Tacoria Humphrey was recently named a Dike Eddleman Athlete of the Year, presented annually to the top Fighting Illini male and female athlete
Big Ten long jump champ Tacoria Humphrey has plans beyond her track and field competitions. (Photo courtesy of Fighting Illini)
She races down the rubberized runway, determination pumping through her arms, energy coursing across her strides and focus blazing in her eyes. With a mighty leap, she seems to sail through the air. Sand mushrooms under her shoes as she lands in the pit, the crowd roaring. That’s Tacoria Humphrey—champion of the 2025 Big Ten Long Jump.
Humphrey started track in middle school at Raymond Park Middle School on Indianapolis’ east side, where she broke two records in the high jump and 200 meter. Now, she’s well-decorated: she earned All-American honors in both indoor and outdoor seasons after winning back-to-back Big Ten long jump titles, placed fourth at the NCAA outdoor championships, recorded the third-longest indoor jump in NCAA history as national runner-up and earned a spot on The Bowerman Watch List. Humphrey said her success came from confidence.
“I feel like track is a mental sport,” Humphrey said. “If you believe you can do something, you’re most likely going to be able to do it, whereas if you’re scared or thinking about other people, that’s going to take over your mind and you’re not going to do well.”
Humphrey also attributed her many accomplishments to her training and her coach, Petros Kyprianou, the current director of Track & Field and Cross Country at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“He has inspired me the most because he really believes in me, and when somebody just believes in you so much, you start to believe in yourself,” Humphrey said. “He’s just so thrilled to coach me, and he sees that I have a bright future and it just makes me want to accomplish everything to the highest level I can.”
She recalled a moment at the 2025 regionals for the NCAA Outdoor Championships. Competitors only had three jumps, and Humphrey’s weren’t up to the number she needed to qualify for nationals.
“After my second jump, he talked with me,” Humphrey said. “He was giving me that pep talk, like, ‘You got this. This is what you’ve been training for,’ and helping me calm down. I literally went from 15th place to fourth, and I qualified.”
Kyprianou was the one who encouraged Humphrey to switch her event from high jump to long jump her sophomore year of college.
“I definitely was like, ‘This is weird,’ but I love trying new things,” Humphrey said. “I never expected to change events and to do so good in that event, but I 100% don’t regret it.”
“I always love helping people. I’m a people person.
Tacoria Humphrey
Community Health major and Dike Eddleman Athlete of the Year
Outside of her national achievements, Humphrey was recently named a Dike Eddleman Athlete of the Year, presented annually to the top Fighting Illini male and female athlete. The University of Illinois Athlete of the Year was first awarded in 1940, and was named in honor of the 11-time UI letterman and Olympian Dwight “Dike” Eddleman in 1993, who is generally considered the greatest athlete in the history of Illinois Athletics.
Caitlin Clarke, a health and kinesiology teaching assistant professor and chair of the Academic Progress and Eligibility Committee, said that sport performance is typically not the only factor that goes into choosing the recipient of the Dike Eddleman award.
“This is part of the culture of Illinois Athletics—they’re not going to go for someone who’s just really good at their sport and doesn’t care about academics at all,” Clarke said. “We get some really phenomenal students who are both really good at their sport and also really good at their major.”
At Illinois, Humphrey is a community health major, with a concentration in health education and health planning and promotion.
“I always love helping people,” Humphrey said. “I’m a people person.”
This summer, she’s participating in the Health and Kinesiology 471 internship program and working with Wellness4Every1, an organization dedicated to ensuring equitable access to high-quality arts and wellness programs for students in diverse communities. Clarke, additionally a lead faculty for the community health internship program, said Humphrey is doing a great job stepping into the professional world.
“She’s future-thinking, because she knows that she wants to compete professionally for a while, but she isn’t just checking off a box with this internship,” Clarke said. “This experience really pushes students to learn how to communicate professionally, which is an important skill anywhere and can be difficult to navigate.”
Clarke said it’s important for all student athletes to also excel outside of their sport.
“Most of our student athletes are going to go on to careers that are not always directly related to sports, so you have to have a plan,” Clarke said. “You don’t want that plan to be, ‘Well, I just kind of did okay in my major.’ You want to be the rock star that gets into a successful career so that you can enjoy your life and do more to help other people around you.”
Currently, Humphrey is preparing to become a pro athlete. Her first pro meet was the USA Track and Field Championships at the end of July.
“I’ll be a little nervous, but not really, because I’ve been jumping big marks that are close to what pros jump,” Humphrey said. “I’m eager to have better competition, and that will definitely push me.”
For her, success means a gold medal, and with her trademark confidence, it’s not a matter of if—but when.
Today’s Department of Health and Kinesiology once hosted the nation’s foremost researchers of sport psychology. Nearly 50 years on, these pioneers reunited at Huff Hall for a weekend on campus.
When Rainer Martens arrived at the University of Illinois in the summer of 1966, he stepped out of his blue Mustang and bounded up the steps of George Huff Hall, to see the university’s Sport Psychology Laboratory with his own eyes.
What he found on the third floor of Huff initially disappointed him: old equipment piled up in the corner of a room with just enough space to seat a class. “We thought we’d come to the wrong place,” Martens said.
Turns out, he wasn’t in the wrong place—maybe just a little early.
What followed was the explosive growth of sport psychology research at Illinois. With help from the university’s world-class department of psychology, a group of likeminded doctoral students—including Martens, Glyn Roberts and the late Dan Landers—began building a formal sport psychology graduate program at Illinois, to study the mental aspects of athletic success, motivation and performance.
Dozens of doctoral students went on to matriculate in the program and bring their discoveries to institutions across the globe. By the late 1970s, Illinois had become the torchbearer for modern-day sport psychology in the U.S., with a vibrant group of researchers at the helm.
Five decades later, a group of those same students and faculty returned to campus to catch up with their former colleagues, and take a tour of their old academic home. The guest list left an indelible mark on the field of sport psychology as it stands today.
Even as Illinois’ own sport psychology program has faded, the legacy of its achievements and discoveries endure in the modern day College of Applied Health Sciences. Faculty at AHS, particularly in Health and Kinesiology, continue to study the psychological effects of exercise and physical activity at large, building on more than 100 years of tradition.
“All these former students, they’ve all gone on to distinguished careers. They’ve gone on to become presidents of national sport psychology organizations, and spoken all over the world,” Martens said. “This gathering, it’s a once in a lifetime thing.”
