Evelyn Kucherovsky recently celebrated 25 years of service to the University of Missouri, the law school, and working with the Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Program.
Suffering ill health from the effects of radiation following the Chernobyl disaster and racial discrimination of her family under the Soviet Union, Evelina Kucherovskaya immigrated with her husband and young sons as refugees from in Kiev, Ukraine to Kansas City, Mo. in December 1990 with the support of the Jewish community.
Even though she was qualified with a master’s degree as an engineer-economist from the Kiev Technological Institute of Light Industry, she and her husband had to start over and worked multiple part time jobs including pizza delivery and cleaning office buildings in the evenings while studying English.
Shortly after arriving in Kansas City, Evelina met Mike Baker, the UMKC director of Continuing Legal Education from 1979 to 1994, at Temple. After learning of her expertise in economics, Mike offered her a part-time job in February 1991. A year later, Evelina was promoted to a full-time position in CLE. Evelina continued studying English and became a U.S. citizen in December 1995. To celebrate her new life, she changed her name to Evelyn Kucherovsky. Since then, she would say her greatest accomplishment is raising her family, putting her sons through college, and helping them both become successful businessmen with families of their own.
After five University Chancellors, five law school Deans and three CLE directors, Evelyn recently celebrated 25 years of service to the University, the law school, and CLE. Evelyn is responsible for handling all of the financial information of CLE. As fiscal officer, she is responsible for creating and maintaining accounts payable, reconciling accounts, creating and maintaining financial reports. She is the backbone of the CLE operation. Her expertise and accuracy is well known and respected both inside and outside the University. Evelyn’s steadfastness, timeliness and contributions are crucial to the success of UMKC-CLE over the last 25 years.