Elgin Community College named a street on campus in honor of its longest-serving professor, who died last year.

The Board of Trustees decided this week to honor the late Gail Shadwell by renaming First Street, which runs between Spartan and Fleetwood drives. It will now be called Gail Shadwell Drive.

“It is the most heartwarming, most gratifying way of honoring her that I could imagine,” Rachael Tecza, an English professor and a friend of Shadwell, said in a statement. “You say the street runs through the heart of the college. Gail Shadwell ran through the heart of the college.”

Shadwell, who grew up in downstate Effingham, was hired at the college in 1967. She retired in 2008 and died last June.

Besides professor, Shadwell served as a division chairperson and a dean at ECC. She also started the forensics program and the ECC Writers Center. She coauthored numerous books, including several speech textbooks.