Illinois – WUN International Development Grant Program
The Division of International Programs and Studies (IPS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Worldwide Universities Network are pleased to announce the 2008 Illinois – WUN International Development Grant Program winners.
The Illinois – WUN International Development Grant Program is designed to strengthen interdisciplinary research on and curriculum development in global themes at Illinois and WUN partner institutions and enhance international scholarly collaboration among the partner institutions. These grants are generously sponsored by the Offices of the Provost and IPS at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Worldwide Universities Network.
The Division of International Programs and Studies (IPS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Worldwide Universities Network are pleased to announce the 2008 Illinois – WUN International Development Grant Program winners.
The Illinois – WUN International Development Grant Program is designed to strengthen interdisciplinary research on and curriculum development in global themes at Illinois and WUN partner institutions and enhance international scholarly collaboration among the partner institutions. These grants are generously sponsored by the Offices of the Provost and IPS at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Worldwide Universities Network.
Prescription and Language Reform
Douglas Kibbee - School of Literature, Culture & Linguistics
Dennis Baron - English
Language, like many patterns of social interaction, has both rules and creativity, the restraining influence of social requirements for communication and the innovative actions of the individual agent. Both of these are natural processes that should be subject to scientific investigation, but because of the dominant ideology of modern linguistics, conscious constraints on creativity have often been considered “unnatural” and outside the realm of science.
In this project we propose to study in a scientific manner types of linguistic behavior most often condemned as unnatural: the prescription of usage by grammarians, teachers and other self-designated experts on language, and the reform of language by governmental intervention. To incorporate prescriptivism and language reform into a scientific framework for the study of language, we need to understand how it works in different national traditions. To accomplish this, we propose to bring together an international consortium to create a database of prescriptivist texts from a number of different national traditions. At the outset, we include English, French, German, Russian and Norwegian. In the future we hope to expand this to include other languages.
WUN International Enterprise Competition
Anthony Mendes - Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership
Kimberly Sugden - Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership
Visit the WUN Enterprise Website
The WUN International Enterprise Competition was created to give students from all academic disciplines, undergrad through PhD, from universities across the world the opportunity to showcase their innovative enterprise plans in an annual global forum. The competition is open to all WUN universities, giving as many students as possible the opportunity for experiential learning and networking. The inaugural WUN competition will begin in next year in April 2009.
The WUN International Competition will be a significant motivator for students and companies to become more involved in the regional competitions held at each of their institutions. The opportunity to travel, compete, and gain invaluable leadership skills will be a unique talking point for these innovative students, as they are looking to be competitive job applicants or writing to get into graduate school.
Anthony Mendes - Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership
Kimberly Sugden - Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership
Visit the WUN Enterprise Website
The WUN International Enterprise Competition was created to give students from all academic disciplines, undergrad through PhD, from universities across the world the opportunity to showcase their innovative enterprise plans in an annual global forum. The competition is open to all WUN universities, giving as many students as possible the opportunity for experiential learning and networking. The inaugural WUN competition will begin in next year in April 2009.
The WUN International Competition will be a significant motivator for students and companies to become more involved in the regional competitions held at each of their institutions. The opportunity to travel, compete, and gain invaluable leadership skills will be a unique talking point for these innovative students, as they are looking to be competitive job applicants or writing to get into graduate school.
Developing a Partnership for Water Quality Research, Teaching , and Extension
George Czapar - Cooperative Extension Springfield Extension Center
Prasanta Kalita - Agricultural Engineering
This project seeks to develop collaboration opportunities on water quality issues facing Illinois and China. A five-member team from the University of Illinois including research, teaching, and Extension faculty in the area of soil and water management will participate in an exchange with WUN partner institutions Zhejiang University and Nanjing University. A second objective of the project is to expand the use of distance education and internet conferencing. A water quality conference will be organized at Zhejiang University and part of the program will be broadcast live via internet to several Extension offices in Illinois. A University of Illinois Information Technology (IT) specialist will join the water quality team for part of the trip to facilitate the internet conference, and to help identify opportunities for more efficient long-term collaboration using distance education technology.
Translating the Middle Ages
Karen Fresco - French
Visit the Multilingualism in the Middle Ages Website
The Program in Medieval Studies requests WUN funding in support of an international conference that it is working with the new Center for Translation Studies to organize. This conference will draw on links with colleagues at WUN-affiliated universities and seek to broaden UIUC involvement in an on-going WUN project on “Multilingualism in the Middle Ages."
This event will bring together medievalists whose scholarship focuses on the theory and practice translation in the Middle Ages or on the cultural transfer of medieval ideas, images, and ideologies, with two renowned contemporary writers who have translated medieval literature. This event is distinctive in that it invites medievalists and modernists, scholars across a broad range of disciplines and artists, to engage in creative dialogue that will draw the interest of both the campus and the broader community. It will showcase the new Center for Translation Studies and the interdisciplinary work that is the hallmark of Medieval Studies.
Soybean Leaf Growth and Canopy Structure in a High Carbon Dioxide and High Ozone Environment
Elizabeth Ainsworth - Plant Biology
Canopy leaf area provides the exchange surface for carbon and water between vegetation and the atmosphere. Small-scale changes in individual leaf growth, movement and physiology can impact canopy leaf area development as well as canopy structure, and control large-scale changes in crop productivity and carbon sequestration. Physiological processes per unit leaf area and total canopy leaf area have been extensively studied under climate change conditions, specifically rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and rising ozone concentration. However, despite leaf growth playing a key role in canopy function, environmental and genetic controls of leaf growth are poorly understood. The goal of this collaborative research project is to understand how global atmospheric changes predicted for 2050 will influence leaf growth, leaf area development and canopy structure in soybean.
This collaborative research proposal will build upon existing collaborations as well as forge new WUN research collaborations between Dr. Elizabeth Ainsworth from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh from the University of Washington, Seattle, Dr. Gail Taylor from the University of Southampton, UK and Dr. Uwe Rascher from the Jülich Research Center, Germany. The ideas for this research collaboration were conceived at the 2 WUN Plant Stress Initiative, held at Penn State University on April 6-8, 2008, and attended by Drs. Ainsworth, Taylor and Van Volkenburgh.
Agrarian-Based Tropical Forest Urbanism in Mesoamerica and S.E. Asia: Cultural Traditions, Heritage Management and Past and Present Sustainability
Lisa Lucero - Anthropology
Since the 1950s and 60s, beginning with Michael Coe, comparisons have been made between the ‘low-density’ urban centers of the Maya in Lowland Mesoamerica and those of the Khmer in Southeast Asia in the first and early second millennium CE. The resemblances extend also to the great urban centers of medieval Ceylon and Indonesia. We plan to explore how people have lived and continue to live in tropical forest environments given the landscape, climate, and noticeable wet and dry seasons. We will explore and compare the impact of sprawling urban populations, land-clearing and the built environment on local ecology, and the role of climate change and other factors in the demise of political systems and the re-organization of people across the landscape.
Colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, the University of Sydney and Pennsylvania State University are planning to organize a program of two symposia, one at Angkor in Cambodia in November 2010 and one at Palenque in Mexico in March 2011 to enable regional specialists who work in Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia to meet, to see examples of the urban cultural heritage of each region, and to discuss the issues of similarity and difference in tropical forest urbanism. The intention is that both the academic researchers and the national heritage managers should have the opportunity to meet and to experience the diversity and commonalities of their varied fields of responsibility.
