Knox in the News

From WGIL radio:

Sixteen new local junior high school students now have the chance to go to Knox and Carl Sandburg Colleges free, as long as they keep their grades up and get involved in their communities.

The two colleges and the Galesburg School District Thursday inducted the 16 into the annual George Washington Gale Scholars Program. Named after the founder of Galesburg and of Knox College, the program selects the Churchill and Lombard Junior High students through an application process. Once selected, if they successfully graduate from Galesburg High School and meet all the other requirements, they can attend Knox and Sandburg without cost.

Les Hunter is the Director of the Gale Scholars program, and says Thursday’s induction ceremony is a day of celebration, even though the students have an eight-year task ahead of them.

“What that is, is a ticket to opportunity that you’ve earned and will continue to earn,” Hunter said to the students. “You’ll receive…a certificate (of induction), and I like to call that a ticket. And you’ll continue to get that ticket punched along the way over the next eight years. Eight years from now, you will graduate and walk across the stage at Knox College. That ticket will give you opportunity; it will be a college degree.”

From WGIL radio:

For the second year in a row, Knox College student Jordan Lanfair has been awarded a Prospective Educator Scholarship from Phi Delta Kappa, the national honor society for professional educators.

A junior educational studies major from Chicago, Lanfair is one of only two college students in the nation to win a 2010 Prospective Educator Scholarship. The other 37 award winners are high school students planning to go into teaching. Scholarship amounts range from $500 to $1,500 — Lanfair’s award includes a $1,000 scholarship from the Phi Delta Kappa Education Foundation. Lanfair also won the award in 2009.

“The award is based on academic excellence, a faculty nomination and an essay by the student nominees on their career goals in education,” said Stephen Schroth, assistant professor of education and president of the Phi Delta Kappa chapter that includes Knox College and other schools in Knox County.

At Knox, Lanfair has taught in the Knox College for Kids Program, and under “Project REACH: A Model for Preparing Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers to Better Serve Gifted Children,” a program developed by Schroth and Jason Helfer, associate professor of education. This summer, he will again teach in the Knox College for Kids program, and in Knox’s Navajo Professional Teaching Development Program, in which Knox students teach at the Navajo Lutheran Mission School in Arizona. 

From the Review Atlas (Monmouth, IL):

On Thursday night during the Warren County Genealogical Societies board meeting, Knox College senior Margaret Spiegel gave a presentation on her honors history project about Irish Immigration in 1850s-1870s Galesburg.

Spiegel said Irish immigrants first came to Galesburg in the 1850s as tradesmen. For example, the first Irishman was a blacksmith named Thomas Mooney.

The 1850s was a time period of rampant immigration amongst the Irish because of the potato famine in Ireland.

“Irish families were only giving dowries and land to their first sons and daughters,” Spiegel said. “The rest of the family had to find better lives in America.”

At the time, it was expensive and dangerous for immigrants to traverse the country, so many stayed on the East Coast. However, when the railroad made its way to Galesburg travel became cheaper and the population “sky rocketed.” By 1870, there were 553 Irish born people in Galesburg, or 6 percent of the population. Most of them were railroad workers and lived “south of the tracks” in the poor side of town.

Discrimination wasn’t as pronounced in Knox County and the surrounding areas as it was on the East Coast she said, but it did exist. The Irish were largely ignored.

The only newspaper coverage about Irish Americans in the area occurred in 1850 when a windstorm blew over a Catholic church. Even then, the story was about Protestants thanking God for the destruction of the church, she said. At the time it was illegal to build a Catholic church within the city limits. When the first Catholic Church, St. Peters, was built in 1863 it received no coverage.

From the Register-Mail:

History 347: Museums, Monuments and Memories is not your average history class.

Over the course of a semester, 14 Knox College students, three teaching assistants and a professor created a museum exhibit “The Second World War: A World Transformed,” which is on display through June 7 at the Ford Center for the Fine Arts.

“A lot of times with history classes, you’re always writing papers, doing research,” said Knox junior Ryan Larson. “With this, we got to work with our hands.”

Wearing a 40s-style, brown wool sport coat, Larson explained that all the students were “dressed to period” to set the scene; some of the costumes were provided by Prairie Players.

“I found this at Salvation Army for 81 cents,” said teaching assistant Margaret Spiegel, gesturing to her red, bandana-printed dress. She was a student of History 347 during the last time it was offered, which is every two years. The year she participated, their museum exhibit theme was the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, since 2008 was the 150th anniversary of the debates.

This year marks the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II, so it was a fitting theme for this history class’s museum project, said professor Catherine Denial.

“All I did was tell them it had to be about World War II,” she said. “They brainstormed to figure out the rest.”

The students interviewed Knox graduates who lived during World War II to get ideas for their exhibit. Knox senior Jenny Pederson interviewed Jim Moser, who was signed up to be a cadet and serve in World War II but then the war ended, and he didn’t get to.

From the Vancouver Sun:

Fewer people are bothering to vote in Canada, and a new psychological study suggests the trend is bad for our emotional health…..

When it comes to politics, why are more of us becoming disengaged? Are we more cynical? Lazy? Self-absorbed? Distracted? Busy? Despairing? All of the above?

New psychological research suggests that rising indifference to politics among Canadians, as well as people in many parts of the world, may actually reflect a lack of personal happiness, an existential melancholy. In fact, the novel psychological experiments conducted by a U.S. psychologist and a German psychologist suggest that humans feel more satisfied and alive when they jump into political action, even at a relatively minor level.

There is something about social activism itself that is beneficial for well-being, says Tim Kasser, chair of psychology at Knox College in Illinois, who co-authored several research papers with Malte Klar, of the University of Gottingen in Germany.

People who are politically active have better relationships, more purpose in life and like themselves better, according to the studies, some of which were published in the journal Political Psychology.

“I don’t doubt that part of the reason activism is good for people’s wellbeing is that they experience higher levels of connection to other people,” Kasser said. “We are not trying to say the only way to increase your well-being is through political activism, but we are saying that it is a good one.”

One study of more than 1,000 individuals conducted by Kasser and Klar found that people who had engaged in political activism reported greater life satisfaction, sense of freedom and competence than those who had not.

Another of the duo’s experiments found that even short-term activism made people feel better. The researchers discovered college students who wrote letters to cafeteria managers about the ethical aspects of food production, such as whether the cafeteria supported “fair trade,” reported feeling more alert and energized than students who wrote to managers simply about the “hedonistic” aspect of the food.

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From Crain’s Chicago Business:

A year after Arizona State University decided President Barack Obama wasn’t worthy of an honorary degree, he and some of his top aides — along with a number of Chicago-area executives — are collecting the honors from various colleges.

Tina Tchen, White House director of the Office of Public Engagement, will receive an honorary degree from Knox College in Downstate Galesburg next week; Education Secretary Arne Duncan received one from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood got one from Loras College in Iowa.