spring break,” junior Matt Wallpe, a Recreational Sports employee, said.Staff members are certified in first aid and CPR, she said, but for more serious injuries, people involved in the accidents have to visit their doctors.“Serious accidents are not common,” Simmonds said. “It’s more petty things.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students who want to join IU organizations aren’t letting the economy get in their way.“Despite the economy, I think students will continue to push forward,” said Caitlin Callahan, vice president of the IU Student Foundation.Many student organizations have not seen a decline in membership but have changed certain aspects of their organization to accommodate students’ needs during the current economic climate. Callahan said the number of people that came to this year’s first call-out meeting for IUSF was about the same as the past year’s. The club also changed is enrollment process this year and now allows members to sign up online instead of attending a meeting, she said, so there could be even greater interest among students than was shown at the call-out meeting.Jessica Dyrdahl, IU Student Association funding board advisor at the Office of Student Organizations and Leadership Development, said the office has seen an increase in the number of organizations on campus.“We went from over 650 groups to over 700 by the end of last year,” she said. “People keep wanting to start organizations for students to be involved in.”The Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority schedules meetings and activities around members’ work schedules, said junior Samantha Moulier.“Activities aren’t the priority anymore, work is,” she said. “Work does make it harder. Students have to be willing to take the risk of managing their time.”Fees are one reason some organizations have seen a decrease in membership. Some students do not have the funds to participate in groups they are interested in, Moulier said.“It happens a lot more now,” she said. “It does get costly. Our dues are around $300 to $400 a year.”More groups are going to the IUSA student organization funding board for funding than in previous years, Dyrdahl said. The board supported almost 100 student groups during first semester last year, ranging from long-standing organizations to newly formed groups, she said.“They help as many as they can, as many different types as they can,” Dyrdahl said.The IU Photography Society, an organization that started three years ago, relies on IUSA for funding, junior Derek Cutting said. The group asks members to pay a yearly fee of $10.“We haven’t seen a decrease in members,” Cutting said. “Because we’re a new club, we’ve seen an increase so far. Arts are one of few fields that is always functioning, there’s never a boom period.”Members of the club are worried, however, about receiving assistance from the benefit galleries that they plan, Cutting said. With the recent economic decline, the club is expecting a decrease in donations.Joining student organizations on campus can provide students with skills they can use later, Dyrdahl said.“Most students get involved with groups that go along with their careers,” she said.Senior Ashley Cox said it is harder to find a job these days due to the economy, so students are turning to organizations to fulfill their volunteer requirements for classes.“If students need volunteer hours, now is a good time to do it,” she said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Lights atop fire trucks will flash and horns will blare this weekend, but not because firefighters will be called into action. Bloomington firefighters will show off their fire trucks to visitors at their annual Be Safe Fire Department Open House, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Bloomington Fire Department on Fourth and Lincoln Street during the 4th Street Festival. It will start with a pancake breakfast cooked by the firefighters themselves.“We wanted to take advantage of the fair right in front of the building,” said Robert Stumpf, battalion chief of training for the city of Bloomington Fire Department. “It made sense to open our doors so when kids come by we could talk to them about safety and show them the station. Then it became a big, all-day cookout.”At 11 a.m. the firefighters switch to lunch items such as burgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers and chicken, all made to order.All of the food will be sold for a small price and the money will be donated to the Local Firefighters Union, Stumpf said. The union sponsors victims of fire in the community by helping to replace some of the things lost in the fire, he said.Besides raising money, the open house also gives members of the community an opportunity to see the station, said Daniel Lewis, communications director for the City of Bloomington. “They show people all around,” he said. “Where the guys go when they’re off duty, the garage. You really get to see everything that goes on in the station.”The fire department has never received a call during the event, Lewis said. However, there are still firefighters on duty. The firefighters in charge of the cookout and tours are off-duty, he said.“It’s officially a volunteer effort,” Lewis said. “It won’t hurt any service.”A new edition to the open house this year is the pipe and drum band, Stumpf said. The band, which consists of all firefighters, will perform in front of the firehouse both days until 12 or 12:30 p.m. The first year the fire department had the open house, they did not do a lot of marketing, Stumpf said. As the station began to market the event more, he said they have seen an increase in visitors from one year to the next.