University President Dan Mote urged students, faculty and staff not to “let up” the drive for excellence in the face of continuing budget cuts in his annual State of the Campus address yesterday.
For much of the speech, Mote touted the university’s accomplishments — raising a record $518 million in research funds, admitting the most academically accomplished freshman class ever and winning national championships in field hockey and men’s soccer. But he also said it is impossible to ignore the impact severe budget reductions will have on the university.
Since the state slashed $37.8 million from the university budget during the summer, Mote said, administrators have been concocting new ways to save money and jobs.
Mote mentioned a strategy used by the University of California, Berkeley — one of this university’s peer institutions — when he worked there in the 1990s. By encouraging eligible professors to retire, the university was able to cut costs by hiring less expensive young professors, while many older faculty members stayed on at the university after retiring, he said.
But most of the strategies and ideas Mote mentioned in his speech were vague.
Mote didn’t provide any new details on state-mandated furloughs, but repeated the university is seriously considering the idea of shutting down the entire campus for a number of days. Some employees have expressed interest in working part-time or looking to sources other than the state for their paychecks, Mote said.
In a short question-and-answer session after the speech, Mote said the university is doing fairly well compared to schools like the ones in the University of California system, where staff are being asked to take as many as 26 furlough days. At this university, the highest-paid employees would probably be asked to take 10 furlough days.
Despite all the attention paid to the budget crisis, the university’s “greatest long-term challenge,” Mote said, are facilities — there is a $600 million backlog for building renovations and the university needs 1.3 million more square feet of space.
“We’re short of space, and what we have is bad,” Mote said, adding state money for construction projects and salaries come from two different pools, and money earmarked for one cannot be spent on the other.
Adding more student beds and improving campus facilities are a key part of the university’s strategic plan, which just finished its first year.
The plan, which lays out a 10-year road map for the university to become a world-class institution, also acts as a guide through the university’s money troubles, Mote said.
“On the one hand we had a little bit of bad luck to begin implementing our strategic plan in this economic downturn,” Mote said. “On the other hand, it was a bit of good luck to have a plan in place in this economic downturn. … Because we know where we want to invest and what we want to invest in.”
The university has already begun implementing many aspects of the plan, including the overhaul of the university’s general education requirements, the construction of more housing both on- and off-campus and the creation of new study abroad and living-and-learning programs, Mote said.
Mote said this trend would continue.
“Despite [the budget], we will implement exciting and new initiatives,” he said. “We must never let up.”
University Senate Chair Elise Miller-Hooks said optimism is important in this time of economic uncertainty.
“I thought he gave an excellent overview of how our campus is moving forward despite the budgetary climate,” Miller-Hooks said. “I think President Mote is trying to get us off that topic and focus on the positive.”
But some students were left unsatisfied with the lack of specifics in Mote’s speech.
“Either story is worrisome,” undergraduate Senator Bob Hayes said. “Either the university has no idea what they’re going to do about the budget cuts, or they’re not telling students, faculty and staff what they’re doing about the budget cuts.”
Student Government Association Business Legislator Matthew Bernstein had similar concerns.
“He didn’t really give me any specific plan of what the university is doing to preserve our talent or attract new teachers,” Bernstein said. “It seemed like a pep talk — like we’re just trying to make ourselves feel better, which is not what we needed.”
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