WEST FRANKFORT — Given a second life, the West Frankfort Redbirds made 10-of-16 free throws in overtime Tuesday to beat the Eldorado Eagles, 82-74, in a nonconference boys basketball game.
Here’s the link to the story in the Southern Illinoisan.
Archives for 2013
DCFS under fire about the number of child deaths in state
December 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
CHICAGO — Lawmakers questioned Illinois child welfare officials Tuesday about an increase in the number of children reported to have died of neglect or abuse in the state, though agency officials argued the number partly reflected a change in the way neglect cases are counted.
Here’s the link to the story in the Southern Illinoisan.
Saluki Shootout rescheduled for Jan. 18
December 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill.–The third-annual Saluki Shootout has been rescheduled for Saturday, January 18 at the SIU Arena.
Ticket prices are $8 for adults and $5 for students. Ticket price includes access to all four games on the schedule.
Saluki Shootout schedule:
3:00pm Herrin vs Mascoutah
4:30pm Christopher vs Waltonville
6:00pm Carbondale vs Jackson, MO
7:30pm Marion vs Belleville East
Letter to the Editor – Collateral Damage
December 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
To the Editor:
Tragedy struck Illinois the afternoon of December 3, 2013. Three of the core fundamental values of democracy were killed in action during a fierce battle Tuesday afternoon in the Illinois General Assembly. The casualties included the longtime government standards of Truth, Honor, and Integrity. The victims had provided legendary framework for all branches of government for over two hundred years. They were ambushed by the sinister forces of incompetent leadership, political ambition and personal greed. They leave behind thousands of honest, hardworking state and university employees, teachers, and retirees who devoted their lives and careers to the principles they established. Truth, Honor, and Integrity will be sorely missed by all who knew them as we long for the days when those values guided the Illinois General Assembly.
In every war there are those who distinguish themselves on the field of battle by demonstrating exceptional courage fighting the forces of evil. This battle was no exception. There are elected Warriors among us who distinguished themselves on the legislative battlefield. Legislators who refused to abandon Truth, Honor, and Integrity, regardless of the danger they faced from the underhanded legislative warlords. Senator Gary Forby, Senator Dave Luechtefeld, Representative Brandon Phelps, and Representative Mike Bost, fought courageously and refused to abandon their principles even when facing certain political wrath from the chamber god fathers. They are HEROs and deserving of our respect and our thanks. To the legislative Judas’ who abandoned Truth, Honor, and Integrity for some cherished political conquest, remember this. With your vote to rob Illinois’ finest of their earned benefits, you planted a seed. I, along with thousands of dedicated state and university employees, teachers, and retirees, will be eagerly awaiting your day of harvest.
One fundamental core value remains intact as of this writing. Justice is still alive and well. As this legislation makes its way through an imminent constitutional challenge, we must stay true to the values we stand for. The Judicial branch was curiously left out of this legislation and its members suffered none of the losses enacted. However, we must remain confident that Truth, Honor, and Integrity remain alive and well within that honorable institution and that justice will reverse this act of legislative treason.
Brad Warren
West Frankfort Illinois
Our Universities: Online Economics
December 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
An education has value. If genuine, it has real worth. Striving to get the experience at the lowest cost may prove wasteful and disheartening if it does not “perform” as anticipated.
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.”
— John Ruskin —
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By Walter V. Wendler
Low costs are heralded as the advantage of online education. Massively Open Online Courses, MOOC’s, epitomize everything that’s supposed to be good about online education: cheap — they are free — and the best ones are masterfully produced, with leading academics and world experts in some cases; open to all who come calling, whenever they come calling; no admission standards, just pass the tests. Maybe this is the egalitarian elixir to elitism in higher education?
Walter V. Wendler
Carl Straumsheim on an Inside Higher Ed post last week confirms the suspicions regarding MOOC’s following studies funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Effectiveness is suspect. Researchers found, “… that user engagement falls off dramatically especially after the first one to two weeks of the course…” and less than 10% ever complete these free courses.
