Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Thank you for reading the third issue of GCI MONTHLY. We are pleased to share with you a range of noteworthy events that involve our partners, faculty, staff and students.

Of course, we would like to hear from you and include your information in subsequent issues. Please drop us a line at gcities@uic.edu or 312.996.8700. All the best to you.

David Perry Professor and Director	Lauri Alpern Associate Director

Latinos and Information Technology Careers
GCI in partnership with Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the Claremont Graduate School in Southern California and Rice University in Houston received support from the National Science Foundation to assess factors that lead to low representation of Latinos in careers in information technology. The research will be carried out in three cities: Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago. Davis Jenkins will lead the Chicago research.

Contact: Davis Jenkins, Director, Workforce Development Partnership Programs, 312-996-8059, davis@uic.edu.


Nonprofit Leaders in North Lawndale Participate in E-learning
The Steans Family Foundation is supporting the Great Cities Institute to develop a customized Online Certificate Program in Nonprofit Management program (CNM) specifically for nonprofit leaders in North Lawndale. At present fourteen participants from a dozen community-based organizations in North Lawndale are participating in the program. For more information on e-learning opportunities at GCI, go to http://cnm.cuppa.uic.edu

Contact: Kate Pravera, Director of Professional Education, 312-996-9371, kpravera@uic.edu.

Urban Universities and Real Estate Development Request for Proposals
GCI in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is currently accepting proposals for studies of general critical analysis or case examples of the challenges and practices of university-based real estate development. The aim of this collaboration is to greatly expand available research on significance of the university presence in urban development. These studies will serve as chapters in an edited volume, The University as Developer, and as course materials for professional development workshops at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The deadline for receipt of proposals is November 30. For more information, go to http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/gci/programs/rfp/index.htm.

Contact: Lynn A. Stevens, University as Developer Staff Coordinator, 312-996-8700, lsteve2@uic.edu.

GCI Scholar Offers New Course on Gang History in Chicago
The History of Gangs in Chicago (Criminal Justice 492) will examine the economic, social, and political roots of gangs in Chicago from the 19th century to the present day. It will look at immigrant gangs of the industrial era; the significance of the 1919 race riot and formation of the ghetto on African American and white Social Athletic Clubs; the influence of the political machine and the built environment on gangs and the ghetto; the politicization of 1960s Latino, Black, and white gangs and the impact of their subsequent incarceration; the impact of crack and the underground economy on gangs; and the reorganization of Black and Hispanic street organizations in the present period. To learn more about gang research online, go to http://www.uic.edu/orgs/kbc.

Contact: John Hagedorn, Fellow, Great Cities Institute, Professor, Criminal Justice, 312-413-2472, huk@uic.edu.

Calendar
UIC Neighborhoods Initiative: University - Community Partnership
Thursday. November 15, 2001
Cynthia Barnes-Boyd, Director and Nacho Gonzalez, Coordinator, UIC Neighborhoods Initiative 4 to 6 p.m. Great Cities Institute, 412 South Peoria, Suite 400.

People
GCI Scholar and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice/ Gender and Women's Studies Beth Richie was a panelist, September 26th, 2001, at the 16th Annual Chicago Foundation for Women's Luncheon & Symposium, "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Changed". Her comments addressed issues of violence against women and the prison industrial complex.

GCI Associate Director Lauri Alpern has joined the Board of Directors of the Women's Self Employment project. The Women's Self Employment Project is a non-profit organization based in Chicago. It serves as a financial intermediary connecting low-income women to the mainstream economy and is certified as a community development financial institution by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

GCI Senior Associate Debby Mir presented "Micro-enterprise Brownfield Prevention, A Question of Scale of a Separate Paradigm? (Case Studies: Motor Vehicle Repair Firms in the Chicago Area and Jerusalem)" at the Brownfields 2001 conference in Chicago. The paper compares environmental awareness and action in motor vehicle repair firms under different contexts (e.g. enforcement practices, role of trade associations), and offers public policy recommendations. The paper will be published in the Brownfield 2001 Proceedings.

GCI Faculty Scholar Spotlight
As a focal point for the UIC Great Cities Commitment, GCI hosts an annual peer-reviewed competition that attracts faculty from every part of the campus to apply for full year appointments as GCI Faculty Scholars in residence at the Institute. In the seven years the program has been in existence 63 faculty members from thirty different disciplines, departments or programs have participated in the program. Each month we will introduce you to one of the faculty spending the year with us. This month we focus on the work of Professor Kheir Al-Kodmany.

Dr. Al-Kodmany is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Policy at UIC. He is also a trained architect who worked for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designing projects in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Dr. Al-Kodmany's research focuses on data visualization at the neighborhood scale. The prime question is how Information Technology (IT), including visualization, GIS, and web-based tools, can facilitate democratic decision-making in community design. He is working on several projects that integrate traditional public participation tools and computerized visualization tools to create interactive environments that encourage public input into a planning process, see http://www.uic.edu/~kheir/.

In collaboration with the Great Cities Urban Data Visualization and the City Design Center, he recently completed visualizing zoning codes for the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago, see http://g015.cuppa.uic.edu/mpc/updated/index.html.

Dr. Al-Kodmany has published articles in The Journal of Architecture Education, The Journal of Urban and Regional Planning Systems, and The Digital Creativity Journal, among other academic publications. He has also contributed a chapter on "Shaping the Image of a Neighborhood in Participatory Environmental Design" to the forthcoming book, Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems. Dr. Al-Kodmany holds a Master of Architecture and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His most exciting news is that he was blessed with a baby girl, Nur about three months ago.