Unless otherwise indicated, all lectures are from 12N - 1:30PM and are held at OLLI.
Join Jack Paxton as he tells the story of how Allerton Park was saved in the late 1960's by a small group of environmental activists. He will explore with us the reasons proposed for building the Oakley Dam on the Sangamon River which would have flooded a large portion of Allerton Park and why a large group of Professors and citizens banded together to stop this Army Corp of Engineers proposed Dam. What was gained in this effort and what was lost?
Instructor: Jack Paxton, Professor Emeritus from the University of Illinois, was Chair of the Committee on Allerton Park and founder of the Prairie Group of the Sierra Club in Urbana. He now helps teach 'Human Impact on the Environment' at UC San Diego.
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.
The sensory system of the human responds to a variety of stimuli-visual, sound, touch, taste and olfaction. We talk about the way a food "tastes," but are we really responding only to taste sensations? Odor, tactile sensations, trigeminal responses as well as color and sound, help us to distinguish between foods. The sensory system is complex. Innate responses to taste sensations may enable infants to accept or reject foods. These responses shift over our lifetimes, and as we age, our sensory systems alter. Scientists are finding correlations between diseases and perceptions of odors and tastes. Acceptance and/or rejection of a food is an important criterion for a food company and how the testing is done can be critical to marketers. Join Professor Klein as she introduces us to this fascinating world of our senses.
Instructor: Barbara P. Klein is Co-director of the Illinois Center for Soy Foods at the University of Illinois, Professor Emerita of Foods and Nutrition/Food Chemistry in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, and a member of the Division of Nutritional Sciences. Her research interests include sensory and nutritional quality of fresh and processed foods; health benefits of soy foods; and sensory evaluation methodology development. She taught sensory evaluation of foods for more than 20 years at UIUC. She is active in leadership roles in the Institute of Food Technologists and served as an elected member of the Executive Committee of this leading organization for food scientists and nutritionists, and has served on the Sensory Evaluation Division Executive Committee, award juries, and Fellows Committee.
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.
In spring 2009 Sharon Michalove gave a lunchtime lecture on the creation of the Venetian Ghetto, focusing on the myth of Venice, how the Jews moved from the mainland of the Veneto into the lagoon, and why the ghetto was created. In this lecture, Sharon moves beyond the creation of the ghetto and will talk about how the Jews lived in that space in the first two decades of its existence. Intellectually, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the most vibrant time for the Venetian ghetto. This talk will cover the development of the ghetto in the sixteenth century and then discuss life in the seventeenth century, focusing on Leone Modena, the most famous rabbi of the period, composer Salamone Rossi, the poet Sara Coppia Sullam as well as travelers' views of the ghetto. This permeability of the ghetto was what gave it the vibrancy of intellectual ideas that mirrored the intellectual ferment of the later Renaissance as well as the relationship and tensions between the Venetians and the Jews and among the various Jewish groups within the ghetto.
Instructor: Sharon Michalove has taught undergraduate courses at the University of Illinois on various aspects of the late medieval and early modern period as well as giving papers on many aspects of late medieval English history, medieval and Renaissance women's education, and cultural exchange in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although retired she is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of History and the Program in Medieval Studies.
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.
Cleft lip and palate is a major birth defect that occurs in about 1:700 live births. With proper treatment involving surgery, dental care, speech therapy, and other services, individuals born with this condition can expect to lead a reasonably normal life. Unfortunately, in many developing countries in the world there are few if any available services for individuals born with cleft lip/palate. Charitable organizations and cleft lip/palate teams, including the team at Carle Clinic in Urbana, are available for support and to conduct mission trips to these countries. Join Professor Kuehn as he discusses his experiences in participating in such cleft lip/palate mission trips to developing countries.
Instructor: Professor Emeritus David P. Kuehn, PhD, is affiliated with the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has been a member of the Carle Clinic Cleft Lip and Palate Team in Urbana since his appointment at the University in 1986. He has over 35 years of experience involving management of individuals born with cleft lip and palate. Dr. Kuehn is a former president of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association.
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.
Diabetes is a very complex disease. Scientists have long known of the links between diabetes and heart disease or kidney disease, but the information about osteoporosis and diabetes is emerging as a complicated issue. For instance, having higher body weight is good for bone density, but there may be other issues related to higher body weight. Researchers have also discovered that some medications used to treat diabetes seem to be detrimental. And there are differences in bone health between those with type 1 diabetes and type 2. Part of these differences may be related to diabetes, others to lifestyles and genetics. Join us as we learn how Professor Chapman-Novakofski and her colleagues are addressing these complicated relationships.
Instructor: Karen Chapman-Novakofski is a Professor in the Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition, and has appointments in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Illinois Extension, and the Department of Internal Medicine. With numerous publications and invited lectures to her credit, Karen has also won awards for teaching, outreach, and research from both the college and national organizations.
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.
In today’s technocentric world, we are continually being assaulted by a gluttony of visual imagery via all things digital, i.e., computer screens, T.V. screens, Blackberries, iPhones, and more. What does it mean, then, simply to look at, or even be absorbed by, a painting on a wall, that rectangle covered with pigment such as oil or acrylic, that lowly, archaic medium that some among the art elite even refer to nowadays as "quaint," "nostalgic," "irrelevant?" Is painting being proclaimed, once again as so often in the past, "dead?" In this noontime lecture, exhibiting artist and University of Illinois Professor Emeritus Rosalyn Schwartz, will present an informative and engaging talk that will include a broad variety of images of contemporary paintings by artists from around the world. She will discuss why and how to look at contemporary painting, even if the viewer thinks he or she does not like or understand it, as well as why and how it is that so low-tech a medium as painting on canvas can still excite, inspire, amuse, inform, and even move. What will be unique about this talk is that it is being presented not so much by an historian, critic, or journalist, but by a professional artist who sees the contemporary painter as agent.
Instructor: Professor Emeritus of Art Rosalyn Schwartz taught painting and drawing for twenty years at the University of Illinois. In May of 2008, Ms. Schwartz took an early retirement so that she could devote herself fulltime to working in her studio. Previous to her professorship at Illinois, Ms. Schwartz taught painting at West Virginia University, Morgantown, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is the recipient of a number of prestigious grants including a Bush Foundation Fellowship, a McKnight Foundation Fellowship, and a National Endowment of Art Fellowship. She also received several UI Research Fellowships during her tenure here. Ms. Schwartz is currently at work on a new body of paintings for an upcoming exhibition in St. Louis, in October of 2010, that will be a survey of her paintings and works on paper from 1985 -2010.
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.
According to Ken Burns, national parks are special places that play an important role in American national identity. A few forward-looking heroes saw that these beautiful places would be set aside. They are now protected by the rangers of the National Park Service. Many people develop close, deep relationships with the wild spaces of their favorite park. Really? We'll take a closer look.
Instructor: Robert Pahre is Professor of Political Science and Director of the European Union Center. He teaches courses on international relations, the European Union, and environmental policy. He has published in political science, economics, sociology, philosophy, library science, and linguistics. He has two current research projects, one on Euroskeptic political parties in Europe, and the other on transboundary management problems surrounding US and Canadian national parks. (We also hear that he studies politics in places that he likes to visit and that he is not very good at doing what he is told. But those are merely rumors.)
Location: OLLI at the Research Park, 2021 South First Street, Suite 205, Champaign
Cost: $8.50 for a box lunch (to be paid at the door); registration required.
Registration: please call Brenda at 244-9141 to register.