PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 23, No. 9, Nov. 6, 2003

Cathy Thurston plans to travel, spend time with family

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
(217) 244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Educating with technology Cathy Thurston, who retired June 30 from the College of Education, is working part time on special projects and the Technology Across Learning Environments for New Teachers program, an investigation into the most effective ways to incorporate technology into teacher preparation and practice.

Cathy Thurston’s transition to retirement has not gone as smoothly as she had hoped, but not because she suddenly had too much time on her hands and a paucity of ideas on how to fill it.

Thurston, who retired June 30 as director of the Office of Educational Technology in the College of Education, had a hectic summer because her 92-year-old father suffered some health crises. Thurston, like her two brothers, traveled to and from upstate New York several times to see their father through his illness, coordinate long-term care for him because he could no longer live alone, and look after his home.

Thurston and her husband, Paul, who retired from the College of Education faculty about a year ago, are hoping that they soon will be able to begin traveling and spending more time with their family.

“We’re anxious to get into the grandparent role,” Cathy Thurston said.

So one destination that is certain to be on the Thurstons’ itinerary is northern Virginia, where their daughter, son-in-law and 18-month-old granddaughter live. The proud grandparents also are eagerly anticipating the birth of their daughter’s second child, due in January.

Two of the Thurstons’ three sons are close to home – one lives in Champaign-Urbana, another is a UI undergraduate, and the third attends law school at Loyola University, Chicago.

In addition to spending time with their children and grandchildren, Cathy Thurston and her husband also are hoping to do some international traveling. The Thurstons share an interest in Latin America. Cathy Thurston was a foreign-exchange student during high school and lived in Colombia; Paul Thurston lived for a time in Costa Rica and would like to visit there again.

Although Paul Thurston has a yen to visit Australia, Cathy Thurston is uncertain about being separated from their Labrador retriever, Bruin, that long.

“We’ve got lots of ideas about places where we want to go, but we really haven’t had time yet to sit down and really plan trips. We’re anxious to do that,” Cathy Thurston said.

In addition to traveling, the Thurstons hope to spend more time playing tennis and skiing, two sports they both enjoy.

Cathy Thurston has returned to the Office of Educational Technology part time to work on some special projects. She also is culminating a three-year grant project funded by the U.S. Department of Education that familiarizes teacher candidates with new technologies and helps them integrate the tools into their curricula.

Before Cathy Thurston joined the College of Education, she taught English and language arts in public schools in Connecticut, Iowa and Illinois for 16 years, including 10 years at Champaign Central High School. That was in the 1980s, when personal computing was in its infancy, and Thurston, who was teaching advanced rhetoric and other writing courses at Central, coordinated the PLATO software program in the high school’s reading lab. She also became affiliated with the university as a teaching associate through Project Excel by IBM, a program sponsored by the department of English that explored using word processing software to teach writing.

“It helped me get over here at the university and see what kind of possibilities there might be and got me interested in doing some initial course work in technology and writing,” Thurston said.

In 1990, Thurston earned a doctorate in educational technology at Illinois. She had earned a bachelor’s in English at Cornell University and a master’s in teaching English at Wesleyan University previously.

Hired by the College of Education in 1990 to coordinate various grant projects, she became an adjunct faculty member in the department of educational policy studies in 2001. When the College of Education formed the Office of Educational Technology in 1996, Thurston was named acting director and then was appointed director the following year.

Her responsibilities included coordinating the Moveable Feast Statewide Summer Institute, which earned an exemplary program award from the university in 1998, the institute’s inaugural year, and received Microsoft’s Model Professional Development Program Award in July 2003.

Thurston’s work also resulted in her being honored with the Russell E. Zwoyer Academic Professional Excellence Award from the College of Education in 2000.

“It was a very exciting time for the college to expand facilities and opportunities for technology,” Thurston said. “I’ve really enjoyed being part of that. We’ve got just a terrific group of people in this office and the college so it’s been a pleasure to be here.”

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