In addition, while the courses are free, production costs may be high, in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars. Community colleges traditionally cater to the needs of students with low ability to pay, but they can’t compete with big money private or state flagships that bankroll upfront production costs for seductive presentations or high priced experts. Why bother anyway… that part of the equation is not working.
Online courses are used by some universities as a cash cow to keep onsite offerings up and running in difficult times. A noble cause to be sure, but there is an educational rub and the cat is out of the bag.
To create a good return on the work of a teacher, leaders and handlers may produce the course but use it repeatedly for online distribution, for full cost to student, with someone other than the “real” teacher. It is disingenuous, deceitful in the worst cases. It is not the means or the message; it’s the teacher interaction that is absent.
Cheap instruction, without teachers, is cheap.
In the School of Architecture at SIU, an online master’s degree provides access to working interns or architects who desire an accredited graduate degree. The interest level was significantly higher than anticipated. In order to make sure the online offering was first rate, some of the most capable teachers were enlisted. Careful academic management builds and nurtures the program. A few insights have been gleaned.
Good onsite teachers make good online teachers. Someone not invested in the material, but only in delivering it, falls short. No surrogates. No substitutes. The faculty member must be the teacher.
Teaching online requires twice the effort to get effective results. Students in the SIU program get personal undivided attention in emails and internet interaction. And nobody hides. There is a durable record of every utterance or sentence by anyone. Different students may ask the same questions to which faculty members must repeatedly respond. This apparent inefficiency also creates nearly pitch-perfect focus between teacher and learner, the essence of good teaching in any setting. Time-consuming beyond expectations, but early indications from students show high appreciation for the concentration of instruction.
Online economy exists in relatively flexible, high intensity, interaction. The costs to students nearly parallel onsite instruction. Students see economy in the process because they have jobs, families, and other challenges that would make residential study difficult or impossible.
F2F (face to face) meetings in St. Louis, two hours from the Carbondale campus, but very close to the airport for students from diverse parts of the nation provide easy access. Hosted at Rankin Technical College, the assemblies offer a positive F2F experience. This hybrid approach provides focused, distraction-free interaction with teachers and engaged peers one weekend per month: an intellectual campout.
Online programs make a great deal of sense. They do not reduce costs significantly, but they increase access if the quality and standards of onsite instruction are maintained and do not use surrogates.
Our universities should focus on primary mission. Interaction between teacher and students in an online environment, coupled with face-to-face meetings, holds promise as a legitimate educational experience.
But buyers beware of look-a-likes.
RLC Foundation Annual Dinner rescheduled for Thursday, Dec. 12
December 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Just a reminder for an event scheduled for this Thursday, Dec. 12:
The Rend Lake College Foundation Annual Dinner will begin with a social hour at 6 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Mt. Vernon. The dinner and ceremony will begin at 6:30 p.m. During the event, the 2013 Alumnus of the Year Trish Reed will be honored, along with several other awards and presentations.
For more information, connect with this story here.
If you have any questions, please contact me at your earliest convenience. If you plan on attending, please RSVP to me as soon as possible if you have not already. Dinner and beverages will be provided to all media for free. We appreciate your coverage.
Warriors Basketball: RLC takes road win over Lincoln
December 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
LINCOLN, Ill. (Dec. 9, 2013) – The Rend Lake College Warriors and the Lincoln College Lynx played a close game Sunday afternoon, but the Warriors came out on top with an 85-82 win in Lincoln.Outscoring the Lynx in the first half 40-32, the Warriors were led by Cortez Macklin (Louisville, Ky.), Brandon Johnson (East St. Louis) and Jeril Taylor (Louisville, Ky.) in points. Macklin finished with the game-high of 20-points to Johnson and Taylor’s 18 points each.
- Taylor was also a key player for the Warriors defense, bringing down 12 rebounds. He added three assists, three steals and a block during the game.
The win moves the Warriors to 8-3 on the season. They will face Danville Area this Thursday, Dec. 12 at 7 p.m. in Waugh Gymnasium. For all things athletic at The Lake, visit www.rlc.edu/warriors.
Staten Island native Mike Balogun developing into 3-point threat
December 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
By Tom Weber
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. – Saluki junior guard Mike Balogun has been fascinated with the game of basketball ever since he was a toddler growing up in Staten Island, N.Y. He had a Fisher-Price hoop in his room and idolized Michael Jordan.
