Nancy Svoboda

Long Time Educator Seeks to Serve Her Community

Nancy Zdarko Svoboda began teaching at College of DuPage in 1972, fresh from completing her MS in College Student Personnel from Western Illinois University. During her 34 years at COD as a counselor and teacher, she gained a great deal of experience in higher education policy, adult education, and college governance. During her time at COD, she was a faculty leader in curriculum and the chair of the Faculty Senate and Faculty Association. She also developed a tremendous capacity for listening closely and carefully to other people’s concerns and ideas, and her ears certainly have been tuned in to the recent issues emerging from the College of DuPage Board of Trustees.

Svoboda retired in 2006, and is now professor emeritus from College of DuPage. She envisioned her retirement as a stage of life that would provide continuous learning and experience in service to her community. Since retiring, she sought to satisfy her boundless curiosity about people and culture. However, it was her love of, devotion to, and concern for COD that brought her to seek a different type of service to the community. Svoboda is running for a six-year term serving on the COD Board of Trustees, and she hopes her experience and knowledge about higher education will help guide COD in the future.

Svoboda is a National Board Certified counselor who earned her Ed.D. in Adult Education from Northern Illinois University. During her time as a full-time faculty member and counselor at COD, Svoboda worked in the areas of educational counseling, career counseling, life transition counseling, and personal counseling. In 2004, she was named Outstanding Faculty from Counseling.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Svoboda is a long-time resident of Downers Grove. Her three children, Sara, Laura, and John, have taken or will take classes at COD, and Svoboda has been a lifelong enrolled student at College of DuPage since she started working there nearly four decades ago.