Wind Turbine Limbo 

A makeshift wind turbine erected on a wooden platform rises more than ten feet high and sways back and forth as the wooden propellers turn gently, reacting to a constant breeze blowing over the Quad at the University of Illinois. It is April 22 – Earth Day – and the wind turbine sits among a host of display tables occupied by student organizations to raise awareness about environmental concerns.

Students parade past the turbine and pause long enough to take in a sign mounted to its base that reads: “R.I.P. Wind Turbines 2003-2009.” Abby Toms, senior in psychology, and a member of Students for Environmental Change, a group whose mission includes informing students and community members about environments issues, said the wind turbine was there to serve as a reminder to students that the campus wind energy project was dead.

“(Chancellor Richard Herman) just pulled the plug on the project and decided that we weren’t going to do it anymore despite the fact that we spent $500,000 in legal fees, getting the contract from GE. We were going to sign it and then, all of sudden, we killed the project,” she said.

When Herman announced in December that he had postponed the wind turbine project, he abruptly halted an effort that began in 2003 to bring renewable energy, in the form of three wind turbines, to be located on South Farms; a 350-acre tract of land south of campus devoted to renewable energy research. 

As the spring semester winds down, members of student environmental groups as well as members of the Student Sustainability Committee, appear to be less than optimistic that the project is actually postponed and not dead. One of the biggest issues affecting the project is the escalating cost of wind turbines. In 2003, a University news release reported that the cost of the three proposed turbines was about $ 2 million each. According to information provided by the UI Office of Facilities and Services, the cost for one wind turbine currently is $4.5 million. The cost raises questions of whether or not there are other renewable energy alternatives to consider that would be more economically feasible for the University to invest in.

This escalation in price is related to increased demand as a result of growing concerns about global climate change that have inspired the federal government as well as the private sector to embrace the idea of renewable energy. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a commitment to boost wind-generated electricity by 20 percent by the year 2030. Reaching this goal would add between 180,000 to 500,000 renewable energy sector-related jobs to the economy and reduce CO2 emissions by 825 million metric tons, among other benefits, according to a report released by the department.

Though the administration cited increased cost as the cause for scaling back the original plan to buy three wind turbines from General Electric to one, before the deal was halted, student supporters remain skeptical of this explanation.

“Why did they put it off? You know we’re not quite sure. It may have come down to the agenda of the administration; it may have come down to that fact that gas prices were falling. Therefore, it made more sense to continue to use dirty energy because it was cheaper upfront as opposed to making an investment into renewables,” Toms said.

The timing of the Chancellor’s announcement to postpone the wind turbine project the week before finals caused the students to question the administration’s motives, said Anthony Larson, a junior majoring in economics.

“I don’t think the (move) was entirely intentional, but it sure looked like it. We had one day (to react) so we took time out of our studying and got about 75 people out yelling at the Chancellor (outside) Swanlund (Hall).” Despite having to scramble to deliver a response, the students were pleased to get media coverage of their protest, Larson said.

Now on Earth Day – four months after the Chancellor’s announcement – Toms and members of Student for Environmental Concerns are encouraging students to stop by their table on the Quad and sign a letter of support for the wind turbine project.

“This is the third letter that we have written to the Chancellor,” she said, “just to tell him that the students still demand what he said he was going to give us.”

While the student groups are intent on keeping pressure on Herman and the administration, he is focused on the larger picture, said Associate Chancellor Bill Adams. He also made a point to emphasis that the Chancellor stressed that the project is “postponed” and not cancelled, Adams said.

“What happened is as we went through the project approval process, turbines became a red hot commodity nationally,” Adams said. “Then the money we thought we could purchase three for would only purchase one.”

Not only did the administration have to contend with the rising costs of wind turbines, it is also facing a “utility deficit of more than $100 million that has to be dealt with,” Adams said.
Aside from the massive utility deficit, the University has not received consistent funding from the state legislature for several years, Adams said.

“The bulk of the budget growth since about 2002 has been on the backs of students in the form of tuition and fees. We just worry about how much can be put on the backs of students because at the end of the day that’s who is going to pay for some of this stuff.”

However, the enthusiasm newly elected Gov. Pat Quinn has shown for renewable energy initiatives as well as his stated commitment to higher education, gives the UI administration a cause for optimism concerning the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Adams said. Speaking of his desire for the Legislature to pass a favorable budget, he stated, “I hope that it’s good because we’ve been raising tuition about nine and a half percent per year for the last five or six years (and) we can’t continue to do that.”

Gov. Quinn visited the campus in February to promote the Sustainable University Compact. The Compact is a plan that calls for colleges and universities to voluntarily work toward achieving 12 sustainable goals by Dec. 31, 2010. The goals include purchasing renewable energy, improving water conservation and implementing green building practices, according to the Standing Up for Illinois Web site.

The Daily Illini also reported that during the governor’s visit student activists presented him with 300 letters of support for the wind turbine project.

Across the country many colleges and universities are trying to initiate renewable energy projects in the face of soaring state budget deficits and shrinking state funding. The Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), established in 2006, is an organization whose mission is to assist institutions to implement sustainable practices. AASHE initiatives include disseminating knowledge and best practices and promoting resource sharing; facilitating member’s efforts to integrate sustainability into teaching, research and operations; and influencing local, state and national policy so that sustainability is a focus, according to their Web site.

One institution of higher learning that has brought renewable energy to its campus is the University of Minnesota, Morris, a small liberal arts college located about 3 hours northwest of Minneapolis. In 2005 after a student-driven effort was launched, the campus purchased a 1.6 megawatt wind turbine that provides about 60 percent of the energy used at the nearly 23-acre campus, said Lowell Rasmussen, Vice Chancellor of Facilities and Finance. Because the campus is not located in a large urban setting, the University was able to install the wind turbine on land adjacent to the campus. This allows the transfer energy to flow directly from the turbine to the campus without needing to use the electrical grid to do so, Rasmussen said.

In order to finance the project, the University secured a Clean Renewable Energy Bond (CREB) from the federal government. CREB bonds are 15-year, interest-free loans, Rasmussen said. Reflecting on the process that eventually resulted in the installation of a wind turbine at UM Morris, Rasmussen stressed the need for patience.

“It takes time; these things just don’t happen over night,” he said.
Waiting for change is something that student environmental activists at UI understand all too well.

Night falls on the Quad and all signs of the Earth Day event have disappeared, including display tables and the wind turbine. But there are a handful of student activists milling around, not too far from a clump of sleeping bags they have brought along on this all-night protest. Larson said that he was disappointed that years have passed and the effort to purchase a wind turbine appears to have taken a major setback. Commenting on the administration’s in-action he stated, “Unless there is someone (in the administration) who is really all for the project, they’ll wait until students who care about the project are gone.”

While the wind turbine project is stalled indefinitely, there are other possible renewable energy projects proposed on campus that may be worthwhile for the Student Sustainability Committee and other activist groups to investigate. One such project calls for Noble Hall to be refurbished with a green roof and smaller wind turbines.

