URBANA — The University of Illinois System has pledged to hire 300 new faculty in the next three years to meet record student enrollment.
As UI System President Tim Killeen told trustees at Thursday’s meeting, the plan is to add 200 new faculty positions to the Urbana-Champaign campus and 100 at Chicago’s campus, in addition to filling vacancies from resignations and retirements.
“An area of particular importance the board has stressed is making sure our faculty resources are in proper ratio and alignment to best serve the needs of our student body and help advance our strategic goals,” Killeen said.
The initiative will, of course, “depend on continued investment by the state” Killeen said. UI officials estimate the faculty additions, once hired, will cost anywhere from $45 million to $50 million annually out of operating funds and state appropriations.
According to Killeen, “The plans are based on student demand for specific programs, expanding the reach of our educational programs, and the level of investments required to achieve those targets,” Killeen said. “They also include recruitment strategies to enhance diversity among the faculty within colleges and set specific targets to increase the number of underrepresented faculty.”
In fall 2021, the UI System set a number of enrollment records: UIUC enrolled 56,607 students and UIC enrolled 34,199. Including the Springfield campus, the system’s combined fall enrollment stood at 94,750 students, an all-time high.
Meanwhile, UIUC’s student-faculty ratio has climbed. In the fall, instructor-student ratio ticked up to 21 to 1, highest in the Big Ten, according to the universities’ Common Data Sets.
In fall 2011, the UIUC’s faculty-student ratio was 18 to 1. The Illinois budget impasse from July 2015 to August 2017 cost the UI system several hundred million dollars, and faculty hiring lagged. Back in the March 2019 UI trustees meeting, the UI System announced plans to hire 916 tenure-system faculty over the next five years, including 448 new positions. But that was put on hold once the pandemic hit.
Student applications for next fall are moving “steadily in a positive direction,” Killeen said, and officials anticipate enrollment being on par with last year. The Urbana campus received a record 47,593 freshman applications last year.
Changing of the guardTop campus leadership continues to shift at the UI’s three campuses.
Thursday marked the first board of trustees’ appearances for Springfield’s new Chancellor Janet Gooch and Chicago’s interim Chancellor Javier Reyes.
Among many appointments approved yesterday, Karen J. Colley was confirmed as UIC’s acting provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, taking the place of Reyes.
Trustees confirmed the appointments of another seven deans, three of them interim, including three of the Urbana campus.
- Ingrid Fulmer, new dean of the School of Labor and Employment Relations, effective today. Fulmer was vice provost of Faculty Advancement and Faculty Affairs and a professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University-New Brunswick — she succeeds eight-year dean Fritz Drasgow.
- Michaelene Ostrosky, interim dean of the College of Education, effective today and ending Aug. 14. Ostrosky, a professor in the Department of Special Education, will lead the college until the arrival of …
- Chrystalla Mouza, dean of the College of Education, effective Aug. 15. Mouza directed and taught in the School of Education at the University of Delaware, Newark. She doubled as a professor of computer and information science in its College of Engineering. Mouza succeeds six-year Dean James Anderson, who retired.
Later tonight, faculty nominations will close for Chancellor Robert Jones’ Provost search committee. Seven to eight faculty will advise Jones as he picks the replacement for outgoing Provost Andreas Cangellaris.
