Chancellor Robert J. Jones provides university updates, announcements and resources from the past week.

The need for contributions to the Faculty and Staff Emergency Fund is great. The fund relies on your generosity throughout the year to help employees during unusual and difficult times. Your pledges allow the fund to continue to help our co-workers. Donations to the fund are always accepted at https://giving.illinois.edu/ or http://humanresources.illinois.edu/fsas/services/emergency-fund.html

The State Department of Central Management Services (CMS) has announced that the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Benefit Choice enrollment period will begin May 1 and end June 1, 2021.

The Office of the Provost is excited to share two new interactive booklets that showcase faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants who received campus teaching, mentoring, and advising awards in 2020 and 2021: https://provostevents.web.illinois.edu/events/cte_2020/     https://provostevents.web.illinois.edu/events/cte_2021/ 

The Office of the Provost has released the 2020-2021 Faculty Women at Illinois: Celebrations, Contemplations, and Challenges booklet. It highlights women faculty who in this past year achieved promotion, tenure, and various honors. The report also includes the latest comparative data that shines light on the status of women faculty at the college and campus level.  

Check out the new resources for the campus-wide move to Canvas, including training opportunities, top features, migration options, and more. Visit the Canvas Workshop Calendar to sign up for a workshop or register for the self-paced Canvas 101 Course, request a Canvas Sandbox, or request a consultation.

We invite you to the 2021 BFA Exhibition to see works created by graduating seniors from the school’s Bachelor of Fine Arts programs. Saturday, May 8  – Saturday, May 15, 2021.  Krannert Art Museum, 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL. Hours: 10am to 4pm Tuesday through Saturday, open late Thursdays until 7pm. Walk ins are accepted or you can reserve time at go.illinois.edu/KAMreservations

UIUC faculty and grad students in any discipline are invited to attend a free day-long online writing retreat, "Ready, Set, Flow: How to Overcome Overwhelm & Make the Most of Your Writing Time," with Michelle Boyd, PhD. Learn new strategies and come away with significant progress on your own manuscript. Learn more and register now! 

The Student Sustainability Committee is seeking undergraduate and graduate students interested in applying for a voting member position for the 2021-2022 academic year. Applicants are not required to have a sustainability or STEM background. Any dedicated student interested in promoting campus sustainability is encouraged to apply. The deadline to apply is May 14, 2021.

The Illini Union Board is now accepting applications for the Illini Union Art Gallery for the 2021-2022 academic year.  All members of the campus community wishing to feature their work are invited to apply.  Complete details can be found on the application by clicking above.  The deadline to submit is Monday, May 31.

Let Allerton help you and your team find the balance between working toward organizational goals and bonding during a time when you might need it most. Our group retreats offer the chance for teams to safely strengthen their relationship with various outdoor activities designed to rebuild, reconnect, and remember what makes a team work. Learn more here.

The HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) will end on June 13. HathiTrust in-copyright works will no longer be browsable. Print materials will be available for requesting and pickup. Print reserves will be available at Grainger Engineering Library Information Center and the Undergraduate Library this summer. Please refer to the Library's COVID-19 Response page for more info.

DPI invites you to join your colleagues in building DPI’s research and development portfolio by applying for a DPI R&D Science Team Seed Grant. Science teams should be interdisciplinary and inter-institutional with the goals of creating new economic value, answering significant research questions, and addressing societal challenges. Funding is typically up to $125K over 18 months.

Applications are now being accepted through Friday, May 28, for the SPaRC'Ed Research Administrator Certification Series.  All are welcome to apply, however, staff who perform sponsored programs and research administration duties and/or related work for their unit will be given priority.  SPaRC'Ed courses will begin in August 2021 and will conclude in April 2022.

Grads UNWIND (Understanding Wellness IN Discussions) is a monthly workshop series for mental health, wellness, & self-care during graduate school featuring diverse speakers and laid-back conversations. Any and all grad students and postdocs interested in mental wellness are invited to serve on our leadership team as a committee member! Please email us at gradsunwind@gmail.com to express interest! 

