Senate panel reports on CAS budget
Budget Priorities Committee report urges faculty involvement in budget process

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

A comprehensive report detailing the budget deficit and financial-management problems facing the College of Arts and Sciences and how the college is addressing these issues was presented Tuesday to the Faculty Senate by the senate's Budget Priorities Committee (BPC).

Susan Hamlen, chair of the BPC and associate professor of accounting and law, presented the report, explaining that the committee's intention was to develop a factual account of the major budget issues, including how the deficit occurred, how it is being managed, its impact on the college and the panel's recommendations.

She noted that the only constraint the committee had in completing the task was that the report had to meet the approval of CAS Dean Kerry Grant and Provost David Triggle before it was released to the university community.

"It is increasingly important that the faculty understand what the budget process is and to get the faculty and administration together talking in a productive way about these issues," said Hamlen. "Although the statement focuses on CAS, its general recommendations apply to all units," she added.

The university's new "all funds" budget strategy calls for units to align expenditures with their own available revenues, whether they come from tax support, tuition, sponsored research, endowments or other sources.

Hamlen cited two major recommendations. The first, she said, is that some process be put into place to measure consequences and to evaluate the costs and benefits of budget decisions. Secondly, she said, "we feel it is extremely important that (CAS) faculty be very much involved in the decision-making process."

The report states that "the process of setting priorities, growing revenues and managing costs will not succeed without the support of the major players-the faculty and staff"-and urges "all deans to encourage (their) involvement."

According to the report, the CAS's state-budget appropriation officially stands at about $45.8 million for the current fiscal year, but $2.5 million of that total is unavailable due to accumulated prior shortfalls. In addition, CAS this year received a permanent base reduction of about $2.2 million, while its expenditures increased by nearly $3.4 million from 1997-99. The report states that "unless decisive measures were taken, the cumulative effect would have been a shortfall of more than $4.8 million by the end of the current year and would have grown each year until the budget was (balanced)."

The reason that expenditures rose so rapidly between 1997 and 1999, according to the report, is due to increases in salaries, including adjustments to retain the best faculty, counteroffers to retain funded faculty in research-intensive disciplines and the hiring of relatively expensive full-time visiting faculty to handle increased course loads.

While 57 full-time tenure-track faculty members were hired during this three-year period, 65 tenured faculty members left the university, many through retirement, which created a problem since additional outlays are required for retirement incentives and many retirees are rehired on a short-term basis to teach one or more courses.

The report says that the college expects to eliminate its remaining deficit by the end of fiscal year 2002 by increasing income from tuition and sponsored research, limiting hiring for the next two years and reducing and deferring operating costs.

The college anticipates that salary expenditures will decline by $200,000 in 2000 when retired faculty actually leave the payroll. The report also notes that the college may save an additional $1.6 million in 2001 by not filling vacant faculty lines. The college also expects to save an additional $1 million by avoiding about $400,000 in faculty setups due to reduced hiring and restricting travel and some purchases.

Some strategies under consideration by the CAS include:

- Hiring lecturers, part-time faculty or doctoral students to teach instead of full-time visiting faculty

- Hiring, at the senior level, associate professors with solid funding instead of expensive "star" faculty

- Examining faculty workload and departmental resource utilization, and evaluating sabbaticals to see if teaching can be covered without significant additional expense

Some concerns cited by the committee in the report include: How will the substitution of lecturers, part-time faculty and doctoral students for full-time visiting faculty affect the quality of instruction? What is the impact of faculty turnover and vacant lines on research reputation? What processes are in place to monitor the college's performance in instructional and research activities?

The senate forwarded the report to the CAS Policy Committee, the college's governance structure, to use as a starting point for its own budget deliberations.