Kristi Mindrup became WIU’s interim president in April 2024, and the board named her president in December 2024.
Chairperson Carin Stutz said during her time leading the institution, Mindrup’s administrative team has implemented a long overdue focus on improving WIU’s financial health.
She said the work done by them has brought WIU closer to the goal of a financially stable university that serves students, faculty, staff, and the region.
“We feel very confident in today’s leaders. They had a very short runway to make tough decisions with no time to spare. Good leaders do that,” Stutz said during the board’s June 17 meeting.
“And Dr. Mindrup has demonstrated that she’s had the courage to finally do something.”
Those decisions have included layoffs and furloughs in the past year.
Stutz said now that WIU is moving out of crisis management, the administration must strive to develop a long-term strategy.
She said while there’s still work to do, the university is headed in the right direction. She is confident that WIU will emerge as a stronger and more robust institution.
Mindrup agreed that work remains.
“The coming year will move WIU toward an increasingly stable foundation taking shape as a result of financial adjustments, staff stabilization, and strategic planning,” she said during her prepared remarks to the board.
Mindrup said the administration took a conservative approach to planning for next fiscal year, and it proved to be the right thing to do because the new state budget signed by Governor JB Pritzker provides just a one-percent funding increase for public universities instead of the anticipated three-percent.
“While we are grateful to legislators for any increase during tight budgetary times, we will continue to advocate at the state level for the equitable funding formula with our institutional allies and stakeholder groups,” she said.
That formula would prioritize schools that are currently the most underfunded, such as WIU.
Mindrup said while the administration continues to be fiscally conservative, they’re also committed to growth and investment in academic programs that align with student interests and state and workforce priorities.
But English professor Everett Hamner told the board that does not seem to be the case at WIU’s campus in the Quad Cities, where he worked.
He said the riverfront campus had about 50 faculty members two years ago, but this fall there will be only about 10 tenured or tenure-track faculty left along with a few non-tenure track faculty.
Hamner said he is concerned about the direction the campus is headed.
“To be clear, I am not speaking only of the last year’s budgetary cuts, but of a decade now of systematic starvation,” he said.
He would like to see the Quad Cities campus grow and succeed, and said work has been put into imagining how that might happen.
“But, at some point as far as this campus goes and as far as Western goes, we’re going to need the hard choices not just of painful cuts, but the hard choices of bold, warranted risks,” Hamner said.
He said WIU has invested in the Quad Cities for decades, and should have an advantage in attracting students from the region.
Hamner won’t be among those teaching in the Quad Cities next school year – he’s being transferred to WIU’s Macomb campus.
Hamner said the administration is doing the best it can with limited resources. And he pointed out none of the funding proposals that would have helped WIU received a vote in this year’s legislative session.
He also expressed disappointment with the state’s one-percent funding increase for public higher education, as did Trustee Kirk Dillard.
“That number is – it’s mind-boggling how little priority higher education is for the state of Illinois,” Dillard said. “As somebody who attended a public university, that one-percent number is to me, it’s just unconscionable.”
He said it’s unacceptable to give higher education a funding increase of just one-percent in what is the largest budget in state history.
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