Ashley Oliver named 2025 Lincoln Academy Student Laureate

“Dean (Ivan) Favila told me that he nominated me for an award. The fact that the school felt I was an appropriate person to nominate, let alone receive the award, was very heartwarming to me. It made me feel that my school is watching and enjoys me being there as much as I enjoy being at the school.”

That was how Ashley Oliver described her immediate reaction to learning about her selection as the 2025 Student Laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Lincoln Academy Student Laureates from colleges and universities across the state are honored by the governor for their overall excellence in civic engagement and curricular and extracurricular activities. Each selected Student Laureate will receive the Lincoln Academy Student Laureate Medallion, a certificate of achievement, and a $1,000 check for the Abraham Lincoln Civic Engagement Award. Winners (including their personal guest and a nominator) will be honored at an in-person gathering on Saturday, October 18, 2025.

Oliver, from Hoffman Estates, IL, is majoring in bioengineering with a minor in chemistry and is a member of the Fighting Illini women’s track & field team.

In nominating her for consideration as a laureate, Ivan Favila, senior assistant dean and director of the Morrill Engineering Program at The Grainger College of Engineering, wrote about Oliver’s impressive traits.

“In over 25 years of working with and mentoring engineering students, Ashley stands out among the top few who have impressed me with their work ethic, personal integrity, appreciation of STEM, and selflessness.”

Favila met Oliver in August 2022, during the EMBARK early move-in and orientation program that brings together students who are underrepresented in engineering for orientation to the U. of I. He hired her as a peer mentor for the program and the ENG 111 Morrill mentoring course in the fall 2023 and 2024 semesters.

“In both terms, she did a phenomenal job in providing guidance, examples, and academic context to students. Students in her section overwhelmingly gave her positive reviews. She has also provided valuable feedback in helping me develop additional features to our training for peer mentors,” Favila wrote.

Oliver is an active participant in the student chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). She has presented her research at local and national conferences, most recently at the 2024 BMES Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

As a varsity athlete, Oliver has competed in intercollegiate outdoor and indoor events across the country, receiving 2024 Academic All-Big Ten honors.

“In over 25 years of working with and mentoring engineering students, Ashley stands out among the top few who have impressed me with their work ethic, personal integrity, appreciation of STEM, and selflessness.”

— Assistant Dean Ivan Favila, Illinois Grainger Engineering

“It is no surprise to me at all that Ashley is earning such a prestigious honor,” said Petros Kyprianou, director of Track & Field and Cross Country at Illinois. “She’s one of the most dedicated and hardworking athletes on our team, not only on the track, but even more so in the classroom. Being able to juggle the physical demands of being an athlete while also handling the tremendous mental demands of being a bioengineering major is a huge testament to how strong of a person she is.”

“The fact that I am on the track team and the fact that I do engineering are not mutually exclusive,” Oliver said. “They work off of each other a lot. I'm in bioengineering. A lot of the things and a lot of the machines that we use for our athletics through our athletic training staff are very similar to things that we learn about in class. I get to learn about how muscles move, and I understand it well because I run track. The thing about track is that you have to be in peak shape mentally and physically. I learned a great deal about fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles. Then you get to your bioengineering classes, and you have applications of the stuff that I've been doing my whole life in athletics.”

She continued, “I think about track when I’m on the track, and when I'm studying, I think about studying. It's nice when one isn't going exactly how I want, so I have the other to lean back on. It keeps me motivated in both areas when I know that I have the other. I not only have the drive to run fast or the drive to excel in my classes, but also have my teammates’ support and my engineering friends’ support, which is huge to have.”

With a strong interest in mathematics, Oliver recalled how her interest in an Illinois education grew.

“One thing I noticed about Illinois Grainger Engineering when I was preparing to apply: the bioengineering program had heavy physics courses, heavy chemistry, heavy biology, and heavy math, and for me personally, having a lot of math classes was important. But I didn't necessarily want to give up all the other areas of science. Bioengineering encompasses all my interests,” she said.

“Now that I'm in bioengineering, I'm happy I picked it because not only do we learn the basic biology and the basic chemistry, but we also understand how to apply it and how to turn that into new technology and new things and new developments. That resonates with the way that I think.”