Each year, through a nomination process, the Macomb Feminist Network (MFN) selects four recipients for its 'Writing Women into History' Award. The 2026 recipients Julia Albarracin-Green, Charlene Callison, Lynne Campbell and Patti Hutinger (posthumously) were honored for their outstanding contributions to the local community at a reception March 7. The complete livestream of the Green and Charlene Callison
recipients' introductions and stories from Saturday's ceremony can be found on the Macomb Feminist Network's Facebook page.
According to the MFN, through this award, the Macomb Feminist Network seeks to expand public knowledge and appreciation of individual women whose initiatives, advocacy and engagement have strengthened the local community in significant ways.
'This award was established in 2010 to honor, promote and expand our knowledge of the extraordinary contributions women have made in shaping our local community and through their accomplishments, have made lasting differences in the lives of others,' said Maria Dunstan, an MFN member and the emcee for Saturday's event.
Albarracin-Green, an immigrant herself hailing from Argentina, has been particularly concerned about the welfare of Dreamers, students brought to the U.S. as undocumented children and, as young adults, remain undocumented and in danger of deportation.
In 2017, Albarracin-Green, a WIU professor, became aware of a cohort of these students at Western and started a Dreamers Fund to support their college completion. In 2019 she founded Western Illinois Dreamers to raise funds to support immigrants and refugees.
This organization provides legal, social, and financial services as well as support groups and scholarships. She continues to serve Dreamers as well as a wider population of immigrants through a network of welcome centers that most recently have been providing support for people in deportation proceedings or who are being detained.
Albarracin-Green focuses on immigrants to the U.S. in her research as well as her activism. In 'At the Core and in the Margins' (2016) she analyzes the impact of Mexican immigrants on Beardstown and Monmouth, while in 'Young and Undocumented' (2025) she tells the stories of Dreamers as changing U.S. immigration policies keep them in a state of uncertainty and fear.
Albarracin-Green has been a longtime member of the League of Women Voters of McDonough County, a member of the Equal Opportunity and Fair Housing Commission in Macomb and a member of the Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes.
'Thank you to the Macomb Feminist Network for this recognition.
I want to acknowledge the role my mother played in shaping the woman I am today. I couldn't have had a better role model, so this honor partly goes to her,' Albarracin-Green said. 'I started with my academic career, and I continued in my heart with immigration, even though people told me to pursue more fashionable topics like social movements or democratization. But I stood my ground and stuck with immigration as that is my passion.'
Callison has been active in the Macomb community since she arrived in 1967 to teach at Western Illinois University. Her background in fashion merchandising led her to develop partnerships with Macomb shop owners and bring town and gown together while also sponsoring internships, field trips, and scholarships to strengthen opportunities for her students. Her activism has been seen through the arts, particularly Western’s Performing Arts Society and Children’s Summer Theatre, and through her support of women’s health initiatives, most notably at McDonough District Hospital as a Board member of the Golden Apple Society, in support of its Dolores Kator Switzer Women’s Center, and by contributing to the development of the Marion P. Callison Nursery. Her service in her church ranges from organizing rummage sales to organizing fundraising lunches and dinners that allow the church to fulfill its mission more generously.
Callison's leadership is evident in how she brings volunteers together, holds them to high performance levels, and creates compatible, efficient task-oriented mini-communities that enjoy working with her and with each other. This is evident at Wesley Methodist Church but also in the many colorful celebratory events she has planned at the university and in the larger Macomb community. She does everything with unmistakable style, flair, generosity and enjoyment 'Fifty-nine years ago, I came to Macomb, it was 1967. I want to thank those who nominated me and for those wonderful letters. I look around at this room of wonderful women and I have stood on your shoulders. You were the ones that pulled me through,' Callison said. 'It has been a wonderful almost 60 years here. Give back. Give back because you've made your life here. Thank you.'
Campbell has had a long successful career in newspaper publishing, working in almost every capacity.
