At its Sept. 11 meeting in Springfield, the UI Board of Trustees approved a more than $2 billion operating budget for the current 1997-98 fiscal year that includes a salary increase averaging about 3 percent for all employees.
Trustees also gave their OK to an FY 1998-99 budget request that calls for a $55 million, 6.4 percent increase over this year's base and calls for another 3 percent salary hike, supplemented by a 1 percent "competitiveness recovery" fund for specific disciplines in which UI faculty earn considerably less than peers at comparable institutions.
The FY 98-99 request, which goes to the Illinois Board of Higher Education for review and then to the General Assembly and governor's office for action next spring, also includes capital projects such as the proposed Mechanical Engineering Lab remodeling project at Urbana.
The current operating budget, more than 4 percent above last year's level, totals $2.12 billion. While direct taxpayer support is up $21 million to nearly $657 million, direct state support for the overall operating budget dropped for the eighth consecutive year to a historic low of 31 percent.
The share of the total for the Urbana-Champaign campus will be $998.5 million, including an estimated $202 million in grants and contracts.
Universitywide, the second largest source of revenue behind state appropriations was gifts, grants and contracts, at 20 percent; sales and services, 17 percent; tuition, 14 percent; auxiliary enterprises, 9 percent; and other sources for the remaining, 9 percent.
The largest expenditures in the current fiscal year are for instruction and academic support (27 percent), research (19 percent), hospital and clinics (12 percent) and public service (10 percent).
Next year's request focuses on five priorities, outlined by UI President James J. Stukel in his introduction to the document. They are:
The salary hikes would cost $19.4 million for the general 3 percent increases and an additional $6.4 million for the effort to make faculty salaries in certain areas comparable to those elsewhere.
Academic programs would get an additional $16.8 million to "strengthen the academic base" by, for example, providing funds to help the Urbana campus enlarge its international focus. In the category of "strengthening state connections," UIUC would enlarge the East St. Louis Action Research Program and the Institute for Competitive Manufacturing. The other two initiative areas are "enhancing instructional technology" and "building operational infrastructure."
The $147 million FY 1998-99 capital development proposals include as their first priority a total of 19 repair or renovation projects on all three campuses. The nine at Urbana-Champaign include Environmental and Agricultural Sciences building remodeling, Gregory Hall vacated space remodeling, Burrill Hall instructional labs and library remodeling, two projects to improve heating and air conditioning at the Armory, replacing the roof on the Physical Plant Service Building, work on piping in the Environmental and Agricultural Sciences building, an update to the fire-alarm system and remodeling of the Smith Memorial Hall instructional lab.
Total cost of the Urbana campus projects is $5.3 million.
Third in priority on the list is a $7.4 million update of the interior of the Mechanical Engineering Building. In fifth place is a $43.9 central campus air conditioning center that will replace several individual units serving instructional and scientific research labs along the science corridor in the east-central portion of campus. Other capital project priorities (seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively) are a $7.5 million remodeling of Freer Hall that will consolidate College of Applied Life Studies faculty and staff members in one building, acquisition for $1.8 million of a building formerly occupied by the State University Retirement System that will house administrative computing functions for the campus and $8 million to build a new Social Work Building.
Other business
In other action, trustees:
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