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Julie Hillery
Julie Hillery

Lee Shumow
Lee Shumow

Alan Zollman
Alan Zollman

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News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

April 25, 2005

NIU honors Hillery, Shumow, Zollman
for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching

DeKalb — Good teachers can capture imaginations and light paths. Good teachers can confirm decisions and provide tools. Good teachers can stir passions and change lives.

Northern Illinois University has many good teachers, and Julie Hillery, Lee Shumow and Alan Zollman stand tall among them. The three are this year’s recipients of the Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Hillery, from the School of Family, Consumer and Nutrition Sciences in the College of Health and Human Sciences; Shumow, from the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations in the College of Education; and Zollman, from the Department of Mathematics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; now enjoy the university’s longest-standing honor.

It stands in a class of its own because the nominations and subsequent words of support originate with the young minds on the other side of the classroom.

“When I read what the students had written, I cried. That was the reward: reading these very thoughtful and kind things they had said. I work very hard at teaching, and a lot of them recognize it,” Shumow says. “A lot of them say I’m passionate, and I am passionate. I care about them as people and about their learning. I make them work hard, and I have very high expectations, but I’ll help them achieve them.”

Initiated in 1966, the awards honor excellent undergraduate teaching in the university, encourage improvement of instruction and promote discussion among members of the university community on the subject of teaching.

Nominees must be full-time faculty whose major responsibility is teaching and must have worked at least five full academic years at NIU. Hillery, Shumow and Zollman each receive a check for $2,000.

Here is a closer look at the three.

‘They can see that passion in me’

As a non-traditional student who started college “later in life,” Julie Hillery gained a fervent appreciation of education while continuing to work and thrive in the apparel industry.

“One night,” says Hillery, a professor whose primary appointment is in the Textiles, Apparel and Merchandising program in the School of Family, Consumer and Nutrition Sciences, “I woke up and thought, ‘I just really want to teach college. What an impact those teachers made on me.’ I followed my dream and my passion, and every day I see the rewards of that.”

Now, with a courtesy appointment as the Kohl’s Professor of Retailing and Apparel Merchandising in the Department of Marketing in the College of Business, Hillery strives to make the same impression on her students.

“Many of my students get a lot of pressure from their parents or friends that they should get a different major. I try to show a lot of enthusiasm for what I do, because that’s the key,” says Hillery, who began her career in retailing at the age of 16. “I use humor. I’m in your face. We laugh and have a good time, and we learn something at the same time: You can find something you love to do. You can build a career around something you’re passionate about. I think they can see that passion in me.”

They do.

“Even though I haven’t been a student in the classroom for some time, Dr. Hillery still continues to teach me,” says Donna Brennan, a 2000 alumna and a buyer/product developer for The Art Institute of Chicago. “I always find myself referring to things that Dr. Hillery had taught me while I was a student.”

Hillery’s classes – and her new book, “Careers! Professional Development for Retailing and Apparel Merchandising,” published in January with co-author V. Ann Paulius – expose students to the wide array of career opportunities. Hillery also leads occasional trips to New York City for “an eye-opener.”

“People think they’re going to work at the mall, and that’s the only thing,” Hillery says. “There are so many facets to retailing: buying, retail management, visual merchandising, product development, stylists for photo shoots.”

Hillery also has built a valuable bridge between NIU and Kohl’s. She began cooperating with Kohl’s to place interns from FCNS in their stores in 1998.

Since then, the percentage of interns from NIU who then enter the Kohl’s executive training program has climbed above the national average as has the job acceptance rate of NIU students who interview with the company and the subsequent retention rate. NIU is the No. 1 recruiting university in the country for Kohl’s. Hillery, meanwhile, stays current with industry trends.

Although her career trajectory has given her opportunities to move on – while boggling the mind of someone whose associate’s and bachelor’s degrees came 11 years apart – she has goals here. The TAM program is growing strong, and Hillery hopes to cultivate relationships with alumni and area professionals by creating an advisory board.

But mostly, she says, “NIU values teaching. That’s what keeps me here.”

‘As teachers, you have a choice’

Teenagers can provoke uproarious laughter from Lee Shumow, a professor in the College of Education’s Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations.

They also cause her to listen, to reflect, to empathize, to sympathize, to rejoice and to hope – all through the honesty of their voices and the idealism of their thoughts.

It’s a lesson Shumow aims to imprint on the undergraduates who take her “Adolescent Development & Learning” course, one she believes critical for shaping tomorrow’s best teachers in middle schools and high schools.

