(Editor’s note: The following is a tribute to retiring faculty member Christopher Wellin written by fellow faculty members Susan Sprecher and Joan Brehm.)
“Please don’t retire!” and “we won’t let you retire!” were frequent statements made by both of us (Susan Sprecher, one of the two most senior members of department, and Joan Brehm, chair of department) and many others when Dr. Chris Wellin started discussing his pending retirement. Somehow, we convinced him to stay an extra year, but inevitably the time came when Chris transitioned from being a faculty member in the department to being an emeritus professor. Chris officially retired in May of 2023. To our good fortune, though, Chris is staying in the local area and wants to remain active with students and our department.
I (Sprecher) was on the search committee that hired him in 2009. He came to us from Miami University in Ohio, where he was an assistant professor in sociology and a research fellow at the Scrips Gerontology Center. As soon as I got to know him, I realized he was about to raise the overall “pleasantness” of the department. And, he did! In his 14 years in our department, he was always kind, thoughtful, humorous, and communal, and inspired the rest of us to follow suit.
Not surprisingly, he was extremely dedicated to students, the department, and the University. Perhaps there has been no one else in the department who has done as much service and with such amicability. The various roles he filled were many and included faculty advisor to the Sociology Club (for over 10 years!); member of the undergraduate curriculum committee; coordinator of the Department Speaker Series; and member of the Department Council, Department Faculty Status Committee, and Graduate Affairs Committee. For his entire career at Illinois State, he served as the coordinator of the interdisciplinary gerontology program, which offered a minor in gerontology. Chris was always someone who could be counted on to help with his time and talents, whether it was writing an article for an edition of Signs & Symbols, teaching a new course, or hosting a departmental picnic, Chris would eagerly step up and do the task.
Many students have been impacted by his classes and mentoring. Chris taught one of the more challenging courses in our sociology curriculum, Senior Experience, and did so more often than most other faculty. In this class, he helped sociology seniors develop a capstone project on a topic that interested them and that typically involved qualitative interviews with people in the community or with partnerships with community agencies. Almost every semester, Chris also taught a course on gerontology and aging, both to undergraduate students and to graduate students. For our department over the years, he also taught Applied Sociology, Sociology of Death and Dying, Self and Society, Work and Occupations, and Qualitative Research Methods, among other classes. Chris’ interests and knowledge of sociology are far-ranging and remarkable. Whether it was during a faculty meeting or a thesis hearing, he could—off the top of his head—refer to sociological work or a scholar that fit the occasion.
Chris also developed a strong reputation as being an excellent mentor for master’s students in sociology. Over the years, many graduate students have benefited from his expertise in qualitative research methods and his dedication to mentoring in the writing process. At the time of his retirement, Chris is still involved in mentoring several graduate students in their thesis projects. When I (Sprecher) was working on the first draft of article in the heat of July, Chris was down the hall in his office meeting with one of our master’s students, Sophie Rout, who also had been an undergraduate student with us. He was doing this despite the fact that it was summer and that he was retired!
Growing up, Chris was no stranger to the academic life. His father, Dr. Edward Wellin, was a social and medical anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he taught for 25 years before his retirement. Our Chris received his undergraduate degree at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his master’s and Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University and then spent two years as a postdoctoral trainee in Health Services Research at the University of California, San Francisco, before being hired at Miami University and then Illinois State University. His research interests have been in the areas of aging/social gerontology, chronic illness and caregiving, and work and occupations. In 2018, he published an edited volume, Critical Gerontology Comes of Age: Advances in Theory and Research for a New Century; WGLT interviewed Chris about it and the issue of home health for the elderly. Over the years, he has had several publications on topics such as paid caregiving, residential care for older adults with dementia, and welfare reform for older adults. He has always been committed to disseminating sociological and gerontological scholarship to the general public and those in the community who directly work with policy or aging care.
Chris Wellin is a man of many talents. Not only is he a talented and beloved college professor, who will continue being a beloved mentor to graduate students and likely doing some part-time teaching for us, but he is also a talented musician. Check it out for yourself at his website. We (Sprecher and Brehm) speak for the entire department when we say to you, Dr. Chris Wellin, that we are happy you were among us for many years and are looking forward to your continuing involvement as an emeritus faculty member.