To cap off their walk down memory lane, these legends of sport psychology got to share lunch with current-day faculty and doctoral students in the Department of Health and Kinesiology.
“That was very humbling, we never expected anybody to turn out,” said Glyn Roberts, who worked as a professor of sport psychology at Illinois until 1998. “It was very rewarding that they would do that for us.”
Guests of Honor
Rainer Martens, a professor of kinesiology at Illinois until 1984, and co-founder of Human Kinetics, leading publisher of books and journals on physical activity
Julie Martens, PhD in sport psychology and the first employee of Human Kinetics, who retired as executive vice president in 2009
Glyn Roberts, professor emeritus at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and former professor of sport psychology at Illinois
Tara Scanlan, professor emerita of psychology at UCLA, and her husband Larry Scanlan
Diane Gill, kinesiology professor emerita at UNC Greensboro
Dan Gould and Marty Ewing, professors emeriti at Michigan State. Both earned a Ph.D. at Illinois, and Gould taught here until 1991
Damon Burton, professor of sport psychology at the University of Idaho
Robin Vealey, professor of kinesiology and health at the University of Miami, Ohio
Linda “Bump” Harrison, a publisher who got her PhD in the program in 1987
Marc Lochbaum, professor of kinesiology at Texas Tech who went to Illinois for undergrad and was mentored by several sport psychology greats
Absent were Joan Duda, professor of sport and exercise psychology at University of Birmingham, and Dan Landers, a professor of sport and exercise psychology and co-founder of the Journal of Sport Psychology, who passed away in 2023
‘We didn’t realize it, but we were pioneers’
Though Illinois experienced fertile growth of sport psychology in the 1970s, the seeds were planted by Coleman Griffith, known as the “father of sport psychology” for his pioneering work into the mental aspects of athletic performance.
Griffith founded and ran Illinois’ Athletic Research Laboratory until 1932, where he studied the links between personality and physiology on athletic success. He wrote two books—“Psychology of Coaching” and “Psychology and Athletics”— but left no proteges for his research. Griffith later became provost of the university.
Physical fitness pioneer Thomas “TK” Cureton started his Physical Fitness Research Laboratory in 1944, occasionally collaborating with psychologist Raymond B. Cattell. The two of them examined the relationship between physical activity on personality and several of Cureton’s graduate students examined the anxiety-reducing effects of exercise. In 1951, Professor Alfred “Fritz” Hubbard revived Griffith’s research line with a new Sport Psychology Laboratory, located in a third floor office of Huff Hall, then known as Huff Gymnasium.
Hubbard specialized in motor learning, but saw latent potential in the sport psychology discipline. After a decade of research and recruitment, Hubbard had a prediction: the number of graduate students interested in sport psychology would double or triple by the end of the 1970s. His forecast of growth came true.
Still, those who joined the Illinois sport psychology program in the 1960s found their way to the field before an academic path formally existed. Some started out in coaching or physical education, and were searching for applied knowledge to use in the field.
For Rainer, his experience with intense anxiety before youth wrestling matches inspired him to understand competitive nerves and how to quell them.
After getting degrees from the then-named Department of Physical Education, Landers, Martens and Roberts all eventually joined the Children’s Research Center, a grant-funded research vehicle seeking to explain children’s behavior from multiple academic disciplines.
The recent grads worked in the center’s Motor Performance and Play Research Laboratory, where they used social psychology principles to study children’s play, and explore how their stress levels, personalities and more influenced their motor learning.
The grant-funded lab supercharged their progress.
“A lot of the stuff we did initially was stress related. How do you reduce stress? That was Rainer’s research—what he called competitive anxiety,” said Roberts, who began working at the Children’s Research Center in 1973. “Mine was motivation: how do you make people do what they ought to be doing?”
Full-time research positions to study the field were unusual, and freeing. From 1968 to 1975, Martens stayed on with the Children’s Research Center. Lifted by the university’s resources, namely its enormous library, computing power and collaborators in psychology, the lab produced leading research in sport psychology before peer institutions had caught on to the emerging discipline.
Julie Martens (center left) and Tara Scanlan (second from right) share a laugh in Huff Hall. Both of them obtained their doctoral degrees in sport psychology from the University of Illinois.
Jean Driscoll (center) chats with Dan Gould and Damon Burton, both graduates of the sport psychology program at Illinois who went on to successful careers in the field.
Bill Goodman (center) retired associate dean for administration at the College of AHS, tours former Illinois sport psychology students and faculty around Huff Gym.
Chris Tamas, the current coach of the Illinois volleyball squad, speaks to former sport psychology students and faculty in Huff Gym.
Jean Driscoll shows off the wall of Distinguished Alumni Award winners from the College of Applied Health Sciences.
Former Illinois sport psychology students and faculty sit in one of the new Huff Hall classrooms. The space used to be part of the Huff Gym indoor pool.
A reunion of sport psychology faculty and students at Illinois brought the guests inside and outside Huff Hall, where much of the early research into their field took place.
Former Illinois sport psychology faculty and students walk up the ramp of the Khan Annex, an addition to Huff Hall that opened in 2011.
Glyn Roberts (center) points to the wall of deans of the College of Applied Health Sciences.
Don Hardin (right), adjunct instructor at AHS and former women's volleyball head coach, talks about the history of Huff Hall with former sport psychology students and faculty.
The sport psychology tour stops by the Freer Hall gym, used for research purposes.
Former sport psychology students and faculty tour the basement labs of Freer Hall.
The enthusiasm of Illinois sport psychologists was clearly infectious. After a couple years teaching physical education, Diane Gill attended a conference at Brockport, New York, where she got to hear both Dan Landers and Rainer Martens speak about their research at Illinois. By her first semester in Urbana-Champaign, Gill was in Martens’ class “Social Psychology and Physical Activity,” where his first doctoral student, Tara Scanlan, was teaching assistant.
“Taking that course, immediately I thought, ‘this is the area I’d like to be in,’” Gill said.
She soon worked with the pair on their competitive anxiety research, and later studied competitiveness and athletes’ “achievement orientation,” or drive to improve and accomplish goals within their sport, along with a host of other topics in the field.
“Illinois was the place to be if you wanted to be in sport psychology,” she said.
Gill is newly retired, having spent more than 30 years as a professor of kinesiology at University of North Carolina, Greensboro after obtaining her master’s and Ph.D. at Illinois.
(“My doctoral students are retiring,” said Martens, now 82. “That makes me really old.”)
Physical activity—whether it’s high-level athletics or recess play—is all one field.
