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Rosanna Marquez

Rosanna Marquez

Illinois state president | AARP | Class of 1980

Rosanna Marquez’s road to Harvard Law began 1,054 miles away, in a UI classroom where Ira Carmen taught 41 years’ worth of students everything they needed to know about constitutional law.

“I took his class when I was thinking of switching from a math and chemistry focus to a pre-law curriculum,” says the Class of '80's Marquez, AARP's Illinois state president since 2015. “I loved that class, the next one, and the graduate-level Con Law classes I took with him as an undergrad.

“He brought such enthusiasm and energy to his subject and had a wonderful way of rapidly talking as though trying to keep up with his brain.

“I wound up going on to law school, in no small part because of the way his teaching brought the law to life for me.”

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