Endowed Professorships

Joanne Diaz, Isaac Funk Professorship

Established in 1866 by the Funk family to honor Illinois Wesleyan founder Isaac Funk

Professor of English Joanne Diaz joined Illinois Wesleyan in 2008 and received the 2022 Kemp Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence. Diaz earned a master’s in creative writing from New York University and a doctorate in English literature from Northwestern University. Her poetry work has appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine and New England Review. Her published books include The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, co-edited with Ian Morris (University of Chicago Press, 2015); My Favorite Tyrants, winner of the 2013 Brittingham Prize in Poetry (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014); and The Lessons, winner of the 2009 Gerald Cable Book Award (Silverfish Review Press, 2011).

James Plath, R. Forrest Colwell Chair of English

Established in 1972 to honor R. Forrest Colwell, businessman, philanthropist and trustee

A widely recognized scholar on the works of Ernest Hemingway and John Updike, James Plath is co-founder and president of The John Updike Society, as well as the author of four books and numerous journal articles and invited presentations on Hemingway and Updike. He has published two chapbooks of poetry and eight academic books on literature, most recently The 100 Greatest Literary Characters (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Critical Insights: Conspiracies (Salem Press, 2020). In 1995, Plath taught American literature as a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies in Barbados. Plath’s short stories and poems have been published in ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Amelia, Apalachee Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Cream City Review, The North American Review and many others. From 2020-21, he curated all of the exhibits for the Shillington, Pennsylvania-based John Updike Childhood Home museum, which The Wall Street Journal called “a worthy site of literary pilgrimage.”A 2004 recipient of the University’s highest teaching honor, the then-named Pantagraph Award for Teaching Excellence, Plath has served as faculty advisor to The Argus, the University’s student newspaper, since 1988. He has served as chair of the Promotion and Tenure Committee and chair of the English department. Robert Bray, who formerly held the chair until his retirement in 2014, continues as Colwell Chair Emeritus.

Kevin Sullivan, McFee Endowed Professorship and Professor of Accounting

Established in 1984 from the estate of Daisy McFee to honor her family

Kevin Sullivan joined Illinois Wesleyan in the Religion Department in 2006 and was named Professor of Accounting in 2021. He served as Associate Dean of Curricular and Faculty Development from 2017-2021. He has served in multiple service and leadership roles at Illinois Wesleyan and in professional organizations, and has authored numerous publications and presentations. Sullivan earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan; a master's degree from the University of Notre Dame; a Diploma in Jewish Studies from the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford.

Bryan McCannon ’98, Robert S. Eckley Endowed Professor of Economics and Dean of the School of Business and Economics

Established in 1986 to honor Robert S. Eckley, Illinois Wesleyan University president from 1968-86

Bryan McCannon '98 is the inaugural director of the IWU School of Business and Economics. McCannon studied economics and business administration at Illinois Wesleyan and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Pennsylvania State University. Prior to IWU he served as an associate professor of economics at West Virginia University, where he also directed the Center for Free Enterprise. He served on the faculties of Saint Bonaventure University, Wake Forest University and Elmira College previously as well. Dr. McCannon currently serves on executive boards to three academic societies and is an affiliated scholar in the Computational Justice Lab at Claremont Graduate University. The bulk of his research falls within the field of law and economics as it uses rigorous data analysis methods and insights from economics to study the incentives and decision making of actors in the legal system.

Robert A. Kearney, Edward R. Telling ’46 Endowed Professor of Business Administration

Established in 1987 by Telling, a 1946 Illinois Wesleyan graduate and former chairman and chief executive officer of Sears, Roebuck & Co.