Mike Balogun
“My mother said I couldn’t take my eyes off the television when a basketball game was on,” Balogun recalled. “I didn’t watch cartoons, I watched basketball. It was second-nature to me.”
No one had to push him to play the sport growing up, which is interesting, because he doesn’t come from a sports family — his dad is a computer engineer and his mother is a nurse — and none of his three siblings took to the game the way he did.
If you love basketball, there are few better places to be than the New York City area. Balogun said there are frequent tournaments and open gyms in which some of the world’s best players compete.
“I’ve matched up with Kyrie Irving (2012 NBA Rookie of the Year) and a bunch of guys who are on their way to the NBA,” he said. Among his friends and gym mates were Ben Uzoh and Quincy Douby — who both played in the league.
“You give yourself a measuring stick and you find out you’re not where you think you are,” Balogun said of his brushes with NBA-caliber players. “It’s a humbling experience.”
The 6-foot-2 Balogun specializes in shooting the basketball. If you watch him work out, you’ll see shot after 3-point shot touch nothing but nylon. He has uncanny accuracy and deep range, as he displayed last Saturday at Chicago State with a 5-for-8 performance from outside the arc.
“I like to shoot the basketball,” he said with a wide grin. “If I see one go in, just know there’s a few more going in, too. All I need is one. Once I get hot, I can start rolling.”
His track record as a shooter is impressive. At Curtis High School in Staten Island, he knocked down four 3-pointers and was named the MVP of the city championship game in 2011. After high school, he played two years at West Hills Community College (Calif.) in the San Joaquin Valley, where he was named All-Conference his sophomore year. His head coach, Mark Arce, was good friends with SIU’s Barry Hinson, who was in need of a sharpshooter, sending him to Carbondale.
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As many juco transfers discover, playing at the Division I level requires an adjustment. The players are bigger and more athletic, meaning you have less time to unleash a shot. Through the first seven games Balogun was 1-of-11 from 3-point range, but his confidence was hardly shaken.
“Working out with guys who have played Division I college basketball or in the NBA, that gives me the confidence to know I can play at this level,” he said.
If his dream of playing in the NBA doesn’t work out, Balogun has a clear fall-back plan. The psychology major would like to be a high school guidance counselor and basketball coach. He said he was inspired by his own high school guidance counselor, Jeannine Sweeney, who was a respected mentor to students at Curtis High.
“She was a lady you could really go to whenever you needed to talk,” he explained. “Basketball and grades, when you try to juggle the two, it can get tough, and she was there to let you know things would be ok.”
Although Balogun grew up in a close-knit family — he Facetimes with them almost every day and they watch his Saluki games on-line — he said many of his friends weren’t so fortunate, and Sweeney was there for them.
“In my high school, a lot of kids didn’t have much guidance at home,” he said. “She’d see you in the hallway and ask you if you’re ok. Her smile gave you a warming feeling. That’s what I want to do — make a high school program for kids so they have someone to talk to, something to do other than just go home, a program that will help kids have someone to talk to when they feel alone.”
RLC Culinary Arts to feature “A Celebration of Southern Illinois Cuisine”
December 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
INA, Ill. (Dec. 4, 2013) – It’s your turn to make a special holiday dinner for your friends and family. The kitchen is full-stocked and you want to make something to impress your guests. What favorite recipe do you reach for?
High school students across Southern Illinois are invited to reach for their favorite savory or pastry recipes, and submit them to the Rend Lake College Culinary Arts program this spring for a chance to win several prizes and develop their culinary skills.
The “Celebration of Southern Illinois Cuisine Recipe Competition” is open to all high school students, not just those in cooking classes. Students may submit recipes starting January 1. Submissions should include the recipe, photos of the finished dish and an explanation as to why the student selected the cuisine.
Chef Robert Wilson, RLC’s Lead Culinary Arts Instructor, said the deadline for submissions is March 1, with the competition date to be at the beginning of April. More details regarding the competition date will be released as they become available.
