Professor Gottheil takes pride in the success of his students.  As a teacher, he is always interested in hearing what his students are up to after they have graduated.  If you have studied or researched under Professor Gottheil, he would like to hear from you!  Please click on the “Contact” page above to e-mail him and let him know how you have been doing!

Part of being young is the feeling of being indestructible. Josh Gottheil, who died last month after a two year battle against leukemia, probably understood that he wouldn’t live forever. But he never stopped working to bring the music he loved to the world around him. Rock and roll would carry on.

The punk movement – simultaneously cynical and realist and suicidal and idealistic – tried in a frenzy to wipe out the commercialism and mass media hallucination which blurred life’s realities, even unpleasant ones like death. There were bands named Dead Kennedy’s, Dead Milkmen, the prototype Dead Boys, and Gottheil’s local band, Dead Relatives.
When he was only a sophomore in high school, Gottheil became a drummer for the short-lived band, but he was no angry punk. He heard the message in the music and he set out, ambitious at a tender age, to deliver it to the community.
At 17, he already had promoted dozens of concerts for teens in community centers and church foundations. He was the least pushy music promoted I ever met, enticing me to see at least one political rock and folk concert through his complete, quiet reticence.

It was the music that spoke to and through him.

At one concert he arranged, I watched Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked get their introductions to the area. And I saw Josh, standing by the door at Mabel’s, anxious to see that the message and the feeling came across. His bands rarely disappointed.

Among the many other national bands he brought to Champaign’s clubs were Living Colour, They Might Be Giants, Soul Asylum, Throwing Muses, Jane’s Addiction, Dead Milkmen, Husker Du, Let’s Active, Timbuk 3, Ministry, and the Pixies.

“The scene wouldn’t be what it was today without Josh,” said Chris Chorpora, an area rock promoter of Trashcan Productions. “He didn’t look the part and he risked his own money. About four years ago he started teen nights when there was a lull in the scene. I don’t want to deify him, but he had an incredibly will poise, and the wherewithal to get contracts signed and do things he probably shouldn’t have been able to do. When I was 15, I couldn’t even read a contract.”

Even in the hard-core punk scene, Josh maintained a romantic side, often bringing roses for the girls in his favorite bands, notably Throwing Muses and the Pixies.

“He was always in love with every girl in a band,” said Katy Stack, one of the many people who considered Josh a best friend.

“He made friends with the Pixies and we flew to California to see them play in San Francisco,” Stack said. “They invited him on stage to sing.”

For a couple of summers, he worked at the desk at Crystal Lake Pool, announcing the adult swim and checking in bags. After high school, he took some college classes in philosophy and math at Parkland and at the UI, where his father, Fred, is a professor of economics. When he got sick, “it didn’t look like he needed to go to college,” according to Stack. “He was real busy doing all the music and he always had a lot of money. He was the only 16-year-old that had $2,000 in his checking account.”

Another friend, Shara Gingold, actually wrote a book about her crush on Josh. “He was two years older. The book is called ‘I Love You, Josh. Do You Even Know I Exist?’” said Gingold, who lives in Urbana. “I think that it was [the fact that] he was very understanding and caring. We’d meet to play tennis and then we’d just sit and hit the tennis ball against the wall and talk about everying.”

Last year, his health started to improve. He gained weight. He was working at Record Swap, surrounding himself in music during the day for the concerts he promoted at night. He had teamed with Chicago promoter Tony Polous, established a limited partnership called Concert One Productions, rented an office in Chicago’s Mercantile Building, and developed the financing for big arena shows.

“Josh was destined to be huge,” said Polous from the Chicago office. “He was the most effective, easy going person I ever met. It’s not hard to master being pushy and strong. Josh mastered being effective in an unassuming way.
“When he had to go back to the hospital, he never let on how sick he was. Every day I’d call him and he’d ask about what his manager was doing or that agent and he’d make decisions. We never really talked about his health. I never thought he was going to die. I think about him every day.”

