The University of Iowa

Willard L. "Sandy" Boyd, 1927-2022

Founder, INRC, and President Emeritus, The University of Iowa

Sandy Boyd was Emeritus Professor of Law and President Emeritus of the University of Iowa.

Within the Colleges of Law, Business, and Liberal Arts, he taught courses concerning the legal and managerial operations of nonprofit organizations.

In 2000, he established the Larned A. Waterman Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center (LAWINRC) as a single resource where questions from the nonprofit field across the state could be channeled in order to promptly provide nonprofit staff, board, and volunteers with information and assistance from across the university.

Willard "Sandy" Boyd

Background

Willard L. Boyd was a lawyer and an educator. He was Rawlings-Miller Professor of Law at The University of Iowa and is President Emeritus of The University of Iowa and The Field Museum of Chicago.

Boyd focused on the role of nonprofits in Iowa and the United States and was one of the founders of the Larned A. Waterman Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center. The Center is a university-wide interdisciplinary program involving departments and faculties from across the University who are interested in and engaged with nonprofit organizations. Boyd taught courses on the legal and operational aspects of nonprofit organizations, and in 2000, he was appointed by Governor Tom Vilsack to chair the Task Force on the Role of Nonprofit Organizations in Iowa.

Boyd received his BSL and LLB degrees from the University of Minnesota and his LLM and SJD degrees from the University of Michigan. He was a Chester A. Phillips Research Fellow at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Department of State Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and the board of National Arts Strategies.

He served as Chairman of the American Association of Universities, Chairman of the National Museum Services Board, Chairman of the Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar of the American Bar Association, Chairman of the Center for Research Libraries, (Chicago), Chair of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, Chair of Iowa 2000 (1972-78) and Chair of Imagine Iowa (2001), President of the National Commission on Accrediting, as a member of the National Council on the Arts, the Advisory Board of the Metropolitan Opera, the Advisory Committee for the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, and the Board of Directors of Americans for the Arts, Elderhostel, Illinois Arts and Humanities Councils, the Advisory Board Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and Humanities Iowa. His memoir, A Life on the Middle West's Never-Ending Frontier, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2019.