Doug Mupasiri has a voice that seems ideal for a professor. It’s booming and resonant, the type that can fill every corner of a lecture hall. The UNI mathematics department head is putting it to use advocating for the inclusion of more minorities in STEM fields, where black and Hispanics have been woefully underrepresented. Last month, UNI hosted a regional conference aimed at encouraging diverse students to consider a career in science, technology, engineering or math.
As a group of revolutionaries huddled together in Philadelphia to craft what would become the Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams made a simple request.
“Remember the ladies,” the future First Lady implored in a letter to her husband John. “And be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.”
A beast resides deep in the bowels of McCollum Science Hall.
This fearsome creature - with teeth that shred and claws that clatter - lurks in a corner of a laboratory behind a formidable gate marked with a sign that warns “enter at your own risk.”
And this menacing monster’s name is...Steve, an American alligator, who, contrary to his appearance - almost five feet long with black and yellow banding across his boney scales - is harmless.
Erin Brockovich, then a single mom and law clerk, became a household name after an Oscar-winning film starring Julia Roberts told the story of her dogged investigation into groundwater contamination in Hinkley, Calif. and the historic class-action lawsuit that followed. On Feb. 25, Brockovich gave her talk “The Power of One” in the Great Hall of the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center.
David Schmitz ‘06 is proof that art can change lives. The Charles City native said his time at UNI was transformative - from creating his own unique artwork to his first exposure promoting the arts while a UNI Gallery of Art student worker. Those experiences sparked a passion for promoting art and a career that led from the Dubuque Museum of Art to the Iowa Arts Council, where he will start as administrator late next month promoting the arts across Iowa. Here he shares his thoughts on the importance of art, how to make it more accessible and how UNI shaped his career.
After setting a national fundraising record at the University of Northern Iowa’s first Dance Marathon eight years ago, organizers have an even loftier goal for this year’s event.
UNI’s largest student organization is hoping to raise $700,000 for the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital on Feb. 29. An anonymous donor has agreed to match the total dollar-for-dollar and will speak at the event.
That $1.4 million haul would shatter the group’s previous record of $680,464.
TC and TK briefly took to the floor of the Iowa State House Monday as the University of Northern Iowa hosted UNI Day at the Capitol, an annual event highlighting UNI’s impact across the state by showcasing its programs, services, students and alumni.
UNI professor Matt Townsley wants to see an education revolution. In his upcoming book “Making Grades Matter,” co-written with Nathan Wear, the UNI educational leadership assistant professor lays out the path for middle and high schools to abandon traditional letter grades in favor of a standards-based grading model. In this conversation, he outlines his case for why schools should rethink the way they think about grades and learning.
What is standards-based grading? Is it the death knell of letter grades?
It’s a classic Iowa story — UNI graduate Cole was raised in small-town central Iowa, where he watched his dad and grandfather work his family’s farm together. At age five, he was sitting on his father’s lap while he drove tractors across the corn fields. Within three years, he started driving the tractors himself. It was a given that he’d grow up to take over the farm’s operations someday.
It was the middle of the afternoon when Phales Milimo saw a pregnant woman go into labor and collapse on the sidewalk.
She was in the Sinazongwe District in southern Zambia, just a five-hour drive from her hometown of Lusaka, the country’s bustling metropolitan capital. Technically, she hadn’t left her country, but it felt like she was in a different world.
