Stanley O. Ikenberry, University of Illinois president who trusted in power of students, dead at 90
He elevated the stature of the University of Illinois in big and brave ways, but former school president Stanley O. Ikenberry's favorite story to tell of his 16 years at the school's helm was about an unexpected house party.
Mr. Ikenberry, who was just 44 when he accepted the university's top job in 1979, was playing basketball with his sons on the hoop attached to the garage of the stately president's home on the Urbana campus when a group of four young men approached him with a question.
They were students, and they wanted to take over the president's house for a single night to entertain dates. Mr. Ikenberry didn't dismiss the idea outright, but instead said they'd need to run the idea past his wife, Judy.
"So they came in, and I said 'no alcohol,' " Judy says. "And they said 'of course,' and they produced a menu of nonalcoholic drinks, and I was impressed. And they said their mothers would help with the cooking. And Stan and I agreed that they could do that."
They hired a limo and picked up their dates and, in a ploy to build up excitement about their final destination, first went to the student union and all got out of the car before instructing their dates to get back in. They did the same thing at a hotel before ending up at the home of the university president.
"This time their dates wouldn't get out of the limo, so Stan and I had to go out and greet them," says Judy, noting that she and her husband and kids went out to dinner to give the young couples some privacy.
"When we came home, the place was spotless and so silent and went to the far end of the house and we found them, and they were all holding hands and saying a prayer. It was the most beautiful thing you can imagine. We later learned that the young men had forged their friendship in a church group," says Judy, noting that the evening came to be known as "the ultimate date."
"That was Stan, he believed in students and wanted to help them put their ideas into effect, and sometimes you have to take a chance," she says.
Mr. Ikenberry died April 1 at his home in Boca Grande, Florida. He was 90.
He had a colorful personality, a quick wit and could be as adroit and persuasive chatting in academic circles as he was with politicians whom the state's flagship university depended on for funding.
High on Mr. Ikenberry's list of priorities when he came to the university in 1979 was to raise the pay for faculty to make the school more competitive in luring top talent.
In 1982, he consolidated the school's two Chicago campuses — Chicago Circle and the Medical Center — into what's now known as University of Illinois Chicago to enhance the image and improve the quality of the university's presence in Chicago.
"That was not an easy thing to do, but it was done and has grown into a magnificent institution to this day, and he was very, very proud of that," Judy says. "He was very much a man of Chicago as well as Urbana."
Chicago became a major focus for Mr. Ikenberry, who spent about 40% of his time here, crashing at a lakefront condo that the University of Illinois Foundation bought in 1985.
In 1991, Mr. Ikenberry risked his job to stand up for the successes that were being racked up in Chicago — and his beliefs.
At issue was who would take the reins from an existing chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago.
An academic search committee, as well as Mr. Ikenberry, backed Jim Stukel, who was already serving as the school's vice chancellor.
But Mayor Richard M. Daley and Jim Thompson, who'd recently left office after 14 years as governor of Illinois, tried to upend the academic selection process by pushing for Paula Wolff, a former Thompson aide.
Mr. Ikenberry, who'd become a respected national figure in the world of higher education, threatened to resign if Wolff got the gig.
Ultimately, Thompson's successor, Gov. Jim Edgar, another former Thompson aide, switched his support to Stukel, Wolff bowed out, and the university's board of trustees voted to give Stukel the job.
"Daley and Thompson, that's a lot to have to resist. It took a lot of courage, it was a gutsy call, but he would have resigned," says Stukel, who later took over for Mr. Ikenberry when he stepped down as president of the university in 1996.
Mr. Ikenberry was born March 30, 1935, in Lamar, Colorado.
His father, Oliver Samuel Ikenberry, was an administrator in Colorado schools and later became president of Shepherd College, now Shepherd University, in West Virginia.
Stanley Ikenberry attended Shepherd before earning a master's degree and a doctorate from Michigan State University, where he studied the problems of higher education.
He served as dean of the college of human resources at the University of West Virginia at the age of 30 before moving to Penn State, where he worked as senior vice president for administration.
He then became the youngest University of Illinois president in the school's history when he took the position at age 44.
“President Ikenberry was a trailblazer as a University of Illinois president and led through a period of robust growth and the development of so much of what we know now as the modern U. of I. system,” current university President Tim Killeen says.
Mr. Ikenberry served as president of the American Council on Education, the main lobbying arm for higher education, from 1996 to 2001.
He returned to the helm of the University of Illinois for several months in 2010 to serve in an interim capacity during a significant state and system budget crisis, which he helped address.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Ikenberry is survived by his sons David, Steven and John, as well as eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
A funeral service will take place April 26 in Boca Grande, Florida, at 1 p.m. at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. It will be accessible online.