Charlie Schlenker
GLT Assistant News Director Charlie Schlenker grew up in Rock Island, Illinois and graduated from Augustana College. He has spent more than three decades in radio and has won numerous state and national awards for journalism. He lives in Normal with his family.
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A major central Illinois cultural institution is losing its music director. Ken Lam has left his conducting post with the Symphony of Illinois. -
Pontiac residents and community leaders are worried. The Illinois Department of Corrections moved 171 medium-security inmates from the Pontiac Correctional Center to other prisons early this year, and the fear is the rest of the prison built in the 1870s will shut down, too.
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The announced closure of Lincoln College is an example of a challenging time in higher education, says the president of Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. Georgia Nugent used to work at the Council of Independent Colleges, a group of about 700 mostly smaller and liberal arts institutions that has tracked a half century of issues facing largely private liberal arts colleges.
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The mayor of Lincoln said Thursday the loss of Lincoln College is a "devastating blow" to the Logan County community. After 157 years, the college will close in May at the end of the school, while Lincoln Christian University is reducing its footprint by going mostly virtual, said Mayor Tracy Welch.
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State lawmakers are going public with concerns about the future of the prison in Pontiac and another in Vandalia in southern Illinois.
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Exelon has completed the spin off of its nuclear power plant division into a separate company. Constellation is publicly traded on the NASDAQ, and Exelon owners received one share of Constellation stock for every three shares of Exelon they have.
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The State of Illinois closed the year with about 333,000 people out of work and looking for a job. The state Department of Employment Security said Friday that's down by nearly a third from December 2020.
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Authorities said Thursday that the body found three weeks ago near Peru, Ill., was missing Illinois State University graduate student Jelani Day of Bloomington.
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Rivian has begun commercial production of its R1T electric pickup trucks at its production plant in Normal.
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Central Illinois Republican congressmen on Wednesday tried to shift the focus back to policy issues, after a voice vote to remove Rep. Liz Cheney as conference chair shielded them from taking a recorded roll call vote.
