Honoring IU Northwest Chancellor William Lowe
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
IU Northwest Chancellor Bill Lowe is with us via Zoom, and as the trustees are aware, this is his final trustees meeting as he is retiring at the end of this academic year. I want take a moment to express Indiana University’s most grateful thanks to Chancellor Lowe for his decade of distinguished service to the university.
Chancellor Lowe brought a breadth of experience to IU Northwest. He came to IU Northwest after having served as a faculty member and administrator at a number of universities—most recently, Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, where he served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs—and for a brief period as Interim President.
He is a scholar of Irish history, focusing particularly on the Irish Constabulary. He deepened his expertise in this area as a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Modern History at Trinity College in Dublin where he had received his doctorate some years earlier.
During his 10 years as chancellor of IU Northwest, he has demonstrated vision, resourcefulness, personal integrity, and an absolute commitment
- to students,
- to diversity and inclusion,
- to community partnerships,
- and to strengthening the academic enterprise.
Chancellor Lowe came to IU Northwest two years after the devasting flood that damaged the campus’s oldest building, Tamarack Hall, so extensively that it ultimately had to be demolished. Bill’s vision and leadership were integral in the planning and construction of the much-needed and much-anticipated Arts and Sciences Building, which was dedicated in 2017.
And he has overseen the IU Northwest portion of the Bicentennial Campaign—which has been enormously successful. IU Northwest has already surpassed its $8 million goal, having raised more than $10 million (more than 125 percent of the original campus goal). This includes funds to establish 46 new student scholarships that will allow students who could not otherwise afford to attend college to come to IU and earn an education that will change their lives. And nearly $3 million of the funds raised to date—approximately 29 percent of the total—have come from IU Northwest faculty and staff.
We will have additional opportunities to celebrate Chancellor Lowe’s service in the coming weeks, but I want to take this opportunity to thank him for his outstanding service to the campus and to IU—and to wish him and his wife, Pamela, the very best.
Honoring Athletic Director Fred Glass
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As the trustees are aware, IU’s Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, Fred Glass, is also retiring in the coming weeks, and so I want to take a few moments to express—on behalf of the entire university—our most grateful thanks to Fred for his distinguished service to IU.
Fred has been an outstanding athletics director for Indiana University and is one of the very best ADs in the Big Ten.
He fully understands that athletics is an important part of IU that is integrated in to the university in all ways, and that it is not a stand-alone independent entity.
He has elevated compliance to the highest level of priority, and during his tenure, IU has not had a major compliance issue.
He has continually underscored the importance of academics, as is reflected in the record numbers of IU student-athletes who have earned Academic All-Big Ten and Big Ten Distinguished Scholars honors in recent years.
Fred has continued to improve the performance of our teams over all 24 sports.
He has also been an outstandingly successful fundraiser, whose efforts have resulted in the completion of the Athletics Master Plan that has created a central and unified athletics campus at IU Bloomington with superb new athletic and academic facilities. This completion represents an investment by some of IU’s most generous donors of around a quarter of a billion dollars over the last 11 years.
And he has been deeply committed to the holistic care and support of student athletes, as is evidenced by the establishment of the IU Excellence Academy, his founding of the Athletic Director’s Council on Diversity and Inclusivity, and the numerous recent conversations he has held with coaches and student athletes over the last few days to ensure that IU Athletics is doing all it can to fight the scourge of racism and secure racial justice and equality.
We will have additional opportunities to honor Fred in the coming weeks, but I know the trustees will want to join me in expressing our thanks to him for his distinguished service.
Honoring Vice President Brad Wheeler
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As the trustees are also aware, earlier this week, I announced that Vice President Brad Wheeler will be retiring from his administrative roles and returning to the faculty in the Kelley School of Business.
I want to thank Brad for his nearly 20 years of outstanding service to Indiana University in his various administrative roles. I have had the pleasure of working closely with Brad over the last two decades, and he has been a close and trusted advisor.
For 13 years, he has led the development of information technology at IU with great skill and energy. In this role, he continued to establish IU as one of the leading public research universities in the country for the uses and applications of IT. And he has become widely recognized as one of the finest CIOs in the country.
Brad led the development and implementation of IU's second strategic IT plan.
Under his leadership, IU has continued to push the boundaries of high-speed computing.
The innovative eTexts initiative, which Brad also spearheaded, helped to transform the way students obtain and use digital course materials.
Brad was also instrumental in guiding the development of the university’s IT facilities, including the Cyberinfrastructure Building, which houses our IT staff, and the IU Data Center, which ensures the safety and security of our networking, computer processing and data storage equipment.
I was also very grateful that he was willing to step forward in 2018 to serve concurrently as vice president for communications and marketing. We will have further opportunities to honor Brad’s service in the coming weeks, and I am sure the trustees will agree that IU owes Brad a great debt of gratitude for all of his meritorious services and contributions to the university.