Diane Gill
Professor Emerita of Kinesiology, UNC Greensboro
Julie Martens, née Simon, was accepted into the program in 1973, coming to Illinois specifically to study with Rainer. (They would get married nearly 20 years later).
“[Tara Scanlan and Diane] had an office out at the Children’s Research Center right next to Rainer’s. As I got to know them, we used to be out there every evening. They said, “Come on out, you can study at night with us,’” Julie said. “That’s how I got involved with meeting the other students, then I got an assistantship and got where I wanted to be.”
The scientists would run experiments, hop over to the nearby cafeteria in the Adler Mental Health building for lunch and sketch out ideas for new research designs on napkins. Those early days were “invigorating,” Martens said.
By 1980, U. of I. was the premier place of study for sport psychology, alongside Penn State. They had turned the topic into a formal graduate program, and the field was continuing to blossom. In 1979, Dan Landers and Rainer co-founded the Journal of Sport Psychology, where Landers was the inaugural editor-in-chief.
As the field grew in relevance, new pathways opened up and Illinois sport psychology spread across the country. Sport psychology got a “big break” when the Olympic Training Committee allowed athletes to be advised by professionals who weren’t clinicians or psychiatrists, Roberts said—sport psychologists could now help athletes develop strategies to perform under extreme stressors.
“The U. of I. was very special. And the thing that stuck with me was we attracted such good students. We generated a reputation, and students wanted to come here from all over the world,” Roberts said. “We didn’t realize it, but we were pioneers.”
‘No better program in the world’
Between visits to their old labs and offices, the sport psychology legends visited classrooms in Huff Hall where there used to be a swimming pool, and walked on floors of Freer Hall that were once open air.
“In Freer and Huff, things have changed, which is good in many ways. You wouldn’t want the same stuff you had 50 years ago,” Gill said.
Over the weekend, the sport psychology crew took the 40-minute drive to Allerton Park in Monticello, where they hosted the nation’s first conference in sport psychology: the North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA) in 1973.
Several of them later served as executives and presidents of the society. The first conference also planted the seeds for Human Kinetics, the Champaign-based publisher of sport and exercise science founded by Martens and his first wife, Marilyn.
Though a formal sport psychology program no longer exists at Illinois, the field has expanded and evolved. The Department of Health and Kinesiology continues to study the psychological aspects and benefits of physical activity.
Rainer Martens speaks to his former Sport Psychology colleagues, and the current-day faculty of Health and Kinesiology.
“I think of it as one field. Physical activity—whether it’s high-level athletics or recess play—is all one field,” Gill said.
After walking through their old stomping grounds, the group met with current-day faculty and students of Health and Kinesiology for lunch in Freer Hall.
“This was the group that got sport psychology a foothold in this country,” said HK Professor Steve Petruzzello, who runs the college’s Exercise Psychophysiology Laboratory. “It’s wonderful to see these folks back here, to see their eyes light up as they’re walking around the halls, seeing spaces that look familiar and some that are completely unfamiliar.”
What remains from this era of sport psychology, and even the early days of Athletic Research Laboratory, are questions on the relationship between physical activity and psychology—including personality, stress, cognitive factors and affect, or feeling states.
“Faculty currently study these kinds of topics in older adults and children, in diverse populations, and in more specialized groups like tactical athletes,” Petruzzello said. “So really, the pioneering work of Coleman Griffith at Illinois over 100 years ago has evolved and developed into what it is today.”
Before heading off, the sport psychologists dispensed career advice with some of the rising graduate students and faculty. Linda Harrison obtained her Ph.D. from the program in 1987—she opted to go into the publishing industry instead of academia, but she credits her time at Illinois for developing her abilities to think and ask questions.
“The grad students all benefited from the historic founding fathers of sport psychology and the scholars who picked up the torch to carry the program to the next level,” Harrison said. “I am sure there was no better program in the world than the one offered at U. of I.”
Editor’s note:
To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu The College of Applied Health Sciences and Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics are celebrating 100 years of Huff Hallthis fall.
Haley Bauman graduated from the University of Illinois in August 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in recreation, sport and tourism. She told us about her internship program this summer.
This past summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to complete a 10-week internship as an activities field support agent for the Catalina Island Co. My initial connection to this company was through an online job search, which led to a seasonal position as a sales agent in the summer of 2022.
After experiencing an incredible season on Catalina Island, I knew that once this opportunity came to an end it would not be the last time I worked for this company. This past spring, I partnered with their tours and activities management team to create an entirely new position that aligned with the RST Internship Program.
I chose Catalina Island for my internship site because I thought it would be the best fit for my future career goals in the eco-tourism industry. Additionally, the Catalina Island Co. provides numerous opportunities for employees to try out multiple positions within their tours and activities department. I decided to do my internship in California because I am hoping to move there post-graduation. Having connections in the location where you plan to live is crucial for your employment in the future.
As a field support agent in the tours and activities department, my primary responsibilities included guiding tourists and helping with any questions or concerns, packaging tours and activities in a cost-efficient and time-friendly manner and assisting co-workers with daily tasks. Additionally, I assisted my internship supervisor with office and onsite jobs, such as setting up signage for cruise ships, adjusting balance sheets and organizing work spaces to maintain a clean and happy work environment. The unique eco-tourism opportunities I packaged, sold and guided guests to partake in ranged from semi-submersible rides and bison expeditions to eco-ziplining tours.
A major positive aspect of this internship experience was that it provided me with the opportunity to practice a work-life balance in the real world. Through trial and error, I found which strategies worked best to keep me happy and healthy during this process. Another key aspect was that I have grown personally and professionally, which allowed me to reach the goals I had set for myself—especially in the areas of communication and customer service. This internship also helped me discover a major life lesson: not everything needs to go according to plan for you to be successful. In fact, most things won’t go according to plan and that’s OK because it’s the problem-solving and outcome that dictates your success.
Although my internship has ended, I am continuing to work with the Catalina Island Co. as a sales agent for the tours and activities department through the remainder of the season in October. This opportunity has been such an incredible learning experience and I am excited to continue to grow with this position. Overall, I would definitely recommend interning for this company as it provides hands-on experiences to help individuals build confidence and a better understanding of what interests them in the field of recreation, sport and tourism.
Three graduates who received this year’s alumni awards from AHS have amassed impressive accomplishments for themselves while keeping a professional eye on others.
A college president who thinks the best part of leadership is facilitating the achievements of colleagues. An attorney who makes sure companies that provide communications and media services are making them accessible to people with disabilities. A young entrepreneur who makes it his business to help other entrepreneurs succeed.
