Distinguished Alumni for Campus Service
Barry Trantham
Barry Trantham's resume reaches far beyond a list of volunteer boards and expresses a genuine love for the University of Michigan-Flint. For twenty eight years he has been dedicated to giving back to his alma mater.
He was a former president and is a current member of the University of Michigan Club of Greater Flint (M-Club). He has previously served as chairperson of the Alumni Board of Governors, was a University of Michigan National Alumni Board member, and was the keynote speaker at the University Ethics Symposia in 2007. In addition to voluntarily serving on several community boards, Trantham currently serves on the UM-Flint Auxiliary building committee and the University of Michigan-Flint School of Management Advisory Board.
Shortly after the university began its search for a new chancellor in 2007, Trantham was chosen to be the alumni representitive on the Chancellor Search Committee because of his dedication to the campus. He focused on discovering how each candidate planned on keeping alumni involved in the university. "I told [the candidates] that the alumni want to be utilized, but you can't ask them to do something that's not meaningful. It has to have some meaning to it; it has to have something that they're passionate about...and so I would always listen to see which ones had utilized alumni in the past.
In addition to donating his time to the advancement of the university, Trantham has donated his resources in the founding of a book scholarship for the University of Michigan-Flint Challenge Program. Trantham began to see that many of the student's families could not afford the expense of textbooks. "That's when I went back to the M-Club and we started a book scholarship fund where we make available five, $500 each book scholarships for challenge students only," Trantham stated.
His passion for the unviersity, students, alumni and community is the motivating factor behind his service. It is his sincere dedication that has qualified him to be the Distinguished Alumni for Campus Service.