When Jenn Jacobs arrived on the NIU campus in 2012, she came not to teach but to learn.
Jacobs began her pursuit of a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology then, only three years after earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
And as an alumna of the College of Education, where she has served on the faculty of the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education since 2016, she feels a special kinship with the graduate students following in her footsteps.
“It’s fun, because I feel like I know where they’re coming from and what they’re thinking. I intimately know the amazing things about NIU and some of the challenges that I had a student that are maybe being replicated for them,” Jacobs says.
“So, I’m able to think about what’s going on in their minds, and I often will ask myself, ‘What would I have wanted back then?’ ” she adds. “I also tell them, straight up, ‘I’m not that much older than you, and I’m not too far from where you are.’ I think that credibility helps give them a little bit of buy-in to some of the ideas that I’m offering.”
NIU’s Graduate School recognizes that quality as well.
The Dr. M. Nadine Zimmerman Endowed Professor is the recipient of one of two 2024-2025 Distinguished Graduate Faculty Awards, which honors excellence in mentoring master’s and doctoral students through direct engagement and scholarly achievements.
Her achievement also provides the privilege of serving as the mace bearer for the Friday, May 9, Graduate School commencement ceremony, a duty that College of Education colleague (and fellow NIU doctoral alumna) Stacy Kelly enjoyed in December.
Like Kelly, Jacobs is humble in accepting the accolades.
“What makes me an excellence mentor is that I have excellent mentors. I still keep close contact with my mentors, including Paul Wright, my doctoral advisor; Barbara Meyer, my master’s advisor; and William Massey, who’s at Oregon State University,” Jacobs says.
“I use them. I ask them for help, and I think of what they would say or what did they teach me back then? Even my high school teachers I keep in touch with – and consider them present mentors in my life,” she adds. “It’s almost like I’ve gathered this army of people who take up real estate in my head, and I think about, ‘What are the things that they gave me, and how can I keep passing that on?’ ”
One of the lessons is paramount.
“I’m going to use the words of one my mentors, Dr. Meyer. She told me to be a ‘forever student,’ and so I think that gives me the mindset of, ‘You never have all the answers. You have to keep striving,’ ” she says. “I try to make that feeling contagious. I tell my students all the time, ‘You need to be a forever student. You need to get a hobby that makes you a beginner at something – every year – so you don’t forget what it’s like to have to be taught something.’ ”
Bracing that philosophy, she says, is the energizing thrill that comes from an exchange of information, new learning and relationship-building – as well as a personal challenge and mission.
“This is a feeling that I try to replicate over and over again for my students,” she says, “but also for myself. Last year I took up breakdancing and learning Spanish. Next year? Surfing.”
Doing so fosters the kind of growth that drives “forever students” to keep climbing and exploring.
“Probably one of the most important skills is to ask the hard questions. I will be the last to tell you that I have any answers, but I will be the first to tell you that I have all the questions, and I think the questions are far more important than the answers,” Jacobs says. “It’s that sort of reflection, examination and critical thought.”
Why did somebody act that way? What is it about their upbringing? What kind of blinders do they have up? And what are those a result of?
“Those are the types of questions that students I work with will need to ask for the types of careers they’re going into in the sports world or in the education world,” she says.
“I’m far more interested in having people examine the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’ or the ‘how’ or the ‘who.’ When anything happens around them, I want them to ask, through this sociological lens, ‘Why? How did we get here? Where did this come from? Why might this person think this way?’ – and, ‘How can I offer alternative knowledge so that maybe they think a different way?’ and go from there.”
JACOBS CLEARLY LOVES teaching and collaborating with graduate students and, as she says, traveling alongside them as they become “the experts.”
Part of that is a result of “the freedom that grad school gives students,” she says.
“It’s almost like their walls are taken down. Their safety nets are taken down. They’re very much wandering and looking for something to grab onto, and I like to be that person who offers this behind Door 1 and this behind Door 2 and this behind Door 3, or at least the person who asks the questions to help them figure out what’s behind each door,” she says.
“I am a pretty self-reflective person myself, so I know the types of questions and challenges you can put in front of someone to really make them dig deep and soul-search,” she adds, “and it’s almost a little bit of me getting to relive that over and over through the students figuring out what they want their ‘thing’ to be.”
Meanwhile, she says with a laugh, “I’ve learned that I’m not so cool.”
“I love learning what’s new and hip. My students will tell you. I’m always asking, ‘What’s the new word that I need to use in class? What’s the new, hip thing?’ I think that makes my job more fun, like lighting a bit of fire under me to keep up with them,” she says. “I tell them to ‘go do your big one’ or ‘That paper – you lowkey ate that!’”
Some lessons are more serious.
Graduate students are “going through a transformational part of their lives where they’re coming into their identity, figuring out what they want their career to be and figuring out how they want their relationships to go,” Jacobs says.
And, she says, “what I thought was a young adulthood lesson is very much a part of all our lives, over and over again, whether we’re in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s – whenever – and I like to watch things happen through their eyes.”
“That’s one of my favorite reasons for taking students on international trips. I like to watch them see culture and newness happen right before them,” she adds. “That spark – it reminds me of how I need to keep finding that in my days also.”
JACOBS ALSO STAYS in touch with her graduate students after they leave NIU, whether that’s on social media or via calls and texts, and hopes they are friends for life.
Frequent contacts include Tim Mack, the original graduate assistant enlisted by Jacobs and Zach Wahl-Alexander for the 2018 launch of Project FLEX and its work behind the locked walls of Illinois Juvenile Justice facilities.
“The No. 1 FLEX GA of all time!” Jacobs says of the Foundation Programs and Events manager for the Chicago Fire Football Club. “We would not be where we are without him.”
Huntleigh Wozniak is another favorite – “our first female hire who really took FLEX in new directions. She opened it up to us working with females, which we never thought we would. We were not sure that we would feel comfortable putting females in the male facilities, and she very much showed us that it is possible and it can be done in a strong way. Huntleigh’s going to go down in history as one of our best instructors.”
Wozniak currently works for the Chicago Public Schools as a student support manager, “supporting the students who don’t have positive connections in school,” Jacobs says. “She helps to set them up with sports programs or mental health programs or vocational programs – very much up the alley of what FLEX is doing.”
Emma Baumert, among the first-year travelers to Belize on the Alternative Spring BAE program Jacobs created, continues to tag along on the annual trip years after earning her M.S.Ed. in Kinesiology and Physical Education in 2021.
Karisa Kuipers, meanwhile, has gone from mentee to colleague: The NIU instructor of Sport and Exercise Psychology was Jacobs’ first Ph.D. student.
“They’re all doing such cool things, and I love to see the little overlaps – ‘Oh, that’s because when you were here at NIU and you took this class, or you went on this trip, or you did that at the prison facility,’ ” Jacobs says.
“I think of them as the people who can help me draw energy when I’m having a low-motivation day, or feeling like I’m not making a difference, and I go to them to see, ‘OK, here’s what they’re doing out in the world,’ ” she adds.
“My absolute favorite compliment to get from them is, ‘I couldn’t wait to tell you this because it reminded me of what we talked about in class or at FLEX.’ I get that every once in a while, and that can buy me a good year of happiness.”
