U N I V E R S I T Y   O F   I L L I N O I S
UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

NEWS  RELEASE

 
June 12 , 2000 Contact: Susan Trebach, 312-996-3771, strebach@uillinois.edu
  Mark Rosati, 312-996-5546, rosati@uic.edu

PRESIDENT JAMES STUKEL NAMES SYLVIA MANNING UIC CHANCELLOR

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.

-UI-

 
Copyright © 1999 by B&P Consulting, Inc. and University of Illinois at Chicago. All rights reserved.
News Bureau home Campus Forum Weekly Advisory Experts Guide News Bureau Staff News Tips Index News Bureau home