The three University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduates who received this year’s alumni awards from the College of Applied Health Sciences have amassed impressive accomplishments for themselves while keeping a professional eye on others.
AHS Distinguished Alumni Award
Dr. Trevor Bates is the president of Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio. While completing his master’s degree in kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he served a pre-doctoral fellowship in athletic training (a program in the Department of Kinesiology at the time) and provided clinical athletic training to student-athletes in the wheelchair athletics program of the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES). Of his time in DRES, he said, “It was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to learn about new and different kinds of injuries, and that’s exactly what happened. I learned that the impact of an injury on the life of a person who uses a wheelchair is a lot different.”
Bates completed his PhD in health sciences through A.T. Still University, with a concentration in leadership and organizational behavior. He is a licensed athletic trainer in Ohio and is nationally certified in athletic training.
Under his leadership, Wilmington College has developed and implemented a five-year strategic plan; introduced its first fully online graduate program; and launched two new graduate programs in organizational leadership and occupational therapy. What he enjoys most about leadership, he said, is seeing other people win. “It is a lot of fun to see my former students become program directors or leaders in organizations, or the people around me experience success as a result of work that we’ve done together,” he said.
Prior to joining Wilmington College, Bates served as vice president of academic affairs, dean of faculty, and professor of health sciences at Mercy College of Ohio, founding associate dean of the Division of Health Sciences and chair of athletic training at Heidelberg University, assistant professor of exercise science and sport at Millikin University (where he earned his bachelor’s degree), and athletic trainer at Decatur, IL, Memorial Hospital.
Committed to promoting and ensuring the advancement of opportunities for underrepresented people, Bates is a strong advocate for the proactive recruitment, retention, and development of high-quality students, staff, and faculty who contribute diverse perspectives and backgrounds that represent the global community. His commitment to underrepresented students is partly selfish, he explained, saying, “I was that student.” He grew up in a neighborhood in Chicago where going to college was not an expectation or common occurrence.
He said, “My mother and father both pushed the value of education and how it can give you broader opportunities. Once I was exposed and began to see the benefits, I understood that there were a lot of people like me whom I wanted to expose to what was possible.”
Bates was honored by the Ohio Athletic Trainers Association with the 2017 Linda Weber Daniel Outstanding Mentor Award and the 2018 Professional Service Award. He also received the 2020 Great Lakes Athletic Trainers’ Association’s Dedicated Service Award in recognition of contributions to the athletic training profession at the state, regional, and national levels.
On receiving the AHS Distinguished Alumni Award, Bates said, “It is extremely humbling to be recognized by the College of Applied Health Sciences. When I received the notification, I was quickly reminded of my mother’s advice. She said, ‘Make a difference. Work hard when no one important is watching.’ Knowing there are countless alumni who have also done outstanding work in their fields, I feel truly blessed to be the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.”
Harold Scharper Award
Michal Nowicki is an associate attorney with Marashlian & Donahue, located in the metropolitan Washington DC area. He completed his law degree in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law in 2018. During law school, he served as staff writer and notes editor for the Illinois Business Law Journal. He wrote two notes for the journal, both of which were published.
He recalls his law school days fondly, saying, “I was very fortunate to be part of a law school class that bonded closely, especially during the first year when there is no flexibility in choosing schedules. We were in it for the long haul. It was a difficult year. We stuck together and I developed several lifelong friendships as a result.” He enjoyed working with the college’s renowned faculty, who helped him understand the broad array of options available to someone with a law degree.
“DRES really topped things off very well,” he continued. “They consistently provided reliable accommodations so that I could focus on academics and not have to fight for what I needed, as too many people I have known, unfortunately, have had to do in their academic endeavors.”
Nowicki focuses his practice on helping clients comply with a wide range of telecommunications laws. His primary area of expertise centers on laws requiring access for people with physical, sensory, and other disabilities to telephone relay services and other forms of telecommunications, video content and equipment, and other digital products and services. Of his work, he said, “My focus on representing clients in accessibility-related matters is not just to help them comply with accessibility laws, but also to understand and take full advantage of the commercial benefits of incorporating accessibility into every state of product and service design, thereby tapping into a market of millions of people who have not allowed their disabilities to hold them back.”
Nowicki is keenly interested in the 21st-Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) and other accessibility laws. He helped the National Federation of the Blind convince the FCC to deny Amazon’s petition for a permanent exemption from CVAA accessibility requirements for e-book readers. He also worked closely with Comcast and DirecTV to ensure that both companies comply with FCC regulations requiring audio description for blind and low vision customers. Nowicki recently responded to the FCC’s request for public comments on how audio description rules have been implemented, hoping that the FCC will expand the requirements to cover video-on-demand programming and television broadcasts delivered over the Internet.
In 2020, he co-hosted a unique webinar highlighting the wide range of business opportunities arising from making digital products and services accessible to customers with disabilities, presenting alongside the Chief of the FCC Disability Rights Office and the top product designer at Poly, which makes various communication devices. He also provided a highly interactive, in-depth overview of audio description requirements under the CVAA, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act at the 2021 Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium; shared his experiences with online conferencing platforms at an American Bar Association-sponsored webinar on disability access to virtual courts; and delivered an informative presentation on the current state of U.S. video accessibility laws.
Nowicki is a proud leader in the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois (NFBI), with which he has been involved for over a decade. Since November 2020, he has served as the organization’s elected treasurer, preparing its annual budget, strategically allocating grants to attract future donations, and managing tax obligations, among other responsibilities. Mr. Nowicki also co-chairs two important NFBI committees focused on helping blind Illinoisans live productive and independent lives and shaping official NFBI policies on a wide range of blindness issues.
AHS Young Alumni Award
Manu Edakara majored in community health as an undergraduate because his parents wanted him to be a doctor, and he thought it would be the best avenue for preparing for that role. He did not become a doctor, however. Instead, he founded the award-winning iVenture Accelerator, one of the top educational entrepreneurship programs in the country. Still, he thinks his education in AHS prepared him well for his entrepreneurial role.
“I credit my discipline, positive outlook, and holistic approach to leadership and management to my deep understanding of health and wellness and how much it matters,” he said. “I am a healthy leader, and I take pride in that, and often inspire others to live healthier lives.”
As an undergraduate, Edakara worked as a personal trainer for Campus Recreation and became an emergency medical technician. He worked in a hospital cardiac rehabilitation center, helped to train the wheelchair basketball team and Paralympians in the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services, did research in the Exercise Psychology Lab, and worked with veterans with severe mental and physical disabilities at the Jefferson Center for Veterans Affairs.
