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FEATURE STORY —
May/June 2006
2006 UIC Alumni Awards
Alumni
Achievment Award
Active
Partner
Sherry
R. Eagle has enriched students’
educational experiences by building
strategic alliances with local governments,
corporations and universities
 As
an educator, Sherry Eagle
is known for her innovative thinking
and building strategic partnerships—both
of which have benefited students and
teachers alike. Ironically, in her
early college days, she never envisioned
herself entering the field of education.
That change in career direction came
about because of a chance meeting
with a UIC counselor.
Eagle began her undergraduate
education at the University of Iowa,
was married during her freshman
year, and then moved to Chicago
with her husband. Seeking academic
direction, she visited the UIC administration
building one day and asked to see
a counselor.
“I sat down with this gentleman
and we reviewed my past,” reflects
Eagle, now executive director, Institute
for Collaboration, Aurora University.
“I was a music major and had
some background in mathematics and
psychology…And he said, ‘Have
you ever thought about becoming a
teacher? Perhaps it’s something
you should consider.’”
Eagle took his advice and enrolled
in the College of Education’s
elementary education program. “Sometimes
you need someone else to help you
see what you’re not able to
see, someone to ask a very important
question that can change the direction
of your life,” she says.
Eagle began her career in 1971 as
an elementary school teacher in Calumet
City. She then joined Thornwood High
School as a reading specialist before
being promoted to assistant principal.
As an administrator at Thornwood,
Eagle received the Friend of Education
Award from the Illinois Education
Association in 1987.
Eagle believes strongly in bringing
together various interests (civic,
economic and education) to benefit
students. As a result, she has helped
establish partnerships between schools,
universities, local government and
corporations in the Chicago area.
“Arthur Andersen partnered
with one of our high schools,”
says Eagle, citing an example. “Its
human resources department simulated
job interviews with our students.
They made the experience very realistic
and helped prepare students for
job hunting in the real world.”
However, perhaps the most significant
partnership Eagle helped establish
was with Aurora University in 1995,
which helped ease an overcrowding
problem at one of the district’s
elementary schools and resulted
in other benefits, including the
Aurora Partnership for Teaching.
APT prepares future teachers and
administrators, supports development
of best practices and increases
student learning. Now in its 11th
year, with 200 elementary students
involved, APT incorporates four
clinical immersion/professional
development schools; a master’s
and doctoral degree program; and
the Read with Me Foundation, a community-based
literacy agenda.
“One important rule that
I’ve learned through my educational
experiences is that it’s not
about you; it’s about the
relationships you build,”
Eagle explains. “It’s
about networking. In order to be
a good teacher, you have to determine
how you can bring multiple resources
to your students.”
—Neal Lorenzi
Alumni
Achievement Award
Devoted
Practitioner
 Over
his 55-year career as an oral surgeon,
teacher, researcher, author and
administrator, Dr. Daniel M. Laskin
has improved the lives of many
After years of treating a female
patient for chronic jaw pain, Dr.
Daniel Laskin recently
determined that her condition had
improved so that she no longer needed
his care. While this was good news,
she left his office crying because
she wouldn’t be seeing him
anymore.
Other patients have formed similar
attachments. Laskin still receives
holiday cards and gifts from patients
he treated more than 25 years ago.
These responses are a testament
to the countless lives Laskin has
touched over his 55-year career
as an oral surgeon, teacher, researcher,
author and administrator.
After earning his D.D.S. degree
from Indiana University’s
School of Dentistry, Laskin came
to UIC’s College of Dentistry
to earn a master’s degree
in oral surgery.
Laskin chose oral surgery “because
it was more scientifically oriented
than other specialties, and incorporated
more anatomy and physiology,”
he explains. “And that appealed
to me.”
Laskin’s interest in research
grew out of the scholarly atmosphere
he encountered at UIC as a graduate
student, and the tutelage he received
from his mentor Dr. Bernard G. Sarnat,
ms ’40 dent, dds ’40,
former head of the College’s
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial
Surgery.
