College of Education Announces New $500,000 Gift

September 28, 2007

Sheila and Steven Miller, both 1967 Illinois graduates (BA, Education and BS, Chemical Engineering, respectively), have made a $1 million gift to the University to be split equally between the College of Education and the Department of Chemical Engineering. The outright gift will create the Sheila M. Miller College of Education Fund and the Steven L. Miller Chemical Engineering Fund on the Urbana-Champaign campus.

The Millers, of Houston, Texas, have both been long-time friends of the University, most recently with Steve serving as the Chairman of the University of Illinois Foundation and Sheila as one of the founding members of the College of Education Board of Visitors. Both funds were established for the unrestricted use of the institutions.

“Sheila and Steve’s generosity is matched only by their strong belief in the power of the University to change lives,” said College of Education Dean, Mary Kalantzis. “The Sheila M. Miller College of Education Fund will have an immediate and a profound impact on our efforts to build better ways of teaching and to provide opportunities for everyone to learn in our world. This gift today will benefit students and scholars for decades to come.”

“I truly valued my educational experience here at Illinois,” said Sheila Miller, “and I wanted to pass that opportunity on to someone else.”

She said that creating an unrestricted-use fund will allow the College the greatest flexibility to use the support in the most strategic and effective manner. “Unrestricted gifts are the most difficult ones to come by,” she said. “I wanted to create a fund that would allow the Dean and the College to support initiatives that they believe to be the most exciting and most promising.”

The Miller’s gift was officially announced on Friday, September 28, 2007 as part of the University of Illinois Foundation’s annual meeting on the Urbana-Champaign campus.