There is a long tradition in higher education of appointing faculty members to endowed
professorships and chairs. At Illinois Wesleyan this honor is reserved for members
of the faculty who have distinguished themselves through exemplary teaching and active
engagement of students, outstanding scholarship and/or artistic achievement, and service
at the very highest levels of the University. The guiding principle in awarding an
endowed professorship or chair is that the individual represents our highest aspirations
for faculty members on this campus.
These distinguished professorships are named in honor of the generous donors who made
them possible. Listed by year established:
Established in 1866 by the Funk family to honor Illinois Wesleyan founder Isaac Funk
(Named 2022)
Professor of English Joanne Diaz joined Illinois Wesleyan in 2008 and received the
2022 Kemp Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence.
Diaz earned a master’s in creative writing from New York University and a doctorate
in English literature from Northwestern University.
Her poetry work has appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine and New England Review. Her published books include The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, co-edited with Ian Morris (University of Chicago Press, 2015); My Favorite Tyrants, winner of the 2013 Brittingham Prize in Poetry (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014);
and The Lessons, winner of the 2009 Gerald Cable Book Award (Silverfish Review Press, 2011).
Established in 1963 through a gift to honor George C. Lewis and Mrs. Ella Beach Lewis
(Named 2011)
Named to the Beach Lewis Chair of Biology in 2011, R. Given Harper is an avian ecologist
whose scholarly work ranges from documenting DDT and heavy metal contaminants in North
American gray wolves, to estimating the breeding populations of red-tailed hawks and
American Kestrels in Illinois.
While at Illinois Wesleyan, Harper has served as chair of the Biology Department and
co-chair of the Premedical/Predental Advisory Committee. He has been a leader in sustainability
efforts on campus, and together with Environmental Studies Program Director Abigail
Jahiel contributed a chapter in Strategies for Sustainability: Stories from the Ivory Tower (MIT Press, 2004).
Harper's work has been recognized with grants by the Rockefeller Foundation, the National
Science Foundation, the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Joyce Foundation.
He has presented his research across the United States and the globe, from the American
Ornithologists Union in Quebec to the International Ornithological Congress in New
Zealand. His work has been published in the American Naturalist, Environmental Pollution, Chemosphere, Journal of Field Ornithology,
Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, Journal of Avian Biology,
Ecology and Behavioral Ecology.
Established in 1972 to honor R. Forrest Colwell, businessman, philanthropist and trustee
(Named 2015)
A widely recognized scholar on the works of Ernest Hemingway and John Updike, James
Plath is co-founder and president of The John Updike Society, as well as the author
of four books and numerous journal articles and invited presentations on Hemingway
and Updike. He has also published on F. Scott Fitzgerald, and most recently edited Critical Insights: Raymond Carver (Salem Press, 2013). In 1995, Plath taught American literature as a visiting Fulbright
Scholar at the University of the West Indies in Barbados.
Plath’s short stories and poems have been published in ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Amelia, Apalachee Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer,
Cream City Review, The North American Review and many others. Since 2005 he has been a film critic, a member of the Online Film
Critics Society, and a Rotten Tomatometer critic.
A 2004 recipient of the University’s highest teaching honor, the then-named Pantagraph Award for Teaching Excellence, Plath has served as faculty advisor to The Argus, the University’s student newspaper, since 1988. He has served as chair of the Promotion
and Tenure Committee, chair of the English department and is a continuing member of
the Faculty-Staff Recognition Committee.
Robert Bray, who formerly held the chair until his retirement in 2014, continues as
Colwell Chair Emeritus.
Established in 1977 to honor the extraordinary generosity of the Sherff family
(Named 2022)
Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Scott Ferguson joined the faculty
of Illinois Wesleyan in 1996.
He earned a bachelor’s degree at Oberlin Conservatory, a master’s degree in fine arts
from the University of California, Irvine, and a doctorate in musical arts from the
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
His choirs have appeared on tour around the globe and he has presented choral workshops
and lectures in the U.S., Europe and South America. Under his direction, the IWU Collegiate
Choir maintains the IWU Choral Commission Series, the oldest collegiate commission
series in the United States, which has added significant works to the choral repertoire
and resulted in a number of important world premieres.
Established in 1987 by Telling, a 1946 Illinois Wesleyan graduate and former chairman
and chief executive officer of Sears, Roebuck & Co.
(Named 2014)
A recipient of the Student Senate Professor of the Year Award, Kearney created and
now teaches a Trial Litigation course that is unique to college campuses.
Kearney earned a juris doctorate from the law school at the University of Notre Dame,
where he served as Executive Editor of the Law Review. He has received four national
awards for his scholarship in employment law and intellectual property, and his research
has been cited in briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States and the California
Supreme Court.
