Support from $10M donation will help students, faculty

By Jeff Wilson

CARBONDALE – SIU Simmons Law School has a nice ring to it. Now it has a fresh look to match.

In February 2024, John and Jayne Simmons announced a $10 million gift to the law school, enhancing and expanding its educational offerings to students and opportunities to faculty. In honor of the donation, the SIU Board of Trustees voted to name the SIU Simmons Law School. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, Aug. 16, the new name and signage were unveiled.

“This mission is aligned with my personal and professional value system,” said John Simmons, a member of the SIU Board of Trustees and founder of the Simmons Hanly Conroy law firm. “We are proud of this school and what it stands for. I owe a lot of my success to SIU and what it has given to my family. It has sent me on my way to success, expanded my world, my horizons, my view on life and my role in supporting my community.”

This historic gift – the largest SIU Carbondale has ever received – further cements Simmons’ legacy at SIU, which includes a $10.2 million commitment to the Simmons Cancer Institute at the SIU School of Medicine in Springfield. His most recent contribution comes as another major step in the Imagine SIU 2030 fundraising campaign, which has raised more than $340 million toward its $500 million goal.

“This gift will allow all of our students and faculty to continue to imagine,” Chancellor Austin Lane said. “You can think about all of the things you’re going to get in this building that are going to take you from Southern Illinois into the world.”

Simmons, a native and resident of Alton, is an SIUE graduate and chairperson and founder of Simmons Hanly Conroy law firm. His support will help provide more access, services, and opportunities to students seeking educational opportunities at SIU Simmons Law School.

The law school is the alma mater of more than 180 local, state, and federal judges. It also has alumni practicing law in 48 states and more than 10 countries. It also features legal clinics that serve members of underrepresented communities and offer students real-world experience.

“Lending one’s name, one’s reputation to a school is a profound gesture,” said SIU Simmons Law School Acting Dean Angela Upchurch. “It intertwines their identity with the ongoing story and mission of that institution, and it creates an indelible impact on its faculty, students and staff.”

Simmons has served two stints on the SIU Board of Trustees, first from 2004 to 2015 and was appointed again in 2019 by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. He has previously functioned as the board’s secretary and chair. He earned his law degree from Southern Methodist University and previously served in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer.

In 1999, he founded Simmons Hanly Conroy, one of the nation’s largest plaintiff’s law firms. The firm has dedicated the past 25 years to representing workers and families impacted by mesothelioma, a fatal and preventable asbestos-related cancer. Under his leadership, the firm expanded to new practice areas and now employs more than 250 people, including more than 80 attorneys, in offices across the country. Most recently, the firm successfully helped lead the national effort to hold manufacturers and distributors of prescription opiates accountable for the opioid epidemic. Firm employees have donated more than $1 million to local charities through the Simmons Employee Foundation and more than $20 million to cancer research nationwide.

Simmons Hanly Conroy has long been involved with SIU’s law school, providing internships, and employing its graduates.

“John is motivated by his core belief of giving back to the community to help improve and create a better life for others,” said SIU Board of Trustees Chair J. Phil Gilbert. “The contribution and investment in this law school will change lives by providing educational opportunities to anyone desiring a legal education … and will develop future leaders that make this world a better place in which to live.”

By Jeff Wilson

Brian Wilson has deep roots at SIU, and his decision to endow a $100,000 scholarship fund in the College of Business and Analytics only strengthens that connection.

“My mother and father met at SIU, and several other family members went there,” he said. “It was probably the first university I was exposed to as a kid.”

The Brian Wilson and Family Finance Scholarship Fund will benefit students from Southern Illinois who are studying finance and other business-related majors.

A Waterloo native, SIU was on the short list of possible universities for Wilson to attend, but the scholarship support he received his freshman year made the choice simple.

“That really clinched the deal for me and my parents,” he said. “I always thought that someday I would like to pay that back.”

Wilson had a typical college experience. He lived at Thompson Point and studied finance. He participated in intramural sports and played pickup basketball at the Student Recreation Center. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1991.

“I enjoyed the experience all around – the academics, the social life, the campus, everything. It was very positive,” he said.

