HR1470 95TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR1470 LRB095 21754 KXB 51966 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives are pleased to congratulate Paula Allen-Meares on her selection as the next chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC); and

WHEREAS, Paula Allen-Meares, dean of the nationally top-ranked school of social work at the University of Michigan, has been selected as the next chancellor of UIC; the chancellor serves as the executive officer of the UIC campus and reports to the president of the University of Illinois; she would take office effective January 16, 2009, and would assume the helm of a UIC campus that ranks 47th nationally in federally funded research, enrolls 25,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students, employs 12,000 faculty and staff, and operates with a total annual budget of about $1.7 billion; and

WHEREAS, Paula Allen-Meares is a high-aspiration, high-achieving leader who for 15 years has kept a professional school of a leading university at the very top of the national rankings; the search committee described her as a role model for the UIC community, an academic leader, and highly productive scholar who is personally involved in vital areas of improving peoples' lives; and

WHEREAS, Paula Allen-Meares has been dean of the school of social work at the University of Michigan since 1993 and is the Norma Radin Collegiate Professor of Social Work as well as a professor of education at the university; prior to joining the University of Michigan, she was a professor and dean of the school of social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received her master's and Ph.D. degrees; her bachelor's degree was earned at the State University of New York at Buffalo; and

WHEREAS, In addition to the UIC chancellorship, she will hold faculty appointments in social work and education at the UIC and Urbana campuses; her academic career has been distinguished during the nearly four decades since she first enrolled in the master's of social work program on the U. of I. Urbana-Champaign campus, where she rose between 1970 and 1993 from graduate student and teaching assistant in the school of social work to professor and dean of the school; and

WHEREAS, Her interest and expertise focus on social work as it relates to educational settings and adolescents; in addition to her administrative experience as a dean at Michigan and Illinois, Allen-Meares has conducted extensive research in her field and her findings have been widely published; and

WHEREAS, She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and is a trustee of the New York Academy of Medicine; at Michigan's school of social work, she is principal investigator of the Global Program on Youth, an initiative supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the principal investigator of the Skillman Good Neighborhoods Grant and the National Institute of Mental Health's Social Work Research Center on Poverty, Risk and Mental Health; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-FIFTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate Paula Allen-Meares on her appointment and look forward to the great things she will accomplish as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Paula Allen-Meares as a symbol of our respect.