Kearney has served as chair of the Department of Business Administration, chair of
CUPP, vice chair of the Faculty Development Committee and faculty visitor to the Board
of Trustees.
Kearney received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, and earned
a Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He
joined the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan in 2002 after an appointment as a visiting
professor at the University of Michigan. He had previously worked in private legal
practice in Chicago and clerked for the Honorable Daniel A. Manion, Circuit Judge,
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Established by the Belings in 1998 in recognition of the quality of Illinois Wesleyan
faculty
(Named 2014)
A prolific researcher and author, Professor of Mathematics Tian-Xiao He has published
111 papers and five books. His research interests include approximation theory, numerical
analysis, wavelet analysis, multivariate splines, number theory, theory of functions,
enumerative combinatorics and combinatorial analysis.
He was voted Student Senate Professor of the Year in 1994. He supervises student research
projects each semester and has served as advisor to Pi Mu Epsilon (national mathematics
honor society) and to the Illinois Wesleyan Mathematics Society, and has served on
the Academic Appeals Board, Curriculum Council and Nominating Committee.
He earned a Ph.D. at Dalian University of Technology in his native China. Leetsch
Charles Hsu, an international expert on combinatorics and number theory, directed
his dissertation. He earned a second Ph.D. from Texas A&M University so he could work
with Charles K. Chui, an internationally renowned expert on approximation theory.
Established in 2010 by Byron S. Tucci '66 as part of the Transforming Lives Campaign
(Named 2010)
Named to the Byron S. Tucci Professorship in 2010, Carolyn Nadeau specializes in 16th- and 17th-century Spanish literature. She is the author of two books, Women of the Prologue: Imitation, Myth, and Magic in Don Quixote I (Bucknell University, 2002) and a critical edition of Francisco de Quevedo's El buscon (European Masterpieces, Cervantes and Co., 2007), and more than a dozen articles
that have appeared in such journals as Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, La Perinola,and Bulletin of Cervantes Society.
The recipient of an American Philosophical Society grant and two National Endowment
for the Humanities Summer Institutes awards, Nadeau has also been honored by the Spanish
Ministry of Culture with Cultural Cooperation grants. She received Illinois Wesleyan's
teaching excellence award in 2003.
Her service to the university includes developing and directing IWU study abroad programs
in England and Spain, chairing the Curriculum Council, serving as Vice Chair of the
Council on University Programs and Policy, and as a member on the Promotion and Tenure
committee, the Strategic Planning & Budgeting committee, and a presidential search
committee. She is also active in the local community serving on the board of the Immigration
Project and volunteering at the Community Health Care Clinic and in efforts to promote
safe immigration reform.
Created as part of the Transforming Lives Campaign in 2010 by Bob Harrington, former
chair of the University’s Business and Economics Department
(Named 2022)
Professor of Biology Edgar Lehr joined the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan in 2009.
His research and publications have been recognized by National Geographic and the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Lehr earned a master's degree in biology from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz,
Germany, and a doctorate degree in zoology from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University
Frankfurtam Main, Germany. His primary research focuses on the biodiversity of amphibians
and reptiles in the neotropics.
Lehr and his colleagues have scientifically described numerous new species of Peruvian
amphibians and reptiles. He has earned a silver medal from the Natural History Museum
at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, in recognition of his long-term
collaboration with the institution.
Created as part of the Transforming Lives Campaign in 2010 by Bob Harrington, former
chair of the University’s Business and Economics Department
(Named 2019)
A member of the Illinois Wesleyan faculty since 2002, Theune was promoted to professor
in 2015. Theune earned bachelor’s degrees from Hope College and the University of
Oxford, a master’s from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of
Houston.
Theune’s courses focus on creative writing, poetry, and Romantic literature. Theune
writes criticism and poetry, and his scholarship has three main concerns: the poetic
turn (places where poems radically change their focus); the assessment of poetry;
and Romantic poet John Keats.
Theune has authored numerous essays and reviews, and he has edited, co-edited or co-authored
three books: Keats’s Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives (co-editor, with
Brian Rejack, 2019); We Need to Talk: A New Method for Evaluating Poetry (co-author,
with Bob Broad, 2018); Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns (editor, 2007).
Established in 2012 by Wendell Hess, a professor of chemistry whose 27 years at IWU
included a term as acting president in 1988
(Named 2008 & 2013)
Ram Mohan was first named to the Beling Professorship in 2008, then to the Hess Professorship
in 2013. He has received multiple research grants from the National Science Foundation,
the American Chemical Society and from Research Corporation.
