DeKALB – Members of the NIU administration discussed NIU’s deficit at the last University Council meeting of the semester.
The meeting was held at 3 p.m. Wednesday in Altgeld Hall Room 315.
NIU President Lisa Freeman started the meeting by discussing graduate commencement and how there will be more than 1,000 graduating students. The graduate commencement will occur at 2 p.m. Dec. 14, and the undergraduate commencements will occur at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Dec. 15 depending on which college a student is from.
Freeman also discussed the upcoming Gradpalooza event being held from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday in the Oasis Center of the Holmes Student Center. Gradpalooza will be hosted by the NIU Alumni Association, the graduate school, the president’s office and the provost office in Student Affairs.
Freeman described the different activities that will be at the Gradpalooza event.
“There are going to be photographers present to take pictures. Provost Elish-Piper and I will be available for photos in caps and gowns with the grads, and likely we will be much less popular than Mission (III) and Victor E., who will also be there in attendance during the event. The Alumni Association will be giving away NIU license plate holders as the grads check in, and they’ll be offering a graduation cord to our soon to be alums if they’re willing to make their first donation of $10 to the university, and then there’ll also be a special class of 2024 shirt that will be available for sale,” Freeman said. “Student Affairs has set up a grad cap decorating station for all the graduates who may want to personalize their crafts before the ceremony. And then there’ll be an information area set up for questions so we can hopefully resolve any issues that are on our students minds ahead of graduation day.”
BUDGET AND PLANNING PRESENTATION
Laurie Elish-Piper, executive vice president and provost, John Acardo, senior associate vice president and chief human resources officer, and George Middlemist, chief financial officer, gave a joint presentation regarding NIU’s $32 million deficit, along with mitigation strategies that NIU is implementing in order to cut their deficit in half by the end of fiscal year 2025.
During the presentation, Middlemist talked about the AIM High Housing Grant that will be available for incoming students beginning in the fall 2025 semester, and how it’ll help mitigate NIU’s deficit.
“We’re looking at the AIM High award from the state to provide housing grants to students. And by doing that, we anticipate that that will help. And when we model out what we think will happen to our revenues, it looks like our net tuition revenues for just that change alone grow by a million and a half dollars,” Middlemist said. “And so that does not account for the additional revenues that we’ll get in terms of housing, so we want housing opportunities for students, and so leveraging our financial aid and getting more strategic with it has a real opportunity for us to grow revenues.”
Elish-Piper discussed the different academic efficiencies NIU is taking to mitigate its deficit.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of reducing the number of low enrollment courses and then rebalancing loads, so assigning people to teach other classes that have more students enrolled in them. We’re at earlier stages in terms of reducing curricular complexity, so looking at low enrollment specializations, or looking at prerequisites, looking at whether there are opportunities for shared courses that could be used across multiple programs,” Elish-Piper said. “By streamlining and getting rid of some of that curricular complexity that’s really not needed, we can also do a better job of serving their students and helping them have a more efficient and clear pathway toward completion of their degrees.”
The dates for the University Council meetings for the spring 2025 semester are listed on NIU’s website and will occur Jan. 29, Feb. 26, April 2 and April 30.
