Meeks honored with alumni award

Loretta Meeks, professor of Teacher Education, is the recipient of the 2009 Alumni Achievers Award from the School of Education and Human Performance at Winston Salem State University, North Carolina. The award recognizes Meeks for professional achievements and contributions to the field of education and the community. It will be presented at the Winston Salem Founder's Day Convocation in late October.

Randy Eccles named WUIS Development Director

Randy Eccles (left), a 30-year veteran of radio stations WGN-AM in Chicago and KTAR-AM/FM in Phoenix, has been named Development Director for NPR-affiliate WUIS 91.9/WIPA 89.3.

WUIS is a service of the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In announcing his appointment, station General Manager Bill Wheelhouse said, "Randy is committed to quality radio and community service, which is what WUIS is all about."

Eccles' experience includes programming, marketing, promotions, production, and website development for music and news/talk/sports radio stations. He has been a part of the management teams at stations that have won multiple awards from the National Association of Broadcasters, including Marconi Awards for excellence and Crystal Awards for community service.

"My role is to find resources and supporters to allow WUIS to continue serving the community with quality programming," said Eccles. "I'm also seeking the funding to develop the best content for emerging technology platforms such as wuis.org, WUIS-HD so we can best serve central and west central Illinois."

Eccles explained that in 2007, he and his then-fiancé took a two-month, nationwide road trip looking for a smaller town with a high quality of life and a lower cost of living where they could relocate. "Springfield had so many things going for it: arts, an emerging music scene, the Capitol, the lake, Lincoln heritage, and the quickly growing UIS," he noted. "We liked it so much we got married here. I'm proud to work for WUIS and the University."

WUIS-WIPA is listener-supported public radio. The station's mission is to satisfy a curious, societally engaged audience through programming and community outreach. For the program schedule, events, and other information, visit www.wuis.org or call the station at 217/206-6516.

Welcome Week 2008

UIS celebrated Welcome Week 2008 in August to greet new and returning students to campus. Welcome Week activities included an open house at the Diversity Center, the Chancellor's Picnic, the Involvement Expo on the Quad, the Foot in the Door Job Fair, a trip to Knight's Action Park and much more.

Heshmat to make presentation at national event

Shahram Heshmat, UIS associate professor of Public Health, will make an invited presentation on "Applying Behavior Economics to Changing Health Behavior" at the Second National Predictive Modeling Summit, to be held September 22-23 in Washington, DC. The summit is the leading forum on healthcare predictive modeling implications, strategies, and solutions for care management, underwriting, profiling, and other related activities. Co-sponsors are the Harvard Health Policy Review, Health Affairs, Predictive Modeling News, and several publications and organizations. Heshmat is one of only 35 faculty from across the nation who were invited as presenters this year.

UIS represented at annual ACS meeting

Jennette Hansen, UIS undergraduate chemistry major, recently presented a paper titled "Preparation of Porous Lithium Cobalt Oxide" at the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia. Co-authors were associate professor Keenan Dungey and undergraduate students Steven Hynek, Andrew Dunn, and Anthony Kilburn.

Dungey also made a presentation at the meeting on "Introducing scanning probe microscopy into undergraduate chemistry courses with hands-on experiments." Co-authors included UIS Chemistry faculty Marc Klingshirn and Gary Trammell.