Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a series of articles addressing the resolution proposing to phase out the appropriated funding the intercollegiate athletics department receives. 

A philosophy professor proposed to gradually remove the athletics department’s appropriated funding in order to alleviate academic financial strains like increased class size and decreased faculty members.

However, according to Eastern data, the average class size is at the lowest in 10 years, and the faculty-student ratio also decreased. 

Grant Sterling, a philosophy professor, introduced a resolution to the Faculty Senate on March 20 to phase out the amount the intercollegiate athletics department receives from appropriated funds, which consist of general revenue funding from the state and tuition money. 

He proposes the phasing out to occur over the next five years and to reallocate those funds to the Academic Affairs Office to increase the hiring of Unit A full-time faculty members. 

Sterling said a debate on the resolution will occur at 2 p.m. on Tuesday in Room 4440 of Booth Library during the Faculty Senate meeting. 

“What has happened is that many departments can’t afford to replace retired professors, and they just have to make due with the professors that they have,” Sterling said. “We still have a lot of small classes taught by really good professors but our ability to do that is being sliced.”

President Bill Perry said the faculty-student ratio was 1-15, and the average class size in 2011 was 19 students, which is the lowest in 10 years. 

“The average class size is the lowest it has been going back to 2002,” Perry said. “Some departments have increased enrollment so class sizes may increase there but decrease somewhere else.” 

Sterling said the amount of appropriated funds given to athletics is comparatively small to those given to academics, but the funds should be diverted because intercollegiate athletics does not fit into Eastern’s academically central mission.  

The total expenditures from the athletic department total about $10 million to $11 million, and the department receives about 15 percent of this from appropriated funds, Perry said. 

“The other 85 percent is funded through student fees, ticket sales, donations from individuals who support the program and those who give money for scholarships and equipment,” Perry said. 

Academic departments receive most of the appropriated funds, which pay all salaries and operations, Perry said. 

The total appropriated funds for university expenditures was $115,209,400 during fiscal year 2011, which is about a 19.3 percent increase from FY07’s $96,561,800 total.

In FY11, the athletics department received $1,612,500 of the total appropriated funds, which is a 5-percent increase from FY07. 

“It is not that I have an objection to EIU athletics or to athletics having money to run their programs,” Sterling said. “If the academic side of the university had enough money to provide the kind of quality education we want to provide and there was money left over to subsidize intercollegiate athletics, that would be great, but academic quality is being hurt.”

Sterling said some departments have lost faculty members over the years and they have not been replaced, and all of the philosophy department’s face-to-face summer classes were canceled because of not meeting the required enrollment mark.

Perry said hiring faculty members is tied to student enrollment.

“As enrollment moves, faculty moves, and when enrollment starts to drop off, we can’t hire as many faculty,” Perry said. 

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].