Robert Jones plans to step down as University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chancellor and vice president of the University of Illinois System at the end of the current academic year, bringing what will be nine years of successful leadership at the state’s flagship public university to a close, U of I System President Tim Killeen said today.
Under Jones’ leadership, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has created a new vision of the flagship land-grant university for the 21st century while honoring and extending its long history of excellence and maintaining its timeless commitment to serving the people of Illinois.
Enrollment has grown 26% during his tenure to this fall’s record 59,238 students and, under Jones, the university has enhanced its profile as one of the country’s premier research universities and a magnet for talented students, faculty, staff and researchers from across the state and around the world.
Under Jones’ leadership, the Urbana-Champaign campus launched Illinois Commitment, which promises free tuition for any Illinois resident whose family income is below $75,000. Jones also oversaw the launch of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the first engineering-based medical school in the world.
His vision also led the university to embark on new strategies to draw together international scholars and professors, particularly in the global south, to help bring diverse experiences and viewpoints to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
“From his first day on campus, Chancellor Jones has been relentlessly committed to delivering excellence at scale, and with him at the helm, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has done just that through its expanded enrollment, through its commitment to growing its world-class faculty and through research that is helping meet the challenges of our time — feeding a growing global population, creating a sustainable economy and building the kind of just and equitable society we need,” Killeen said.
Jones is a nationally respected leader in higher education who has served as chair of the Association of American Universities Board of Directors, chair of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities Board of Directors, chair of the Big Ten Council of Chancellors and Presidents, president of the University of Albany and in a number of leadership roles at the University of Minnesota.
He drew on that deep well of experience during the U of I System’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Urbana-Champaign became one of the leading universities in the country by developing a saliva-based test and ecosystem to rapidly receive results.
“Chancellor Jones understands, on a very profound level, the power of the university system to deliver when people need it most — our research prowess was never more evident than during the pandemic as the creator of a life-saving test for the virus and a partner in the drive to create a vaccine,” Killeen said.
Killeen has asked Jones to remain with the U of I System to employ his considerable experience on strategic initiatives related to expanding the system and Urbana-Champaign’s role and presence in Chicago; international partnership opportunities; and support for the search for a worthy successor to become the next chancellor.
“I truly believe this is the greatest university in the world, which makes this the most difficult decision that has confronted me in my 47 years in higher education. My time at Illinois has been the most profound experience of my professional life, and I thank every single campus community member for that,” Jones said. “We are at the high point in our 157-year history in terms of our educational and research impact. Next is a period of transition with our institutional strategy and collaborations. This is an appropriate time to look toward the next leader who will build on that momentum and promote the bold ideas for which Illinois is known.”
Donald J. Edwards, chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, praised Jones for a long, successful tenure as chancellor.
“I am exceptionally grateful to Chancellor Jones for his leadership of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In this unprecedented era, the university increased access for the students of Illinois while remaining dedicated to our mission of excellence and affordability. Urbana-Champaign has also grown its capacity for research with economic and societal impact and been a major contributor to the health of our people throughout the state — I have had no greater pride in this university than knowing that under Chancellor Jones’ leadership, Urbana-Champaign played such a pivotal role in steering our state through the pandemic,” Edwards said. “As chairman of the board but also as a dedicated alumnus, I am thankful for Chancellor Jones’ commitment to this great institution and his collaborative, innovative spirit.”
Jones has been a trailblazer throughout his career. He became the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s first African American chancellor in 2016 after more than three decades as an internationally respected authority on plant physiology and nationally recognized university administrator.
Under Jones’ leadership, the university has expanded to serve Illinois in critical areas, including economic development, and boosted fundraising. Some of the notable advances of his tenure include:
- Leadership, in partnership with the University of Chicago, of the $200 million Chicago Quantum Exchange, which is establishing Illinois the center of the quantum sciences and information in the nation.
- Leadership, in partnership with the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, of the $275 million Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago — an unprecedented initiative that seeks to redefine how we understand human biology.
- The chancellor was selected by Gov. JB Pritzker to co-chair the Innovate Illinois partnership to coordinate the state’s efforts to secure critical federal research investments that will put the state at the center of the industries that will define the 21st century.
- The recent completion a $2.7 billion philanthropic campaign that was the largest in university history and included two of the largest private gifts it has ever received.
- Establishment of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the first engineering-based medical school in the world.
- The creation of the new Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, promoting collaboration across two disciplines that are among the university’s most renowned, and the Siebel Center for Design.
Jones is a Georgia native who 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 the University of Minnesota in 1978.
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society of America.
The U of I System will now begin the search for his successor.
Urbana-Champaign is one of the three U of I System universities, along with the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of Illinois Springfield. It is the largest and oldest of the three universities.
