ISU Trustees Approve New President, Small Tuition Hike
Illinois State University has chosen a new president.
The university's board of trustees voted on Friday to hire Timothy Flanagan, who is currently president of Framingham State University in Massachusetts.
Flanagan’s accomplishments include creating new academic programs, securing tens of millions of dollars in capital investment and establishing record-setting levels of fundraising and private support.
During a campus announcement, he quoted Horace Mann in saying Normal Schools such as ISU are an important American creation that has served the country well.
"Suitable for the richest and available to the poorest people in states," Flanagan said. "And I think that is a tradition that serves to frame importantly the mission of these institutions as they have grown into terrific comprehensive public universities."
Flanagan said he looks forward to getting to know the students at ISU, and said it is an incredible privilege working with young people and seeing the transformation they make during their time on campus.
"Ultimately the reputation of any institution of higher education in the long run is developed and sustained by the accomplishments of its alumni, its graduates," he said.
Flanagan begins his new job on Aug. 15. He will have a salary of $350,000 a year, which does not include the value of some other perquisites of the office such as a car, a country club membership to assist in doing campus business, and use of the Presidential residence. Overall, he will be making $50,000 less than the compensation for outgoing President Al Bowman.
Bowman will step down next week, while Provost Sheri Everts will serve as interim President until Flanagan starts.
Flanagan said government de-funding of higher education will require more private fundraising and a renewed articulation of the case for college as a public good.
Meanwhile, ISU trustees also approved increases to tuition, dining and residence hall rates, and other fees, which will affect new freshmen and transfer students for the 2013-2014 school year.
Tuition rates are increasing about 2 percent over last year. Housing is up 3 percent and dining rates go up by 2.5 percent.
ISU spokesman Eric Jome said the combined increases mean it will cost a new in-state freshman just over $22,200 a year, with about $10,200 of that going toward tuition.
The tuition rate will hold stable through summer of 2017, meaning it will be the same for incoming students during the four-year period. State law guarantees incoming students at Illinois universities set tuition rates for four years. It is expected to generate about $2.1 million. ISU plans to use that for what it terms modest salary increases.
Trustee J.D. Bergman said the tuition increase was necessary with the decline in state funding.
"We are presumably going to be passing the resolution today with a very very small increase. It is the best that we can do with a very very bad situation."
Seventy percent of current Illinois State Students will not feel the effect of the recently approved increase in tuition, because the truth in tuition law freezes rates for four years.