Paul F. Schutt
PHYS ’55
Amelia Island, Florida
Paul Schutt lived his life according to a simple statement: “I believe in God, family, and country.” After graduating with a physics degree from Illinois Tech, Schutt married his wife, Suzi, and then served in the United States Army for three years before joining The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W), an engineering firm. Schutt went on to work for Union Carbide before becoming president and founding director of the Nuclear Assurance Corporation (now NAC International), a consulting firm that specializes in energy consulting, information services, and spent nuclear fuel management technologies. He started a number of other businesses and ultimately retired from the nuclear fuel manufacturing company Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc., where he served as chief executive officer and chairman.
A member of Illinois Tech’s Philip Danforth Armour Society, Schutt was presented with the Collens Merit Award in 2012, given to alumni who have shown exemplary commitment to the future of Illinois Tech through philanthropic contributions and involvement with the university. He and his wife provided a gift to establish the Paul and Suzi Schutt Endowed Chair in Science to the university’s College of Science.
Regnal “Reggie” John Jones
CAHMCP Executive Director
Chicago
In 1986, when the health care professions had relatively few minority members among their ranks, Regnal “Reggie” John Jones helped to lead an organization formed to ensure that more underrepresented minority students would have the opportunity to become physicians, dentists, and other health care professionals.
Jones, who worked as a research biologist at IIT Research Institute in 1963, returned to campus 23 years later to become executive director of the State of Illinois-sponsored Chicago Area Health and Medical Careers Program (CAHMCP), which made its home on the Illinois Tech campus. Pronounced “champs,” the program continues its mission to identify and recruit qualified underrepresented minority students to medical, dental, and other health professions’ schools. Participants are provided with successive years of structured academics as well as counseling, motivational, and financial support until they reach their long-range careers goals. The CAHMCP pipeline extends from 6th grade through the final year of health professional school.
Before his CAHMCP role, Jones served as director of Prevention Programs for the City of Chicago Department of Public Health, where he developed several nationally recognized community-based intervention programs in nutrition and communicable disease control.
Nicholas Grecz
M.S. BACT ’55, Ph.D. ’60
Professor Emeritus
Gainesville, Florida
After retiring from a 20-year teaching career that he began at Illinois Tech in 1961, Nicholas Grecz took a position at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, conducting cancer research. Through his research, Grecz made many discoveries in the field of microbiology, including the antibiotic properties of Limburger cheese and botulinum toxin in canned foods. Additionally, his research extended to the irradiation of foods for safe storage and shipping.
Grecz emigrated from the Soviet Union through Germany in 1949 and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1956. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree from Bradley University, Grecz worked for the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute for the Armed Forces (U.S).