A recipient of the Student Senate Professor of the Year Award, Kearney created and now teaches a Trial Litigation course that is unique to college campuses. Kearney earned a juris doctorate from the law school at the University of Notre Dame, where he served as Executive Editor of the Law Review. He has received four national awards for his scholarship in employment law and intellectual property, and his research has been cited in briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States and the California Supreme Court. Kearney has served as chair of the Department of Business Administration, chair of CUPP, vice chair of the Faculty Development Committee and faculty visitor to the Board of Trustees. Kearney received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, and earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He joined the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan in 2002 after an appointment as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. He had previously worked in private legal practice in Chicago and clerked for the Honorable Daniel A. Manion, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Amber Kujath '97, Deloris Helsley Ascher Professorship of Nursing and Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences

Established in 2007 in honor of Deloris Ascher '53

Amber Kujath joined Illinois Wesleyan as the Director of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences in 2023. She previously served at the College of Nursing at Rush University in Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2019, Kujath was honored as the Rush University College of Nursing Education MVP and was recognized for Distinguished Service to the National Association of Orthopaedic Nurses. Previous honors included the 40 under 40 Emerging Nurse Leader Award from the Illinois Nurses Association, National Association of Orthopaedic Nurses Foundation Leadership Award, and the Nurse Educator Fellowship Award from the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Her clinical experience includes more than 15 years at medical centers in Bloomington and Chicago. She earned bachelor's degrees in nursing and in business administration at IWU. She earned a master's and Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Carolyn Nadeau, Byron S. Tucci Professor and Professor of Spanish

Established in 2010 by Byron S. Tucci '66 as part of the Transforming Lives Campaign

Named to the Byron S. Tucci Professorship in 2010, Carolyn Nadeau specializes in 16th- and 17th-century Spanish literature. She is the author of two books,Women of the Prologue: Imitation, Myth, and Magic in Don Quixote I(Bucknell University, 2002) and a critical edition of Francisco de Quevedo'sEl buscon(European Masterpieces, Cervantes and Co., 2007), and more than a dozen articles that have appeared in such journals asBulletin of Hispanic Studies, La Perinola,andBulletin of Cervantes Society. The recipient of an American Philosophical Society grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes awards, Nadeau has also been honored by the Spanish Ministry of Culture with Cultural Cooperation grants. She received Illinois Wesleyan's teaching excellence award in 2003. Her service to the university includes developing and directing IWU study abroad programs in England and Spain, chairing the Curriculum Council, serving as Vice Chair of the Council on University Programs and Policy, and as a member on the Promotion and Tenure committee, the Strategic Planning & Budgeting committee, and a presidential search committee. She is also active in the local community serving on the board of the Immigration Project and volunteering at the Community Health Care Clinic and in efforts to promote safe immigration reform.

Edgar Lehr, Robert W. Harrington Endowed Professorship

Created as part of the Transforming Lives Campaign in 2010 by Bob Harrington, former chair of the University’s Business and Economics Department

Professor of Biology Edgar Lehr joined the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan in 2009. His research and publications have been recognized by National Geographic and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Lehr earned a master's degree in biology from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, and a doctorate degree in zoology from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurtam Main, Germany. His primary research focuses on the biodiversity of amphibians and reptiles in the neotropics. Lehr and his colleagues have scientifically described numerous new species of Peruvian amphibians and reptiles. He has earned a silver medal from the Natural History Museum at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, in recognition of his long-term collaboration with the institution.

Mike Theune, Robert W. Harrington Endowed Professorship

Created as part of the Transforming Lives Campaign in 2010 by Bob Harrington, former chair of the University’s Business and Economics Department

A member of the Illinois Wesleyan faculty since 2002, Theune was promoted to professor in 2015. Theune earned bachelor’s degrees from Hope College and the University of Oxford, a master’s from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Theune’s courses focus on creative writing, poetry, and Romantic literature. Theune writes criticism and poetry, and his scholarship has three main concerns: the poetic turn (places where poems radically change their focus); the assessment of poetry; and Romantic poet John Keats. Theune has authored numerous essays and reviews, and he has edited, co-edited or co-authored three books: Keats’s Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives (co-editor, with Brian Rejack, 2019); We Need to Talk: A New Method for Evaluating Poetry (co-author, with Bob Broad, 2018); Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns (editor, 2007).

