Rochelle resident and co-owner of Institute of Languages, Mathematics, & Sciences, Faten Abdallah, was awarded the 2025 EIGERlab 815 Innovation Award for Education Innovation on Saturday, Oct. 25, at an awards dinner.

Abdallah, along with Maliha Khan, owns ILMS, a business located at 5601 Wansford Way in Rockford that offers customized tutoring services online and onsite. Abdallah and Khan are both former teachers and started the business in 2019. They both work as tutors for ages 3 through adults. More information can be found at www.ilmstutor.com.

Khan said Abdallah and ILMS were nominated for the award by parents of children that the business serves. The women and minority-owned business was proud to be nominated and win amid competition with other learning centers in Rockford.

“It was an honor to be nominated,” Abdallah said. “We work to be creative and innovative. To stay in business nowadays, you have to be. We’re able to combine traditional methods with nontraditional methods. We still use books, paper and pencils. But we also use technology. We teach students how to balance that. Winning meant that our business is out there more. We’ve become experts. We’re recognized for our innovation in education and that we’re not afraid to try new things.”

Along with tutoring, the services offered by ILMS include standardized testing preparation and summer camps for traditional students, along with computer literacy skills, English as a second language, and citizenship tests for adults. Along with area students and residents, the business tutors people remotely in the Chicago area, on the West Coast, and even in Turkey.

Abdallah and Khan previously worked together as teachers at a private school. After 9-10 years of that work and discussing the idea, they decided to work for themselves and open their own tutoring business after seeing gaps in education that students couldn’t catch up to.

ILMS started tutoring in libraries and remotely in 2019 and opened its brick and mortar location in January 2020. After the March 2020 COVID-19 shutdown began, they had to move their timeline up to offer more online services and immediately transitioned all tutoring to online and helped students that were learning remotely during the pandemic. That catchup work continued in the years that followed.

“We saw that learning gap when students returned to school after remote learning,” Khan said. “ Some students were behind almost two years. We saw more students come in for tutoring. Being here with customized programming that works differently with every student, I think that helped students bridge that gap. We work with the teachers of some students and they let us know what they need help with to catch up. We’ve seen some of them improve two letter grades in their time here.”

Successes at ILMS have included kids coming in for assessment testing and seeing scores improve and students with reading issues improving to higher grade levels. Along with rising grades and scores, Abdallah said increased confidence is also seen in students, which she enjoys.

Abdallah has also taught adults how to read English. She believes education is for all ages and groups and she and Khan wanted to make ILMS a comprehensive tutoring center for all.

“Teaching adults how to read and write is a big thing,” Khan said. “Until the parent generation learns the language, they will struggle finding jobs and teaching and mentoring their children. Things like setting rules and focusing on your children’s education all come when the parents are educated. We have a great scholarship program as well for families that can’t afford tutoring. That helps the community and our families.”

Being a local tutoring center helps ILMS to know the community and what’s happening locally and what’s expected at area schools. Abdallah and Khan enjoy being a resource for the community and seeing its growth.

Khan and Abdallah like working for themselves and seeing students come in for help and get what they’re looking for. They enjoy having the freedom to be creative and innovative and making families feel welcome.

Khan estimates ILMS’s business is three times larger than it was upon starting six years ago.

“Being six years into our business and receiving an award like this is very nice,” Abdallah said. “Now we want more awards. We want to be out there more and more competitive and network more and become more involved.”