A student housing area and new dining hall will be named after former university president Stanley O. Ikenberry in recognition of Ikenberry’s years of service to the UI.
At its Jan. 17 meeting in Chicago, the UI Board of Trustees agreed to name the area bordered by Gregory and Peabody drives, and First and Fourth streets, the Stanley O. Ikenberry Commons.
A dining hall within the Student Dining and Residential Programs Building, currently under construction on Gregory Drive, will be named the Ikenberry Dining Hall. It will seat 1,172 students.
“It’s very important that the Ikenberry name be part of the living legacy of the campus,” Chancellor Richard Herman said at the meeting.
A new residence hall wing scheduled to open in fall 2010 is the first phase of what will become the Stanley O. Ikenberry Commons. The residence hall will house 150 students, including some with physical disabilities who now live off campus.
The long-term project will replace the undergraduate residence halls at that site. The six residence halls, built in the late 1950s, have outdated building systems and rooms that are smaller than market standard.
Once the project is complete, the Stanley O. Ikenberry Commons will be home to more than 3,000 students.
Ikenberry, who was university president from 1979 to 1995, was honored because of his contributions to the campus, such as establishing the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Herman said.
“Much of what this wonderful university is today can be traced to President Ikenberry’s visionary work on behalf of the University of Illinois and its students,” Herman said.
Trustees called Ikenberry at his Florida home during the meeting to tell him the good news.
“At the heart of it, what makes the university really are the young people, and to be affiliated with that is a great honor,” Ikenberry said while on speakerphone. “While it comes to us a surprise, it really is a great honor.”
Upon Ikenberry’s departure from the presidency, he was named president emeritus and regent professor of education. From 1996-2001, Ikenberry served as the President of the American Council on Education, and in 2001 he returned to the university as a professor in the department of educational organization and leadership in the College of Education and in the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.