29 Jul 2009

Teaching the Whole Child: Longfellow-Augustana Partnership Brings the Liberal Arts to Primary Education

By Tushar Rae

A classroom in the 'new' Longfellow

Students stepping into Longfellow Elementary in Rock Island this school year will notice physical changes: a new media center and library, a new cafeteria, and a renovation that has added four new classrooms. But a more important change will be the school's new formal partnership with Augustana College.

The relationship will bring a liberal-arts-based curriculum to Longfellow - a contrast to the No Child Left Behind-forced shift in primary education that emphasizes reading and math skills to the exclusion of other subjects. Though the content of the curriculum will still conform to district standards, the way that content is presented will change: The focus will move to collaboration among students, small-group and individualized instruction, interdisciplinary learning, thematic teaching that attempts to make the coursework relevant, and the fine arts.

A No Child Left Behind-influenced curriculum "doesn't have anything to do with creative problem-solving, imagination, collaboration - all of these skills we need to survive in the next millennium," said Pat Shea, an assistant professor of education at Augustana who was part of the planning team for Longfellow. "If we don't get those things taught, it doesn't matter how many facts we know. ... We are so off-target about what it means to be an educated person, and I think we as educators have the first line of responsibility to start speaking to that."

28 Jul 2009

"Holocaust by Bullets" Researcher/Author to Speak at St. Ambrose

By Nicholas Depew

Father Patrick DesboisIn the early 1940s, mobile Nazi killing squads traveled across Ukraine executing an estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews. The locations of some of the estimated 2,000 mass graves may well have remained undiscovered if not for the research of Roman Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois, author of The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews. On Thursday, August 27, at 7 p.m., Desbois will be at St. Ambrose University to discuss his work. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at the Rogalski Center, located at the corner of Ripley and Lombard streets in Davenport. A book-signing will follow, and donations in support of Desbois' work will be accepted.

Modern Woodmen of America has agreed to incorporate the parking lot east of its office building into the design of a new riverfront park. The agreement will also provide some additional parking that will be used by the organization during office hours and by park users evenings and weekends. Armory Park will cost $12.35 million and will be funded through the Downtown Tax Increment Finance District. The new park should be complete in 2010.

Dean Klinkenberg virtually lived in the Quad Cities in the summers of 2007 and 2008, exploring any place that might interest visitors. He then wrote The Quad Cities Travel Guide. The book can be purchased online at MississippiValleyTraveler.com and at tourist-oriented retail outlets.

The Figge Art Museum and Blick Art Materials have created a one-year artist-in-residence pilot program at the museum for emerging student artists at the master's level and above. Two participants began their residencies earlier this month. Included in the program are free studio space in downtown Davenport overlooking Second Street, free housing two miles away from the studio space, a flexible job at one of the sponsoring organizations, free art supplies provided by Blick Art Materials, the opportunity to exhibit on a monthly basis in downtown Davenport, free limited health insurance, and free marketing of the artists' work and exhibitions in printed material and online sources. For more information about the Figge Art Museum, visit FiggeArt.org.

The Iowa Whitewater Coalition has announced the Clean Rivers Team Stewardship Program -- a mini-grant program to help fund local river cleanup activities across Iowa. Any community group or organization in Iowa may apply for a grant of up to $500 for expenses related to river cleanup. Grants are limited to a maximum of $500. Details are available at IowaWhitewater.org. Questions can be addressed to Peter Komendowski at (319)269-8493.

Seniors are invited to the Davenport Public Library's Fairmount Street location on Wednesday, July 29, at 1 p.m. for the fourth-annual ice-cream social. The free event's featured entertainment will be the two-part PBS documentary Pioneers of Television. For more information, call (563)888-3371 or visit DavenportLibrary.com.

Susan Uthoff, Iowa State University Program Assistant, will discuss current food-preservation techniques at the program "Why Grandma's Canning Methods Won't Work." Call (563)359-7577 to register for the morning or afternoon session. This workshop is free and will be held on August 10 from 10 to 11 a.m. or 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Scott County Extension Office (875 Tanglefoot Lane in Bettendorf).