As director of iVenture Accelerator, Edakara provides a startup ecosystem across the three University of Illinois campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago, and Springfield. Part of a statewide economic development initiative, iVenture Accelerator supports students’ innovative ideas for economic and educational transformation. Its portfolio companies have raised more than $100 million, created more than 600 full-time jobs around the world, and received prestigious international recognition. Edakara serves as the main strategic advisor for all teams on mission, vision, hiring, leadership, raising money, storytelling, operations, and marketing.
“I’m in the line of work I’m in because I believe that business that works is business that solves a problem,” he said. “Good business solves a problem, which helps people. I’m in the business of helping people.”
Edakara also is the co-instructor for the Topics in Entrepreneurship seminar offered by the Gies College of Business,. The seminar attracts students from all colleges, majors, and academic standings across the entire University of Illinois system and Illinois Innovation Network, and is consistently ranked in the top four percent of courses at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His young changemakers have been featured on Amazon Prime documentaries and received Thiel Fellowships from the Society of Women Engineers.
In 2020, Edakara was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. He is a certified personal trainer, emergency medical technician, and formerly competed in men’s bodybuilding. He has been training in kalaripayattu, believed to be the oldest surviving martial art in India, since he was a child.
“I’ve accomplished everything that I set out to do when I graduated college,” he said. “I’m very happy and fulfilled where I am. I’m very grateful for where I am and very humbled. I’m doing what I want and every day is really good.”
Travis Threats was recently named one of the recipients of the Honors of Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
Travis Threats had a clear inspiration for what he wanted to study: his brother.
Threats, who earned his master’s degree from the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in 1984, said he first observed speech therapy when he was eight years old.
“My younger brother, three years younger than me, is autistic,” Threats said. “Autism directly affects communication. Now, some people think, when they hear this, that it’s some beautiful inspirational story, and all of the speech therapists were great, and that’s why I wanted to be like them. Well, it’s the opposite. All the speech therapy in its early years was bad. The social work was bad. The teachers were bad. Even though (my brother) didn’t have any overt behavior issues, my parents would go to the doctor’s office, fill out the information, and the (pediatrician’s) nurse would come out to the waiting room, saying ‘He doesn’t see autistic children.’”
That interaction led Threats to the conclusion that “there was a need. All of my work has been with people in their actual lives because I realized there’s been a disconnect between therapists, and what goals they achieved, and what people with disabilities actual lives are like. For me, it’s a clear-cut (reason to study speech pathology).”
For his work and dedication to the profession, Threats—now professor and department chair of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Saint Louis University—recently earned Honors of Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). It is the national organization’s highest honor.
Threats got his undergraduate degree at Kansas State University before coming to the University of Illinois for his master’s. At Illinois, he met a man who would have a profound effect on his career.
“I did decide I wanted to work with adults with acquired disorders,” Threats said. “And the person who taught that wasn’t a researcher: Dr. Robert Simpson. He was a very humane man, and he did talk about aphasia and strokes and all that from that broader viewpoint of what they do to people’s lives.”
Simpson, who died in 2019 at 93, was a professor of speech and hearing science at the University of Illinois and also served as director of the department’s speech and hearing clinic. He served on the facial deformity team at Carle Foundation Hospital and eventually was employed by Carle as a speech pathologist after retiring from the university.
“He wasn’t a researcher in a traditional sense,” Threats said. “But his teachings were very much a positive influence on me.”
The ASHA award Threats received recognizes exceptional contributors whose work has enhanced or altered the course of research in the field of speech, language and hearing sciences. In an association of more than 218,000 professionals, only a select number of individuals each year receive this prestigious award.
He understands its significance.
“Three of my professors at U of I have honors from the association. I do remember—as a Ph.D. student (at) Northwestern—going to the first ASHA conference and going to the awards ceremony. And these were the people who wrote the books that I was studying from. These were some of my alums at Northwestern—three or so of those people eventually got honors, too. My own advisor got honors the year I graduated. … I certainly didn’t at the time think that I would be one of those people.”
Susan Chaplinsky’s $3.4M estate gift funds endowments supporting disabled Illinois students
The family of Susan J. Chaplinsky sits on her memorial bench in the center of the Disability Resources and Educational Services building. Her siblings Kathy, Amy, Molly and Pete sat with her plaque. (Photo by Ethan Simmons)
To honor their sister’s time at the University of Illinois, the siblings of Susan Jane Chaplinsky thought a memorial bench in the open-air plaza of Disability Resources and Educational Services would be a fitting tribute.
Because the work of DRES was a big part of what propelled Chaplinsky, living with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, to become an acclaimed business scholar and beloved instructor. She said so herself.
“[DRES at Illinois] … put me on a path to achieve the professional success I have attained over the course of my life,” Chaplinsky wrote in her will. “It remains a unique institution for students with disabilities to level the inequities caused by life and health and allows them to achieve a measure of success. I would be proud to have my name associated with an institution with these goals and aspirations.”
Upon her passing in November 2022, Chaplinsky dedicated a substantial portion of her wealth to the DRES: A $3.4 million estate gift which will support two endowment funds for Illinois students with disabilities.
The family got to witness the memorial for Chaplinsky at the DRES 75th Anniversary Open House on April 19, surrounded by staff, alumni and visitors. College of Applied Health Sciences Dean Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell gave thanks to the family and to Chaplinsky for her generosity.
”It’s going to change much of what we can do here at DRES, I can’t thank you guys enough for being willing to be here with us today to celebrate Susan’s commitment to us,” Hanley-Maxwell said. “Susan is an example of many students who have graduated from the University of Illinois who look back on DRES and say, ‘If it weren’t for DRES, I don’t know what I would have done.’”
‘A lifeline’
Chaplinsky graduated from Illinois in 1975 with her bachelor’s in economics. She went a couple hours north to obtain her MBA and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.
What followed was a stellar academic and teaching career, where Chaplinsky taught finance at the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, and eventually the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, where she spent her final 28 years.
But with her early obstacles, she charted a course her family could’ve never foreseen.
In sixth grade, Chaplinsky was diagnosed with a severe form of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. In a matter of months, Chaplinsky went from being an active, able-bodied preteen to needing a wheelchair to get around day to day.
Growing up in Palatine, Illinois, a village 30 miles northwest of Chicago, Susan’s sister Kathy would bring her lunches during high school, since Susan couldn’t access the cafeteria with her wheelchair. As Chaplinsky confronted her new health challenges, others began to place unfair limits on her abilities.
