U of I Trustees Approve Contracts For New Siebel Design Center & Other Projects

A field on South Fourth Street where the Marching Illini once practiced will become the home of the new Siebel Center for Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

University trustees meeting Thursday in Springfield voted to award construction contracts for the $48 million design facility, which is expected to open in 2020.  Ground-breaking ceremonies were held in April for the facility, and actual construction is scheduled to begin in July.

Internet billionaire Thomas Siebel is helping to pay for the building that will bear his name, with a $25 million lead gift from the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation. University officials say the Siebel Center for Design will serve as a student-focused learning and innovation hub that will harness design thinking and learning as part of a cross-campus, multidisciplinary effort.

U of I trustees also voted to advance nine other capital projects, ranging from new track and field facilities in Urbana-Champaign, to expanded medical training facilities in Chicago.

Taken together, the 10 capital projects will cost more than $263 million when completed. None of that expense comes from state-appropriated capital funding, but is being paid for with gifts, institutional funds and borrowing.

Faculty Hiring Plan

University President Tim Killeen told trustees that the administration is developing plans for adding hundreds of new faculty on all three campuses over the next five years. The university is trying to catch up, after hiring was limited for two years, due to the state budget impasse.

According to a university news release, Killeen says that due to the uncertainties in state funding, the U of I’s system-wide enrollment increased about 7 percent over the last five years, while faculty number increase by just over 2 percent.

Killeen says the University of Illinois is in a good position to make a major investment in faculty, because of the efforts made during the budget impasse to hold down expenses, followed by growing revenues due to restored state funding and tuition from increased enrollment.

Killeen says the new faculty hiring plan should be completed by later this year.

New Trustee

Trustees installed Sanford “Sandy” Perl of Glencoe as the newest member of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees Thursday, pending confirmation by the Illinois Senate.

Governor Bruce Rauner’s appointment of Perl to a six-year term earlier this week fills the last vacancy created on the board when the terms of Patricia Brown-Holmes, Ricardo Estrada and Karen Hasara ran out in January, 2017.

The 52-year-old Perl graduated from Urbana-Champaign in 1987 with a degree in accountancy, and earned his law degree from the University of Michigan. Perl is a partner at the international law firm, Kirkland & Ellis LLC in Chicago. He joins Chicago private equity investor Donald Edwards and Champaign physician Stuart King as the newest trustees appointed by Gov. Rauner to oversee the University of Illinois.