This is the first of several meetings over the next 10 weeks in which regents will ultimately have to reduce yearly spending by $11 million for the current biennium while attempting to maintain the strength and reputation of the NSHE schools for fiscal year 2011.
Items to appear before the board include consideration of changing, suspending or repealing policy that would allow them to create alternative strategies, such as using capital improvement fee funds generated by student fees for the current biennium to supplement operating budget shortfalls. This could include increasing student tuition at specific campuses and implementing additional furloughs, pay reductions, hiring freezes, notice of non-reappointments or unit and program closures for faculty or the university.
Regents may also declare financial exigency, or bankruptcy, if they so choose. But for fiscal year 2011 at the University of Nevada, Reno, salary cuts, layoffs and reorganizing the school’s academic programs will be key strategies that President Milton Glick and Provost Marc Johnson will present to the board today.
Staff/salary reductions
Johnson said the university will have to lay off 46.5 positions among tenured faculty, administrators and classified employees to meet its budget cut target. “Not every department is affected, not every college is affected, but we’re doing this by a vertical approach,” Johnson said.
Possible positions to be cut were chosen by program, not by tenure, he said. “The program closure or reduction in size or reorganization is about the only tool available to us to face — to respond to a big budget reduction, that’s the mechanism,” he said. “We compared programs based on the number of people who graduate, the number of majors in the program and the ability to maintain other programs at the university if we close that program. I called that connectedness.”
During the university’s first round of cuts to help fill the state’s $33 million reduction in education, no faculty member actively filling a position was affected. This time, Johnson said, there is no way to avoid cutting into the campus’ smaller-output programs and faculty related to them.
Those who are to be terminated will be notified of their employee rights, Johnson said.
Possible UNR program restructuring
Johnson said many changes have been made since March 1 to the university’s original proposal for curricular review, which is the process by which administrators determine whether programs at the university should be reduced, organized or closed.
For example, Johnson said, the College of Agriculture’s animal biotechnology department is considered high-cost and its closure was protested by many of its students and community members. Its key program is pre-veterinary, which comprises half of all the college’s students. Complete closure is now off the table, though a rangeland ecology teaching position could be moved to fill a vacancy in natural resources and environmental resources. Johnson said keeping the college open is a priority for local ranchers and farmers and for organizations that maintain Nevada’s 87 percent open land held by the federal government.
“Much of the savings will be administration overhead costs,” Johnson said. “But the proposal is currently keeping separate the College of Agriculture with three remaining departments in the original proposal. … We’re always going to make it possible for students to study pre-vet and go on to vet schools."
Difficult approaches
Final decisions on cuts will be made at a Board of Regents meeting to be held in Reno in June. Today is meant to give an overview of the schools’ proposals, which have yet to be solidified.
Johnson said one certainty, however, is that the Board of Regents is shying away from claiming financial exigency, in which “certain legislative cuts of a magnitude of greater than 10 percent” would cause the NSHE to file bankruptcy, according to the NSHE’s code.
“The regents have already determined they’re not going to declare (financial exigency),” Johnson said. “Yes, nobody wants to go into financial exigency. It gives the faculty a lot less protection in terms of time and notice. … It also declares to the whole world we’re bankrupt and the regents anticipate it would take us a long time to live down that reputation. We (university and college administrators) urged them not to go that direction and they chose not to.”
Also to be considered at the meeting today is a request by Glick to approve two fees effective in fall 2010 to continue supporting academic success and performing arts. The academic success fee would charge undergraduate students enrolled in one or more credits $25 per semester and graduate students $5 per semester. The performing arts fee would be $5 for both undergraduate and graduate students.
Glick will also request approval to sell the UNR Fire Science Academy, a property of more than 408 acres in Carlin, Nev., for a proposed price of $10 million to be applied toward capital debt reduction.
Friday’s special meeting takes place at 9 a.m. at the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas.
Post a Comment