Jacksonville, Winchester students earn honors at Marquette University

A Jacksonville student, Ava Schilsky, and a Winchester student were named to Marquette University's spring dean's list, putting two west-central Illinois hometowns on the Milwaukee university's academic roll. The recognition lands as a small line on paper, but it is the kind of public nod that families, former classmates and school communities tend to pass along quickly in Morgan County.

Marquette is a Catholic, Jesuit university in Milwaukee that offers more than 80 majors and enrolls 8,000-plus undergraduates along with 3,700-plus graduate and professional students. The campus sits about a 90-minute drive north of Chicago, which helps explain why students from Jacksonville and Winchester can study in Wisconsin and still stay on the radar back home.

Dean's list honors at Marquette are awarded twice each academic year, after the fall term and the spring term, and the academic bar changes by college. The Klingler College of Arts and Sciences requires at least 12 graded credits and a 3.7 grade-point average, while the College of Business Administration, Opus College of Engineering, Diederich College of Communication and College of Health Sciences all require at least 12 graded credits and a 3.5 GPA.

For Morgan County, where the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 32,515 residents on July 1, 2025, that kind of recognition carries outsized local value. A short honor-roll notice gives Jacksonville and Winchester families a public marker of achievement and keeps students from a smaller county visible at a university with national reach.