PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 17, March 16, 2006

University Women's Club celebrates 100 years

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Square deals Women’s Club members Jennifer Richardson, left, visiting program coordinator in the department of agricultural and biological engineering, and Sandi Thomas, club president, show the decorative Motawi tiles that the club is selling to raise money for its scholarship fund. The tiles showing ears of corn commemorate the Morrow Plots and are available in yellow or green; a new tile commemorating the dairy round barns will be available soon in shades of brown, blue or orange.

Sandi Thomas had a 2-year-old son and was seven months pregnant with the second of her three children when she and her husband, Brian Thomas, arrived in Champaign-Urbana 21 years ago for Brian’s new job as a professor of mechanical engineering at Illinois. They also were newcomers to the United States, having left behind their families and the mountaintops and ocean vistas of Vancouver, British Columbia, for the landlocked horizons of Central Illinois, a change of scenery that Sandi Thomas described as “quite a shock.”

But Sandi Thomas found the transition to her new life a bit easier once she found the  Mother-Child PlayGroup, a special interest group of the UI Women’s Club, that provided 2-year-old Chris with twice-a-month play dates and Sandi with “a wonderful group of friends.”

“The club provided the basis of my feeling like I belonged when I first moved here,” Sandi said. “Everyone was just so friendly and helpful,” providing welcome advice on the best obstetricians and pediatricians and other necessities that helped her family make their new home feel like home. Sandi is now the club’s president.

Helping people find a sense of community is one of the missions of the Women’s Club, a social and philanthropic organization that is celebrating its centennial anniversary this year. The foundation of the club is its 25 special interest groups, which offer members a multiplicity of activities – ranging from antique collecting to movie going, from foreign language conversations to knitting, and investing and hiking. The Newcomers Group, which is open to club members during their first two years, sponsors field trips to places in Illinois and neighboring states, and the Cosmopolitan Group, Sandi’s favorite, aims to create an inclusive environment for people from other countries while providing opportunities for members to learn about other cultures.

Anna James, wife of the UI’s fifth president, is believed to have founded the club in February 1906 as an informal means for “the women connected with the faculty of the University of Illinois” and the wives of local ministers to get acquainted with each other, the campus and the community. The club’s activities included monthly Tuesday Teas, a variety of social and enrichment activities and service work, such as sewing bandages for the Red Cross during wartime.

Over the years, the club’s evolution has reflected societal changes: The Mother-Child Playgroup is now called the Parent-Child Playgroup, and many of the interest groups’ activities are held in the evenings and on weekends to accommodate members’ work schedules. And, despite the club’s name, approximately 10 of the club’s 350 members are men. Membership is open to anyone affiliated with the university.

While many things have changed over the century that the Women’s Club has been in existence, some activities have remained fundamental, such as the club’s scholarship program. Each year the club gives out five or six “Make A Difference Awards,” $1,000 scholarships to UI juniors or seniors, and confers one named scholarship to a student in the fine arts, the Judith Life Ikenberry Scholarship, in honor of the wife of former UI president Stanley Ikenberry. Since 1973, the club has provided more than 180 university students with more than $86,000 in scholarships.

This year, the club is hoping to raise at least $25,000 for its scholarship endowment through its “Decades of Giving” fundraising campaign, which allows donors to give from $50 to $1,000. As it has in the past, the club also is selling decorative Motawi tiles that commemorate the Morrow Plots and the dairy round barns on campus. Jennifer Richardson, a Women’s Club board member and visiting program coordinator in the department of agricultural and biological engineering, said the group has sold about 50 of the tiles so far and hopes to sell a total of 200 by the end of the year.

Richardson said that when she was a newcomer to campus two years ago she knew the club would be a good fit for her once she learned about the club’s emphasis on its scholarship program. “It’s been a privilege to be part of a club that puts a priority on community and provides a way to give back to deserving students,” Richardson said.

The club’s centennial celebration this year has included a gala event, “A Night of 100 Lights,” at the Illini Union in January. On Valentine’s Day, members donned their white gloves and most fashionable hats for a Tuesday Tea at Clark-Lindsey Village in Urbana, with 15 of the club’s former presidents.

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