The plans to provide Noble Hall with a green roof were produced by landscape architecture students enrolled in LA 336/438, one of the department’s spring studio options. Students in the course, taught by Professor Dave Kovacic, were asked to incorporate a green roof into a redesign of Noble Hall, which is one of the least energy efficient buildings on campus, Kovacic said.

A design put forth by seniors Mike Darrow and Jacob Heck included solar panels, small-scale wind turbines and plants as a part of their green roof design. According to the details listed on their plan, the green roof would reduce the buildings heating costs, reduce storm water run off, extend the life of the roof materials and serve as a research demonstration space where researchers could measure how much rain water had been diverted from the storm drain system. The cost for this project is estimated at approximately $ 500,000, including installation, which is roughly 10 percent of the cost associated with the proposed wind turbine.

The project addresses the question of “how to retrofit an existing building on campus so that it is sustainable,” Kovacic said. Being able to utilize elements of wind, solar, vegetation and water retention to address renewable energy efforts is a growing need on campus, he said.

“We have 75 acres of building roof on campus that are old roofs like this. So, potentially, (that’s) 75 acres of roof that could be made reusable.”

Kovacic intends to eventually submit a proposal to the Office of Sustainability that incorporates the best elements of his students’ designs for Noble Hall. Implementation of such a plan would engage different disciplines in a collaborative effort between different departments, including horticulture, engineering and landscape architecture, Kovacic said.

Suhail Barot, graduate student and chair of the Student Sustainability Community,
responding to the Noble Hall roof redesign idea, he said, “I’d want to see hard numbers on energy generation, payback, budgeting, etc, before I 
could say anything.”

As the college careers of the class of 2009 draw to close, there is still no word on when the Chancellor will finalize a decision on whether the wind turbine project will move ahead or be put to rest permanently.

Memorandum

Date: April 23, 2009

Re: Visit to Champaign Court House

To: Shelley Smithson

From: Will Atwater  

One of the first things that I learned about the Champaign County Court House  is that criminal cases are heard on the third floor where there are three  courtrooms; divorce and traffic courts are held on the first and second floors.  This morning judge Thomas J. Difanis conducted four arraignment proceedings,  which involved the defendants entering a plea and either requesting or waving  their rights to a trial. We soon learned that in each case, the attorneys for the  accused had negotiated a plea deal, which involved pleading guilty to a lesser  charge with the expectation of receiving a lighter sentence.

I was struck by how subdued the proceedings were and how quickly things  transpired. Mary Schenk informed us about what the numbers an letters that  appear on file folder mean (CF-criminal felony, MR-miscellaneous remedy,  etc). She also informed us that a discovery affidavit is a document that includes  a list of witnesses and other information related to a case being built against  the accused. Both the defense and the prosecuting attorneys share the  document, and I believe the information collected in this file will influence  whether or not a plea bargain will be offered, or if there is enough evidence to  proceed with building a case.  

Another point of interest was learning that the only cases closed to the public  are ones involving juvenile delinquency and juvenile neglect. Also, I was not  aware that the News-Gazette has a self-imposed policy of not placing the  names of juveniles in the paper. However, I was surprised to learn that many  judges feel publishing the names of juvenile defendants would serve as a  deterrent.  

The thing that stands out mostly from my trip to court was hearing Mary  Schenk stress how important it is to establish rapport with all of the officers  and employees of the court. They are the gate-keepers in this arena and a  reporter must win their trust and respect in order to have long-term success.    

A Profile of Wes Jarrell

It’s 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, and Wes Jarrell, a faculty member in the University of Illinois’ College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), looks down from the podium at the half-filled auditorium of the Beckman Institute. In its second day, the Human Story of Climate Change (Planet U) conference hosted by UI, is coming to a close. Following the conference agenda, Jarrell is to give a 15-minute presentation on the Environmental Change Institute (ECI).

Sporting a corduroy blazer and a red tie, the 60-year-old Jarrell stands before the podium and introduces himself as an educator, an environmentalist and farmer. What is not visible to the audience is how this man’s life story, starting as a boy growing up on the family farm in Bend, Ore., and shaped by a career straddling between academia and agriculture, has defined the man standing before them; a man who is on crusade to save the planet.

 Along with his appointment in ACES, Jarrell is also the interim director of ECI, which was established to raise awareness and to inform public policy on matters related to climate change. In order to achieve this mission ECI seeks to engage the public through research, teaching and public engagement, Jarrell said. Although he smiled, and he conveyed a relaxed tone, a sense of urgency was present in Jarrell’s message.

“Very importantly, a lot of us are near the end of our careers, shall we say, and (climate change) is a problem that is going to go a long way into the future. So, we need (to develop) highly motivated, broadly trained, ethical leaders for the 21st century and we want to do our part to make that happen.”

In order to cultivate future leaders equipped to address climate change issues, Jarrell used the ECI platform to develop a course in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES). The course titled NRES 199, was offered for the first time during the spring semester and is held on Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The students range from freshmen to graduate students and the goal of the course is to develop a carbon registry and a business plan to address how UI can reduce its carbon footprint. The class will present findings to the campus administration on May 7.

To prepare themselves for this presentation, the students rehearsed during class last Thursday. The clean-shaven Jarrell was seated at a table with arm sleeves rolled up to his elbows, listening as students reported on group projects. This was a rehearsal for the upcoming presentation to the administration.  Jarrell served as co-facilitator for the meeting and gestered with his hands as he offered solutions to research problems identified by students. Each suggestion Jarrell posed was usually accompanied with a smile and slight chuckle.

Freshman Matt Rundquist said he "he enrolled in the  class because it looked like a good way to learn about carbon trading and that side of environmental economics in a real-world kind of way." Regarding Jarrell's teaching style he added, "He's been more of a manager than a teacher on this project, and really let us take the this thing where we wanted to."

During his tenure at UI Jarrell has not always been as at peace with his work as he appears to be now. From 2003 until 2007, he served as the director of NRES and faced what he described as a difficult time, as a result of his efforts to change the department’s culture. “I don’t see boundaries where other people see boundaries. And I didn’t appreciate how impenetrable some of these boundaries were, in terms of how people (viewed) what they did and what they thought their jobs were.”

Jarrell said that one of the major challenges in academia is related to the unwillingness by many professors to engage in collaborative endeavors that are not directly aligned with their particular scholarship.

 “Many people in academia are more loyal to their disciplines than they are to society and societal needs, in general.”

He added, “(Some people) tie up their identity so much with the discipline they got their degree in, that they have an enormous amount of trouble breaking free of it. I’m not that way, so that made for a disconnect (in my department),” he said.

Jarrell’s vision for how the department should function involved stripping away discipline boundaries that hindered collaborative research efforts and it encouraged the restructuring of certain course curriculum in order to better serve the needs of students.

One of the biggest challenges with NRES is that it consists of faculty from different disciplines, including horticulture, forestry, soil sciences, and human dimensions, among others, said Interim Director Bruce Branham.

