Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1954 [PAGE 786]

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1953]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

783

to be dispensed with, temporarily or permanently. However, such a result appears inevitable in the face of an operating appropriation for the coming biennium which, after allowing for certain specified increases, is no more than the appropriation for the preceding biennium, and out of which it is necessary to maintain an effective instructional and research and public service program, provide for an anticipated increase in enrollment, and provide for a minimum scale of selective salary increases. Approximately half of the budget adjustments specified for next biennium will go to the latter purposes and in these increases the nonacademic employees will receive more generally distributed increases than the selective increases possible in the academic staff. The staff of the University, both academic and nonacademic, is to be commended for its willingness to face these financial facts and to carry on in the traditional Illinois spirit.

HAROLD E. GRANGE, ROBERT Z. H I C K M A N M R S . DORIS S. HOLT Chairman

On motion of Mr. Johnston, this report was accepted and approved.

REPORT OF SPECIAL. COMMITTEE TO STUDY PROPOSAL FOR A FOUR-YEAR UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS IN CHICAGO

Mr. Johnston presented the following report:

At the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois on May 23, 1953, the undersigned were appointed a Special Committee to study the petition and proposal from the Council of the Faculty of the Chicago Undergraduate Division for the establishment of a four-year university in Chicago, the immediate objective being to expand the present curricula at Navy Pier to four years of undergraduate work. The Committee held a preliminary meeting at Urbana on May 23, following the Board meeting, at which it planned its study and called upon the President of the University, the Provost, the Comptroller, and the Bureau of Institutional Research for the data and other information required. The Bureau was directed to call upon the administrative officers and faculty at the Chicago Undergraduate Division for any data needed from that source. The officers of the University submitted their reports promptly and the Committee held a second meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on June 3, 1953. At this meeting the following members of the Committee were present: Mr. Cushman B. Bissell, Mr. R. Z. Hickman, Mr. Park Livingston, Mr. Herbert B. Megran, and Mr. Wayne A. Johnston, Chairman. Mr. Vernon L. Nickell was unable to attend because of illness. Also present at this meeting were President George D. Stoddard, Provost Coleman R. Griffith, Comptroller Lloyd Morey, Professor Edward F. Potthoff, Director of the Bureau of Institutional Research, Mr. Howard A. Hazleton, Business Manager of the Chicago Departments, and Mr. A. J. Janata, Secretary of the Board. A third meeting of the Committee was held in Urbana on June 22, 1953. As the result of careful studies of ( a ) the materials submitted by the Council of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees on May 23 during the hearing given representatives of the Council and of other proponents of a four-year university in Chicago and (b) the data and other information supplied by University officers, and after due deliberation, your Committee submits the following report. General Considerations The educational needs of the state of Illinois justify giving the utmost consideration to providing facilities for four years of undergraduate study in certain fields of college work in Chicago when it is practicable and state finances permit. The fact that one-half the population of Illinois is in the Chicago area is a strong argument. The President of the University has consistently recommended such a development but he does not favor a permanent program of this kind at Navy Pier. The municipal authorities of Chicago thus far have definitely indicated unwillingness to commit the use of space at the Pier by the University for an indefinite period. In its eighty-five years of existence, the University of Illinois has not been able to establish a four-year college in Chicago. T h e Chicago Undergraduate Division at Navy Pier was directly related to the University's sudden need to provide educational opportunities for the returning veterans of World