SIU's new president has plenty of work ahead

~ A chief issue Glenn Poshard must address is keeping a college education affordable.

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- During four decades, Glenn Poshard has risen through the ranks at Southern Illinois University -- recipient of three degrees, adjunct professor, vice chancellor and head of the board of trustees.

Now the former five-term Democratic congressman and one-time Illinois gubernatorial candidate is taking on the school's biggest role -- and challenges -- as president of the 35,000-student, two-campus university.

He has plenty of work ahead of him. State funding for higher education is flat, the Justice Department may sue if the university doesn't end three fellowships the government considers discriminatory, and Poshard hopes to head off any future calls for the school's Edwardsville campus to be spun off.

"I couldn't be more ready to get going," said Poshard, who officially assumes the top job today.

Poshard, who will oversee a university system with a $665 million annual budget, called the job "the capstone of my career."

"I don't even look at this as a job," he said of the $292,000-a-year post. "My heart is in the same place my head is when dealing with SIU -- it's my roots, it's a place I dearly love. It's a place I've tried to make a contribution to just about all of my adult life."

Poshard will find out more this month about what's in store for him at the school. That's when Roger Tedrick, chairman of SIU's board of trustees, said the group will spell out a list of immediate goals it wants Poshard to achieve, with longer-term goals to be hashed out in the coming months.

Although he won't divulge specifics, Tedrick said finding ways to keep a college education affordable will be "a chief issue" Poshard must address in 2006.

Poshard was tapped in November to succeed James Walker, who announced last summer he would retire in mid-2006. Poshard declared his interest in the job shortly after Walker revealed his retirement plans and was widely considered the favorite. Walker is on medical leave, fighting prostate cancer.

Poshard takes over an SIU system that, like others nationwide, grapples with stagnant state funding. At $217.6 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, SIU's state aid for the second consecutive year is off $225,000 from the prior year and off $32.2 million from fiscal 2002.

Tuition has surged to make up some of the slack. New students at SIU's Carbondale campus paid on average of $6,537 in tuition and fees for this academic year, with those rates frozen for students who enroll for four consecutive years under a state law guaranteeing tuition. Those costs are up 6.1 percent from last year, following double-digit jumps each of the three years prior.

Carbondale's chancellor has proposed boosting tuition another 9 percent for the coming school year.

All of it has Poshard -- the son of a former hunter and trapper who became the first in his family to go to college -- worried that working families may soon be priced out of higher education, if they're not already.

"We can't just keep raising tuition," he said.

Mike Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU in Carbondale, said Poshard's knowledge of state and federal governments "will produce dividends for the university" in successful lobbying for funding.

"It's not that he'll be able to go to Springfield and bring home a truckload of money. But he understands the system," added Walter Wendler, chancellor of SIU's Carbondale campus.

Poshard wants people's expectations to be realistic.

"Yes, I've had a lot of experience in Springfield and Washington, but you can't go up there and work miracles," he said. "I'll do the best I can."

All the while, some scholarships are in question. The Justice Department has threatened to sue SIU if the school doesn't halt three graduate fellowships aimed at women and minorities, arguing the programs illegally discriminate against whites, non-preferred minorities and men. SIU says such financial aid has helped nearly 130 students promote the university's tradition of diversity.

Talks to settle the matter continue. Citing the litigation, Poshard declined to discuss the matter but said generally that "we're not going to desert our mission of seeking a more diverse student body and faculty."

"Our university sits in a most unique position because we have a long history of accepting and promoting diversity in our system," Poshard said. "I don't want us to lose that mission, because that's our roots, our history."

Poshard also will have to work to satisfy Democratic state Rep. Thomas Holbrook of Belleville and other lawmakers who in recent years have pushed to make the Edwardsville campus -- Holbrook's alma mater -- its own school.

To Holbrook, the SIU system has given short shrift to the Edwardsville campus, despite the site's proximity to St. Louis, a metropolitan area with a ready pool of prospective students.

"The Edwardsville campus should have outgrown the Carbondale one 20 years ago. The need's there; we just haven't filled it," said Holbrook, who also complained the Carbondale campus offers more bachelor's degrees than Edwardsville. "We'd like to be treated on an equal plane."

Holbrook said he has deferred any push for divorcing the two campuses, saying Poshard has pledged to treat the Edwardsville site more fairly and that both locations, with combined assets of more than $124 million, would remain autonomous.

"I've assured them that the campuses would be treated fairly, that they have an open, direct line to me, and that the needs of Edwardsville will not go unmet," Poshard said. "All of this is going to require openness and inclusiveness."

Holbrook embraced the diplomacy.

"There's not a man of higher integrity when he gives you his word than Glenn," he said.