Keeping operating costs down is essential for the university in the current economic environment.

To help Eastern keep its costs down, the university has been accepting cost containment suggestions on its Web site.The link to send suggestions can be found at eiu.edu/costcontainment.php. The link has been up since late May and will remain there indefinitely. Students can also send suggestions directly to costcontainment@eiu.edu.

“We have not set a deadline,” said Derek Markley, special assistant to President Bill Perry. “There might not be a deadline.”

Markley is in charge of collecting the responses. So far, around 45 suggestions have come in, but he said most of them fall into three main categories.

“The three most popular are printing, such as how we can utilize PDF files instead of hard copies,” he said. “Two, we got a lot of suggestions about lighting, dimming, staggering and using more natural lighting where possible. The third concerned power overall. Computers came up a lot.”

Markley said the campus contains about 10,000 computers.

President Perry said keeping computer operating costs down is simple.

“Shut it down at night; start it up in the morning,” he said. “And utilize the computer’s spin-down mode when it’s not in use.”

Making people aware of how much money can be saved by doing this is the main goal, Markley said.

“We want to show people how much power this would save and in turn how much cost,” Markley said. “It’s a lot of computers. It’s not really implementation; I’d go back to education.”

Most of the suggestions are not going to become set rules, just thoughts on ways to keep costs down, Perry said.

“Some of these things we can’t actually require people to do, but they’re suggestions we can make,” he said.

The submitted suggestions have been given to the vice presidents most involved in the area for review and analysis. After the vice presidents look at the suggestions they will be presented to the Council of University Planning and Budget.

“The vice presidents are in the process of analyzing the suggestions right now,” Markley said. “We’re doing our best to make sure CUPB has the full analyses by their October meeting.”

Business affairs is looking at electronic billing to save paper, for instance. External relations is looking at having the general information line, 581-5000, be answered internally.

Jill Nilsen, vice president for external relations, said that number is currently answered by an outside source.

“We’re looking to see if it’d be cheaper to do it internally,” she said.

Perry hopes the university will be able to keep costs low with the suggestions.

“If it looks like it will produce savings, we’ll bring it to CUPB,” he said.

Sarah Ruholl can be reached at 581-7942 or seruholl2@eiu.edu.