“The fundraisers are very important,” Lewis said. “And it’s important to get a chance to see the facilities and put a face with the fire fighters who sacrifice a great deal for the community. It’s a good way to spend some time with them.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Digital music download sales increased by 30 percent in 2008, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. However, avid music listeners continue to purchase physical copies of their favorite songs in the form of CDs and vinyl records.“I want more from my music,” senior Mike Lang said. “It’s easy to download hundreds of songs at a time and never listen to them.”Lang, who buys CDs in mass quantities, works at Tracks Music & Videos, a small record store on Kirkwood Avenue. Tracks owner Andy Walter said he began the business 37 years ago at Purdue University. The Bloomington store opened 21 years ago and is now the only one he owns.“The music business has changed dramatically,” Walter said. “It changed when big-box stores like Best Buy came in and people didn’t have to go to record stores anymore. People can be exposed to a variety of music online far greater than by walking in a record store.”Tracks, which began solely as a CD store, eventually became a CD and DVD store and is now a CD, DVD and IU apparel store, he said.While sales are decreasing at Tracks and record stores similar to it, listeners like freshman Jonathan Pabey continue to support the traditional music industry. Pabey said he owns an iPod but has never downloaded from iTunes or other downloading Web sites. He prefers the aesthetic sound of vinyl records and CDs.“Vinyl sounds better, crisper,” he said. “Vinyl almost sounds like the band is playing in your room.”Digital music cuts out the finer details of songs, Lang said. Vinyl records include all the sounds involved in recording, so listeners get more out of the music experience.“Vinyl records on the right system sound immensely better,” Lang said. “But you have to invest in a solid turntable.”Artwork on packaging is another reason Pabey and Lang said they continue to buy CDs. Bands spend a lot of time finding artwork that fits their sound and style, Lang said.“It’s a nice bonus to have, especially for concept albums,” he said. “It puts you in the mood for what you’re about to listen to.”Senior Haleigh Howe, another Tracks employee, said artists decorate their MySpace pages in basically the same way by posting CD images and other photos. It gives off the same feel as album artwork, he said.Pabey said he thinks art and music go hand in hand and disagrees with downloading artwork online.“What are you going to do with it, just save it in a file?” he said.When records first came out, Howe said they were used to support the artist’s tour and schedule gigs. Then artists began to make more money from the records than the shows, he said. “The record got people to come to the show,” Howe said.He added with the introduction of digital downloads, the income for the music industry turned around again. However, artists are not selling the massive amounts of CDs they sold 10 years ago, Pabey said.“Back in the day, people like Mariah Carey and Alanis Morissette sold 22 million copies,” he said. “Now you’re really successful if you hit a million or two.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The return of an ice cream shop to downtown Bloomington will not be as sweet as Hartzell Martel and his wife had hoped.The Martels are opening a new ice cream shop on Dunn Street within a few weeks, but they did not receive the rights to the name Jiffy Treet, Hilary Martel said.The Martels previously owned the ice cream shop on Kirkwood Avenue, then called Hartzell's Jiffy Treet, for 14 years. The store was forced to close in 2006 because the building was bought out, not because of poor business, Hartzell Martel said. The couple still maintains the Jiffy Treet located on Pete Ellis Drive.“We hoped to come back sooner, but we wanted to find the right space,” Hilary Martel said. “We miss being downtown.”Hartzell Martel said the original owners of Jiffy Treet told him he was under discretion for usage of the title.“In another article I read the owners said they intend to make it a corporation,” he said. “But we just don’t know why we weren’t allowed the name.”The Martels owned the Kirkwood Jiffy Treet for 14 years, Hartzell Martel said. The downtown area is different from the location of the Jiffy Treet on Pete Ellis Drive, he said. With the shop downtown, there will be more room to try different things.The exact opening date of the shop is currently undecided.“We really don’t know. It could be a little over three weeks, it could be less,” Hartzell Martel said. “It all depends on how much we get done in the store.”After being denied rights to the name, Hilary Martel said they might call the shop Hartzell’s to keep it similar to the previous Kirkwood location.By not naming the shop Jiffy Treet, the Martel’s will be able to sell different products and flavors not available at other Jiffy Treet shops, Hilary Martel said. “At first we were upset we couldn’t use the Jiffy Treet name,” she said. “It will be hard to promote both stores with different names. But now we will get a fresh start, a fresh spin.