A&S Planning and Budget Commmittee Minutes Feb 16 1999
- Members attending:
- George Barnes
- Ginger Brown (Staff Rep)
- Julia Dietrich (ex officio)
- Stephen Edgell
- Robert Kimball
- Nathan Schwartz (Chair)
- Wiley Williams
- Visitors attending:
- Shirley Willihnganz (Acting Dean)
The majority of the meeting was a discussion between the Committee and Dean Willihnganz concerning the 1% (of all salary lines) CAR reallocation within the College for next year's salary increment. She reported that, in a recent meeting she had with the Provost, it was made clear that we must do this reallocation.
At our last meeting, it was recommended that more information was needed for this decision making process on the following questions: What was the size of the rollover from last year and where did it come from; will it be there each year? What are other units doing to find their 1%; how is A&S; different from them in having opportunities for finding areas to cut; how does being the undergraduate unit impact us differently from other units; can other units cut student credit hours without the same effect and resulting prohibition from the Provost? The Dean reported that the rollover was a little over $700K last year. About half of this was from two sources: S&E; remainders within departments that those departments retain and funds left in lecture lump sum that was reallocated to departments. Obviously, this money is not available for meeting the current CAR reduction. The rest of the money was within the central administration of the College and was designated for enhancements to information technology within the College. We were under a mandate to find funds for such an enhancement. No breakdown on how this sum of money was found was available at the time of the meeting.
In conversations with several other Deans, it was learned that they are scrounging also. None of them have any available money with which to make the 1% CAR reallocation. It appears that no one has a magic bullet. Most of them are planning to cut a little here and a little there, but will obtain most of the money needed from open lines in their units, with the hope of finding money in the future to recoup the lines. The Provost will be sending written guidelines to each Dean, but these are not out yet. A March 5 deadline for submission of A&S;'s plan has been set.
The current thinking in A&S; is to use open lines to provide most of the money. We will attempt to find as much of the amount needed as possible from other sources. One example is to combine some under-enrolled sections and cancel some others to produce some savings in lecture lump sum spending. That savings would be applied to the reallocation, but it will likely not be a significant proportion of the $280K needed.
The Dean requested that the Committee attempt to generate ideas for how cuts could be made that would have minimal impact on the College and also to generate ideas of how revenue might be increased.
The discussion turned to the issue of spending the money committed this year to technology update within the College. Dave Baugh is still coalescing the data. A very preliminary worksheet was distributed. It shows that the College has 75 pre-386 machines, 88 386, 179 486 and 418 after 486 machines as well as 221 Macs. Members of the Committee pointed out that many of the oldest machines were not critical and had already been replaced, but were being kept as they served some function. A rough estimate was that 300 machines would need replacing at a cost of around $2K per for a total of $600K. The report also showed that 589 PCs were already connected to ethernet, 42 were still on the isn and 146 not connected. Again, not all of the PCs need to be connected to ethernet. It was estimated that another $50K would be needed to put all of the College on ethernet. Add to this another $50K for software for the new PCs, and the total is $700K. This is close to the amount budgeted for this year. The plan is still being developed. The Committee suggested that, with the number of machines the College and other units (all units had to reallocate for technology upgrading) would be buying soon, the University should be able to cut a very good deal with someone.
The Committee discussed in very general terms two upcoming University changes that will have major budgetary impacts within the College. The first is the SACS requirement that within each department at least 75% of all student credit hours be generated by full time, permanent faculty. The other is the new, transferrable, general education requirement policy being mandated by the State.
The next meeting was set for Thursday, February 25, at 1:00 in the Dean's conference room.
The time for the meeting having more than expired, the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted, Steve Edgell