After SIU, Wilson earned a master’s degree from the University of Miami and took a job with Ryder System. Over a 15-year career with Ryder, he worked in Miami, Detroit, Dallas, Toronto, and Singapore. He was then recruited into the world of private equity and is now the chief financial officer in North America for Barentz, a Dutch chemical distributor.

Today, he and his wife, Kris, live in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and have two adult children who make their homes in the Chicago area.

“It all started back with the finance education at SIU,” he said.

His SIU and professional experience intersected when fellow Saluki, Chuck Lounsbury, became senior vice president for supply chain solutions at Ryder System in the early 2000s.

As a student, Wilson had heard of Lounsbury from his professors. Lounsbury, a 1965 SIU graduate and member of the COBA Hall of Fame, had an illustrious career in the business world.

Recently, Lounsbury made a $500,000 donation to establish the Charles and Barbara Lounsbury Endowed Scholarship in the College of Business and Analytics.

“Chuck Lounsbury ended up working two offices down from me, and we got to know each other and shared memories of SIU,” Wilson said. “I saw an article about his gift in the SIU Alumni Association magazine, and it sparked interest in me to go ahead and fulfill my plan to repay my scholarship.”

Beyond financially supporting SIU students, Wilson hopes his scholarship helps drive the college and SIU forward.

“I want to do whatever I can to help the school continue to attract the best students and professors and allow more people the opportunity to get their education from SIU’s College of Business and Analytics,” he said.

To learn more about making a similar gift, visit siuf.org.

By Jeff Wilson

Eric Larson always enjoyed being in and around nature.

Growing up on a farm in Wyanet, Illinois, it was that passion that led him to choose Southern Illinois University Carbondale over the University of Illinois.

“I knew since I was about 10 years old that I wanted to be a forester,” he said. “There are not many trees around U of I. Southern Illinois was the perfect place for me. I fell in love with it.”

That decision began a journey that led Larson from SIU, to East Texas, to Tennessee, to Wisconsin, and back to Southern Illinois. He recently donated $25,000 to establish the Eric Larson Forestry Scholarship Endowment Fund.

“Through the years, I realized how much I learned at SIU,” Larson said. “At first, I didn’t know if I was going to be financially successful. As it turned out, I did pretty well and wanted to give back.”

While attending SIU, Larson was a member of the Forestry Club and enjoyed several field trips, including treks to Missouri and Gulfport, Mississippi. He spent a summer in Oregon after his junior year working for the Bureau of Land Management.

“After graduating high school with a class of about 20 students, it was great to blend in with students from around the world,” he said. “I was fortunate to have great instructors, and these field trips awakened my interest in forestry. It was worth seeing things in action more than just reading about them in a book.”

After graduating from SIU in 1969, he earned a master’s degree from Texas A&M and began working in the forest industry helping manage 600,000 acres of timberland in East Texas.

“Then I started my own business working for non-industrial landowners. I advised them and did things like planting trees, controlled burning, timber sales, and I marked individual trees to be removed, made inventories, wrote sales contracts, and I looked after logging jobs. I did the whole gamut,” he said. “It was a lot of hard work, but I always enjoyed being in nature.”

He also bought some timberland and practiced what he learned in school on his own property. Later, he had jobs with the state government in Tennessee and with a lumber company in Wisconsin.

Larson hopes his scholarship fund in the School of Forestry and Horticulture will invigorate the next generation of passionate foresters.

“I hope it encourages students to stick with it,” he said. “When I was going to school, it wasn’t always easy paying the bills, and I was more fortunate than most. This is just another tool to help them achieve their goals.”

Dr. Karl Williard, director of the School of Forestry and Horticulture, said Larson’s gift will make an impact on students through scholarships and supporting camps, which immerse students in forest and park management issues in other regions, including the Southeastern, Northeastern, and Western United States.

“This endowed scholarship is critical to future Saluki Foresters to support them in their academic journey and to lower the cost of participating in our Summer Field Camp, which is such a formative part of our student’s training,” he said.

To learn more about how to make a similar gift, visit siuf.org.