URBANA — The number of tenure-track faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has shrunk in recent years, but campus officials are hoping to reverse that trend with new hiring programs now in full swing.

A previous hiring freeze, voluntary retirement program, and faculty being recruited to other universities have all led to lower numbers of tenure-track faculty in Urbana. Consequently, more instructors are teaching classes, existing faculty take on additional teaching load and class sizes have increased.

"Our numbers are down and we do need to rebuild," said Barbara Wilson, vice provost at the University of Illinois. "We're seeing a slow increase (in hiring), but we can do better."

To counteract the recent downward trend, the campus has approved 133 tenure-track faculty searches. Advertisements for those positions are being posted this fall, candidates are expected to be interviewed this coming semester and the new faculty members will start in August 2012.

In addition to regular faculty searches being launched around campus, the university has a new hiring program, called the Illinois Strategic Excellence Hiring Program, aimed at bringing to campus senior faculty who will foster interdisciplinary research across units, Wilson said. The UI also has a program called Targets of Opportunity that supports recruiting faculty from underrepresented groups.

The hiring programs do not "completely" make up for the loss of tenure-track faculty in recent years, according to Wilson.

"We are definitely rebuilding faculty strength on the campus," she said.

The head count of tenure-track faculty on the Urbana campus stands at 1,871 this academic year, down from 1,963 in 2010-2011. (Numbers for the 2011-2012 academic year are unofficial as of Nov. 23, according to the UI's Division of Management Information.) Ten years ago, in 2002-2003, the head count of tenure-track faculty stood at 1,927. In a review of the last decade, the number peaked at 2,100 in 2007-2008.

Part-time and visiting

During the last decade, the head count of instructors teaching classes increased from 672 in 2002-2003 to 853 this school year. The head count of visiting faculty generally has remained more steady throughout that same period, ranging from 156 in 2003-2003 to a high of 176 in 2004-2005 and back to 154 this year.

Nationwide, hiring part-time faculty is on the rise, said John Ikenberry, president and co-founder of HigherEdJobs in State College, Pa.

"The real driver here is cost savings," he said. "Colleges and universities tend to pay these faculty less in terms of compensation and benefits, if any, and you also have scalability. If you commit to a full-time faculty member, that person is on the payroll continuously. With part-time or adjunct faculty, the school can increase or decrease its staffing depending on how student enrollments go," Ikenberry said.

At the College of Applied Health Sciences, there are six faculty searches under way.

"We have several department searches going on now, partly as a consequence of faculty being recruited elsewhere," in addition to some professors retiring, said the college's dean, Tanya Gallagher.

To cope with some faculty leaving, the college has brought in visiting faculty and practitioners from the community, she said.

Because of the need to rebuild the faculty across campus, Wilson said, university officials felt "we needed to energize these searches."

Four areas of strength

They've done so by identifying four, broad-based, distinctive strengths at the university. For the strategic excellence hiring program, the provost's office is supporting hiring in four areas: information technology and society; human health and wellness; energy and sustainability; culture, communication and global issues.

The provost's office has committed $75,000 toward the recurring salary for each of the positions. The participating departments or units will cover the rest of the person's salary.

The office received 18 proposals and approved nine of them. The units that proposed the positions are now preparing to advertise the positions and, after that, invite candidates to campus.

"We are very excited about the Illinois Strategic Excellence Hiring Program," Gallagher said.

The college is one of the units on campus participating in the new program for recruiting senior faculty. The provost's office approved a position in "bio-social-behavioral approaches to health and wellness."

The provost's office also approved two positions in computational and genomic medicine.

"It's a very new approach. We're trying to build strength in computation and genomic medicine," said animal sciences Professor Bryan White. One hire probably would not make a difference, but multiple hires will make a difference in building critical mass in the program, he said.

Units supporting those positions include the College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, College of Applied Health Sciences, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, he said.

The field is "very, very competitive. People who do this are pretty unique, and searching at a senior level is important. Being able to offer a new theme in the institution and being able to offer a number of junior hires in order to strengthen or provide critical mass — those are important recruiting tools," White said.

What's unusual about the strategic excellence hiring program is the faculty hired will be ostensibly shared among two or more departments or units. It's also unusual in that although several colleges and units will help recruit the senior faculty, the people hired might ultimately not be housed within that unit. But despite that, the colleges and units are willing to take that risk and "roll the dice" to see if the new hire will land in their department, White said.

"This is an interdisciplinary approach. A lot of us are realizing that's the best route to success. Science really has evolved into an interdisciplinary field. That's why the Institute for Genomic Biology and the Beckman Institute have been so successful," he said.

White estimated his own department is down about 25 percent in faculty numbers in recent years.

"We are not going to be able to replace all that faculty," he said.

Looking ahead

By examining job postings for higher eduction, it looks like the University of Illinios is not the only institution in hiring mode again.

Job postings for full-time faculty were up nationwide during the third quarter of 2011 compared with one year ago. (But they're still being outpaced by the increase in part-time faculty.) Back in what Ikenberry described as the "heat of the recession during 2009," a lot of colleges and universities cut back on their job postings.

"Next year will be very interesting. If you look at the employment trends in higher education in the last year, postings really surged between 2009 and 2010 in large part because 2009 was such a down year. In comparison, it looked very robust over the last year," Ikenberry said.

In the coming years, the university is not going to replace every body with another body, such as a faculty member whose speciality is the same as the previous one, Wilson said.

When talking with departments about hiring plans, university officials are asking questions such as, "How can you think more strategically in the future?" she said.

It may be that the unit will not be able to cover all teaching and research areas previously covered. In fact, she said, the unit may become stronger if its staff think about the unit's strengths and depths in a number of key areas instead of its breadth across a lot of different areas.

"We are asking units to be more careful and strategic in hiring," Wilson said.

STAFFING AT UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS OVER THE YEARS

This chart shows University of Illinois faculty and instructor staffing through the years.

First row of numbers is the headcount for tenure-system faculty on all funds. Second line is headcount for "visiting faculty" on all funds. Third line is headcount for "other instructors," including lecturers, on all funds.

All numbers are official except for this academic year: 2011-2012.