Big Ten conference not all athletics, officials say

When the University of Nebraska wanted to join the Big Ten, the conference’s academic provosts were asked for their views first.

This sharing, debating and collaborating throughout the Big Ten happens often, said IU Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald.

“There are tens of millions of dollars in savings because of the Big Ten on the nonathletic side,” Theobald said.

While athletics in the Big Ten tend to take center stage, IU receives other benefits academically for being a member of the conference.

“The Big Ten is unusual in that there is a very high degree of collaboration at every level, not just athletics,” IU Spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation is a group for all Big Ten universities, as well as the University of Chicago, to collaborate and improve academic missions, share experiences, work on programs and advance campus resources.

“The CIC is in essence a way for members of the Big Ten conference to have sort of an academic collaboration that is similar to the athletic collaboration that happens in the Big Ten athletic conference,” said Faith Hawkins, chief of staff to the vice president for research.

Through the CIC, conference schools are able to collaborate because of how much they have in common with one another, Hawkins said. These characteristics, including size, typical student body, public funding and more, she said, are more similar than dissimilar.

“The challenges that they face, both from an administrative perspective and often in terms of scholarship and how to teach effectively, are very similar,” Hawkins said. “By having one another to collaborate with and confer with on that, it becomes a source for sort of collective wisdom.”

There are also times when CIC schools will collaborate on particular interests.
One example, Hawkins said, is the Great Lakes Alliance for Sustainable Energy Research, which is partially funded by IU and other members of the CIC.

The logic behind creating the research consortium was tackling school and Midwest energy challenges. Clean power generation, transportation systems and energy efficiency might be more effective if done on a regional level, Hawkins said.

Members of the CIC work together to create solutions for universal problems schools and  the communities they inhabit face.

“Because of where all of the CIC colleges are located, we tend to have similar climate and similar energy needs because our winters are more alike and our energy needs are more similar than, say, to the University of Florida,” Hawkins said. “The idea was if we bring together some of our expertise and funds, we might be able to make some breakthrough in energy research.”

One aspect of the CIC’s collective knowledge comes from university research. All Big Ten schools are research universities, and each has a lot to offer the others in terms of how they do function, said Steve Martin, associate vice president for IU’s Office of
Research Administration.

“On the research side it helps us to know how everyone is dealing with changes, as well as talking about how to work together to be more competitive,” Martin said.