In a massmail sent by Chancellor Easter, projects within Stewarding Excellence at Illinois to improve cost-savings measures are open for comment by the public.
17 projects have been launched across campus staffed by students, faculty and staff. Questions were submitted then put to discussion which was followed by a final report. All reports can now be found on the Stewarding Excellence website.
One of the projects was regarding the Graduate College. The review to this led to a discovery of coordination problems with the college and the Office of the Registrar. The committee stated in their report that if these problems are resolved, it could result in financial savings.
Another committee was responsible for the Academic Unit Reviews project. Through this review, the committee looked at the College of Media, the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), the School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER), and the School of Social Work (SW), all of which have 40 or fewer faculty members.
The committee reported that if these programs were consolidated or merged, some of them could be significantly harmed in their program quality. To save money, each of these programs has created multiple plans for consideration.
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In the College of Media, some faculty and staff have decided to participate in voluntary separation programs which annually save approximately $500,000.
Other projects include Project: Institute of Aviation IT at Illinois,, Refocusing Scholarships, Campus Programs Supporting Teaching, Initiatives and Small Centers, Revenue Generation, University of Illinois Extension, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement, Police Training Institute, Biology Education and Research, University Library and Law Library, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, Space Utilization and Utilities.
All project reports can be found online at http://oc.illinois.edu/budget/projectteams.html.