The Search for the Next President of the University of Illinois

Hey, what's up, Flies? This is David Spade. Dana Carvey. Look, I know we never actually left, but I'll just say it. We are back with another season of Fly on the Wall. Every episode, including ones with guests, will now be on video. Every Thursday you'll hear us and see us chatting with big-name celebrities. And every Monday you're stuck with just me and Dana. We react to news, what's trending, viral clips. Follow and listen to Fly on the Wall everywhere you get your podcast. The University of Illinois system will have a new president next year. Current president Tim Killeen announced he stepping down after more than a decade of guiding the University of Illinois system through the COVID-19 pandemic and funding disputes with Washington. The next president will be tasked with running an institution with over 100,000 students, three campuses, a $9 billion budget, and research grant funding of well over a billion dollars. I'm WBBM News Radio. Rob Hart. We talked to University of Illinois Board of Trustees Chair Jesse Ruiz about the search for the next president this week on at issue.

Jesse Ruiz, Chair of the Board of Trustees for the University of Illinois System. Thank you for joining us today on At Issue. Thank you for having me. Now, before we talk about the future, your job is to pick the new person who will lead the University of Illinois System starting next year. Let's assess the tenure of Tim Killeen. What are his big wins over the last 11 years? Well, lots to cover. I understand this is only about a half-hour show. So... Think about the COVID is one example where universities had to pivot and go remote. And he did that superbly, where the university created a shield test that was implemented across the university, but also across the state and across the country. So under his leadership, he was able to transition. making sure those students can continue their learning and then to help oversee developing that test to get them back. The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is coming online, being built under his watch, Discovery Partners Institute, Illinois Innovation Network. I mean, there are a number of things that we can be very proud of that Tim Killeen has overseen in the past decade plus. But one thing overall is consistent and consistent. and steady stewardship and leadership of our institution, which is frankly now an enviable job because of his work. As you look for the next president of the University of Illinois system, how wide of a net will you cast? Because Tim Killeen came to the U of I from NASA by way of the State University of New York, kind of a non-traditional path into university leadership. And is that going to inform your search for his successor? It's a big, big role. And so the net will be cast very wide. We'll look from academia, of course. academic leadership, but also business and industry, government. We are looking everywhere and open to leadership in all forums and wherever it may come from. But universities are complex organizations, 30,000 employees, 100,000 students, $9 billion budget. So you need an experienced CEO who can manage an enterprise of that size. Now, I know the position has only been open officially for just a couple of weeks. Do you have anything approaching a short list right now, or is it a truly wide open process? It is truly a wide open process. We have a search firm, AGB. Some of our search, the folks heading up that search are former university presidents themselves. And so they bring that insight to help guide the process. There's a search committee. Three trustees serve on the search committee. One trustee, Ray Sabeta, co-chairs it, along with a professor from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. and representatives from all three universities, from the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, from our health system. So we want to get a broad community input in helping sort through all the applications. And I trust at the end of the day, we're going to have a...

significant number of applicants because it is such a desirable role. Now you mentioned one of, you know, at the end of the day as the president of the university system, you are the administrator of an organization with a budget of $9 billion. But at the same time, it seems like if you're the U of I president, you almost have to pull three. disparate campuses together. It's UIC in Chicago. It's the big one, UIUC and Urbana-Champaign. It's the University of Illinois in Springfield. And the person who is listening to this program right now, when you think of the U of I, you think of the orange logo, you think of the football team, you think of basketball, you think of the West Loop, you think of Springfield, and you can't really envision the University of Illinois system. in a holistic way and is it up to the next president of the university system really kind of look at it as a statewide institution and not just a collection of campuses. Very much so. That's something that Tim actually did under his watch is, you know, that it created the Illinois system and the logos of the three universities collectively, and they all each have an identity. But again, we are much greater than the sum of our parts, and that's how that next leader will continue that trajectory. That Tim did start, in fact, and truly have it be a flagship system for our state. There are two systems in Illinois, Southern Illinois is another system. But there are 12 total public universities. Our system comprises three of those. I'm a U of I Urbana-Champaign alum, so I'm a little biased, but I think ours is a powerful system that lifts all the other universities, and in fact, we work collectively with them. So I look forward to the next president continuing that trajectory. And then when you talk, we talk about some of Tim Killeen's wins. And we can touch on the COVID aspect of it just a little bit, just because when looking for a new president, I would imagine you're also assessing how can you respond to a black swan event such as COVID-19, which is clearly on everyone's mind still to this day. But also. The research side of the University of Illinois, it's a huge component of the University of Illinois system, but as we mentioned before, it's not something that people really talk about as one of the three things you mention when you think of the U of I. Yeah, it's about a billion dollars in research funding, and it drives even more economic development and jobs across our state. You know, we didn't even think about the agricultural extension that also helps our agricultural industry. So it's a... huge economic engine in our state. The research is important. Again, the shield test came out of some of that research that, again, scientists at the University of Illinois spearheaded that effort. And literally, it was used across our country in private businesses as well, as in school districts across Illinois and in other states. So our research is, you know, the history of research and our Nobel laureates that are either faculty or alums.

