Dr. Peter Waterman and family and friends of Carol Feltz

Carol Feltz had been a star student in the NIU Mathematics department in the 1970s, earning both her bachelors and masters degrees, and completed her Ph. D. in 1982 at the University of Missouri. At Northern, she was the only full-time female professor in the statistics division and role model to women in a subject area traditionally dominated by men. She taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses at NIU during her 16-year career. Later in her career, Carol went to work as a member of the technical staff at the AT&T Engineering Research Center in Princeton, N.J., one of the premier research facilities. As both a student and professor at NIU, Feltz was known for her optimism and contagious enthusiasm. Carol had a quality that you don’t often see in students-she elevated the efforts of the people around her, said Stanley Trail, a retired professor of statistics who taught Feltz and later worked alongside her as a colleague. She was like that as a faculty member as well. Feltz, of St. Charles, carried a full teaching load in the spring of 2005, vacationed with her family in June to Switzerland, finished writing a scholarly book chapter in July and intended to teach in the fall of 2005. But the 49-year-old professor succumbed to breast cancer on August 11, 2005 after a seven year battle with the disease.