Faculty Senate Tuesday voted to support reconfiguration of the Illinois Monetary Award Program grant system and to create a steering committee to handle matters of faculty development arising from the Spring 2002 Faculty Forum.

The forum, held Jan. 28, focused on faculty development, and the senate has been trying to formulate and pass recommendations to the office of academic affairs since then.

To address these issues, the senate approved a structure for a steering committee that would include two faculty representatives from the library. It also would include one from each college as well as one representative from the Council of Deans, the Council of Chairs and the provost.

The Council of Illinois Senates, whose representatives are faculty senate chairs from Illinois’ 12 public universities, distributed the resolution to its respective faculty senates. The resolution calls for legislative action on the IMAP, specifically, on how its funds are distributed.

The resolution describes a discrepancy in how many students attend private institutions compared to how many private college students receive IMAP grants. Private universities and colleges in Illinois educate about one third of the state’s college students, the resolution said. However, those students receive about half of the IMAP funds.

The resolution said the cause of all this is the higher cost of a private school education. IMAP grants are based on need, and need is calculated by figuring income against the cost of attendance. Therefore, a student, who may be defined as having no financial need at Eastern, may qualify for grants at schools such as Northwestern University, a more expensive, private institution.

Essentially, the resolution calls for a re-examination of the awarding process by the state legislature. Although as it arrived at Eastern’s faculty senate, the resolution didn’t contain any suggests for how to correct the problem.

Last week, senate member Matthew Monippallil suggested adding ideas for how the General Assembly should proceed. Senate members and English professors Anne Zahlan and David Carpenter did some grammatical fine tuning at last week’s senate meeting.

More grammar and and style changes were made at this week’s meeting, and the senate voted to support it.

Blair Lord, vice president for academic affairs, updated the senate on the budget problems for next fiscal year, explaining that the governor dished out a small increase in funds after making a huge cut to higher education.

Eastern started fiscal year 2002 (the current fiscal year) with $82 million and will start next fiscal year with $81.36 million if the governor’s budget recommendations for higher education pass through the General Assembly.