Longtime educator and former State of Tennessee legislator Michael McDonald was awarded the department’s first Distinguished Alumni Award. McDonald (MA, ’71; PhD, ’76, speech communication) returned to campus to receive the award in this year’s departmental Illinois Tradition Awards ceremony. ...

The Simpsons has earned a reputation for being prophetic with its uncanny predictions of the future, but when you’ve written enough stories to produce more than 800 episodes over nearly four decades, something is bound to come true — or at least that’s what Emmy-winning comedy writer Bill Odenkirk...

 Nearly 69 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, yet weather warnings have long been issued almost exclusively in English. A new study documents how the National Weather Service is using artificial intelligence to change that, developing a...