Black Excellence: Andrea Evans 

Tariq El-Amin 00:01    

Welcome to “Black Excellence” at UIC.    

The Office of Student Success and Belonging, with Dr. Aisha El-Amin.     

Recording of Dr. Martin Luther King 00:09    

[Applause] Believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.    

Clips from 1995 movie “Panther” 00:17    

His intention is that we study and master a bunch of different things.   
Why are you here?     
Study and master a bunch of different things.   
I’m proud to introduce our new Minister of Information.   

Aisha El-Amin 00:26    

I’m Dr. Aisha El-Amin.    

Tariq El-Amin 00:29    

Welcome to “Black Excellence.”  

Andrea Evans  00:33 

And I think it’s in those years: 18, 19, 20, 21, where we’re sort of wrestling with all these messages about who we are and who we’re supposed to be, and I went along with that, you know, I gave away my power frequently to people, and I learned to stop doing that, that I am a whole individual with a brain and I can utilize my power for my own good and for the good of people around me, my children, my community, etc. 

Aisha El-Amin  01:10 

In this episode of the “Black Excellence” podcast, we sit down with Dr Andrea Evans, a proud Chicago native and UIC alum. Dr. Evans unpacks her powerful journey navigating grief while balancing life as a young mother, student and widow. Despite the many challenges she faced,  

she remains steadfast in her pursuit of her dreams. She begins the episode by reflecting on her path and sharing where her passion for education first took root. 

Andrea Evans  01:40 

So, I’ll tell you a little bit about me, born and raised on the West Side of Chicago, and I was born on Kedzie and Fulton. My dad was a pharmacist, and I have to say that I didn’t know until way later in life that UIC, he was an alumni there. I didn’t know. He didn’t really push it. He did want us to go to UIC, but we didn’t. I didn’t really know his real background until later, when he gave me his yearbook from 1952 and a class picture. And so that’s how I got to know that he was actually an officer of his class voted; he was only two African Americans in that class of maybe 60, and he was voted by his peers as an executive on the Executive Council. So, you know, it was sort of in my blood and genes, but I didn’t really know it, because he didn’t really talk about it. Didn’t, he didn’t really boast about it.  

But I grew up on the West Side, and then later moved to Maywood when I was about, oh, third grade, so I don’t know what that is, 7 or 8 years old, and which was a wonderful place for us to grow up. And then I went to Proviso East High School, and it’s there that I just really got a love of science. That’s when I knew I had a wonderful African American teacher my freshman year in biology, Mrs. Edwards. We’re still friends today and just seeing her as my freshman year biology teacher, I said to myself, I’m going to major in biology. That’s how important her representation was to me, that important. When I saw her, I knew for myself what I was going to do. So I, you know, did a lot of science in high school, went to Loyola. So, I went. My goal was to go to Loyola medical school at some point, but I went there, majored in biology, and then I’ll have to say that this is sort of where my story and journey got sort of really tangled up, because I, you know, my personal life sort of took precedence over my education for a while. 

I married, I had two children while I was an undergrad, and so I, you know, by the time I came to UIC, I was, I had finished two years at Loyola, transferred to UIC, and by the time I transferred there, I had two babies. So, this was quite an experience. I was really wrestling with identity issues. And you know, one of the things I know certainly as African American young people, we’re often challenged to reconcile different parts of ourselves. Sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s because of money. For whatever reason we’re reconciling, how do I do this thing, and then also get my education. And so that was me just really trying to wrestle with these sort of identity issues of a woman and a mother, but also an educated person, which I always wanted to be. And so I got myself into this little pickle, and UIC was the place that. I really solidified who I thought I was.  

