To: Pres. Tim Hall

From: The combined Exec. Committees of AAUP and FS

8 Dec. 2008

Re: Budget Difficulties

On Friday, 5 Dec., the Executive Committees of AAUP and Faculty Senate met to discuss the budget and brainstorm about some potential solutions to the short term problem.  We are most appreciative of the administration's commitment to shared governance, and in that spirit we offer the following list of possibilities.  Some may have already been tested by the administration, but others, we hope, will offer new suggestions. 

We operated under two principles:

1) any cuts made should have the least adverse impact on students,

2) we should try to minimize damage to the instructional mission of the university.

With those two ideas uppermost in our minds, we discussed a wide variety of possibilities and present the following in priority order. 

We understand that some of these ideas will also represent long term savings but we believe that some of them, number one for instance, could begin to save money immediately.

1.  Conduct a campus-wide energy audit to investigate recycling & other sustainability issues for immediate and long-term savings.  Such audits are done without charge and can be done immediately.  Simple acts such as turning out lights may result in small savings but small amounts add up.

2.  The Student Services budget has increased dramatically in the last several years.  We recognize that recruitment is critical and that should probably not  be subject to cuts, but it seems to make sense to begin with the areas which have received the largest recent increases.

3.  Physical Plant and Public Safety operations.  Any grounds issues that can be delayed, should be delayed so long as they will not involve damage to the existing facilities or grounds .

4.  Examine the cost/benefit of all university reorganizations.  This would include freezing current Dean positions that are unfilled, as well as releasing the funding for the unfilled Ed. Dept. positions that are connected to the Ed.D.

5.  Examine the Continuing and Extended Education departments for possible cost saving initiatives. 

6.  Place a freeze on university-funded athletic travel.  We recognize the value of athletics to long-term giving to the university as a whole, and we understand that there may be instances where travel reductions could affect some student athletes' scholarships, but the baseball team, e.g., has an extremely high number of games (about 50 in both spring and fall) and so it seems prudent to examine the schedule for a possible reduction. 

7.  Place a travel-freeze on administrative and faculty travel with allowance for some exceptions.  For faculty, if someone is chairing a session or giving a paper, they might receive full reimbursement for that one trip.  Here we would like to put tenure-track faculty at the top of the list.  For administrators who currently have no per diem, we would suggest that they too only attend a conference if it is absolutely necessary and that they be subject to the same per diem as everyone else.

8.  Faculty/Chairs, Deans, Directors and qualified Administrators could contribute up to one additional three-hour course without pay.  For faculty, it will mean one course above the standard load with no pay for one Fall semester. 

9.  Explore the cost/benefits of our summer teaching program.  How many students do we serve and is the saving adequate to offset the damage that would be done to students trying to complete degrees in a timely fashion?

The following suggestions would be even less palatable but under the most extreme of circumstances they might also be considered.

10.  Freeze temporary faculty lines.  It is difficult at best to see how this would be possible given the need to provide courses for our students.  We are already thin, and if we freeze these lines, we run the risk of hurting more than helping.

11.  Freeze new faculty lines.  The same arguments apply here as to number 10.  It is no good having more students if we can't offer them classes.

12.  Any kind of furlough would be at the very bottom and would have to be shared by administrators and staff.  We would want to see exact numbers about how much would  be saved on a daily basis.  Such a furlough would need to be taken while classes are in session, not in a break of some kind such as the beginning of August or over Christmas holidays.  Supervisors would have to decide how to implement such a decision.  We would be willing to work with the Provost to settle on a day to hold such a furlough.

We understand that university personnel policies would be temporarily suspended during this short-term crisis.  That is to say, if a faculty member on tenure-track is asked to teach five courses for one term, s/he  must not be held to the same standards for scholarship during that term.