After lawmakers hacked $11 million from the U’s budget, administrators asked each department to trim its costs by 4.7 percent. And Friday, department heads turned in what remains of their 2002 2003 budget.
Since last week, when the biology department laid off non-tenured professor lecturer Fred Montague?and days later reversed the decision?many junior faculty members have worried about job security. However, few colleges and departments have reported layoffs.
U administrators will review all department budgets this week and, unless the recommended cuts appear to be “really strange,” will approve them, said Paul Brinkman, associate vice president for budget and planning.
Brinkman describes the cuts as “decentralized.” U administrators authorized the department heads to decide the majority of budget cuts.
Brinkman said it would be hard to cut 4.7 percent from any budget without layoffs because most departments have more than 90 percent of their funds wrapped into faculty and staff salaries. The additional money?usually less than 8 percent?covers non personnel costs such as office supplies, phone bills and traveling expenses.
The Chronicle contacted nearly all academic departments to find out how they trimmed their budgets. For the most part, each department decided to cut largely from the non-personnel portion of its budget.
“Hitting the non-personnel budget is still a hard thing to do,” said Robert Newman, dean of the College of the Humanities. In a previous interview, Newman said the Utah State Legislature has not increased the non-personnel portion of the budget in 16 years and that this section of the budget has been “strained for years.”
Political Science Chairman Ron Hrebenar reported cutting the non-personnel budget, as did other departments, including communication, biology and sociology.
However, for the theatre department, cutting off the paper supply to copy machines is not an option, said Chairman David Dynak.
Student plays and other scenes are copied frequently for instructional purposes. “We couldn’t take the cuts by cutting our non-personnel budget without stopping the academic process,” Dynak said.
Instead, the theatre department’s cut will come in a reduction of faculty members. Dynak said this will not result in layoffs, but instead, two open positions will remain unfilled.
“What we are hoping to do is limp through this year and see where it carries us,” he said.
Many other departments will leave unfilled positions open to free up money used for salaries.
This may appear to be an easy solution, but unfilled faculty positions can also financially hurt departments because of the system used to appropriate funds.
U departments receive $60 for every lower-division credit hour and $65 for upper division credit hour they offer per student.
For instance, for an introductory course worth three credit hours, a department would receive $180 for each student enrolled.
If unfilled faculty positions mean fewer class sessions, these departments will receive less money than in previous years.
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dave Pershing said in a previous interview, “Above all we are trying everything we can to keep courses open and keep students on track for graduation.”
As for now, few colleges have announced layoffs. Only the College of Pharmacy and College of Fine Arts will cut jobs before July 2002, but have yet to say in which departments. Last week, the geography department laid-off one lab employee who had worked at the U for 11 years, because the lab had previously ran a deficit, said Phoebe McNeally, director of the Digit lab.
“It is an interesting time in the history of the U,” Brinkman said.
Chronicle reporters Adam Benson, Fred Thaller, Erika Johnson and Jared Whitley contributed to this story.