Local not-for-profit organizations are invited to participate in a fundraising opportunity with local Younkers stores. The company's Community Day Event will be held on Saturday, November 14. Not-for-profit organizations can sign up at CommunityDayEvent.com. This event provides an opportunity for local organizations to gather the donations needed to support their missions.

22 Jul 2009

The Business of Blood: How the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center Prepares for the Future

By Jeff Ignatius

David R. GreenWhen he got started in blood banks almost 20 years ago, David R. Green's understanding of the blood-transfusion process wasn't very sophisticated. Green, now the president and CEO of the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center, had a background in finance.

"I thought they simply took that bag of blood after they tested it and made sure that it was hanging above the patient, and it just flowed back in the patient," Green said last week. "I really didn't know."

Now Green runs an organization that last year collected more than 133,000 units of blood products, serves 53 hospitals in four states, and had more than $38 million in revenue in 2008. The organization's 72,000-square-foot building off 53rd Street in northeastern Davenport suggests a big operation, but few people realize just how large, or the complexity of the issues the blood-donation community deals with.

"The core of it is making sure the donors are safe, and that the product that goes out the back door is safe for recipients," said Dr. Louis Katz, the center's executive vice president for medical affairs.

The Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center is trying to optimize - and therefore drive down - blood usage by hospitals; it is working to help identify heretofore poorly understood risks associated with blood transfusion; and Katz is among those preparing for the next disease threat to the blood supply. And the organization's size has the key benefit of keeping costs lower for local hospitals.

So it's not just bags of blood.

21 Jul 2009

Help Name the Putnam's Egyptian Gallery

By Joe Collins

The Putnam Museum's Egyptian Gallery is undergoing a renovation - and the museum is looking for a new gallery name to go with its new look. The gallery has housed two mummies since the 1960s and is slated to reopen August 22 with several updated components, including new flooring, new lighting, new mummy cases, and a touch-screen video monitor that features results from the CT scans performed at Genesis two years ago. Name suggestions should be sent to arguello@putnam.org by July 30. The winner will be notified in August, will receive a lifetime membership to the Putnam, and will be invited to the gallery's VIP premiere on August 21.

14 Jul 2009

Winners of the 2009 Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest

By Administrator

2009 marks Midwest Writing Center's 36th-annual Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest. This year Max Molleston, longtime contest administrator, passed the reins to local poet Kristin Abraham, author of Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus. Kristin reconfigured the contest to contain just two categories: regional and national.

A total of 349 poems were entered - 165 for the national category and 184 for the regional. Out of these entries, 25 finalists were selected to be judged by our regional judge, former Quad Cities Poet Laureate Rebecca Wee, and 25 were sent to our national judge, May Swenson Award-winning poet F. Daniel Rzicznek. From these entries our judges each selected first-, second-, and third-place winners as well as honorable mentions. First-place winners received $200, second-place winners received $150, and third-place winners received $75. The first-place regional winner also receives the Max Molleston Award, created by local artist Dee Schricker. All of the poems that were selected as finalists will be printed in Off Channel, Midwest Writing Center's Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest anthology, due out before the end of summer 2009.

The Midwest Writing Center accepts entries for the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest from January 1 through March 31 each year. More information is available online at MidwestWritingCenter.org.

A reception and reading will be held on Saturday, July 18, from 7 to 9 p.m. in our conference room at 225 East Second Street in Davenport -- the Bucktown Center for the Arts. All individuals who submitted poems to the contest are invited to read their work.

14 Jul 2009

Journey of Hope Cyclists Visit Davenport

By Joe Collins

On Wednesday, July 22, a team of cyclists participating in the Journey of Hope will arrive in Davenport as part of a nine-week, 4,000-mile cycling event across the country to raise funds and awareness for people with disabilities. The team will arrive in the afternoon and then have dinner and a friendship visit at 1757 West 12th Street beginning at 5 p.m. Visit PushAmerica.org for more information, or call (704)504-2400 extension 159.

