2008 Woodie Awards
Alumni Association honors past grads in Hall of Fame
Jeff Mason
Issue date: 7/30/08 Section: News
While most of SIUE is focusing on the oncoming hoard of freshmen, the Alumni Association is looking back at the university's graduates.
With the growth and expansion of SIUE, Director of Alumni Affairs Steve Jankowski said the university decided to start the Alumni Hall of Fame, honoring two alumni from each school except the College of Arts and Sciences, which gets four.
Previously, only one alumnus was honored each year with the Distinguished Alumnus Achievement Award and was asked to speak at commencement each year.
"(Since) the commencement for August this year was cancelled because of the renovations to the Vadalabene (Center), we thought this was a good opportunity to change the system and do something that would recognize more alumni," Jankowski said.
In the future, the commencement speech may be delivered by the winner of the Great Teacher Award.
Those who will be inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame are first chosen by the schools from which they graduated and are then submitted to the Alumni Association.
With the quick decision to start the Hall of Fame comes some other quick decisions on nominations, but it didn't stop them from coming through.
"Since this was the first year, we didn't really have very much time to pick nominations," Christi Donsbach, director of development and alumni relations for the School of Business, said. "The Alumni Association sent out a mass e-mail to all of the alums, and so some (nominations) did come from the community, as far as Texas, and we also had the department chairs nominate alums as well."
Honorees will get more than bragging rights. They will also be honored at a banquet during homecoming and have a plaque made in their honor.
"(The plaque) will then be displayed in the hallway outside each of the respective schools," Jankowski said. "Students will get a chance to say, 'Oh, I didn't know so-an-so went to school here' … so it will generate, we hope anyway, a greater sense of pride in the university."
With the growth and expansion of SIUE, Director of Alumni Affairs Steve Jankowski said the university decided to start the Alumni Hall of Fame, honoring two alumni from each school except the College of Arts and Sciences, which gets four.
Previously, only one alumnus was honored each year with the Distinguished Alumnus Achievement Award and was asked to speak at commencement each year.
"(Since) the commencement for August this year was cancelled because of the renovations to the Vadalabene (Center), we thought this was a good opportunity to change the system and do something that would recognize more alumni," Jankowski said.
In the future, the commencement speech may be delivered by the winner of the Great Teacher Award.
Those who will be inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame are first chosen by the schools from which they graduated and are then submitted to the Alumni Association.
With the quick decision to start the Hall of Fame comes some other quick decisions on nominations, but it didn't stop them from coming through.
"Since this was the first year, we didn't really have very much time to pick nominations," Christi Donsbach, director of development and alumni relations for the School of Business, said. "The Alumni Association sent out a mass e-mail to all of the alums, and so some (nominations) did come from the community, as far as Texas, and we also had the department chairs nominate alums as well."
Honorees will get more than bragging rights. They will also be honored at a banquet during homecoming and have a plaque made in their honor.
"(The plaque) will then be displayed in the hallway outside each of the respective schools," Jankowski said. "Students will get a chance to say, 'Oh, I didn't know so-an-so went to school here' … so it will generate, we hope anyway, a greater sense of pride in the university."
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