ANNOUNCEMENTS

(Notes provided by Allan Penwell)

Penn is selling raffle tickets at $20.00 each for the Champaign Park District Foundation.  The winner gets a new car from Worden-Martin, and the drawing is on August 16^th as part of the Taste of C-U.  There are only 3,500 tickets available so break out your wallets now!

PROGRAM

It was Pass the Gavel Day, and many thanks to Oktay for doing a great job.  There were many people to thank for a great year, and we want to recognize those who make things happen in our club during the year:

Our officers who meet each and every month to run our club business are:

Chuck Reifsteck
President

Tod Satterthwaite
President Elect

Ata Durukan
Secretary

Jack Kamerer
Treasurer

Rod Roberts
Director of Community Service

Cary Woolard
Director of Club Service

Dave Krchak
Director of Vocational Service

Alan Chalifoux
Director of International Service

Scott Paceley
Director of New Generation Services

Jeff Van Buren
Past President

Special thanks to Lou Simpson for keeping a record of our attendance.  Another special thanks to Lou and Phyliss who are doing a phenomenal job with our Decker Garden, Andrew for his work with our newsletter, Rod for maintaining our website, Benny for his hours of photographic work, and to those note takers who take (mostly) wonderful notes for our newsletter.

Many thanks go to Mary Hudson, Ata Durukan and Gary Olsen, and others who have been representing our club at the district level, and in and out of town.  Special thanks to all the past presidents and officers for their service.

Each Recognition Award is given to one of our own, who goes one step further, who have contributed significant amount of time and service to our club to help with others and the community. All of us know well that such outstanding services help building goodwill, provide humanitarian service, and encourage high ethical standards in all vocations.

Perfect Attendance

Every year at the C-U Sunrise Rotary Club Pass the Gavel Day Ceremony, our members are recognized for their commitment to Rotary with perfect attendance at our weekly breakfast meetings and participating in make-up meeting opportunities at other clubs or volunteer programs.  Eleven members had perfect attendance:  Reuben Chambers, Ata Durukan, Mary Hodson, Dave Krchak, Gary Olsen, Scott Paceley, Ed Perry, Chuck Reifsteck, Tod Satterthwaite, Lou Simpson, and Oktay Baran.

Alive, Alert Awake, and Enthusiastic

The Don Decker Alive, Alert, Awake, & Enthusiastic award goes to Cary Woolard for making bucket money fun.

Courage Award

Our Courage Award goes to Coletta Ackermann.

Distinguished Service

Every year, we honor outstanding persons who, through their dedicated efforts, set high standards and achieve important goals.  By honoring and recognizing outstanding individuals and highlighting the values of Rotary, this award may help inspire all of us to strive for worthy goals.  This year’s winner of this award is Mary Hodson.

Golden Pen

Ed Perry was scheduled to sing Nessum Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot, but deferred to make a special award.  The Golden Pen award is one of the club’s moderately prestigious awards.  The award of the Golden Pen goes to Allan Penwell for excellence in note taking (even though Andrew consistently corrected everything he wrote).

New Rotarian of the Year

This is one of our club’s most prestigious awards.  The New Rotarian of the Year Award is presented to the member who has exemplified the “Service Above Self” motto by exhibiting outstanding service and has demonstrated commitment to the goals and visions of our club.  This year the honor goes to Philip Holthaus as our 2013-2014 New Rotarian of the Year.

Rotarian of the Year

Every year our Awards Committee members select one Rotarian to receive the highest award we give to one of our own. The honor is presented to the Rotarian who best exemplifies the motto “Service Above Self,” both as a well-rounded Rotarian and as someone who goes a step further to help with our mission. This year our club’s highest honor, The Rotarian of the Year, goes to the recipient, Phyliss Mischo.

Past President

We thank Chuck for a great year and not breaking the gavel on ringing the bell.  He received a past president’s pin and a gavel.  At the same time we welcomed Tod Satterthwaite as the incoming president.

 
SPECIAL NOTE

Chuck and Tod initiate a new tradition: the Presidential Fist Bump.  Future Presidents will have to aim high in order to top this instant classic (pictured at left).