“My sister was always very smart, brilliant, but there was no guidance counselor encouraging her to look at colleges,” Kathy Arter said.
“Then our parents learned about the program at Illinois, and it was just like a lifeline to them. There was a place that not only could accommodate her, but they wanted her there.”
Illinois, with its wheelchair accessible campus and the Division of Rehabilitation Education Services led by director Tim Nugent, was an opportunity too promising to pass up. After being accepted onto campus, Chaplinsky’s life and confidence transformed, her siblings said.
Every time they’d visit her at Allen Hall, she was surrounded by friends, going out to bars or movie showings on campus, living a regular student’s life.
But she took her studies seriously, and Nugent played a hand in that. Chaplinsky “talked a lot about Nugent,” Arter said; he was demanding, and held high expectations for the students he worked with.
“Some of that, with Susan, she left here with that: ‘They expect me to go on and be a success, I won’t disappoint them,’” Arter said. “I don’t think Susan ever forgot her debt to the university, for that opportunity.”
An outpouring of support flowed from the UVA campus after Chaplinsky’s passing. Her siblings didn’t always get to see the teaching side of Susan; a memorial event they attended allowed them to see a new side of their sister.
“The great passion of her life was teaching,” said her sister, Amy Meehan. “She was interested in students, she always rooted for the underdog. She just views this gift as an extension of that: ‘I can help for years to come.’”
Plenty of the traits they knew well—Chaplinsky’s sports fandom and dry humor, for example—also shined through in their remembrances.
“She’s funny, she’s brilliant,” sister Molly Gillis said. “I think about all the time, her footprint is ginormous when she had so many things that could’ve limited her reach and they didn’t.”
The siblings and extended family made a big showing at the DRES Open House. They gratefully packed in around their sister’s newly arrived memorial bench and posed for pictures in the cool spring weather.
“Maybe somebody sees that bench, and it gives them the confidence, the energy to go forward, to dream big, and to do something they didn’t think they could do,” brother Pete Chaplinsky said.
The question that guides her research: How might yoga be used to manage chronic pain?
Stephanie Voss poses outside of Freer Hall.
To doctoral candidate Stephanie Voss, chronic pain treatment and yoga have more in common than we think.
Voss, now in her third year of a kinesiology Ph.D program at the University of Illinois, first came across the connection while working as an occupational therapist at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a rehabilitation research hospital in Chicago.
While she consulted patients who were dealing with persistent, chronic pain, Voss was training to become a yoga instructor—an out-of-class hobby that helped her overcome her own studying-induced back pain.
“I couldn’t get over how similar the treatment approaches are,” Voss said. “Yoga is very much a holistic practice, and we address chronic pain in very much a similar way—it involves working as part of an interdisciplinary team on strength and muscle conditioning and posture and body mechanics. We also work on the psychological components, the emotional components and how we can integrate pain management strategies into daily life.”
Today, Voss’s research at the College of Applied Health Sciences merges the two: How might yoga be used to manage lasting pain?
This fall, she was named a recipient of the Paul D. Doolen Graduate Scholarship for the Study of Aging, an annual award given to two University of Illinois graduate students whose scholarly work advances research on the human aging process.
With the help of the Doolen scholarship, Voss will develop a yoga protocol that specifically targets interoception, or the ability to perceive and interpret the sensations within one’s own body, an ability which may fade as we age.
The project will explore whether yoga can improve older adults’ abilities detect and interpret feelings of pain and discomfort within their bodies.
“I found [the scholarship] relevant to my research because most of my patients are older adults,” she said. “Chronic pain is immensely prevalent in older adult populations for various reasons but interestingly older adults tend to not be included in pain trials as often.”
It’s so immensely important that my research questions are rooted in the clinical needs of the patients.”
Stephanie Voss
Kinesiology Ph.D. candidate
What the $4,250 scholarship gives her for now is “breathing room,” Voss said. “Being a grad student isn’t always easy from a financial standpoint, so having a little bit of extra support to free up my time and mental space, it’s one less thing to worry about.”
Voss received her B.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Northwestern University in 2014 and her M.S. in Occupational Therapy from Rush University in 2018.
She began at the University of Illinois in August 2021, working under former Illinois KCH Associate Professor Neha Gothe in Gothe’s Exercise Psychology Lab. Gothe was one of the only academics exploring the connection between yoga and pain management. Voss, then fully working as an occupational therapist, reached out to Gothe over email, expressing her desire to pursue a Ph.D. under her.
Since then, Voss has worked as a research assistant and teaching assistant, having instructed an introductory-level yoga class while periodically working with patients at the AbilityLab in Chicago. She recently taught the yoga intervention for one of Gothe’s research studies working with older adults.
“That got to really challenge my clinical and yoga teaching skills to integrate modifying postures for people who live in different bodies than mine,” Voss said. “It’s so immensely important that my research questions are rooted in the clinical needs of the patients. I want to make sure I’m still in touch with that population.”
When Gothe departed Illinois for Northeastern University in Boston, Voss decided to stay and finish the final stages of her Ph.D. program, with KCH Professor Steve Petruzzello stepping up as her on-site doctoral co-advisor.
“She’s very smart, and very personable,” said Petruzzello, who first met Voss while she made insightful comments in his class, KIN 443: Psychophysiology of Exercise & Sport. “It’s just refreshing for somebody to have such a good perspective on the science of what she does, but to also be very respectful and willing to take criticism for what it’s worth.”
Both her mentors described Voss as a methodical, talented researcher whose clinical experience has given her unique perspective and a deft ability to communicate scientific concepts to different audiences.
“She has an eye for translation and application of the research in clinical as well as real-life settings,” Gothe said. “Her years of yoga training and teaching also give her a unique advantage to work and communicate with her patients and research subjects.”
After her graduation, expected in spring 2025, Voss hopes to work in a hybrid clinical-academic position. In the meantime, Voss has seen great recruitment interest in her dissertation research, examining yoga as a strategy for chronic pain management.
“I do feel like I will be leaving with a degree that gives me a lot of opportunity and flexibility that I can teach in occupational therapy departments. I’ll be fully qualified for that, but I’ll also be fully qualified to teach in more traditional academic university-based settings that are not necessarily a clinical program,” Voss said.
Editor’s note:
Stephanie Voss completed her Ph.D. at Illinois in May 2025.