It's incredible to comprehend and so much, but we need to continue that, and especially in the changing landscape that we're facing. Now, there's certain headwinds in federal funds that we're maneuvering through, but we're going to continue to do the excellent work. The university's always done. Let's talk about that because what are some of the challenges that a university system president faces that are evergreen that are just... They come with a job, regardless of where and when you take that job. And then what are some challenges that are unique at this moment in history? And we're talking about college presidents who've been calling to Capitol Hill. You mentioned the legal challenges involving federal funding. And... How, you know, adept at politics does this next university president have to be? We are a public institution, and so we do exist in a public funding landscape and like, you know, always managing the resources. incredibly well and again since we're a public institution making sure that there's transparency and accountability to the citizens that help fund our university but also again finding other President Colleen has overseen incredible record-setting amounts of private funding fundraising as well for institutions so constantly being vigilant of that. But it's a changing perception of the value of higher education and continually making sure that we do prove that value. And when the age of AI, how is that going to impact the training that we provide our students and making sure that they can graduate and also be viable members of our future tech economy as well? Let's explore the impact of AI on... college education, not only at the U of I, but around the world. AI were still in the opening stages of it. Someone said it's we're almost in the second inning of the world of AI. And it will impact the U of I's mission from an educating student standpoint, but also the research mission as well. How, though, does this stack up to, let's say, the beginning of the World Wide Web 30 years ago? I mean, we've started a discussion about that at our last board meeting in July. I asked President Colleen to work with the three chancellors and present at our board meeting about this very topic. They're thinking about it. At times, it's helpful if they describe publicly in a public board meeting, how they're thinking about it, how it's going to impact the university. And they did that. One thing they pointed out was we've had technological changes, you know, from beginning as a land grant institution in 1867 to moving into an industrial economy to, you know, the AI economy that we're going to be on the precipice of now. So we've done that. We've constantly evolved and how, you know, I think back in my student days many decades ago now.

and using a computer system that would then call Plato, which would now make everything that exists today, you know, it seemed like a toy. But it was cutting technology at the time that taught me my first major was electrical engineering, helped teach me physics. So we think about all the technological advances and the excellent faculty that has learned to incorporate that. into the learning experience of students to make sure they are prepared for that first role outside of once they earn their degrees. You're listening to Add Issue on WBBM News Radio. We are talking with Jesse Ruiz, chair of the Board of Trustees for the University of Illinois System and the person to whom you should send your resume. If you want to be the next chairman, president of the University of Illinois system, you mentioned one thing when talking about The value of a college education because... Top of mind, and it's become a politically potent issue as well, is just the rising cost of a college education. And when you start talking about where can my child go to college or where can I go to college to further my education and further my career, the discussion is never about opportunity. It's how much does it cost? What's the tuition? Will I be in student debt for the rest of my life? And how is... the University of Illinois or how will the next president address those very real concerns? Well, hopefully in the same path that we've done over the NASC. number of years. President Colleen has worked very hard and thankfully we're in the state where the governor, J.B. Pritzker prioritizes education and has increased funding during his time in office. And hopefully that continues. But we also have to do our part to maintain costs at the current level, be as efficient as possible, maintain our educational institution within the budgets we have. and maintain any cost increases at sub-inflationary levels. So that's something that President Colleen has really focused on, along with the board. We encourage that, making sure that it's attainable, that we raise private funds to make sure that we can provide scholarship support. And so those will be continued work streams for our next president. How We Made Your Mother is the How I Met Your Mother rewatch podcast with me, Josh Radner, and Siri's co-creator Craig Thomas. Follow How We Made Your Mother wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned economic impact of the University of Illinois system and touching on some of the research innovations and the multiplying effect of the research arm of the university. But let's talk about the economic impact of just having three knowledge factories in the state.

