From: Elgin Courier News
Ushma Shah will take on the newly created position of chief of equity and social justice in Elgin School District U46. Shah also comes to U46 from Chicago Public Schools: previously, she was a consultant, coaching instructional leadership teams of schools that are on academic probation.
[Elgin superintendent Jose Torres said] “Dr. Shah brings to U46 her expertise and her proven ability to work with school leaders in closing the achievement gap between student groups.”… Shah earned her bachelor’s degree in educational studies and anthropology from Knox College in Galesburg [in 1992], her master’s degree in education, curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her doctorate from Harvard University.
From: Edinburgh Fringe Festival News
As the most populous and one of the fastest growing democracies in the world, India is embracing unprecedented change, not least in its demand for English-language comedy…
Next year’s [Edinburgh] Fringe [Festival] promises an influx of comedy and theatre from the sub-continent, but at the vanguard is Vir Das, whose Walking on Broken Das arrives here for nine nights…
Having grown up in various parts of India and Nigeria, he first tried stand-up at Knox College in Illinois…
Das postponed his festival debut last year to shoot a contrived caper [film]… One critic called its snappy blend of gross-out humour, sex and swearing, ‘Bollywood’s most daring, cheeky, irreverent, blasphemous, raunchy youth film to date … the lurid content … has never been witnessed on the Hindi screen before!’
[Das is] one of the first Indian stand-ups to tour theatres… performing his 60,000-plus selling show, History of India, at Mumbai’s Sophia Bhabha Auditorium in early July.
From: Galesburg Planet
Everyone, even kindergartners, can do history, according to Knox College faculty member Catherine Denial, the lead historian for a program that is revolutionizing the way history is taught in our nation’s schools. Denial, assistant professor of history at Knox since 2005, has worked with the program “Bringing History Home” since its inception in 2001, serving as lead historian since 2006. This summer, she is leading workshops in July and August for teachers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
From: The Register-Mail
A dancer with the Moscow Ballet is teaching a week-long intensive summer dance program in Galesburg. Nataliya Miroshnyk will teach a pair of two-hour classes every day this week. The classes are filled with about 40 ballet students.
Miroshnyk has been a soloist with the Moscow Ballet for more than five years. She also is an audition director. The classes will end Friday with a performance at the Orpheum Theatre.
The theater partnered with Knox College dance faculty Kathleen Ridlon to receive various grants to pay for the program.
Dancers from the Moscow Ballet will perform “The Nutcracker” at the theater in December.
Also covered by: Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Bloomington Pantagraph, Moline Dispatch Argus, Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
