College of Education Alum Jennifer Rainin Honored with Alumni Achievement Award
Introduction
Every year the University of Illinois Chicago Alumni Association recognizes remarkable UIC alumni. For the first time, a UIC College of Education alum is among those being honored.
Jennifer Rainin (PhD, '02), is one of three Alumni Achievement Award winners, the highest honor bestowed by the University of Illinois Chicago Alumni Association, which recognizes individuals whose exceptional success and national or international recognition in their fields demonstrates the value of a UIC education across a lifetime.
Storytelling is at the core of Jen Rainin’s work. For the UIC alumna, stories matter — and whose stories are told matters even more. The plot to her story as a teacher, philanthropist, filmmaker and LGBTQ+ activist is giving voice to those who are not represented in the dominant narrative.
“My personal mission is to build visibility…and positive representation,” She says. “I want to eliminate the shame and injustice that comes from not being able to access knowledge.”
Rainin’s early career as a special education teacher and literacy specialist shaped her passion for storytelling. But the struggles she saw with young children learning how to read led her to UIC’s College of Education. While pursuing her PhD, she worked with the Center for Literacy at UIC, which provides family literacy and adult education services to Chicago’s South and West Side communities. This experience greatly contributed to Rainin’s dissertation research — a better understanding of how to prepare teachers to be more effective early literacy instructors and how to center parents, caregivers and community members in that education.
In the next chapter of her story, the UIC alumna stepped in as the head of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation after her father passed away. With a focus on arts, health and education, the Bay Area-based foundation has launched programs to strengthen early literacy in Oakland, California, and to support early childhood teachers, especially minority educators — providing children with the stories and storytellers that matter to them.
A filmmaker and proponent of the arts, Rainin has also invested in initiatives to uplift artists’ voices. Through the Community Arts Stabilization Trust, the foundation works to secure affordable spaces for artists in the Bay Area, and with the Rainin Filmmaking Grants in partnership with SF Film, the foundation supports independent feature films that address social justice issues.
“I really do see a strong through-line from my work giving young children and their families the ability to read stories, and the foundation work that ensures that educators and artists are set up to tell those stories that need to be told…to give voice to underrepresented groups,” she says.
In her own work as a filmmaker, Rainin champions stories about lesbian, bisexual, queer and transgender culture, bringing LGBTQ+ voices, achievements and struggles into awareness. The Curve Foundation, which Rainin founded with her wife, supports journalists, produces dozens of intersectional and multi-generational events, and is the U.S. host for Lesbian Visibility Week, elevating and celebrating lesbian culture across the country each April.
At a time when LGBTQ+ rights are targeted and diversity, equity and inclusion is being rolled back, Rainin’s storytelling is critically important and demonstrates an embodiment of UIC’s mission to inspire social change.