Not-So-Lazy Days of Summer

Wednesday, July 17, 2013 Next print issue August 28! Read UIC News online uicnews.uic.edu VOLUME 31 / NUMBER 34 www.uicnews.uic.edu facebook.com/uicnews twitter.com/uicnews NEWS UIC youtube.com/uicmedia For the community of the University of Illinois at Chicago Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin New students head across campus on a tour for UIC Orientation, organized by Student Development Services. Up to 8,000 freshmen or transfer students and their parents will be introduced to UIC through orientation, which began at the end of May and continues through July. Students are also invited to stay overnight in residence halls. All new undergrads can participate in orientation; it’s not too late to sign up at 312-996-3271. Not-so-lazy days of summer INSIDE: Profile / Quotable 2 | Campus News 4 | Postgraduate 7 | Calendar 8 | Police / Deaths 10 | People 11 | Sports 12 Christine Mary Dunford adds drama Look, Ma, no gravity! Team takes Custom map business leads Loyola women’s coach joins to teaching science into space urban planning grads to success Flames staff More on page 2 More on page 5 More on page 7 More on page 12 2 UIC NEWS I www.uicnews.uic.edu I JULY 17, 2013 profile Send profile ideas to Gary Wisby, [email protected] Christine Mary Dunford takes bestseller to the stage By Gary Wisby “Alice talks to herself,” Here’s how Christine Mary Dunford Dunford said. “She can say came to adapt the bestselling novel Still things she thinks that she Alice into a play that she directed recently wouldn’t say to her family.” for Lookingglass Theatre: Dunford has been She was working with the director of part of the Lookingglass a program for Alzheimer’s patients and asked if she’d ever ensemble since 1989 and considered stage performance as a way to reach them. has acted in, written, “Yes, but I didn’t know how,” the director said. adapted or directed nearly Said Dunford: “I know how.” three dozen of the theater’s Dunford, associate chair of UIC’s theatre and music productions. department, is a partner on Alzheimer’s-related projects For the Memory with Darby Morhardt and Mary O’Hara of Northwestern Ensemble, she gets University Feinberg School of Medicine. together with eight to 15 They co-founded the Memory Ensemble, which involves Alzheimer’s patients once a patients in improvisation. week for improv work. “People don’t have to remember,” Dunford said. “No one has to Because she needed background on Alzheimer’s, Dunford remember anything from asked Morhardt for some literature. The book Still Alice, by week to week,” she said. Lisa Genova, was part of the material she was handed. In one exercise, “One of the reasons I liked it was that it shifted the objects are grouped in the discourse about ‘dying from’ to ‘living with,’” she said. middle of the room and “It matched my own values and principles about living participants take turns and change, and my experience with people in the Memory pretending the objects are Ensemble. Living with Alzheimer’s — that felt truthful to me.” something else. Another thing she liked about Still Alice was its “dark Illustrating, Dunford picked up her sweater and humor that matched my experience with people with “One of the reasons I liked it was that it shifted the discourse about ‘dying from’ to ‘living with,’” says held it like a violin, cradled Alzheimer’s,” Dunford said. Christine Mary Dunford about “Still Alice,” her recent play directed for Lookingglass Theatre. “Sometimes people are afraid, sad or confused, but when it like a baby and tugged their feelings are acknowledged, they quickly move into the on it like a dog leash. chance to do something positive with humor and hope.” For each transformation, “everyone shouts ‘Yes it is!’” she She earned a bachelor’s degree in theater from She wanted the play to present some of the biggest said. Northwestern University. questions about living with Alzheimer’s and “provide a “Everyone is creative, everyone is supportive, everyone is “I thought about a double major including political science, vocabulary for more conversation.” successful in a safe environment.” but I kept coming back to theater,” she said. She seems to have succeeded. Twenty years ago, Dunford co-founded the Lookingglass “Through stories, we get to experience and explore what it “People who came to the play told me almost without Education and Community program for public and private means to be human.” exception that they drove home talking about it,” Dunford school students across the city. Dunford received a master’s degree in cultural anthropology said. In the Young Ensemble, kids ages 8 to 18 spend a school at UIC before returning to Northwestern for a doctorate in One of several works she’s adapted