Chet Zych, associate director and certification officer at the Council on Teacher Education, is a UI “lifer.” With the exception of two years in the Army and three years in Chicago, Zych (pronounced Zitch) has worked on campus virtually all of his life. He started as an 8-year-old strawberry picker on the South Farms in 1954, and after working a few more summers there during his teens (his father was a UI professor of horticulture), he spent two summers working for the Illinois Natural History Survey. He also worked in food service at the Illini Union, and then as a records officer first in the Office of Admissions and Records and then in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He managed a bookstore in Chicago before returning to the university in 1981 as a records officer I for the council and has “been here ever since,” he says.
A graduate of University High School and the UI, Zych holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a Latin American studies minor.
What is the Council on Teacher Education?
Each campus has a Council on Teacher Education office – it’s in the statutes for the university. We have 32 teacher education programs on this campus right now, and they’re scattered across six colleges and two schools. Most people think that everything is in the College of Education, but that’s not the case. We’re a campuswide body even though we’re semi-housed with the College of Education.
What does the council do?
The council has purview over all of the teacher education programs on campus; the council itself is composed of the deans of the colleges that offer preschool through 12th-grade certification programs.
The main thing we do is serve as liaison with the Illinois State Board of Education to ensure that the university’s programs are in compliance with all the state’s rules and regulations for teacher certification. We also process all the applications for certification for all of our candidates.
You’re the certification officer for the Urbana campus. What does that mean?
The Illinois State Board of Education requires that every campus that offers teacher preparation programs designates someone as a certification officer.
As certification officer, I’m responsible for making sure that every student who we recommend for certification has, in fact, met all of the requirements of the program that the state approved for certification.
I also have to monitor everything that’s going on in Springfield. That entails informing faculty members about what new legislation means for us, and how we need to revise our programs to comply.
Our standard line around here is, ‘Certification requirements are subject to change without notice,’ because you never know what the Legislature is going to do.
So, you’ve seen the files of everyone who’s been certified as a teacher here since 1981?
Yes. A few years ago, we estimated that I had certified over 10,000 students to become teachers. We do about 500 certifications per year, and that includes school principals, superintendants, school social workers and speech pathologists, among others.
For your first job with the university, how much did you get paid picking strawberries?
It was something like 5 cents a quart. We started out getting paid by the quart, but eventually I got to be too fast, so I was put on an hourly wage. Back then, in order to pick strawberries, you had to sign a card that said you never had been and never would be a member of the Communist Party.
Really? Why?
It was during the Cold War, and McCarthyism still cast a shadow. I thought that was really interesting, at 8 years old, having to sign a loyalty card for something as innocuous as picking strawberries.
What do you like to do off the job?
I read a lot. I’ve always had a tremendous passion for books, which explains my stint as a bookstore manager. I’m a political junkie who’s glued to CNN. I also enjoy live theater and movies.
My granddaughter is about to turn 9 months old, so that’s a new and wonderful element in my life.
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