Graduate students in the Department of Communication will have help succeeding as teachers, thanks to an endowment honoring the memory of Professor Martha Cooper.

Before she died in October at age 46, Cooper helped create the Martha Cooper Memorial Endowment for Support of Instruction in Graduate Teaching. Contributions from former students, colleagues and relatives have helped the endowment grow to more than $20,000.

The endowment will fund an annual stipend recognizing outstanding performance and peer leadership of one or more graduate teaching assistants. It also will support mentoring of first-year graduate assistants and will be used to sponsor programs that encourage excellence in teaching.

“We want to continue to use the endowment to support grad students in their teaching mission and the faculty who help them develop as teachers,” department chair Lois Self said.

The first recipient will be announced during the department’s awards ceremony Sunday, April 29.

Self said the department graduate program director and faculty members who work with graduate students will be involved with choosing the recipient, along with student caucus members.

It has not been decided whether there will only be one recipient, or more than one, she added.

Charles Tucker, Cooper’s husband and a retired NIU professor of communication, explained Cooper’s goal in creating the endowment.

“She was always very interested in the training of graduate students in teaching because such a large population of grad students go on to teach,” he said. “If not in the university, they’re likely to do training and other forms of teaching in whatever professions they do choose.

“It will support both graduate students and faculty who instruct grad students in their teaching, and it will support departmental activities that encourage teaching competence in grad students,” he added.

Self said the large number of people who attended Cooper’s memorial, many from out of state, was a testament to how loved and appreciated she was by her students, colleagues and family members.

Some of her former students also created a Web site in her memory, at www.robertbscollins.com/martha/legacy.htm.

“She was a very valuable member of our department who excellently balanced teaching, research and service, not only in our department, but to our whole university and our profession,” she said.

Cooper served as director of graduate studies in communication from 1989 to 2000, and more than half of the 30 graduate students she advised went on to earn Ph.D.s.

“Martha and I talked at some length about doing the endowment,” Tucker said. “She considered the instruction of graduate students in teaching to be the most important graduate assignment other than director of graduate studies itself. I’m confident that the endowment fits the person it’s set up to remember.”

To contribute to the endowment, call Nora Clark in the NIU Development Office at 753-1797.