Dear Friends and Colleagues,

First, we'd like to remind faculty that we are about seven weeks away from the deadline when Great Cities Faculty Scholar applications and proposals are due. Please see the website listed below and contact us if you have any questions. We will quickly and happily do anything we possibly can to help you with your application.

The Faculty Seed Grant program applications are due Friday, February 20, 2004. For faculty interested in applying for these grants, please visit our website. Please realize that due to the state budgetary situation this year, there will be fewer grants available this time around. Nevertheless, we are committed to carrying on this program. Again, if you have any questions, please contact Joy Pamintuan or David Perry here at the Great Cities Institute.

Also, on December 12, at noon, we will inaugurate the 2003/4 Great Cities Brownbag Seminar Series with a presentation by Dr. Mark Rosentraub, Dean of the Maxine Goodman Levin College at Cleveland State University and one of the nation's leading analysts of the economics of sports and sports infrastructure. Professor Rosentraub will lead a seminar on "Sports and Downtown Development: Lessons from Success and Failure." We hope you will call us at 312-996-8700 and let us know you will be attending the seminar. There will be four more brownbag seminars in the Spring. Watch for the schedule in the January "GCI Monthly."

David Perry Professor and Director	Lauri Alpern Associate Director

News

GCI is pleased to welcome Dr. Thomas M. Lyons, Visiting Senior Associate, from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Tom started December 1, working on "The Healthcare Needs of Addicted Criminal Offenders" research grant, as a senior researcher for Paul J. Goldstein, Senior Fellow and Professor. Tom has a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago and has worked in medical anthropology, health services research, and substance abuse research. He has been an associate investigator at the Veterans' Affairs Healthcare System and a postdoctoral fellow at the George Washington University. His interests are in substance abuse and treatment, variations in health care, and cultural differences.

The Great Cities Institute announces the 2004-2005 Faculty Scholar Competition. Please visit the following website for details and an application: http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/gci/fellows_and_scholars/faculty_scholar_comp.htm
Applications are due by 4pm on Friday, January 16, 2004

The Great Cities Institute announces the 2004-2005 Faculty Seed Fund Competition. For more information, please visit the website at: http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/gci/fellows_and_scholars/faculty_seed_fund_cover_and_appl.htm
Applications are due by 4pm on Friday, February 20, 2004

Spring Registration is now open for the UIC Online Certificate in Nonprofit Management. For more information on the program, please visit http://cnm.cuppa.uic.edu or contact John Mudd at jmudd1@uic.edu, 312-996-9257. January course offerings include "Fundraising Management for Nonprofit Organizations," and "Operations Management for Nonprofit Organizations," held from January 29-March 3, 2004.

Calendar

Great Cities Brownbag Seminar
December 12, 2003 at noon in the GCI seminar room

Mark Rosentraub
Dean and Professor
Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs
Cleveland State University

Professor Rosentraub is one of the nation's leading experts on sports economics and downtown infrastructure. He is the author of several books including the influential Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who's Paying for It and has been a primary consultant to Major League Baseball and cities around the world.

Please attend this stimulating seminar. Refreshments will be served.

People

Arkalgud Ramaprasad, faculty scholar, presented a paper, "Public interaction with health information using the Internet: Leading the way to an informed patient" at the International Conference on Public Participation and Information Technology at MIT, November 10-12, 2003. The paper, "eHealth applications on Chicago hospital websites," was presented at Innovations in Connectivity in Springfield on November 20-21. He will also be presenting "Digital-divide in eHealth applications in the city of Chicago" at the MedNet in December in Switzerland and "eHealth applications on Chicago hospital websites" at Innovations in Connectivity in Springfield.

Irma Olmedo, faculty scholar, will be presenting at the State Bilingual Education Conference in December on teachers' conceptions of effective instruction for English language learners. She also has had three pieces published this fall, including, "Deconstructing and contextualizing the historical and social science literature on Puerto Ricans" in the edited book Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by J. Banks, "Language Mediation among Emergent Bilingual Children" in Linguistics and Education, 14(2), and "Accommodation and resistance: Latinas struggle for their children's education" in Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 34(4).

The Illinois Humanities Council has funded GCI and John Hagedorn, faculty fellow, to develop a "Conservative Vice Lord On Line Living History Museum." The 1960s Conservative Vice Lords (CVL) made great efforts to reinvent themselves as a "conservative" business-creating organization. They began African clothing stores, two Tastee-Freez ice cream stores in Lawndale and were funded by public and private dollars for a variety of social programs. Founding members of the CVL are donating their archives from that period to Hagedorn and the UIC Special Collections Library. The 1969 CVL "Report to the Public" has already been reproduced and is available as a digital slide show on http://gangresearch.net. There are a variety of documents on the Vice Lords already up on the site. This important chapter in the history of Chicago will be fully documented both on line as well as in the UIC Library Special Collections.

Marcia Farr, former faculty scholar 2001-2002, has two edited books. The first, Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City's Neighborhoods, was published by Erlbaum this past summer. It contains chapters on a variety of ethnic populations in Chicago (except for Spanish-speaking populations, which are the focus of the second book). The second book, Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago, is now in press with Erlbaum and expected to be out next year. Farr is currently on the faculty of Ohio State University.

Michael Pagano, faculty fellow, was a co-organizer of an international conference on federalism with a particular focus on the Italian case, called "Which Federalism." The conference was held in Savelletri (Italy) on Nov 12-14. The overview and background papers will be collected in an edited volume and the papers on Italian federalism are expected to be edited by Pagano and published in Publius: The Journal of Federalism sometime in 2004. Professor Raffaella Nanetti of CUPPA's Urban Planning program was also a co-organizer of the conference.

The weekly magazine for tax aficionados, State Tax Notes, invited Michael Pagano, faculty fellow, to pen a regular feature for the magazine. The title of the regular feature is "The Third Rail," symbolizing the energy and dynamism of local governments' contributions to the intergovernmental fiscal system. The inaugural article appeared in the October 27th issue. The second installment of The Third Rail, published November 24th, focused on the fiscal situations of Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cleveland and was titled "A Tale of Two or Three Cities."