I really found myself at UIC. I found that I was a person, not just getting an education, because I wanted a certain kind of a job, but I wanted, I was a learner, and I, really getting it to UIC, continuing my major in biology, I had an ecology class that was really a game-changer for me, because it put me outside, literally, I mean, it put me outside in nature. And that was, that was a place that I had been away from for a while because I had babies, so I’m in the house. I’m, you know, I’m taking care of children, small children. I also took a volleyball class my senior year, which enabled me to move my body. So those things, really, in my time at UIC really brought me back into myself. And I had done a lot of things that sort of separated me from myself. And getting to UIC a really engaging in a music class, in a gym class, in an ecology lab, really brought me back to myself. And so it’s I hold this place very dear to my heart, because of my father, because my oldest sister, too, by the way, is a two-time alum of UIC. She got her bachelor’s degree in the late ’70s and her MD In the early ’80s from UIC. And so we had quite the legacy there. But for me, personally, it was just a place that allowed me to find myself and sort of sort of reconcile these different parts of me and recognizing that I’m a learner and that I needed to stay on that path. 

Aisha El-Amin  06:48 

Wow. So, first of all, I have to be introduced, if I can, to your family that are also alum, yes, yes. Just, I think that’s an amazing story, and you give a lot of hope to young mothers who are learners and want to get that degree and want to get that education. So, thank you for being vulnerable enough to share your story, you know, and all of the contours of it, I know you kept going even after getting your bachelor’s degree. And so tell us about that, that continued journey.  

Andrea Evans  07:25 

So, I and again, thank you for that. I have a soft spot for mothers, young mothers, and I understand where they are and what they’re trying to do, and I’m writing a book about this period of my life, by the way, so that’ll come. I’ve been working on that for a while. I have an article that’ll come out pretty soon, hopefully in a magazine, so I’m working with an editor on that, so that hopefully will, will, you know, tell more of the story. But yeah, it’s when I graduated and I was married and had a 1 and a 2 year old. My husband, at the time, was a United States Marine. Six months after I graduated, in June of 1989, he passed away. So now, yeah, I’m at another place of challenge and but the one thing that I was so glad that I had done was complete my degree. Because what I realized, and I talked about this a little bit in the book that will come out, is just sometimes people leave and sometimes people die, and what do you have left? And so I was so glad that that the part of me that I learned to become I had done at least that, you know, the early parts of me, because he left, he was gone, and so I had, I gave up my dream for medical school because I wanted to take care of my children. I did not want to spend the next 10 years trying to go to medical school and leaving them with my sister and my mom and all these things.  

So, I decided to forgo medical school. I got my first job at Mount Sinai Hospital, which is on the West Side, and I worked in microbiology lab there for two years, which was wonderful work. And I knew it wasn’t my life’s work, but it was wonderful work. It really renewed my love of science and but, well, not but, and it really made me want to share my love of science with students. So, I went to DePaul at night and got my teaching certificate, and then became a biology and chemistry teacher. So, my first teaching job was at Morgan Park High School on the South Side of Chicago. And then I went to back to my alma mater at Proviso East High School. Became a chemistry teacher there, and then from there, I did two things. I became the principal of a new alternative school that Proviso East opened, or Proviso Township opened, and decided to get my PhD. So that’s when I returned back to UIC.  

So, I came back to UIC in 1997 to get my doctorate in education policy studies, not quite sure what I was going to do with it. I thought I was coming back to K-12, but I really loved the writing, the working with adult students, so I decided to go ahead and shift careers. I left K-12 for good and started my journey as an assistant professor at Northern Illinois University. And then I was all over the place, Northern, I went at Southern Illinois, I’m happy to say I also returned to UIC as a faculty member there in 2012 to 2014, but I didn’t; I sort of knew, again, I had always sort of wanted to a leadership role, so I didn’t stay as a faculty member. I left there and got a dean’s job, dean of the College of Education at Governors State. And I did that for about four years, and then went to Northeastern Illinois and did several administrative roles there, the department, the  director of the Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies for several years, the dean of their College of Education.  

And then I wrapped it all up in 2023, retiring as the interim provost and vice president of academic affairs at Northeastern, so I retired after 30 years in education. And again, as I’ve said, UIC has played a huge role in that work, both for me, coming back for my PhD there, but also coming back to work there, and then also coming back, which I also forgot I was the president of Black Alumni Association, probably 2007 to 2010, or something like that, and the College of Education representative on the campus Alumni Advisory Board. So, I’ve always found my way back to UIC over the years. And so, it’s, as you can see, it’s near and dear to my heart and my life, quite frankly. And I’ve met wonderful people there, wonderful, wonderful professors, and just have had a wonderful experience that changed my life. 

