Excerpt from the Springfield Journal-Register:
Festivities for Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday will last a year in Galesburg.
The celebration will start with Knox College’s commencement address at the 2008 graduation, said Karrie Heartlein, director of public relations. It will end after the 2009 commencement address.
“It seems to fit for us,” she said. “Lincoln was here at Knox. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were here at Knox.”
Old Main, built in 1857, is the only site of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates that is still standing. The college also plans to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the debates during 2008.
The story also ran in the Galesburg Register-Mail and the Peoria Journal Star.
Excerpt from the Register-Mail:
“Coming to terms with the fact that I’m different, unique. I have a responsibility to represent my culture and my country,” she said. On the flip side, many Pakistanis only know about America from the media, and she does her best to share with them the diverse society she has found here.
Another big misconception some people have is about Pakistan’s relationship with India. Akram worked her booth at the International Fair with several others, including senior Sukhi Srivatsan, whose parents are Indian. Their booth was titled the Indian Pakistan Unity Booth.
“The unity booth shows that even though India and Pakistan are political enemies, we share common bases and similar culture,” Srivatsan said. “My Pakistani friends are like sisters and brothers.”
Srivatsan was actually born in Africa and spent most of her life in the Middle East before moving to America four years ago. She said her experience in the United States has been positive. Most Americans are interested and eager to learn about her culture and she has not encountered any direct racism, though she said religion does tend to be a “touchy” topic.
The International Fair offered many ways to experience culture. Along with the many multimedia presentations and brochures, traditional music and cultural artifacts, there were plenty of opportunities for interaction. Akram and Srivatsan did free Henna body painting at their booth. The Japanese Club offered origami. Students Against Sexism in Society provided a “Women of the World” coloring book. The Korean Club had traditional games, one played on Korean New Year similar to jacks, said junior Sarah Won.
Excerpt from the Register-Mail:
Laurie Simkins knows quite a man.
He starred as Growly Bear, served as guest star of every neighborhood pick-up game played with ball, bat or imaginary monster and patiently tried to teach volleyball to a girl with plenty of interest but precious little athletic ability.
Harley Knosher was — and still is — the flame that drew children like moths. Some knew him as a swim coach at Lake Rice, others as a golf coach, basketball coach or Knox College’s athletic director for 32 years.
To Laurie, Knosher is simply Dad.
The 45-year-old recalled growing up with one of Galesburg’s most revered coaches Tuesday afternoon while she hung uniform pants in the new retail storefront at Go Van Gogh’s: The T-shirt Factory.
“When I think of my dad, I think of the neighborhood games he played with us after he got home from work,” Laurie said. “We played a game called Growly Bear Around the House. Of course, he played the Growly Bear. He shuffled around the house in the dark growling and we all ran around screaming.
“He always played the neighborhood games with us. I think a lot of kids might remember him from that.”
Excerpt from Crain’s Chicago Business:
On Tuesday, SLM Corp., also known as Sallie Mae, the nation’s biggest student lender, said it would eliminate a loan program for riskier borrowers. Its decision pummeled stocks of Hoffman Estates-based Career Education Corp. and DeVry Inc. of Oakbrook Terrace and other for-profit education companies. College directors of financial aid, like Teresa Jackson of Knox College in Downstate Galesburg, say the impact of the credit crunch so far has been minimized by continued availability of federally guaranteed loans, competition in the private loan market and declining interest rates, which reduce students’ borrowing costs.
National Education, whose Web site said it would continue to fund loan commitments made before Jan. 16, made a wrong bet in August when it bought a $1-billion student-loan portfolio from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which acted to minimize its exposure to the developing credit crisis.
FinanSure began making student loans in 2002, generating about $750 million in loans annually and employing about 300, according to former President Tom Sakos.
Ms. Jackson says, “It’s one of those companies that cropped up, largely to do consolidations. There was a lot of money to be made. They got paid by the federal government for consolidating those loans.”
Knox biology professor Judy Thorn comments on the possible pitfalls of agricultural cloning.
Excerpt from the Register-Mail:
Do meat producers dream of steak from cloned cattle?
That’s one of the questions raised in the wake of a report released this week by the Food and Drug Administration that concluded meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals.
But according to the owner of Thrushwood Farms and two local biology professors, the safety of meat and milk from cloned animals is far from the most important issue raised by the prospect of widespread cloning…..
Variety cheated in cloning
A developmental biologist, Thorn said concerns about cloning should focus on its impact on genetic variety, not the possibility of physical harm from eating the meat of a cloned animal.
“The biggest reason to clone a particular animal would be to skip the breeding process and make a direct copy of it,” Thorn said. “The concern is down the road. The concern is the long-term effects of limiting genetic variability.”
Thorn used corn as an example of ever-decreasing genetic variability.
“The thing that is scary is when you have bred corn so it grows perfectly in a specific environment and then the environment radically changes,” Thorn said. “You are going to be in big trouble because you no longer have genetic variety.”
Excerpt from the Galesburg Register Mail:
The competition for spots in the incoming classes at two local colleges gets more difficult every year.
At Knox College, where there are roughly 350 spots for incoming students, the admission office has already seen more than six times that amount of applications.
“We’re running roughly 10 percent ahead of last year,” said Paul Steenis, Knox’s dean of admissions. The college has, as of Tuesday, received 2,263 applications, many of those seeking early action. Roughly half, or about 175 students, of an incoming class comes from early action admissions, due Dec. 1. The other half comes from the regular decision deadline, which is creeping up on Feb. 1.
When all is said and done, Steenis believes Knox will have upwards of 2,700 applications. “We finished last year at a record 2,540 applications for admission,” he stated. “It certainly seems like we’re on track this year for exceeding” that number….
….And not only are the institutions seeing an upswing in the numbers of students applying, but they are also seeing better resumes from applicants.
“We’ve seen some shifts” in applicants’ qualifications, Steenis said. Most notably, the college sees “students every year who have taken more and more AP (Advanced Placement) courses. I think there’s a tendency for students to be better prepared for college than at any point in the past.”