“I think what got to Wes was trying to get everybody to buy into his vision of what the department should be because a lot of people felt they were comfortable with the old vision of how they were and did not want to change.”

After fours years of departmental turmoil, Jarrell resigned in 2007.

“My psychological makeup just wasn’t able to accept that, I guess, and just go with the flow, so I stepped down,” Jarrell said.

After he resigned, Jarrell spent more than three months away from academia and focused his energy on the 39-acre certified-organic farm that he owns with his wife Leslie Cooperband. Located about ten miles from downtown Urbana on North Lincoln Avenue, Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery is home to a herd of goats that includes 50 milkers and 350 fruit trees.

His wife describes a typical 12-hour day on the farm. “So, the day would (begin at) 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. and go until 6:30 p.m. or 7:30 p.m., depending on what type of cheese we were making,” Cooperband said.

The farm produce is primarily sold to customers through the Urbana and Chicago farmer’s markets, she said.

Prior to purchasing the farm land in 2003, the couple lived in Madison, Wis., where both were faculty members at the University of Wisconsin in the soil sciences department. Cooperband described herself and Jarrell as “two soil nerds” that met in Las Vegas at an agronomy conference.

“We’re both kind of dreamers and schemers,” Coooperhand said. “We were interested in applying science to good ends and not just doing science for science’s sake, but applying it to pressing needs of the day. I think that’s what attracted us to each other initially.”

Jarrell’s appreciation for the natural world stems from growing up on the family farm in Central Oregon, with a view of the Cascade Mountains, where he and his two sisters assisted with the chores.

“One of his responsibilities, when he was 11 or 12, was to get out and pick berries,” said Jarrell’s mother, Edith. “He was noted for the rows he picked (because) they were very clean – he picked the good berries and left the bad ones.”

Reflecting on her son's behavior as a boy, Edith stated, “He did what he was told. He was a very obedient kid (and) he didn’t need to be corrected more than once, if there was something he did wrong,” she said.

Among Jarrell’s earliest memories was attending Peter Boscow Elementary School located in Hillsboro, Ore. This is the same school that his mother attended, he said. Jarrell remembered that his mother taught him and his sisters to count by making flash cards from “old shredded wheat boxes.”

In high school Jarrell excelled in the classroom and in extra curricular activities. He was the student body president during his senior year, a member of the wrestling team and played the clarinet as a member of the band, he said.

            After graduating from high school, Jarrell attended Stanford University on a merit scholarship. As a freshman, Jarrell was interested in pursuing a law degree but Ms. Kinsella, his English teaching assistant, encouraged him to pursue another field, he said.

            “I came in as a pre-law (major) but discovered I didn’t write as well as I needed to.”

The switch from his rural community to the life of a college student surrounded by seemingly sophisticated peers, was a transformative moment for Jarrell, he said.

            “(Going) from the backwoods of Oregon to downtown Stanford, there were quite a few rich kids from cities. That was my first real jarring experience of rural meets urban.”

            While recognizing that students from urban areas dealt well with people, he also discovered that not many of his peers knew as much as he did about farm life, he said. Jarrell enjoyed the time he spent in the woods and in fields and decided to become a biological science major, he said.

Another transformative moment occurred for Jarrell when he realized he was more interested in focusing his energies toward a discipline that had practical applications. Intent on joining the Peace Corps and saving the world, Jarrell enrolled in a course titled “Physical Resources of the Tropics,” which was a course in soil science, he said.

            Reflecting back on the course, he recalled, “I was just blown away because as a kid I had worked in (soil) all this time and I knew nothing about it. And then I found out a lot about it was really fascinating.”

His mother Edith recalled that once Jarrell focused his studies on soil science, some of his dorm mates nicknamed him the “dirt doctor,” she said.

After graduating from Stanford, Jarrell took a job for one year delivering metal shelving in the San Francisco Bay area before attending graduate school at Oregon State University. There he received a master’s and a doctorate degree in soil science, he said.

As a professor, Jarrell worked for 12 years at UC Riverside before giving up his tenured position and moving back to Oregon, where he taught for 10 years at the Oregon Graduate Institute, he said. Jarrell decided to leave the security of his tenured position because he had grown tired of being in an environment where many colleagues abused the tenure system, he said.

“I grew up blue collar and I figured that if you weren’t carrying your weight, you should not be paid,” Jarrell said.

Jarrell’s journey would lead him to Madison, Wisconsin, where he joined the UW soil sciences faculty after spending a few years exploring business ideas, he said.

 In 2007, Jarrell met Joel Friedman, president of the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund based in Chicago. At the time, Friedman had contacted members from the UI Law and Business Schools and had expressed and interest in funding a collaborative project that would assist the current administration to establish policy to address climate change, Friedman said.

Friedman recalled being “impressed with Jarrell’s leadership” and with the contacts Jarrell had developed both within the University and the broader communities, he said.

Before Friedman would agree to allocate foundation funds for the project, he demanded that a collaborative team form that would include the Law School, the Business School and the College of ACES, he said.

“Lawyers can do some but they can’t solve the problem; The Business School could do some things, but they can’t solve the problem; The folks at ACES could potentially solve the problem, but communicated poorly with the broader community,” Friedman said.

Once the three entities agreed to work together and had showed initial progress, the foundation awarded ECI a $ 300,000 grant in 2007 and committed an additional $300,000 for the next two years. The College of ACES also contributed $100,000 to the organization. With the seed funding it has received, ECI has five years to raise a $5 million dollar endowment to sustain itself, Jarrell said.

Beyond the carbon registry course, ECI will host the Chicago Cap and Trade Summit May 28^th.  The conference will feature discussions about how to achieve an 80 percent reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050. Among the presenters, students from NRES 199 will share the research they are conducting on how UI can reduce its emissions. To learn more about the conference and other ECI initiatives, log onto www.eci.edu.

  Back inside the auditorium, Jarrell’s 15-minute presentation is over and he collects his materials and prepares to exit the podium to make room for the next presenter. Pleased with the presentation, he will soon enjoy a silent moment as he drives north on Lincoln Avenue, where the urban landscape will quickly dissolve into open fields. Several years removed from the country boy of his freshman year at Stanford, Wes Jarrell the man, has become comfortable traversing between rural and urban settings.

Miss Nora

It's 5 p.m. and there's not a clean spot on her two and a half foot body -- the pigtails are speckled with sand and the tiny hands are painted black with dried mud. Nora offers a "hello" to passers-by, gripping my hand on the way to the car. Soon, the two-year-old's tiny voice will pierce the silence with questions: "Where's my sweater, can I watch a show?" But for now, I enjoy the moment as we walk hand in hand to the car.

I'm exploring the idea of writing about the famous stalled campus wind turbine project. I've been advised to follow the $ trail, so if you happen to come across a suitcase stuffed with cash and a note attached that reads: "wind turbine funds,"let me know. Or, if you come across any random wind turbine parts that look out of place, please let me know. Also, I'd appreciate any other ideas you might have.

