‘NIU Travel with a Professor’ group plans New Year’s trip

The “NIU Travel with a Professor” group will voyage from Dec. 27 to Jan. 5 to visit historic Vienna.

Participants will partake in many activities including a symphony at the Vienna Concert Hall, a tour of Schonnbrun palace and a cooking demonstration at a famous Viennese restaurant.

On New Year’s Eve, students will attend The Imperial Ball at Hofburg Place after a waltz lesson at Vienna’s Elmayer dance school. After New Year’s, students will tour St. Stephan’s cathedral, the Austrian Gallery at Belvedere Palace and the city’s many coffee houses. The trip will conclude with a trip to Vienna Woods, dinner at “Maestro,” a visit to Mozart’s birth place, an Alpine sleigh ride and a Mozart dinner concert.

For information, call Steven Johnson at 753-5200 or e-mail [email protected].

International pan superstar ready to lead NIU Steel Band

Liam Teague, international pan superstar, who will be heading the NIU Steel Band, has grand plans for the 30-year-old band.

Teague said he wants to make NIU the American Mecca of the steel band.

Teague, a native of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, where the steel pan was invented, came to NIU in 1985 to build and tune steel pans and compose and arrange music.

Teague’s plans include moving the annual Steel Band concert from Boutell Memorial Concert Hall to a larger venue and featuring more “listener-friendly” songs to replace the 10-minute arrangements of the past.

Scholarship made in memory of late faculty member

Carmen Pursley, wife of late NIU School of Music faculty member Wilbur Parsley, made a donation to NIU in her husband’s name.

The Wilbur Pursley Endowed Scholarship in Music fund will be used to provide support for junior or senior undergraduate trombone or composition music majors at NIU.

Pursley, a talented pianist and trombonist, joined the NIU music faculty in 1964 and remained a dedicated faculty member until 1991. He performed with the NIU Alumni-Faculty Dixieland Band and the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

In May 2000, Pursley was honored posthumously with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Rockford Area Music Industry Association “for lifelong dedication to music education, promotion, and performance nationally and in the Rockford area.”

Library set to move reference services to first floor

In response to recent budget cuts, the Founders Memorial Library will be moving its reference services to the main desk starting this fall.

The move will save the library $400,000. During busy times, there will be double-staffing at the desk.

The library will begin moving 40 percent of the reference materials from the second and third floors to the main floor. Dean of University libraries, Arthur Young said that the library was unable to fill some recently retired positions.

School of Nursing grads rank high on state boards

Scores in the 95th percentile on the National Council of State Boards of Nursing Licensure Examination ranked NIU as the 6th among Illinois’ 22 nursing programs,

Fall 2002 graduates ranked 93rd among the nation’s 546 programs with fall semester graduates.

“We continue to have more exceptional applicants for our programs than we can handle,” said Marilyn Frank Stromborg, chair of the school of nursing. “These NCLEX scores show us, however, that we are choosing our students well and providing them the quality of education they need to become excellent nurses.”