Janine….
Where have you been, what have you done?
Janine is originally from Mt. Vernon, Missouri and moved to Springfield, Missouri, in 1971, when she was 8 years old. She graduated from Glendale High School in 1981.
She earned a B.A. in sociology with a journalism emphasis from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1985.
She earned a master’s degree in Education – College Student Personnel at WIU in 1988 (coursework completed in ’87; major paper not finished till ’88). She’s since taken an Advanced Student Development Theory class and 18 hours of Women’s Studies classes (just lacking a feminist theory class to have the equivalent of a WS minor). She did an Internship in Student Personnel Services (now the Student Development Office) during her second year of grad school.
She was an RA and Summer Conference Assistant for 2 ½ years at Mizzou and worked in residence life at WIU for 13 years, as an Assistant Residence Hall Director, a Hall Director, a Complex Director, Assistant Director of Residence Life (supervising half of the halls on campus as well as Graduate and Family Housing), and Assistant Director of Residential Facilities. In 1990, she received the American College Personnel Association’s Annuit Coeptis Award, which honors five outstanding new professionals in the Student Affairs field. In 1994, She was selected as a participant in the National Housing Training Institute; and in 1995, She was inducted into the Caroline Grote Chapter of National Residence Hall Honorary. She served on numerous committees while working in Residence Life, including the Human Issues Education Committee. She also served on WIU’s Cultural Diversity Cadre and was awarded the President’s Affirmative Action Award for Administrative Excellence in Multicultural Programming; the Sexual Harassment Prevention and Education Committee, ADA Advisory Committee, and the Western Organization for Women executive board.
In 1998, she became Director of the WIU Women’s Center and has served in that position for 18 years. She also served as the Project Director of a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women from 2010-2013; taught University 100 (a First Year Experience student success course) in Fall 2013 and Fall 2014; and served as Interim Supervisor of Casa Latina Cultural Center in Fall 2015. She’s a member of the Western Organization for Women exec board, the University Diversity Council, the University Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression, and the Interpersonal Violence Prevention Committee. She advises the Feminist Action Alliance, the Organization of Adult Students for Interaction and Support, Campus Girl Scouts, and the Female and Family Veterans Association. This spring, She has also served as acting advisor for Alpha Sigma Tau sorority. She previously advised Sigma Iota Alpha sorority and the Picture Perfect Modeling Troupe multicultural student organization. She served on the Multicultural Center Steering Committee during the planning and construction of WIU’s Multicultural Center, and she has served on the LGBTQA Resource Center Advisory Board. Until a couple of years ago, she served on the Emergency Consultation Team, the Financial Aid Satisfactory Progress Committee, the Eating Concerns Coalition, and the Substance Abuse Prevention Education Grant Committee.
She was eligible to retire on March 1, 2016 with the “30-and-out” years of service incentive and a year of unused sick-leave, but she chose to wait until June 1, because, she says, “What director of a Women’s Center would retire at the beginning of Women’s History Month, and how could I skip out on our Women’s Center’s 30th Anniversary Celebration, and my commitment to hosting the National Women’s Studies Association’s Midwest Regional Women’s Centers Meeting this spring?!”
In her local community, she is on the Board of the Macomb Feminist Network. She’s a member and former president of the Women’s Golf League at the University’s golf course, and for several years she was a member of the WIU Women’s Bowling League. Until recently, she served on the Service and Justice Outreach Committee at the First Presbyterian Church of Macomb. She previously served on the church’s Board of Trustees and Building and Grounds Committee. She participated in the Macomb Leadership Academy in 1993. She served on the Board of the League of Women Voters of McDonough County, the McDonough County United Way Board, the community Sexual Assault Response Team, the Paint the Town Pink (breast cancer awareness) planning committee, and was a member of the Macomb Business and Professional Women’s Local Organization. She served four years on the Board of the Girl Scouts of Two Rivers Council (now Girl Scouts of Central Illinois), and she was on the national HEN Foundation Board of Directors for two years, promoting and supporting social justice artist activists. She’s looking forward to doing more community service and volunteer work in her retirement.
