LAS Spotlight

Undergraduate Students

Rommel Calderwood , a senior Political Science major, has made the world his campus, traveling to Washington DC and Bangkok for internships with the US Department of Defense and Amnesty International.

Calderwood has earned several awards while at UIC, including the the Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship through Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, the Chancellor's Student Service Award, the McKelvie Scholarship for Public Service, and the Institute for International Education's Freeman-ASIA Award. But Calderwood hasn’t rested on his scholarly laurels. He has sought for ways to use his education to serve citizens of his new country and the world.

As a sophomore, Calderwood interned with the United States Department of Defense on a scholarship from The Washington Center's Norm Mineta Internship Immersion Program funded by the U.S. Congress. At the Department of the Navy’s Physical Evaluation Board, he evaluated case files of service members in the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy. A year later, Calderwood served as a legal intern on the Detained Immigrant Protection Project at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, working with a team of pro bono attorneys to provide legal support for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the Midwest. Just last autumn, Calderwood spent the fall semester of his senior year at Mahidol University International College in Thailand and interned in the Bangkok office of Amnesty International. There, he collaborated with human rights activists from the United Kingdom, East Timor, Myanmar, Hong Kong, and the U.S.

Being at UIC really expanded my world views as well as giving me an different perspective on life. Being at a diverse school has provided me with insights I otherwise wouldn’t have had,” Calderwood reports.

Graduate Students

Kathleen Rizzo earned her PhD in Anthropology in LAS, and continues to publish her research while also serving as a key member of the department's staff. A biological anthropologist specializing in primatology, Rizzo's dissertation research focused on the socioecology of howler monkeys living in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico. She is interested in all aspects of their social behavior and particularly how individuals interact with members of their group as well as members outside their group.

Calakmul is part of one of the largest tracts of undisturbed tropical forest in Central and South America, making it an excellent location to study the behavior of these monkeys in their natural habitat. Several UIC undergraduate and graduate students have participated in data collection with Kathy for a unique field experience.

In addition to studying primates in their natural habitat, she is interested in the rehabilitation of monkeys previously kept as pets. In the photo with Kathy is "Pebbles," a spider monkey brought to the reserve when her owners could no longer control her. She is unable to survive on her own and is completely dependent on the reserve personnel for food and protection.

Faculty

Thomas Park's research on neurotransmitter function in naked mole rates may help unlock the secrets of pain reception in humans.

Though they look like buck-toothed sausages from another planet, biological sciences professor Thomas Park says that naked mole rats “are the nicest, sweetest animals I’ve ever worked with.” They are also the only animal scientists now know of that show “completely no response to acid.” Park and his research team found that naked mole rats lack Substance P, the neurotransmitter that causes the feeling of burning pain in mammals. Park suggests that this surprising anomaly could offer long term help for humans who suffer chronic pain: “We’re learning which nerve fibers are important for which kinds of pain, so we’ll be able to develop new strategies and targets.” To test whether the lack of substance P in the mole rate is an anomaly at all, Park’s next project involves studying its distant relations—the Mexican free-tailed bat and the Alaskan marmot. (Adapted from January 30 reports by Charles Choi for LiveScience.com, and Dan Childs for ABC News Medical Unit)

Alumni & Friends

Jean Bogner, MA in Earth and Environmental Science, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for her work on the environmental imperative of integrated waste management.

Bogner is a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Gore. The Nobel Committee awarded the prize to IPCC and Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Bogner is pleased that the 2,000+ members of the IPCC have shared the prize. “Because there were so many of us sharing in this honor, it has raised the level of public interest in climate change science and mitigation issues. All of us who were authors have had the experience of a high level of interest in our local communities as the Nobel Peace Prize has given a ‘local face’ to these important issues.

President of Landfills +, Inc. in Wheaton, IL, Bogner is an expert on landfill gas (LFG) recovery, utilization, and mitigation of emissions. With over 30 years of experience (including 20 years at Argonne National Laboratory), Dr. Bogner has worked with U.S. Dept. of Energy and private sector programs on commercial, research, and policy aspects of landfilling and landfill gas recovery since the 1970s. She’s also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at UIC.