Retirement issue fuels freeze
Expected retirements, new hires overextend CAS budget

BY MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

The hiring freeze facing the College of Arts and Sciences is due largely to an over-anticipation of faculty retirements, structural problems, and commitments made prior to the inception of the college, President William R. Greiner and Provost David Triggle told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee last week.

"The good news is, a lot of great new faculty have been hired (in the CAS)," Greiner reported. "The bad news is, if we continue to spend at the current rate­the rate that started when the fiscal year began in July­we would have the College of Arts and Sciences exceeding the state appropriation by somewhere in the order of $2-$3 million."

He added that Triggle is working with CAS Dean Kerry Grant to see that the expenditure rate in the college is brought down closer to, and then in line with, its appropriation.

"In order to accomplish this, over the next year or 18 months, there will be a tightness in hiring and some other things," Greiner said. "Hopes for new appointments will be delayed and we'll have to wait for retirements to actually occur."

Triggle explained that most of the 32 faculty lines that have turned over in the CAS since 1998 were due to retirements. However, many of those faculty members who were expected to retire are still on the payroll because of retirement incentives or simply because they intend to leave but have not actually left.

"We have hired against those lines and are still paying old ones," said Triggle, adding that the CAS hired 38 full-time, tenure-track faculty and several full-time equivalents during this same time period.

"The issue around the College of Arts and Sciences is significantly due to an over-anticipation of what was going to happen with faculty retirements, but it will certainly require some caution over the next year in terms of hiring," said Triggle. "Nonetheless, a great deal of the hiring that would have been done has, in fact, already been done."

Triggle noted that the issue was complicated by the fact that Grant took over as dean of the new college in the middle of an academic year, by which time a lot of "commitments had been out there from the previous structures."

Greiner noted that UB is now in an era of "all-funds budgeting."

The new notion is that every dollar, regardless of its source, is usable for operations of the university. Although "we're used to first spending all of the state appropriation," said Greiner, "there are tradeoffs that can be made between one kind of dollar and another."

He said that over the next several months, the university probably will have to bring down the nominal allocations to the units to line up with what really is available for expenditure. "Collectively, that won't mean the units get to spend less than they have in the past," he said. "In making the transition into this, we're going to have to get people to think differently and creatively about the ways they spend all of the moneys available."

Greiner's report to the FSEC also included a response to environmental concerns among members of the university community about the removal of seven trees on the south shore Lake LaSalle to accommodate more new apartment-style housing for students.

He noted that there are significant expanses of natural areas on the North Campus, which will continue to be preserved in the years ahead, but said that "some of the beautiful, interesting spots on our campus are not natural" and cited the two lakes as an example.

Greiner said that the lakes serve a functional purpose, since they were built to allow for drainage. "They were created by people, and as far as I'm concerned, they can be manipulated by people for the good of the institution," he said. "If we were going to use that site for anything other than a stand of trees, it turns out that the trees had to come down because you have to raise the level of the site to make it usable."

Greiner acknowledged that those who have environmental concerns should express them, but maintained that cutting down the trees "is a reasonable tradeoff for housing that will serve thousands of students over the next 20 years."