Chicago Center’s 40th Anniversary coffee table book: Coming Home Again
Coming Home Again: Chicago Center 1970-2010
Chicago Center’s 40th Anniversary coffee table book is a powerful retrospective of our 40 year history, and includes the stories of 20 alumni from 1970-2010 as well as reflections from founders, current and former staff members, and lots of photos.
Excerpt from Preface by Scott Chesebro, PhD
“I’m often asked if Chicago Center keeps track of alumni or has any data on the impact of our programs on participants once they leave. My usual response is that we don’t do a good job of tracking alumni and that we have never had the resources to do a study of those who have done the program. When Phil Schmidt, History Professor at Southwestern College asked me if he could spend his sabbatical with us, I immediately knew what I wanted him to do. This book is the culmination of his sabbatical project and involved many hours of travel, interviews, transcripts, writing, editing, layout, and graphics and finally publishing. Many others besides Phil became committed and involved in the project. I now have an answer to the question posed above.
Phil Schmidt spent his sabbatical travelling to different parts of the country to interview people that I selected for the project. Out of the interviews, Phil Schmidt and Ashley Holloway, along with an editing committee which included Tiffanie Beatty and Megan Crawford created the stories included in the book. Alleigh Schmidt, Lane Cheseboro, and Cameron Siefkes helped transcribe the interviews. Tricia Fensky, a student in the Summer Session of 2010 and a senior at McPherson College designed the book and took responsibility for mounting photos and all of the graphics. Emily Nelson managed the project and brought all of the pieces together.”
Raj Biyani Excerpt
As General Manager of the CIO/Product Group Strategic Initiatives team at Microsoft Industries, Raj Biyani offers students this advice. “The major your focus on will prepare you for the first three to five years after college. And in fact, you may be at a disadvantage to your peers at more focused institutes like MIT or the University of Waterloo, which are great computer science programs. But when it comes to your life five years and beyond, its liberal arts education that’s going to ground you and enable you to learn what you need. And so I would put the Chicago Center experience in the context of a liberal arts education, because in a lot of ways Chicago Center is an immersive liberal arts program in the midst of a city.”
Any LaChance Excerpt
“…a woman was speaking named Christina Martinez and as she was speaking I said to myself ‘that’s what I want to do. I want to do what she’s doing.’ After she was done talking I went up to her and said ‘I really liked what you had to say and I’m just wondering how did you get into this kind of work? How did you get here?” …Amy LaChance later earned a Master’s in Urban Planning and Policy with a specialization in Community Development; the exact credential Christina Martinez told her about. After completing her MUPP, Amy was hired as the Senior Resource Development Associate at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago. “Interestingly, Christina ended up working here later on as the Neighborhood Director at our Back of the Yards office. And I told her one day, ‘you don’t know me, and you don’t know this but you’re the reason I’m here.’”
Phyllis Cunningham Excerpt
“…it’s away from the whole notion there’s somebody who has all the knowledge. That knowledge is the knowledge, rather than the fact that our job is making spaces for people to create their own knowledge and that knowledge is not defined by a group of people, but rather knowledge is something created by all people.”—Phyllis Cunningham, CCULC co-founder
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