A Garden to Come

Behind the Catholic Worker House located at 317 S. Randolph St. near downtown Champaign, lies a patch of dark soil that will be transformed into a community garden this spring. Produce from the garden will be used to prepare meals in the Catholic Worker House’s soup kitchen, said student volunteer Craig Kreutzer.

“Planting a garden is the best thing you can do to address the ills of the world,” Kreutzer said, as he surveyed the space.

A similar belief in the capacity of gardening has inspired a local eco-ecumenical organization to partner with the Catholic Worker House to start the garden. Group member Emily Laugesen sees gardening as a connection between their faith and the environment, she said.
Participating in this project will provide the group with a tangible way to “foster a sense of caring about the planet” and to also develop “a social outreach plan (to) benefit people who would otherwise not have access to fresh produce,” Laugesen said.

According to the American Community Garden’s Web site, there are18,000 community gardens in the United States and Canada. And there are signs that interest is growing, said UI Landscape Architecture Professor Laura Lawson, who dose research on community gardening.
“In the last eight months there has been an escalation in the number of calls and emails that I (have gotten) from people interested in community gardening,” Lawson said.

More people have turned to community gardening to strengthen their connection to the environment as well as to address social justice concerns such as access to affordable and fresh vegetables, she said.
In 2005 Lawson published “City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America,” which traces the origins of community gardening back to the 1890s and through phases of popular interest that include the War Gardens of World War I, the Victory Gardens of World War II, and up to today’s urban gardening movement.

Lawson credits the renewed interests in community garden to the economic crisis and to food security concerns brought on by the recent recall of peanut butter, among other items. But to Lawson, this period of renewed interests also exemplifies a cyclical trend.
“My research shows that, historically, whenever our nation has been confronted by some sort of social or economic crisis, people turn to gardening -- in particularly they turn to community gardening because it satisfies so many things simultaneously.”

The benefits of gardening include a renewed sense of self-reliance that comes from “the ability to grow your own food,” a feeling of “community building” through interactions with fellow gardeners and “link(s) between the environmental, ecological and sustainable” movements, she said.

While the eco-ecumenical group is excited about the potential of the community garden project, they will need to help establish the garden.

“Ideally we would a have on a volunteer basis someone who is really knowledgeable about gardening who could provide expertise and practical advice,” Laugesen said.

When offering gardening advice, Lawson recommends groups to visit the ACGA Web site because it offers “a nice mix of hands on and practical” tips about how to operate a garden as well as how to manage the “people aspect of gardening,” she said.

“Garden(ing) is not just about growing food, it’s about organizing people to run the garden and to work together in common interests. And so, to build that community focus is something that the ACGA has looked into and they really support that concept,” Lawson said.

According to their Web site, ACGA’s mission is to “build community by increasing and enhancing community gardening and greening across the United States and Canada.”

Vicki Garrett, project coordinator for ACGA, fields calls at the Columbus, Ohio, office from people seeking gardening advice. Garrett cautions new garden groups to develop strong community partnerships before breaking ground on a garden.

“I get people calling here asking for a garden in their city because they’re desperate to plant something and can’t find one near them. And then, I get calls from the same city telling me that they can’t get anyone interested in community gardening. So, if you’re not reaching the people who want to garden it’s not going to work. And you also have to make (people) feel ownership,” she said.

For local people who are interested in renting an individual garden plot, there are two primary sites in the Champaign-Urbana community that supports community gardening. The sites are managed by the cities parks districts. In Urbana, for example, Meadowbrook Park, located in south Urbana along Windsor Road and Race Street, has provided organic garden spaces for community residents since 1974, said Park Coordinator Erica Schneider. Individual garden plot rentals range in price from $30 to $60 depending on the size of the space and require deposit of $15. Currently, there is a waiting list for spaces, Schneider said.

The Champaign Park District also offers garden plots at Dodds Park located at 1501 N. Mattis Ave. and as of April 1, there were 21 plots available. A plot rental ranges from $20 to $25 depending on the size of the space, said staff member Quandra Clarke.

Before the eco-ecumenical group begins gardening at the Catholic Worker House, it will conduct a planning meeting on April 7. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and will be held at the Wesley-United Methodist Church located at 1203 W. Greene St. in Urbana. A member of the Illinois Agriculture Extension Master Gardeners’ program will be there to answer gardening-related questions and to help the group map out an action plan for the upcoming growing season.

The eco-ecumenical gardeners are “an inner-faith religious group and people from any religious institution who want to get involved are welcomed,” Luagesen said.

“We envision this (project) beyond just putting some seeds in and getting food out of the ground. We think it’s more about nurturing respect for the land and what it provides us and (realizing) that we are not the only creatures that depend on it for survival.”

A response to the New York Times Portrait of Grief Series

The profiles of Edelmino Abad, Paul Acquaviva and Donald Adams were the three profiles that stood out to me from the series. The details and imagery presented in the descriptions provided a snap shot of how these men lived.

Beginning with Abad, he was portrayed as a man who adored his wife and children and who also treated his coworkers as a second family. The opening line provides you with an image of Abad—the proud father—attending his children’s dance recitals, and then we hear from one of his daughters about how he supported her dream to become a dance instructor. I felt like I knew this man by the way he was described.

The profile of Paul Acquaviva was moving because beyond stating all of his achievements, it offered a snap shot of a man who married his childhood sweetheart and cried at the birth of his first child. These are the details that give you a sense of the way Acquaviva lived.

Lastly, I was struck by the profile of Donald Adams. The piece had strong imagery of the connection Adam had with his wife and daughter. There was a scene of Adams walking toward his house and spotting “his girls” waiting on the porch for him. But my favorite aspect of the piece was how Adam’s wife, Heda, described their relationship. "I was H. He was D. Just the first letters. That's all we needed."

E-Waste Solutions

Paul Cade, a sophomore in urban planning, scrambled to maintain order as he sorted an array of electronic waste that poured into Lincoln Hall on Saturday, February 21. The southeast entrance to the building was converted into a makeshift recycling center where local residents brought old computers and computer accessories, including monitors and printers. During the five hour period, student volunteers received more than five tons of e-waste - enough to fill a semi-truck.
The group collected old computers to be used in the upcoming Sustainable E-waste Design Competition, Cade said.

Registration for the competition opened on January 29 and will run until March 16. Teams consisting of up to five students will choose from the donated e-waste and present their re-imagined designs to be judged by a committee on April 16. The juried competition will be held on the UI quad and will be preceded by a sustainable design conference hosted by the UI Environmental Council April 8 – 10 that will be held in the Illini Union.

The Cade family is playing a key role in the production of the event. Paul’s sister, Amy Cade, a senior in industrial design, initially proposed a project using recycled e-waste to Art and Design professor William Bullock. Amy explained that her father, Willie Cade, rehabs electronic equipment and provides it to schools and civic organizations.

