CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – With the Chief Illiniwek controversy still unresolved and the start of the $116 million renovation of Memorial Stadium just a few months away, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees is being asked to ensure stability at the top of its Division of Intercollegiate Athletics.

The board’s posted agenda for its meeting Thursday in Chicago includes a proposal to extend athletic director Ron Guenther’s contract until Jan. 1, 2009, and grant him an immediate $90,000 raise that would put his salary at $500,000 per year.

The proposed deal also calls for a $250,000 bonus if Guenther does not leave the Urbana-Champaign campus before Dec. 31, 2008.

Also among the more than two dozen items on the trustees’ agenda is approval of a $15.8 million residence hall at the university’s Springfield campus.

Guenther, 60, has been athletic director at the university’s flagship campus since 1992. He’s a UI alumnus who was voted most valuable player of the football team in 1966 as an offensive guard and now oversees 19 intercollegiate sports and the multimillion-dollar fundraising efforts of the division.

He also has presided over a department that has been free of major scandal during his 14 years. on the job.

“If he’s not the best AD in the country, I want to know who is,” Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Richard Herman said Tuesday. “He does a wonderful job of bringing in great coaches and building a team that understands what athletics is and needs to be about.”

Guenther has recently raised his profile in the ongoing debate about the future of Chief Illiniwek, the University student who dons buckskins and dances at halftime of football and basketball games.

After the NCAA in May upheld its decision to bar Illinois from hosting postseason tournaments if it keeps the “hostile and abusive” mascot, Guenther said such consequences would have “an unbelievably negative effect on our programs.”

More recently, he said he expects Chief Illiniwek to dance during the coming year while the trustees continue to work on reaching a solution to the dilemma.

Guenther has hired two football coaches and three men’s basketball coaches during his tenure and is known for his support of non-revenue sports.