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College of Applied Science and Technology

Agriculture

Julie H

Julie Hewitt ’99

Julie currently serves as the executive director of the Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council (NREC). In this role, she works closely with the council to direct funds assessed to producers for fertilizer purchases into nutrient research and outreach. She also works closely with industry partners to ensure that best management practices related to nutrient management are shared with farmers and the retail industry in a manner that allows for easy incorporation into farming practices.

With over 20 years of experience in agriculture, Julie has worked in a wide variety of roles including corn product development and research, marketing food ingredients and selling corn and soybean seed to producers.

In addition to her work with NREC, she helps support her daughter’s livestock and popcorn operations and enjoys volunteering with the various activities her two daughters are involved in. Julie is a founding member of Heyworth Connect, a not-for-profit organization that serves the community through family friendly, community building events. She also serves on the Illinois FFA Foundation Board of Directors, the Heyworth Sting JFL Board of Directors and on the ISU Agriculture Advisory Board.

Criminal Justice Sciences

Kelsie F

Kelsie Frooman '14, M.S. '16

While obtaining her degrees at ISU, Kelsie worked alongside professors and assisted with their original research. She is a 2021 McLean County Multicultural Leadership Program graduate and a board member at INtegRIty Counseling. Kelsie has worked at local organizations in the community but is back on ISU’s campus working in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Access.  

Family and Consumer Sciences

Flor H

Flor Hernandez ’15

Flor is a first-generation, Latina graduate of the interior design program. As a student she was diligent in her studies and work and served as a teaching assistant for the Design Elements course. 

When she graduated, she landed a coveted position at HOK in Chicago and gained valuable experience over the course of three years. While at HOK she reached out to the interior design program at ISU about mentoring other first-generation students. After leaving HOK to work in hospitality design at Aria Group,  she continued to mentor several ISU students including one that earned an internship role at Aria Group. 

Morgan Murphy

Morgan Murphy ’18

While at ISU, Morgan served as associate director for the 2018 Illinois State Fashion Show, fundraising coordinator for the Fashion Design and Merchandising Association, a teaching assistant for Apparel Product Analysis, and an intern at TJX Companies for TJ Maxx in Massachusetts.

After graduation, she started her career as an executive trainee at Von Maur. After a few months, she was promoted to associate buyer of moderate sportswear and the buyer of men’s shoes. She then moved to Walgreens Corporate to be an associate category manager. She was promoted to a category manager in less than two years where she now leads the pet and pantry team, buying and picking out product while  developing her team members. She also serves on Walgreens' diversity and inclusion committee, Women of Walgreens, and the engagement committee. 

Health Sciences

Jake C

Jake Callahan ’10

Jake is currently the director of operations and maintenance for the Bloomington and Normal Water Reclamation District. He was hired by the district shortly after completing his ISU professional practice as an operations intern. Jake is also certified by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency as a class 1 wastewater treatment works operator. 

Jake is proud to serve his hometown municipality which recently obtained the National Association of Clean Water Agencies Peak Performance Platinum Award for sixteen consecutive years and the Gold Award for the District’s West Wastewater Treatment Plant for full compliance with permit limits in 2022.  Jake has also served on the ISU Environmental Health and Sustainability Academic Advisory Board since 2021. In 2018, he earned his Master of Science in environmental, safety and health management from the University of Findlay. 

Lisa Difatta

Lisa Difatta ’16

Lisa is a public health emergency response coordinator at the DuPage County Health Department. She started her journey at the agency as a graduate intern doing work surrounding youth substance use prevention. In her current role, Lisa assists with local public health emergency responses including COVID-19, Mpox, and Ebola by engaging directly with healthcare and community partners to support their needs.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lisa transported the first doses of vaccine to the hospitals and had her team’s public health data regarding personal protective equipment shortages shared in front of the United States Congress. She has since presented her work regarding first responder mental health and wellness at the National Association of County and City Health Officials Preparedness Summit and has been recognized as one of 60 individuals who goes above and beyond in demonstrating her agency’s values.

