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<p>Colleagues, there was a chairs and directors retreat today that included discussions of the budget cut. I wanted to share my understanding of what is being said as well as a few other items.</p>
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<p>1. The budget “cut” is truly a “recession.” Which means that KU is reducing its baseline budget to $20 some million less than it was last year. In the College this recession is more than $6 million. I think of this as a claw-back of existing funds. This
means a “new normal” budget that stays that way unless revenue increases from the state, tuition, student credit hours, or through cost centers.
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<p>2. For us this was a cut to our operating budget that amounts to a few thousand dollars, but also that we can’t hire this academic year or next unless that is supported by funds outside the normal budget. There is no hiring freeze, but effectively it is.</p>
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<p>3. This is not a great year to seek a retention offer. If you go on the market you should not assume that KU will make a salary counteroffer.
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<p>4. The new GTA baseline salaries are because of the union. Ironically we already paid our GTAs more than this but because of the claw back of existing funds, we were also denied the ability to use our existing GTA funds to increase our GTA salaries even
higher this summer (like we had done in the past) because those funds will not be there any longer as of October. Likewise, PRO is dead to save money and based on chair input, but my sense is that the perceived time saving for faculty will soon be lost to
another system or other means (e.g. specialized formatting to CVs; the King is dead, long live the King).</p>
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<p>5. A couple of bright spots after combining this info with info from endowment: the College is increasing the funds available in the internal REI grant process (call for proposals in September), but those proposals will be more successful if they include
projects that include collaboration with UG or grad students. Again ironically to me, this model is what we have used for our Thompson and Johnson funds. In addition, new funds are being sought to create revolving named research chair positions that would
include funds over several years. These awards would likely be used in place of retention offers, but it’s not clear to me that the funds are yet committed.</p>
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<p>6. The recent pattern of events has made more me more committed to using our existing resources and newly available resources for supporting faculty research. More on this later.</p>
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<p>7. Enrollment and credit hours are up, and for the first time in years the College increased more than any other portion of the University.</p>
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<p>8. In principle the interim Dean and Provost appear to support the email proposal you received yesterday from the faculty senate.</p>
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<p>I am happy to talk further with you about this or hold a faculty meeting if you’d like. In my experience you’d prefer not to waste time with an informational faculty meeting so I’ll leave it to you about further discussion.</p>
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<p>Please excuse any grammar errors, it’s already been a long week.</p>
<p>DHM<br>
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