URBANA — Robert Jones led the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign through a two-year budget crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the student protests for Palestine this spring.
He has also overseen record student enrollments and expanded financial aid to low-income families. Jones is the first Black chancellor at U of I.
He announced Wednesday that he plans to resign from the position in June, after nine years.
Illinois Public Media education reporter Emily Hays spoke with Tim Killeen, who is president of the University of Illinois System. The system includes UIUC and its counterparts in Springfield and Chicago.
HAYS: Would you tell me how you’re feeling today?
KILLEEN: [Jones] has been my partner, colleague and friend through a lot of things over the last few years. Everything goes through transitions in life, and I’m feeling proud of the accomplishments, the stability, the integrity, the commitment that Robert has brought to bear, the fundraising, all of those things that are in the press release.
And also, I’m very close to him and am wanting to keep our connection going, because I think it’s been a really important era for the University of Illinois.
HAYS: What do you think Chancellor Jones’ most lasting legacy will be?
KILLEEN: He’s not going away fast, obviously. I have asked him – and he’s agreed, in concept – to continue working with us through the year after that.
He’s brought, I believe, a sense of purpose and a groundedness to our university system, not just UIUC, but the whole system, a sense of ambition and purpose and momentum, and represented the land grant mission really effectively and well. And I think that it’s been a long tenure. So I think his contributions are manyfold.
There are specifics, but I believe that the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has grown in scale. It’s grown in facilities. It’s grown in reputation. It’s grown in impact. I think the word impact is probably the one that I would want to stress, impact for serving the public good, and obviously with our educational mission.
HAYS: What is the timeline and what does the process look like next?
KILLEEN: He’s announced his departure from the chancellorship will be at the end of June, the end of the academic year. It’s a good time for that, because we will have a lot of opportunities to celebrate and acknowledge accomplishments, and there’ll be commencements that he will preside over that are very important.
In the meantime, we will initiate a process to seek and select a successor to Robert as chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and we will go through the processes that are documented on how to go about doing that. It will involve shared governance, significantly, and a committee and a process. I think that there will be a lot of interest in academic circles about this position, because of the standing of the incumbent, but also because of the stature of the institution. So I’m hugely optimistic that there’ll be a lot of interest.
Then we’ll go through the transition, and hopefully that will culminate in the right time, so that there is no period when we have to have an interim or anything like that.
Emily Hays is a reporter for Illinois Public Media.