MONDAY November 26, 2018
THE DAILY ILLINI The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
WWW.DAILYILLINI.COM
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Vol. 148 Issue 25
UI begins search for diversity chancellor BY ASHLEY FU STAFF WRITER
Public presentations by candidates are underway as the University begins the hiring process for vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion, a new position created at the University. The vice chancellor’s responsibilities w ill include conducting Title IX investigations, making accommodations for people with disabilities, developing the University’s affirmative action program and responding to reports of discrimination and harassment. James Anderson, dean of Education, and Danita Brown Young, vice chancellor for student affairs, are co-chairing the search committee. “I was a student on this campus over some 50 years ago, and I think about things that have cha nged,” A nderson said. “When I was a student here, there was not a single student from mainland China on this campus.” When Anderson went to graduate school, there were international students. “It never occurred to me to interact with them,” he said. “It’s just like ships passing in the night; they were here. I was here. We went in separate ways.” The candidates’ public presentations are ongoing. Students who cannot attend the events in person can watch livestreams of their presentations. The candidates for the position are giving presentations on the problems universities face in terms of diversity, such as unequal access to higher education and what their goals would be if selected for the position. Students can share their opinions of each candidate. They can submit their opinions online or email them directly to the members of the search committee. Many of the candidates’ speeches and articles are published online, and students can learn more about what candidates think about issues of diversity and inclusion, SEE HIRING | 3A
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Costume play: more than meets the eye PAGE 6A
Volleyball team tournament bound PAGE 1B
JEANNETTE YAN THE DAILY ILLINI
People work at the Gies College of Business atrium on Nov. 14. It is now easier for undergraduate students to enter the business minor program after recent changes.
Business minor opens to all students BY JULIE KANG STAFF WRITER
Changes have been made to the business minor, making it easier for undergraduate students at the University to enter the program. “The Gies College of Business has modified the minor to eliminate the application process and offer open enrollment of business minor courses to undergraduate non-business majors. Non-business students need not to pursue the business minor credential to enroll in business minor courses,” said the Gies College of Business in an email. Jeff Headtke, academic coordinator and student adviser in Business, said
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One significant change is that students pursuing the business minor are no longer required to take CS 105: Introduction to Computing, STAT 100: Statistics and MATH 234: Calculus for Business I or their equivalents as prerequisites; they are instead listed as recommended courses. However, students must still take prerequisite courses for specific classes such as FIN 221: Corporate Finance. The change simply gets rid of the prerequisites for applying to the minor as a whole. “Students must continue to meet the prerequisites required of the course for which they register,” the
email said. Another issue Headtke said made the business minor less attainable was the college’s lack of physical resources. For example, if a course for both business majors and minors had 50 seats available, most of the spots would go to business majors instead of minors. This made it difficult for students to register for the classes necessary for the minor. The Gies College of Business currently has a number of online graduate degree programs. Using this as a model, Brown has transformed the system of undergraduate courses as well to have more online classes
available for students. “Business minor students may enroll in online sections because, with online sections, we’re not confined by the physical dimensions of a classroom,” Headtke said. Further, non-Business major students must sign up for online sections instead of in-person ones if online sections are offered in the course. Although class capacity is not unlimited, it provides more opportunities for interested students. With the new changes, students will also not be required to submit an application. In the past, students SEE MINOR | 3A
Nick Offerman to Study examines retweet factors perform on campus Four factors that increase message dissemination on for Japan House Twitter BY EMILY DAO STAFF WRITER
BY HONGBIN JEONG STAFF WRITER
Famous for his role as Ron Swanson on the NBC series “Parks and Recreation,” Nick Offerman will be sharing laughs with the students at the University to fundraise for Japan House. Offerman’s relationship with Japan House began when Offerman was a student. He enrolled in a course offered by Shozo Sato, professor in FAA and founder of Japan House, where Offerman learned the arts of Kabuki, a Japanese-style performance. Sato remembers putting together a Kabuki-style performance of the Greek mythology story of Achilles in which Offerman acted as a soldier with two other friends. “Typical Nick Offerman sets the dialogue of theater,” Sato said. “You have a script and dialogue even in TV productions, but everybody becomes aware of his extraordinary talent to start putting contemporary senses into the dialogue to form a connection with the audience. That was his unique talent.” Sato said his relationship with Offerman developed further when Offerman joined Illini Kabuki.
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the changes were initiated because the minor had been fairly restrictive and difficult to achieve in the past. “Dean (Jeffrey) Brown wants our college to have a minor that would be available and accessible to any student who believes in the value of a business education,” Headtke said. “With the new changes, students will be able to earn the business minor with more access to the courses.” Headtke said the minor courses are now available not only to students who are intending to earn a business minor but also to any student on campus who is simply interested in management and marketing.
Through Illini Kabuki, Offerman learned about not only Kabuki, but also the Japanese tea ceremony, Japanese flower arrangements and the way of Zen at the Japan House. “After my Kabuki classes, or especially when rehearsal goes into the long hours, at the time when my students finish, they are hungry. Then they all come to my house, and then I could fix late-night suppers. Then we all eat and drink sake together and have a great fun,” Sato said. Beyond the common relationship between an instructor and a student, Sato and his students treat one another as family, calling it Kabuki family, he said. Sato appreciates his fellow Kabuki family member, Offerman, and his longtime support for the Japan House even after his graduation. “He shows his faith to his teacher, and then he sees himself as a student that honors his relationships and, therefore, he (is) trying to support whatever I do in this University,” Sato said. Sato said he believes Offerman was influenced by the Japanese way of treating others as you would treat SEE OFFERMAN | 3A
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With roughly 20 percent of Americans using Twitter, a growing amount of health professionals have turned to the social media platform to spread important messages about public health. A study led by Dolores Albarracin, professor in LAS, and Sophie Lohmann, graduate student in LAS, examined the four factors contributing to how many times a public health message got retweeted, if at all. The four factors that increase message dissemination, otherwise known as reasons an audience isn’t engaging with a tweet, on Twitter are employing fear-related words, having a higher word count, adding an image and not including a link in the tweet. The research team studied over 20,000 tweets about HIV posted within the range of 2010 to 2017, from 37 different HIV experts. “You can get messages from Twitter for research purposes and other purposes for free, so it’s quite easy to collect this data,” Lohmann said. “We already had this database with a lot of tweets about HIV, and we knew that this was a good opportunity to look at what in those tweets led to them being retweeted or not.” Benjamin White, co-
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• Employing fear-related words • Having a higher word count • Adding an image • Not including a link in the tweet SOURCE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
author of the study and graduate student in LAS, said 80 to 90 percent of the health departments Lohmann worked with wanted more data on how people were viewing their messages on social media. “This was something the community really wanted, and there wasn’t a lot of work done in this public domain on how messages are being spread, so that’s where our paper came from,” White said. According to the study, only 52 percent of original tweets sampled from experts’ accounts were disseminated further. In other words, although people following health experts on Twitter were seeing the message, if the message wasn’t retweeted,
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the information wouldn’t be spread to people who weren’t following that expert. “People who are related to health are more likely to be following public health accounts,” White said. “But those individuals will have family, friends and work associates who might not be in health, so dissemination through these tweets could get to audiences that may not be directly following a public health account.” Other factors that increased message dissemination included using more hashtags and if a celebrity tweeted a message that a health expert later retweeted. SEE TWITTER | 3A
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