RST alum Josh Larson is general manager of the Austin Spurs, the G-League affiliate of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. (Photo provided)
Many sports fans only see the athletes arriving at games, ready to take the court. However, the logistical and behind-the-scenes work often goes unnoticed. When a plane is delayed, causing the team to miss a connecting flight, or someone arrives 20 minutes late, it’s Josh Larson’s responsibility to ensure everything continues running smoothly.
That emphasis on service and hard work has propelled Larson to where he is today. He was immersed in basketball, almost from birth. His mother, Jenny, was an assistant athletic director at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and his brother played basketball collegiately. Today, Josh Larson serves as the general manager of the Austin Spurs, the G-League affiliate of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs.
Raised in Tolono, Illinois, Larson attended the University of Illinois, where he earned a B.S. in Recreation, Sport and Tourism.
“What you learn in college isn’t necessarily all the Xs and Os of sports like how to coach basketball, how to work a salary cap, how to negotiate contracts and things like that,” Larson said. “To me, what was really beneficial, and I think it applies to not only my profession but a lot of other ones, was how they teach you to problem solve.”
Although the fast-paced lifestyle might seem stressful, Larson sees it as a rewarding challenge.
“That’s kind of the beauty of sports in general, or even recreation. It’s never perfect,” Larson said. “You have to be able to think, do things your own way, problem-solve and figure out how you feel best fits your team, your culture, your park district.”
Larson emphasized that the RST program equips students to handle real-world situations. One hallmark of the program is its focus on practical experience. Reflecting on his coursework, Larson recalled a group project where he and his peers organized a kids’ day for the Stephens Family YMCA in Champaign.
“That was a good reminder of what it means to be service driven,” Larson said. “In the moment, you think, ‘Group project,’ and you have to go hang out with kids for four hours, and I probably wasn’t as excited to do it. But I felt like afterwards, I got a lot out of it, purely because it forced me to be in a mindset of serving others.”
After his sophomore year, he landed a summer internship with the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. Through that experience, he made connections with the Spurs organization, which led to an internship in Austin after graduation. However, Larson noted that it didn’t begin with fun and glamour.
“You just do the laundry, you do the film, you do all the grunt work, and drive the players and vans … and clean apartments,” Larson said.
He then spent two years as the basketball operations assistant for the San Antonio Spurs before becoming the general manager of the Austin Spurs last May. His current responsibilities include managing players and coaches and supporting the coaching staff with resources for team building and player development.
Larson’s dedication to basketball was evident long before he entered the professional world. He started volunteering at Illinois men’s basketball summer camps the summer before he began college, eventually becoming a team manager for four years and serving as head manager his senior year. His relentless work ethic caught the attention of the coaching staff, and through networking within the program, he was able to make key connections that helped propel his career forward.
Jenny Larson said dedication has always been a part of her son’s work ethic.
“He was the first one in the office when he interned at the Charlotte Hornets, and he was the last one to leave,” Jenny Larson said. “It’ll be 7 at night when I call him, and he’d say, ‘I’m still in the office,’ and I’d ask him, ‘Why are you still in the office?’ and he’d say, ‘Because my boss hasn’t left.”
Josh showed his dedication to his mom on another occasion when he was in high school and met with Mike Raycraft, a clinical associate professor in the RST program. Raycraft helped Larson figure out his interests and potential career paths.
“He dressed up in a suit. He’s a junior in high school and he walks into meeting him, and he’s serious,” Jenny Larson said. “Josh put himself out there. He had to be extremely nervous, going in and talking to a professor. But he did it and I know it helped him grow and get to where he is today.”
Josh Larson said Raycraft was one of the most influential figures in his career.
“For him to do that, it meant a lot to me,” Larson said. “He was a massive influence, not only going to the university, but even after I got there. His care and attention to his students, not only with me, but you could see it with other people too.”
Another enduring takeaway from the RST program was its strong sense of community. Larson said he frequently encounters former classmates while traveling for work.
“A lot of people—we stay in touch still, so I think that, again, is a testament to the quality of people that the major tracks,” Larson said. “You get to have lifelong connections with people that you know you’re going to be working with. You can call for advice—they know what you’re going through and they can probably give you better advice than anybody.”
Larson explained that the program introduces students to diverse perspectives, which become invaluable when collaborating with others in the future.
“Even aside from just the classes and the curriculum that you learn, I think the people you meet is what makes it worth the while in the end,” Larson said.
Audiology wasn’t initially Graves’ field of choice—she graduated from University of Illinois Springfield in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology
Third-year audiology doctoral student Kaley Graves is missing the first week of classes this fall, but she has a great excuse.
Thanks to her sterling accomplishments as a budding audiologist, she’s on an all-expenses-paid trip to visit one of the premier hearing aid manufacturers in the world: Oticon’s headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“I had to reread that email six times to make sure it said ‘Denmark’ and not ‘Denver, Colorado,’ or something,” Graves said. It’ll be her first time out of the United States.
Earlier this year, Graves was selected as one of six recipients of the American Academy of Audiology Foundation’s Empowering Student Scholarship, sponsored by Oticon and awarded to students who show “exceptional promise” as future clinical audiologists.
“I have hearing aids in both ears, so I’ve been the patient my entire life,” Graves said. “Now I’m on the other side of the booth and can be the clinician, which I think is so fun.”
Graves grew up in Monticello, Ill., a half-hour drive from the University of Illinois campus. Audiology wasn’t initially her field of choice—she graduated from University of Illinois Springfield in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
That career path didn’t fit, but Graves found her way into intriguing research projects that focused on hearing and visual cues. One of her undergraduate mentors encouraged her to apply for a behavioral neuroscience position at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, also in Springfield, where she studied the development of tinnitus in lab rats.
Graves went on to perform hearing research for a decade, but she craved more human connection on the job. A suggestion from her own doctor set Graves on her current course.
“I was admittedly kind of a pain in the butt to my current audiologist about all the things that she was constantly doing to my hearing aids and all of the things that she would do on a daily basis with her patients,” Graves said.
“And she eventually was like: ‘You should probably just get into this field. You’ve already got the hearing background, go deal with people—it’s more fun.” Graves’ mother was especially encouraging of her daughter’s new career path. When her parents first discovered their child had hearing loss, “it was terrifying,” Graves said.
“[My mom] said for patients, especially families that have young kids who are finding out their child has a hearing loss, it’s going to be huge for them to see their doctor has a hearing loss and can be successful in life.”
Today, Graves keeps busy as president of the Student Academy of Audiology chapter at Illinois. The registered student organization doubles as a networking site for SHS students and an outreach arm for the department.