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Summer grades are in. While Purdue hangs its B on the fridge, IU shuffles home with a D. A recent report studying the general education requirements at leading universities questioned IU’s overall education.The study, titled “What will they learn?” looked at the curriculums of 100 colleges and universities across the nation, said David Azerrad, program officer for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which conducted the report.“The report is meant to be a study on higher education,” Azerrad said. “Our argument is there are seven key areas every student should know.”According to the report, universities should include composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics and science as required general education courses for each student.Of the 100 universities, 42 received D’s and F’s, Azerrad said. In the report, IU received a D for only requiring two of the seven subjects, composition and foreign language. Because the mathematics and science courses are combined in a single distribution category, IU was not credited for either subject.“Combination does not ensure knowing both,” Azerrad said. “We want to make sure students are both scientifically literate and mathematically educated. They are equally important.”Sonya Stephens, vice provost for undergraduate education at IU, said there are limitations to the report. Two main weaknesses, she said, are that the report takes a particular view about education where students all take the same courses and that it does not take all schools on the Bloomington campus into account.The council focused on the college of arts and sciences in each university, Azerrad said.“They are measuring something that’s constantly changing,” Stephens said. “They took one educational view of a narrow curriculum taken by all and used it to rate schools that each have their own models of general education.”A new curriculum for entering IU freshmen will be set in 2011, she said. The curriculum will require students of each school to take a total of 31 to 32 credits in general education courses, Stephens said, as well as credits in intensive writing, information fluency, diversity and enriching educational experiences.“The report implies that IU students do what they want and take easy courses to get good grades,” she said. “But that’s not what IUB does at all. The report underestimates students’ commitment to learning.”The report is not an argument against choice, Azerrad said, but rather that there are seven key areas that need to be covered. “What Will They Learn?” was meant to be a wake-up call to parents, faculty members and others involved in the universities, he said.“It’s a rule of thumb that people pay more attention to reputation than education,” Azerrad said. “However, some universities tout virtues of a strong curriculum but allow students to graduate with a thin education.”While IU received a D in the report, Stephens said she thinks students at IU are getting a broad education.“Students would be hard-pressed to find as many opportunities in specialization,” she said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In an effort to provide high-quality pork to Indiana food banks, Indiana Pork, in collaboration with Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, launched its Million Meals program at the annual Indiana Pork Ham Breakfast on Aug. 7. “We wanted to create a program statewide for pork producers who want to contribute to feeding the hungry,” said Michael Platt, executive director of Indiana Pork.The goal of the Million Meals program is to donate one million pork meals to Indiana food banks over the course of a year, Platt said. Approximately 160 pork producers donating one pig a month will accomplish the goal.While the pork industry is coming up on the end of a second year of losses, producers still want to get involved in helping the hungry, Platt said. Indiana Pork is working with industry partners to sustain funds for the start of the program.“Though the pork industry has seen a recent downturn due to the economy,” Platt said, “pork producers recognize that there are people out there worse off than they are and want to help them.”The number of food bank participants has increased 30 percent nationally during the last several months, said Emily Bryant, executive director of Feeding Indiana’s Hungry. Currently about 600,000 Hoosiers go hungry – about 10 percent of the Indiana population – 190,000 of whom are children, she said.“The campaign will provide quality meat to Hoosiers who really need it,” she said. “We want to make sure they are receiving food that is nutritious.”Protein is one food type missing in many food banks, Platt said. The program will help deliver high-quality protein to food banks across Indiana.Julio Alonso, executive director of Hoosier Hills Food Bank, said fresh meat is not donated on a regular basis.“We rely heavily on donations,” he said. “We take whatever we can get. Unfortunately it doesn’t always have nutritional value. With the Million Meals program we will be able to access pork and put it to good use.”In addition to providing protein, the program works to establish a relationship with Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, Platt said. The relationship will allow pork producers more opportunities to donate their time and products to helping the hungry.