For a location map and website link details, please see the NIU PASCAL member entry.

Northern Illinois University (NIU) is one of the premier regional public universities in the United States.

Chartered in 1895, Northern Illinois University (www.niu.edu) is a comprehensive teaching and research institution with a diverse and international student body of more than 25,000. The university is organized into seven degree-granting colleges (with 40 departments), an administration and outreach division, and a central business affairs division.

The university’s 1,200 faculty members offer 63 undergraduate majors and 79 graduate programs, including 11 Ph.D. programs, doctoral degrees in education, and the Juris Doctorate.

The main campus is located on 756 acres in DeKalb, Illinois 65 miles west of downtown Chicago. NIU also offers dozens of undergraduate and graduate level courses at its three regional outreach centers in Hoffman Estates, Naperville, and Rockford, and through partnerships with Elgin, Waubonsee, and Rock Valley community colleges. NIU is a member of the NCAA Division 1 (1-A in American football) and the NIU Huskies compete in the Mid-American Conference.

NIU’s PASCAL Host

The host for PASCAL at NIU is the Center for Governmental Studies (www.niucgs.org). The Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) is a public service, applied research, and public policy development unit within NIU’s Division of Administration and Outreach. The Center functions as a “think and do” tank, applying the intellectual resources of the university to address public issues facing communities, the region, the state, and the nation.

Founded in 1969, CGS has an interdisciplinary, full-time staff of more than 30 professionals with doctoral and masters degrees in fields such as public administration, public policy, history, business, economic development, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. The Center assembles interdisciplinary teams to work directly with community leaders in governmental and non-governmental organizations.

• Policy analyses and program development in specialized fields such as:

       *  regional and local economic development,
       *  community development,
       *  municipal growth management and land use planning
       *  economic & fiscal impact analysis and sustainability,
       *  workforce education and training,
       *  human service planning and needs assessments,
       *  program design and evaluation, and
       *  performance reviews.

• Development of innovative public initiatives and public-private programs that cut across the boundaries of these specialized fields.
• Customized management consulting services for governmental and non-governmental organizations.
• Development of management information systems, with particular expertise in developing user-friendly applications that interface with very large scale administrative data systems.
• Management services for associations of professionals who conduct the public’s business in both governmental and non-governmental organizations.
• Applied research reports that provide information to decision-makers and the public about important issues facing the region, the state and the nation.
• Professional development programs and executive education services designed to bolster the skills of decision-makers and to expand public participation in local, regional, statewide and national policy making.

The Center’s professional staff is dedicated to advancing the capabilities of government at all levels and helping build the civic capacity of non-governmental organizations.

The Role of the Host

The main roles of PASCAL’s node at NIU are to recruit and support a network of subscribing members and associates in North and South America and to manage a number of PASCAL’s research and development projects, in collaboration with PASCAL’s central support staff and its other two nodes at the University of Glasgow and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. It also develops new links with other organizations in North and South America that are relevant to PASCAL’s work at local, national, and international levels.

The Benefits of PASCAL Membership

Each year NIU's Center for Governmental Studies works with 40-60 external partners and clients to help decision-makers collect and evaluate information that is relevant to important public decisions.  They include units of government (local, state, and Federal), non-governmental organizations, and public-private partnerships.  About 80% are located in Illinois or nearby in Wisconsin, Iowa and/or Indiana.  The remainder are comprised of U.S. Federal government agencies and/or state & local governmental units elsewhere in the U.S.

This diverse portfolio of projects gives us extensive first-hand learning about the growing need to increase our understanding, and our clients' understanding, of the regional and global engines of change that are reshaping the social and economic factors that influence public decisions at all levels.  Our engagement with the PASCAL Observatory, therefore, is a natural outgrowth of NIU's deep committment to community and regional outreach and engagement. We all need global networks of learning in order to make good decisions about regional and local policies. PASCAL's committments to the principles of place management, social capital, and lifelong learning create a unique set global networks, partnership opportunities, learning opportunities, and individual relationships that help connect local and regional decision makers to their colleagues around the world.

NIU's ties to PASCAL have already influenced the following activities:

• Aligning the priorities of public higher education with regional workforce needs.  The Pascal Universities and Regional Engagement (PURE) project has been used as a valuable mechanism to bring together the Presidents of NIU and nine regional two-year community colleges to pursue collaborative strategic planning related to expanding access to underserved groups and aligning curriculum with regional workforce needs.
• Stimulating the creation of high wage jobs through technology commercialization.  By working with our PASCAL colleagues at RMIT, we are organizing a multi-year program of...??

Contacts at PASCAL's NIU Host

PASCAL Board Member: Anne Kaplan, Ph.D. Vice President, Administration and Outreach, Northern Illinois University.

PASCAL Co-Director: Bob Gleeson, Ph.D. Director, Center for Governmental Studies, Northern Illinois University.