 He has also received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, first prize in the Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, a Pushcart Prize, and several grants from the Illinois Arts Council.Before retirement he was a Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first director of the MFA in Creative Writing program created there in 2003.Van Walleghen began his academic career at Wichita State University.