After learning about Willie Cade’s company, PC Rebuilders and Recyclers, professor Bullock went to see the operation and was excited to witness old electronic equipment being prepped for reuse because “in industrial design we are part of the problem,” he said.

“E-waste is a huge problem that is creeping upward and upward,” Bullock said. The end-of-life of (electronics) is not good and much of it we’re exporting overseas and, essentially, dumping our trash on foreign shores and it’s really tragic because (toxins) are leaching into the soil, air, water and affecting the environment adversely and the people who are around those things.”

And the problem of e-waste is growing. The Electronics TakeBack Coalition, citing Environmental Protection Agency data, released a report stating that in 2006 Americans generated 2.9 million tons of e-waste, of which 11 percent was recycled. Those findings were supported by Allen Hershkowitz, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who said in a Nov. 9, 2008, interview on 60 Minutes that, “We throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States.”

Energized by his visit to Willie Cade’s company, Bullock helped develop ARTD 391/351, a sustainable e-waste course, he said. According to the course description, the class covers relevant topics such as history and theory of sustainable design and e-waste design techniques. Course enrollment is not mandatory in order to enter the competition and participants may attend course lectures and seminars without enrolling.

Amy Cade enrolled in the class and she and her classmates conducted research and developed a report that will be presented to the University, which will highlight how it can play a role in e-waste reduction, she said.

One of the primary goals of this effort is to stimulate support for a new research institute at UI called the I-Care Center, which will work with the University as well as electronic manufacturers to reduce e-waste, Bullock said.
“(E-waste) has become a global problem and we just wanted to take a positive step (toward) doing something about it,” Bullock said.
The Office of Sustainability helped fund ARTD 391/591 and supports the effort to develop the I-Care Center.

“We think UI could be a real leader in this area,” said Office of Sustainability Director Dick Warner.

“The collection of e-waste is a sticky issue these days. But it will be much easier come January 1, 2010,” Willie Cade said. He is referring to a new law called the Illinois Electronic Recycling & Reuse Act. The law’s key sponsors are Rep. Elaine Nekritz and Sen. Susan Garrett. According to a published description of the law, “manufacturers of televisions, computers, monitors and printers are required to set up and pay for the collection, transportation, recycling and or reuse of obsolete products.” The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency will monitor compliance of the law, which also bans e-waste from landfills.

“The really good part about the Illinois law is that it gives manufacturers double credit for reusing the equipment. And that’s what we really want to focus on here is the reuse of this equipment – not just taking it and throwing it away and making (silicone sand) out of it,” Willie Cade said.

Manufacturers such as Apple also seem to be taking notice of this issue. In its latest advertising campaign, Apple is touting the new MacBook “as not only the greenest notebook Apple has produced, but the greenest family of notebooks.”

According to Apple, the new MacBooks contain “materials that are highly recyclable and free of many of the harmful substances found in other computers.”
Apple’s new advertising campaign would be welcomed by local residents like Gisela Kraus, 55, of Champaign. Krauss was one of the people who participated in the e-waste drive.

“We saw the article in the News-Gazette and I thought it was time to get rid of the broken laptop. It broke recently and I didn't want to fix it because (it would) cost more than buying a new one and it was old anyway."

The Electronics TakeBack Coalition reported that 68 percent of consumers stockpile used or unwanted computer equipment in their homes.

“There are about 100 million computers being stored in homes right now. That’s about 1 per home,” said Willie Cade.

Kraus said she held on to the broken computer for two months. “Recycling is the best thing you can do right now, isn't it? Anything you can recycle, you should recycle – plastics, paper, cardboard, cans.”

After gathering a computer and five monitors, Paul Cade headed to a first-floor room in Lincoln Hall that his team will use for the next month to develop their design idea.

“We want to make a hydroponic farm, which is a farming system that uses no dirt, just water. (We hope) the computer will be able to control the nutrients that the plants will get. Then we will use computer monitors to give the plants light.”
Cade hopes the project will benefit from the five-member team that includes students from industrial design, international studies, urban planning and architecture, he said.

Supporting e-waste recycling efforts will offer many benefits to the local community, Willie Cade said.

"Eighty percent of the energy in the life cycle of a computer is used to manufacture it. So if we could reuse the silicon (contained in it), as opposed to grinding it up, we've done a much better (job for the) environmental process,” Willie Cade said. “Also, too, we've created local jobs. The whole notion of reuse and refurbishment is educational -- it creates local jobs. It's green and it's cost effective. Those are really the highlights of this (effort)."

On Tuesday night a marked silence fell inside the chambers of the Champaign City Council meeting. Prior to this moment, the proceedings proved to be uneventful as Council members voted unanimously to approve all but one agenda item.

The last item before adjournment was the public comment session. After Mayor Schweighart invited comments from the audience, Claudia Lennhoff, executive director of Champaign County Healthcare Consumers addressed the council.

Lennhoff, there to speak on behalf of the 5th and Hill Neighborhood Rights Campaign, informed the Council about the Ameren Open House meeting that will take place at City Hall on Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

“I am here because we just read Ameren’s report last week. And there is some new and important – and I would say – some shocking information from our prospective,” she said.

Lennhoff was referring to an ongoing battle between residents of Champaign’s 5th and Hill neighborhood and the utility company Ameren. The neighborhood is located near the site of contaminated property owned by Ameren, according to Lennhoff.

“Ameren, for the first time—after all their reports and after all their testing – identified large sections of the property that pose a (health) threat because of vaporization from toxins.

This risk of exposure to poisonous substances has been “a long-standing concern” for 5th and Hill residents, Lennhoff said.

“Ameren found that the test results exceed the safety standards for residential property. In other words, if there was residential property there it would be unsafe (for people living near the site). Of course, there is residential property 40 or 50 feet away (from the site) and they didn’t test outside the boundaries of their (property). But there is no reason to think that the vaporization stops at the boundaries of the fenced-in area,” she said.

According to Lennhoff, the report also stated that “the ground water is far more contaminated than we had ever been told or led to believe.”

“One of the water test wells showed the presence of benzene, a highly toxic substance in the ground water. Now the safety standards are five parts per billion, in other words, you don’t want a test result that exceeds five parts per billion. Well, from Ameren’s on documents, the test results for that particular well show a 1000 parts per billion.”

Council members sat quietly as Lennhoff continued to build a case against Ameren, eventually highlighting the City’s ground water restriction ordinance passed in 2007,which she said, exempts Ameren form having to clean up the contaminated area.

“On the surface the ordinance seems benign. It basically prohibits people from putting in wells to (access) water for potable purposes. It is important to understand that the only thing this ordinance accomplishes for the people of the City of Champaign is that it prohibits them from drinking contaminated water, which they have not been doing.”

The ordinance only protects people from exposure to toxins if they drink the water. “However, that is only one of three ways that people can be exposed,” she said. The other ways include “touching or tactile exposure and inhalation.”

