The faculty senate met to discuss childcare, capturing non-traditional revenue and strategic planning with guest speakers Bill Elliott, director of international programs, and William Weber, vice president for business affairs, Tuesday.

Elliott reported a survey taken about whether or not the campus should implement a childcare facility. This issue has been brought up twice before.

“We’re trying to look at the demand for children that need that,” Elliott said.

Of 800 that responded to the survey, 43 percent of faculty and staff had work that was affected by the lack of childcare. Additionally, 264 of the 800 reported that they would use the facility.

“In general, it seems that a lot of people want to have it,” Elliott said, but then explained that even though the idea is well supported, it would be too expensive.

Elliott also said that it would be most advantageous for Eastern if they found an outside provider for the service, even though this would probably not generate any outside revenue.

“Hopefully, the third time’s a charm,” Elliott said.

Next, Weber spoke about ideas to bring in non-traditional revenue. He said the committees that come up with these ideas should be responsible with discussing whether or not the ideas are actually good or need to be thrown off the table.

“Some ideas are not reproducible,” Weber said, as he explained some of the ideas.

Such ideas include expanding partnering with community colleges to outside Illinois, advertising more around campus, or making a university columbarium. He also mentioned that there could be changes in terms with fee schedules.

Although there are a lot of good ideas that could be used, some may induce reputational risk, which Eastern would be wary of.

Weber also mentioned the possibility of growing biomass for the new Renewable Energy Center.

He then switched gears to talk about strategic planning and gave an outline of what he would be doing for the next year.

“It’s time to do full-fledged, campus-wide strategic planning,” Weber said.

Weber will put together a steering committee to lead this in. Next week, he hopes the website for strategic planning will be up and running.

The planning has five phases, which the steering committee is currently in phase one of getting organized. Then, phase two, data gathering, will take place from February to April, where the steering committee will engage in campus and external constituencies.

The steering committee will need to choose between five and ten themes to work with.

“As the campus looks ahead in the next five or ten years, what do we need to worry about?” Weber said.

In the summer months, the committee will undergo phase three in order to make sense of the issues. They will need to write a concept paper on each issue.

During the fall semester, they will share their findings with the campus community and finish with creating a set of goals.

“I think it’ll be one to engage the campus and to lay out the future,” Weber said.

The deadline for the strategic planning will be the board meeting in January 2012 where each topic needs a one-sided, one page action plan.

Jacob Swanson can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].