Awards recognize excellence in public engagement
Individuals and teams from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences who have made a visible impact on society were recently recognized with the 2025 Campus Awards for Excellence in Public Engagement. Faculty, staff members, students and community members who engage the public to address critical civic and community issues at the local, state, national and global levels were honored at an awards ceremony last month.
The LAS recipients this year include faculty member Antoinette Burton, graduate student Ananya Yammanuru, and the Entomology Graduate Student Association team.
Burton, a professor of history and director of the Humanities Research Institute at Illinois, is the recipient of the Distinguished Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.
Burton’s scholarship specializes in 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire — with a special focus on colonial India — along with research and writing on feminism and gender history. But her almost decade-long leadership at HRI has positioned the institute as a bastion of public engagement, stretching the imagination of what a humanities researcher can be. Burton’s approach to embedding the humanities in the public does not move in one direction, from campus outward, but instead is grounded in an ethical reciprocity.
Her role as the principal investigator of a Mellon Foundation-funded project, a 16-partner consortium headquartered at HRI called Humanities Without Walls, has recalculated that boundary line between campus and the wider world. The Humanities in Action program places undergraduate students in paid internships with local community organizations where the priority of the semester-long work is serving the needs and ambitions of the partner program in both words and in practice.
She also oversees the operations of the Odyssey Project, an adult education program housed within HRI for students who live at or below the poverty line and are seeking reentry into higher education through U. of I. humanities courses. Burton has fought to keep this community-driven program fully funded year after year, and the results have been profound. According to surveys, 50% of students report that the Odyssey Project helped them improve their financial stability; 70% experienced a stronger sense of community, increased civic engagement and said their family’s perception of learning was positively impacted by their involvement in the program; and 100% of students reported improved feelings of empowerment and hope.
The Entomology Graduate Student Association team — whose members include Annaliese Wargin, Jared Martin, Morgan Brown, Erinn Dady and Ellie Meys— is the recipient of the Student Team Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. This registered student organization led by graduate students from the department of entomology strives to promote a positive message to the public about the scientific and cultural importance of insects.
With a four-decade history of outreach efforts, the EGSA maintains a steady presence at events in the university community, the region and the state with its insect “petting zoo.” In the past 12 months, the EGSA has hosted activities in such varied places as schools, farmers markets, libraries, Allerton Park, churches, Riggs Brewery and several of the venues around campus. Each appearance is tailored to the research and outreach goals of the hosting venue. Classrooms often provide the most lasting educational impact, with EGSA members bringing insects that meet the curricula for state teaching standards and then leaving those insects behind as “class pets” for students to continue learning weeks after an event.
One of the most beloved outreach events produced by the EGSA is the annual Insect Fear Film Festival, which celebrated its 43rd year this past February. The graduate students organized activities including arts and crafts, face painting, insect-wrangling at the petting zoo, crowd control, media interviews and collaborated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology to display CT-scans and electron microscope images of insects. The event typically brings up to 1,000 people to Foellinger Auditorium every year in what is now a hallmark of the university events calendar.
Ananya Yammanuru is the recipient of the Graduate or Professional Student Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. Yammanuru is pursuing her PhD in computer science and holds bachelor’s degrees from Illinois in computer science and brain and cognitive science within the Department of Psychology. She leads the computer science department’s Girls Who Code and Sunday Coding Studio outreach programs, enabling access to computer science to K-12 students in the Champaign County area.
Since her first year on campus in 2018, Yammanuru has been involved with Girls Who Code, rising from a facilitator up through the leadership ranks. She displayed creativity and perseverance in addressing logistical challenges during her tenure, from researching different coding platforms to overcoming diminished resources when the program resumed operations following the COVID-19 pandemic. Yammanuru also founded the Sunday Coding Studio after she discovered nothing existed locally that offered programming like Girls Who Code — free and easily accessible — that was open to all students. The studio was piloted in spring 2024 and became a full-fledged program last fall, providing coding activities beyond foundational principles to students of all genders.
