School board honors Sterling Merit award winners
It was a night of recognitions at the May 10 meeting of the Illinois Valley Central District 321 school board.
Thirteen high school seniors from IVC were recognized at the meeting and at an honors banquet at the Peoria Civic Center last week for being named Sterling Merit scholars.
Sterling Merit is sponsored by the Chillicothe Rotary Club and the Peoria Journal Star.
The 2009 Sterling Merit award winners from IVC are: Kelsey Brooke, Kyle Doerr, Rebekah Durig, Marci Furuholmen, Keegan Horack,
Jared Johnson, Spencer Jones, Kelsey Losey, Alyssa Mall, Michelle Erma O’Brien, Megan Otto, Ross Romane and Benjamin Tyler Sutton.
Sterling Merit scholars must be in the upper 8 percent of the class at the end of the seventh semester.
Names were also revealed for the five distinguished alumni to be honored at the 101st annual Alumni Banquet June 12.
This year’s distinguished alumni are: the late Rev. Joseph M. (JM) Elliott (Class of 1952), James Fennell (Class of 1965), Nancy Green Worsham, M.D. (Class of 1952), Colonel Yvette D. Nonte (Class of 1979) and Kevin Sill, Ph.D. (Class of 1997).
Elliott was a Top 10 student at Chillicothe Township High School and received a full scholarship to Dartmouth University.
Elliott served the same congregation, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in the South Bronx, for 43 years and led the church from mission status to independence in 1972.
Although most of his congregation — and over half the neighborhood — was impoverished, Elliott and his sermons focused on encouraging families to get off welfare.
A plaque was dedicated to his ministry in 2003 and a street was also renamed in his honor.
Fennell serves as president and CEO of JT Fennell Co., a steel fabricator for machined and welded assemblies for the major equipment industry.
Since being established in 1946, the company has been one of the largest employers in Chillicothe.
Fennell, a lifelong Chillicothe resident, served on the IVC District 321 school board and IVC Educational Foundation and has served as fiscal agent for the Project Lead the Way grant, enabling IVC High School to establish a pre-engineering curriculum.
Fennell is also a deputy fire chief in Chillicothe, working as a volunteer fireman for the past 41 years.
Worsham worked in private practice in Seattle for 28 years, specializing in stroke care, chronic pain and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation.
In her retirement, Worsham continues to volunteer weekly at Harborview Medical Center’s brain injury clinic. She also has served as a faculty member of the University of Washington Rehabilitation Department for more than 35 years, teaching medical students and residents in her field.
Worsham’s father, the late Dr. Frank Green, was a prominent Chillicothe physician for many years.
Nonte began her extensive career in the United States Army in 1983, which included numerous leadership and staff positions in Korea, Iraq and the continental U.S.
She was also part of the Army’s recovery operations in New York City and the Pentagon following the 9/11 attacks and was later assistant director of intelligence within the Defense Intelligence Agency, a group of 16 military and civilian agencies that provide the nation with national security.
Since retiring from the Army earlier this year, Nonte serves as Chief of Staff for the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force at the Pentagon.
Nonte resides in Silver Spring, Md., with her husband, Kent, who is also a retired Army colonel.
Sill has been in the research environment since he was 16 years old, at one point taking nine months off from school to work in a research lab in Chicago and Peoria.
During graduate work at University of Massachusetts, Sill was approached by a fellow Ph.D. candidate about starting a company.
Intezyne was started in 2004 — before the two had even finished school — and focused on developing technologies that would have a great impact on drug delivery and patient outcomes.
The company has developed four oncology products, two of which will soon enter clinical trials, and Sill is the co-inventor on 18 pending or issued patents.
The company also generated a drug encapsulation method which limits chemotherapeutics’ anti-tumor activity to within the tumor itself, thereby sparing healthy tissues.
Sill was awarded R&D Magazine’s “Young Innovator of the Year” award in 2009.
In other action and discussion:
• Superintendent Dr. Nick Polyak said construction work is on track at South School with a target date of early June for completion.
Polyak said the wood has been laid, sanded and sealed for the gym floor and the next step is to paint lines and give it a final coating.
Locker installation has also begun for the academic hallway, and the kitchen floor will be poured and interior windows glazed soon.
The board discussed its tentative meeting schedule for 2010-11, and Polyak said the Aug. 24 meeting will be hosted at South in order to show off the new addition and renovations.
• Board member Nell German said the curriculum committee met regarding future funding for the Bright Futures program.
German said since the state adjourned the session without approving a budget, everything is still in the process of being evaluated.
“We are hoping to at least keep four sections, but right now it’s too early to tell,” German said.
• Polyak said he received a letter from the Regional Office of Education informing the district it had received full recognition status and commended the district for its organization and efforts in achieving three-year compliance during the ROE’s recent visit.
• the board approved the hiring of Paige Kline as a substitute bus driver to be used as needed in the 2010-11 school year.
• and the board approved the appointment of Larry Williams to a three-year term as Truitt scholarship trustee.
