Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Senate: Academics always first with Ron Guenther

Vice President and interim Chancellor Bob Easter told members of the Senate Executive Committee Monday the search for a new UI athletics director won’t last long.

Ron Guenther, athletics director for 19 years, announced earlier in the day he would be retiring July 1.

Easter said the search committee is being led by Larry DeBrock, the dean of the College of Business, who also has served on the UI Athletic Board and chaired its Academic Progress and Eligibility Committee.

Easter said that committee could find Guenther’s replacement by next month.

“These things tend to move very quickly,” he said. “This is the time of the year when these kinds of positions roll over.”

Incoming SEC Chair Matt Wheeler, who presided over the meeting in Chair Joyce Tolliver’s absence, said Guenther’s replacement has a lot to live up to.

“Academics has always come first with him,” Wheeler said.

“They’re not just athletes, they’re also scholars,” Easter said. “This is not unanticipated, but it is a day of transition. Ron’s become an institution.”

Under Guenther’s leadership, the graduation rate for UI athletes is second in the Big Ten conference, trailing only Northwestern.

In other business, SEC members heard a report on the efforts of the Office of Prestigious Scholarships to increase student scholarship awareness and participation.

“We’ve been working hard in the last three years trying to build the program,” said Laura Hastings, a co-director of the office. “Illinois students do not come here with a scholarships mentality.”

She said the office had been trying to enlist department and unit leaders in an effort to reverse that mindset.

“We want to create a culture of scholarship seekers,” she said. “But we do need help with recruiting. We’d like to get to the freshmen early.”

The office is asking faculty members to nominate “high-achieving” students for scholarships and has asked campus units across campus for help in reaching them.

“It’s not a question of lack of talent, it’s a lack of information,” she said. “If you have a bright student, you know where to send them.”

SEC members also discussed whether the process of closing the Institute of Aviation should have gone through the Committee on General University Policy. The matter went instead through the Educational Policy Committee, whose recommendation to dissolve Aviation except for the master’s program was turned down in a full vote of the Senate.

“What is the process by which we consider these questions?” asked SEC member Sarah Projansky.

When it comes to the issue of unit closures in the future, “it might not be a bad idea to have GUP review it,” SEC member Mary Mallory said.

Student Senator David Olsen said having too much review would be inefficient.

SEC member Bill Maher said GUP has traditionally been reserved for more general campus governance questions and not specifically for discussion of single units.

“That’s a very large door in which you can drive an awful lot,” he said.

Read Next

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010