Aisha El-Amin  12:07 

Wow, it’s funny, because some of our history mirrors each other. I went to DePaul teaching and learning as I was teaching, and then I went to UIC for my PhD in education policy as well.That certainly mirrors. Now, I’m wondering, the Dr. Evans, that we know now, after getting that PhD and doing all of the very impactful work of administrating and being an administrator and a leader in higher ed spaces, from that Andrea, who was coming into UIC and finding herself and going through losing your husband and raising your two children like, what, how was that different when you came back from when you left, and then you went in and did several things, and then you came back. Well, tell me the change and the shift in you in that time?  

Andrea Evans  13:05 

I think the way that I think about it is, I think as a young person, and I would say this for any young person, 18, 19, 20, there’s so many things that we learn to be from family members, friends, from the culture writ large. And I think it’s during those years that we have to unpack some of that and decide which of those things actually work for you. And so that’s what that journey was about for me. So, I’d heard these things, am I, you know, this? This is, I mean, I was a young Black girl who liked science. I found out really early that that was, like, a special thing. Like, why is that a special thing about it? I didn’t understand it because girls don’t do this, and Black girls certainly don’t do it. And so these are just messages that we get.  

And I think it’s in those years, 18, 19, 20, 21, where we’re sort of wrestling with all these messages about who we are and who we’re supposed to be. And I went along with that. You know, I gave away my power frequently to people, and I learned quickly and again while I was at UIC, really sort of finding myself to stop doing that, that I am a whole individual with a brain, and I can utilize my power for my own good and for the good of people around me, my children, my community, etc.  

So, when I came back to UIC, you know, in ’97 even you know, my kids, by this time, I had remarried, my husband, Dwayne, actually got his EDD from the College of Education at UIC back in 2012, I think it was, so again, we’re always staying connected to UIC. But at the time I came back in ’97 my children, who I’d had as undergraduate, they’re almost teenage. I mean, they’re approaching high school, and so, you know, I had to wrestle, even then, with how do I get this PhD done with kids? So, those challenges, I think, for women, is always it’s always there, right? You’re still always trying to figure out how to make it work. So that challenge was the same.  

The thing that was different when I came back years later is that I felt strong in my conviction of who I was as a person and what I needed to do. So, once I start this PhD, oh, it’s going to get done. It’s not even an option, because that’s what I need for me. So, I’ll work the rest of this out, but it’s going to happen because I want that for me. So, there’s this idea of self-empowerment. By the time I came back, I had that. I found that learning again was not just a means to an end for me, but I valued it. I valued the challenge of it. I valued the environment of higher education and learning and classrooms and professors. I valued that as a part of me. So I think that, you know growing up is just reconciling all of the messages that we get as women, reconciling the messages that we get as Black women, reconciling the messages that we get as Black people generally, by this time and when I came back later, those things, I’ve settled. I’ve pretty much settled who I am, what I am, the value that I bring, the worth that I have again, to myself, for myself or for my children, for my family, my community, for higher ed, and my contributions that I can make there. So, there’s a confidence and there’s a trusting instincts that I didn’t have as a young girl, a young woman, trusting my own instincts. And again, that’s something I had to get over. Trust yourself, girl, you know what’s best for you. And it was really learning to trust my own instincts, which all of the early life challenges built up that strength in me to be able to do 

Aisha El-Amin  17:22 

That is really, really powerful. I want you to tell us what the name of your book is going to be, because I want folks to buy it and read your story, to get that inspiration, to get that those nuggets of wisdom as you, as you look back, are there people or places or books or things that you did to help you get there, because I know so many of us are trying to get to the point of that self-actualization of that I’m, I’m hearing myself, and I know that I got this because we have so many opposing messages to the contrary of that. So, do you have any advice around places, people, things, books that should be done in order to help get to that space.  