into plays, Still Alice, year creating a play — or adapting one from a short story or performance studies. which ran at Lookingglass from April 20 to May 19, “came novel — then stage and produce it. She rejoined UIC in 2012 as associate chair of theatre and rather easily,” she said. In 1994, Dunford became a founding teaching artist with music and will be director of the new School of Theatre and “The source material is so good, and I’d had a lot of the Chicago Arts Partners in Education, teaching in the Music. personal experience that gave me a sense of clarity about what program until 2003. Dunford lives in Evanston with her husband, Daniel I wanted to do.” As an anthropology research associate with the Field Cunningham, production coordinator at Oakton Community As with any piece of fiction, the challenge was in Museum, she conducted research commissioned by the city’s College, and their two young children. translating the narrative voice to the stage. Dunford did this Department of Environment on how residents understand “I like to hike and camp with my family,” she said. “I have an by splitting Alice into two characters. and deal with issues of conservation and climate change. interest in travel, but don’t get to do a lot of it. Both are onstage together, along with the play’s other Dunford’s family lived in Evanston and Chicago until “And I want to learn to draw and watercolor. It’s on my list characters — Alice’s husband, their two children, a grad she was 6, moving to Rockford for three years and then to of things to do when I retire.” student and two doctors. Phoenix, Ariz. [email protected] quotable “History tells us with modes of transportation, at “Kids hear a lot of negative messages about healthy “It’s the notion of universities doing things and us some point with more and more use, the number of eating. When we say things like ‘you have to eat your doing things with universities, because they can’t do it crashes declines.” brussels sprouts before you get any dessert,’ we are alone, that helps us create the coalitions of place that sending a message that vegetables are something to we need to invest in Chicago.” Siim Soot, professor emeritus in the Urban Transportation be tolerated, not enjoyed.” Center, on the decline in the number of Chicago-area David Perry, professor of urban planning and policy, on bicycle crashes, July 12 ABC7 News Sheela Raja, assistant professor and clinical psychologist the impact of universities on Chicago’s economy, July 10 in pediatric dentistry, on getting children to eat their WBEZ-FM “Curious City” vegetables, July 14 Nashua, N.H. Telegraph UIC NEWS I www.uicnews.uic.edu I JULY 17, 2013 JULY 17, 2013 I UIC NEWS I www.uicnews.uic.edu 3 UIC Chicago site for Latino health study Crisis training may improve police response to mentally ill By Sharon Parmet By Jeffron Boynés UIC will manage the Chicago por- tion of a six-year, multi-center National Can specialized training help Chicago police to divert Institutes of Health study of Hispanic people with mental illness into treatment services and and Latino health in the U.S. avoid incarceration? “The Hispanic/Latino population is A $3.1 million, five-year grant from the National growing faster than any other minority Institute of Mental Health to researchers in the Jane group in the U.S., and to better serve Addams College of Social Work will fund a study of the their health needs, we need to know effectiveness of a police-based diversion approach that uses where they stand as a whole — this crisis intervention teams. study lets us see that big picture,” said “There is emerging evidence that crisis intervention Martha Daviglus, director of the UIC teams improve police response to persons with mental Institute for Minority Health Research illnesses,” said Amy Watson, associate professor of social and principal investigator of the Chi- work. cago field center. “This study will allow us to more rigorously test crisis The nationwide Hispanic Com- intervention team effectiveness and examine factors that munity Health Study/Study of Latinos support improved longer-term mental health and criminal includes more than 16,400 Hispanic/ justice outcomes for persons with serious mental illnesses Latino adults between the ages of 18 in the community.” and 74. Participants are of diverse back- Results from a previous study in four Chicago police grounds‚ including Cuban, Dominican, Mexican, districts suggested that crisis intervention-trained officers Puerto Rican, Central American and South American. They disease, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, were more successful at directing individuals with mental were recruited from four U.S. communities. diabetes and smoking,” she said.

Load more