Aaron Stevens

Aaron Stevens ’10

Aaron is currently the supervisor of immunohematology reference laboratory for the American Red Cross Heart of America Region. Prior to beginning this position this year, he served 14 years with OSF Healthcare in a variety of roles including manager of laboratory services, regional manager of clinical laboratory services, and manager of the clinical reesarch business office. 

He developed competencies in Six Sigma, process improvement, lean methodologies and project management, and LIS implementations. He also developed in-house training curriculum for non-traditional lab techs to work towards ASCP certification. 

Jane Turley

Jane Turley ’81, M.S. ’89

Jane is a retired professor, program director, and professional practice coordinator from the health information management program in the ISU Department of Health Sciences. During her lengthy career, she was a consultant for hospitals and physician offices in the area of Medicare reimbursement.

Her areas of expertise included HIPAA, long term care documentation, and acute care revenue cycle management. She belonged to many local health care organizations and served three terms on the board of the McLean County Health Department. Her legacy will be the many students she developed as health information management professionals.

Information Technology

Matt Jones

Matt Jones ’13

After graduating with a computer science degree, Matt spent a year as a software engineer at Wolfram Research before accepting a software engineer position at Google, working on development of the Chrome browser. 

In his nine years at Google, Matt has risen to senior software engineer, and has been the technical lead for features that span platforms including Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS. Some of his more visible projects include Chrome shopping, reader mode, and bookmarks. Currently, he spends considerable time building and maintaining user-invisible systems that other Google teams depend on.

Matt Lindstrom

Matt Lindstrom ’14

Matt is the information security operations manager for Illinois State University’s Information Security Office as well as a lecturer for the School of Information Technology. He began working for Illinois State in 2013, fixing computers as a student desktop support technician. Following graduating in 2014 with an information assurance and security degree, he continued working at Illinois State. Over the years he was promoted to security analyst, then supervisor, and ultimately his current role. Here, he led the development of the University's first Security Operations Center and now manages the development and maintenance of information security controls, reporting, and solutions.

Kinesiology and Recreation

Heather Cox

Heather Caputo ’10

After graduation, Heather held the group fitness manager position at Gold’s Gym for five years while personal training and teaching group fitness. 

She then pursued a management position at Orangetheory Fitness (OTF) Chicago for one year prior to becoming a multi-unit franchisee of three OTF locations across Central Illinois. She is also a member of the Franchisee Advisory Council subcommittee for OTF corporate. 

In her spare time, she is back in the classroom as an adjunct professor at ISU, teaching fitness management. 

Jaylon Joyner

Jaylon Joyner ’17, ’18 

Jaylon graduated from ISU with a double major in athletic training and physical education. He soon moved to Chicago to begin his career as a high school athletic trainer, teacher, and coach. After a year working as a physical education teacher for Chicago Public Schools, Jaylon began as the athletic trainer and health teacher at Christ the King Jesuit College Prep and has held the position for five years. Here he helps students and athletes develop holistically. 

Jaylon holds a master's degree in sports, fitness, and recreation leadership and is currently working on his doctorate in kinesiology. 

Technology

Giovanni Bernetti

Giovanni Bernetti ’94

For the past 23 years, Giovanni has worked for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. He is currently the senior financial advisor and senior vice president for the company. 

He is based out of the Bloomington Merrill branch and has clients throughout Central Illinois as well as other states. The majority of clients are local individuals and families that are business owners, business executives and professional people in many fields. 

Sara Lynn Keene

Sara Lynn Keene ’19

After graduation, Sara worked for the local, non-profit environmental agency, Ecology Action Center while also volunteering for an organic produce farm, PrairiErth Farm. She then began working for Rivian Automotive, Inc. as a customer service specialist. In addition to her full time job with Rivian, for three and a half years, Sara is an instructor at Dreams Are Possible, a non-profit women's empowerment and education center, in Bloomington.

Sara recently accepted a promotion with Rivian as a launch serviceadvisor, a position in which she will travel the United States, opening new service centers for the company's electric vehicles.