One in Springfield, one in Urbana champagne, one in Chicago. What does that mean to the state to just have... Every December and every May, a new group of college graduates entering the workforce. What does that mean for the Illinois economy? Well, it's a phenomenal resource for the Illinois economy as a lifelong Chicago. I love to see all these fellow U of I alumni join me here in the workforce in Illinois. We keep, I believe the number is about 74% of our graduates here in Illinois as opposed to... A lot of the, particularly in engineering where Silicon Valley was one of the number one employers of UIUC engineers. We've, I think, turned that and having IQMP here, having Discovery Partners Institute here. Hopefully, the term was thrown around a lot in the past, but I think we're actually going to get to Silicon Prairie here in Illinois, largely. due to some of the efforts of the University of Illinois. They work in conjunction with our other universities, including some of the privates, like Northwestern in Chicago. But when the governor invested our state dollars in IQMP, he turned to the U of IE to help lead that effort. And then also just the existence of a public university system in the state of Illinois. And... using that as an, you know, providing opportunities for people who may not, their families may not be able to afford the tuition at a private institution or maybe out-of-state tuition at some other school. What does it mean, or some other state, I should say, what does it mean to Illinois families to have the U of I system there just to provide that college education? I mean, it's an invaluable resource again. In my case, my... parents emigrated from Mexico, had no money to send me to college. I was able to put myself through four years at Illinois with Pell Grants and with loans and didn't come out straddled with insurmountable debt. Now, that was a while ago. The economics are a bit different now, but hopefully we can continue to make that an accessible dream. Again, thanks to J.B. Pritzker, he keeps increasing map grants for Illinois students. So that makes it where a certain level of household income, students can go for paying nothing because he's increased map grant funding so much. So, you know, look forward to Governor continuing that great work and supporting all public institutions. But we're very grateful at the University of Illinois to making a path to U of I, either any one of our three universities, very accessible. We touched on some of the legal challenges that are taking place over grant funding for various university programs. And this is no doubt going to be on the plate of the next university system president. But let's talk about the overall mission of academic inquiry at the University of Illinois at a time when social media allows.

different stories to be told or very different perspectives on the same event and how can the university you know maintain that open inquiry allow professors to conduct their own research and answer their own questions and also allow students to Really think about the wider world maybe in a way they hadn't before while at the same time not setting off a million social media tripwires. Yeah, no, it's a constant challenge. But me, making sure that first and foremost, we train critical thinkers that learn to still go to primary sources and in a world where there's so much information, literally, you know, sort through all that to making sure that, you know, you are making decisions. and being able to analyze problems critically with solid facts. And so those skills, especially with the advent of AI, being able to do that. And as Chancellor Isabel said in his presentation, the Chancellor of Urbana Champaign, you know, we've got to create great editors. But in order to be a great editor, you had to learn to be a great writer first. So everybody has to learn the basics, the critical fundamental skills. so that they can then. be good consumers of this work and being able to edit it or sort through it and making sure that it leads to the right conclusions and hopefully create some great critical thinkers who can problems all. You bring up something that numerous experts have pointed out on the noon business hour about how do you cope with the A of AI, the age of AI, and how can you future-proof your career for artificial intelligence is that a liberal arts education. may be the most valuable thing you can have in this era of AI because it allows you to have that critical thinking to determine if the AI model is accurate or not. And also to make very real decisions that could be outside of the programming of the AI model. Yeah. I mean, we're all going to be content producers in whatever way, shape, or form. I'm a lawyer. And I wouldn't be very effective if I couldn't use, you know, word processing systems or Excel and now AI. I don't worry about AI replacing me or any of our graduates as long as they know how to effectively use these tools, adeptly use them, but to make themselves more efficient. I've heard somebody say, you know, oh, A is going to replace our new graduates. I think they'll, they could potentially replace a new graduate who's not adept at using these things. And so we'll make sure our graduates are. And then, you know, the people who are coming into the University of Illinois system, the incoming class of 2030, these are kids who were born, check my math on this, in 2008.

They grew up in a very different world than you or I. I mean, they are very much digital natives. They are social media natives. And how does that change the mission of education, given they have this technological background ever since they were four or five? Well, appreciating that and knowing that, and how do you leverage that? That, you know, again, most of these folks were having iPads in their elementary school classrooms and the iPad carts were around. And they were using that. And Chancellor Miranda and Chancellor Gouche, Chicago and Springfield, respectively noted that, you know, same thing when we had a Ti-30 calculator that, you know, when I was a freshman in high school. Like, oh, could I use that in my algebra class? Whereas now they have graphing calculators, and then we're well beyond that. And so at each point in time, educators had to learn to incorporate these new tools that can make people more efficient, but how do you make sure you're still learning the fundamentals? You can still add and subtract and divide and multiply. And at the same time, how can you make sure that those technological tools are... used properly and that the students actually learn and don't use those tools to game the system. Yeah, no, there's, believe it or not, there's, it's going back to my time in law school, Blue Books are being used once again for written exams, and so there'll be some places where technology won't be used at all. Blue Books, I'm having like 30-year-old cramps thinking about, and in my right hand thinking about Blue Book exams. You're listening to Add Issue on WBBM News Radio. We are talking with Jesse Ruiz, chair of the board of trustees of the University of Illinois System, who is just several weeks into the search for the successor of the outgoing U of I system president, Tim Killeen. And how is that job search going right now? You mentioned a search firm has been hired. But let's just talk about the nuts and bolts here. I mean, if you do it, if you look on LinkedIn and put on the right prompts, is that opening available to you to anyone? It should be, yes. There is a place where you can go and submit your application and express your interest or reach out to AGB, our search firm that is our front door to our search and ask any questions you might have. And I'm aware it's all very confidential. We don't want to encourage, we want to encourage candidates to know that you can, if you're an incumbent, you know, president, chancellor, dean somewhere else, or a CEO or a government official. And you just want to explore, please do. It'll all be kept confidential. And we've all signed NDAs, the search committee, as well as board members. And we pledge to each other, we will maintain the integrity and the confidentiality of the search process. So we can encourage everybody to be open and to explore the possibility of leading our great university system. Now, President Colleen is going to be in office until next summer. So you have almost a year to find that next person, whoever that person may be. Is that a hard start date? Do you hope to have someone in place or would it be all right from the U of I system standpoint to have an interim president in charge for a couple of months? We've built, and thanks to President Colleen, who's given us plenty of runway by announcing his intentions a while ago. And so we've been able to launch a search. Right now, the timing is that we could have a president named by the end of this calendar year and then have a number of months.

