Senate Committee Begins Discussion of Proposed Admin Changes
The University of Illinois' Senate Executive Committee held the first in a series of forum's Monday to discuss three administrative changes introduced by University President Michael Hogan at last month's Board of Trustees meeting.
One of the proposals covered at the meeting was about adding a new vice president who would oversee health services at all three campuses. The Board of Trustees approved a 3.9 percent increase in its operating budget last month, even with about a $245 million backlog in payments from the state.
U of I officials have said cuts and consolidations would help offset the cost of creating this new position.
Harriet Murav, who teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, attended the forum. Murav said she is worried changes to the university's administrative structure could mean other departments and programs will take a hit.
"How could it possibly make sense to take funding away?" she asked. "Class size has gone up. Tuition waivers have gone down. Academic salaries have gone down because we're bleeding faculty."
Some of the other administrative changes under consideration include making each campus chancellor a vice president and adding a "research" element to the portfolio of the vice president for technology and economic development. Interim chancellor Robert Easter said the campus-wide discussions will help shed light on what he calls "ambitious" proposals.
"I don't know that there's any reason to be concerned until we fully understand the proposals," he said. "I understand the president is meeting with various groups to talk about it, and so I think we'll have productive conversations and at the end, we'll come to good decisions."
The faculty-student Senate committees on all three campuses in Urbana, Springfield, and Chicago will make recommendations on the proposals to the U of I Board of Trustees before the board's November 18 meeting in Chicago.
Joyce Tolliver, chair the Urbana campus' Senate committee, raised doubts over whether a month is enough time to fully discuss the proposals.
"The discussion is not going to be a clean straight forward one," Tolliver said. "It's going to be a messy one. It's probably going to be a rambling one, and I'm glad that I have set aside all this extra time for it."
University President Michael Hogan will be at the next town hall Senate meeting set for October 18 at 3 PM in College of Business' Deloitte Auditorium on the Urbana campus. The Senate has also scheduled meetings for October 25, November 1, and November 8.