Highlights from the March Board Report

Highlights from the Board Report is a monthly regular feature that highlights what one person finds to be important from the most recent Board Report. We read it so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

The March report is up; congratulations to Chairperson Woolf on the completion of her inaugural Board meeting as the gran formagi!

~No reports from HR and Academic Affairs, but there was some stuff about money.

~The policy on facilities use (which was a part of/at the root of/led to some complications (depending on your interpretation of things) last fall) has been clarified a bit (with respect to inside/outside groups and priorities and the rest). I’m particularly interested in this:

“-The service and consumption of alcoholic beverages on City Colleges of Chicago Campus property is prohibited, unless served by a properly licensed caterer with the State and/or City required liquor liability (dramshop) insurance” (emphasis mine).

~There were changes made to the academic policy, too–notably in regard to graduation eligibility (via the elimination of the home campus requirement and the promised enforcement of the diversity appreciation requirement for all of our degrees. There were some other changes, too. Check it out.

~On the personnel front, there were 11 new hires at the DO (recession, schmeesession!) including two new Associate Vice Chancellors, one of whom is a replacement for a former Vice Chancellor (of Development) who was moved over into a different Vice Chancellorship (of Athletics). That means that in addition to the Chancellor and Board members and their Chief Advisor, we now, officially, have 11 chiefs of this or that and Vice Chancellors, a Provost, a General Counsel, an Inspector General, 7 college Presidents, somewhere between 9and 81 Associate Vice Chancellors, approximately 37 (give or take 20) Directors, at least 20% of which are executive directors, and a bevy of managers. The numbers are, admittedly, a little fuzzy in spots. I’ll do a tighter count when next year’s budget comes out. Ahem. Onward. It seems that we lost Workforce Development VP Christopher Wilkerson (we hardly knew ye…did we?), and Tom Higgins has, apparently spent his sabbatical working on time travel, as indicated by his special assignment which reads “Start date from 07/30/2012 to 05/14/2012 and end date from 08/10/2012 to 05/25/2012”, which is awesome.

~Our Phy Sci people are ringing the register again (congrats to all!).

~Who uses a travel agent these days? We do, I guess!

~We hired somebody to make sure that we’re getting our share of the Tax Ripoff Increment Financing law. Hey, it’s on the books, might as well use it, I guess. (Of course, there’s this to consider…)

~Limegreen gets some more love, in the form of up to 60 G’s to manage Graduation–should be awesome!

~Plus (up to) 80K to UIC for the use of the Pavilion…wait a minute…60 plus 80…that’s a Vice Chancellor! What if we hired an Associate VC of Graduation for $100,000 and then split the other $40,000 between the seven colleges? Just brainstorming here…any other good ideas?

~They approved a contract for two years of temp staffing…think they’re planning on not having administrative assistants for a spell? Luckily for us the contract didn’t say anything about temporary faculty. Yet.

~Daley and Olive Harvey get theater renovations.

~Contracts for what bugs ya.

~The Presidents and Chancellor agreed on some other things.

~Polly Hoover addressed the board about some curricular issues, especially the stuff going on with CPS.

If you think I missed anything (or mis-stated anything), please post your ideas in the comments.