“This ordinance only addresses one pathway for exposure – the ingestion pathway, which really has not been an issue because residents were not digging wells for drinking water and they were not hauling water in buckets from their flooded basements for drinking purposes. The ordinance does not prevent (contaminated) water from flooding their basements or from flowing into Boneyard Creek, or onto other people’s properties.”

Lennhoff said that the city ordinance allows Ameren to get away with not cleaning up the toxins because it claims that it is using the suing the ordinance to address the issue.

Regarding the ordinance Lenhhoff stated, “This is what amounts to an administrative slight of hand that allows Ameren to have the appearance that it is addressing contaminated ground water.”

Lennhoff hopes that the City Council members will not only attend Ameren’s open house meeting, but will also amend the ordinance that she said is allowing Ameren to avoid cleaning up toxins that are located in the 5th and Hill neighborhood.
In other Council news, the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club and 7 of program participants, presented Council members with commemorative plates as a token of appreciation for financial support.

Ideas for stories:
1. Cover the Ameren Open House Meeting
2. Follow up interview with Claudia Lennhoff
3. Interview Council members regarding Ameren issue

Obama's Speech

On Tuesday night President Obama was showered with applause and handshakes as he entered the House Chamber to deliver his first address to Congress. During his speech he laid out an economic recovery plan that, among other things, underscored a commitment to renewable energy, healthcare and education.

President Obama wasted no time in ensuring the Congress and America that he has a plan to get the economy moving.

“Tonight I want every American to know this: we will recover, we will emerge stronger than before,” he said.

On the issue of energy, President Obama laid out a goal to “double the supply of renewable energy” and to “curb carbon-based emissions.” These alternative energy sources included wind, solar, biofuel and clean coal.

In terms of education, the President laid out multiple points, including his goal to increase the percentage of college graduates.

“By 2020 America will have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world.”

The president also demonstrated a sense of urgency with regards to addressing the rising costs of healthcare. “We can no longer afford to put healthcare reform on hold,” he said.

Environment Beat Story

Members of the Champaign-Urbana organic community, a group which includes organic farmers and grocers, would like the University of Illinois to commit more research funding to organic agriculture instead of genetically modified crops.

According to a 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census report, cash receipts for crop-related sales in Illinois totaled more than $13 billion. Revenue from organic produce comprised less than one percent of the total that year. The Midwest produces almost 40 percent of the world’s corn and soybeans and much of the current agricultural research at UI is focused on the development of genetically modified seeds.

In 2007 the College of ACES appropriated $62 million to fund agriculture research at UI, according to a report released by the college. It is unclear how much, if any, of the funding was used to support organic agricultural research. Jozef Kokini, associate dean of research for the College of ACES was not available for comment.

Most recently, there has only been one research project related to organic agriculture at UI and it is currently inactive as researches worked to find new funding sources, said Wesley Jarrell, professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES). Jarrell is also interim director of the newly established Environmental Change Institute, which solicits proposals from members of the UI community related to environmental initiatives.

Aside from his work at UI, Jarrell, 60, owns Prairie Fruit Farms and Creamery, a certified organic farm, with his wife Leslie Cooperband. The 39-acre farm is located about 10 minutes from downtown Urbana on North Lincoln Avenue. A one story log home and a barn that houses goats, punctuate a flat and dormant landscape sprinkled with rows of fruit trees planted near the house. Jarrell and Cooperband also raise vegetables and hay.

“There is nowhere near the (research) base in organic agriculture as there is with conventional agriculture,” Jarrell said.

Because organic agriculture uses systemic farming practices that require the farmer to consider the entire ecosystem of the farm and discourages single inputs for such concerns as pest control, it does not lend itself to the kind of research that occurs within conventional agriculture, Jarrell said.

“(Organic agriculture) is not amenable to the simple statistics that all aggies grew up with where you vary one variable in an experiment (which allows you) to draw nice curves and get significant differences,” he said.

The fundamental differences between organic and conventional agricultural methods are echoed by Harriet Behar, organics specialist for the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES). Based in Wisconsin, MOSES is, according to their Web site, a nonprofit out-reach organization that works to promote sustainable and organic agriculture.

“Companies are not going to invest in a systems approach because it will not yield the kind of financial return they want,” Behar said. She added, “A lot of university extension agents have been skeptical of organics because it doesn’t have a lot of science based research. We’re trying to change that.”

Jon Cherniss, a tall and spry-looking 48-year-old, owns Blue Moon Farm, an organic operation located about eight and a half miles northeast of Prairie Fruits and Creamery in Urbana. Cherniss cultivates 40 to 50 varieties of produce on 12 acres of land and sells it at the Urbana Farmer’s Market. The farm supports six hoop houses (a term for green houses without electricity) and a red barn – all clustered together in the center of the property. Cherniss agrees that the drive for a financial dividend influences a lot of agricultural research.

“Scientist understand the need to protect genetic diversity, but they want a return on capital in the short-term,” he said. “Crop diversity is more important than anything. It’s what makes my farm strong.”

From the consumer’s perspective the proliferation of genetically modified seed is a cause of concern said Jacqueline Hannah, general manager of Common Ground CO-OP located in Urbana.

“What we know is that seed diversity is dropping constantly. We lose varieties of fruits and vegetables all the time. (We’re) literally down to three types of corn being grown in America and if we have a disease that wipes out one of them, then (we’ve) got a huge problem,” she said.

Since 1974 Common Ground CO-OP has sold local and organic food and produce to the Champaign-Urbana community. The co-op also contributes to the local community by hosting “seed swap” workshops that are designed to educate people about the importance of saving seed from their gardens.

Although there is not a lot of current research focused on organic agriculture, Hannah said the demand for organic produce and the growth of small farms is a cause for optimism.

“To me it is the American way. People have always had a passion for growing their own food and we are going back to that passion.”

Shelly Smithson
JRN 400 Lab
Interview with Brian Johnson
Will Atwater
February 5, 2009


On February 2, 2009, I interviewed Brian K. Johnson, associate head in the department of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


Please state your name, your age, where you live and your job title.

Johnson: My name is Brian Johnson and I’m 49-years-old. And, presently, I’m the acting department head and I live in Champaign.

Q: How long have you worked here at the university?

Johnson: I’ve been teaching at the university for 20 years…and it’s amazing that it’s been that long—I started in 1998. So, I’ve seen a lot of changes in those years.

Q: What was your life like as a kid growing up?

Johnson: Well, I grew up in Central Wisconsin (Stevens Point). And I was the kind of kid that was always coming up with things I could create and invent. If I was playing with my G.I. Joes I’d take things and turn them into radar dishes … things like that. When I was in my early teen years, my sister had a photo class in high school and my dad had kind of fooled around with photography a little bit … and I thought that was neat—I had always liked photographs. In particular, I always liked old photographs, historic photographs that would show … the general store in 1880 … to see how people lived; what the inside of their houses looked like in 1920. So then, when I was in high school, I took my first photo class. And just really fell in love with it. I had been creative, but what I really liked about photography was that it mixed science with the arts…there is a technical side to it, but there’s a strong creative side to it. I never felt like my dexterity was very good for drawing and painting and things like that. So, photography helped me with that because however I could compose my images, that’s what I could capture.