After completing his graduate degree,
Laskin joined the Department of
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery as
an instructor, eventually becoming
a full professor and department
head. He also served as a clinical
professor in the Department of Surgery
in UIC’s College of Medicine.
A turning point in Laskin’s
career came in 1963, when he was
asked to be a co-principal investigator
on a National Institutes of Health-funded
study on temporomandibular (jaw)
joint problems, which set him on
a line of research that he continues
to pursue to this day.
Ten million people nationwide suffer
from temporomandibular joint (TMJ)
disorders, which can cause pain,
headaches, restricted jaw movements
and difficulty chewing. In 1963,
Laskin established the College’s
Temporomandibular Joint and Facial
Pain Research Center.
One of Laskin’s major research
achievements in TMJ was isolating
problems of jaw muscles from those
of the jaw joint. He also demonstrated
that the arrangement of teeth do
not contribute to these problems.
These findings have clarified treatments
for jaw joint pain, greatly reducing
bite equilibration and use of invasive
surgery and crowns. “This
research has led to a more conservative
approach in managing these patients,”
and eliminated unnecessary treatments,
he reports.
The author of more than 900 research
papers and 16 books, Laskin served
as editor of the Journal of Oral
and Maxillofacial Surgery from 1972
to 2002. His magazine editorials
often addressed the importance of
recognizing and responding to signs
of child and spousal abuse in patients.
Laskin left UIC in 1983 to become
professor and chairman of the Division
of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
in the School of Dentistry at the
Medical College of Virginia/Virginia
Commonwealth University.
At age 81, Laskin remains active
as both a researcher and clinician,
continuing to add to his formidable
legacy. “I love what I do,”
he says. “I still feel I can
make a contribution.” —Kevin
McKeough
Distinguished
Service Award
Proud
Participant
 For
more than 50 years, Dr. Truman O.
Anderson has played a key role in
the College of Medicine’s
growth and development
Dr. Truman Anderson,
Keeton Professor of Medicine Emeritus
at UIC, felt proud when he recently
saw one of his former medical students
interviewed on a national television
program. Then again, Anderson can
see his impact nearly everywhere
he walks on UIC College of Medicine
campuses in Chicago, Peoria, Rockford
and Urbana-Champaign.
With more than 50 years of service
as a teacher and administrator,
Anderson has helped shape the College,
and takes understandable satisfaction
in his considerable accomplishments.
“At my age, you reflect almost
daily on how you spent a lifetime,
and I am very gratified that I feel
I have spent most of my life usefully,”
says Anderson, who is 79 years old.
“The College of Medicine is
a remarkable institution. I take
considerable pride in that I worked
within it for such a long time.”
Since joining UIC’s Department
of Microbiology as an instructor
in 1955, Anderson has held positions
as professor of both medicine and
microbiology. He has also served
as dean of the School of Basic School
Sciences (1970 to 1976) and executive
dean of College of Medicine (1976
to 1980).
“I have been very active
both in teaching and administration
because the University of Illinois
is so important not only to the
state, but also to the country,”
explains Anderson. “The role
it has to fulfill as an educator
of future leaders is a very significant
one.”
Anderson repeatedly has taken leadership
roles in initiatives that have profoundly
affected the College’s organization,
operation and academic programs.
During the 1970s, he was instrumental
in developing its regional campuses
in Peoria, Rockford and Urbana-Champaign.
“This expansion extended
the University’s presence
in clinical teaching and research,
and it’s made a fundamental
difference in the healthcare in
those communities,” says Anderson.
A member of the College’s
Medicine Executive Committee since
1970, Anderson played a lead role
in retaining the Medical School’s
clinical operations at the University
of Illinois Medical Center in the
face of a proposal to transfer them
to Michael Reese Hospital.
