Several things have changed about the Global Campus Initiative, including its name. After months of information gathering, planning and negotiating, the project will now be working under the name “Global Campus Partnership” in an effort to better describe its purpose.

A revised version of the Global Campus proposal was released Tuesday after a meeting of faculty and student leaders and University administrators on Jan. 8.

The new plan includes several key changes, many of which originated from a proposal called “Three-Plus,” written by professors Terry Bodenhorn, Nick Burbules and others.

Burbules, a professor of educational policy, said the name “Three-Plus” attempted to explain their position on the structure of the Global Campus. He said they felt that it should not be looked at as a separate entity or a fourth campus but as a partnership between the three campuses.

Under the new proposal, the Global Campus Partnership will be recommending to the University’s Board of Trustees that the Global Campus be an official academic unit rather than a Limited Liability Corporation, as previously expected.

An agreement was also reached so that classes offered through the Global Campus will be structured in a master-teacher model. Through this model, a tenure-track faculty member would be in charge of designing a course and guiding non tenure-track faculty in a large portion of the actual teaching.

Bodenhorn, chairman for the University Senates Conference, said he is “quite pleased with that change.”

However, Bodenhorn said he believes there are still going to be challenges before agreements can be made on all issues.

“The governing structure (of the Global Campus) is going to be a sticking point,” Bodenhorn said. “I think the central administration wants this to be a business venture with a (chief executive officer) that would be nimble and able to quickly respond to the market, where we want the approval process for programs and courses to be completely housed on the academic side.”

Bodenhorn said he felt a conceptual consensus had been met after the meeting on Jan. 8 but that debate will arise in the implementation of the concepts.

The new proposal was released not long after Champaign’s News-Gazette reported University spending to date on Global Campus at an estimated $1.1 million.

They reported that about $573,000 was spent on salaries and travel, while $252,000 went to office space and $272,000 to paid consultants.

However, Chet Gardner, special assistant to President White, clarified those numbers and their purpose in the project.

About 15 people have been assisting with the Global Campus Partnership. Four are working on the project full-time, with two of them doing clerical work. None of these employees were separately hired for the purpose of working on the project; they were already salaried at the University.

The $569,000 accounted for in the News-Gazette’s salary figure is reallocated funds. A percentage of employees’ regular salary is accounted for under the Global Campus Partnership, instead of under their regular department, to correlate with the time they spend working on the Global Campus.

The $252,000 spent on office space was used to remodel a storage room. It was turned into an office by putting in carpet and furniture and installing phone lines. The project had to vacate the office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs because a new person was appointed to the position, taking back the room. But the created office space could still be usable by another campus unit in the future.

The $272,000 spent on market and business consulting and market research would be lost if the project is not brought to fruition. However, Gardner said it is unlikely the project would be abandoned.

University President B. Joseph White defended this spending to The Associated Press, saying it was a “wise and prudent expenditure.”

Gardner, with others, will speak at the University Board of Trustees meeting in Chicago on Thursday to present the Global Campus Partnership’s recommendation for a course of action.

The Associated Press contributed to this report