July 19, 2016

Dear colleagues,

I am delighted to announce that I have recommended Dr. Robert J. Jones as the new chancellor for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Dr. Jones currently serves as the president of the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), one of the SUNY system’s leading research universities. He is an experienced and accomplished scientist and research university leader.

Dr. Jones has been at the helm of UAlbany since 2013. His tenure there follows a 34-year career at the University of Minnesota, a Big Ten land-grant institution where he began as a faculty agronomist and rose through a series of academic administrative appointments, serving as senior vice president for academic administration at the University of Minnesota System from 2004 to 2013.

He is a native of Georgia, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from Fort Valley State College, a master’s degree in crop physiology from the University of Georgia and a doctorate in crop physiology from the University of Missouri, Columbia. He began his academic career as a faculty member at Minnesota and became an internationally respected authority on plant physiology. He is a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society of America.

Dr. Jones would be the first African-American appointed Urbana chancellor since the office was created in 1967. Please click here to read more about him.

We will introduce him to the Urbana campus community Wednesday morning at 9:00 a.m. in the Illini Union Ballroom. If you are able to attend, please join us for this happy and historic occasion.

Thank you in advance for welcoming him to the University of Illinois family.

Best wishes,

Tim Killeen
President, University of Illinois System