Knox in the News

From Indiana University:

A study co-authored by a professor in Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business suggests that fans do have a great impact on games and that officials often are not objective in their efforts to be fair to both teams.

An examination of 365 major conference games played during the 2004-05 college men’s basketball season found a clear pattern of an increased probability of a foul on the team with fewer fouls, the visiting team and the team that is leading.

“Whether consciously or subconsciously, officials seem to show a pattern where they try to make the number of fouls called on each team come out approximately even,” said Kyle J. Anderson, a visiting assistant professor of business economics at Kelley-Indianapolis. “That is seen as being objective or fair.

“We had suspected that, having played and watched basketball,” he added. “But once we started to run the data, I think the magnitude of the effect was much more than we had ever anticipated. We thought that this was going be a very small effect.”

Anderson and his co-author, David Pierce, an assistant professor of sport administration at Ball State University, published their findings in the Journal of Sports Sciences earlier this year. Both have ties to the game — Anderson played collegiately at Division III’s Knox College and Pierce has done some local officiating.

From the Beloit Daily News:

Mary Batterman, a 2003 graduate of Beloit Memorial High School and the daughter of Mark and Gillian Batterman, decided to join the Peace Corps after attending Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. An anthropology major who graduated from college in 2007, she had studied abroad in Thailand and wanted to do overseas development work.

Batterman left in June of 2008 for Tanzania to become a health education volunteer. After briefly living with a host family and undergoing two-and-a-half months of intense Swahili training, she moved to a remote village in the southern highlands called Kilolo. There, she worked with local village officials to implement community projects.

She helped to get a health center opened in the village, organized a youth AIDS committee, started a writing club at the primary school and helped with HIV/AIDS treatment and counseling.

During her time in Kilolo, she lived in a mud brick house with a Tanzanian helper assigned to her. With no electricity or running water, she learned to cook over a coal fire and carry her own water in from more than a mile away. With most Kilolo residents growing vegetables on small plots of land, the typical diet was a corn flour porridge with vegetables or beans. Rice was available, although too expensive for the average family which lives on about 50 cents a day.

The nearest volunteer to Batterman was located in a village 8 miles away, reachable only by walking or bicycling.

Despite the rough conditions, Batterman enjoyed her time in Kilolo. When not working on her volunteer projects, she spent a lot of time walking around the village or sitting in the bread and tea shops. She said most local were eager to talk to her and learn about the United States.

From Colorado State University:

Katie Driver, a Colorado State University student from the Warner College of Natural Resources, was honored with the 2009 Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit Student Achievement Award for her work in creating a protocol for monitoring wetlands in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Driver has a long history of interest and experience in botany. At the age of 14, she completed a botany project surveying flowering plants in an open field near her home in Wisconsin. The project, funded through a grant encouraging middle school students to engage in academia, was only the beginning of Driver’s research life.

“Surprisingly enough, this experience affected the trajectory of my education, career and life,” said Driver.

Attending Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., Driver majored in biology but enrolled in every botany course the school had to offer. “I had a professor there who was a botanist himself, and he acted a mentor and encouraged my interests,” said Driver. She took her first botany-related job in college collecting plant species in Yellowstone National Park and afterwards continued to travel around the country working miscellaneous jobs in the field.

From the Register-Mail:

On Nov. 15, 1909, a century ago, Knox County student Reuben Johan Erickson won the Illinois Oratorical contest held on the campus of Monmouth College. As a result of his feat, witnessed by more than 300 Knox students and local residents, Erickson became eligible to represent Illinois in the Interstate Contest in Omaha, Neb…..

Before he entered Galesburg High School the structure at Broad and Tompkins Streets was destroyed by a tragic fire. Erickson was a member of the first class to graduate from the newly built school at the same location. He proclaimed on the first page of the first ever known GHS Yearbook that the school colors would be “Silver and Gold.”

Erickson’s greatest contribution to Galesburg High School and its citizens was the first ever school song entitled “The Silver & The Gold”…..

Reuben Johan Erickson, upon departing from GHS, would graduate from Knox College and John Hopkins University. He was a lieutenant in the medical corps during World War I. He practiced medicine in Albany, N.Y., before retiring to Santa Fe, N.M.

Reuben Erickson lived as long as his song was sung at Dear Old Galesburg High School. He passed away on June 5, 1959, following an automobile accident in New Mexico. This coincendentally was the last day of classes at the downtown GHS school site prior to the opening of the current facility on West Fremont Street. Reuben lived as long as his old school.

From Denver Business Journal:

Jim Martin has been named the new executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.

Martin currently is head of the Department of Public Health and Environment. His appointment is effective Nov. 16.

He will succeed Harris Sherman, who has been appointed as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, overseeing the Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service…..

Martin was executive director of Western Resource Advocates from 2004 to 2006, and previously was director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School.

He was senior attorney and director of the energy program for Environmental Defense, and from 1986 to 1992 worked for former U.S. Rep. and Sen. Tim Wirth, including four years as state director and counsel.

Martin holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Knox College in Illinois and a law degree from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon.

From WGIL radio:

Events that took a team of individuals months to schedule and prepare for will be on display this weekend at a local college.

Knox College celebrates its homecoming beginning Friday running through the weekend, and there’s plenty for both alumni and current students to attend that will make the weekends events worthwhile.

Director of Alumni Programs at Knox, Carol Brown, who is also a Knox grad, says she began preparing for homecoming celebrations earlier this year in order to get the word out to the schools 14,000 alumni all around the country.

Brown tells WGIL in addition to many programs being offered this weekend, one provides alumni with the opportunity to head back to class and interact with current students.

“It’s very popular. Alumni are given the opportunity to return to the classroom on Friday morning, and there are a selection of classes for them to choose from,” Brown said. “The feedback I receive both from faculty and alumni, is that it’s a very good experience, and there is some interaction that happens between the alumni and current students.”