2004 Recipients
Donald Moravec
Class Year: 1969
Outstanding Alumni Award Winner 2004
Don Moravec was involved in football, wrestling, track and field and intramurals while attending North Central. After graduation, he earned a master’s degree from Governor’s State University in 1975 and an Ed.D. from the University of Sarasota in 1978.
Moravec was dean of students and coach for 31 years at Downers Grove North High School, retiring in 2001. He and his teams won nine WSC Championships in wrestling, football and badminton, six IHSA Regional Championships in badminton, and an IHSA Sectional Championship in tennis. Moravec received the Illinois Girls Coaches Association Badminton Coach of the Year award in 1992 and was inducted into the Downers Grove North Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002. He is a member of the Illinois State Deans Association.
He has also enjoyed a very different sort of career, co-developing patents for Keating of Chicago—a business founded by the grandfather and father of his wife, Eliza Keating ’68 Moravec. Moravec belongs to the National Restaurant Association, Food service Consultants Society International and the North American Food Equipment Manufacturers.
Eliza Keating Moravec
Class Year: 1968
Outstanding Alumni Award Winner 2004
Eliza Moravec is president and CEO of Keating of Chicago, Inc., which manufactures and sells fryers, griddles, food warmers and pasta cookers to commercial kitchens and restaurants around the world.
Moravec began working at the Keating factory in 1968, after graduating from North Central with degrees in business management and economics. She soon realized that manufacturing was a male dominated industry and she had to work hard to make her way as a woman. Today, Keating’s biggest contracts include the United States military and federal and state prisons. Her company also supplies Disney and Six Flags amusement parks, the Hilton and the Marriott hotel chains, the Billy Goat Tavern, Soldier Field and fine Chicago area restaurant chains including The Rosebud, Tuscany and Carmine’s.
For the last 36 years, Moravec’s management skills and self motivation have proved invaluable. Although the business was started in 1931 by her grandfather and father with just $1,000, she has built the firm into a multi-million dollar global corporation with 100 employees. President of the privately-held company since 1988, she successfully bought out her business partners in 2003. Her future business plans include a new $11 million plant.
Kenneth Pohly
Class Year: 1945
Outstanding Alumni Award Winner 2004
Rev. Kenneth Pohly graduated with degrees in psychology and sociology. After graduation, he attended Evangelical Theological Seminary and earned a master of divinity degree in 1947. In 1969 he received a doctorate of ministry degree from Vanderbilt University.
He organized a new mission congregation and led it through development to over 700 members and three building programs in a 17-year period. He helped initiate Rural Ministries Training Program in Ohio, has been a mentor for Pastoral Supervision Peer Group, Doctor of Ministry Program, and most recently, a faculty advisor for the Clinical Learning Peer Group, Doctor of Ministry Program for the United Theological Seminary. Pohly is also a member of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and the Association for Theological Field Education
Rev. Pohly also has many publications to his credit including The Clinical Method in Theological Education, 1969; The Contextual Model for the Church’s Educational Work, 1974; Pastoral Supervision, 1977; A Theology of Supervision Proceedings, 1981; “The Distinctness of Ministry Supervision,” for the Journal of Supervision and Training in Ministry, 1988; and Transforming the Rough Places: The Ministry of Supervision,” 1993, second edition, 2001.
Over the years, he has been honored with the Brotherhood Award from the Men’s Club of the Euclid Jewish Center, Temple Ner Talmid, in Euclid, Ohio; Outstanding Service Award from The Master’s United Methodist in Euclid in 1965 and 1993; and the renaming of the Center for Supervision and Leadership Formation as the “Kenneth H. Pohly Center for Supervision and Leadership” at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, in October 2002.
Dan Iverson
Class Year: 1994
Alumni Recognition Award Winner 2004
Dan Iverson is a history and government teacher as well as the girl’s cross country and track coach for Naperville North High School. In 2001, the Naperville North Girls Cross Country team earned its second Class AA state title since 1993. Coach Iverson’s teams have been IHSA Regional and Sectional Champions and DuPage Valley Conference Champions on numerous occasions. Iverson received the ITCCCA’s (Illinois Track, Cross-Country Coaches Association) Coach of the Year Award in 2002 and the Illinois Association of Girls Coaches Coach of the Year in 1998 and 2001.
Five times in the last 10 years, Iverson has been named “Most Influential Educator” by graduating seniors who are in the top five percent of their class. When he’s not in the classroom or on the high school track, he manages to find time coaching a six-week running camp through the Naperville Park District during the summer months. He has been a guest speaker at numerous athletic conferences and organizations including North Central’s summer camp program for high school runners.
Iverson graduated in 1994 with degrees in history and political science. In 2003 he returned to his alma mater to receive a master’s degree through the M.A.L.S. Program. In 1998, he ran as an independent candidate for Congress in the 13th District to replace retired U.S. representative