Janine has vacationed with friends for two weeks at the end of each school year in May for 28+ years at the Outer Banks of North Carolina (they rent a house on the beach). She was only able to go for one week last year, so she took a second week of vacation in July to Las Vegas with friends.
Family vacations growing up included annual trips to see family in Ohio, Indiana, and New Jersey, as well as historical site-seeing, mostly east of the Mississippi; and a trip to Mexico where she and her brother climbed the Pyramid to the Sun and the Pyramid to the Moon. One year, she and her family spent a week in the Bahamas, and that same summer they went to Mexico with her Jr. High Spanish Club and went parasailing in Acapulco. She’s been skiing with friends in Colorado a couple of times, in college and grad school. Recent fun trips with friends include Lake Michigan in Summer 2011, New England (including Provincetown) in Fall 2011, Riviera Maya (near Cancun) in December 2011, a long weekend in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts in April 2012, Hawaii in July 2012 (celebrating the culmination of her friend Cari’s retirement goal of driving a golf cart in all 50 states, for several of which Janine went along for the ride:), Las Vegas in November 2013, and Branson in October 2014. She would love to take a European vacation, a Mediterranean Cruise, a trip to her ancestral homeland of Italy, a trip to her sister Rebeca’s native home in Bolivia, and road trips to the 10 U.S. States she hasn’t yet visited (most of which are in the Northwestern United States, and Alaska), and she’s looking forward to many more travel adventures!
She flew in a helicopter from Long Beach, CA to Catalina Island, as well as one in Kauai (where she helped Cari get her California and Hawaii golf carts) and loved it.
She went Zip Lining in Vegas last summer, and sometime she wants to do the Zoom Line (higher, longer, and strapped in a flying-like-a-bird position instead of seated). She loves to fly in airplanes and says, “If I die in a plane crash, you can say I died doing something I loved.” She has NO desire to go bungee jumping or skydiving, however.
Other than these occasional travel adventures, and enjoying golfing with friends, riding her bicycle, and mowing her lawn, she says she’s pretty much a couch potato. But in the four months preceding her 50th birthday (between April 15 and Aug. 17, 2013), she rode her bike 1,000 miles. It was a goal she set for herself when her doc told her that her cholesterol was beginning to get elevated, and she suggested Janine try to get/keep it under control with exercise rather than medications. (So far, so good!)
After making it through her first 20 or so years of adulthood without owning a cookbook, Janine was delighted to get a Soup cookbook from her friends Janice and Eric for Christmas 2003 when she was 40 years old. She doesn’t cook, so she decided to keep a log of her cooking adventures. She began writing “The Soup Diaries: The (mis)adventures of a 40-something-year-old non-cook” in January 2004 and wrote sporadic entries over the next eight years or so. This was before the widespread use of facebook, and before she was aware of the existence of blogs, and she shared her “Diaries” with only a handful of family and friends via e-mail at the time. When she later shared them with her facebook friends, several people encouraged her to share them with a wider audience via a blog. As one friend put it, “Think of how many other non-cooks you’d be helping!” She’d never thought of it that way–she’d been so worried about what people who are good cooks would think that she hadn’t thought about how her (mis)adventures might help other non-cooks. She doesn’t know how many people will find them helpful, but she hopes those who read them will enjoy them and find them somewhat entertaining. As she embarks on her retirement, She’s looking forward to having time to get back to her soup adventures, and to blogging about them (you can follow her if you’d like at http://thesoupdiaries.blogspot.com/2011/01/introduction.html). Be sure to read the Intro. first, then scroll all the way down and read Week 1, Week 2, etc. in chronological order to get the full effect (it’s a progressive story…perhaps even a book in progress…. she says she just needs to figure out how to re-title the blog, now that she’s 50-something!
Janine has three cats (Mia, 9; Sheba, 12; and Socks, almost 2) who keep her entertained, along with three outdoor cats who adopted her about 10 years ago. She says her retirement travel plans and adventures will be somewhat limited by her ability to find kitty sitters (though her parents always are happy to have their grand kitties, Mia, Sheba and Socks, come visit them in Missouri:), but she is looking forward to visiting and having visits from family and friends near and far.
She says she has a couple of guest bedrooms, and guests are always welcome!