(DAVENPORT, IA) Griggs Music is pleased to announce the winner of the music store’s Students in Band t-shirt design contest for the Third Biennial Competition. Music students in the Quad- City area submitted a record number of entries, impressing judges with artistic creativity and design.

A recent Western Illinois University alumna was inspired so much by her classes at WIU that she has created a new organization called Real Women of the Quad Cities to help women with their self-image.

Stephanie Hoover graduated with a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences in Fall 2013 after transferring from Scott Community College (SCC) to the WIU Quad Cities campus. In the midst of her studies at WIU, she continued taking classes at SCC and took on two internships and two independent studies.

Hoover was inspired and motivated to develop her organization from within her WIU classrooms. First, she watch a video from her gender and society class, called "Killing Us Softly 4? by Jean Kilbourne, which discussed how the media and society negatively affect women and their body image. The following fall, Hoover took a women's health class, where she began to realize how accepting herself and others was a topic that needed attention. So, Hoover began to write her ideas on what could be done and how she was going to do it, which evolved into Real Women of the Quad Cities (later shortened to Real Women LLC).

The organization began with local women replicating photos of models and actresses who had been digitally altered.

"(This is) who we are told we are suppose to look like," Hoover said.

The images were shared over a Facebook page Hoover created. Eventually, she began receiving many messages and page 'likes,' and she began to take names of women who wanted to model for the organization. Women were interested in blogging for the organization as well.

Hoover hired five local photographers to take pictures of women who had volunteered. The idea was to compare the images of what society says women should look like to how they actually are.

Assistant Professors Tammy Werner and Nancy Schaefer from the classes in which Hoover was inspired helped her create an independent study on body image for Spring 2013, which won first place at the Macomb campus Undergraduate Research Day in sociology.

Now, after graduating, Hoover has written a business plan and is pairing with Mando Murga, a former WIU business graduate, to apply for grants in hopes of renting an office and hiring staff.

Hoover is fulfilling her dream of being her own boss and plans to put her strong and personality to good use in standing up for the beliefs that she and others hold. She is currently editing her third book, which she won an award for from WIU in Spring 2012.

To learn more about Real Women of the Quad Cities, visit realwomenofthequadcities.com or visit the organization's Facebook page at facebook.com/pages/Real-Women-of-the-Quad-Cities/438737702829430.

Community leaders, WIU representatives and Rock Island School District administrators and staff will be on hand for the announcement.

For more information or to confirm attendance contact Tami Seitz, director of marketing at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities at (309)762-9481 or TS-Seitz@wiu.edu.

MOLINE, IL -- From April 11 to May 23, the halls of local libraries and non-profits throughout the Quad Cities region will resound with the beat of uniquely American musical genres, thanks to the grant-funded "America's Music" project.

Bettendorf, Davenport, Moline and Rock Island public libraries, in collaboration with Western Illinois University-Quad Cities and River Music Experience, will host the six-week series, which features documentary film screenings, scholar-led discussions of 20th century American popular music and live performances as part of "America's Music: A Film History of Our Popular Music from Blues to Bluegrass to Broadway."  The project covers a wide span of musical interests, including blues and gospel, Broadway, jazz, bluegrass and country, rock and roll, mambo and hip hop.

Featuring 19 presentations, the local effort is one of 50 sites nationwide selected to host this program series, which is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor. Each screening and discussion session will examine an American musical genre in the context of key social and historical developments, giving attendees of all ages an opportunity to recognize the influence of these popular music forms on the cultural landscape.

The series will kick off at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11 with a live performance by Iowa Blues Challenge winners, The Candymakers, at the River Music Experience, 129 Main St., Davenport.

Discussions, along with a call for stories about memories of the Quad Cities musical landscape, will be led by program scholar Daniel S. Malachuk, associate professor of English at WIU-Quad Cities, and several faculty colleagues, including Everett Hammer (English), Nancy Schaefer and Tammy Werner (sociology), and Chelsea Clearman and Jill King, two students in the WIU-Quad Cities English graduate degree program. With help from his students, Malachuk will present some of the local stories collected at the final event in the series, "Celebrating America's Music in the Quad Cities," from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, May 23 at the WIU-QC Riverfront campus atrium. Attendees are encouraged to bring their stories about the great variety of music heard in the Quad Cities over the past 50 years. Musicians are encouraged to bring instruments, as the event will close with an open mic event of local performers.

A full list of performances and locations is available at americasmusicqc.com. For more information, visit americasmusicqc.com, email americasmusicqc@gmail.com or call (309) 524-2470.

"America's Music" is a project by the Tribeca Film Institute, in collaboration with the American Library Association, Tribeca Flashpoint and the Society for American Music. "America's Music" has been made possible by a major $2,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor. Additional funding was received from the Riverboat Development Authority, Sedona Technologies, UAW Local 2282, Friends of the Moline Public Library, along with in-kind sponsorships from the River Cities' Reader, WQAD-TV, STAR 93.5, WQPT Quad Cities PBS and WVIK Augustana Public Radio.