Naomi B. Lynn

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Naomi Burgos Lynn (b. 1933) was the first Hispanic woman president of an American public university. She served as President of Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois, beginning in 1991 and through its entrance into the University of Illinois system as the University of Illinois at Springfield. She retired as Chancellor of UIS in 2001. At her retirement the Naomi B. Lynn Distingiushed Chair for Lincoln Studies was created at the University of Illinois at Springfield, where Dr. Phillip Paludan serves as its first recipient.

Born in New York in 1933, Naomi Burgos was the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants. Her sister, Ruth Sascer, also became a university president, leading a community college in San Antonio, Texas. Naomi attended Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee, where she met Robert Athan Lynn, whom she married in 1954. She went on to become a Professor of Political Science, and then Department Head, at Kansas State University where she received her Ph.D. in Public Administration. She was also on the Kansas Social and Rehabilitation Review Commission. In 1988 she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she became the Dean of the College of Public and Urban Affairs at Georgia State University.

She has authored several books including: The Fulbright Premise: Senator J. William Fulbright's Views on Presidential Power (1973), A Research Guide in Women's Studies (1974), and Public Administration: The State of the Discipline (1990). She also edited Women, Politics and the Constitution (1990). She has four daughters, Mary Lou, Nancy, Judy, and Jo-An. She also has ten grandchildren.