At its Sept. 10 meeting in Urbana, the U. of I. Board of Trustees gave its final approval on a background check policy for new faculty, academic profession and Civil Service employees and will consider whether to expand the policy to include graduate students and internal transfers in the future.
The background checks will verify Social Security numbers, examine local, state and national criminal records and run a check through the National Sex Offender Registry. For certain jobs, the checks also will include educational and credit history.
The new policy is set to go into effect Oct. 5.
The university has for some time required background checks of employee candidates working with children or in sensitive or high-security areas, but the new policy extends that check to the final candidate for other campus positions.
A positive criminal hit does not necessarily exclude a candidate from being employed, and extenuating circumstances may be considered.
The background checks cost about $50 each to conduct.
Trustee Patrick J. Fitzgerald asked human resources staff members to research the implications of expanding the policy to include graduate students and internal transfers. He said the item could come up for board consideration by early next year.
New surgery guidelines
Gender reassignment surgery provided under the student insurance program and approved by the board two years ago can be performed within the U. of I. medical system, the board decided at its Sept. 10 meeting.
The original proposal included the surgery under the student insurance program, but required the surgeries be performed out of the university system.
The new policy allows the surgery to be conducted in or out of the U. of I. medical system.
The measure passed with three “no” votes, with Trustee Timothy Koritz saying that allowing the surgeries to be conducted internally could affect university liability and open it to medical malpractice suits.
“It’s a bad business decision,” he said.
He said he voted “no” on the initial insurance expansion question because he felt the procedures being covered were against medical ethics, considering 18-year-olds could become permanently sterilized.
The majority disagreed, with Trustee James D. Montgomery saying, “There is no evidence of any increased (liability) risk.”
Trustee Patrick J. Fitzgerald agreed.
“We don’t have a track record to determine what the (financial) outcome will be,” he said.
In other business:
- Final board approval was given for several appointments on the Urbana campus, including Interim Chancellor Barbara J. Wilson and Edward Feser, interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs.
The two were appointed last month after the resignations of Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise and Provost Ilesanmi Adesida.
Other approved appointments included Kathleen Harleman as acting dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and Bill Cubit as the interim Illinois football coach.
The search process for a full-time chancellor replacement began last week with a resolution by the Senate Executive Committee and is expected to be finalized before the end of the academic year. A search for provost is scheduled to follow that search.
- The board OK’d new or continuing construction work at several Urbana campus buildings.
The projects include Talbot Lab, which will see its renovation budget increase from $3.2 million to $5.8 million; the Natural History Museum, which will have $3 million added to the $73 million project; the purchase of a second boiler for Abbot Power Plant at an additional cost of $13 million; and a $48 million design center facility in Urbana that will be paid for through a mix of gift and institutional funds.
The Talbot project was proposed by the departments of aerospace engineering and of nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering. The goal is to upgrade and expand Talbot instructional and laboratory space, creating an additional 9,150 gross square feet.
The Natural History Museum project will create 148,000 gross square feet of instructional and laboratory space. The cost overruns are because of unforeseen additional expenditures on the 120-year-old building.
The Abbot project will improve energy efficiency and allow the use of multiple power sources to generate electricity.
The design center facility will be used to promote student multidisciplinary collaborations in finding design-based solutions
Other stories from the Sept. 10 U. of I. Board of Trustees meeting:
• Employees will be paid despite state budget impasse
• Enrollment strategies seeing success, leaders say
• U. of I. Sesquicentennial celebration starting to take shape
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