URBANA -- Challenging the view that the University of Illinois is a monolith, the Urbana faculty-student senate voted unanimously Monday to call for a discussion about the roles of the campuses.

The resolution could also be discussed at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Illini Union in a meeting of the Senates Conference, which represents all three campuses, but it is not on the agenda.

Senate Executive committee Chair Joyce Tolliver said the diacussion emerges naturally from the agreement voiced by Chairman of the Board Chris Kennedy that we should engage all university constituents in a conversation about how to structure its future.

Education policy Professor Nicholas Burbules drafted the nine principles of the resolution, which stresses that both statute and custom make the chancellor the CEO of the campus.

Recent board of trustees action has stressed that the president is the CEO, and has added the title of vice president to that of chancellor.

Last week, the trustees in Chicago passed, with little discussion, their own resolution in support of President Michael Hogan's authority, and praising him for his first eight months on the job. They also supported Hogan's "recommendations for other staffing changes that will better integrate administrative services across the university in order to improve the quality of those services, and contribute to cost savings."

The resolution drafted by Burbules begins by saying "the General Rules affirm that the University of Illinois is not 'a system of totally independent units.' It is, however, a system of largely independent units, each possessing 'a high degree of delegated authority.' Each university campus is a constitutionally self-governing entity, each with its own Senate.

"At the same time, the campuses should work together to 'achieve intercampus cooperation,' and 'to avoid unnecessary duplication' through shared services organized through the university-level administration."

Other principles include that: the campuses are not branches of a single institution; that the chancellor is the public face of the campus; that campus-level staff should report to the chancellor; that academic policy is not advanced by centralization; and that changes to structure must be submitted for faculty review.

"I don't view this as controversial or confrontational," Burbules said, adding that in working reality, the campuses have functioned in this manner for decades.

"My goal was to find common ground, based on the Statutes and General Rules, to develop a consensus about the kind of university we want to be," Burbules said in an email. "The fact that it passed unanimously, I think, shows that it expressed values shared by a very broad range of senators."

"The president and board of trustees are always willing to listen, but the issues raised today, again, for discussion have been raised and answered by the board on many occasions," UI spokesman Tom Hardy said. "Any so-called summit should therefore focus on other, more important and pressing issues, such as what will the university look like if it takes another $100 million dollar state appropriations cut, and/or if it will have to cover more of the health care costs and pension benefits of employees out of its own diminished budget."

Senate Executive Committee Chairwoman Joyce Tolliver said she would like a working summit with a "bare minimum" of a dozen leaders from the three campuses to discuss the issue.

In February, she asked seven Urbana colleagues to "research various administrative structures that have been used to integrate universities with multiple campuses."

The committee's members were Debra Bragg, C.K. Gunsalus, George Gollin, Sarah Projansky, Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, Matthew Wheeler and Paul Diehl, the chairman.

Tolliver said the panel interviewed several national leaders in higher education about structure in an effort to gather information, not to issue policy.

"I asked the committee not to make any specific recommendations about the best structures and practices for the University of Illinois, but rather to gather, organize and present a cogent database upon which such recommendations might ultimately be made," Tolliver wrote in a cover letter.

Diehl said Monday that the UI is more like a multicampus university than a multisite university, "different animals."

The committee also concluded that centralization is more beneficial for functions such as business rather than core academic functions.

But some professors at Monday's meeting noted that even such functions as procurement of supplies don't always work well with centralization, arguing that ordering specialized research equipment is best done by people who are very familiar with the individual needs of a certain project.