University of Illinois Springfield’s annual alumni gala on Friday, Feb. 21, is honoring two former participants of the Public Affairs Reporting program, former PAR director Charles Wheeler III and class of ’85 graduate Cheri Bustos.
Wheeler, recipient of the University of Illinois Distinguished Service Award, was the program’s third director, from 1993 to 2019. His relationship with PAR started during his 24 years working for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he worked with the program’s students. During the mid-’80s, Wheeler served as part of the PAR’s selection committee, up until then-director Bill Miller retired, allowing him the opportunity to take on the role of director.
Cheri Bustos, retired congresswoman and winner of the University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award, was a PAR student in the class of 1985. She had an early introduction to journalism and the goings on of the Illinois Statehouse through her father, Gene Callahan, who was chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Paul Simon, PAR’s founding director. Through one of her first reporting jobs out of the program at The Quad City Times, she met her now husband, Gerry Bustos.
“My first beat at the newspaper was covering the police beat, which is where I ended up meeting my husband, who was a rookie cop and I was a rookie cop reporter,” Bustos said. “We met six months after I moved to the Quad Cities and then we got married a year and a half after I moved to the Quad Cities. So even my personal life was formed because of UIS and PAR.”
Even though Wheeler and Bustos participated in different positions within PAR and at different times, both speak highly of the effectiveness the education provides. Bustos especially attributes her ongoing success to the foundation PAR provided to her.
“I was happy being a journalist and I ended up being one for 17 years,” said Bustos. “I loved nearly every day of it, and it just would not have happened without being able to go through the Public Affairs Reporting program at UIS. Our nation needs good, gutsy, strong journalists… now more than ever, and the training that a future journalist gets from the Public Affairs Reporting program is almost second to none.”
PAR began more than 50 years ago at what began as Sangamon State University. Now, at the renamed UIS, PAR is still one of the most successful journalism programs in the country, with a 90-100% job placement rate for graduating students.
“PAR has people all over the world,” said Wheeler. “A lot of them have gone on to do other things, but the training that they got in PAR, the practical experience of taking complicated subjects and describing them in a way that average citizens can understand, it is a talent that you can carry over into other fields and other activities.”
What separates PAR from most other graduate journalism programs around the country is where students are placed for their internship experience. Most journalism programs have their students placed in positions within a student or school newspaper, but PAR pairs students with real publications. This allows students to gain professional experience as actual reporters inside a newsroom.
“I figured the best way to prepare people to be Statehouse reporters is not to talk about theory…but to tell them here’s what happens, here’s why it happens, here’s the rules you need to know, here’s the background information,” said Wheeler.
Jason Piscia, current director of PAR, spent 21 years as a journalist and editor before he took up the role of training the next generation of reporters at UIS. His vast experience in professional reporting continues a trend of students’ access to highly skilled educators, beginning at the program’s creation in 1972 by Simon.
PAR began as a response to veteran reporters at the time upset with the lack of experience newer journalists had in a real newsroom. They felt the primarily book-based educational method largely failed to adequately prepare students for the expectations of reporting outside the classroom. Simon responded by bringing veteran reporters and education administrators together to create a program allowing both educational and professional development for students.
This cooperation between the university and Statehouse reporters, and the insistence of Director Simon, is what led to the half-century of journalists graduating and advancing their careers as reporters.
“When students come out of PAR, they’ve just come off of covering the Illinois General Assembly and state government, which is one of the more high-profile beats in the state,” said Piscia. “They are keeping track of what the governor and the legislature are doing, right in the middle of the action in the Capitol. When those students go into another newsroom, they’re able to hit the ground running, pick up coverage of a city hall or a county board, and they’re ready to cover that on day one without much hand-holding.”
Logan Bricker is a master’s degree student in the UIS Public Affairs Reporting program, working this semester as an intern for Illinois Times.
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