UI Enrollment Management Will Continue Without Hogan

University of Illinois President Michael Hogan steps down in three months, but faculty leaders say a revised document central to his departure will have life.

University Senates Conference Chair and U of I Chicago biology professor Don Chambers says the university's individual campus Senates and president-designate Robert Easter need time to review changes to an enrollment management plan. Many faculty members sparred with Hogan over the original proposal.

But the 3-campus Senates Conference has signed off on the plan, one Chambers thinks all parties will agree to.

"I think it will come back to university administration and I think that Bob Easter - whose appointment I applaud - will embrace it, or will learn what embracing it means," Chambers said. "And I think we'll go on from there."

U of I Senates Conference Vice Chair Nick Burbules says the new report eliminates the most controversial points - including a branding idea that would have established the U of I as a single entity, and not a 3-campus system.

"A degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana is not the same thing as a degree from the University of Illinois at Springfield or Chicago," Burbules said. "Each school has its own strengths and its own missions, and we felt that the danger of an overall branding would be to erase or minimize some of those distinctions, which particularly matters, I think, to this (Urbana) campus."

Burbules says he's also happy that the plan will no longer have an executive director overseeing enrollment on all three campuses.

Chambers says it's 'sad' that it took about six months after Hogan's initial report to revise the enrollment plan.

Easter will take over as president in July, when Hogan leaves the office to become a tenured faculty member in the U of I's history department.