Stephanie Filtcheva, junior pre-law student
Stephanie Filtcheva is an executive board member for Justice Under Restorative Youth (JURY), which is a student organization on campus that works with the Champaign County Youth Assessment Center. As a whole, JURY seeks to promote restorative justice practices, empower middle and high-school students, and keep these students out of juvenile detention. Stephanie leads JURY’s outreach branch, where she coordinates programming that teaches students about their legal rights and the repercussions of illegal behavior. So far, she has worked with the mayor of Champaign county, the superintendents of the Champaign school district, and the local YMCA and Boys and Girls Club. Stephanie loves seeing students’ confidence grow throughout the presentations she gives, and she’s inspired by how much students are willing to discuss difficult topics, such as current immigration policy.
Darby Elo, senior in political science and Spanish (Class of 2026)
As an Ignite Fellow for Teach for America, Darby Elo has been tutoring under-resourced elementary students over the past school year. In Spring 2026, she tutored three second-grade students four days a week to help them in their English classes, and the previous semester, she tutored two fourth-grade students. As someone who comes from a family of educators, Darby was interested in honing her teaching practice through the work involved in this fellowship. She finds it extremely rewarding to build relationships with students and watch them progress over the course of the semester, and this experience had led her to become more creative and patient while teaching. Darby finds many of the skills she learned in Dr. Wisniewski’s WRIT 300 class are applicable to both this role and her work as a consultant in the Workshop, especially motivational scaffolding.
Maris Daleo, veterinary medicine student and PhD from the Program for Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology
The Veterinary Medicine Scholars Program at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine requires students to enter veterinary school, acquire a PhD, then come back to finish veterinary school and obtain a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine. As a third-year vet student, this means Maris Daleo is undergoing her clinical rotations in vet medicine while having already defended a dissertation (and consulting at the Workshop!). For her PhD in wildlife epidemiology, Maris researched how to best care for confiscated turtles that were being transported through airports as part of illegal wildlife trades. This research reflects her passion for wildlife health, which drives her veterinary practice in pursuit of solutions that help both animals and people. So far, her favorite rotation has been with farm animals, which she prepared for by taking classes in regulatory medicine, clinical reasoning, and surgical skills. After receiving her DVM, Maris hopes to work in free-ranging wildlife health research, which would build upon skills she gained while writing her dissertation, her current work with bison herds in the Midwest, and her work over the summer engaging in wildlife medicine in Alaska.
By Emily Mendelson, Communication, PhD candidate