Janice Watkins Award 2005 Article

Hardworking Winners Give Their All to UIC, Community by Carol Mattax and Jeanne Galatzer-Levy

They’re not afraid of hard-work: that’s something all three winners of the Janice Watkins Award for Distinguished Civil Service have in common. The Watkins Award is presented each year by the Staff Advisory Council to outstanding support staff employees. Like the woman for whom the award is named, winners must be active in improving their communities, as well as their workplace.

Lillie Adams

Procedures and Systems Analyst

Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs

Lillie Adams says her parents raised her with a strong work ethic.

“I was raised to get a job and stick with it,” she said.

She’s stuck with UIC since 1981. Now a procedures and systems analyst in the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Adams has had a variety of positions in her career.

She started in nursing administration, working in nursing payroll and personnel, moved to main payroll services in the Office of Business Administration and, in 1986, the provost’s office. She then went to engineering and psychiatry before returning to the provost’s office in the mid-1990s.

One of Adam’s most difficult responsibilities was also her most rewarding, she said -working with employees whose positions were eliminated during campus cutbacks a few years ago.

“I was given the opportunity to help by giving assistance that focuses on individual resolutions that benefit both the employer and the institution. I felt I was giving service beyond myself.”

Adams also gives through music, which she calls “my ministry”.

Gifted with a three-octave-plus spinto soprano voice, she sings with a 200-member chorus at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Over the last six years, she and fellow chorus members have travelled four times to Gospelabende, a gospel fest in Switzerland.

“It’s an awesome experience, hard work but very, very rewarding,” she said.

In high school, Adams loved painting and sculpting. Someday, when she has time, “I would love to do poetry and learn the piano,” she said.

Now her focuses are her 13-year old son, her work and her music.

When she learned she would receive the Janice Watkins award, Adams says she cried all day.

“To even think I had attained the right to receive that award, the fact that someone else thought I was worthy of it, greatly humbled me.

“UIC is a community and I’m glad to be a participant in that community.”

Martha Collins

Patient Service

Mile Square Health Center

When Disney on Ice arrives at the United Center, Martha Collins will be there with more than 40 children from her Near West Side neighborhood.

Over the years she has organized all kinds of outings, with tickets donated by the United Center.

“One year I took a group of senior citizens to see the wrestling. That was really something,” she said.

Collins has spent more than 20 years as a community organizer, going door-to-door to keep her neighbors informed about issues that affect them and to educate them about the importance of registering and voting.

“I got started back when Harold Washington was mayor and I’ve been doing it ever since”, she said. “I discovered I loved meeting people.”

In her job at Mile Square Health Center, Collins is just as involved in meeting and helping people.

On an average day, 35 to 40 walk-in patients may visit the clinic.

"I’m the top of the line for most people walking in," said Collins.

Everyday Collins tackles a mountain of paperwork that would overwhelm most of us, but she never see it that way. She said she is always ware of the people she is helping –that she is smoothing the way for someone to get the medical care they need.

Collins has been at Mile Square 12 years, “but I worked at the same facility UIC took over, so I’ve really been here much longer,” she said. She took a three-year break from 1989 to 1992 to work for her church, but returned because she missed the daily contact with the public.

Collins will celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary this August. She has three children: two sons in college and a daughter who has been a Chicago police officer for 16 years. She is an active member of the Rock of Ages Baptist Church in Maywood.

Brenda Rivers

Office Supervisor

Mile Square Health Clinic

Sometimes, all you need is a chance. In 1974 Brenda Rivers was a young woman looking for a job and not having much back.

“I was filling out applications everywhere and people were saying they would call you back, but no one would call,” she said.

Then a girlfriend told her UIC was hiring. She filled out an application and took a test for the position. As she handed it in, she stood watching the clerk.

“She looked at the application and then, when she turned it over, she looked at me and said, “You really need a job,” said Rivers.

Rivers had printed PLEASE HELP ME, I NEED A JOB across the back of the applications in big black letter.

“I said, ‘If you give me a job, I’ll work for you,” Rivers continued. “She called me back and six weeks after I got the job I retook that test and passed it.”

UIC was amply rewarded for taking a chance on Rivers.

“I was blessed with working with a lot of nice people who were happy to share what they knew,” said Rivers, who retired in 2004 as office supervisor at Miles Square Health Clinic.

As supervisor, Rivers worked with outside agencies and served as the troubleshooter for office problems.

“Whatever came up, people would come to me when they needed help, and if I didn’t know the answer, I’d find it out.”

Rivers says one of the best things about working for UIC was the variety.

“I never was in a position for more than five years –I was always learning something new. Since retiring in 2004, Rivers has kept busy with her church, Shiloh Baptist, and her local YMCA.

“I promised myself that when I retired, I wouldn’t sit around and get fat,” she said, laughing.

Rivers has been married for 14 years; between her and her husband, they have four grown children. She is raising two grandsons, age 16 and 17, and caring for her mother, who had a stroke in 2001.

“I felt really blessed by the help that I got from my supervisor and coworkers when my mom had a stroke,” said Rivers. “It was a very hard time, and I don’t how I would have made it to the retirement without everyone’s support.”

Because both Rivers and her mother see physicians at Mile Square, she is able to keep in touch with her former co-workers.

“It’s nice to see friends. It feels like I never left,” she said.

February 8, 2006