Current board members Mitchell Vogel and Fred Giertz have been elected to continue serving on the State Universities Retirement System (SURS) Board of Trustees by the System’s annuitants. The election was conducted April 1 – May 3 by YesElections, an impartial election services company.
Vogel who is a professor emeritus and former chair of Educational Leadership at Northeastern Illinois University, will serve out the remaining three years of a six-year term. Giertz, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will serve a six-year term. Both terms begin July 15.
There were 68,262 members eligible to vote in the election; 8,273 members voted.
The final vote totals are:
Three-Year Term
Mitchell Vogel – 4,433
Michael Fortner – 1,875
David Sinason – 1,780
Six-Year Term
Fred Giertz – 6,155
William Marzano – 1,900
There are also two elected active-member seats open on the board beginning in July. Andriy Bodnaruk and Scott Weisbenner were the only candidates to return petitions with the necessary signatures to qualify for the seats. For that reason, it was not necessary to hold an active-member trustee election. Bodnaruk, a professor and interim head of the department of finance at the University of Illinois Chicago, and Weisbenner, a William G. Karnes professor in mergers and acquisitions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will begin serving six-year terms on July 15. They will replace current trustees Aaron Ammons and Antonio Vasquez, who did not run for re-election.
The SURS Board of Trustees consists of 11 trustees: five appointed by the governor including the chair of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, four active members elected by SURS active members and two annuitants elected by the annuitants of the System.
Other members of the SURS Board of Trustees include: Chairperson John Atkinson, Richard Figueroa, Jamie-Clare Flaherty, Scott Hendrie, John Lyons, Steven Rock and Collin Van Meter.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 1600.740 of the Illinois Administrative Code, there is a seven-day challenge period beginning May 5, 2021. If, after that date, there is not a legitimate dispute, the election results will be certified by the SURS Board of Trustees.