Applications are now open for the Disruption & Innovation Fellowship in Gies College of Business. Projects are sought in the following areas: Automation, Blockchain, Immersive Technology. This fellowship is open to all U of I faculty and staff, with preference given to Gies personnel. Submit applications to jritter4@illinois.edu by May 31, 2021 Learn more about the program and application details

Registration is now open for a remote camp experience summer 2021! Campers will receive a t-shirt and materials for eight weeks of at-home experiments, crafts, and other science-themed activities. After the camp, participants will keep the materials they receive, including a microscope and bullet journal. The fee for the remote camp is $50; scholarships are available.

Dr. Shuchi Grover (Senior Research Scientist, Looking Glass Ventures) will present a talk titled, "Realizing the Promise of (STEM & non-STEM) Disciplinary Integration with Computing". Dr. Grover's research is primarily centered on Computational Thinking, CS education, and STEM learning in the PK-14 years. Email us at tier-ed@education.illinois.edu for more information. 

Join us Wednesday, May 5th at 5:30PM for the final Science Café of the semester!  Dr. Rohit Bhargava will present his work in a talk titled “Seeing Cancer in a New Light”.  We hope to see you online!  Join Via Zoom

The Asian American Education Initiative launches to the community with events in May—recognized as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The initiative kicks off with an opening address from Dr. Yoon Pak, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership department head. Register today for this talk and visit the AAEI website to learn about AAEI events, geared for students of all ages.

This month, Chicago-based multimedia artist/educator, John E. Bannon, will begin his journey as the inaugural resident of Allerton's Artist-in-Residence Program. Join us in welcoming John to the Allerton community during a special reception. John will discuss the work he hopes to accomplish during his residency, including plans for his next exhibition. Registration required. Register here.

Join the EU Center on Friday, May 7 at 12PM CDT for a brown bag talk by Bryan Endres, Professor of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, on the performance of the restaurant industry in leading tourist destinations in Croatia with respect to self-disclosure of potential food allergens and strategies for improved food allergen communication beyond regulatory minimums. Zoom info here.

Online students want to learn how to build their professional experiences through experiential learning inside and outside the classroom, a challenge when scattered across the world. Join our discussion where Andrew Allen, Director at the Magelli Office of Experiential Learning at Gies, will share about experiential learning and using focus groups to identify student needs and expectations. 

Join the WRC for the final Dish It Up of the semester: I'm Speaking: Finding a Community of Voices to Create Social Change. We will be joined by Ashanti Files, Poet Laureate of Urbana, and Jamillah Gabriel, founder of Call Number Box. We'll be discussing the intersections of art and activism and the importance of seeing one's own experiences reflected in poetry, literature, and more. 

Join us by zoom at 2:00 on Fri., 5/7/21, as Khaled Esseissah (Georgetown Univ) discusses "Harāṭīn Reformist Intermediaries: Slavery, Islam, Gender, and Social Change in Colonial Mauritania, 1900-1960." After the talk, our speaker will answer questions and address comments. All are welcome! Click here to register.

Inspiring faculty panel discussing multi-modal assignments that go beyond traditional essays and tests. Join us as Dawn Bohn (FSHN), Dave Musselman (Engineering), and Rachel Magee (iSchool) demonstrate how they design, manage, and grade alternative assessments that include video, graphics, zines, and multimedia journals. Robert Baird (CITL) will serve as panel moderator.  Register for Zoom link.  

Please join us for a discussion on the accomplishments and experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) members of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES). 

Climate researcher James Hansen, known for raising alarms about climate change in the 1980s, will address failures in energy policy & suggest changes moving forward. While the public is coming to grips with climate change, scientists & engineers failed to shape policies to avert its worst consequences, says Hansen, Director of Columbia University’s Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program.

Are you interested in the faculty's role in campus governance? UIUC Vice Provost William Bernhard, author Prof. Hadi Esfahani, and Prof. Harriet Murav will lead a discussion of the UIUC AAUP Chapter's report on shared governance on campus at the UIUC AAUP Chapter Annual Meeting Tue., May 11 at 3:30 PM. All faculty and staff are invited. Vist the UIUC AAUP webpage for Zoom connection information.

SIM camp is a one-week virtual day camp for rising 8th-12th graders, run by grad students in the math department with a focus on providing campers with a creative and hands-on online learning experience in fun and engaging mathematics. Please visit math.illinois.edu/SIM to learn more and apply! The priority deadline is 5/03, though we will continue accepting applications until all camps are full.

