In Call With Alumni, Killeen Urges Calls To Legislators, Governor

University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen had one main message for alumni in a conference call held Thursday night, call your state legislators and the governor and tell them to pass a budget.

Killeen says he’s most concerned about losing faculty to other institutions if the impasse continues beyond the end of the fiscal year on June 30th. He says the university has a plan in place to help retain and recruit new faculty, but it requires reliable state funding to be fully implemented.

Killeen answered about 15 questions from alumni in a call that lasted about 50 minutes. The calls came from across the state, and one came from California from an alumnus who is also sending his daughter to the U of I.

He said that regardless of the state funding situation, his main goal is to "preserve and extend the world class learning experience" at the University of Illinois.

He took several questions about the proposed Investment, Performance, and Accountability Commitment, or IPAC, which would put into law five years of state funding for the U of I in exchange for meeting certain criteria for tuition costs, in-state enrollment, and other benchmarks. Killeen says there have been discussions about incorporating other state public universities into the legislation.