Q: You were saying that your father played around with photography, was that your first exposure to it?

Johnson: Yeah. I think largely what came to my mind was when my sister had her photo class in high school and she and my dad sort of were able to share that (their interest in photography). And I thought some of the pictures my sister took were pretty interesting. I’d always taken pictures; I’d done some movies when I was a kid. I would do things like, um, (this is going to sound crazy maybe) I’d have plastic model airplanes, and I’d poor gasoline over them and take movies of them as they melted. It was sort of like I was re-enacting the war film, like the plane had crashed … I’d taken pictures on trips and things like that.

Q: Were you using film to shoot your movies?

Johnson: Yeah, it was 8mm film. Then we busted all the way up to super 8 and then we had a video camera … and could record sound as well.

Q: You mentioned your sister, did you grow up in a large or small family?

Johnson: It’s just me and my sister and my sister is 3 years older than I am.

Q: Growing up, who would you say were your role models?

Johnson: I would say my mom and my dad and my grandparents—particularly my grandfather. My grandfather…was born into … an interesting family. His mom and dad divorced when he was fairly young and he ended up going (to live) with his mom. She was a creative person; she wrote songs and did some performing. (My grandfather) grew up fairly poor, but he ended up being a president of a bank. Even though he was a fairly stern man, I just respected him quite a bit. My mom was a working mother. She worked as a speech and language clinician in the public schools. I was really proud of her for doing that. My dad (was) a university professor…he’s retired now. He was a department head…so I always looked up to him too. And actually, I looked up to my sister—we had a pretty close relationship.

Q: You were saying that you took a photo class in high school?

Johnson: Right. It was my sophomore year in high school…My first year in high school, which was my sophomore year, I took a photography course in the art department. My teacher, his name was Warner Halverson, and he was a really interesting, easy-going kind of guy…he was an excellent photographer himself. I think that’s when I really started enjoying photography … working with him.

Q: Was this the point when you began to consider being a photographer as a possible career choice?

Johnson: (It) was when my junior year came about because, um, I was (the) photographer for the yearbook and did some pictures for the student newspaper. Then my senior year, I was editor of the year book. Again (these roles) fell right into place with my love for photographs…I really liked documenting things. But also with the yearbook, those are photos that would go on to (become) the historic photos of the future. So, I think that’s when I started thinking about journalism and photojournalism.

Q: Did your interests in photography influence you choice of colleges?

Johnson: It did to a degree. My sister was going to the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and they were known to have a very good journalism department. They also had a well respected business department—I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go. The university, as a whole, had a very good reputation among the state schools. I had been accepted at UW Madison and…I just decided ‘my sisters at Eau Claire and it’s a slightly smaller school …’and I thought that would (be a better fit for me). I … started out as a business major. But then, it seemed that so many of my classmates were interested in partying and getting wasted—superficial things like that. Whereas a lot of classes I had in the humanities, people seemed to care a lot about issues. I think that was what swayed me to say ‘I think journalism is where I need to be.’ I switched to journalism. That was the start, I think, of my junior year of college. I had taken some pictures for the school newspaper and had done some for the yearbook. I became the photo editor of the paper, and then I also, for one semester, served as the design editor.

Q: By then were you pretty much hooked?

Johnson: Yeah, I was definitely hooked. Once I switched into journalism, there was no question for me that I was going to go be a photojournalist and work for a newspaper.

Q: After graduating with a journalism degree, what was your first job?

Johnson: I’m going to take it a half step back. I graduated in four and half years, so in between my spring, which would have been my normal graduation year, and my fall semester, which is when I did graduate, I had an internship at the Racine, Wisconsin Journal Times. I had an excellent internship. They really just put me in as a photojournalist after a couple of weeks, going around with the different photographers. Then I graduated in December of 1981. I went to New York to (visit) my sister because she was living up there. I spent a week or so with her and came back and started looking for jobs. I had two or three job interviews lined up. The first one I had was at the News-Gazette, here in town. For someone starting out in journalism, the News-Gazette at that time had a circulation of 50,000. So that was a nice sized paper to get your first job at. That was March of 1982.

Q: How long did you work at the News Gazette?

Johnson: I (worked) at the News-Gazette for about six and a half years. Because I was here in Champaign-Urbana and I knew I was going to work on my master’s degree, I thought: ‘ok, I’m here, I’m going to work on my master’s degree here at the university.’ I didn’t come to Champaign-Urbana for the university, but because the university was here, it was a convenient way for me to get my degree. What was interesting was that my undergraduate school had quite a number of Illinois graduates, who were my professors. And the program there (UW Eau Claire) was very, very similar to the Illinois program: it was a hands-on journalism program, so the fit was very comfortable for me here. Then in 1988, a friend of mine, who was the photojournalism instructor, was hired to be the publisher at the Illinois Media company, which publishes the Daily Illini. Well, by then, I’d earned my master’s degree, I’d been working close to seven years, and so, I took a visiting appointment here from October until May. I took about a $10,000 pay-cut. I had a union job at the News-Gazette and could have stayed there forever, but I took the chance and I came here. (The university) did a nationwide search and brought in some people who are actually my colleagues now at other universities, and thankfully, I was the one chosen to stay here. And I’ve been here since then.

Q: Who are some of the photographers that you admire?

Johnson: When I was starting out in photojournalism, one of the people I looked up to was Eugene Smith. He was a photographer for Life Magazine. He’d done a number of documentary works and his photographs were just incredible. Then I also had joined the National Press Photographers’ Association, and they have a monthly magazine that comes out. And they always have the award winning photos for that month, so I really immersed myself in all of those photographs. I also liked photographs by Elliott Erwitt. A lot of his photos are really funny and ironic; Diane Arbus has a lot of really interesting photographs of people--people on the fringe of society; Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange … photographers from the depression era…a range of people from the turn of the last century all the way to current photojournalists.

Q: What are some of the hardest lessons you’ve learned as a photojournalist?

Johnson: Well, I’m also an Eagle Scout, and the Boy Scout motto is ‘be prepared.’ And that is especially true in photojournalism, because if you’re not prepared—in those days did not have enough film with you—you couldn’t be prepared to take the picture when it was going to happen. So, being prepared is certainly one big part of it. Another lesson that I learned is that things happen very quickly, and if you’re not there before things start to happen you might very well miss it. It’s really a part of being prepared: your need to be at places early. I don’t know if this is a hard lesson or not, but (you need) to be sure and confident in your rights as a citizen, especially; and carrying on from that, then, your rights as a journalist. You know a journalist doesn’t have any more rights than a citizen, and many times you had to stand up for your rights to document what was going on. And you had to be willing to try to convince some people that maybe didn’t want you to take the photograph, or you had to learn to deal with irate people; you needed to deal with tragedy sometimes.

Q: Going along with that, are there particular moments that stand out to you?

