Please take a moment to learn a little more about our talented and diverse alumni as they excel in life after Illinois State.
Check back often, as we will continually showcase new alumni throughout the year. Spotlighted Alumni rotate each time the site is visited.
Career: Marketing and Development Associate, YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago
In my classes I learned about many of the social ills that plague the world we live in and circumstances that make life difficult for many people. You want to help everyone and be a part of all the efforts that address those issues, but it can be difficult and overwhelming. With the ACED program and the Sociology Department, I was encouraged to look at other ways I could use my skills and knowledge to tackle some of society’s most pressing problems.
I’m not a social worker, policy maker, or “activist”- but my hope is that, through philanthropy and what I’ve learned about social problems, I can support those who are. I hope to use my experiences here to go into Corporate Social Responsibility/Corporate Citizenship.
Career: Latin America Product Operations Manager, Motorola Inc. in Libertyville, IL
How did Illinois State help me get there?
As an undergraduate, I struggled to identify the best career path for me, but ultimately I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in 1992 and immediately completed my Masters of Arts in Sociology in the summer of 1993. The skills I learned in little under 6 years at Illinois State University could not have been more beneficial in my last seven years at Motorola and in my personal relationships.. The one thing I found most valuable in my day to day work is the relationships and networks I have built in my life. This network is something you can always count on when working projects, accomplishing goals and ultimately achieving future career growth. I feel that the time I spent in my studies of Sociology really gave me a lot of information about how people are effected by their past interactions with people, their upbringing and their socio-economical factors. In the end, getting them to work together in a collaborative manner comes down to doing your best to understand them and their needs.
I once worried that I might be limited in what I could use my degree in Sociology, but the truth is I have done supply chain planning, sales operations and product operations and currently the majority of my employees are Latin American, so my sociology skills are more used then ever. Six years later I received my MBA degree and although that knowledge is helpful, it is my opinion that it has not been the driving factor for my career growth and the extensive network I have built. I now realize that struggle in the beginning to chose my career was really the best thing and gave me great flexibility to choose the best path for me.
Faculty Member, University of Missouri-Columbia
"I graduated from Illinois State University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and a double major in English and Anthropology. I left for graduate study in Anthropology at the University of Kansas, where I worked with cultural anthropologist Jane Gibson and applied anthropologist Don Stull. The following summer, I began what would turn out to be a long-term ethnographic research partnership with the Cheslatta Whut’en, an aboriginal community in northern British Columbia. During my time in the field, I grew interested in questions of place, landscape, and territory--questions that ultimately led me to pursue a PhD degree in the cognate field of Geography, also at the University of Kansas. My doctoral field research was again in that same region of Canada, but this time involved Anglo, Mennonite, German, and back-to-the-land residents in addition to aboriginal people. After receiving the PhD in 2002, I received my first academic job at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. I joined the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2005, where I have been conducting research in phenomenology and the politics of place."
"Two things stand out from my experience at ISU. First, I received a number of opportunities to get directly involved in original research--a rare thing for undergraduate students--and I know I was not the only one who had such opportunities. I remember with great fondness, for instance, the summer I spent at the Eliot Elisophon photograph archives in the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution. These opportunities prepared me better than any amount of book learning could for the real excitement and difficulties involved in conducting original research. Second, the senior thesis seminar was an invaluable “capstone” to my anthropology experience at ISU. It was then that I was able to bridge theory, case studies, and my own research agenda for the first time, though of course this “bridge” continued to evolve and change over the graduate and postgraduate periods. ISU gave me the solid undergraduate foundation I needed to pursue my ambitions in academe, and for that, I am extremely grateful."
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