Mohan was recognized for co-authoring an article in the international journal Tetrahedron
that became one of the 50 most-cited articles from 2004-07. In 2003 he received the
Young Observer Award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Mohan
was the 2002 winner of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Distinguished
Alumnus Award; a 2001 winner of the national Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award;
and a recipient of Faculty Travel Awards from The American Chemical Society in 1997
and 1999.
Mohan has co-authored numerous articles with Illinois Wesleyan undergraduates as co-authors,
and a 2007 article was recognized internationally as an innovative study of the reactivity
of ionic liquids.
Established in 2013 by a major gift to the Transforming Lives Campaign to support
a faculty member in Psychology or any of the Social Sciences
(Named 2013)
The 2012 winner of the Kemp Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence, Professor of
Political Science William Munro is a scholar of the politics of state formation and
development in the global south, as well as the international food economy. He is
the author of The Moral Economy of the State: Conservation, Community Development,
and State-Making in Zimbabwe (Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998),
and co-author of Fighting for the Future of Food: Activists versus Agribusiness in
the Struggle over Biotechnology (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
Munro joined the Illinois Wesleyan faculty in 2000. He earned a doctorate in political
science from Yale University, a bachelor's and master's degree from Cambridge University,
and a bachelor's from Natal University in South Africa.
At Illinois Wesleyan, Munro has served as a director of the International Studies
program and of the John and Erma Stutzman Peace Fellows Program and chaired the chair
for the Technos Award Selection Committee. He has served as a faculty advisor to Amnesty
International and the International House on campus. He was a member of the Committee
for a Sustainable Campus and the First-Year Advisory Board.
Established by a lead gift to the Transforming Lives Campaign by Chuck ’50 and Jay
Ames ’49, their first of 10 matching professorships.
(Named 2014)
As a professor of physics, Spalding has led a national conversation regarding laboratory
courses for undergraduate students. This engagement has resulted in the American Physical
Society (APS) awarding him the inaugural Jonathan Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert
Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction. The same organization elected
him to Fellowship in the Society, an honor limited to no more than one-half of one
percent of the APS membership.
Spalding’s extensive scholarship in the area of optical tweezing and beam sculpting
led to his recognition as a Fellow by SPIE, the international society for optics and
photonics. His scholarship has resulted in more than 70 peer-reviewed papers over
the past 25 years.
For more than 10 years, Spalding has taken Illinois Wesleyan students to the University
of St. Andrews and Dundee in Scotland where they take part in beam sculpting research
projects, most recently developing non-invasive methods of targeting and destroying
tumors.
Spalding earned a doctorate from Harvard University, and holds a bachelor’s degree
from Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the Illinois Wesleyan faculty in
1996.
Established by Sally A. Firestone ’69 to honor her friends, Susan and classmate Ben
Rhodes ’69.
(Named 2022)
Professor of Physical Education and Head Men’s and Women’s Track Coach Christopher
Schumacher joined the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan in 1997.
He has led Titan track and field athletes to multiple NCAA Championships and has been
named NCAA Coach of the Year several times. Under Schumacher’s direction, the Titans
have produced more than 290 All-American athletes and many Academic All-Americans.
Schumacher earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in physical education from the
University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. He also serves as the IWU Athletics Diversity &
Inclusion Designee.
Established by Sally A. Firestone ’69 to honor her friends, Susan and classmate Ben
Rhodes ’69.
(Named 2022)
Professor of Political Science James Simeone joined the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan
in 1992.
Simeone is the co-founder of IWU’s Action Research Center and the originator of IWU’s
Advocacy Minor.
He earned a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degree in political science from the
University of Chicago. His research examines the development of liberal democratic
values and institutions amid the pressures of free market capitalism and group identity
politics.
His books include The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 2021) and The Bottomland Republic: Democracy and Slavery in
Frontier Illinois (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000).
Jaeckle began teaching at Illinois Wesleyan as an adjunct assistant professor in 1996
before becoming an assistant professor in 2001; he was promoted to the rank of full
professor in 2015. Jaeckle earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Humboldt State
University and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Southern California.
Jaeckle’s research is focused on aspects of the life history, development, physiology,
and ecology of invertebrate animals, with particular emphasis on their free-living
developmental stages called larvae. His primary research interests relate to understanding
how and in what form aquatic invertebrates and their larvae acquire food from the
environment.
The author of numerous publications, Jaeckle is currently working with IWU research
students to assess the ability of aquatic animals to take up dissolved organic materials
(DOM) from marine and fresh waters, the degree to which absorbed DOM is distributed
throughout their bodies, and ultimately, the importance of DOM as a source of energy
and nutrition.