CHICAGO, IL – Pamela Kendall-Rijos, a Vice-President at Goldman Sachs & Co., has been named to the Columbia College Chicago Board of Trustees, announced college President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D.
During her twenty-year professional career, Kendall-Rijos has been an investment advisor to many of the Forbes 400 families. At Goldman Sachs, she and her team are distinguished as one of the largest wealth management teams worldwide with more than $9 billion of assets under management. Kendall-Rijos was recently recognized for her success and was named a member of the Goldman Sachs leadership Council for Private Wealth Management. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University as well as a Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in Accounting from Southern Methodist University. Professionally, Kendall-Rijos has earned the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst with the Association of Investment Management and Research. She is an active member of the Chicago Society of Investment Analysts.
Kendall-Rijos has served as a board member for the 100 Club of Chicago, a non-profit organization that responds immediately with financial support to families of fallen police officers, paramedics and firefighters located in Cook County, Illinois. Additionally, through Goldman Sachs Community Team Works efforts, she has championed many local volunteer projects for variety of public charities including: Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank, YMCA, as well as numerous volunteer teaching efforts throughout underserved urban campuses.
Kendall-Rijos has a growing personal interest in music and theatre and is an avid patron. She is a member of the Ravinia Festival and the Van Wezel Performing Art Center in Highland Park, IL and Sarasota, FL, respectively.
She resides with her husband, John, her daughter and step-sons in Highland Park, Illinois.
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Alumna Allison Riggio and Student Hunter Clauss Recognized for Report on City Corruption
(CHICAGO, IL) Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., (IRE) recognizes the most outstanding watchdog journalism each year. IRE Medals, the top honor bestowed by the organization, are generally garnered by veteran investigative reporters from such respected publications as The Washington Post and The New York Times. The IRE also awards certificates for outstanding work in smaller markets; only one award in the student category is given.
The IRE 2007 student achievement certificate was awarded to two young Columbia College Chicago journalists: Allison Riggio (’07) and Hunter Clauss, a current student.
The pair teamed up during Suzanne McBride’s Investigative Journalism class during Fall term 2006 to work on a story about the nepotistic hiring practices of Chicago Aldermen. The story grew, becoming a 6-month independent study project that ultimately was co-published by the Journalism Department’s creatingcommunityconnections.org initiative and The Beachwood Reporter. (See http://www.beachwoodreporter.com/politics/post_12.php )
To research “Public Payroll, Family Affairs: Aldermen Keep It Relative,” Riggio and Clauss used public records requests and numerous phone calls to identify relatives of city council members on the public payroll. Persistence and aggressiveness overcame the obstacle of not being taken seriously by some sources.
“This was not an easy project to tackle. Some sources wouldn't call Allison and me back,” explains Clauss. “So we had to call them every hour of every day for weeks just to get an interview. But we kept at it and it's nice to know it paid off. Working on this project was a blast. Suzanne is an excellent professor and it was a pleasure working with her. Her investigative journalism class really got me interested in Chicago politics. It essentially made me a nerd for local politics and I encourage any Columbia students interested in investigative journalism to take her class. I also encourage all students to go to city council meetings and become familiar with how the city operates.”
“I'm thrilled to receive such an honor for work that began as a project with Suzanne McBride's Investigative Journalism class. When our semester came to a close it seemed as though we had only seen the tip of the "nepotism" iceberg,” says Riggio. “With Suzanne's guidance and encouragement we were able to attack this issue full-force. I feel this award has further helped us shed light on a topic that usually falls on deaf ears. In a city the size of Chicago, it's often hard to find anyone to really care about corruption unless it affects them directly. It is not our job to say what is right or wrong, ethical or unethical; however, it is my hope that our work will inspire readers to make those decisions on their own.”
“Each of the award winning projects highlights the crucial impact that the best investigative reporting can have,” said IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit. “Lives were changed, injustices were eliminated and dangerous threats to public safety were removed as a result of this work.”
