Nov 20, 2008 9:00 am73 views
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.