Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1970 [PAGE 763]

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1970]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

763

On motion of Mr. Grimes, this appointment was approved.

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF SOCIAL WORK, URBANA (29) The Urbana-Champaign Senate has approved the establishment of a new curriculum to be offered through the School of Social Work leading to the degree of Doctor of Social Work. Providing an adequate supply of competent social-work manpower for health, education, and welfare services has been a major and continuing national problem for several decades. All available evidence suggests that projected needs in the country will escalate faster than current projections of the number of graduates from professional schools. It was this gross imbalance between demand and supply that led the 1967 Manpower Report of the President of the United States to identify social work as one of the professions with the most critical shortages in relation to present and future needs. Social work in Illinois shares the critical national manpower shortage. A survey of conditions in April, 1969, revealed an estimated minimum of 700 budgeted vacant positions requiring a master's degree in social work of anyone who might be employed. This year the three schools of social work in the state will graduate little more than 400 Master of Social Work candidates. An advisory committee to the Illinois State Board of Higher Education has recommended that these schools should double enrollment by 1975 and triple it by 1980. To expand enrollment in that order of magnitude depends on the availability of qualified faculty. The supply of faculty is short and directly related to the low volume of doctoral study in the field. The national council on Social W o r k Education, in 1966, estimated that in the decade 1966-75, at least 1,200 more personnel with doctorates would be needed. The Council estimated that to reach such a goal would require a 50 per cent increase in existing programs and the start of several new programs. The proposed program includes four principal areas: study in two divisions of social work content (social welfare organization and policy and social work treatment theories); research methods; and courses in the student's area of specialization, including his dissertation. Of interdisciplinary nature, the program provides for identification of problems and issues in social work and application of theory and technique from basic social science fields. Although the program, as first developed, will be centered on the Urbana campus, Chicago Circle faculty members will be involved in teaching seminars and in directing the research of students. The Chancellor at the Urbana-Champaign campus and the Executive Vice President and Provost concur in this recommendation. The University Senates Conference has indicated that no other Senate jurisdiction is involved. I recommend approval subject to further action by the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

On motion of Mr. Hahn, this recommendation was approved.

PROPOSED INCREASE IN BUILDING SPACE FOR BURRILL HALL ADDITION, URBANA (30) The Board of Trustees at its meeting on July 23, 1969, approved the inclusion of an addition to Burrill Hall in the University's Budget Request for Capital Funds —Fiscal Year 1971. The proposed structure was planned to have 26,142 gross square feet, and the cost was estimated at $1,537,750 (exclusive of movable equipment). The purpose of the structure is the housing of a new School of Basic Medical Sciences, which would offer a first-year curriculum in medical education for thirty-two students and related research and graduate work in the basic medical sciences. The Board of Higher Education approved this proposal, together with certain other capital projects in the health fields, on November 4, 1969. The Chancellor at the Urbana-Champaign campus, with the concurrence of the special planning committee for the medical-sciences program, has recommended changes in the program for this building which would increase its size to approximately 34,500 gross square feet, at an increase in cost of $400,000 for the additional 8,358 gross square feet. This additional area would house a graduate-training and research program in reproductive biology, for the support of which the University has been invited to submit a proposal to a major foundation. In response to this invitation, a request for a grant totaling $1,010,995 has been submitted, of which the sum of $400,000 would be used to finance the construction of another