Andrea Evans  18:06 

Well, first of all, let me say I don’t have a title for the book yet. I do have, and I call it a working title, in part because I doubt that this will end up being the title. But for me, there’s something about unbecoming in order to become so because we, when we go to school, we’re always thinking we’re going to become something. For me, there were some things I had to unbecome first, right? I mean, you know, again, I’ve been giving my power away to folks. I need to stop doing that. I have to unbecome some things and that. Again, that’s that for me, that 17, to say, 23 age range, was me really unbecoming, so that I could become because some of these messages and things I had believed, you know, which got me into some situations that I didn’t, didn’t bode well for me.  

So, I, right now, I just have this book that I call “The Unbecoming,” because it is sort of me unpacking and unbecoming some of these things that I thought that I heard, and then building up the strength to become what I really thought I needed to be. I doubt that that’s going to be the final title, but that’s what I work with right now. I have to say that I’m not back during this time, I really wasn’t thinking about and I really didn’t have like people that I could really talk to about these things, or books that I could really read about sort of finding myself and forgiving myself, because that’s another part of finding yourself, self-forgiveness. I had to realize that I’m not my worst mistake in the world, right? I’m better. You know, we all make them, but I couldn’t just own that. I had that hanging around my neck is like the worst thing. I’m better than my worst mistake in the world.  

So, these are sort of messages I really have to tell you. It just took me some years to work through and put in writing for myself. Journaling I have, you know, I have a shelf here of journals that I’ve written for in for years, I’ve kept them, and I go back to them sometimes and look at some of the things I wrote, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it’s really remarkable of sort of where I was in my thinking, or even, even earlier than that. So, I can’t say that I had, like, really people. I think I was so I felt a misalignment between my external life and internal, so I had to reconcile that for myself, and that’s what really helped me get the confidence to believe in my own instincts and then allow me to really move forward. It’s that decision to go back to school at DePaul and get that teaching degree. You know, it was that decision to say, you know what, I think I want to get this. I mean, these are, these were things that well, one, because I love learning, but it was really just sort of some internal feeling good about myself and the things that I thought I was good at, which was school and staying consistent with that.  

So, I think that one of the things, and I’m actually going to do sort of a little free webinar on this pretty soon, just for anybody who wants to come and join. And one of the things I’m going to ask folks is, what in your life separated you from you? And for women, a lot of times, it’s relationships. I mean, I just go throw that out there. Sometimes, you know, it’s just relationships that sometimes separate. I mean, it could be other things, too. But I’m gonna ask people to really sort of try to pinpoint the different incidences and times in life where they felt separated from themselves, and then ask people and give them permission to let that go. Because you gotta let it go. You did it whatever that was, or you allowed it to happen, whatever that was, it separated you from you, and then find and try to remember the time when you felt your most authentic self.  

And so, for me, it was easy. School was always where I felt my most authentic self. So at a time when I was struggling, I was always get back in school, take that ecology class, go sit in classical music class over at the music place over there on Harrison, and just sit and listen to the classical music, you know, during the class period. So, for me, it was just letting my mind observe and enjoy nature and, you know? And so those are things that I felt were my authentic self.  

So, yeah, I think just really going back, and for many of us, going back to a time when you felt your most authentic self, and then trying to find out what that is. I mean, one of the things I write about a lot in my own journaling, and I did this not too long ago for an article that I’m writing. All the things that I did as a kid. I played the string bass, the piano, I crocheted, I had a baseball collection, I had a seashell collection. I mean, all these things I did as a child made up who I was and so what I want us, women and people, to just sort of remind ourselves like because those are things that are really your, authentic you. It’s sort of before you get into all the complications of adult life, there’s some pieces in there that are really you that I you know, that we should grab back to sometimes and just remember who we are. So, I can’t say that I had this books or people. This is really just some really hard work internally and mentally with journaling and really getting to other tipping points in life, and saying I can either do this or that, and, you know, starting to pick the one that I thought was best for me gives you strength and energy. And so that gave me strength and energy going forward, and not that I never made mistakes again, because we all do. But I was able to think differently about how will this impact me? Is this what I really want? Let me do what I really want for me? Everybody else around me is going to be okay. So, learning to take care of myself was really, really important lesson that I had to learn, and there was a lot of internal work to do that. 

