Dr. Robert J. Jones
Chancellor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Robert J. Jones is the chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Jones’ tenured faculty home is in the Department of Crop Sciences, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES). He is the first African American scholar appointed as Urbana chancellor in the institution’s history. He is the current chair of the Board of Directors for the Association of American Universities (AAU) and he chairs the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors.
A Georgia native, Jones earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from Fort Valley State College, a master’s degree in crop physiology from the University of Georgia, and a doctorate in crop physiology from the University of Missouri, Columbia. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society of America. He began his academic career as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota in 1978 where he spent more than three decades as an internationally respected authority on plant physiology and a nationally recognized university administrator.
Jones is married to Dr. Lynn Hassan Jones, MD, a muscular skeletal diagnostic radiologist. Together they have five children and a growing number of grandchildren.