NIU will lose a 23-year veteran at the end of this semester when the director of the University Honors Program retires.

Marion Miller graduated from Western Kentucky and received his doctorate from Northwestern University in Evanston at age 22. Miller taught at the University of Maryland for 20 years before joining NIU’s faculty as the chair of the chemistry department in 1968.

Current chair of the chemistry department Joe Vaughn said Miller was one of those who helped make biochemistry an emphasis in the department.

Miller was influential in the field of chemistry and wrote a general chemistry textbook that was used at NIU. His other accomplishments include work leading to the development of the birth control pill, four anesthetics, and a drug used for the fatal disease lukadistrophy.

Miller has been a consultant to the government and industry. He has been a guest professor at Heidelberg (Germany), Baghdad (Iraq), Xi’an (China), and the University of Virginia.

In addition to a number of committees, Miller served on the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Senate at NIU for three years. In 1981 he was the recipient of the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching award which allowed him to serve on the committee of improvement of undergraduate education that he chaired for three years.

“He is always able to maintain his equilibrium,” said Tim Blickhan, a professor in the School of Music. “He is always diplomatic and is always willing to make sure that all points of view are heard in any discussion,” he said.

In 1986, Miller was named director of the Honors Program.

“He has worked tirelessly to make the Honors Program develop and grow to become a very respectable program. He will be hard to replace,” said Blickhan.

Miller is involved in the freshman honors orientation at the Lorado-Taft field campus, and has a strong interest in all other students in the program, said Bill Monat, public administration professor.

“He’s an easy-to-talk-to guy,” said Brian Hosking, a senior finance major. “Other professors talk over your head, but Dr. Miller doesn’t do that. He’ll sit and talk to you about anything,” he said.

“He’s quietly charismatic, subtly humorous, soft spoken and easy to work with,” said Jason Price, an honors program graduate in geology.

Despite his busy work schedule, Miller always found time for hobbies including spending Sundays on the golf course with Blickhan or at the Chicago Symphony with Phil Wells, former professor in the School of Art.

“He is a tremendous asset to the university, and when such a person retires, it leaves a big space,” Wells said.

“We have a habit of putting people into niches. They’re either great teachers, great researchers, outstanding administrators … but Dr. Miller is one of the very few who has done it all,” Blickhan said. “He sets an ideal example of the kind of administrators we need on this campus,” he said.