The southeastern states have seen a record-breaking number of hurricanes already make landfall in a year when the nation is also grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. When researchers wanted to know how people would balance the danger of contracting the virus with the need to evacuate their homes, they turned to UNI professor Mark Welford for help. Welford, who heads UNI’s geography department, is also an expert on global pandemics like the medieval Black Death.
UNI Fulbright Scholar Hasina Jalal knows only too well the high stakes for women who work for equality, liberty and democracy in her native Afghanistan.
University of Northern Iowa officials traveled to Des Moines Area Community College on Thursday to tour a new $24 million downtown campus that will host the UNI@DMACC program that launched this fall.
The UNI Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders has welcomed a new addition to their department: baby “Paul.”
Weighing just under two and a half pounds, “Paul” is a preterm infant born at 27 weeks. He has a pulse, real hair, and can breathe and cry.
Paul is not a real infant, though, but rather a top-of-the-line high emotion simulator that students in the department will soon begin using for classwork.
Community policing was the main focus of the first “The Purple Couch Courageous Conversations,” a series of public discussions about equity and social justice on UNI’s campus. The series, which launched last week, was organized and moderated by Jamie Butler Chidozie, Director for Diversity, Inclusion & Social Justice.
UNI President Mark Nook and Police Chief Helen Haire took part. Highlights from the conversation have been edited for length and clarity.
2020 hasn’t been easy. A global pandemic, national reckoning on racial inequality and economic crisis have led up to a contentious election season. Psychology professor and department head Adam Butler and family services assistant professor Heather Kennedy are here to help with some ways to cope with stress and anxiety this election season.
The election of 2020 is shaping up to be one unlike any other. With record early voting turnout and increases in absentee ballots due to the pandemic, it’s uncertain whether Americans will know who their next president will be when they wake up on Nov. 4. University of Northern Iowa political science professors Donna Hoffman and Christopher Larimer have been studying elections for years and are frequently sought out by the media for their expertise.
Witches have long been part of popular culture, from “Bewitched” to “Charmed” to the countless children knocking on people’s doors dressed as a witch this Halloween. But those modern myths have dark origins of persecution, prosecution and execution. University of Northern Iowa history professor and department head Jennifer McNabb has studied the causes and consequences of witch hunts for years, publishing articles in journals and writing material for textbooks on Western civilization and European history.
As if 2020 hasn’t been strange enough, this Halloween will feature an unusual celestial treat - the first worldwide blue moon in 76 years.
While a Halloween blue moon comes once about every 19 years to specific time zones (the Midwest last saw one in 2000), the last truly global blue moon was in 1944, according to the Farmer’s Almanac.
Last week, a panel discussion on the intersection of race, policing and social justice was held virtually as part of UNI’s “Cultivating Justice: A 6-Week Quest Toward Racial Equity” series. The series, now in its fourth year, was launched in 2015 in the wake of demonstrations after the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
