As part of President B. Joseph White’s resources summit initiative, he has appointed a systemwide steering group and charged it to construct a long-term revenue and expenditure plan that “delivers the most resources possible to the academic front lines.”
Making up the group are Walter K. Knorr, vice president and chief financial officer; Meena C. Rao, vice president for academic affairs; and Avijit Ghosh, vice president for technology and economic development; Douglas H. Vinzant, senior associate vice president for planning and administration; and provosts Linda P.B. Katehi in Urbana, R. Michael Tanner in Chicago and Harry Berman in Springfield, who will appoint campus working groups to address resource issues such as salary competitiveness, administrative and academic program redundancy and waste reduction.
The steering group will meet with White and chancellors Richard H. Herman, Urbana; Eric A. Gislason (interim), Chicago; and Richard D. Ringeisen, Springfield. They will propose five-year operating and capital budgets as well as short-term actions to improve effectiveness and efficiency at the campus and system levels.
The first meeting of White’s Dec. 6 resource summit brought together 125 leaders – the chancellors, provosts, faculty senate representatives, deans, department heads and students – representing the three campuses; university administration; the foundation; and alumni association at the Illini Union in Urbana.
White described the group’s task as “a dialogue on how we can deliver maximum resources to the front lines: faculty positions and salaries and financial support of our core academic missions of teaching, research, service and economic development.”
The daylong dialogue then migrated to a dedicated Web site where the participants continued their discussions.
In a February e-mail to faculty and staff members, White declared himself “passionately committed to strengthening the quality, academic environment and reputation of the University of Illinois and … the fundamental change to achieve these goals.”
In addition to five-year budgets, long-term plans include streamlining administrative functions at both the system and campus levels through careful planning and attrition; achieving cost containment through energy production efficiency and conservation; regularly and rigorously reviewing academic programs to avoid overlap and sprawl; and seeking change in externally imposed regulations that impose unnecessary financial burdens.
In his message, White also announced a number of short-term actions suggested by the summit attendees to be implemented immediately. They included ensuring sufficient financial support of all faculty members in support of their teaching, research and professional development, taking immediate steps to promote energy efficiency, developing service centers to support aggregations of small departments where appropriate and reducing administrative duplication and bureaucratic waste.
White enumerated the substantive questions the resource initiative seeks to answer going forward:
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Are we trying to support “too much university” with the dollars we have?
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How can we examine the scope of academic offerings at our three campuses to improve quality and free up resources to better support faculty members, academic programs and students?
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How can we reduce the growth of central costs at all levels – university administration, colleges/schools and departments?
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How can the university leadership collaborate to undertake this initiative in a way that will yield meaningful and constructive results?
White said that while the UI’s resources from the state, tuition payers and private donors have grown at a reasonable rate in the past few years, the softening economy and state budget woes suggest a period of tight budgets on the horizon.