Contest entries are screened and judged by IRE members, who are working journalists. This year, judges considered more than IRE, founded in 1975, is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to training and supporting journalists who pursue investigative stories and operates the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a joint program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism. The contest, which began in 1979, considers entries in 15 categories and a range of market sizes. Judges reviewed 530 entries for the 2007 awards.
The IRE awards will be presented at a luncheon on Saturday, June 7, at the 2008 IRE Conference in Miami. Allison and Hunter will be there to collect their certificates – and to network with some of the best investigative reporters working in media today.
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Teacher Skill Building Initiative Targets Math for English Language Learners
CHICAGO, IL -- The Education Department, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Columbia College Chicago has received $305,058 to continue their work on “Extending Teacher Capacity to Increase ELL Success in Mathematics.” The funds were awarded through the Illinois Board of Higher Education’s “No Child Left Behind: Improving Teacher Quality” program. This is the fifth year Columbia has received funding for the initiative.
The grant will allow Columbia’s Education Department to continue providing professional development for elementary school teachers to enhance their ability to teach math more effectively to English language learners (ELL). The project activities will provide professional development for a cohort of at least 30 teachers, giving them tools and strategies to adapt standards-based mathematics instruction to match the linguistic needs of students enrolled in bilingual or English-as-a-new language (ENL) programs. To that end, the project is designed to integrate mathematics with the study of language and with the arts to increase the probability for academic success.
Members of the college’s Education Department will work in partnership with the Chicago Public School District #299 and Summit School District #104 to provide teachers with information, plans, opportunities and tools to ensure successful learning among language minority students. These activities will improve teacher practice by addressing mathematical content knowledge, prepare a cohort of teacher leaders, introduce pedagogies for using art projects to teach ENL students, and develop an integrated math, ENL and arts curriculum.
According to Dr. Ava Belisle-Chatterjee, Chair of the Education Department, “We have found that the same rich contexts and strategies that are used to develop mathematical concepts in a standards-based curriculum are also useful for developing second language proficiency. And the interactional nature of the arts, where learning emerges from doing or making the art form, dovetails with both research-based approaches used for second language learning and with those approaches recommended in standards-based mathematics curricula, which demand that students do mathematics.”
This phase of the grant will focus on program sustainability by providing professional development for teachers to assume school-based leadership roles necessary for this initiative to continue to thrive. In addition, the grant will focus on including the department’s Master of Arts in Teaching students in the project’s professional development activities. It will also pilot the use of the lesson study approach with a small group of faculty members from other departments in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
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CHICAGO, IL – This fall, Columbia College Chicago will launch the third year of Critical Encounters, the school’s campus-wide learning initiative, with a multi-layered examination of the relationships and tensions between humankind and the natural world.
Human|Nature will consider how factors such as the culture, wealth, geography and history of societies have influenced humanity’s stewardship, exploitation, understanding and artistic representation of the natural environment.
Through both public programming and classroom initiatives, Columbia faculty, staff and students, as well as the general public will investigate how past actions have resulted in local and global environmental crises and weigh potential solutions.
“Human|Nature will survey how societies either choose to collectively protect their shared resources or retreat from cooperation and the impact these decisions have had on humanity and human rights,” explains Dr. Kevin Fuller, Columbia’s 2008-9 Critical Encounters Faculty Fellow. “The theme will also gauge the impact of the natural world on human development by considering how nature has shaped the shared human experience as well as exploring the degree to which individual values, qualities and desires are either naturally imbued or socially nurtured.”
Fuller, associate chair and professor of biology in Columbia’s department of science and mathematics, has been working with a team of academics across the college’s liberal education, arts and media disciplines to develop the layers of inquiry that comprise Human|Nature. The team will continue to work together to create educational opportunities for both students and the general public.
“Human|Nature is a very timely and a very rich theme,” says Provost and Senior Vice President Steven Kapelke. “We are not only addressing ‘green’ issues, although clearly this is a significant component of Human|Nature. The core paradigms of Western society have been shaped by a historically contentious relationship between humans and the natural world. Linking with the previous and current Critical Encounters themes of HIV/AIDS and Poverty & Privilege, Human|Nature should significantly deepen our exploration of many of our most ‘cherished’ social constructions.”
