This article has been edited from a previous version.

Stanley Ikenberry stepped into his office Monday morning and began his first day as interim president of the University of Illinois system.

The new year’s holiday and a weekend put three days between Dec. 31 – when the resignation of former president B. Joseph White went into effect – and Ikenberry’s first day in his new position.

Ikenberry, who was named White’s interim successor in early October, got to work side-by-side with the former president for about three months before taking the helm of the three-campus university system for the second time. This adjustment period will make Ikenberry’s transition into the interim president role a “seamless” one, said Tom Hardy, University of Illinois spokesman.

“His top priorities involve the presidential search for a new permanent president and trying to come to grips with the financial situation that the state’s fiscal crisis has put all of public higher education into,” Hardy said about Ikenberry, who also served as president 1979-1995 and has since held positions on the faculty and with the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

As interim president, Ikenberry will also be busy preparing for the next Board of Trustees meeting, scheduled for Jan. 21 in Chicago. This will be the Board’s annual re-organization meeting, Hardy said, in which the group will elect certain members and university officials to a variety of positions.

But when undergraduates, graduate students and faculty members come back to the Urbana-Champaign campus for the spring semester, Hardy said Ikenberry’s presence as interim president should not cause any immediate changes.

“Life goes on in some variation of what typically has been,” Hardy said. “For the most part, there is really no day-to-day change in the rhythm of campus.”