October 25, 2005

Krambles Transportation Scholarship Fund Moves to UIC

The George Krambles Transportation Scholarship Fund has contributed $50,000 for an endowed scholarship at the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The UIC scholarship will replace the fund's 25-year-old national competition.

Beginning next year, a scholarship of several thousand dollars will be awarded annually to an outstanding urban planning or transportation student planning a career in transportation. Four UIC students won Krambles scholarships during the 25 years of the national competition, including a high-level PACE operations planner and a Rutgers University professor.

"We consider it an honor and privilege to carry on the work of the Krambles Fund board of directors," said Robin Hambleton, dean of the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. "Many students have benefited from the legacy of George Krambles, and we applaud the efforts of the board to continue to help more students."

George Krambles founded the scholarship fund when he retired as executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority. He had worked in Chicago-area transit since earning an engineering degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1937. He served as a public transit consultant and historian until his death in 1999.

Norm Carlson, president of the original George Krambles Scholarship
fund, will present the contribution to Hambleton at the UIC Urban
Transportation Center's Oct. 21 symposium.

Additional funds will be raised in part through events such as a
vintage CTA train tour planned for next spring.

UIC ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world. For more information about UIC, visit http://www.uic.edu/

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