President Colleen's term goes through June of 2027. So there's a lot of transition time, also building in a few months of buffer in case the person, I fully suspect, will be engaged in some other professional endeavor where they might need some additional time to transition from that role to the new role of president of the University of Illinois system. Well, if anybody can apply for this, then the search committee is going to have to parse. thousands of resumes. So let's kind of walk through this process on a step-by-step basis. Sure. We're going to have the process of applications go through the end of this month. And then we go into the search committee sorting through and deciding who they would interview. Those interviews will be done via Zoom or teams. They'll be done remotely. And then they'll decide a number of... applicants that will then become candidates for the board to consider. And right now we're looking at potentially doing those, assuming everything works as planned in October. How many rounds of interviews do you anticipate, you know, if you have a candidate the board really likes, how many rounds of interviews with that person go through? Right now, it would be a couple rounds of interviews. It could change. And again, there's a thorough vetting process that if there's anything else that we want to delve into in the person's background, we would have time to do that. And, you know, we fully expect to do that. Now, are these open-ended job interview questions, you know, like if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? Or is it very specific? Questions specific to that person's background or the very specific university challenges you anticipate facing? A bit of both. There are some things that, again, all the candidates are different. So we'll talk about experiences from their background, but there are also some standard questions. We will ask all candidates. And again, relative to our university system and their thoughts on how they would lead us forward. I mean, I tend to believe, again, I'm a little biased, but we're on a very fast-moving upward trajectory. I'm grateful that this is the possession President Colleen has left us in. So the tough task for the next president will be, how do you take us even higher? And it's not about fixing anything. I mean, we're doing really well right now. And I'm glad because there are some other universities that face challenges. We've had more turnover at the top. We have enjoyed over a decade of stability and upward trajectory. If we're having this conversation in 2037 and assessing the tenure of President Colleen's successor, What would you like to look back upon and say that worked?

That we did pick a person who could, you know, again, take the helm of this institution and bring it to greater heights that was able to realize a lot of the things that President Colleen put in motion. IQMP will be firing on all cylinders as well as Discovery Partners Institute and will continue to educate even more students and grow the impact of the University of Illinois. At the same time, though, as we talk about those Black Swan events, I would imagine their ability to pivot in a truly surprise situation. That has to be part of the mix. Yes, we will definitely see candidates who have dealt with that kind of adversity and maneuvered through it adeptly and successfully and can make decisions in a time of crisis. but do so with agility and wisdom. And then lastly, as we talk about just going into the age of AI, what would you like to hear from a potential successor about how they will tackle the age of AI? Yeah, that they will embrace the opportunities that it brings, that they will face the challenges that it brings as well. And we will come out of it, again, stronger like we've come out prior technological ages and advances that we've seen in our history. And then also just looking at how do you evaluate the University of Illinois versus the flagship university systems in other states versus Indiana or Wisconsin or Minnesota or Iowa? Do you hope to be at parity with them as far as headcount and economic impact or do you just focus on your own house? Well, we focus on our own house, but I think we compare incredibly favorably well and have as great as impact on our state as we possibly can. We always seek to improve on that. We never rest on our laurels. But I'm very proud of where we are today and look forward to a very bright future under our next president. Now, will the final question of the job interview with the person you want to select? Will it go with something like this? Just say, complete this sentence, I-L-L. Well, I would hope they would answer I-N-I, and as well as they could talk about the flames and in Springfield as well. So we're very proud of all three of our universities, but that one's a pretty common refrain. Jesse Ruiz, Chair of the Board of Trustees University of Illinois System. Thank you for joining us on at issue. Thank you. If you want to hear the program again, you can find it at WBBMNewsRadio.com, the Odyssey app, and the IHeartRadio app. Join us next week for another edition of At Issue. Until then, I'm Rob Hart. News Radio 105.9 WBBM.

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