University of Illinois
President James J. Stukel will recommend to the University's Board of
Trustees that Interim Chancellor Sylvia Manning be the next chancellor
of the University of Illinois at Chicago, he announced Monday, concluding
a national search for the next leader of UIC.
Manning would be
the first woman to lead UIC when the Board acts on the president's recommendation
at its July 19-20 meeting.
Stukel tapped Manning
to be interim chancellor last September when UIC Chancellor David Broski
resigned. Prior to taking on the interim leadership of the campus, Manning
was the University of Illinois vice president for academic affairs.
"Sylvia Manning
stepped in and did a superb job shepherding the campus during this past
academic year," Stukel said Monday. "Dr. Manning has a brilliant and
decisive management style that is an excellent fit for an urban campus
on the fast track to tremendous success.
"Moreover, Dr.
Manning has earned the deep respect of the Board of Trustees by demonstrating
her talents on the job, tackling challenges with creativity and energy.
She stood out in a field of exceptionally strong candidates."
Board of Trustees
Chair William D. Engelbrecht said Monday that board members "have been
consistently impressed by Dr. Manning's performance in a variety of
roles since she first joined the University of Illinois. We believe
she has done an outstanding job as Interim Chancellor at UIC and she
has our full confidence and support as she takes on these responsibilities
permanently."
"I am deeply honored
to be named chancellor for UIC," Manning said Monday. "The extraordinary
combined talent of the 12,000 of us who work here can realize UIC's
ambition to become the nation's premier public urban research university.
"We have good cause
for confidence as we continue to enhance our programs of instruction,
to grow our world-class research enterprise and to fulfill our promise
of genuine engagement with our community, city, region and state," she
said.
During the nine
months that Manning has been interim chancellor, UIC has made major
progress in a number of critical areas:
- received National
Institutes of Health approval for a corrective action plan for protection
of human research subjects. Most of the human subjects research has
been approved and restarted;
- received final
City Council and Board of Trustees approval for the south campus expansion
project, with construction now under way;
- installed new
leadership of the health sciences area, including a new vice chancellor
for health affairs and a new executive director of the hospital. Hospital
finances are improving;
- continued to
recruit top scholars to the faculty; and
- saw an 8 percent
increase in undergraduate applications over the same time a year ago.
As vice president
for academic affairs, Manning filled the University's No. 2 administrative
position. In that post, she was the University's senior academic planning
officer and advised the president on matters of educational policy,
academic programs, budget priorities, academic personnel actions and
other issues.
As vice president
she acted as a catalyst for several all-University faculty studies,
including widely read reports on faculty tenure and sabbaticals and
a report on the benefits and drawbacks of teaching via the Internet.
She led the creation of University of Illinois Online, which is the
University's program for Web-based teaching and learning, and appointed
Dr. Burks Oakley II to run it. Manning co-chaired the Task Force creating
the Illinois Century Network, a high-speed communications grid linking
Illinois educational institutions from kindergarten to university.
Before Manning
took on the interim chancellorship at UIC, she developed the initial
plan for expanding the University's role in technology transfer, including
identifying and capturing state and private funding for early technology
ventures.
She instituted
a Faculty Fellows program in her office, which allows faculty members
to experience higher-level administrative duties for a year to test
a possible career option or pursue a particular interest.
Manning, who had
been U of I vice president for academic affairs since summer 1994, received
her master and doctoral degrees in English language and literature from
Yale University in 1964 and 1967, respectively, and a B.A. with honors
in English from McGill University in 1963.
Before joining
the University of Illinois, Dr. Manning was executive vice provost at
the University of Southern California, where she had been the founding
chair of the Freshman Writing Program and associate director of the
Center for the Humanities. She also led the creation of USC's Freshman
Seminar program to encourage learning for its own pleasure and she instituted
the Fund for Innovative Teaching. The Fund awards summer grants to USC
faculty members seeking to improve their undergraduate courses.
She led the team
that wrote the proposal to create the Annenberg Center for Communications
at USC, leading to an award of $120 million. She also helped establish
the campus' Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies.
Dr. Manning was
a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Danforth Teaching Fellow. She is an authority
on the works of Charles Dickens and other Victorian literature.
She has two grown
sons.