“We have a whole cultural stereotype of how bad adolescents are,” says Shumow, who joined NIU in 1995. “I want them to see adolescence as a very instrumental period of life – and very hopeful. There’s all of this potential. As adults, as teachers, you have a choice about how you’re going to impact them.”

Shumow drives her point home with a tough syllabus and the demand that students consider each topic personally and professionally. They don’t hear lectures in class; rather, Shumow leads a lively discussion laced with hard questions.

After each week’s reading, students must determine whether the information supports or contradicts their own memories of adolescence. They also must glean what their future students – and they, in turn, as teachers – need to know about their own development as adolescents.

Her students keep journals, due every Tuesday, and build Web pages with “inside information for teens” that they researched, wrote and submitted for expert review before posting.

Enlightenment also is gained through analyzing popular media for its messages about adolescence. Alongside the books on the shelves in Shumow’s office are films such as “Thirteen,” “Dead Poets Society,” “Ghost World,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Real Women Have Curves,” “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” “Now and Then,” “KIDS” and “Spellbound,” a 2004 documentary about the national spelling bee that Shumow calls “awesome.”

Shumow also is a collector of teen-produced videos on adolescence, which she enjoys for their contrasting – usually positive – views on those years.

“The class I teach is a class about their students,” she says. “If you want to teach something, you have to really know your student – their motivation, their peer interaction, how they learn. Practicing teachers will tell you this is the most important thing.”

She stresses authentic experiences for her students, and even sends their Web projects to high school students for review.

“I want them to do things that have real consequences,” she says, noting a spelling error in the title of one student’s project. “A lot of high school students are going to read that and comment on it, and it’s going to make a real impression on her, more than my circling it with a red pen.”

Students appreciate the lessons.

“As a future high school teacher, I will be forever indebted to Dr. Shumow for engendering in me a sincere fondness for, and the desire to understand, adolescents,” English major Gail Anne Rover says. “She is demanding but reasonable, showed no favoritism, listens well, sets high standards – and seems clearly invested in our becoming skilled and compassionate teachers.”

X + Why = Zollman

Professor Alan Zollman doesn’t only teach his students how to solve equations. He teaches them to reflect on their work, make larger connections and think like mathematicians.

“He’s one of the best teachers that I’ve ever had,” says sophomore Julie Pattermann, adding that she never enjoyed mathematics until taking Math 201, a requirement for elementary education majors.

Zollman, with his easy-going style and interactive lessons, helps students develop confidence in their abilities. Now a math tutor, Pattermann is considering a minor in the subject area.

“I realized that I wasn’t bad at math after all,” she says. “Dr. Zollman not only helped me understand what to do but also why to do it that way.”

Zollman says students are more likely to learn when they grasp the big picture. “It’s not enough to demand that students memorize a set of mathematical steps,” he says. “They’ll be good at making bricks but won’t be able to build anything. I want students to see larger connections, to understand where we’re going and why. In that way, they’ll learn to build a house.”

Zollman serves as chair of the teacher education committee in the NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences, which is consistently one of the country’s largest programs for certifying math teachers. He has taught a variety of courses and recently led a department overhaul of Math 201.

“With Alan’s guidance, we now encourage the students to work in groups to learn the material and guide them through the activities, instead of just lecturing to them,” says math instructor Marcia Lack. “He knew students would benefit by becoming more engaged learners, an attitude they will pass on to their students.”

Zollman holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University and began his career teaching middle school and high school mathematics. He moved on to the university level and came to NIU in 1993.

On the national level, Zollman is a sought-after speaker, having given more than 90 presentations to more than 15,000 teachers. His scholarship focuses on research-based and classroom-tested curriculum innovations. He has served on the Illinois Teacher Certification Standards Committee and as an elected director of an international association for science and math teachers.

In the classroom, Zollman is known as a tough grader. Yet he consistently receives high marks on student evaluations.

“This is remarkable when one considers that his students are not mathematics or science majors. They often begin the class with negative feelings toward mathematics,” says Presidential Teaching Professor William Blair. “His curriculum not only prepares teachers who are technically proficient, but also ones who have developed an appreciation for mathematics, and a belief in its importance for their future students.”

Zollman says his teaching philosophy has evolved into a less-is-more approach.

“Some of my students might say I don’t teach that much at all, and I’d take that as a compliment, because a lot of the learning is their responsibility,” he says. “I don’t give them everything. I give them structure and let them learn how it all fits together.”

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