John Taylor, college of education dean

Money set aside for faculty retention, reinstating vital classes

UA administrators will announce today how cuts in colleges and departments campus-wide will be made to meet a 4 percent state-mandated budget cut.

The Arizona Legislature will convene a special session Nov. 13 to identify exactly how much the University of Arizona will have to cut, but UA administrators have decided to plan for the 4 percent - or $13.9 million - rescission, in hopes that the Legislature will not ask for a larger cut.

Deans across the UA agree that though a 4 percent cut is not healthy for their departments, a larger cut and cuts continuing into coming years would have a much more devastating effect.

"If we have to do another 4 percent (cut) next year, it would have a negative impact on class sizes and faculty workload," said John Taylor, dean of the College of Education.

Forty-seven adjuncts that would have lectured in education classes this spring will not be rehired, Taylor said. Other College of Education faculty will be teaching some of these classes, in addition to their regular workload.

Aside from a bigger workload, Taylor said that a large, prolonged budget cut could force him to cut education programs.

Another problem Taylor said he foresees is that a large portion - 96 percent - of his budget goes to payroll for faculty and classified staff.

A budget cut larger than 4 percent would have to come out of the payroll, meaning Taylor would have to lay off employees, he said. However, since many of the members of Taylor's staff are tenured, they cannot legally be terminated or laid off.

The best-case scenario would be a 4 percent budget cut in one year, with an opportunity to go back to this year's original budget, and keep 5 percent raises for all UA employees, said Gene Sander, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The nearly $10 million will come from colleges and academic departments, as well as other business-related university departments.

Deans and department heads who were responsible for identifying where the remaining money would come from have given their plans to Provost George Davis and President Peter Likins. They, along with Joel Valdez, senior vice resident for business affairs, are responsible for identifying where the cuts would come from.

Sander's budget cut plans for his college include: delaying spending on research equipment until next summer, borrowing faculty members from research and colleges outside the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to teach classes and increasing the faculty's workload.

Students will also be affected if a university-wide budget cut goes into effect.

Mark Zupan, dean of the College of Business and Public Administration, plans to drop elective courses with low enrollment, reduce the hours the computer lab in McClelland Hall is open and possibly close the computer lab on the first floor of the Economics building to accommodate budget cuts.

Zupan said because of the hiring freeze currently in place, open positions in his staff have left gaping holes in the services provided. In the marketing program, for example, Zupan said students did not receive their exams in time to take them for a class, because there was not a staff member to make copies of the exams.

UA administrators have identified sources for $3.96 million of the $13.9 million budget cut by scaling back various costs, leaving about $9.94 million to be announced today.

However, deans and department heads have identified an excess $500,000 where budget cuts could be made to help ease problems such as the loss of vital classes or faculty retention.

Davis said though deans and department heads had worked to avoid cutting tier one and first-year courses and courses necessary for the completion of a major, there would likely be some vital classes that deans and administrators had forgotten to protect, or which would be crowed.

"The $500,000 would answer a cry for opening up a new section, (or) retaining faculty thinking of leaving," Davis said.