CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Seven academic professionals were honored with 2017 Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence awards at a reception April 6.
Now in its 29th year, the program honors the accomplishments and contributions of academic professionals, who perform a range of vital functions for the campus community. They provide critical support for administration, research laboratories and educational programs, and offer important outreach programs throughout the state.
Recipients are selected for work, personal and professional contributions. Each award winner receives $2,000, a $1,000 increase in base salary and a $1,000 one-time budget increase for his or her department.
This year's honorees are:
Lisa Burgoon, the director of the campuswide minor in Leadership Studies in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, is responsible for marketing, recruitment, advising, monitoring and updating the curriculum, as well as the assessment and evaluation of the program. Since the minor’s inception in 2011, Burgoon has been primarily responsible for developing it into one of the largest and most popular academic minors on campus.
She has been the major force behind not only developing the required introductory course for the minor into a rigorous, theory-based course, but also for significantly expanding enrollment. This exceptionally popular course fills to capacity in both fall and spring semesters.
Burgoon has served as an academic professional for 20 of her 22 years at the university. She embodies the land-grant mission through her work educating students, developing and administering programs, participating in research, and disseminating information to the campus community and nationally through publications, presentations and collaborative partnerships.
The director of research at the Illinois Fire Service Institute for the past 12 years, Gavin Horn has secured and executed more than $12.5 million in grants for the university and the institute.
IFSI is the state's statutory fire training academy, providing training to more than 60,000 firefighters annually. Horn integrates the latest research findings into IFSI courses, lecturing firefighters and fire officers about the impact of firefighting activity on firefighter health and well-being, fire behavior and the risks from chemical exposure to the byproducts of combustion. A volunteer firefighter, Horn regularly leads hands-on demonstrations to further the education of student firefighters.
On a national and international level, his work has led directly to dramatic changes in National Fire Protection Association standards that immediately affect firefighter health and safety, fireground tactics and the development of firefighting tools and equipment.
Charles Murphy, an associate director in Undergraduate Admissions, leads by example and draws from his experience in having performed most of the functions within the office, including supervising student staff, coordinating summer registration, leading campus visits and providing a new vision in the areas of recruitment and outreach. The entire institution benefits from his visibility and contacts throughout the state. Murphy has stepped up during periods of high turnover and budgetary uncertainty, holding the team together and leading the campuswide recruitment and yield meetings.
Murphy is committed to understanding underrepresented populations, challenging staff to go beyond the job requirements to learn about applicants as a means of better recruiting the students who may need extra information or encouragement to apply to Illinois.
As a lifelong learner, Murphy is extremely interested in how ZIP codes affect the likelihood of college attendance and how students in areas of lower likelihood can be encouraged. He is intrigued by the bigger picture of college attendance and helps staff to comprehend the obstacles that many prospective students face.
A senior geochemist in the Illinois State Geological Survey, Samuel Panno has devoted more than 28 years to understanding the dynamics of the earth, with an emphasis on natural and anthropogenic impacts to the environment. His work focuses on protecting groundwater from the impacts of changing land uses and population distributions. The multidisciplinary research program he developed helps ISGS meet its mission of providing scientifically based, unbiased information.
Panno also is a leading researcher of cave or “karst” environments, which are present in parts of Illinois and in other areas of the U.S. The primary source of drinking water in some areas, cave groundwater is highly sensitive to contamination.
Panno is an energizing force in a team setting, as well as a calm, thoughtful and constructive colleague. He also has a talent for making scientific topics accessible to diverse audiences, such as two exhibits he created that are on display in the Natural Resources Building: a diorama of a cave environment and a 2-foot diameter tree slab that correlates historical events with variations of tree ring growth.
Norma Scagnoli, the senior director of e-learning in the College of Business, developed the instructional model for online and blended courses in graduate and undergraduate education, and also led the development of the fully online courses of the undergraduate minors program, including faculty and student orientation. Described by her nominator as “the heart and soul” of Business e-learning initiatives, she has conducted many workshops and clinics for faculty development.
Scagnoli has advanced the mission of the College of Business immensely and stretched the traditional definitions of teaching, research and public service. She created a line of service for academic department and student services units that allowed units and departments to develop online training and information materials using campus learning-management systems.
Her deep sense of humanity comes into play in her online mentoring of students from throughout the world. Scagnoli is responsive to issues in other parts of the globe that may be taking place in the middle of the night here. She refuses to accept anything but the best quality and always finds time to support the ideas others bring to her.
The associate director of Women in Engineering in the College of Engineering, Angela Wolters has been crucial in organizing and presenting the WIE Orientation program for incoming freshmen women enrolled in an engineering discipline. More than 250 students participate annually in this three-day program, and she has garnered substantial outside funding from companies to continue this very effective program.
Wolters is one of the first people the freshmen engineering women meet on campus, and they quickly form a deep connection with her. An engineer, she is a wonderful source of ideas, enthusiasm and wisdom who works with a wide variety of people to make them feel welcome and valued.
Wolters leads more than 30 on-campus recruiting events each year for female high school students interested in engineering. Working with the Office of Admissions and within the schedule of the campus Orange and Blue Days and Admitted Student Days, Wolters connects visitors with current students and administrators to provide personal perspectives.
Tim Yardley, the associate director of technology in the College of Engineering’s Information Trust Institute, has been a senior lead researcher and active contributor to more than $50 million of ITI research, while also developing more than $30 million of his own research secured on behalf of the university.
Yardley has leveraged his extensive industry connections to open new opportunities and to aid existing efforts. Some of these contributions include bringing in external speakers and acquiring millions of dollars of hardware and software donations.
Yardley has helped to guide Ph.D. students and brings valuable nonacademic experience and background to his service as a guest lecturer to security classes. He independently launched a multiinstitutional effort to develop an open curriculum for cybersecurity in industrial control systems; developed training material for internal and external use within the industry and beyond; acted as a lead on numerous years of the TCIPG Summer School; and acquired the external support to make the ITI academic mission successful.