PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 28, No. 10, Nov. 20, 2008

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Trustees discuss separate accreditation of Global Campus

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

At its Nov. 13 meeting in Springfield, the UI Board of Trustees authorized university officials to seek separate accreditation for Global Campus.

Separate accreditation is needed so Global Campus can develop the kinds of high-demand, affordable baccalaureate-completion programs sought by community college graduates that will allow Global Campus to achieve its enrollment, program and revenue goals, President B. Joseph White said.

If the program is accredited under its own auspices, officials could work directly with faculty members and others to create the types of programs that will allow Global Campus to flourish and broaden access in accordance with the UI’s land-grant mission, White said.

Global Campus currently offers five degrees, four related certificates, and 10 e-learning certificate courses primarily aimed at community college instructors. Initial enrollment when Global Campus opened in January was 10 students; its current enrollment is 238 students.

Chester Gardner, special assistant to the president for Global Campus, said that plans to begin 12 more programs over the next 2 1/2 years are achievable, but for Global Campus to break even during 2011 as planned, it needs to enroll 1,850 students and to offer 18 degree programs.

Elliot Kaufman, chair of the University Senates Conference and a UIC faculty member, reiterated the support of UIC’s administrators and faculty members and offered his personal endorsement as well during the discussion.

“I believe a successful Global Campus is necessary for the UI to fulfill its mission in this current and foreseeable environment,” Kaufman said. “I believe that independent accreditation provides the best opportunity for the Global Campus to succeed (and that) accreditation ensures high quality programs and academic rigor; it’s not a shortcut. … Continued dialogue through shared governance will assure that faculty concerns are heard and resolved.”

Trustee Robert Vickrey, who said he would have voted in favor of accreditation and was disappointed that it was not on the trustees’ agenda during the morning session, said: “I would be in favor of moving forward with accreditation, but if it doesn’t work, there will come a point where we have to make a decision and close it down.”

Following discussion, the trustees redrafted an agenda item that authorized employee tuition waivers and discounts so that it also authorized officials to seek accreditation for Global Campus. One of the three residential campuses will sponsor Global Campus programs during the two-year interim period.

However, the trustees wanted to ensure that faculty members’ concerns were addressed, and White agreed to meet with them and the trustees and report back by mid-December.

The Urbana-Champaign Senate’s decision not to support a statement from the Senate Executive Committee that expressed cautionary support for separate accreditation at the senate’s Nov. 3 meeting reflected senators’ wishes to have questions about statutory compliance, shared governance and other significant issues clarified before proceeding, said Nicholas Burbules, SEC chair. “We’ve always been the friendly skeptics. We want it to succeed. We are not anti-Global Campus, but we have concerns.”

While community college officials “enthusiastically embraced” the Global Campus model as a means for students to attain UI degrees, they also indicated that Global Campus needed to broaden its array of degrees and decrease tuition for its baccalaureate-completion programs. Current tuition for the entire bachelor of business administration degree is $31,860, and $18,495 for the bachelor of science in nursing degree.

With base funding provided by a line of credit with the university, Global Campus also was awarded two grants totaling $1.3 million from the Lumina Foundation for Education in Indianapolis, a $300,000 grant from the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Education-Bauman Moscow Technical University e-Learning Initiative.

Trustees approve appointments, contracts

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

At the direction of President B. Joseph White, officials and faculty members at the three campuses are preparing contingency operating plans for the next six- to eight-month period. State revenues are soft, disbursements from the state are slow and “we can’t rule out a rescission,” White said at the Nov. 13 UI Board of Trustees meeting, and added that the policy council would prepare plans in early December and the trustees would be briefed thereafter. Protecting academic quality, ensuring that students get the courses they need to graduate on time and that patients get the health care they rely on are the plans’ guiding principles, White said.

The provosts of the three campuses – Linda Katehi, Urbana; Michael Tanner, UIC; and Harry Berman, UIS – reported on programs aimed at improving outcomes for minority students and recruiting minority students and faculty members. The Chicago and Urbana campuses rank first and second respectively among Committee on Institutional Cooperation schools for their numbers of African American and Hispanic students, with UIC’s minority undergraduate population at 25.2 percent, Urbana’s at 13.9 percent, and UIS’s at 14.3 percent.

While UIC’s percentage of undergraduates from under-represented groups has remained constant over the past eight years, UIC consistently ranks among the top five research universities for undergraduate diversity and first or second among the nation’s 50 leading research universities for the diversity of its graduate and professional schools.

During the 2007-2008 academic year, Urbana made more than 350 high-school visits, especially targeting the Chicago area. Katehi and Chancellor Richard Herman recently convened Project 2012: Transforming Illinois, Re-envisioning Diversity and Inclusion, a cross-campus committee focused on recruiting and retaining exceptional faculty members and students. During AY08-09, about 650 students, more than 78 percent of whom are minorities, are being assisted with their educational expenses by Illinois Promise, a program started by Herman in 2005 that ensures access to an Illinois education for low-income, in-state students. Additionally, 122 minority faculty members – 117 of whom remain on campus – have been hired through the Target of Opportunity program.

In other business, the trustees approved:

• Extending White’s employment contract through June 30, 2011, with no other contract modifications. White has been president since Feb. 1, 2005.

• The appointments of Ruth Watkins, currently vice provost and a professor of speech and hearing science at Urbana, as Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences effective Jan. 1; and M. Tamer Basar as interim director at the Beckman Institute, effective Nov. 16. Basar’s appointments include the Swanlund Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

•  Establishing the private limited company Singapore Pte. Ltd., (“Illinois Singapore”) to implement an agreement with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and establish a major technology research center in Singapore in conjunction with the Urbana campus.

• Awarding several contracts related to construction of the Petascale Computing Facility: a $5.6 million contract to Core Construction Services of Illinois, Morton, for general work; a $5.7 million contract for heating and air conditioning work as well as a $1.4 million contract for ventilation work to A and R Mechanical Contractors, Champaign; and a $7.1 million contract to Bodine Electric of Champaign for electrical work. The $72.5 million petascale facility, under construction at the corner of St. Mary’s Road and Oak Street in Champaign, will house the Blue Waters Data Processing Center.

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