Endowed Professorships

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:

1. The Isaac Funk Professorship, established 1866
2. The George C. and Ella Beach Lewis Chair of Biology, established 1963
3. The Caroline F. Rupert Chair of Nursing, established 1961
4. The Adlai H. Rust Chair of Insurance/Finance, established 1971
5. The R. Forrest Colwell Chair of English, established 1972
6. The Fern Rosetta Sherff Professorship in Music, established 1977
7. The Miner Linnaeus Sherff Professorship of Botany, established 1977
8. The McFee Professorship of Religion, established 1984
9. The Dr. Robert S. Eckley Professorship of Economics, established 1986
10. The Edward R. Telling Professorship of Business Administration, established 1987
11. The Dr. Kenji Tanaka Professorship of Japanese Studies, established 1991
12. The Earl H. and Marian A. Beling Professorship of Natural Sciences, established 1998
13. The Deloris Helsley Ascher Professorship of Nursing, established 2007
14. The Byron S. Tucci Professorship, established 2010
15. Robert W. Harrington Professorship (2), established 2010
16. Wendell and Loretta Hess Professorship of Chemistry, established 2012
17. Betty Ritchie-Birrer '47 and Ivan Birrer Endowed Professorship, established 2013
18. B. Charles and Joyce Eichhorn Ames Professorship, established 2014
19. Ben and Susan Rhodes Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice (2), established 2014
20. Davis U. Merwin Endowed Professorship in History, established 2015
21. Semour and Diana Galina Endowed Professorship

Joanne Diaz, Isaac Funk Professorship

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).

Contact: jdiaz@iwu.edu

Given Harper, Beach Lewis Chair of Biology

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.

Contact: gharper@iwu.edu

James Plath, R. Forrest Colwell Chair of English

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.

Contact: jplath@iwu.edu

Scott Ferguson, Fern Rosetta Sherff Professor of Music

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.

Contact: sferguso@iwu.edu

Robert A. Kearney, Edward R. Telling ’46 Endowed Professor of Business Administration

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.

Contact: rkearney@iwu.edu

Marian A. Beling Professor of Natural Sciences

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.

Contact: the@iwu.edu

Byron S. Tucci Professor and Professor of Spanish

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.

Contact: cnadeau@iwu.edu

Robert W. Harrington Endowed Professorship

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.

Contact: elehr@iwu.edu

Robert W. Harrington Endowed Professorship

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).

Contact: mtheune@iwu.edu

Wendell and Loretta Hess Professor of Chemistry

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.

Contact: rmohan@iwu.edu

Betty Ritchie-Birrer '47 and Ivan Birrer Endowed Professor

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.

Contact: wmunro@iwu.edu

B. Charles and Joyce Eichhorn Ames Professor

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.

Contact: gspaldin@iwu.edu

Ben and Susan Rhodes Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice

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. 

Contact: cschumac@iwu.edu

Ben and Susan Rhodes Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice

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).

Contact: jsimeone@iwu.edu

Semour and Diana Galina Endowed Professorship

(Named 2019)

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.

Contact: wjaeckle@iwu.edu