Margaret Cupps, a secretary with the Campus Honors Program, began her long affiliation with 4-H at the age of 10. Since then, she’s been a 4-H leader, was the assistant director of the nature area at 4-H Memorial Camp in Monticello for two summers and has judged canning and sewing exhibits at the annual 4-H Expo at Marketplace Mall. While studying for a bachelor’s degree in English, with minors in music and library science, at the Urbana campus, Cupps worked for the former Illini Union Book Center in the Union’s Pine Lounge. Over the years, Cupps also worked as a retail sales associate at the former Robeson’s Department Store in downtown Champaign and as a housewares buyer for a gift store in Oklahoma. Cupps returned to the UI workforce in 1993, working as extra help in the Illini Union Bookstore and the I.D. Center, then transferring to the Campus Honors Program several months later.
What are some of your responsibilities?
I answer phone queries from current and prospective students and parents, open and distribute mail, file, make coffee, set up audio-visual equipment in the morning for the professors, and get the labs and rooms ready. I work on several databases and recently learned to use the digital camera and printing equipment. I also assign jobs to the evening student workers.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The students. They’re very bright, and they are the kind of students who will make a difference in the world. They’re involved. They want to do something to improve our world. The hardest part for me is remembering their names.
Tell me about your activities outside of work.
I belong to the First United Methodist Church in downtown Champaign and am on their building committee. We’re getting ready to celebrate our sesquicentennial, and I’m working on a walking tour of places in downtown Champaign that are part of the history of the church. I also am interested in promoting 4-H.
What’s kept you involved in 4-H?
It’s a worthwhile program. My mom, Marie Chambliss Tapscott, was a 4-H leader for 32 years and a great mentor. I’d like to try to follow in her footsteps. I’ll soon be serving on the Champaign County Committee, which sets policy and provides hands-on help with local programs. 4-H provides the kind of information that people need – practical knowledge – such as taking care of yourself and your surroundings. People mistakenly think of 4-H as an agriculture-interest club, but it teaches all kinds of skills: cooking, photography and environmental projects, to name a few.
Tell me more about your family.
We are a UI family. Our older daughter, Heather, lives here in town and works for the Office of Continuing Education, and her husband, Ryan, works for Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services. Our grandson, Luke, is 5; he’s the poster-child that you see with a bunch of vegetables around him on “Champaign County Agriculture Today.” My husband, Bill, now retired, earned his Ph.D. here and was the administrative editor for the College of Agriculture for 11 years before he left for an administrative position at Oklahoma State University.
Our younger daughter, Laurel, lives in Ottawa with her husband, Brad. Their son, Logan, will be a year old in November. Laurel and Brad breed and show Dalmatians, and I will be going to Indianapolis with them soon to help care for Logan during a dog show.
This summer, my husband I went to visit our nephew’s family in Manassas, Va. We toured the Manassas Museum, the Civil War battlefield and other historic sites. We also drove to Washington, D.C., to see the new Native American Museum and America’s Hangar. America’s Hangar has aviation and space artifacts that the Smithsonian couldn’t fit into the museum at the National Mall, such as the Enola Gay B-29 bomber from World War II and the Space Shuttle Enterprise trainer.
We also went to Ohio for more than a week to rehabilitate the house where my husband was born. It was good to visit the family farm and go to the Medina County Fair.
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