Several Illinois State staff members will be honored with advising awards at the Founders Day Convocation on February 21. The awards include the Herb Sanders Award, the Outstanding New Undergraduate Advisor Award, and the Jonathan Rosenthal Academic Advising Advocate Award. The advocate award was renamed for 2019 in honor of retiring Associate Provost Jonathan Rosenthal.
Christie Martin
Christie Martin of the Honors Program will receive the Herb Sanders Award. The award was established by friends of Herb Sanders, a member of the faculty from 1949 until his death in 1980, to recognize advisors who demonstrate a caring attitude for students, are assertive in their contacts with students, and support campus-wide academic advisement.
Martin is the assistant director of the Honors Program. She earned an undergraduate and master’s degrees in sociology from Illinois State University. She joined the Honors Program staff in 2002 and currently advises honors freshmen with majors in the College of Education, the Mennonite College of Nursing, and accounting. In addition to leading the team of honors advisors, Martin serves as the Honors Program’s enrollment manager, coordinates the honors facilitator portion of Honors Mindset Seminar, and manages honors sections as well as Advanced Honors Seminars. She was also part of the Honors team that implemented a new program model in 2014.
Gina Turton
Gina Turton of the Honors Program will receive the Outstanding New Undergraduate Advisor Award.
She earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in college student personnel administration from Illinois State. She currently advises honors freshmen students majoring in the College of Fine Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as international business majors. Turton supervises a team of honors peer mentors who assist in Honors Mindset Seminar, and collaborates with the Office of Residential Life to support the Honors Themed Living Learning Community. Her research has been published in The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, and she gave her first international presentation last year at the Honors College Conference hosted by Siberian Federal University in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
Hina Gilani and Kristen Grimes of Administrative Technologies, and Amanda Trefzger of the Office of the University Registrar have been named the recipients of the Jonathan Rosenthal Academic Advising Advocate Award. The purpose of the award is to honor an Illinois State employee, not employed as an academic advisor, who supports and enhances the profession of academic advising, leading to improved student advising, service to students, student success, and the mission of the University.
Gilani is a PeopleSoft technical analyst for Administrative Technologies. She earned an undergraduate degree at Illinois State in information systems. Gilani started her career at ISU eight years ago as an Enterprise Service Desk support associate when iPeople was first launched. She went on to lead the ESD team and was selected to assist the quality assurance team during the LEAPForward project in 2014. She has also worked closely with the Registrar’s office in updating student records and reviewing transcripts.
Grimes is a two-time Illinois State alumna with a bachelor’s degree in arts technology/graphic design and an MBA. She serves as a user experience technical analyst in Administrative Technologies working specifically with PeopleSoft and SharePoint. Previously, she served as the marketing and technology coordinator for the College of Education. She is active in Friends of the Arts, the Bloomington-Normal Sunrise Rotary, and has assisted the Multicultural Leadership Program in its marketing and technology efforts.
Trefzger earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a certificate in project management from Illinois State. She has worked in the Office of the University Registrar in different capacities since summer 2007. Her first exposure to catalog requirements came when she was a student member of the University Curriculum Committee from 2005-2007. Now working in evaluation services, her main duties are to review transfer credit and perform undergraduate degree audits. In addition, she enters all Illinois State Study Abroad credit and assists the Commencement office each semester. She also worked on the LEAPForward project for Campus Solutions from 2014-2015.