A few events they’ve taken on: Hearing safety stand-ups at the Urbana’s Market at the Square, free hearing screenings in the SHS building, and recently, cerumen (earwax) removals for the ClarkLindsey Village retirement community.
Especially for older adults, earwax buildups can be a primary cause of muffled hearing, Graves said. Graves and another member of her graduate cohort cleared residents’ ears while a handful of first-year students in the audiology program cleaned their hearing aids.
“Being able to do a minimal amount of work over two hours to improve their quality of life was huge,” Graves said. “So many people left that room super happy.”
Her audiology work extends to Illinois’ student population as well. Graves has booked a hearing safety presentation in the fall for the student bandmates of the Marching Illini.
“The first thing that I’m really going to try and drive home to them is to please wear ear plugs when you’re out and constantly practicing,” Graves said. “We were taught first year what the acceptable levels of noise exposure are over X amount of time. If they’re out practicing for four hours and it’s about 90 decibels, they need to do something to mitigate the effects of those loud noises.”
For now, though, Graves is preparing her Denmark itinerary: visiting Tivoli Gardens, one of the world’s oldest amusement parks, and seeing the Danish Crown Jewels. “I’m super excited to go be a tourist,” she said.
Of course, she’s ready for her Oticon visit. “They do a lot of innovation, they do a lot of workshops, they do a lot of Ph.D. student type-things,” Graves said. “I am just really, really fascinated by what I’m going to see behind the scenes at their research center.”
Joe Rank is helping sustain a campus resource he could’ve used as a military Veteran who returned for further education: The Chez Veterans Center
Joe Rank, left, stands with his son Jay Rank at the WWII Memorial. Rank, a Vietnam War Veteran, recently returned from an Honor Flight visit to Washington, D.C. (Photo provided)
By the fall of 1965, the conflict between North and South Vietnam had escalated, as had the United States’ military involvement. With the draft looming, Urbana teenager Joe Rank, newly enrolled at the University of Illinois, joined the Naval ROTC unit at the advice of one of his fraternity brothers a year after reserve officer training was no longer compulsory.
After four years as an undergraduate student majoring in advertising, Rank was deployed to Vietnam, where his responsibilities included pinging enemy submarines and managing gunners aboard the destroyer USS Lyman K. Swenson and the cruiser USS England.
Following his three-year tour, Rank returned to the university and embarked on several career journeys. He taught new cohorts of reserve officers, helmed a $20 million Navy advertising campaign, and developed two decades of relationships at the University of Illinois Alumni Association.
“If anybody 55 years ago said ‘You’re going to make a career of the Navy,’ I would’ve told them they were absolutely crazy,” Rank said. “All of life’s twists and turns, I couldn’t have planned it.”
The retired Rank, now 76, is helping sustain a campus resource he could’ve used as a military Veteran who returned for further education: The Chez Veterans Center.
“Joe is a bridge between the university’s deep history in the Veteran community and what the future can be,” said Chez Director of Operations Andy Bender. “Joe has the passion for this work, being able to take the things we need and then bringing in the support to do it.”
“They’ve got a clear mission now to serve all veterans,” Rank said of the Chez Center. “Veterans bring diversity to the campus.”
Rank, who lives in Urbana with his wife Pam, has strong ties with his identities as an Illinois alumnus and Veteran. He recently returned from an Honor Flight, a no-cost, full-day visit to military memorials in Washington, D.C., with 96 other Vietnam Veterans and three from the Korean War.
Witnessing historic monuments such as the Arlington National Cemetery and feeling warm receptions at every point led to an unforgettable experience. At the Vietnam Memorial Wall, Rank made a charcoal rubbing of the etched name of Marine Corps 2nd Lt. David Skibbe, a fellow Illinois Naval ROTC officer who died during a mission in 1970.
“He was just an outstanding leader,” Rank said. “His death brought the war close to home for me.”
Rank has stayed in the University of Illinois orbit since he was a kid. His mother worked in the Dean’s Office of the College of Commerce, now the Gies College of Business. Many of his friends coming up through Urbana High School were children of professors.
When he returned from Vietnam, Rank became an instructor for Illinois ROTC classes, earning the title of assistant professor of Naval Science while obtaining his master’s degree in advertising.
Three years of 18-hour days in Vietnam made the daily study grind feel easy.
They’ve got a clear mission now to serve all veterans,” Rank said of the Chez Center. “Veterans bring diversity to the campus.
Joe Rank
Vietnam War Veteran and Illinois alumnus
“I was at the library at 8 o’clock in the morning, got my work done by 4 p.m.,” Rank said. “I had that discipline—I got one B in graduate school.”
Rank soon went back to sea, when the Navy did something that “didn’t make much sense” to him at the time: Brought Rank in as director of National Advertising for Navy recruiting.
During his tenure, the Navy unveiled the “It’s Not a Job, It’s an Adventure” advertising slogan that rippled across national airwaves in the early 1980s. The campaign even inspired an infamous sketch from “Saturday Night Live.”
“You know you had a successful campaign when it was parodied on SNL,” Rank said.
After 20 years of active-duty service, Rank faced the test of reintegrating into civilian life and passed with flying colors. The mission of the Chez Center has connected with him from the start.
While serving as vice president of membership and marketing at the Alumni Association, he was brought into an ad hoc committee to address the vision of Chez, then known as the Center for Wounded Veterans in Higher Education.
“The intent was it would be much like (Disability Resources and Educational Services) was for the World War II Vets. It would accommodate severely, profoundly injured military veterans who wanted to come back to college.”
The technology of war has changed and casualties have decreased. As that cohort of seriously injured Veterans of college age dried up, the question was how to transform the center’s mission.
Like DRES, Chez has morphed its service to apply to a wider range of students and staff. On the advisory committee, the word “wounded” was eliminated from the title, as Chez became a one-stop shop for campus folks with military connections.
“Originally, it was a welcoming cocoon for people to recreate that military atmosphere and camaraderie. But in reality, the whole idea is to get people comfortable enough with the university and the civilian environment and push them out, get them involved in their major,” Rank said.
“The idea is not to segregate them into a pseudo military unit, but get them comfortable with what they’re going to experience in civilian life.”
Rank’s support of the Chez Center is multifaceted, as both a donor and member of its advisory board.
“He’s a great sounding board for me,” Bender said. “He’s been a part of this project since the very beginning.”
“He’s a great supporter of us, of the Veterans, and of the university at large.”
