The Huffington Post
Shortly after I became chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) over two years ago, I convened a town hall meeting on campus to discuss the ongoing state budget crisis. In the audience was a young man -- like many UIC students, the first in his family to attend college -- who asked if he could come to visit me sometime. Of course I agreed. When he arrived at my office for our scheduled appointment, he was out of breath, his reddish-brown hair was disheveled, his T-shirt was dirty and he looked exhausted. He apologized and explained that he had worked just before our meeting and had run all the way across campus in between classes.
I was awed by this young man and how hard he was willing to work to achieve his goal. At the same time, I felt a huge sense of responsibility as chancellor, as I realized that an essential part of my job leading a university campus during the Great Recession of the 21st century would be keeping the doors of opportunity open for this young man and thousands like him at UIC. Many of our students hold down one or more jobs to finance their educations to realize their dreams.
I am very grateful to Sheila Johnson for her invitation to join the ranks of contributors to HuffPost BlackVoices, an exciting new addition to the world of online news and commentary. As head of Chicago's largest public research university (with 27,300 students), a member of the board of directors of the Coalition of Urban-Serving Universities, and a member of the Institute of Medicine and the New York Academy of Medicine, my goal is to use this important new forum to share my perspectives about access to higher education, health care, and economic opportunity for our nation's young people.
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