Aisha El-Amin  24:42 

I sincerely appreciate everything that you’re saying because it resonates with me in my journey. And so, I’m I want to ask you a few I want to give you a few sentence stems and ask you to finish them. Okay. Education is… 

Andrea Evans  25:04 

Wow. Education is growth, change. Growth and change, I see education. I mean, it is the one thing that we have. I mean, one of the things I think education does is make us nimble enough to use information to change if we need to. And I, I’m saying that even in this current political space that we’re in right now, I mean, we have to be nimble, and education gives us a foundation of knowledge and experience to be able to try to understand the moments that we’re in, to try to understand life differently. So, there’s growth that happens, but it makes you nimble enough to change and adapt to the situations that you’re in. And so again, it’s been everything for me, but that’s, that’s how I see education, just sort of as a foundation for growth in life, but also the foundation to be nimble enough to change if and when you need to. 

Aisha El-Amin  26:26 

And the next one is: Every young Black woman deserves… 

Andrea Evans  26:37 

I have to think another second on that one, that one’s important. Every young Black woman deserves to be heard and to live the life that they want to live, and that’s a hard thing to come by in a society that doesn’t that value necessarily Black people the way we that we would like and doesn’t, and that doesn’t necessarily value women the way that we would want and like. So, for Black women, it’s particularly tough, right? Because in some ways, we bring so much value to  

our society, and yet we’re not necessarily heard. We’re not on the front lines of, you know, of organizations that do problem solving, right? Which is why I’ve always liked being in administration, because I want to be at the table where problems get solved.  

So, I believe that we, you know, all Black women, you know, have a voice, but that voice needs to be heard, so they need to use it. And I think that we have some generation of some young women that do that, but I think we need to make sure and pursue that and push that. I think that we need to be at the table. I think we need to be in the room, because we bring unique perspectives to America’s problems, you know, and I know people don’t like to hear it, but it’s absolutely true from a racial standpoint and from a gendered standpoint, we have just a unique perspective on this nation’s issues and concerns. And so we deserve to be heard, and we deserve to make decisions that are best for us as individual people, as a mother. And again, I’ve been a mother since I was 20. And you know, I have made decisions that, you know, where I put my children first, my decision not to go to medical school, for example, was because I wanted to be a mother, right? I needed time to actually, my husband’s gone, so I need to be there, and I didn’t want to hand them off to someone else. But what I also believe is that it was important for me to carve out a path for me, like, was just for me, because in the end, they actually benefit from who I became, you know, who I become. Them, watching me pursue a doctorate, and all of these things was important for their upbringing, for them, seeing their mom, you know, sort of focused on something that was really, really important to me.  

So I think that every young woman deserves to be heard, and every young Black woman, Black woman, deserves to be able to make decisions for themselves and for self-love and the people around you who believe that you owe them something, or that you owe their you know, taking care of other people all the time. You have to take care of yourself first. I always use that, that the thing that they say on the plane, you know, if you’ve got a kid with you, make sure you put your mask on first before you. Put it on that child. You have to do that. We have to do that. We have to put our mask on first. If we’re going to be the type of person that can provide value to our families, to our communities, et cetera, we have to be healthy and well in order to be able to create healthy and well, children and community. 

Aisha El-Amin  30:21 

Well. Dr Evans, I don’t think there’s a higher note that we can end on than we need to first take care of ourselves so that we can continue to take care of others as we do. And so, I thank you for your time with us today, for being who you are and what you are and unbecoming so that you could become inspiring others as we journey along to the becoming part. So, thank you so much for your time and all that you do. 

Andrea Evans  30:50 

Thank you for everything that you’re doing — it’s completely 100% beautiful and just quite, just quite an honor to be here and talk with you today. 

Announcer  31:02 

Thanks for joining us. Find more inspiring and informative conversations with UIC alums, faculty and staff at blackresources.uic.edu — that’s blackresources.uic.edu