The headlines are fewer, but the momentum created by the campus-led Stewarding Excellence @ Illinois process continues to help shape the university's future.
Unveiled in 2010 by then-Interim Chancellor Bob Easter and Provost Richard Wheeler, Stewarding Excellence has encompassed a broad array of university programs. Twenty project teams, with academically diverse leaders, were asked to explore new methods to streamline campus operations.
Some of the project-team recommendations - like the closure of the Police Training Institute and the Institute of Aviation - were high-profile announcements involving intense debate by the campus and surrounding community.
Others, like the development of a universitywide plan to consolidate server space and the transition to Unified Communications, were less noticed outside campus borders but had no less impact.
In all, it's predicted the process has developed mechanisms to create annual savings of up to $15 million.
But if you thought the effort was only a monetary exercise, then you've missed the point.
"This is part of an ongoing effort to change how we think about resource allocation and our mission as a university," said Wheeler, who also is the interim vice chancellor of academic affairs. "The sentiment at this point is, 'we're not done.' "
The actual review process of Stewarding Excellence is indeed coming to an end, with all of the initiatives but three already started or implemented. (The review and consultation process is being completed for reports covering the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Institute for Genomic Biology.)
But the lessons learned from the introspection brought on by Stewarding Excellence - or as Wheeler calls it, "real, critical self-analysis" - have laid a foundation that leaders say will guide the university through current financially challenging times and well into a successful 21st century.
"Some of these reports have tentacles," he said, "and they'll keep reaching out."
For example, he said, a project team recommendation led to the creation of the Biology Coordinating Committee, which will be utilized to better market the campus's broad biological sciences enterprise and assist with better coordination of campus hiring and curriculum development.
"It will be a place to have new conversations," he said, "and it will be a resource for individual units and the campus as a whole for a very long time."
Associate Provost Katherine Galvin said many units already were undergoing self-initiated self-evaluation prior to Stewarding, but the universitywide vehicle brought cohesiveness and immediacy to the effort that was prompted by the ongoing downward spiral of state funding.
According to Mike Andrechak, the associate provost for budget and resource planning, at any given moment the state of Illinois is behind in university obligations by about $300 million. In fact, the state's overall level of support has consistently dropped for more than a decade.
Illinois is not alone in declining support for public higher education, though Gov. Pat Quinn has promised to protect education dollars despite a host of other public-service austerity measures proposed in a budget released last week.
The governor's promises aside, Andrechak said university leaders - from unit heads to administrators - agree that new strategies must be developed to adjust to the new funding configuration that leaves the university with a larger share of responsibility. He said there also is general agreement that tuition can't be stretched any further as a revenue stream.
"We are in the process of saving money because of (Stewarding)," he said, "but it's just one part of a multifaceted approach we've taken."
The university's rejuvenated self-evaluation processes have led to improved utility management, a voluntary separation program, the creation of campus and unit "service centers" and information technology initiatives, just to name a few, all of which reap ongoing savings. Additionally, the systemwide re-engineering of the university's procurement process has the potential to save millions more.
Andrechak said nearly 70 percent of the ongoing Stewarding Excellence savings can be traced to new IT measures, but that utility improvements would lead to millions more in savings in the future.
Generally, the difficulties in state support have led to a greater inclusion of finances in campus decision-making processes, but none of the changes or reorganizations have come at the expense of academic quality, Andrechak said.
For example, while university staff levels have dropped by about 400, the evolution is allowing leaders to precisely target new hires to address specific university needs, he said.
"There have been measures put in place to ensure we're hiring thoughtfully," he said.
"It's been a matter of deciding, 'What do we excel at and what can we do better?' " Galvin said of the Stewarding process. "The fact that some of these things also save money means there will be more to reinvest in other things that better serve our mission."
Wheeler, Andrechak and Galvin agree that none of the efforts would have been as successful without the participation and full cooperation of the entire campus.
"None of these things have been top-down efforts," Andrechak said. "The successes we've had are the result of the efforts of the entire college or unit; we've had a great respect for the faculty and the campus."
As with Stewarding Excellence, "We used the experience and intelligence of the entire institution, and we tackled these issues during very difficult times," he said.
Galvin said the faculty-led Stewarding process will continue to pay dividends well into the future because communication has improved and everyone realizes their stake in the outcome.
"At a moment in time when we had some real financial challenges, this campus rolled up its sleeves and got to work," she said.
Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise also has adopted the "excellence" theme and is applying it to a program she has started called " Visioning Future Excellence." The program is not a physical re-organization parallel to Stewarding Excellence, but focuses on ensuring that the university is positioned to continue to be a premier public research university in the next 20 to 50 years.
"We will use a series of focus groups and a survey to answer three questions that center around imagining the world 20 to 50 years from now," she said.
Questions include: What will be societies' most pressing challenges? What is the role of a premier public research university in solving these challenges? What are the Urbana campus's distinctive strengths and what do we need to do to position the university to be able to address these challenges?
Wise said that input from faculty and staff members, students, alumni, and community and corporate partners is necessary to succeed.
"Stewarding Excellence @ Illinois was a powerful and effective process that used the expertise of this campus to think boldly about the future," she said. "We hope the focus groups will be as successful in not only maintaining the excellence here, but ensuring we'll be leaders years from now."
