Category: Alumni awards

Adam Tiouririne (‘09), recipient of Uni’s 2026 Rising Star award, can draw a straight line from his first year at Uni to his current role as founder of Opus Vox, an executive communication consultancy. 

“My first year at Uni I made a commercial for Frisbees (™) as part of the computer literacy class,” he says. Tiouririne’s narration of that project caught the attention of computer literacy teacher Joel Beesley, who introduced him to announcing Uni sporting events. 

“I was pretty bad at first,” he says, but through mentoring and practice, he became known as “The Voice” and continued announcing until he graduated. That Uni thread continues for him as the announcer at each spring’s Illinois Marathon in Champaign, in which most Uni students participate.

Tiouririne says that type of mentoring informs his positive memories of the spirit of Uni.

He says that while some schools are more of a conveyor belt, where students do successfully get to the end, but the school doesn’t do much, he experienced Uni as an “incubator”.

“Uni was like an incubator,” he says.  “You expressed or revealed an interest, and they seized on it and nurtured it and pushed you in that direction.” 

“I support Uni because a lot of my favorite things come from my time there,” he says. 

While discovering the power of his voice and the possibility of using language to elicit audience behavior as an announcer at Uni, he met a Uni parent, Mike Fernandez, who mentored him and hired him to work at State Farm the summer after his senior year. 

Later, Tiouririne met Helio “Fred” Garcia, an adjunct NYU professor who worked in crisis management and served as another mentor.  Tiouririne connected with Garcia while earning his B.S. in Economics at NYU, and, after what Tiouririne describes as “the lunch that changed my life”, Garcia hired him in the crisis management position where he worked for a decade.

Tiouririne then set out on his own — mere weeks before the COVID pandemic hit — to found his current company, Opus Vox. There he advises business leaders on core messages and systematic approaches to communication at the executive level. 

He likes that he gets to engage in an area of strength, make his own decisions, and do things his own way.  He advises students to find areas that play to their strengths and that genuinely interest them, find mentors, and learn everything they can at every juncture. 

“You always need to have a fresh perspective and curiosity,” Tiouririne says. “Try to make every statement end with a question.” 

The Max Beberman Distinguished Alumni Award is the highest honor awarded an alumna/us by Uni High. Since 1985, it has been awarded to recognize alumni who have enhanced the reputation of the school by distinguishing themselves in their careers and who have made significant contributions through professional service, public service, and civic activities, or in their service to Uni High.

When Amber Barnhart (‘73), the 2025 recipient of the Max Beberman Award for Distinguished Alumni, walked into Uni High as a ninth grader, she embraced Uni’s challenging and experimental curriculum, the small classes, the close community, and the leadership opportunities.  Her Uni experience encompassed experiences outside the building as well: she learned Latin on PLATO (a computer housed in a nearby two-story building) and visited with National Guard members camped in the nearby parking lot when they were brought in to address campus unrest related to the Vietnam War. 

“I was surrounded by kids who were really bright and from lots of different cultures, who attended classes even though attendance was not required,” she says. 

After four fondly remembered years, Barnhart launched a decades-long career as a doctor that was rooted in her passion for the experimentation and experiential learning she encountered at Uni. Barnhart earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a medical degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. She became a professor of Family and Community Medicine at SIU, as well as being a practicing physician.

During her pioneering career in family and community medicine, she received over $880,000 in grants, authored more than a dozen publications, gave many presentations at local, regional, national, and international conferences, and created a new model for physician-patient teamwork and patient empowerment.

“SIU Medical School is also experimental,” Barnhart says. “I tried to listen to society and listen to ideas and write grants to address real issues,” she says of the process that, among other things, inspired an early inquiry into distance learning for medical students in field placements. The concepts from that study later informed telehealth and online learning during COVID.

Her studies leaned toward the humanitarian, and she developed case studies to highlight the needs of underserved populations: people without housing, survivors of domestic violence, rural patients and LGBTQ+ patients.

She’s proud of her outreach because she was able to respond to the needs she saw in tangible ways. In some cases, her initial inquiries and volunteer work evolved into formal programs to bring health care to where people were, and offer it in accessible ways, rather than making marginalized communities overcome obstacles to access care. 

As a strong voice for public health, Amber was an invited speaker at dozens of conferences, locally, nationally, and even internationally and convened many conferences at SIU School of Medicine, such as the Women’s Health Conference.

In her role as a teacher and mentor, Barnhart was frequently recognized for excelling in mentoring students to enter the medical field as patient partners working to make medical care responsive, inclusive and accessible. She was named the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians Teacher of the Year, was chosen by her students as a guest speaker and honored faculty for graduation ceremonies and was also twice honored as the SIU School of Medicine Family Medicine Residency Teacher of the Year. Barnhart was also named an SIU School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni of the Year in 2011.

Today, after retiring from SIU, Barnhart devotes her energy to groups devoted to promoting nature and environmental sustainability. 

Barnhart and her husband, Stuart Frank, raised five children and have six grandchildren, all of whom are very precious to them. She is also very proud of her siblings: Trent Barnhart, M.D., Reverend Karen Bush, Donald Barnhart, PhD , Gayne Barnhart, and Brett Barnhart. 

Uni is honored to recognize the work of Dr. Amber Barnhart as the 2025 Beberman Award recipient.