10 Jul 2009

Homebuilding: The New Green

By Emily Heninger

Design of the demonstration green home

In March, the Quad Cities Homebuilders & Remodelers Association began construction of a demonstration "green" home. Scheduled to be completed by September, the house is intended to illustrate that environmentally friendly homebuilding does not have to be costly or showy.

Homes represent 22 percent of our country's energy use -- only 6 percentage points fewer than the transportation industry, according to the Energy Information Administration. In recent years, green builders have emerged to reduce residential energy usage.

Green building isn't necessarily about solar panels, green roofs, wind turbines, and other expensive features. Double-paned windows, recycled cabinet materials, better insulation, erosion control, and efficient appliances might not be as glamorous, but they constitute green building, too.

"Green is a wave of the future," said Dave Burrows, executive vice president of the Quad Cities Homebuilders. "Our industry has to adapt."

A 2006 study by McGraw-Hill Construction predicted that green homes will make up about 10 percent of new-home construction by 2010, up from 2 percent in 2005.

"It's coming," said Burrows.

 

08 Jul 2009

The Return of Terry Swails: How WQAD Scored the Biggest Name in Quad Cities Weather, and What It Means

By Jeff Ignatius

Terry Swails

When the National Weather Service issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation tornado watch on May 25 last year, Terry Swails was in an unusual position: He could chase the storm - and not via a radar from the confines of a television newsroom.

He was in Iowa City that Sunday, coming home from a storm-chasing trip in Kansas during which he saw three tornadoes.

That Sunday storm produced the EF5 tornado that hit Parkersburg, Iowa - the strongest tornado in the state since 1968.

His wife Carolyn dissuaded him from chasing it - she'd had enough of storms - but for the first time in nearly three decades, Swails has been able to indulge his love of weather directly instead of through the technology of a television station. "When the storms came, I had to work," Swails said last week. "I was always inside."

On Monday, Swails returns to the airwaves after an 18-month absence, doing weather on WQAD's 6 p.m. weekday newscasts. It's a part-time gig, meaning that Swails can devote more time to the actual weather and to his Web site.

For WQAD, this is a bold partnership that will almost certainly erode KWQC's local-news dominance and could start a sea change. Channel 8 will allow Swails to directly promote TerrySwails.com on the air, and in exchange it will get the Quad Cities' most recognizable weather personality.

08 Jul 2009

Riders Go Cross-Country for Cancer

By Tushar Rae

Drew Wessels and Danny LeonardThe two men came to the cross-country bike ride in different ways.

For Danny Leonard, a cancer survivor in his late 60s, the idea for a second cross-country ride arose from a conversation he had two years ago while running on a treadmill next to a young man preparing for a marathon. As the men ran next to each other for almost two hours, the young man explained to Leonard that running the marathon would be his way to raise awareness for leukemia and lymphoma research. The conversation left Leonard wondering what he could do to advocate screening for and raise awareness about the disease he had battled -- non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He decided to place an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a Christian who was interested in riding across the United States to raise awareness of the importance of early detection.

For Drew Wessels, an Augustana College graduate and Bettendorf native in his early 20s who stumbled across the listing while looking for a job, it was an opportunity to honor the grandfather he lost to leukemia three years ago.

But for both men it was the right time for the ride. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Leonard being cancer-free, and of his first ride across the country. Wessels, whose summers were usually consumed by basketball or school, found himself with a rare free summer. "The one time I actually had the opportunity, that something like this came by is pretty neat," Wessels said. 2009 also marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

07 Jul 2009

Input Solicited for Two New Rock Island Park Concepts

By Joe Collins

Two new park concepts are being developed by the Rock Island Parks & Recreation Department: Old Chicago Park and Douglas Park. Old Chicago Park, located on Ninth Street east of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, will be a brand-new park. The designs can be viewed here. Comments and suggestions on the plans are being accepted by e-mail (parkrecmail@rigov.org) and phone (309)732-7275. A finalized design will be created and presented for public comment in the coming months.

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