A Rockford coffee shop continues to engage the community through monthly conversations.

Katie’s Cup facilitated these discussions even before the pandemic, but once COVID-19 surfaced, the shop started having them virtually.

Michael Thomas is the pastor of Zion. He said these monthly conversations help the faith community stay intentional when dealing with the public. 

"I know what you're thinking."

Ever have anyone do that to you? Splash right into the big puddle of your thoughts and you suddenly feel exposed.

Then you relax. Of course they can't read your mind. They can only guess.

Or they can gently ask, "Penny for your thoughts."

(Why is it always a penny? Our thoughts are valuable. Should be a million bucks for your thoughts.)

What's interesting is how we respond. I think we tend to dodge and weave.

We don't reveal what we are thinking. We shrug it off with, "Oh, nothing important."

Following the consolidated elections earlier this month, three new members will soon take seats on the DeKalb School Board.

On the campaign trail, voters often asked Ari Owens how she was going to leverage her connections with Northern Illinois University on the school board. She’s the assistant director at NIU’s Gender & Sexuality Resource Center.

Owens said she hopes she can help students in the district take advantage of the counseling and mentorship programs they offer.

In this episode of the STEM Read Podcast, host Gillian King-Cargile (@gkingcargile) gives you an encore excerpt from one of NIU’s Future Telling Webinars. These free events bring together great minds from the worlds of writing and STEM to explore bleeding-edge research and its impact on our society and our sci-fi. Our guests are author S.L. Huang and physicist Rebecca C. Thompson.