CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Six academic professionals will be honored with 2019 Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence awards at a reception April 10.
The CAPE award was established to recognize academic professionals for their work, personal and professional contributions. Individuals are nominated, reviewed by a committee and approved by Chancellor Robert Jones.
Each of the honorees receives a $1,000 cash award.
This year's honorees are:
Adam Bleakney has served as the head coach of the men’s and women’s wheelchair track and road-racing team since 2005. An employee of the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services, Bleakney has coached student-athletes to 44 medals in three Paralympics and 43 medals in four world championships. The athletes he has trained possess 13 world records.
In addition to managing the team’s day-to-day operations, Bleakney organizes training sessions; coordinates the strength and conditioning training for all varsity wheelchair athletes; and incorporates the latest training methods and modalities to promote a lifestyle of fitness and long-term health, self-accountability and personal excellence.
Bleakney also collaborates with professors and corporations to develop technology and training methods to enhance athlete performance. For example, he served as the primary consultant in a manufacturer’s initiative to create and fabricate new racing technology. He also served as the primary consultant for the aeronautical engineering department’s research study of the aerodynamic profile of a racing wheelchair, and he designed and implemented telecommunication-driven indoor resistance-training rollers.
Melissa Edwards, the executive director of strategic research communications in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, provides ongoing strategic communications guidance and counsel to the vice chancellor for research, senior research administrators, research-active faculty, and central public affairs and governmental relations staff. She also leads the university-level communications designed to enhance the safe, ethical and productive conduct of research at Illinois.
Like many of the university's most impactful and effective leaders, Edwards has developed strong relationships with campus collaborators to navigate the university’s complex structure. She led efforts to coalesce research-focused communications officers throughout campus into a networked working group; built the Office of Proposal Development into a service-oriented operation that helps researchers compete for large grants; and most recently, supported Cancer Center efforts to secure National Cancer Institute designation.
Edwards and her team develop publications, campaigns, programs, events and collaboration tools to showcase university discoveries and expertise. None of these functions existed in any coordinated, organized fashion until she took the job six years ago.
Maria Gillombardo is a research development manager in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. Over the past seven years, she has worked closely with faculty in the humanities, arts and humanistic social sciences in support of their scholarly and creative research. She collaborates with the associate VCR for humanities, arts and related fields, and with faculty advisers; together, they have developed an infrastructure for research project design and development that includes meeting with individual faculty to identify and strategize funding avenues, sponsoring agency-specific information sessions, connecting faculty members with institutional resources, and providing extensive proposal development support. Her enthusiasm and dedication to supporting faculty members at all stages of their careers and research endeavors is evident through these initiatives and services.
Her editorial skills and knowledge of federal and private funding agencies enable her to assist faculty across a range of fields, including many of the faculty members who in recent years have received prestigious fellowships, grants and residencies from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (Guggenheim Fellowship) and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For 27 years, Rhonda Kirts, the associate dean of students, has managed difficult student crises in her frequent role as the emergency dean. Whether it’s waiting in the hospital for a deceased student’s family to arrive or staffing a student group’s protest on the Quad, Kirts is likely involved.
Kirts, a 29-year veteran of the university, also oversaw New Student Orientation for almost two decades, helping undergraduates and their families become acquainted with the resources to ensure their success.
As an undergraduate at Illinois, Kirts served as student body president, and for 14 years as an employee she was the adviser to the Illinois Student Senate/Government. Kirts also has served as the faculty guide at Commencement, helped lead the committee that developed the Illinois Leadership Center, was the adviser to Block I and IBook, assisted with major special events and has advised senior university leadership on responding to student-related crises.
George Roadcap is a hydrogeologist and groundwater modeler at the Illinois State Water Survey, part of the Prairie Research Institute. He has been instrumental in helping put together recommendations for protecting the Mahomet Aquifer, which provides drinking water to more than 800,000 people in central Illinois. There have been several threats to the aquifer in recent years, and Roadcap was the primary developer of the Mahomet Aquifer groundwater flow model, the single most important tool for understanding and managing the aquifer.
In addition to his work on the Mahomet Aquifer, Roadcap guides a team of highly successful and respected modelers in the Groundwater Section at the ISWS. The section’s modeling capabilities have leaped forward in recent years with the development of novel modeling and data display techniques, leading to several publications in scientific journals.
Roadcap has been an adjunct professor in geology since 2012, teaching a 400-level hydrogeology course and guest lecturing to share his real-world experiences. State agencies often contact Roadcap for assistance, such as his 2016 work in helping the state Department of Natural Resources investigate well contaminations in White County.
Sarah Zehr is the assistant vice president of academic affairs in the University of Illinois System, working with academic programs and activities for the three universities in the system. She served on the University Administration Realignment Task Force, which identified System administrative units that could operate more efficiently on the campus level. The System ultimately transferred seven units including purchasing, grants and contracts post awards, and budgeting.
Zehr’s role also includes reviewing and updating system-wide academic policies. She staffed a committee that reviewed and updated the system Conflict of Commitment and Interest Policy and she recently initiated the review process for the system’s research integrity policy. Zehr provides data and reporting for state legislators and policymakers as they determine higher education policy to help prepare System leadership for appropriations hearings and other legislative meetings. She also plans and administers the President’s Executive Leadership Program, which includes senior faculty and administrators from the Urbana campus.
She introduced the Day of Service event in 2014 with more than 1,000 volunteers representing faculty members, staff, students and local community members. Zehr initiated a partnership with Illini Fighting Hunger, a registered student organization dedicated to hosting meal-packaging events, which highlighted the power of student leadership.