Silly WIU rumor

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leatherface
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A silly rumor is apparently making the rounds on campus that WESTERN will close this spring. What's sad is the "news" made the Quincy Journal site, and has been addressed by the WESTERN President as false. He did say more cuts would be coming. Likely the suspension of MAP grants started this rumor. No doubt this is going to hurt WESTERN but include all Illinois schools- including community colleges. In addition, many legit training program funding is on hold.

I wish the wackos in Springfield would do their jobs, and get a budget passed. No wonder a lot of people despise politicians and those who have been around forever and all of their power stunts.

ST- any word on what is likely to happen as far as cuts?
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sealhall74
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The folks in Illinois need to start an "Impeach the Governor" campaign. If he cannot even get a budget passed, he has no business sitting in that position.
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ST_Lawson
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Yea, the university is not closing. Not anytime soon anyway. Actually, the first I'd heard of the rumor was when President Thomas addressed it in his letter last week. I agree that it's probably tied to the MAP grant issue. All universities in the state will be in a really tough position if they don't do something about the MAP grants, since a lot of students rely on them. Enrollment might drop some in the Spring if they don't come through, but that's going to be the case with pretty much all state universities.

Without getting too political, they do need to get something figured out soon, otherwise they could do a great deal (more) damage to higher education in the state.

As for cuts at Western, we're continuing to try to find ways to save money. My (new) department (uTech) is actually going through a reorganization right now that involves combining some areas. For example, Electronic Student Services (ESS) is being rolled into the main uTech department. ESS was technically part of uTech before, but they kinda operated as their own standalone tech support/services office and there was some overlap of duties between them and uTech. At this point, no positions have been eliminated in this restructure, but they're working on streamlining things so that there's less overlap in multiple offices, and better internal redundancy of many duties. An example of that specific to my office (Web Services) is that my office now (with the addition of myself) has 3 web people (technically 2 webmasters, and one "Instructional Technology Systems Manager"...essentially the manager of web services/head webmaster for the university). ESS also has 1 webmaster, but if he was gone or something, he'd have to have a backup that was also trained in web stuff. He's being rolled into our office, so we can essentially act as his backup without any additional training of personnel.

I can't really speak for the other departments, but I know that outside of absolutely necessary positions, hiring has been put on hold, so they're kinda cutting costs by attrition. They've also put on hold some of the "national search"-type positions rather than trying to go through the process of notifications, interviews, bringing candidates in, holding open forums, providing tours, and eventually hiring someone new, they're just holding on to "interim" people for now...Athletic Director and Provost are two that I'm aware of right off the top of my head.

I don't think we'll end up seeing a big cut like Eastern announced this summer, but I could see a bit more consolidation of programs or elimination of programs that have not been well-attended. Might end up with a few less faculty positions that they'd be hiring for in the fall and maybe a couple fewer administrative positions to go along with it.

The MAP issue is the big one right now, so we'll just have to see how that plays out in the next month or two, otherwise, I think the university still has a little ways that it can "limp along" without more funding. Thankfully they were in a fairly good place financially before the recent budget issues, so we can survive for a while longer than some of the other institutions in the state.
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wiu712
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ST_Lawson wrote:Enrollment might drop some in the Spring if they don't come through, but that's going to be the case with pretty much all state universities.
It's not just the state universities that are being impacted by the lack of MAP grant funding. Area colleges like Monmouth, Knox, Augustana, Bradley, and Quincy University are also concerned.

WGEM-TV had a story about this a few weeks ago. Approx 300 students at QU are getting MAP money.

Here is a list of all of the Illinois "Approved Schools" for the Illinois Monetary Award Program:
https://www.isac.org/students/during-co ... ogram.html
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ST_Lawson
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wiu712 wrote:
ST_Lawson wrote:Enrollment might drop some in the Spring if they don't come through, but that's going to be the case with pretty much all state universities.
It's not just the state universities that are being impacted by the lack of MAP grant funding. Area colleges like Monmouth, Knox, Augustana, Bradley, and Quincy University are also concerned.

WGEM-TV had a story about this a few weeks ago. Approx 300 students at QU are getting MAP money.

Here is a list of all of the Illinois "Approved Schools" for the Illinois Monetary Award Program:
https://www.isac.org/students/during-co ... ogram.html
Yea, sorry, that's what I meant. All universities in the state (as opposed to just all state public universities). It most definitely ain't just us. Personally, I'm guessing we'd see Chicago State and maybe Eastern have more severe problems before Western would. Both have had significant enrollment drops over the last few years and if I had to guess, probably a higher percentage of students in the more "urban" schools utilize MAP grants than the students at the more "rural" schools...so I'd imagine it'd hit CSU pretty hard if they didn't get renewed.
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meganeck
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Scott, you think any sports get dropped?

Also WIU has been wanting Alum, etc to contact legislators about the budget.. has anybody done that... just curious
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ST_Lawson
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meganeck wrote:Scott, you think any sports get dropped?

Also WIU has been wanting Alum, etc to contact legislators about the budget.. has anybody done that... just curious
I haven't heard of anything saying that they might at this point (drop sports). I know that a few years back, swimming & diving was on the chopping block. Essentially it was cut, but then there was a swell of support and it was reinstated. If I had to guess, I'd say swimming/diving or tennis would be the likely targets if (that's a big IF at this point, as I said...haven't heard anything mentioning even the possibility of it at this point) they decided that they needed to cut a bit from the athletics budget.

I haven't contacted lawmakers yet, but was thinking I might do it tomorrow (today was kinda a busy day for me).
You can also go sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/illinois-state ... n-illinois
Not sure if the petition does any good, but it can't hurt and it's easy to put your name down for it. The biggest impact is going to be contacting your state lawmakers (for those of you who live in Illinois) about it. For more info, you can view the message sent out to alumni here: http://wiu.edu/Alumni/email/2015/lawmakercalls15.html
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leatherface
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My vote would be to at least drop men's and women's golf. I still don't know why those are considered sports. :)
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sealhall74
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leatherface wrote:My vote would be to at least drop men's and women's golf. I still don't know why those are considered sports. :)
If you play like I do, it could easily be considered a water sport. LOL
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Tere North
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Leatherface, guess you weren't aware Golf was being added to the Olympics. Oh, and have you heard about the PGA and LPGA, the Solheim Cup and the Walker Cup, etc. I'd venture there are far more people who play golf than say, play football, after college. No, not many go pro, but then, I don't see that as the purpose of college sport.
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