Sasha Costanza-Chock, Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, Senior Research Fellow at the Algorithmic Justice League, and a Steering Committee member of the Design Justice Network, will present Design Justice on May 5, 2021. The event will take place on Zoom from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Central time. Register and learn more at just-infras.illinois.edu.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to an open forum to discuss the Main/Undergraduate Library Integration Project’s progress and make recommendations to team members. The Forum will be hosted Thursday, May 6, from 10:30am-Noon. Please register for Zoom link.

Illinois faculty and students interested in learning more about the cancer research conducted at the U of I are invited to attend. Speakers for the May series include Sayee Anakk, associate professor in molecular and integrative physiology, and Hua Wang, assistant professor in materials science and engineering.

Please register today and join our virtual symposium on environmental economics at 6pm on May 11. The symposium will include presentations by faculty from both the Center of Economics of Sustainability, UIUC and the Urban Institute, Kyushu University, Japan and be followed by discussion of areas of mutual interest and opportunities for joint work. Please see event flyer for more program details.

Part of the Planetarity: Field Notes from the Present Series: Public Lecture "On Complaint" with Sara Ahmed  

CAII's Spring Seminar Series features weekly talks from researchers & industry leaders that enable innovation through AI & advanced computing. Join us tomorrow for the final talk & hear from Sanjay Patel, acting co-director IBM-Illinois Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research, Illinois ECE professor, in a presentation titled “A Startup Foundry Approach to Increasing Research Impact." 

Interested in AI and digital transformation science? The C3.ai DTI Spring Colloquium Series features free weekly talks from researchers who leverage AI research to benefit society. Join us on Zoom & hear from Princeton Professors Stefana Parascho & Corina Tarnita on a talk titled "Bringing Social Distancing to Light: Architectural Interventions for COVID-19 Containment." Register + more info here.

Women@NCSA invites you to join us on Wednesday for a fireside chat with Rana el Kaliouby on her experiences as a woman & CEO in tech and her memoir, Girl Decoded. We will hold a drawing for 15 books after the event concludes. Winners will be contacted directly via email. If you are interested in entering this drawing, you will need to fill out this registration form and attend the event via Zoom.

The FSHN Sensory Group is recruiting panelists for a consumer test between May 17-28. You must be 18 or older, have no food allergies, not be pregnant/nursing, not have smell/taste disorders, be a frequent consumer of cookies, have a Zoom account, be near campus to pick up samples, and be available for 4 testing sessions. Participants will be compensated with a $20 Amazon gift card.

Join us for the College of Education's Zoom webinar with Dr. David Stovall, Professor of Black Studies and Criminology, Law & Justice at UIC, and Illinois alum, as he discusses, "Addressing Systemic Racism Through Justice and Equity: The Role of Faculty at a Community-Engaged, Empowered University".  Registration is required: https://go.education.illinois.edu/ddss-stovall 

Data continues to impact business decision-making and analytics-driven automation with focus on the importance of the algorithm behind the scenes. Yet the choice and optimization of the algorithm is becoming automated itself, resulting in many missing the importance of what comes before and after. Join us to learn about important issues behind so-called first-mile and last-mile problems.

Join us for the University of Illinois Archives’ monthly Women in Science Lecture. Dr. Ruby Mendenhall, Associate Professor in Sociology, African American Studies, Urban and Regional Planning, and Social Work, will discuss her interdisciplinary work that focuses on issues of social inequality and economic mobility. Please register to receive the zoom link.

Do you live alone full-time in Champaign, Knox or McDonough counties? Seeking adults for a study on how living alone affects food practices. The study involves a 60-90 minute virtual/phone interview, one-week food diary & photo exercise & a second interview to reflect on the exercises. You will receive $60 in grocery gift cards for participating. Please contact oleschuk@illinois.edu if interested.

We are studying how impaired heart health affects brain while walking. This one day study will take ~3.5 hours in lab and you will receive check payment of $30. If you are ≥55 years old, do not have any medical condition and willing to participate in walking and balance study, then please contact by phone (217)-300-3080 or email: mhernand@illinois.edu,abishn2@illinois.edu  

Seeking participants for a study on the effect of sweet taste on blood sugar. Participants aged 21-45, non-smokers, with a BMI >30 kg/m2 and no diabetes will complete questionnaires, taste testing, body composition, and blood draws and receive up to $500 upon completion of 5 visits (between 2 to 6 hours each). Please contact sweettastelab@gmail.com if interested or follow the link for more info.