“Pork producers are an integral part of the community,” he said. “The program will recognize the generosity of the producers in adding to the community.”Bryant said the program will help in the goal of Feeding Indiana’s Hungry to make Indiana the first hunger-free state.“Ultimately that is always our goal,” she said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students and faculty members can now bring research in the environmental sciences directly from the outdoors to the indoors with IU’s new Field Laboratory, located a mile from campus at the Griffy Preserve.The laboratory, which uses new techniques in minimizing human impact on the environment, opened April 22, said Jenna Morrison, a graduate research assistant for the IU Research and Teaching Preserve.IU’s board of trustees approved plans for the lab in 2003, said Keith Clay, director of the IU Research and Teaching Preserve.“It’s been six years in the making,” he said. “We thought it could become a centerpiece and catalyst for more and better environmental science research and teaching at IU.”The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program declared the lab “silver” LEED-certified, meaning it uses enough eco-friendly approaches to receive certification, said David Bricker, a University communications representative. A few of the eco-friendly components include a roof based on recycled steel material, new insulation technology based on shredded newspaper, indirect lighting and air circulation and composting toilets, Clay said.“There is very little resource use,” he said. “Using cutting-edge technology in the Field Laboratory gives the opportunity for the University to explore the methods before, say, changing all of the dorms to composting toilets.”Morrison said the building conforms to IU’s mission to preserve land not used for development.“We’re using the building to learn how to be stewards of the natural environment,” she said. “It makes sense to have the building also economically friendly.”The building has four lab rooms ranging from wet to dry, Morrison said. Wet labs are used for processing samples, while dry rooms contain computers available for researchers. Besides the labs, the building also contains classrooms, a presentation room and some office space.Students and faculty members can use the labs or classrooms by reserving them ahead of time, Morrison said. The building is not open to the public, but if people express an interest in conducting research there, they can reserve a time.Students can receive grants for their research at the Field Laboratory by submitting a proposal, which is then evaluated by Clay and other people familiar with the area, Clay said.“Doing field research requires extra money that students do not have,” said James Farmer, manager of the IU Research and Teaching Preserve. “The grants help promote research at the preserve.”With IU sitting right on the edge of extensive natural areas, students and faculty are provided with a focal point for researching and teaching, Clay said.“The building is located directly adjacent to the forest,” he said. “There’s a vast array of habitats literally within reach of the building. You can go back and forth from outside to inside. That’s where the facility will be most useful.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel advisory Monday recommending people avoid unnecessary travel to Mexico because of the recent swine influenza outbreak.“IU is following the information very closely,” said Diana Ebling, medical director at the IU Health Center. “So far no restrictions have been put on travel. It is just recommended.”The outbreak has since spread to about seven countries, including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Israel and the United Kingdom, said David Orentlicher, co-director of the Center for Law and Health at the IU School of Law-Indianapolis. Only a few states have seen signs of the outbreak, including Indiana.The CDC confirmed a University of Notre Dame student as having the first case of the virus in Indiana on Tuesday. The case reported was mild, and health officials said the student has fully recovered. That student had not recently traveled to Mexico, where the new flu strain is suspected of causing more than 150 deaths.So far no other cases have been confirmed in Indiana. Indiana was expected to have sent a total of about 30 viral samples to the CDC by late Tuesday for analysis to determine if they might be swine flu, said Elizabeth Hart, a spokeswoman for the state department of health.Ebling said people began to take notice of the outbreak last week when the first cases were confirmed in California and Texas. The virus received special attention because it is a strain never seen before.“That’s partly what’s causing the concern,” she said. “It does not appear that the flu vaccine that people got this year will provide protection against the illness. People would also not have immunity to this strain because it is a new virus.”Orentlicher said a high percentage of deaths have been reported in Mexico, but only mild cases have been seen in other countries.