From: Official Announcement Date: May 2, 2007 1:55:27 PM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] Spring 2007 grading deadline Tuesday, May 15 Reply-To: mgarci8@uic.edu Please note that grades for courses taught in the Spring 2007 semester are to be entered via the Web for Faculty Final Grade Entry form no later than Tuesday, May 15, 2007, by 5:00 pm. Submission of grades after this deadline will require completion of a Supplemental Grade Report (SGR) for each individual grade submitted. Web for Faculty can be accessed at https://osssorawebprod2.admin.uillinois.edu/webforfaculty/wff.asp. Or go to the UIC home page, scroll down to Quick Links, select Web for Faculty, and hit Go. If there are questions regarding grade submission, please contact me or Michelle Garcia, Assistant Director for Records, at 312-996-4381, or mgarci8@uic.edu. Thanks for your timely submission of grades upon which so many essential University functions rely. Robert R. Dixon, J.D. Registrar From: Official Announcement Date: May 4, 2007 2:02:03 PM CDT To: jhendry@MAILSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] SMS Emergency Notification System Reply-To: Official Announcement Dear UIC Students, Faculty and Staff, To enhance UIC's ability to alert the campus to emergencies, we are implementing a text-messaging system. This will enable campus officials to send very brief bulletins to you in the event of a serious crime, weather emergency, or similar incident. To subscribe, simply go to http://sms.accc.uic.edu (or see the ACCC home page under Quick Links) and follow the directions to input your cell phone number to the notification system. You will then automatically receive all bulletins as they are sent. Registration is free, and your privacy is ensured. The system will be activated only in emergencies. We encourage every member of the UIC community to take advantage of this service, which will enable us to quickly provide important information in the event of emergency. This new system will augment, not replace, the existing means we use to notify the community of important, time-sensitive information, including the URGENT mass-mails to uic.edu e-mail addresses, postings to the Emergency Information page (the link at the bottom of the UIC home page), and recorded announcements on the emergency information line, (312) 413-9696. We are sending this announcement in phases, to not overwhelm the signup system. If you have technical difficulties, please send a note to consult@uic.edu Sincerely, Ahmed Kassem, Vice Provost/Chief Information Officer/Director, Academic Computing and Communications Center Mark Rosati, Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs From: Official Announcement Date: May 11, 2007 3:25:33 PM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] Dean, Liberal Arts and Sciences Reply-To: bil@uic.edu A MESSAGE FROM THE PROVOST Dear Colleagues, It is my pleasure to inform you that Chancellor Manning and I will present to the Board of Trustees at their May 17 meeting a motion to appoint Dwight A. McBride as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, effective August 16, 2007. This recommendation follows a search process that attracted a very strong field of candidates. Dr. McBride currently serves as chair and Leon Forrest professor of African American studies and professor of English and communication studies at Northwestern. Under his leadership, Dr. McBride established Northwestern's African American studies department as one of the top programs in the country. He directed a complete renovation of the program that included extensive revisions of the undergraduate curriculum, recruitment of leading scholars and increasing the amount of black studies core and affiliated faculty members. He also oversaw an ambitious plan that led to the department recently becoming the seventh institution in the country to offer a Ph.D. in African American studies. Dr. McBride is a leading scholar of race and literary studies. He has published numerous books, essays, articles, and edited volumes that examine connections between race theory, black studies, and identity politics. His most recent publication is the co-edited volume "A Melvin Dixon: Critical Reader," a collection of critical essays on literature and life from the African American activist and scholar. "Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality," a collection of his personal essays offering contemporary cultural criticism, was a nominee for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award and the 2006 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. In 2005, Dr. McBride garnered the Best Special Issue Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for the special issue of Public Culture he co-edited titled "100 Years of the 'Souls of Black Folk': A Celebration of W.E.B. DuBois." He is the editor of "James Baldwin Now" and co-editor of a special issue of Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters titled "Plum Nelly: New Essays in Black Queer Studies." Both works received special citations in 2000 from the Crompton-Noll Award Committee of the Modern Language Association for their significant contribution to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender studies. Dr. McBride's other works include "Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bi-Sexual African American Fiction," a co-edited volume that earned the 2002 Lambda Literary Award for best fiction anthology, and "Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony." He