Anderson established the College’s
James Scholar Program for Independent
Study, which he led from 1966 to
1970, and again from 1996 to the
present. The program led to the
development of the UIC Medical Scholars
Program, in which students earn
both an M.D. and Ph.D. in fields
ranging from the hard sciences to
philosophy. As executive dean, Anderson
helped obtain funding for the clinical
education program at UIUC, which
allowed establishment of the Medical
Scholars Program there.
In 1996, Anderson retired—then
rejoined the College in that same
year as special assistant to the
dean. In this position, he acts
as liaison between the dean’s
office and the three regional campuses
on issues relating to curriculum,
research and administration; directs
the James Scholar Program for Independent
Study; and discusses relevant issues
with state legislators and other
government officials in the state
capital.
“I owe the University of
Illinois a lot,” Anderson
concludes. “It has given me
one of the richest and most rewarding
professional lives I could ever
have imagined.” —Kevin
McKeough
Alumni
Humanitarian Award
Bridge
Builder
 Dr.
Michael J. VanRooyen is helping
to eliminate the disconnect between
academic institutions and organizations
that provide humanitarian assistance
As a humanitarian worker in Somalia
and later in Kenya and Russia in
the early 1990s, Dr. Michael
VanRooyen found himself
asking this question: Why was there
such a disconnect between non-government
humanitarian organizations, such
as Doctors without Borders and Save
the Children, and academic units
conducting research in medicine
and public health practice?
This was in sharp contrast to his
own experience as a medical student
at Wayne State University and as
a resident in emergency medicine
at UIC. “In medical school,
the link between theory and practice
is fairly tight,” explains
VanRooyen, co-founder and co-director
of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Consequently, innovations in medicine
enter clinical practice relatively
quickly.
The more VanRooyen thought about
this question, the more he knew
the answer did not lie in starting
another non-government organization—or
NGO—to do humanitarian work.
He had a different solution, one
built around the concept of empowering
existing NGOs by providing them
with experts and programming. In
effect, he would build a bridge
between NGOs and academic and research
institutions.
After completing his MPH at UIC,
VanRooyen joined Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore in 1997, where he founded
and directed the Johns Hopkins Center
for International Emergency, Disaster
and Refugee Studies. CIEDRS combined
the efforts of the School of Public
Health and the School of Medicine
to examine how to “professionalize
the humanitarian community and make
it better,” he says, and to
link CIEDRS “with the field.”
At CIEDRS, VanRooyen and his team
helped reestablish the Central Hospital
of Kigali, located in the capital
of Rwanda, which had been destroyed
during the war.
In 2004, VanRooyen joined Harvard
University and co-founded the Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative with his
long-time colleague, Jennifer Leaning.
HHI does what CIEDRS did, but on
a much larger scale, says VanRooyen.
“HHI [operates] as an umbrella
entity within Harvard University.”
It combines the humanitarian interests
of many units, including the Schools
of Public Health and Medicine, as
well as the Harvard Business School
and Kennedy School of Government,
and “links them with field
organizations like CARE, Save the
Children, Doctors without Borders
and many others,” he says.
As a researcher, VanRooyen has
focused on public health operations
in complex humanitarian emergencies
and war. This has taken him into
areas such as refugee health care
access, demography of forced migration
and quantifying war-related mortality.
VanRooyen’s current research
projects include quantifying the
destruction of livelihoods as an
indicator of genocide in Darfur,
Sudan.
Besides his humanitarian research
and work in more than 30 nations,
VanRooyen is preparing the next
generation of humanitarian workers.
At UIC, for example, he founded
the nation’s first international
emergency fellowship.
When asked what his future holds,
VanRooyen responds, “There’s
so much work to be done…But
I feel like I’m finally at
a place with the [NGOs] where we
can work together to look at ways
to improve the care, quality and
reach of humanitarian assistance
in a way we never really could before.”
—Hugh M.
Cook
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