In a Sept. 8 memorandum, Wilcox asked Hillard to devise a list of recommendations for Olin and other student health service related topics by Oct. 16 — the same deadline for college deans to submit their suggestions for short- and long-term budget reductions. The recommendations represent efforts to reduce MSU’s operating budget by 15 percent to 20 percent throughout the next three years and also support activities that enhance the university’s future.

Prior to Hillard’s deadline, university officials discussed the possibility of moving Olin to the MSU Clinical Center on Service Road as one potential cost-saving measure.

“It’s not ‘pick up the health center and put it some place else,’” Wilcox said Tuesday. “It really is about service, funding, financing and lots of other things. I’ve got a series of recommendations on my desk about student support more broadly, about health issues on campus more broadly … and I hope to have something out there in a couple weeks.”

Senior Associate Provost June Youatt said student health services recommendations remain in a study phase.

“There isn’t much of an update on student health issues,” Youatt said in an e-mail. “As the provost said (Tuesday) at ECAC, we’re looking at some of the preliminary recommendations about student health services and how they may or may not fit with recommendations on student support services, so absolutely no new developments. We’re in a study phase.”

Olin officials will wait for Wilcox’s final word before assembling a team to handle the recommendations, Olin Director Glynda Moorer said. She said university officials requested Olin recommendations be implemented as soon as next fall.

“We’re busy seeing patients now with the flu, so we haven’t had a lot of time to think about (potential job losses),” Moorer said. “We are concerned, if we do have to move, about renovations and if they can be done by the fall. … It is a short time line.”