URBANA -- Faculty leaders surprised President Michael Hogan on Wednesday with assertions of low morale and lingering shame over an admissions scandal at the University of Illinois' flagship campus.

Senate Executive Committee Chairwoman Joyce Tolliver told Hogan that Urbana has a world-class set of scholars eager to engage with administration in shared governance.

"So far, it seems to us that our invitations, our requests, and our pleas to work with us have not had much response, and we have not seen the sort of intellectual engagement about the future of our university that we are hungry for," she said.

"Indeed," Tolliver added, "major structural changes are being imposed on us against our expressed advice, without benefit of our advice, or with advice that is rushed, at administrative insistence, which prevents consideration as carefully as would be desirable."

She concluded by saying "right now, Mr. President, we are on the cusp of a crisis, if we have not already entered it. Our campus is suffering and will continue to suffer if we continue the way we are going now.

"The question I would like to pose is, What can we do together to save our campus and our university?"

Another senator, kinesiology and community health Professor Kim Graber, said there were concerns that faculty reputations were harmed by the so-called Category I admissions of connected candidates two years ago.

Later, vice chairman Nicholas Burbules said there were also concerns that "morale" issues could stop the campus from finding a top chancellor candidate in its search.

Hogan heard the comments, then said that if the group wanted to discuss some of the concerns such as personnel, it would be "more productive" to go into executive session, not debate in front of the press.

He first addressed Category I, which resulted in the deposings of a president, a chancellor and most of the trustees, before Hogan was hired from the University of Connecticut in May 2010.

The UI is "way past the admissions scandal," the president said, adding he rarely hears a reference to it.

He said faculty members were not to blame for Category I; "people know exactly who was responsible for it" and "adjustments were made" by the trustees.

As for the other issues, Hogan asserted that his email invitation to the meeting had not prepared him to talk about them, and that he "didn't want to get into 'he said, she said.'"

On Monday, the senate voted for a resolution affirming "its strongest disapproval of university-wide initiatives that are carried out with no, or merely token, engagement with statutorily mandated shared governance processes."

"These are not really just my decisions," Hogan told the committee. "I report to the board" of trustees.

He said he had spent more time dealing with faculty governance in his year here than in his previous administrative history.

"I don't want to sit here and have this fall on my shoulders," he said, later saying "this has been hurtful to me."

The state's financial crisis, which precipitated many of the restructuring efforts, has been long building, he said.

"I didn't create a crisis when I came here; I walked into a crisis," Hogan said.

"I need all the help I can get from faculty."

But in senate resolutions, he said, "mostly I hear 'no.'"

Repeatedly, Hogan said the board of trustees is ultimately responsible for final decisions. He said he would be glad to sit down with the committee and go over the general rules and statutes.

But he said he could deal with the ongoing budget crisis, and that's why he was hired to run the UI after, he said, successfully doing so at Ohio State University and the University of Connecticut.

He said the trustees, especially Chairman Chris Kennedy, had given "unprecedented access" to faculty.

As for the information technology change, which among other things put all the campuses under a central CIO, he urged, "Give it a chance."

Senator Alex Scheeline, a chemistry professor, said the board of trustees was the best he had ever seen, and Tolliver agreed.

After the meeting, Tolliver met with Hogan and said she was sorry the president found the remarks "hurtful" or felt he was "blindsided."

She said she hoped the discussion would prove fruitful in improving communication.

Tolliver said the invitation to meet may have been misconstrued.

"Looking back, he might have interpreted the message more narrowly than it was intended," she said.

Outside the Henry Administration Building, Hogan said he was proud of what the UI has achieved and proud of the board and the faculty.