Despite his illness, Josh moved to Chicago last fall to be immersed in the music business. “It was a chance, a break, an exciting thing to do. The world was his to conquer,” said Fred Gottheil from his UI office. “I remember going to visit and spend the night. The wind was howling, but he was so proud of the apartment. He was designing tickets on his computer, telling me [about] all the bands he had booked, his new ideas, bubbling with enthusiasm for the possibilities. The move was exhilarating for him. He called home quite frequently, but [Chicago] was where he had to be.”

Said former Champaign-Urbana DJ Charlie “The Quaker” Edwards, who shared the Chicago apartment, “He had a real vitality, youth, and infectiousness. His eyes would light up and he’d talk fast and you couldn’t help being excited about the band or record he’d discovered, too. Even though there was almost 20 years age difference between us, we’d listen to albums and talk about the band and share a mutual excitement.

“He was a really good, serious businessman. Much better than I could have been, always dealing with five shows at once. He really loved it, too. He just loved the music.”

“Definitely, there are people who are into [punk] because it is a fad,” Gottheil said three years ago, “But for the people who really believe in it, it won’t die for them.”

Josh Gottheil died April 4 at Barnes Hospital in St.Louis, three months short of his 20th birthday. There was a turn-away crowd for his funeral on April 7 at the Sinai Temple in Champaign. Because he did so much to bring a new attitude about music in this area, one of the bands he helped find national prominence, Throwing Muses, has donated its performance at a benefit concert this Sunday at Mabel’s with proceeds going to the Josh Gottheil Memorial Fund for Lymphoma Research.

When I took economics in college decades ago, it literally blew my mind! It changed the way I saw the world around me. I think that will happen to you.

The study of economics will open up a world of understanding about who you are and how you relate to your community, your country, and the world you live in. It will tell you much about your past, your present, and most importantly, your future. Economics deals with many real-world issues that you will confront the rest of your life, among them the curse of poverty amid plenty, the problems associated with monopoly and market regulation, the causes of wealth of nations and why some nations lag behind others, and why our economy repeatedly slips into periods of recession and unemployment. Economics, you will see, is a powerhouse of issues, ideas and policies.

I hope you take as much out of your first economics course as I did many years ago. Good luck and enjoy every step of the way.

-Fred

This semester I will be teaching the following two fascinating courses for Undergraduate Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this semester:

Economics 102: Microeconomic Principles

Economics 103: Macroeconomic Principles
Introduction to the theory of determination of total or aggregate income, employment, output, price levels, and the role of money in the economy. Primary emphasis on monetary and fiscal policy, inflation, unemployment, economic growth, and international economics.

Mondays and Wednesdays
8:00AM to 8:50AM
Foellinger Auditorium
Course Registration Number: 38997

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Please note that students who are interested in registering for either course must also register for a discussion/quiz section along with the lecture sections listed above.

For more information on registering for the courses listed above, please visit the following website:
http://courses.illinois.edu/cis/2009/fall/schedule/ECON/index.html

]]> http://fredgottheil.com/2009/08/18/interested-in-taking-my-class-this-fall/feed/ 0 http://fredgottheil.com/2009/08/18/joshs-fund/ http://fredgottheil.com/2009/08/18/joshs-fund/#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:00:54 +0000 admin http://fredgottheil.com/?p=83 THE JOSH GOTTHEIL MEMORIAL FUND FOR LYMPHOMA RESEARCH

Lymphoma is a blood-related cancer that attacks and destroys the body’s immune system.  Ranging from young children and elderly adults, the cancer does not discriminate between its victims.  The toll it takes is enormous.  However there has been many advances over the years in treating lymphoma with the use of Bone Marrow Transplants to replace destroyed marrow in the victims body.  Care for these Bone Marrow Transplant patients requires highly experienced and well trained nurses and doctors.

Having witnessed the quality care provided for patients of Bone Marrow Transplant first hand when his son was stricken with Cancer, Professor Gottheil set up this fund in which all contributions go towards establishing grants to aid nurses directly involved in patient care in bone marrow transplant units.  Specifically, grants help to further their education and training by accepting short-term leaves from their permanent positions to work in BMT units in other hospitals or by providing travel grants to those who wish to attend seminars and conferences specifically related to their training and education as bone marrow transplant nurses.   The exchange of research, technique, experience and training will serve to improve the quality of care given to BMT cancer patients.  The fund is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and all contributions are tax deductible.  The fund is named in memory of Josh Gottheil, a pioneering young music promoter, and son of Fred and Diane Gottheil, who fought valiantly against the cancer that took his life at the young age of 19.

