Birthing dreams: Alumna achieves family, career success through surrogacy

Zara Griswold

Illinois State alumna Zara Griswold is in the business of creating families. The agency Griswold created with Staci Swiderski helps couples who cannot physically reproduce their own child navigate the expensive and legally complicated process of using gestational surrogacy with egg and sperm donation to have a baby.

How we met: Kelsey Wallace and Alex Nagyivan

Kelsey Wallace and Alex Nagyivan wedding party

Kelsey Wallace and Alex Nagyivan, both 2009 graduates, completed a management and quantitative methods class together their junior year. But that’s not when their romance started.

ISU Olympian inducted into Hall of Fame

Charlotte Lewis dribbles a ball

Former ISU basketball star and Olympian Charlotte Lewis ’78, ’01, is a 2017 inductee into the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame. A Redbird student-athlete from 1974 to 1978, she died of a heart attack at the age of 52 in 200

Five athletes competed at U.S. volleyball tryouts

Women's volleyball players

The strength of ISU’s volleyball roster was proven during the spring semester, when five team members were chosen to participate in the U.S. Women’s National Team Open Tryouts held in Colorado.

Freshman runner at NCAA championships

Derrius Rodgers head shot

Derrius Rodgers made Illinois State University history as the first 60-meter runner to ever qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships held during the spring semester.

Conference champions: Top Valley honors go to men’s basketball coach, player

Photo of men's basketball team

After leading the Redbirds to a regular-season championship for the first time in nearly two decades, head men’s basketball coach Dan Muller was named the 2017 Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year. Senior Paris Lee also captured top honors when named the MVC Larry Bird Player of the Year and the Defensive Player of the Year.