DeKALB – At the first Faculty Senate meeting of the year, faculty expressed concern about the benefit of moving football conferences and voiced frustrations about athletic team hires during their own hiring freeze.
FACULTY HIRING CONCERNS
Therese Clarke Arado, director of the law library, contrasted the hiring of two football coaches to the difficulty faculty have had during a hiring freeze.
“I noticed there have been two football coach hires very quickly,” Arado said. “This is among a constant barrage of information to all of us that we have position control, we have to go through a process. One position was replaced in less than a month and the other in less than two, and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people in this room that can’t even get a position description approved.”
Arado said while athletics is under separate circumstances, seeing hirings like this is frustrating.
“From an optics point of view, regardless of switching conferences, that is very frustrating regardless of benefits,” Arado said.
Chief Financial Officer George Middlemist said he understood Arado’s concerns.
“I certainly get that,” Middlemist said.
MOUNTAIN WEST REVENUE
Many of the conference change’s details regarding exact financials were withheld. Middlemist said this was because they made a promise to the Mountain West.
“I don’t have the finances to share because we promised to Mountain West that we’d keep a lot of the information confidential,” Middlemist said.
Middlemist explained the benefits of the deal.
“Overall, the finances for this deal are a pretty strong net positive, primarily driven by the TV revenues that the Mountain West has in their deal,” he said.
The deal has raised questions over how other athletics will be affected.
“Athletics is committed to the other programs. They’re not secondary programs,” Middlemist said.
There have been concerns with the size of the Mountain West’s athletic budget compared to the MAC (Mid-American Conference) budget and the greater increase in expenses to meet the increase.
Middlemist explained that schools like the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), New Mexico State University (NMSU) and University of Nevada, Reno, were driving up the average.
“UNLV put a lot of money into their athletic program and, if I remember correctly, New Mexico State. Outside that, their programs were pretty close in alignment with where we were,” he said. “The increase I really anticipate is in assistant coaches salaries.”
Hughes explained how many student athletes are involved in the football program and the impact that has on the budget.
“Across the NCAA right now, they are putting roster limits, so any change you see in football squad size is just due to the change that’s happening across the nation for football, so the league won’t impact the number of players on the team,” she said.
Middlemist addressed how long the current contract will be and what that entails for the amount of revenue NIU will receive from later contracts.
“When we were working for the Mountain West, we had pretty strong assurances that the team contract, that they’ll be extending, we’ll get at least the amount of money that we have in the contract now,” he said.
RE-ENROLLMENT
NIU’s provost, Laurie Elish-Piper, asked faculty to make sure students are officially enrolled in their classes.
Each semester, NIU releases enrollment statistics. The numbers are taken 10 days after the semester begins, after the add/drop period has ended.
“Our 10-day count for the spring will be drawn after Monday’s classes wrap up, so if you have any students that are attending your class but are not officially registered or not officially enrolled, please encourage them to do so,” Elish-Piper said.
NIU will release 10 day enrollment numbers after Jan. 27.