]]> http://fredgottheil.com/2009/08/18/joshs-fund/feed/ 0 http://fredgottheil.com/2009/08/18/latest-textbook/ http://fredgottheil.com/2009/08/18/latest-textbook/#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:50:45 +0000 admin http://fredgottheil.com/?p=58

Bring the study of economics to life with Principles of Microeconomics, 6th edition.  Fred Gottheil speaks directly to student experience through a conversational writing style and narrative that uses stories, familiar examples, engaging scenarios, and relevant examples from literature emphasizing that economic principles can be found in all aspects of modern life.  The text focuses on the key questions and presents the basic concepts-developing economic analysis step-by-step.  The result is a more interactive and enjoyable learning experience when compared to the pedantic approaches often found in texts.

Each chapter in the sixth edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the most relevant data and also emerging and critical issues such as the issues of Iraq, terrorism, Katrina, China and more.  We invite you to see for yourself how Professor Gottheil’s approach will help to shorten the distance between students and the exciting study of economics.

Click the picture to discover more about the textbook on Amazon.com or find the textbook at the campus bookstores!

The University of Illinois revenue budget is derived from numerous sources including State of Illinois appropriations, student tuition and fees, sponsored research, gifts and endowments, auxiliary operations income (bookstore), and earnings from the UIC hospital and medical plans.  These sources can be visualized in this graph here.

The following is a Budget Update released to the University of Illinois by the university’s President, B. Joseph White.

A state budget bill that passed the Illinois House and Senate on May 31 included $697.9 million in general revenue funds for the University of Illinois 2010 fiscal year (July 1, 2009-June 30, 2010), and it restores the 2.5 percent budget rescission in fiscal 2009.

In addition, the U of I will receive $53.3 million in U.S. Department of Education funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal economic stimulus bill. The total fiscal 2010 state general revenue funding is $751.2 million. This appropriation reflects a
1.1 percent increase, $7.8 million, in the university’s base operating funds from the state over fiscal 2009 funding. These funds are contingent upon Gov. Patrick Quinn’s signature of approval.

The Legislature also has acted on a capital budget that allocates $249.5 million to the U of I for fiscal 2010.

* The Urbana campus would receive capital funds for the Lincoln Hall renovation, a post-harvest crop processing and research laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ petascale computing facility and an electrical and computer engineering building.
* The Chicago campus would receive capital funds to modernize its College of Dentistry building and to construct the National Rural Health Center at the College of Medicine at Rockford. The College of Medicine would also receive capital funds to construct a cancer-research center in Peoria. The College of Dentistry would receive funding to build a pediatric dental clinic.
* The Springfield campus would receive capital funds for a public- safety building.

The three campuses would receive repair and renovation funds to address deferred maintenance in the amounts of $18.6 million for the Urbana campus, $12.5 million for the Chicago campus and $1 million for the Springfield campus. Capital funding is contingent upon final legislative approval and Gov. Quinn’s signature of approval.

Other U of I funding in fiscal 2010 statewide legislative budget bills include allocations for Cooperative Extension, the Division of Specialized Care for Children and sickle-cell research. (Project Chance funding continues with support from the University’s general revenue
funds.)

We at the U of I appreciate the foresight of the state’s legislators and governor for recognizing even in these difficult economic times that higher education funding remains an important state priority and an investment in the future.

At its May meeting in Chicago, the Board of Trustees approved a preliminary 2010 fiscal-year university budget of $4.5 billion. Student room-and-board rates and fees were set at the trustees’ January meeting.

Tuition for first-time, 2009-10 incoming students will be set soon by the Board of Trustees. Tuition for returning undergraduate students will be the same as last year under the four-year tuition guarantee.