Illinois Valley Community College is honoring five remarkable women for forging new paths as part of Women’s History Month. Among them is Crystal Credi, who champions student success and started a campus food pantry to address food insecurity. Kim Koehler designs programs that connect the college with the wider community, earning recognition for her innovative courses. Aurora Medina supports single parents and advocates for Latino voices and youth empowerment. Theresa Molln leads the welding program, encouraging women to enter the trades. Nursing faculty Samantha Whiteaker blends teaching, practice, and community support, proving that compassion extends well beyond the classroom.
Crystal Credi, Dean of Student Success
Serving and supporting students has guided Credi’s 13-year career at IVCC. Now, she leads support services departments such as academic counseling and career services, student success, and Project Success TRIO program.
“Students’ success is at the center of everything we do. The greatest gift is cheering them on as they cross the stage at graduation,” she said.
Credi’s educational journey continued amid her job and family. “My own educational journey helped me understand some of the challenges students face. There are many obstacles along the way and moving forward can be challenging. It took some time and life experience to determine what I wanted to do, and then it took grit and determination to keep reaching for and achieving my goals.”
One significant challenge students face is food insecurity. Credi is determined to alleviate it and established a campus food pantry that has grown over the past three years in response to student needs.
Kim Koehler, Program Manager of IVCC’s Continuing Education and Business Services
Koehler found her passion early in designing recreational activities. Now, she designs a catalog of activities ranging from youth summer camps to personal enrichment classes to cultural tours. She won a state innovation award for a history series she created two years ago.
Koehler says the programs knit the college and community together. Summer camps provide early exposure to a variety of topics that might eventually define a career path. Tours can broaden cultural awareness and personal enrichment classes can lead to a new hobby, improve health, provide a skill, or stimulate wonder.
Koehler is satisfied knowing IVCC created a space for those “a ha!” moments: the smiles, the light in the eyes or spark of confidence that learning or achieving can bring. “And the summer camp participants can’t wait to tell their friends they went to college this summer,” she added.
Aurora Medina, Single Parent Connections Coordinator
Medina was once a struggling young parent and college student. Now she is back coordinating the program that helped shape her.
“I am standing on the other side, supporting families who are walking paths like I once did. I am living proof that compassion and opportunity can change a person’s life and I get to pay that forward.” Medina, who went on to earn a degree in social work, provides education assistance, parental coaching, resource referrals, and career counseling.
As a community coordinator to Girls Empowered Are Rising (G.E.A.R Up Academy), she advises and encourages middle school and high school girls “to navigate life with courage and clarity and become strong self-aware leaders.”
As president of the Illinois Valley Hispanic Partnership Council, Medina is determined to create spaces where Latino voices are heard, supported and celebrated, and where youths can see themselves represented and empowered. Partnership events celebrate heritage and foster cultural sensitivity.
Theresa Molln, Welding Program Coordinator and Lead Faculty
Molln was the only girl in her shop and welding classes but that is not true in the classes she teaches today. Women populate her classes and her female lab assistants provide expertise in the welding lab.
“I believe I have created pathways for them because of what I have done,” she said.
Looking back on her own training, Molln says she wasn’t trying to be different. “I was just interested in the welding and drafting that was being taught in that shop class.”
She was told she had “a knack for welding” and went on to expand her skills at IVCC, earning two degrees and numerous certificates and sending a message to her growing children. “You can accomplish anything you set your mind to do – at any age.”
She tries to help all young welders with her work in the program by advising them to look beyond where they otherwise might “because you never know where it will lead you.”
Samantha Whiteaker, Nursing Faculty
Samantha Whiteaker knew she wanted to teach nursing as well as practice it.
“I had such an amazing experience in nursing school that I wanted to give that kind of education back to future nurses. I knew before I even graduated from nursing school that I wanted to eventually teach.”
She is a practicing nurse and leads a birth and breastfeeding support group. “This area does not offer a wealth of resources, so I am extremely happy to be a community organizer and link women to resources and information. I love helping in a moment of need and then seeing people move on with their lives and being happy, without me!”
She coordinates community service projects for student nurses that benefit women and families and shows her students it is easy and important to give back to the community.
Between working, teaching, and raising a family, “I don’t always do a great job at spinning all the plates I have to spin, but I try to give myself grace and remember what I tell others: You can have it all, and you can do it all, but not all at once!”
