By R. Owens
Times staff writer

Even after her death last year, Bette J. Soldwedel continues to help her beloved Pekin school children.

Soldwedel's commitment to education continued Tuesday when her father, Richard Soldwedel, presented a $700,000 check to an Illinois State University official, $50,000 of which will go to Pekin Public School District 108.

The gift, presented Tuesday at the Jefferson School Learning Center in Pekin, comes from an endowment the educator left to ISU, her former employer. Soldwedel was best known for helping design President Lyndon Johnson's Job Corps Initiative.

University officials seek to expand their involvement with the grade school district by forming a distance learning project that will benefit teachers in the ISU Teacher's Education Program, as well as Pekin students and schools.

The $50,000 gift is earmarked for a high-speed data link between Tazewell County schools and ISU.

Guy Cahill, District 108's finance and operations director, described the new technology link as a "data-voice-video network that would provide educational opportunities between campuses and classrooms."

The link will allow prospective teachers at ISU to get a look at real classrooms to improve teaching and learning, Cahill said.

Cahill called the distance learning project a "super highway, a highway I'd like to refer to as the U.S. 150 Information Corridor."

"Students at the ISU campus can actually travel to the classroom (via the network link) and actually see a teacher engaged with his or her students, and learn techniques and skills that they'll need when they enter the classroom," Cahill said.

Through distance learning, prospective teachers will be able to see "real-time, real-life interaction with the students," Cahill said.

District 108 Superintendent Perry Soldwedel -- Bette Soldwedel's cousin -- said the program will benefit both partners.

"The whole idea of this is to promote teaching and learning," Soldwedel said.

"This gift today will do much to enhance an already strong partnership between District 108 and Illinois State University," Sally Pancrazio, an ISU spokeswoman said.

Pancrazio said about 30 ISU students are in Pekin schools for a month of clinical study. The Soldwedel endowment will bring that number for a full year in the future.

"They (student teachers) will spend their whole senior year here, and we'll deliver some of their courses (on the network) here," Pancrazio said.

"The district and ISU will annually plan for state and federal grant resources to sustain this project," a document provided by ISU said.

Bette J. Soldwedel was born and raised in Pekin. She graduated from Pekin schools and received bachelor's and master's degrees from ISU.

She received a doctorate from New York University and taught at ISU from 1951 to 1957.

She also served as the Job Corps' Deputy Director of Women's Centers, and later became the dean of the College of Education at the University of North Florida.

"I can't think of a more fitting way an endowment to ISU could be used to help bridge partnerships between the community where she was raised and the university," Perry Soldwedel said.