URBANA — Updated numbers on faculty departures from the University of Illinois show 70 resignations over the past 12 months, a 59 percent increase over the previous year.

The total number of "retention cases" the campus dealt with — professors who received outside offers and were seeking incentive packages to stay — was up 41 percent in that period, to 151, from 104 and 110 the previous two years, campus officials said Monday.

While high, both represent slightly lower percentage increases than the previous 12-month reporting period in May, interim Provost Ed Feser said.

Feser and interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson shared the data with the campus Senate Executive Committee. The numbers are from August 2015 to August 2016.

Of the other retention cases, 61 professors elected to stay at Illinois, two took leaves of absence without pay, and 18 are pending, Feser said.

The campus does year-to-year comparisons periodically during the school year, Feser said, so "it's a moving target over the course of the year."

Earlier May-to-May figures showed 50 tenured faculty members had left the UI, double the number from the previous 12 months. And the number of professors seeking retention packages was up 47 percent during that period, from 84 to 124.

"Basically, what happens during the course of the year is that you're winning some, and you're losing some," Feser said. "By the time we got to August, we had better outcomes."

Still, he said the campus would rather see the percentages closer, "because then we'd be winning and losing the same. The fact is that we're losing at a higher rate."

Last August, the campus had seen 46 faculty members resign in the previous 12 months because of outside offers; in 2014, the number was 42, Feser said.

Wilson said deans and department heads are working hard to keep people, but it has been a struggle.

"It will be an increasing challenge going forward if we can't get some budget stability," she said. "I think everybody's anxious about this. We continue to emphasize to the state, our legislators, the governor, this is a really critical issue. It is going to be even more critical going forward."

Professor Kim Graber said her department, kinesiology, lost 25 percent of its faculty.

"We have some big losses in education as well," Feser said. "Every area has suffered."

The campus will welcome more than 70 new tenure-system faculty this year, about half as many as each of the last two years.

JULIE WURTH