2/12: Correction added in caption

After five hours of interviews by different constituents, William Weber, the single internal candidate for the vice president of business affairs search, had to face the campus open session.

The forum, which took place in Booth Library at 4 p.m., allowed faculty, staff and students to ask Weber questions about what he would bring to the position.

“I’m in my 21st year, here at Eastern,” he began, and then explained his many credentials.

“My career, both academically and occupationally, can be divided into decades,” he said. “In my 20s, I learned how to learn and in my 30s, I learned how to teach.”

Weber explained how he earned a baccalaureate degree in computer science and mathematics from the University of Kansas, and met an inspirational teacher that began his path in economics leading to a masters and doctorate.

His path rolled to administration in his 40s. And now, entering his 50s, he has a taste for a new path.

“What will be my challenge for this decade?” he asked.

The questions from the audience were challenging enough, said Godson Obia, interim chair of the biological sciences department.

“But I thought he did a very good and thorough job,” he said.

Peggy Brown, assistant to the dean for academic computing, also believed Weber did a thorough job, but said he had an advantage fiscally by being an internal candidate.

Obia believed that being internal gave him no advantage.

“I think that whenever a search is done, it is the qualifications that mattered,” he said. “If he wasn’t qualified, he wouldn’t have been selected for an interview.”

Obia asked Weber what his “plan of attack” would be to address the deferred maintenance issues.

Weber explained that not only has Eastern accrued more than $90 million in facilities and planning, but it has an additional estimated $80 million in bond funding that has not been discussed in the news.

Bond funding includes the textbook rental facility, housing repairs and more.

“My opinion is that we cannot keep adhering to the mentality that ‘broken gets fixed, shoddy lasts forever,” he said. “Our deferred maintenance has been cast under ‘shoddy,’ and that cannot happen anymore.”

Mildred Pearson, director of faculty development, asked what Weber thought were the major challenges the institution will face in the time that he would hold the position. Weber said fiscally, including deferred maintenance, the university faces hard times.

“Essentially, in 2002, our state funding declined and never recovered,” he said. “We have been successful on the funds that have flat lined; however, now we face more cuts, and it will be much harder to accommodate for those.”

“Essentially, if you factor in inflation, we peaked (in state funding) seven years ago,” he said.

Other issues addressed were his plans on opening up the power of the banner system and how he could affectively solve problems by making the system more efficient and how he could assess communication and cultural issues through the network of constituencies.

Weber said that he would find ways to productively address issues in the banner system and model by example how he wants communication to be.

Questions were cut short because of his full schedule.

Weber’s interviews continue today.

Finalists Patrick Kirby, associate vice president for financial affairs at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, will visit Eastern Monday and Tuesday, and Donald Chrusciel, associate director of Facilities Planning and Management at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, will be on campus Feb. 23 and 24.

Krystal Moya can be reached at 581-7942 or at ksmoya@eiu.edu.

Candidate for vice president for business affairs William Weber, left, speaks with the retired chair of the Geology-Geography Department Alan Baharlou, right, during a campus open session at Booth Library Wednesday afternoon. (Audrey Sawyer)

(more…)