“The focus of the recipes is to promote Southern Illinois Cuisine. Think of what your favorite foods are; the ones that you look forward to when your family gets together at special gatherings and holidays,” said Wilson.
Three entrants within each of the two categories – savory and pastry – will be chosen to participate in the April culinary challenge by preparing their recipes at RLC. The winner of the savory category will receive a professional knife kit and the winner of the baking category will receive a professional baking kit, both from Mercer Knifes, event sponsor. All contestants will receive an embroidered Professional Chefs Jacket.
Entrants should email submissions to Wilson at wilsonr@rlc.edu. All submissions will be posted on the program’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/rlculinary. Local chefs will judge the submissions and the top contestants at the challenge.
Our Universities: Trust is a Two-Way Street
December 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Organizations that rely on the public trust must build trust from within to earn the reputation of trustworthiness. Treatment of people creates an aura of trust or distrust. It’s not arbitrary. Human groups give and receive trust: It is a two-way street built brick by brick, one decent act after another.
“The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”
— Henry L. Stimson —
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By Walter V. Wendler
Chaffee College, a California community college, recently dismissed adjunct faculty member and at-will employee Stefan Veldhuis a few hours before his scheduled class meeting, according to a post in Inside HigherEd by Colleen Flaherty last week. Veldhuis claims he was a whistleblower in reporting inappropriate sexual activity and subsequently charged with inappropriate sexual activity himself. Retaliation? Who knows?
Walter V. Wendler
As campuses lean ever increasingly towards part-time and adjunct faculty, giving and receiving trust to/from them is paramount. Trust and decency are important for all and no contract provision for/by anyone provides it.
Employees at institutions of public trust may be terminated for cause. Universities should be public trust enterprises but trust evaporates in high temperature political monkey business along with diminished rewards for excellence, lackluster focus on teaching and scholarship, higher costs for less valuable experiences, and lower performance expectations. A dismissal might build trust by “doing the right thing” as opposed to expedient, trust rotting actions driven by fear, politics or cronyism. Low and small-minded administrative behavior creates apprehension and suspicion. Not trust.
It’s difficult to know about the Chaffee case. The dismissal of a faculty member a few hours before class is strong medicine that voids a contract in existence since the beginning of the semester between a faculty member and students. The contract between a university and faculty member is a detail of employment law. As important in a teaching/learning environment is the moral contract between teacher and students.
In all likelihood, this faculty member presented a syllabus that laid out expectations for the semester: attendance and grading policies, tests, papers, expectations and means of assessment; a contract of sorts. For the institution to annul that honorable agreement, an egregious violation of deep principle, a matter of law, or malfeasance should have occurred and been revealed plainly to the faculty member, even when employed at-will. At Chaffee, this may or may not be the case.
Here is what I do know.
Stolen trust demeans faculty, staff, students and the institution while reeking of capricious, arbitrary, and/or prejudicial decision-making. Institutions have an obligation to treat employees with decency and respect. Employees who engage in the high contact, emotionally laden setting of teaching, have an obligation to everyone, including the university, which demands decency.
It’s a two-way street. Meghan M. Biro, in a June 4, 2012, post in Forbes, says “Model the behaviors you seek… accept your responsibility as a leader and act with engagement, commitment and responsibility. Do this every day.” Faculty members who violate given trust by engaging in inappropriate relationships of any kind with students, under any circumstances, represent fundamental abuses of power and shouldn’t be tolerated. Likewise, legal improprieties also should be grounds for immediate termination. Teaching absent trust is wasted and wanting.
If, on the other hand, someone like Professor Veldhuis reports in good faith what he honestly believes is an impropriety, he should be held harmless. INC. ran a story by Geoffrey James earlier this month with this admonition, “Tell the truth. Employees realize there’s stuff you can’t share, like what you’re paying other people. However, employees always find out when you do something underhanded…” Untrusting leaders lead poorly, if at all.
Too many universities have become domiciles for dime store despots who demonstrate little understanding of the vitality trust and decency play as the bedrock of teaching and learning.
A university blind to the necessity of transparency is flawed. A faculty member not cognizant of his or her responsibility to build trust misses the first calling of teaching.
Trust is a two-way street to decency.
