The Moline Foundation announces February 16 as the deadline to apply for the Clem T. Hanson scholarship. Residents of Moline School District No. 40 are eligible to apply for the four year college scholarship based on scholarship, financial need and extracurricular activities. Students should contact their counseling office at Moline High School, Alleman High School or Black Hawk College for an application. The three Hanson scholarship award winners will be chosen by a local scholarship selection committee and notified of their selection by May 1, 2011. They will receive $1,500 annually for the next four years with an annual renewal based on satisfactory progress in their post-secondary education.

Since 1985, over 100 students have received the Hanson Scholarship Funds as a result of an endowment fund established through the generosity of Clem T. Hanson (1901-1985), a former Moline businessman and community leader. He was the founder of Hanson Advertising Agency in Moline and was a co-founder of HON Industries in Muscatine. Mr. Hanson also served as president of Moline Rotary in 1952 and was a volunteer for Boy Scouts, Arrowhead Ranch and United Way. The Clement T. Hanson Memorial Scholarship Fund was established with the Moline Foundation by his family, following the death of Mr. Hanson on July 17, 1985.

The Moline Foundation, founded in 1953, is a community foundation which provides grants to health, human services, education, community development, the arts and other charitable organizations which benefit the citizens of Moline and the surrounding area. For more information, contact Joy Boruff, Executive Director, at (309) 736-3800. The Moline Foundation receives and administers charitable gifts and has assets of approximately $15 million.

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DES MOINES, IA (12/03/2010)(readMedia)-- State Treasurer Michael L. Fitzgerald's office awarded a $1,000 College Savings Iowa account in Pella today. Deputy State Treasurer Karen Austin was on hand to administer the award. The award, courtesy of the College Savings Iowa BABY 529 Giveaway, is given once a month to put one lucky baby on the right path toward saving for college. Baby Laurelei, born at Pella Regional Health Center, was this month's winner. The baby's parents, Lauretta MacCready and Shawn Melendrez, received information about the giveaway program before leaving the hospital after their child's birth.

"Little Laurelei may not be able to study yet, but she's already got a jump start on her college savings, and it will continue to grow right along-side her," stated Fitzgerald, plan administrator. "I encourage families with young children like Laurelei to put time on their side and start saving for college early. Anything they can put away today will offset what may need to be borrowed in the future."

Treasurer Fitzgerald and Deputy Treasurer Austin thank Pella Regional Health Center for helping them spread the message about the importance of saving for college. By participating in the College Savings Iowa BABY 529 Giveaway, the hospital provides new parents with information about saving early and a chance to win a $1,000 College Savings Iowa account for their baby. "We are pleased to have you as part of our team working to increase public awareness about the benefits of saving for college from day one," stated Fitzgerald.

Dr. Vande Zande, D.O., Marcia Schut, OB RN, Karen Westercamp, OB Manager, and Yvonne O'Brien, CNO were on hand to congratulate the family.

About the College Savings Iowa BABY 529 Giveaway

The BABY 529 Giveaway awards one $1,000 College Savings Iowa account each month to a randomly selected baby. All babies born in participating Iowa hospitals are eligible to win if they register for the monthly drawing. Seventy hospitals currently participate in the program and provide college savings materials to families before they leave the hospital. To learn more about the program, please visit www.iowababy529.com.

About College Savings Iowa

College Savings Iowa is a state-sponsored 529 plan designed to give families a tax-advantaged way to save money for college. Investors can choose from thirteen Vanguard investment options. Iowa taxpayers can deduct up to $2,811 in contributions per beneficiary account from their adjusted gross income in 2010,* and there are no income or residency restrictions. Withdrawals used to pay for qualified higher education expenses including tuition; books, supplies, and room and board are free of state and federal taxes. Funds can be used at any accredited college, university, community college or technical training school in the United States or abroad.** For more information on College Savings Iowa, visit www.collegesavingsiowa.com or call 1-888-672-9116.

*Adjusted annually for inflation. If withdrawals are not qualified, the deductions must be added back to Iowa taxable income.

** Earnings on non-qualified withdrawals may be subject to federal income tax and a 10% federal penalty tax, as well as state and local income taxes. The availability of tax or other benefits may be contingent on meeting other requirements.

About The Vanguard Group

The Vanguard Group, headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, is one of the nation's largest mutual fund firms and a leading provider of 529 college savings plans. Vanguard manages nearly $1.3 trillion in U.S. mutual fund assets, including $25 billion in 529 plan assets invested in 25 plans in 23 states. Vanguard offers more than 150 funds to U.S. investors and more than 50 additional funds in foreign markets.

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Our nation’s high school graduation rate, after declining in the latter part of the 20th century, is beginning to rise, according to a report released Tuesday by America’s Promise Alliance. The U.S. graduation rate increased from 72% in 2002 to 75% in 2008, according to Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic.  The report boasts more than half of states increased their graduation rate from 2002 to 2008.  Iowa shows an increase of 2.3% (84.1% in 2002 to 86.4% in 2008) and Illinois shows an increase of 3.3% (77.1% in 2002 to 80.4% in 2008).  The report is part of Grad Nation, a national movement aimed at ending the dropout crisis.  Despite these promising statistics, the rate of progress is too slow to reach the movement’s goal of having 90% of students graduate from high school and obtain at least one year of postsecondary schooling by 2020.  To meet this goal, progress in graduation rates will need to increase fivefold over the next decade.  The challenge is large; in 2008, more than 2 million students still attended a school in which graduation was not better than about a 50/50 proposition.  Still, the central message of the report is that we can end the high school dropout crisis in America, through a targeted approach sustained over time, with clear goals and expectations and support to school leaders, teachers, and students.

