Recognizing Dr. M. Roy Wilson's Service to the Staff and Students of Wayne State University

Floor Speech

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Mrs. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dr. M. Roy Wilson, the president of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan at the end of his tenure. His contributions to the lives of students and staff at Wayne State and universities across the Nation are worthy of commendation.

Prior to joining Wayne State, Dr. Wilson served as the deputy director for strategic scientific planning and program coordination at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health. Previously, Dr. Wilson was vice president of health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine at Creighton University. president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, and chancellor of the University of Colorado-Denver while simultaneously serving as chair of the board of directors of the University of Colorado Hospital.

Under the leadership of President Wilson for the last decade, Wayne State has seen an era of growth and prosperity. Before my time in Congress, I served as Chair of the Wayne State Board of Governors, where I was able to see firsthand President Wilson's hard work in many different areas. In 2018, Wayne State won the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities' Degree Completion Award, which recognizes innovative and successful approaches to improve degree completion and ensure educational quality. Improvements were particularly seen among first-generation, low-income and minority students. As a result of efforts to promote the recruitment and retention of those who represent out global community and create the best clinical experience within our cities, the School of Medicine saw a tenfold increase in the number of traditionally underrepresented students from 2014 to 2020.

President Wilson's tenure also saw a drastic improvement to Wayne State's campus. In 2018. Wayne State opened the new Mike Illitch School of Business in downtown Detroit, made possible by a generous donation from Mike and Marian Illitch. That same year, groundbreaking took place for two major projects: the Hilberry Gateway Performance Complex for theatre, music. dance, and the arts, and the renovation of an unused science library into the STEM Innovation Learning Center, an instructional learning environment for undergraduates that opened in Fall 2021. The university established a partnership with the Detroit Pistons to construct a new $25 million arena for Wayne State's men's and women's basketball teams, which opened in fall 2021. The arena also serves as the home of the new NBA G League affiliate in Detroit. Lastly, the university invested $4 million to upgrade and refresh Wi-FI across campus to improve connection reliability and speed.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me today in celebrating the lifetime of work that Dr. Wilson has accomplished. Though his legacy will certainly live on at Wayne State University, this is simply the most recent chapter in a long and successful career in education for Dr. Wilson. I thank him for his service and wish him the best in any future exploits.

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