—

—

Upcoming Schedule

July 3rd – Susan Warsaw, September 11th volunteer from Champaign

July 10th – Lacey Rains-Lowe, City of Champaign Planner, will discuss the city’s Environmental Sustainability Plan

July 17th – Linda Tammen, UIUC College of Education, will discuss the upcoming Youth Literature Festival (Oct 16-18, 2014)

July 24th – TBD

July 31st – TBD

August 7th – TBD

August 14th – TBD

August 21st – TBD

Date TBD – Chuck Reifsteck will discuss the trials and tribulations of his life while in office, including all the controversial votes, vetoes, and videos

Announcements

(notes provided by the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut, Ed Perry)

Phyllis thanked everyone for the help with the Decker Gardens. She mentioned that every time she is out in the garden the people who pass by compliment on how beautiful it looks. One couple that stopped by loved it so much that they recently celebrated their wedding in the garden (see photo below).

Mary shared with the club her recent travels to New York and visits with several Rotarians and friends. She also shared her adventures with Benny Lapid who was doing the phtography for a Jewish wedding in New Your City. Check out Mary’s Facebook for details.

This week’s meeting will be the “peaceful transition” of the President of our club. We will thank Chuck for his presidential service and welcome Tod as our new club president.  We will all also breath a big sigh of relief.  This week’s meeting will also include awarding club members for their service.

Special Note

As mentioned above, Phyllis recently interacted with a couple who got married at Decker Garden.  They sent along this picture to share with the group.

Program

Carly McCrory and Craig Rost of the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation were our program guests last Thursday morning. Carly, who has been to our club before as a speaker with the Douglas County Rotoract Club, is now the communications director of the Champaign County EDC. She presented information on the EDC and its mission, goals and activities.   Carly also spoke about the EDC’s Innovation Celebration awards ceremony.

Starting 15 years ago, the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation acts through public-private partnerships to continually grow the local economy by supporting local business, driving expansion and attracting new business. The Champaign County EDC brings together community leaders to support Champaign County economic development.

EDC’s partners include: local and state government; education leaders including the University of Illinois, Parkland College, and K-12 schools; utilities; business leaders and other organizations that play an important part in the development and growth of our community.

Carly noted that our community continues to be nationally recognized as the place to be for emerging new businesses, our entrepreneurial spirit and a community to watch. EDC is very active in attracting new businesses and retaining existing ones. The next Innovation Celebration awards ceremony will take place March 3, 2015.  Carly named several award winning businesses and shared a short video showing one such award winning business, Electroninks. For much more information see EDC’s web site: www.champaigncountyedc.org.

—

—

Upcoming Schedule

June 26th – Pass the Gavel (Reign of Chuck the Terrible ends)

July 3rd – Susan Warsaw, September 11th volunteer from Champaign

July 10th – Lacey Rains-Lowe, City of Champaign Planner, will discuss the city’s Environmental Sustainability Plan

July 17th – Linda Tammen, UIUC College of Education, will discuss the Youth Literature Festiavl (Oct 16-18, 2014)

July 24th – TBD

July 31st – TBD

August 7th – TBD

August 14th – TBD

Announcements

(Notes provided by Allan Penwell)

Penn is selling raffle tickets at $20.00 each for the Champaign Park District Foundation.  The winner gets a new car from Worden-Martin, and the drawing is on August 16^th as part of the Taste of C-U.  There are only 3,500 tickets available so break out your wallets now!

Program

Our speaker on June 12^th was Daniel Bronson-Lowe, Ph.D., who is a senior infections preventionist at Carle Hospital.  Infection preventionists are experts on practical methods of preventing and controlling the spread of infectious diseases with patients, staff, and visitors.  Infection control practices include surveillance, investigation of cases and outbreaks, training of staff members, the development and enforcement of infection control policies, and evaluation of the effectiveness of infection control efforts.  Daniel also teaches statistics at UIUC.

It was the 1840’s when a doctor first realized that there were significantly fewer infections in delivering babies by mid-wives than from surgeons.  The reason was that surgeons often came right from surgery to the delivery room whereas the mid-wives did not and were clean.  After surgeons began washing their hands and wearing clean clothes, then infections dropped dramatically.  This is probably the reason your mom told you to wash your hands before supper and sing two “Happy Birthdays” before finishing.

