Jon Blitz, the president of Eastern’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois, spoke to the Faculty Senate Tuesday about the differences between the academic and athletic departments’ accounting practices and the EIU-UPI’s role in the vitalization project.

Blitz said he had a possible concern regarding the profit loss sheets after condensing a pair of profit loss reports.

The first sheet was from the recreation administration department and the second one from intercollegiate athletics.

Blitz explained how the recreation administration department spent and totaled its money by adding up salaries, student costs, operation costs and summer school, meaning they had $358,115 in expenses.

To come up with the revenue the recreation administration department generated, the tuition was added up from all three semesters, which came to $513,238. Money was subtracted from waivers and scholarships to get a net tuition of $422,531.

Blitz showed how the $422,531 revenue was subtracted from the total expenses of $358,115 to get a profit of $64,416 made by the recreation administration department during academic year 2014-2015.

Blitz said intercollegiate athletics did their math differently, which does not really make sense to him.

Blitz said the profit loss sheet for intercollegiate athletics claimed $4,185,756 in tuition, $1,217,773 in fees and $2,278,592 in housing and dining to get $7,682,121 as their total revenue.

When the deficit and revenue were added together, intercollegiate athletics came out with a profit of $664,354.

Senate member Grant Sterling said his biggest concern was how intercollegiate athletics calculated their numbers.

He said since they calculated differently than the academic departments did, athletics looks like they are generating a lot of money.

He said the workgroups are looking at these reports and drawing their own conclusions about athletics and the academic departments.

The senate also discussed the data used in the vitalization project at their meeting Tuesday.

Eastern President David Glassman introduced the vitalization project during his State of the University Address.

It consists of nine workgroups that will analyze campus programs and services on their viability, efficiency and sustainability.

Then, the groups will make recommendations for how the administration should allocate future resources to the given programs or services.

Blitz said the vitalization project does not violate any part of the professors’ collective bargaining agreements.

“However, we are all potentially largely affected by whatever comes out of this agreement,” he said.

He said the EIU-UPI will be looking at the workgroups to see if anything will be a violation of this collective bargaining agreement.

Blitz said he is concerned about workgroup seven, which is in charge of looking at academic programs and article 18, which is responsible for department reorganization and elimination.

He said he wants workgroup seven to keep the EIU-UPI informed.

Also during the meeting, Blair Lord, Eastern’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, told the senate there are currently four candidates for the associate vice president for enrollment management position.

Senate members Jemmie Robertson and Teshome Abebe were nominated and approved by the senate to serve on a provost search committee to help find a replacement for Lord, who will retire next year.

The senate also asked the two candidates for Illinois State Representative for the 110th district, incumbent Reggie Phillips (R) and challenger Dennis Malak (D) to come to a faculty forum set for Oct. 12 in the Charleston/Mattoon room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The format will be similar to the setup used for the presidential debates. Both Phillips and Malak have had emails sent to them inviting them to the forum.

Phillips will go first and have between ten and 15 minutes to give a speech, then have half an hour to answer questions. Malak will to do the same.

Samuel Nusbaum can be reached at 581-2812 or at scnusbaum@eiu.edu.