Ram Mohan, Wendell and Loretta Hess Professor of Chemistry

Established in 2012 by Wendell Hess, a professor of chemistry whose 27 years at IWU included a term as acting president in 1988

Ram Mohan was first named to the Beling Professorship in 2008, then to the Hess Professorship in 2013. He has received multiple research grants from the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society and from Research Corporation. Mohan was recognized for co-authoring an article in the international journal Tetrahedron that became one of the 50 most-cited articles from 2004-07. In 2003 he received the Young Observer Award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Mohan was the 2002 winner of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Distinguished Alumnus Award; a 2001 winner of the national Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award; and a recipient of Faculty Travel Awards from The American Chemical Society in 1997 and 1999. Mohan has co-authored numerous articles with Illinois Wesleyan undergraduates as co-authors, and a 2007 article was recognized internationally as an innovative study of the reactivity of ionic liquids.

Willam Monroe, Betty Ritchie-Birrer '47 and Ivan Birrer Endowed Professor

Established in 2013 by a major gift to the Transforming Lives Campaign to support a faculty member in Psychology or any of the Social Sciences

The 2012 winner of the Kemp Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence, Professor of Political Science William Munro is a scholar of the politics of state formation and development in the global south, as well as the international food economy. He is the author of The Moral Economy of the State: Conservation, Community Development, and State-Making in Zimbabwe (Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998), and co-author of Fighting for the Future of Food: Activists versus Agribusiness in the Struggle over Biotechnology (University of Minnesota Press, 2010). Munro joined the Illinois Wesleyan faculty in 2000. He earned a doctorate in political science from Yale University, a bachelor's and master's degree from Cambridge University, and a bachelor's from Natal University in South Africa. At Illinois Wesleyan, Munro has served as a director of the International Studies program and of the John and Erma Stutzman Peace Fellows Program and chaired the chair for the Technos Award Selection Committee. He has served as a faculty advisor to Amnesty International and the International House on campus. He was a member of the Committee for a Sustainable Campus and the First-Year Advisory Board.

Gabe Spalding, B. Charles and Joyce Eichhorn Ames Professor

Established by a lead gift to the Transforming Lives Campaign by Chuck ’50 and Jay Ames ’49, their first of 10 matching professorships.

As a professor of physics, Spalding has led a national conversation regarding laboratory courses for undergraduate students. This engagement has resulted in the American Physical Society (APS) awarding him the inaugural Jonathan Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction. The same organization elected him to Fellowship in the Society, an honor limited to no more than one-half of one percent of the APS membership. Spalding’s extensive scholarship in the area of optical tweezing and beam sculpting led to his recognition as a Fellow by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. His scholarship has resulted in more than 70 peer-reviewed papers over the past 25 years. For more than 10 years, Spalding has taken Illinois Wesleyan students to the University of St. Andrews and Dundee in Scotland where they take part in beam sculpting research projects, most recently developing non-invasive methods of targeting and destroying tumors. Spalding earned a doctorate from Harvard University, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the Illinois Wesleyan faculty in 1996.

James Simeone, Sally A. Firestone Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice

Established by Sally A. Firestone ’69 to honor her friends, Susan and classmate Ben Rhodes ’69.

Professor of Political Science James Simeone joined the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan in 1992. Simeone is the co-founder of IWU’s Action Research Center and the originator of IWU’s Advocacy Minor. He earned a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degree in political science from the University of Chicago. His research examines the development of liberal democratic values and institutions amid the pressures of free market capitalism and group identity politics. His books include The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021) and The Bottomland Republic: Democracy and Slavery in Frontier Illinois (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000).

Will Jaeckle, Semour and Diana Galina Endowed Professorship

Jaeckle began teaching at Illinois Wesleyan as an adjunct assistant professor in 1996 before becoming an assistant professor in 2001; he was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2015. Jaeckle earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Humboldt State University and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Southern California. Jaeckle’s research is focused on aspects of the life history, development, physiology, and ecology of invertebrate animals, with particular emphasis on their free-living developmental stages called larvae. His primary research interests relate to understanding how and in what form aquatic invertebrates and their larvae acquire food from the environment. The author of numerous publications, Jaeckle is currently working with IWU research students to assess the ability of aquatic animals to take up dissolved organic materials (DOM) from marine and fresh waters, the degree to which absorbed DOM is distributed throughout their bodies, and ultimately, the importance of DOM as a source of energy and nutrition.