Dear Friends of GCI,

As Spring approaches, the Great Cities Institute is entering the middle stages of a strategic process that we have called "New Directions." We are excited about this process and the potential it has for clarifying GCI's focus and making us more able to attract the very best scholars from GCI and the world to work with our partners in Chicago and throughout the world on issues of engaged research and learning. The process is centered on a series of small, highly interactive meetings on the topics of development, university and the city/engaged university, governance, health, international partnerships, and GCI's instructional mission.

I would like to invite you to contribute your own thoughts about GCI to our new plans. From your perspective, what have we done best? What are our limitations and where do you think we have failed? And what do you think we should be doing in the future? Please send your thoughts on the "new directions" of GCI to me at dperry@uic.edu or to Lauri Alpern at lauri@uic.edu. We will read your suggestions with interest and make them a part of our strategic rethinking. We are so appreciative of your support and hope that this interaction will only lead to more engagement with you in the future.

David Perry Professor and Director

News

March courses for the UIC Online Certificate in Nonprofit Management include
"Strategic Management for Nonprofit Organizations," "Mastering Grantwriting", and "Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations," held from March 18-April 21, 2004.

For more information on the program, please visit http://cnm.cuppa.uic.edu or contact John Mudd at jmudd1@uic.edu, 312-996-9257.

CUED has received a contract from the Center for Economic Progress to evaluate technical assistance activities to community organizations that provide tax services to low- and moderate-income persons. The evaluation sites are Dade County, Florida where two coalitions are conducting EITC outreach programs and San Antonio, Texas where a broad-based coalition is trying to use the EITC as an asset-building tool in low-income communities.

Contact: Nik Theodore, Director, theodore@uic.edu and Kimary Lee, Research Associate, klee42@uic.edu.

The new Illinois minimum wage went into effect on January 1, 2004. CUED, in collaboration with IGPA, is investigating whether the wage increase has a negative impact on employment levels. Researchers have completed a benchmark survey of fast food establishments along the Illinois-Indiana border to determine how employers are responding to the wage increase. The survey will be repeated in the fall 2004 and again in fall 2005. The project is being undertaken by Ron Baiman (CUED), Joe Persky (UIC Economics), and Liz Powers (UIUC Economics and IGPA) with generous support from Dean Wim Wiewel (College of Business Administration) and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Contact: Ron Baiman, Research Assistant Professor, rbaiman@uic.edu.

Calendar

Great Cities Institute Faculty Scholar Seminar Series
Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 3pm
Linking Technology and Democracy: A Study of City Government Use of the Internet to Facilitate Public Discourse
Eric W. Welch, Assistant Professor, Public Administration Program, CUPPA

People

Louise Cainkar, Faculty Fellow, participated in a Social Science Research Council working group meeting on "Islam and America" in New York. She is also one of a small group of scholars to receive a new Carnegie Corporation grant for a project entitled "Reframing the Challenge of Migration and Security." On April 15th she will be presenting a paper at UIC's Institute for the Humanities Conference on "American Islams."

Irma M. Olmedo, Faculty Scholar, has been invited to be a co-chair of the Education Panel for reviews of doctoral and post doctoral applications for the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program for Minorities.

John Hagedorn, Faculty Fellow, will be giving the keynote address in London at the conference "Gangs, Guns, and Community Safety: Combating Armed Violence Amongst Young People" at the University of Luton, March 24.

Michael Pagano, Faculty Fellow, was interviewed on the WBEZ program "848", hosted by Steve Edwards, on February 18. The topic of the interview was the state budget situation.

Nik Theodore, Director of CUED, presented the paper "Closed Borders, Open Markets: Immigrant Day Laborers' Struggle for Economic Rights" at the Contested Urban Futures conference at the University of Minnesota. He had two papers published: "Political Economies of Day Labour: Regulation and Restructuring of Chicago's Contingent Labour Markets" Urban Studies 40(9) and, with Chirag Mehta, "Organizing Temps: Representational Rights and Employers' Responsibilities under Sturgis and Jeffboat," Working USA 7(3). He also presented testimony to an Illinois General Assembly task force on immigration; before the Finance Committee of the Chicago City Council on the impacts of the ongoing strike at the Congress Hotel; and to the Wisconsin Minimum Wage Advisory Committee.

Faculty Scholar Spotlight

Arkalgud Ramaprasad is Professor and Head of the Department of Information and Decision Sciences (IDS) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He is also the Director of the Center for Research in Information Management (CRIM) there. He teaches courses and conducts research in management of information, and promotes industry-university partnerships in education and research related to that topic. He has been at the University of Illinois at Chicago since fall 2000. He is currently working with faculty at UIC from various colleges on projects related to eMedicine, eBusiness, eGovernment, Information Systems Agility, and Information Systems in Crises.

Prior to joining UIC, he was a Professor in the Department of Management, College of Business and Administration at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC). He was also the founding Director of the Pontikes Center for Management of Information there till his departure. During his tenure at SIUC he worked on projects ranging from child-welfare to transforming Carbondale to Cyberdale. He also participated in collaborative projects with universities in Taiwan and Russia.

For more information, please contact Dr. Ramaprasad at prasad@uic.edu.