“One reason people are especially concerned is that young, healthy people have been seen among the people dying,” he said. “But so far that isn’t the case in other countries, which is more reassuring.”Even with the single case reported in Indiana, Steve Chaplin, a University Communications representative, said students do not need to take extreme precautions, such as avoiding classes or crowded events.The IU Health Center is primarily inviting students to participate in common sense precautions, such as covering mouths when they cough, washing hands properly, avoiding touching the nose, eyes and mouth and avoiding shaking hands with other people, Ebling said.The most common symptoms are coughing, body aches and a fever of more than 100 degrees, Ebling said. Other symptoms can include vomiting and diarrhea. Most cases only last up to a week, and medicine can be taken to shorten the number of days.“We want people to be informed,” Ebling said. “And we will continue to update the health center Web site. I know they will be coming out with recommendations for students as it gets closer to the time when they will be going overseas to study abroad.”– The Associated Press Contributed to this report.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Older and forgotten books in IU’s extensive library collection often fall by the wayside in researchers’ attempts to get the most out of what the libraries have to offer.By digitizing the books through the Google Books Project, every book will be available online for researchers’ use.As part of the Google Books Project agreement in 2007, each Big Ten university agreed to join Google in this effort, Eric Bartheld, director of communications for IU Bloomington Libraries, said.IU’s folklore collection will be the first “collection of distinction” digitized through an agreement between the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and Google, Bartheld said. Digitizing the folklore collection will begin in mid-May and will hopefully be completed by the end of the summer.“The basic approach is to grab books from anywhere and put them in one big pot with results from here, there and everywhere,” said Moira Smith, librarian for anthropology, folklore, sociology and social work at the IU Libraries.The project will allow anyone to search volumes on Google using keywords, Bartheld said. Most volumes will only allow researchers to view small portions of the works, due to concerns about copyright issues, he said.“The snippets will give readers a preview of the volume,” Smith said. “Readers will get enough information to decide ‘Yes, this is a book I want to look at.’”Libraries participating in the agreement are interested in making the content of their collections as widely available as possible, said Kim Armstrong, assistant director of the CIC.“Google makes digitizing possible in a way that the libraries could not have achieved on the same timeline,” she said.Of the Big Ten universities, IU was the first to begin digitizing, said Patricia Steele, Ruth Lilly dean of University Libraries. Because the libraries’ collections were already catalogued and readily accessible, they were ready to send the volumes to Google, she said.“We send books to Google by semi-truck loads,” Smith said. “Digitizing the books takes about six to 12 weeks.”As part of the agreement, each institution involved will digitize at least one “collection of distinction,” Armstrong said. Other collections will be brought together across the CIC institutions. The “collections of distinction” are important because they bring intellectual content together the way they would have done in a print environment, she said.“We have the largest single library folklore collection in the world,” Smith said. “The ‘collection of distinction’ shows off the exceptional resource that IU has.”As of now the collection will be put into Google Book Search as single volumes, but Smith said people will hopefully be able to search the collection in its entirety in the future.Collections in print are deteriorating, Armstrong said, and digitizing the volumes will provide long-term access.“I think some people believe we are devaluing the book by digitizing them,” Steele said. “But by digitizing them we are providing a new discovery mechanism that the book never had before. For many people, if something isn’t online, it doesn’t exist.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Environmental Management Association of IU will take part in two tree giveaway events this week in celebration of Earth Week.The first event, organized by the city of Bloomington, will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at People’s Park on Kirkwood Avenue. The other event will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. At the tree giveaway events, any attendee from IU and the Bloomington community can pick up a tree seedling with instructions on where to plant it and how to take care of it, said Julie Ramey, community relations manager for the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department.“The seedlings are about 12 to 14 inches tall and come in a plastic baggie so you can take them home and plant them,” she said. “I’m thinking there will be plenty to go around.”Ramey said trees are the only renewable resource.“The important thing is to have the right tree in the right place,” she said. “You have to be careful not to plant tall trees under power lines. Usually in a power line war, the power lines win.”Three native species of trees will be offered at the events: white oak, black gum and flowering dogwood, said Frances Gary, chair of the Environmental Management Association.The city of Bloomington, Michael Herbert, an alumnus member of the association and his father donated the trees, said Jenna Morrison, head of the special initiatives committee for the association.The group decided to participate in two tree giveaway events in order to reach out to multiple groups in the Bloomington community, Morrison said.