People
328
Award winners
Pinshane Huang
UI professor of materials science and engineering
Ivan Racheff Faculty Scholar
Paul Ellinger
VP, CFO and comptroller, UI System
2025 ACES Alumni Award of Merit
Mildred Barnes Griggs
UI College of Education's first Black dean
Died in 2025
Hope Wheeler
2021 Athena Award recipient
Principal, CliftonLarsonAllen of Champaign
Itch Jones
Career record of 1,240-718-6 as baseball coach at Illinois and Southern Illinois
Died in 2025
Hugh Hefner
Founder and editor-in-chief, Playboy magazine
Died in 2017
George Lundeen
Sculptor of statues on campus depicting Red Grange and Dick Butkus
2024 Alumni Achievement Award recipient
Theresa Grentz
Led Illini women's basketball to 5 NCAA tournament berths
Inducted into Naismith, Illini and Women's Basketball halls of Fame
Adham Sahloul
2025 Young Alumni Award winner
Co-founder, North Star Policy Initiative
Amy Stabell
Global quality head of experts/aerospace, Henkel
2024 Young Alumni Achievement Award, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Sean Long
Corporate director of programming, Weigel Broadcasting
2-time Emmy-winning Illini Media Hall of Famer
Kenneth Jaconetty
Retired intellectual property attorney, 2024 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award winner
2022's chemical and biomolecular engineering convocation speaker
 Cooper.jpeg)
CeCe (Marizu) Cooper
Swimming star turned senior content producer for Apple Fitness+
Earned UI degrees in broadcast journalism (2010), education policy studies (2012)
Ken Holtzman
Major League Baseball's winningest Jewish pitcher
Threw two no-hitters, won three World Series rings
Mary Schubauer-Berigan
Senior epidemiologist, International Agency for Research on Cancer
World Health Organization
Jaime Roundtree
Director of curriculum and instruction, Rantoul City Schools
Former principal at Champaign's Booker T. Washington STEM Academy
Josh Whitman
Illini athletic director
2017 Central Illinois Business Magazine Forty Under 40 Man of the Year
Stephanie Cohen
Global head of platform solutions, Goldman Sachs
2018 Distinguished Alumna Award, Gies College of Business
-Gardner.jpeg)
Emily (Klopf) Gardner
MillerCoors local media manager
2017 Homecoming Comeback Award winner
J. Robert Rossman
Professor and dean emeritus
Illinois State University
Anjali Forber-Pratt
2-time Paralympian
Director, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research
Stan Deal
President/CEO
Boeing Commercial Airplanes
Cheryl Quinn
LAS Alumni Achievement Award
QnA Pharma Consulting, LLC
Jaime Torres
General manager/sports attorney
International Baseball Sports Management, Inc.