Hospital rooms have many sources of infections so the rooms have to be cleaned thoroughly between patients.  Other means of prevention are patient isolation, wearing of face masks, and precaution signs.  Daniel also recommended that people pay attention to signs as they go into a room for the safety of the patient as well as the visitors.  Lastly, using an anti-biotic hand wash while with a patient is an important method of reducing hospital infections.

Infections such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) can be a nightmare for hospitals as staph bacteria become resistant to treatment (it’s similar to the way Donna is resistant to the heckling she receives during her movie reviews).  Infection preventionists study where the MRSA virus occurs.  For example MRSA was found in 3% of Chicago ISU’s, and in some long-term care units, there was a 30% occurrence.  All are problems for the preventionists to deal with.

Another nightmare bacteria is the C. difficile bacteria which can be a life-threatening inflammation in the colon.  It tends to occur in older patients but can also affect the young.  One problem with this infection is that anti-biotic hand lotion doesn’t seem to help.

A third bacteria is CRE, which stands for carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae.  This is a family of germs that are difficult to treat because they have high levels of resistance to antibiotics. It especially is prevalent in urinary and blood infections.

Along with general cleanliness, there are some simple measures you can take before surgery to reduce infection:  bathing, wearing clean clothing, don’t use lotions, and use special soaps.  And remember—wash those hands after you use the bathroom.

—

—

Upcoming Schedule

June 19th – Carly McRory, Communications Director, Champaign County Economic Development Corporation

June 26th – Pass the Gavel (Reign of Chuck the Terrible ends)

July 3rd – Susan Warsaw, September 11th volunteer from Champaign

July 10th – Lacey Rains-Lowe, City of Champaign Planner, will discuss the city’s Environmental Sustainability Plan

July 17th – TBD

July 24th – TBD

July 31st – TBD

August 7th – TBD

ANNOUNCEMENTS
(notes provided by the unconventional and unorthodox Paul Conforti)

Jennifer Shelby announced that the Bloomington-Normal Sunrise Rotary was sponsoring a spectacular one-of-a-kind tour of Bloomington-Normal for the 9 Rotary Clubs (including us) outside their community. Saturday June 14th 9:30 – Noon, $30. Meet at the law office of Helen Olgar in downtown Bloomington (108 W Monroe Street).

Cary Woolard mentioned the great social the club had at Triptych Brewing on Wednesday night.

PROGRAM

Zack Grant was our speaker. Zack is the director of the Sustainable Student Farm at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The farm serves as a production farm to supply our residence halls with locally grown, low-input sustainable food. In addition, the farm acts as a living laboratory to connect students, community members, and the state at large with regional, small-scale food systems. We plan to broaden our focus to include the research, education, and outreach missions of the university.

Currently, the farm operates between 45-48 weeks per year, occupying 6 acres for outdoor field production and nearly 10,000 square feet of year round high tunnel production. In addition to selling the majority of our produce to the residence halls, we also market our produce directly to consumers on the quad. This is on Anniversary Plaza (just south of the Illini Union) from May-November, Thursdays, 11am-5pm. Every attempt is made to integrate educational aspects into all activities on the farm.

The Sustainable Student Farm was created through a grant from the Student Sustainability Committee and is made possible by the continued support of the University of Illinois Dining Services, the Department of Crop Sciences, and the Student Sustainability Committee.

Every Thursday, outside the Illinois Union the Sustainable Student Farm has a sale cart from 11-3:30. Please visit the farm anytime for more information or a tour. thefarm.illinois.edu/

—

—

Upcoming Schedule

June 12th – Daniel Bronson Lowe, PhD, Senior Infection Specialist at Carle (meeting in the Skyway)

June 19th – Carly McRory, Communications Director, Champaign County Economic Development Corporation

June 26th – Pass the Gavel (Reign of Chuck the Terrible ends)

July 3rd – Susan Warsaw, September 11th volunteer from Champaign

July 10th – Lacey Rains-Lowe, City of Champaign Planner, will discuss the city’s Environmental Sustainability Plan

July 17th – TBD

July 24th – TBD

July 31st – TBD