Rivermont Collegiate, the Quad Cities’ only private, independent, nonsectarian college-prep school, features a rigorous academic program that results in a meaningful diploma.  Students receive focused attention possible only in small classes, and are supported to take risks in academics, leadership, athletics, arts, and service.  Rivermont boasts 100% graduate acceptance to four-year colleges and universities, with over 90% of Rivermont grads earning four-year renewable merit scholarships.

What are you waiting for?  Explore the Rivermont approach to learning!  Join us for Open Tours the first Tuesday of every month.  The next Open Tour will be held Tuesday, December 7th from 8:30-10:00 a.m.  No appointment necessary!  Drop in to explore our philosophy and curriculum, take a tour of campus, and see our teachers in action.  Rivermont Collegiate is located at 1821 Sunset Drive, directly off 18th Street behind K&K Hardware in Bettendorf.

For additional information on Grad Nation, including the full Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic report, visit  http://www.americaspromise.org

For additional information on Rivermont Collegiate or Tuesday’s Open Tours, contact Cindy Murray at (563) 359-1366 ext. 302 or   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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Rock Island, Ill.–Selected from more than 300 top professors in the United States, Dr. Lendol Calder has been named the 2010 Illinois Professor of the Year. Sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the award is the only national initiative specifically designed to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring.

Calder, a 14-year veteran of the history department, is the second Augustana professor to receive this coveted award since the program began in 1981. Dr. Dorothy Parkander, professor emeritus of English, was named Illinois Professor of the Year in 1992.

“This is a very special day for Augustana College, and it’s a great honor to join Dr. Calder’s colleagues and students in offering congratulations on this outstanding recognition,” said Augustana President Steve Bahls. “For almost half a century, Dr. Dorothy Parkander transformed the lives of our students by introducing them to the world’s greatest literature. Dr. Calder has the same kind of impact as he leads students to a deeper, more effective understanding of history.”

An accomplished historian, Calder also is a leader in the growing movement to bring scholarly inquiry to teaching and learning in higher education. In 1999, the Carnegie Foundation invited Calder to join other distinguished academicians from diverse fields to invent and share new models to enhance student learning.

Calder’s research findings, published in the March 2006 issue of The Journal of American History, examine the problem of “coverage” in introductory history courses and is part of a larger effort to forge a new way of teaching and learning college history. It was the first time the flagship journal for American history had published an article on the scholarship of teaching and learning.

“The kind of professor I’ve worked to be is the kind who approaches teaching with both the trained eye of a scholar and the wild eye of a poet or mystic or comic,” Calder said. “Teaching for me is both scholarly work and soul work. Studies tell us that professors are not all that comfortable with spiritual discourse and moral inquiry in the classroom. But Augustana has given me a green light for this kind of inquiry so I’ve been able to run with it. In my courses I work to help students develop both the language of their hearts and the language of their minds.”

For example, Calder’s American history class covering 1945 to the present has no exams and no 60-minute lectures. Instead of a single textbook, students read two competing histories and dozens of documents from the past. Grades are based on seven essays in which students demonstrate their ability to construct sound historical arguments on the basis of document analysis. Class time is filled with lively discussions where students do what historians do: formulate questions, analyze evidence, construct claims, dispute inferences, correct initial conclusions and recognize what can’t be known. Most importantly, students debate what story best makes sense of the American past. “If you don’t have a story that makes sense of the world,” said Calder, “then you don’t know what to do, or how to live.”

Caroline Sallee, a 2002 Augustana graduate, says the most important skills she learned in college were from Calder’s classes. “I learned how to  approach history, to think about it critically and to write about it clearly,”Sallee said. “Today, as a 30-year-old economic consultant, I use these skills every day.”

A native of Texas, Calder received his bachelor’s at the University of Texas at Austin where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1980. He earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of Chicago. Calder came to Augustana in 1996, after having taught at Colby-Sawyer College; the University of Washington, Seattle; and the University of Chicago. In 1999, Princeton University Press published Calder’s book Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit, which continues to be the authority on the subject, even after a decade.

Ceremonies honoring the state and national winners of the U.S. Professors of the Year Awards Program include an awards luncheon at the W Washington D.C. Hotel and a reception at the Folger Shakespeare Library, also in Washington, D.C.

About Augustana: Founded in 1860 and situated on a 115-acre campus near the Mississippi River, Augustana College is a private, liberal arts institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The college enrolls 2,500 students from diverse geographic, social, ethnic and religious backgrounds and offers more than 70 majors and related areas of study. Augustana employs 287 faculty members and has a student-faculty ratio of 11:1. Augustana continues to do what it has always done: challenge and prepare students for lives of leadership and service in our complex, ever-changing world.

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