Carbondale Reporter

Six academic professionals at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were honored this week with the Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence award for 2022.  

The CAPE award was established to recognize academic professionals for their work, personal and professional contributions. Individuals are nominated, reviewed by a committee and approved by Chancellor Robert Jones.

Each of the honorees receives a $1,000 cash award.

This year’s honorees, with descriptions adapted from their nomination forms:  

Jessica Hartke, the senior associate director of nutritional sciences, fills multiple critical roles spanning the university’s teaching, research and public service missions. In her position, she follows graduate students throughout the cycle of their program – from meeting with prospective students to proofreading dissertations to reading graduates’ names at convocation ceremonies. The academic adviser for new students, Hartke is frequently the first point of contact for students in distress. Since the onset of the pandemic, she has been a vital resource for many graduate students.

Hartke recently collaborated to develop a new online course on food regulations that utilizes a novel team-based learning approach. The new course has received outstanding reviews.

Hartke is passionate about graduate education and has an extensive knowledge of the academic, research and administrative policies required to operate interdisciplinary programs. Her advice is frequently sought by other units across campus that are seeking to establish interdisciplinary research or educational programs.

Florencia Henshaw, Spanish and Portuguese, the director of advanced Spanish, coordinates four of the foundational courses for all Spanish majors and minors. In this capacity, she serves 600-1,000 students annually and mentors an average of 15 graduate teaching assistants per semester. She created a special section of Spanish composition – the department’s only required course – to meet the unique needs of Latinx students. She also developed seven more online courses, ranging from beginning Spanish to upper-level linguistics courses.

Henshaw has used her personal interest in online technologies to help many others. During the pandemic, Henshaw created a website compiling resources to help language educators in their transition to remote learning. More recently, she launched her own podcast and YouTube channel to make research findings accessible to teachers and bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Henshaw is a sought-after invited speaker in the field of language pedagogy, and her work has been recognized through multiple awards, including the Campus Award for Excellence in Online and Distance Teaching.

Ken Vickery, Graduate College, the director of fellowships, helps graduate students compete for prestigious grants and fellowships. In 2009, Vickery was asked to establish a new office to support graduate students applying for external funding. With few models nationwide, he launched the Office of External Fellowships, which helps graduate students learn the art of proposal writing and compete effectively for the nation’s most esteemed awards.

Vickery offers proposal-writing workshops, information sessions and one-on-one proposal advising. He is particularly dedicated to workshops and advising, through which he helps students refine their research projects, think broadly about the scholarly and societal impact of their research, and articulate that impact in a bold and compelling proposal. He also designed Fellowship Finder—a nationally recognized curated database of nearly 1,800 funding opportunities available to graduate students. In 2016, Vickery began managing the Graduate College’s internal fellowship and grant programs, working closely with the Fellowship Board to award several million dollars in funding to graduate students each year.

Kraig Wagenecht, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, was appointed SHIELD project manager in spring 2020 and currently is executive director of SHIELD operations. Prior to that role, he connected, managed and implemented on an ad hoc basis a comprehensive set of initiatives, programs and processes to mitigate the pandemic. He has led with vision and partnered wherever needed across campus and the community – with incredible wisdom and collegiality – to oversee an unprecedented endeavor requiring complex logistics, diagnostic testing, software development and deployment, and campus and community education and outreach.

Wagenecht is responsible for the daily, end-to-end operation of an efficient, effective, high-quality COVID-19-mitigation program. Additionally, as the senior director of external research partnerships in OVCRI, he develops and executes comprehensive engagement strategies and plans for select external state, national and international research collaborations.  Wagenecht’s portfolio also includes serving as a university facility security officer in the Security Management Office, where he co-manages national security clearances and a special research facility dedicated to housing and supporting classified projects.

Nancy Walsh, Undergraduate Admissions, is the director of operations, advancing admissions toward more automated and technically efficient processes. When she started in admissions in 1996, the university received about 22,000 freshmen and transfer applications – all on paper. This year, more than 50,000 applications are anticipated, all submitted and processed online. To usher in the transition over the years, Walsh needed a full understanding of complicated functional processes, a vision of how and where technology could improve the office’s efficiency, and the ability to articulate this vision in technical terms so programmers could implement updates. Walsh knew the functional side of processes extremely well, understood the capabilities of software and led the development of online processes.

In addition to leading projects for Undergraduate Admissions, Walsh oversees the admissions records management, course articulation, domestic processing, first-year review and international processing units. She is proud of the work accomplished by her units over the years, especially as application volume and complexity have increased.

Steven Wilson, Illinois State Water Survey, a groundwater hydrologist, assists people nationally who get their drinking water from private wells. His programs also serve as a resource for water and wastewater system operators in small towns and on tribal lands. His work includes applied scientific research, outreach and education of the general public and government officials.

More than a decade ago, Wilson established an externally funded national program that provides outreach to water utilities, well owners and public health personnel. The program includes a website dedicated to disseminating information to public water systems and a free, online class for private well owners. This latter program includes monthly webinars and has reached more than 20,000 private well owners, public health practitioners, local and government officials, and real estate professionals.

Wilson is in high demand as a speaker at national conferences and is approached regularly with potential funding opportunities. His public speaking and willingness to provide individual support to stakeholders are the major reasons why his programs have been so successful.