“EMA is involved with numerous community outreach projects,” she said. “So it was important to the organization that we could give out trees to the Bloomington community at the People’s Park event on Tuesday as well as to the IU community at SPEA on Wednesday.”At the Earth Day Celebration on Tuesday, companies such as General Motors, Sycamore Land Trust and Pizza X will set up booths to share information about eco-conscious ways of doing business, Ramey said. Information about carbon footprint reduction will also be available, she said. “The focus of the celebration is to demonstrate the viability of green businesses and how easy and important it is for people to reduce their carbon footprint,” Ramey said.A carbon footprint is a gauge of how much carbon one person, company or city uses in a given amount of time, said Michael Hamburger, associate dean of facilities and co-chair of the IU sustainability task force.“There is very strong scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide may be a drastic cause of global warming,” he said. “Information at the event will provide new approaches to lower a person’s environmental impact.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>President Michael McRobbie made a key change this year as to how commencement speakers are chosen, designating the duty to honorary degree recipients and eliminating student input from the selection process, a University spokesman said Thursday.IU announced Tuesday that former Australian Justice Michael Kirby will speak at the University’s commencement ceremony, leaving some students to wonder how that speaker is chosen.“I don’t know who chooses the speaker,” senior Lakyra Pharms said. “Most people don’t know.”With the new process, students do not have input in the decision, said Larry MacIntyre, IU vice president for University communications.“They don’t get to decide who gets the degree,” MacIntyre said, “just like they have no input in who graduates, either. There are some things that are probably not appropriate for student input.”Under former President Adam Herbert, a committee was in charge of recommending speakers for the ceremony, he said. When McRobbie took office in 2007, he changed the process of choosing the speaker. It is his concern that people who receive honorary degrees at the ceremony deserve to speak to the graduating class, MacIntyre said.“McRobbie wants to assure when we award the honorary degrees that students get a chance to hear from the recipients,” he said.McRobbie decided to change the process after last year’s commencement ceremony, MacIntyre said. Many people were disappointed when Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the recipient of the honorary degree, did not get a chance to speak to the departing seniors, he said.“She has an incredible story, an incredible history,” MacIntyre said.In the new process, someone on the faculty nominates a speaker, MacIntyre said. The nominated speaker then goes through a series of checks and reviews ending in a review by the board of trustees, he said.Lauren Robel, dean of the Maurer School of Law, nominated Kirby, a human rights advocate who recently retired from the Australian High Court, the equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court.Senior Kyle Cowser said he is nonchalant about who will be speaking at the commencement. Because IU is not a private or Ivy League university, Cowser said he knows IU will not get a big name as the commencement speaker.“Besides, I want people to be there because I’m graduating,” he said, “not because they came to see Will Smith give a speech.”Other students do not share Cowser’s indifferent attitude.The commencement ceremony usually lasts a long time, Pharms said, and if students knew a well-known speaker would be there, they would be more willing to attend. Pharms was impressed upon hearing President Barack Obama will be speaking at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement ceremony.“If we had Obama, I’m pretty sure everyone would go,” she said. “I wonder how they pulled that. It almost doesn’t get any bigger than that.”Senior Karen Gillespie said she thinks if students cared more and put effort into the process, big name speakers would come to the ceremony.“There’s no reason we couldn’t get a big-name speaker,” she said. “We have multiple top-10 programs and are one of the biggest schools in the state.”Gillespie said she thinks the reason people don’t care is because of the impersonal graduation process. Smaller graduation ceremonies would change people’s perspectives, she said.“I think every school should have their own graduation ceremony so students can actually walk across the stage and feel recognition,” she said.People nominated to receive honorary degrees are required to have made extraordinary achievements in their careers, MacIntyre said.“I anticipate some very accomplished people to receive a degree and speak in future years,” he said.While students do not have input in the process, some students are excited to hear Kirby’s speech.“Maybe he’s an interesting guy,” Cowser said.Sophomore Peter SerVaas, the newly elected president of the IU Student Association, said he thinks it is exciting to have leaders from the international community.“He may not have a household name, but he will bring a different perspective,” he said.