also serves as co-editor of "The New Black Studies Series" published by the University of Illinois Press. He is currently working on two book manuscripts titled "Poetics, Politics, and Phillis Wheatley" and "White Lies in the Republic: Race Sexuality and Politics." Dr. McBride was on the faculty previously at UIC from 1999 to 2002. He began as an assistant professor of English and African American studies and advanced to associate professor in 2001. He was head of the department of African American studies at UIC from 2001 to 2002 before accepting his current appointment at Northwestern. Pending approval of the Board of Trustees, Dr. McBride will rejoin UIC as Dean-Designate on June 18 and assume the deanship on August 16, 2007. Dr. McBride will succeed Dr. Christopher Comer, who has served skillfully as dean since August 2004. I am grateful for the innovative, caring, and balanced approach Dean Comer has demonstrated while guiding the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences through various challenges over the last three years. Dr. Comer will continue at UIC as professor of biology, neuroscience, and bioengineering. As the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences builds on its established excellence, it will be well served by Dr. McBride's leadership skills, interdisciplinary academic interests, passion and enthusiasm for the university, and fresh outlook on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. I hope you will join me in congratulating Dr. McBride on his appointment as dean and welcoming him back to UIC. Sincerely, R. Michael Tanner Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs From: Official Announcement Date: May 28, 2007 10:18:01 PM CDT To: OFFICIAL_FACULTY@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [OFFICIAL] Message from the Provost Reply-To: gerolynh@uic.edu Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Professor William E. Walden as Special Assistant to the Provost for Diversity, pending Board of Trustees approval, effective June 1. This appointment follows an internal search with several strong applicants. Professor Walden is currently Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and Director of Graduate Diversity Programs in the College of Medicine, and Director of the NSF-funded campus-wide Bridge to the Doctorate Program. The Special Assistant to the Provost for Diversity is a new faculty administrative position charged with providing leadership in promoting diversity among faculty and student ranks. The Special Assistant will work as a member of a team, together with the Provost and Vice Provosts, the Associate Chancellor for Access & Equity, and others to develop a diversity plan for academic affairs at UIC and initiate programs to enhance the success of all groups in academic affairs, advancing UIC’s ability to offer an outstanding education at all levels to a diverse student body. In his 20 years at UIC, Professor Walden has demonstrated a deep understanding of how to foster success in a diverse academic environment along with the leadership skills to implement his vision. As Director of Graduate Diversity programs in the College of Medicine since 2006, Professor Walden has strived to increase the number of underrepresented minority students who enter and successfully complete College of Medicine Ph.D. programs. In 2006 he secured NSF funding for a Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) program through the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. As director of that program his goal has been to increase the number of underrepresented minorities obtaining the Ph.D. degrees across campus in science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The first cohort of 12 BD fellows has completed the first year of graduate study, and a second cohort of 12 will begin study in the fall. Recently Professor Walden served as a 2006-2007 Fellow ! of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation-Academic Leadership Program (CIC-ALP), which annually mentors a select group of promising administrators for advanced leadership opportunities. Previously Professor Walden served as Associate Department Head of Microbiology and Immunology from 1992-1997, during which he gained exposure to fundamental issues of recruitment, retention and academic success. Professor Walden was a member of the Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee for the past three years, serving as co-chair of the committee for the past two years. He has worked with the Summer Research Opportunities Program since 1994, chairing the steering committee much of that time, and he has served as external evaluator for an NIH-funded Initiative for Minority Student Development (IMSD) program at Indiana University, which has similar goals to the Bridge to the Doctorate program. Professor Walden is a nationally and internationally recognized researcher in the area of cellular iron regulation and iron-related gene expression in eukaryotes. He has served on NIH Study Sections, the proposal review committee of the Leukemia Research Foundation, and as a reviewer of proposals for the NSF, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Research Corporation and the Illinois Cancer Council. He also frequently serves as a reviewer for major journals including Science, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Bacteriology, Molecular and Cell Biology, PNAS, and BBA. Sincerely, R. Michael Tanner Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs