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Accomplished Alumni
In 2022, the UIC College of Nursing conferred the 44th annual Distinguished Alumni Award and honored the fifth class of Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award winners
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Distinguished Alumni Award
Sue Penckofer, PhD ’93, MS ’82, BSN ’79, RN, FAAN
Sue Penckofer (pictured above) wanted to be a nurse as far back as she can remember. Her father, a Chicago firefighter, encouraged her to go to a diploma program—a specialized program that resulted in nursing licensure, but not a college degree.
Penckofer objected.
“[It was a different time, and] in his mind, women never got a college education,” she recalls. “I said, ‘no, I have to go to a university. I have to get a college education.’” Penckofer went on to earn not one, but three degrees from the UIC College of Nursing, and made her career in academia at Loyola University Chicago, rising to associate dean for the Graduate School. She is now Emeritus professor at Loyola's Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing.
Over the course of her career, Penckofer made important strides in understanding cardiovascular disease risk among women. She also worked on influential therapies to treat depression in women with diabetes, long before the topic of mental health was mainstream.
Through a large scale, NIH-funded study on the use of vitamin D to relieve depression in women with type 2 diabetes, Penckofer demonstrated that even a low dose of vitamin D was effective at improving mood, making it a cost effective option for patients.
“[Sue] is a stellar alumna, who has improved the daily lives and health of women with diabetes by providing relief of depressive symptoms,” says UIC Nursing professor emerita Carol Ferrans, PhD ’85, MS ’82, RN, FAAN, and Penckofer’s former classmate.
Penckofer describes her experience at UIC as “wonderful” and credits her exacting advisors with helping her to become a scholar.
“To this day, I think the University of Illinois Chicago has the best education in the state of Illinois,” she says.
Over the course of her career, Penckofer has published more than 60 papers and has served as the chair of more than 30 dissertation committees. She’s proud of her students who have gone on to obtain NIH funding and assume prestigious positions across the country, among them UIC College of Nursing Dean Eileen Collins, PhD, RN, FAAN, ATSF.
“It brings me pleasure to see [my students] become even more successful than I’ve been,” she says. “It feels good that my students have gone on to carry on nursing science.”
Outstanding Alumni Achievement Awards
Lilian Ferrer
Lilian Ferrer, PhD, MS ’01, FAAN
Lilian Ferrer is a risk-taker. At the age of 25, Ferrer moved from Santiago, Chile, to Chicago with her husband and young son to pursue her master’s degree in public health nursing at the UIC College of Nursing.
She says she knew by observing nursing abroad that she could learn “how to better improve or do things here in Chile.”
Now, Ferrer has made globalism a hallmark of her approach to her work as professor and vice president for international affairs at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Over the course of her career, Ferrer has conducted cutting-edge work on HIV/AIDS prevention in Chile, worked to establish a culture of internationalism at her university, and promoted the training of advanced practice nurses.
“Being a nurse means I’m part of a group of people who care about others, who care about human beings,” Ferrer says.
In addition to nursing, Ferrer says she’s most proud of her family: her husband and eight children, who range in age from 6 to 27 years old.
Sarah Ailey
Sarah Ailey, PhD ’02, MS ’98, BSN ’96
Sarah Ailey’s son is her muse. Now 46, he was born with an intellectual disability. It was Ailey’s experiences navigating the health care system that led her to her life’s work—improving the lives of those with intellectual disabilities.
“I’ve been through the health care system with him, and have seen its better and worse sides,” says Ailey, now a professor at Rush University College of Nursing.
Ailey’s research found that individuals with intellectual disabilities are more vulnerable to depression, aggression and challenging behavior as they get older.
She developed an intervention delivered in Chicago-area group homes to enhance social problem-solving skills for residents and staff; co-hosted a national conference to address issues and standards of care for individuals with intellectual disabilities; and is addressing the lack of content about individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in interprofessional health care curriculum.
