Long before he ran a private liberal arts college in western New York, Ken Macur enjoyed the Greek life — and all that came with it.
“My favorite fraternity/sorority prank was when, in retaliation for lifting our composite, a couple of brothers and I went over to Presby House and removed all of the seats from their bicycles,” says the Medaille College president, a Sigma Phi Epsilon man. “We made The Daily Illini for that — complete with picture.”
Macur spent a dozen years at the UI, earning three accountancy/finance degrees from the Gies College of Business and piling up a treasure trove of “wonderful” memories.
Among his favorite spots:
— David Kinley Hall and ComWest, home to 80 percent of his classes and his various office as a Ph.D. student.
— The triple crown of nightlife — “Dooley’s, the fraternity bar; Chances R, which burned down during my undergraduate days; and Boni’s.”
— The path between the house and Campustown, aka “the Ho Chi Minh trail.”
More Macur memories: “I shared an office in ComWest with two other doctoral students: Phil Regier, now University Dean for Educational Initiatives and CEO of EdPlus at Arizona State, and Fred Mittelstaedt, now Deloitte Foundation Professor of Accountancy and Chair of the Accounting Department at the University of Notre Dame.
“One of our not-too well-guarded secrets was the ‘emergency beer’ we kept in a file cabinet there. Just for emergencies, mind you, but they seemed to happen quite regularly.
“And especially when preparing for Professor Rashad Adbel-Khalik’s Research Methods class, which met from 3 to 5 on Monday and Friday afternoons. Tough class, tough professor, extremely fair and supportive.
“Thank you — still — to professors Pete Silhan for moral support during my preliminary exams, Florence Sharpe for getting me through my dissertation, and Dick Ziegler, who was always a constant supporter.”
