The University of Northern Iowa’s student-produced newspaper since 1892
Northern Iowan
Friday, August 27, 2010 Volume 107, Issue 1 Cedar Falls, Iowa northern-iowan.org
Steve Forbes visits UNI
Panthers catch attention at the ESPY Awards Page 23
Page 8
UNI receives its largest donation in history JOHN ANDERSON Staff Writer
The University of Northern Iowa received
its largest gift ever on Thursday when Des Moines businessman Richard O. Jacobson pledged to donate $11 million to create the Richard O. Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy, pending Iowa Board of Regents approval. The gift is the largest ever given by the Richard O. Jacobson Foundation. The focus of the Richard O. Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy is to provide state-of-the-art literacy education to the 20 percent of Iowa students who struggle with learning how to read. The program is expected to impact 10,800 students in the state of Iowa within five to seven years. “Learning to read is the most important aspect of
education and the foundation for all subsequent learning,” Jacobson said. “UNI has long been known for excellence in preparing teachers and especially teachers in reading. I am pleased to partner with UNI to impact the children of Iowa.” According to Dwight Watson, dean of the UNI College of Education, the program will address the achievement gap between white students and students of color as well as the learning gap between students of higher and lower socioeconomic backgrounds. “Because these are two kind of pervasive concerns in Pre-K to 12 education, we need to come up with some sort of solution,” Watson said. “And we feel this literacy program – the way it’s going to be laid out, the way it’s going to be targeting those particular students – it will answer
Photo courtesy of Sam Castro/University of Northern Iowa
Richard O. Jacobson makes an $11 million pledge to UNI. If approved by Iowa Board of Regents, the money will be used to create the Richard O. Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy
that sort of pervasive concern about gap issues.” The first $1 million of the gift will be used to provide access to technology that is critical to the program as well as special training for the university’s literacy instructors in this specific teaching method, which has proven to be successful in different parts of the country, UNI President Benjamin Allen said. A $10 million endowment will support the expansion of the program as UNI education students will become trained in its methods, and literacy coaches trained at UNI will travel to Iowa schools to train school teachers. According to Allen, the gift reaffirms the university’s leadership role in the field of education and will help the university recruit better faculty in addition to providing better opporSee JACOBSON, page 6
Department of Residence Encourages In-Room Recycling RACHAEL ZIDON Staff Writer
For University of Northern Iowa students who grew up hearing “reduce, reuse, recycle,” staying green at college has become a bit easier. This fall, for the first time, all nine of UNI’s residence halls, as well as the ROTH apartment complex, will have in-room recycling. Over the summer, the Department of Residence purchased 2,800 recycling bins and distributed them to dorm rooms and ROTH apartments. Additionally, each residence hall and ROTH now have a designated recycling room where students can take recycled plastics, tin, glass, cardboard and paper. City Carton, an Iowa City based company, will pick up the materials in each of the recycling rooms every Wednesday, adding a Friday pickup if necessary. This year’s new recycling program was inspired
by the Rider Recycling Revolution (RRR), a pilot program implemented last year by the UNI Recycling and Reuse Technology Transfer Center (RRTTC). For the RRR, Rider Hall residents were given recycling bins for their rooms and were educated about the benefits of recycling. The RRTTC conducted weekly measurements of the recycling, and found that recycling increased from an average of less than 40 pounds per week before the program to an average of 121 pounds of recycling per week. Eric O’Brien, UNI sustainability coordinator, said the results of the RRR made it possible to convince the DOR that an inroom recycling program in all the residence halls could be effective, “Being able to show (administrators) real data of the growth we saw (in Rider) was tremendous. We wouldn’t have been able to get it off the ground See RECYCLING, page 6
JULIE WHEELER/Northern Iowan
Nicole Combs, a sophomore social science education major, seperates her recycling into the bins provided in the residence halls.