Dr. Antonio Tillis, a distinguished graduate of Memphis Central High School in the 1980s, was the beneficiary Saturday night of a surprise celebration in his honor at the Collage Dance Collective on Tillman. The affair, arranged by a group of his old Central classmates, was in tribute to Tillis’ recent appointment as Chancellor of Rutgers University in New Jersey.. The appointment takes place on July 1.
Tillis, 55, will head Rutgers University–Camden, the southernmost campus of Rutgers, aka The State University of New Jersey, with more than 7,200 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in 39 undergraduate and 29 graduate programs.
He recently served as interim president of the University of Houston-Downtown, where he had previously served as the M.D. Anderson Professor in Hispanic Studies.
Tillis holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in Spanish literature from Howard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Latin American literature (with an Afro-Hispanic emphasis) from the University of Missouri at Columbia.