Johnson: Yeah, there are. There’s one (photograph) that I always think about…when I was not working on a day, I always had my cameras with me. I also had a police radio going, so I knew what was happening…a call came over the police scanner that there had been a shooting … I think they said a shooting at that time…at Curly’s Pond Shop. Well, I was only a block and a half away from there when that call came over. So, you know, I parked my car, I grabbed my stuff and that’s where the preparation came into play because … you develop a routine … load the camera, set your exposure … In those days we didn’t have auto focus cameras; we didn’t really have auto exposure so … I got to the scene and there was the owner of Curly’s Pond Shop, laying on the sidewalk with several bloody spots on his shirt and there’s a policeman over him taking care of him … You know it’s real easy to … you almost go into a state of shock where your vision goes kind of black and white and your heart starts racing. There was a little voice in me that kept saying, ‘focus, focus, focus.’ So I shot pictures of that and I thought I had done a really nice job on that assignment of really covering all angles of it. I had pictures of the policemen in Curly’s Pond Shop looking for things…There are two other stories I’ll tell you. I used to sleep with a police scanner on at night and it was also (a scanner for) fire and police. These calls would come over and you’d kind of wake and listen and try to decide if it was something. So there was an apartment fire … it was 2 a.m. or something … so I pulled on my pants, threw on a shirt and tore off across town to go photograph this. It wasn’t really much of a fire, but the firemen where bringing down this woman and she was just kind of hanging there. She really looked to me like she was dead. I was taking pictures of that—you never know if you’re going to use the body photo or not. Usually not actually—regardless of what people think. When I got back I processed my film and I noticed that on the side of the frame—I didn’t see it when I took the picture—there’s this woman reaching out to the woman who is being carried away, and there’s a fireman kind of holding her back. It really made this dramatic photo. The next day the newspaper sent people over to the complex to identify the (women) and it turns out that they were twin sisters. So, that was just a very, very moving photo, a very moving moment. Thankfully, the woman survived and she was fine, so that just made it a really wonderful moment. The last one I’ll tell you about was one of the last assignments I’d done for the (News)-Gazette. There was a young woman or an old girl—whatever you want to say—on the boys’ University High School soccer team. And I thought ok, ‘how am I going to illustrate that there’s a girl on the boys soccer team?’ So I thought when there’s a free kick…you know how the soccer people always line up and protect their private parts, I thought that would be the moment…because she’s going to have a different set of parts to protect. Sure enough, because I was prepared and I had thought about what I was looking for, I was ready when that actually did happen. It turned out to be a really funny photo, an excellent illustration. And that (photo) ended up winning second place nationally in the sports feature category for the pictures of the year. It was one of those situations where you felt your were at the top of your game; really feeling like you thought out the situation; you were ready for the interesting stuff when it happened and you actually captured it.

Q: I want to switch gears and find out how you feel about the shift from film to digital photography?

Johnson: I have always been very excited about the shift to digital photography. There are a number of photographers who were not happy. One thing when the cameras started becoming more automatic, had auto focus (some photographers) were worried that every one would think that they were a photographer. ‘Everyone will think that they can go out and take photos and we want need photojournalist anymore.’ Well, I didn’t believe that because I knew that it was what was in the photographer’s head, not what was in his hands, that made the difference about getting the picture or not. When digital photography first came onto the market … it was when I first started teaching here (U of I) and we were actually one the first universities in the nation to have a digital dark room. At that time we were sill shooting with film but we had a scanner that would scan negatives. It cost $ 8,000 and we had copies of photo shop when it was still in beta—wasn’t even version one yet. We’ve been a leader in digital technology all the way through. Now, we don’t have a photojournalism major, so it was somewhat unique that we would be a leader in that way, but I knew it was coming, I knew that it was something that we needed to pay attention to. And for that matter, you can do more with your image when you’re working with it digitally than you could with it in the dark room, I felt. The quality has continually gotten better, the cameras have gotten better, and we don’t have to work with hazardous chemicals anymore in the dark room. We’re not pouring silver particles down the drain when we’re done using it…There were a lot of advantages to digital and I’ve been really pretty excited about it from the beginning.

Q: Do you think the department will eventually offer a photojournalism major?

Johnson: I don’t think that will…change as far as having a major. Now what has happened in the past few years is that as the internet has become more prevalent and then the Web came on and now people can easily get their information through Web sites, and also because newspapers aren’t limited anymore by only having a picture on a page … Now they can have video, they can have audio, they can have interactive graphics … Again, we’re a leader in that way. I’ve been teaching multimedia classes here for 15-16 years-- way before we even had an internet. So we want have a photojournalism major, but what has happened is the realization that all journalism majors need to be able to feel comfortable with a still camera, a video camera, and an audio recorder so that they can produce content for which ever medium they happen to be working for. If it’s a video they need to produce…an audio slide show, or if it’s just a story they’re doing …

Q: How have the changes in the newspaper industry affected photojournalists?

Johnson: (The changes) have affected photojournalism in a big way. When digital photography first came on it meant that our deadlines could be changed. So we could stay out shooting pictures longer. When the internet came on and all of a sudden we could shoot video there was really no reason for us not to shoot video. Some photographers got locked into: ‘well, I don’t do video, I’m a still photographer.’ And that’s true, but they needed to then train themselves. Because of that concept, though, many reporters now are seeing the value of being able to shoot video, shoot their on photos … So what we’re really seeing, I think, is journalist that still have their specialties but have a common area in the middle where they feel comfortable with—at least at a basic level—producing a video or an audio story. We’ll still have a photo journalist that specializes in those visual areas, still have the reporter that specializes in the written areas … But there’s this big center area that is actually growing bigger to encompass all those skills so that a journalist can really at least feel comfortable in any one of those areas, but still have a specialty that they concentrate on.

Q: While industry changes seem to have affected print reporters adversely, are there now more opportunities for photojournalists?

Johnson: I think there are because one of the frustrating things about being a photojournalist was always being limited to only being seen as the photographer and always not to be seen as the journalist. And what I loved in particular about this convergence as it’s called is that it has put the photojournalist in a more central role so that (he or she) can now be the journalist telling the story; photographing the situations, but also doing video and audio. So what I’ve love about it is that it really lets you tell a full story in a way that you’ve never been able to do before. And the funny thing is, even for many reporters, (is that) they embraced this technology well. So I think for some reporters they see it as a real growth area … because they can tell the whole story.

Q: What advice would you offer journalism students who are interested in pursuing a career in photojournalism?

Johnson: What I tell all my students is to not have your blinders on. Don’t see yourself as only a one medium journalist. Don’t say, ‘well I’m a print journalist’, or ‘I’m a TV journalist,’ or ‘I’m a photojournalist.’ You have to see yourself as a journalist first and then use what ever tools are appropriate for that story. So, the advice I give is to be very open to learning the tools of your trade, whether they’re intellectual tools, whether they’re physical tools, so that you’re prepared to cover a story in whatever way you think it will be best told.