Critical Encounters is a college-wide initiative intended to synchronize conversations between the school and the community in an ongoing dialogue around a central, socially and culturally relevant issue, each academic year. The purpose of Critical Encounters is to further enhance Columbia College’s commitment to civic engagement by inviting students, faculty and staff to explore and reflect upon the chosen issue so that we better understand the impact of that issue in relation to our role as artists, communicators, and media makers, and as those who shape public perception and author the culture of our times. More information at www.colum.edu/criticalencounters.
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CHICAGO (March 7, 2008) - The headline event of Columbia’s popular Story Week Festival of Writers will feature a talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Divakaruni, whose popular works include Queen of Dreams and Sister of My Heart will read from and discuss her recently published novel The Palace of Illusions with Booklist Associate Editor and Open Books WLUW-FM host Donna Seaman. A book signing follows.
The free event will take place at 6:00 p.m. in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium of the Harold Washington Public Library on Monday, March 17. The reading and conversation is being presented in collaboration with Columbia’s Conversations in the Arts: Up Close With… series. More information and a full schedule of events at www.colum.edu/storyweek.
In The Palace of Illusions, Divakaruni reweaves the epic Indian saga the Mahabharat from the point of view of the female heroine, Pricess Panchaali. Though set sometime between 6000 BCE and 5000 BCE, the story has many parallels to today’s war-torn world. Central to the novel’s plot is the infamous and bloody battle of Kurukshetra, in which most kings of the period participated and perished. Divakaruni closely examines both the political and personal motivations for the war, and is unsparing in recording its consequences for her characters. The Mahabharat was meant to impart wisdom just as much as it was meant to entertain, and Divakaruni fulfills those purposes admirably, and takes a decidedly feminist look at the tale, in the pages of her much-anticipated new novel.
Joyce Carol Oates canceled her book tour due to the death of her husband of more than 40 years.
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CHICAGO (March 5, 2008) -The Columbia College Chicago Department of Journalism has announced the winners of the 2008 John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition. Winner of the top prize is Michael Ramirez of Investors Business Daily. Honorable mentions went to Tony Auth of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Steve Greenberg of the Ventura County Star. A panel of judges chose the winning entries from a field of 171 cartoons submitted by 56 editorial cartoonists. Ramirez will receive the $3,000 grand prize and Auth and Greenberg $1,000 each in recognition of their work.
The first place cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez depicts Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama as one of the massive, enigmatic, sculptural figures of Easter Island. “An editorial cartoon….is neither conservative nor liberal,” says Ramirez. “Whether you agree with it philosophically or not, a good editorial cartoon engages the reader in debate.”
A U.S. map constructed of guns, hovering over splattered blood, is the chilling image that garnered an honorable mention for Steve Greenberg. “Editorial cartoons …help raise awareness of pressing issues, sound an alarm on issues of dire urgency and attempt to help redirect us when we are going off in the wrong direction,” notes Greenberg.
Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Tony Auth commented on the Blackwater scandal with his image of a hulking Blackwater soldier driving a bayonet through the back of Uncle Sam. “As newspapers struggle as never before, more and more of them are questioning whether they can afford the luxury of their own cartoonist,” says Auth, whose cartoon won a 2007 Fischetti honorable mention. “The times we live in, the visual nature of cartooning and its strength and power when used well argue that editorial cartooning is as needed now as ever. But then again, so are newspapers.”
Ramirez, Auth and Greenberg will be honored at a reception on Tuesday evening, April 1 at Chicago’s Flatfile Galleries. The evening will include comments from the honorees, presentation of awards and a silent auction of original editorial cartoons with proceed benefiting the Fischetti scholarship fund. Also featured will be a tribute to the late Doug Marlette with Marlette’s nephew, Andy Marlette, editorial cartoonist for The Pensacola News Journal. Doug Marlette was a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Fischetti winner, a Nieman Fellow and the creator of Kudzu. To request an invitation to the event, contact Jim Sulski at 312-344-8954 or jsulski@colum.edu. More information on the Fischetti awards can be found at www.johnfischetti.org.
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