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UIC News Release
Paula Allen-Meares Begins Chancellorship at UIC
Paula Allen-Meares, former dean of social work at the University of Michigan, today officially became the sixth chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"I am very excited and enthusiastic about the opportunity to lead this great institution," Allen-Meares said Thursday at the University of Illinois Board of Trustees' meeting at UIC. Citing UIC's "intellectual breadth, the strength of the academic units and full complement of health sciences colleges," Allen-Meares said, "My objective is for UIC to become the nation's premier urban public research university."
Allen-Meares took over from interim chancellor Eric Gislason, who served since the retirement of former chancellor Sylvia Manning in December 2007.
When Allen-Meares was introduced last summer, Lawrence Eppley, the board's chairman at that time, called her a "proven success" who has "exactly the right stuff that an ascendant UIC requires in a chancellor."
She had been selected from a field of more than 100 candidates.
"We were looking for someone who could communicate with the city and state, speak for the institution, and be a leader," said Elliot Kaufman, chair of the 20-member chancellor search advisory committee and professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics. "She clearly sends the message that she's a doer; that she'll get things done."
Allen-Meares said Thursday that her immediate priorities include moving forward on UIC’s strategic plan and fundraising to ensure both academic excellence and financial support for students to pursue their educations.
As dean of social work at Michigan since 1993, she led the school to consistent rankings as No. 1 in the nation, improving its research profile with externally funded interdisciplinary research awards totaling more than $100 million. The school established interdisciplinary degree programs with law and public policy and set up partnerships with other agencies, institutes and communities.
Under her leadership, the social work school at Michigan increased its endowment from $1 million to $42.3 million; she raised $34 million in private and public funds between 1995 and 1998.
Allen-Meares' research focuses on school social work, adolescents and their families, and social work education. Her books include "Social Work Services in Schools," now in its fifth edition, with Korean, Japanese and Chinese versions.
At Michigan, she was principal investigator of the Global Program on Youth, an initiative sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health's Social Work Research Center on Poverty, Risk and Mental Health. She was principal investigator of the Skillman Good Neighbors Grant.
She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a trustee of the New York Academy of Medicine.
"When it comes to hard work, I have never met anyone who sets the pace achieved by Paula Allen-Meares," said U of I President B. Joseph White.
Allen-Meares grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., where she was a hospital volunteer and camp counselor as a teenager before earning her undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
She went to Urbana-Champaign for graduate studies in social work, working as a child welfare worker for the Department of Children and Family Services and a school social worker for the Urbana public schools while she completed her master's and Ph.D.
She joined the Urbana social work faculty after earning her doctorate in 1975, moving up the academic ladder to become dean of the school in 1990. Her husband, Henry Meares, assistant dean for external relations at Michigan's school of education, and their three daughters are Urbana graduates.
Allen-Meares is the sixth chancellor since the 1982 merger of the university's former Chicago Circle and Medical Center campuses created the University of Illinois at Chicago. UIC today ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world.
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