When she returned to the area where she was raised, Campbell had the experience and knowledge to establish her own newspaper, the Community News Brief (CNB), to counter the growing consolidation of newspapers at the expense of local coverage. To fill the need for local coverage, she started a free community newsletter which expanded into a full-fledged newspaper. Each week, the Tuesday and Thursday editions showcase breaking news, events, in-depth features, local history, sports, and other topics important to the region while the free Midweek newsletter is distributed every Wednesday. As the region’s only truly local newspaper, the CNB, which employs local reporters, fulfills its responsibility to hold government bodies accountable, a mission readers support and the CNB upholds.
Along with her commitment to counter a rural Illinois news desert, Campbell serves the community by providing retail space for area artists to market their work and through her many years with organizations such as the Macomb Rotary Club (currently serving as Past President), MAEDCO, and Macomb Chamber of Commerce boards, General Macomb Chapter of the DAR and the Bushnell VFW Auxiliary.
'I'd like to thank the members of the Macomb Feminist Network for this wonderful honor. This award means so much to be especially because it recognizes something I've spent 45 years of my life learning that local news told honestly is how communities remember who they are and what matters,' Campbell said. 'In 2017, with only a leased printer, my husband, daughter and I started the Community News Brief.
We covered what the Voice couldn't or wouldn't, and we're still growing. We built something bigger than I could have ever imagined.
That's what happens when you believe in what you are doing. My staff and I believe in providing accurate, local news that matters to the community we serve and to keep history alive and accountable for future generations. ' Hutinger came to Western Illinois University in 1966 with a focus on child growth and development and continued in that field for over 40 years. She understood the needs of infants to three-year-olds, so, when it became clear to her that education was virtually non-existent for them, including those with disabilities, she recognized her mission.
She founded the Macomb Birth-3 Regional Project to reach these children and their families, established Sharing Centers and developed a graduate-level interdisciplinary program to prepare staff to meet their educational needs.
A demonstration project, Macomb Birth-3 became a model for rural communities across the U.S. To realize her out-of-the-box, trail-blazing ideas, Hutinger became an adept and successful grant writer, earning close to $40 million in competitive state and federal grants. When she received an Activating Children through Technology grant, she quickly wedded best practices in early childhood education and computer technology to facilitate the learning of children with disabilities.
Patti demonstrated the effectiveness of tech-assisted learning for this population and taught other educators, both women and men, to do the same. Her success was not accidental but the result of her own hard work and collaboration with her staff. She demanded much from them but made sure they knew how critical their contributions were to the success of their programs.
Hutinger retired in 2007, and passed away in 2014.
'Dr. Patricia Hutinger was an innovative pioneer in early childhood education.
She began teaching kindergarten in 1953 and then went on to teach first grade and Head Start. Her career at Western began in 1966 as an instructor of child growth, and evolved into becoming a nationally recognized leader and director of the Illinois State Board of Education's designated Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood Education,' Smith-Skripps noted. 'I, in large part, contribute my professional success at Western to Patti.
She was a role model as she was always looking beyond the next curve and was never satisfied with the status quo.' Hutinger's son, Chuck, sent in a letter of acceptance for his mother's posthumous recognition. Her photo and certificate will be placed in the Center in Horrabin Hall.
'Thank you to the Macomb Feminist Network and for recognizing my mother for her lifetime of work on behalf of young children with special needs,' he wrote, also noting other past WWiH recipients he knew in part due growing up in Macomb and through his mother's many connections. 'It takes a village and I'm honored to have been surrounded by such tremendous individuals and to have had such a great mom.'
Past recipients of the Writing Women into History Award can be found at macombfeminists.org.
'Aren’t we lucky to be surrounded by these wonderful people,' Dunstan concluded. 'When people ask me where Macomb is, I answer 'it's the center of the universe.' I really believe that and today exemplifies that.
When you think about the contributions made by our recipients, we do influence the universe.'
