Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1992 [PAGE 119]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1992]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

107

University in an era of financial stringency. Your calm, thoughtful analysis has given shape to many complex and emotionally-charged discussions. The challenges facing higher education today are of such a scale that the servants of the University must be persons of scope and vision. Your short association with your colleagues on the Board has shown you to be such a person. The President and other administrative officers of the University join the members of the Board of Trustees in thanking you for your service, in hoping you will be receptive to future requests to serve the University, and in extending to you and Mrs. Downey their best wishes.

Resolution

To Nina T. Shepherd: In your 18 years of distinguished service, you have served as an exemplar of public service and have demonstrated what outstanding trustees can contribute to a University such as ours. As the first woman to be elected President of the Board of Trustees, you helped to guide our University through difficult times of change and readjustment, and you gave inspiration to many of the possibility of fulfilling individual potential. Your association with the University has been marked by excellence, first by your achievements as a student, then by your activities in the Alumni Association and, in the last 18 years, by your devotion as a Trustee. Your advocacy of the Chicago campus at the beginning of your tenure was instrumental in building that campus into the great urban institution it is today. Your enthusiasm and early support for the two-campus consolidation that created the Chicago campus and your ensuing encouragement of those who lead it have added immeasurably to its stature. In an equally impressive manner, you nurtured the evolution of the Urbana campus. Your willingness to seize opportunities for development of that campus by supporting such programs as Food for Century III and the revitalization of the College of Engineering provides ample evidence. Such undertakings as these helped change the landscape of the Urbana campus and greatly augmented its teaching and research possibilities. The years of your tenure, however, have been particularly notable for your advocacy of the liberal arts and sciences and the education of undergraduates. For this we are especially grateful. Over the years, you helped guide and inform newer colleagues on the Board and demonstrated great skill as a mentor. You chaired many committees of the Board, but your service on the Academic Affairs Committee will be particularly remembered for the selection of crucial academic issues you asked be presented. The record you leave is a testimony to selfless public service and to a true understanding of the need great universities have for governance that places the long term good of the institution above all else. Your consistent demand that difficult issues always be faced squarely and your integrity will be well recalled. You leave the University of Illinois in a position of strength. All associated with your Alma Mater are richer for your efforts. The President and other administrative officers of the University join with your colleagues on the Board of Trustees in this tribute to you and extend best wishes to you, your sons Paul and David Shepherd, and their families. The Board of Trustees directs that this resolution be incorporated in the minutes of today's meeting to become a part of the official public record, and that a suitable copy be given you as a permanent reminder of the esteem in which you are held.

REGULAR AGENDA

The board considered the following reports and recommendations from the president of the University.