Paula Allen-Meares has been named the new chancellor for the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus, pending approval by the UI Board of Trustees.

Allen-Meares said she was “deeply honored” to become the next chancellor of the Chicago campus and hopes “to build on and strengthen bonds” with the UI campuses in Urbana-Champaign and Springfield.

She succeeds Sylvia Manning, who retired last December after eight years as Chicago chancellor. That campus has about 25,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students and a total annual budget of about $1.7 billion.

Since Manning’s retirement, the campus has been overseen by interim chancellor Eric “Rick” Gislason, the vice chancellor for research in Chicago. Gislason plans to retire next January, when Allen-Meares is scheduled to take office.

Allen-Meares, 60, has been dean of the University of Michigan’s top-ranked School of Social Work since 1993. Before that, she was a professor and dean of the School of Social Work at the UI’s Urbana-Champaign campus.

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The silence on the bus after the game said it all. For a school that became accustomed to losing over the past few years, this year was suppose to be the big one. The Illini became used to winning during the first half of this season, but with losses to Missouri, Iowa, and now Michigan, is there really any hope for a bowl game?

The Michigan game started off well, to say the least. The Illini returned the ball and scored in three plays. Michigan would later return with a field goal and after some intense action, both teams left for halftime tied 17-17. The Illini never scored again. This game contained many big plays that seemed to change the game. One of them came in the second quarter on third down when Michigan threw a pass in the far corner of the end zone. The pass was caught by the Michigan receiver but was ruled out of bounds by the referee. The play was later reviewed and call a touchdown. Another key play came in the fourth quarter when the Illini were receiving a punt. The Illini receiver called for a fair catch, and when he caught the ball, he dropped it on his own 13 yard line. A Michigan defender fell on it. The game overall was a tough match for the Illini, they were battling not only the Wolverines, but most of the time, they were also battling the referees. The Illini were penalized 10 times for 107 yards. If you want to know about the validity of any of those penalties, ask a Block I member. The fact is, the Illini had many opportunities, but could never take advantage of them. I hope this isn’t the beginning of another losing streak, I don’t want to be a Cubs fan and have to watch my team lose again.

“The bottom line is we can’t make the mistakes we did against a good football team like that and expect to come out ahead. We made mistakes and I thought with the exception of the last eight minutes, we played pretty well. We did some things wrong we need to improve on, but its part of learning and where we have to be as a program. As a team, we have to get in that mindset of learning how to win. We will get back to work on Monday.” – Coach Ron Zook

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