Illinois State University’s governing body approved a new degree program, additional funding for work at the future home of the College of Engineering, and the first renovations of the chemistry lab at University High School since 1965 during a regularly scheduled meeting Friday.
The Board of Trustees also provided a brief update on an ongoing search for a new, permanent president at ISU: BOT and presidential search committee chair Kathy Bohn said trustees approved the slate of four candidates scheduled to appear at a series of public forums on campus this month.
Those 75-minute forums will be a combination of a short presentation by each presidential candidate followed by a question-and-answer session with the public. Candidate information will be published online 24 hours ahead of each candidate’s scheduled appearance.
In a divided vote Friday, the BOT also approved the creation of a sports communication degree program within ISU’s School of Communication. The new program offers both a bachelor’s of science and arts degree. BOT meeting documentation reported the program was created in response to “many requests for such a program from prospective students” and a “high need in the state.” Creation of the degree program was approved by ISU’s Academic Senate in December.
Acting provost and vice president of academic affairs Ani Yazedjian said the hope is to draw students who would otherwise consider leaving the state or attending a different university.
“We don’t offer something like that in this area — and there are students in the state of Illinois, in central Illinois … who may not want to go more than 200 miles away,” she told trustees. “It is actually an opportunity for us to draw students to Illinois State who otherwise would not be here.”
The program is expected to draw an additional 40-50 students to campus in its first year, up to an eventual “steady stream” of 250 students. No new faculty will be hired for the 42-credit hour program in its first year; when or whether additional faculty are added depends upon enrollment numbers, Yazedjian told the board. Preexisting courses within the School of Communication will be used for the new program’s curricular requirements.
Interim athletics director Jerri Beggs spoke in favor of the program to trustees Friday, saying her department was “quite interested in the program.” Beggs said the department relies on the work of student interns and graduate assistants and the program could draw additional help to the department.
Trustee Scott Jenkins and student trustee Ash Ebikhumi voted against the resolution, which passed 5-2.
Jenkins told Yazedjian it "seems like we're jumping over a couple of interim steps of what the history should provide" before creating a degree program. Yazedjian said various analyses of student demand, research and U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics from School of Communication staff and faculty justified the jump to a new program.
"We believe there's more visibility and there's evidence for demand — that if we start with a major, we will be able to increase actually the enrollment in that program because it will have visibility," she said.
The BOT also voted to approve an additional $3 million for work at the future home of ISU’s College of Engineering. The additional expense is partly related to an unexpected amount of asbestos and the location of certain service lines within the John Green Building and Carter Harris building, which are scheduled to be ready to house the engineering program by 2026.
Meeting documentation indicated ISU’s administration brought the resolution to authorize additional funding to the BOT now because “waiting will delay the project” and “not enough money has been currently approved to proceed with this unforeseen/unplanned work now.”
Interim president Aondover Tarhule told trustees for the site to be ready for construction in July, the issues would have to be dealt with ahead of time — hence the current request for more funding. The hope is that addressing the issue ahead of time will improve the university’s position when finally bidding out the construction work in the coming months.
Ebikhumi said he was concerned with the amount of resolutions coming before the BOT asking for additional funding for unforeseen needs and said his personal tally indicated an additional $24 million had been authorized for the project beyond previous estimates.
Founding the new College of Engineering was expected to cost $61 million, but with unexpected developments and inflationary costs, Tarhule said it will likely exceed that in the end.
“This project will cost well over $70 million. When implementing a project of that scale, it’s extremely difficult to know exactly what all the costs would be ahead of time,” he said. “We try to build in a contingency to account for everything we can anticipate, but every so often, given the complexity of the scale of the project, things will come up that we’re not able to totally anticipate. But I’d like to assure the board we scrutinize costs very closely and continuously.”
Some additional work — adding flooring to 2,000 square feet of the space —has also been added to the original project to make space for storing projects senior engineering students must complete before earning their degree.
That resolution passed unanimously.
Also unanimous was the passage of a resolution authorizing $730,000 in renovation of the chemistry lab at University High School. Tarhule told trustees that lab hasn’t been updated since the ISU-owned laboratory school was built in 1965.
Work is expected to be complete by the end of the summer.
