Three elected to UD Board of Trustees

Three new trustees were elected to the University of Delaware Board of Trustees at the board’s semiannual meeting Dec. 18.

Elected were Thomas J. Burns of Dover, a 1974 UD alumnus; Mary Jane Willis of Smyrna; and Jacquelyn Owens Wilson of Frankford.

Burns, a graduate of UD’s College of Business and Economics, is the owner, with his wife Terry Ellis, of Burns & Ellis Realtors. President of the Kent County Association of Realtors in 2000 and director-at-large 2001 for the Delaware Association of Realtors, Burns also is Kent County director of TREND, a regional, multiple-listing organization, located in King of Prussia, Pa.

Past president and a member of the board of trustees of Kent School in Chestertown, Md., Burns currently serves as vice chair of the board of Bayhealth Medical Center. A Dover resident since 1979, Burns has been a member of the Greater Dover Committee since 1993, serving as its president in 1994.

Mary Jane Willis, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from West Virginia University, served as a guidance counselor in Moundsville, W.Va., from 1969-80, where she was a diversified cooperative training coordinator. From 1982-83, she worked as a teacher of gifted in the Smyrna School District in Delaware.
Willis currently holds a number of public service positions, including Delaware state chairman of the U.S. Special Olympics Committee, board member of Washington College’s Parents’ Council, director of the Schwartz Center for the Arts and a committee member of the Delaware Court of the Judiciary’s Preliminary Investigatory Committee.

Her other public service has included membership in the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Panel for Strategic Library Planning as well as service on the Delaware Public Integrity Commission, the Delaware Community Foundation and UD’s Parents’ Association Board.

Jacquelyn Owens Wilson, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Salisbury State University and a doctorate in education from Wilmington College, is principal at Lord Baltimore Elementary School in the Indian River School District in Ocean View. Having previously served as an assistant principal at Lord Baltimore and Georgetown Elementary School, Wilson also is an adjunct professor at UD and Wilmington College.

Appointed by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to a Department of Education task force and by former Gov. Thomas Carper to the Professional Standards Board, Wilson also has served on the Delaware Performance Appraisal System.

A two-time winner of the Superstar! in Education award, Wilson has won several grants and received the Delaware Technical and Community College Alumni Association International Women’s Day Award.
At the Dec. 18 meeting, the trustees also recognized the contributions of trustee Sally H. Higgins, who retired from the board after 30 years’ service. She was elected a trustee emeritus.

Higgins, who is originally from New Castle County, spent most of her career as a teacher at Georgetown High School.

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