July 30, 2009

Durbin: Senate Committee Approves $5.2 Million in Health and Education Projects for Illinois

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that the Senate Appropriations Committee, of which he is a member, has approved $5.2 million in federal funding for health and education projects in Illinois.

 

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 appropriations bill for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education and Related Agencies Appropriations includes funding for the following projects:

 

• Alivio Medical Center, Cicero: $500,000 in funding for a new facility at Alivio Medical Center. The new facility will allow Alivio to provide support services, a pharmacy, and a dental clinic to uninsured and underinsured populations.

 

• Benedictine University, Lisle: $150,000 in funding to design, create, and implement open-source educational materials for use in introductory college courses at no cost to students.

 

An open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online allowing users to read online, download, or print the book at no cost. Faculty will design and create an open textbook for an introductory course. Upon completion the book will be licensed under an open license, posted online, and made available to students.

 

• Blackburn College, Carlinville: $225,000 in funding for the construction of an addition to the college’s science facility and for the outfitting of that facility with instruments and technology.

 

• Brehm Preparatory School, Carbondale: $250,000 in funding to support the development of a database that will allow educators of learning disabled children to access and exchange information about practices and teaching methods. Brehm, a boarding school for students with complex learning disabilities, seeks to create a national database for learning disabilities education and research.

 

• Chicago Public Schools, Chicago: $300,000 in funding to provide professional development to upper elementary and middle school science teachers in the Chicago Public School system. This partnership between the Chicago Public Schools and the Museum of Science and Industry will support workshops to improve teachers' knowledge of science concepts, enhance classroom practice through hands-on science instruction, and incorporate science into classroom activities.

 

• Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago: $500,000 in funding for continued the construction of the hospital's Comprehensive Cardiac Unit, which, when completed, will be one of the nation's few programs specifically designed and equipped to diagnosed and treat a broad range of complex heart conditions from infancy through young adulthood.

 

• Easter Seals, Chicago: $250,000 in funding for the construction of Easter Seals’ new Therapeutic School and Center for Autism Research. This facility is the only one of its kind to combine on a single campus educational, research, training, early intervention, school-to-work transition and independent living capabilities. Nowhere else in the country is this continuum of services for children with autism so well integrated at a single campus facility.

 

• Erie Neighborhood House, Chicago: $250,000 in funding for the facility and implementation of therapeutic support services within the Sunshine Initiative, an early-childhood program that addresses the needs of low-income children with emotional or behavioral difficulties.

 

• Golden Apple Foundation, Statewide: $350,000 in funding to support a partnership between the Golden Apple Foundation and the Illinois Math and Science Academy to recruit and train math and science teachers. Participants in the program will agree to teach for five years in a needy Illinois school.

 

• Instituto del Progresso Latino, Chicago: $375,000 in funding to support an expansion of Carreras en Salud, a program established earlier this decade at the Instituto del Progresso Latino to help bridge limited-English speaking individuals into Certified Nursing Assistant and Licensed Practical Nursing positions. Instituto del Progreso Latino was established to meet the needs of Latino immigrants to learn English, find employment, accustom their children to the educational systems, and adjust to life in the United States.

 

• Lincoln Land Community College, Springfield: $250,000 in funding for the HIRE Education pre-apprenticeship program at Lincoln Land Community College, designed to boost minority participation into local construction-related unions. The funding will also expand current programming into a comprehensive academy, purchase equipment and materials, and support training costs.

 

• Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago: $200,000 in funding for the development of a comprehensive diabetic program aimed at minority populations who are disproportionately affected by the disease. Funding also includes the construction of three ophthalmology facilities with medical and eye equipment.

 

• Resurrection Health Care, Chicago: $400,000 in funding to replace inadequate and outdated analog mammography imaging equipment at the St. Mary's and Elizabeth Medical Center (SMEMC), a health care facility in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Updated imaging equipment will help SMEMC patients, many of them underserved, in their battle against breast cancer. SMEMC is part of Resurrection Health Care, a non-profit organization consisting of hospitals, nursing homes, retirement communities, a surgery center, behavioral health services, medical office facilities, community clinics, a home health company and hospice services.

 

• Rockford College, Rockford: $300,000 in funding for technology upgrades, including the addition of fiber infrastructure, the modernization of library resources and the further equipment of science laboratories and classrooms.

 

• Saint Xavier University, Chicago: $250,000 in funding for the renovation of an outdated, undersized library on the campus of Saint Xavier. The library, built in 1952 and designed to serve only a few hundred students, today serves more than 5,300 undergraduate and graduate students.

 

• Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville: $500,000 in funding to establish a regional nursing program at SIU's Carbondale campus. With the funds SIU will hire a regional director and secretarial help, implement a marketing and recruitment plan, and purchase sophisticated patient simulators for the nursing program's foundations course. Currently, the only baccalaureate in nursing program south of Bloomington, Illinois is at SIU's Edwardsville campus.

 

• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: $150,000 in funding to design, create, and implement open-source educational materials for use in introductory college courses at no cost to students. An open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online allowing users to read online, download, or print the book at no cost. Faculty will design and create an open textbook for an introductory course. Upon completion the book will be licensed under an open license, posted online, and made available to students.