Photos and illustration by Amy Winkler

Deans report: Fewer classes, no new technology, vacant positions

Less than five months after the Arizona Legislature first began chipping away at the state budget, the cuts are beginning to have an impact on students' lives.

Class availability has shrunk, student programs are in danger of losing funding, technology will not be upgraded and vacant faculty positions will remain empty, deans and administrators said.

These losses compound a crisis that had already victimized several university areas, most notably Arizona International College, which was eliminated last semester by the Arizona Board of Regents to help offset the cuts.

But despite that closure and a variety of other measures taken by administrators to help minimize the cuts, individual colleges were given the burden of finding a total of nearly $10 million for the initial 4 percent cuts University of Arizona administrators planned last semester.

An additional 0.56 percent cut, which was set by the state Legislature last month, has also resulted in additional cuts to colleges and departments.

Deans have been told to cut 3.3 percent from their budgets mid-year to pay for the $15.8 million needed to send back to the state, and the cuts' effects parallel each other throughout the university's colleges.

Class warfare

In the communication department, which makes up 18 percent of UA's largest college - social and behavioral sciences - concerns are focused on long-term damage.

Already, the department has struggled with maintaining a reasonable student-teacher ratio, and hiring new faculty will be nearly impossible now, said department head Michael Dues. Currently, the department has more than 1,100 students but only nine faculty members.

"We were in massive budget trouble to begin with," he said. "I don't know of any other department on campus that is in this serious of trouble."

He said the department has placed an emphasis on seniors - making sure that they get the classes they need to graduate.

UA President Peter Likins said the university has placed an across-the-board emphasis on making sure seniors can graduate.

"(Deans) eliminated a lot of classes this spring," Likins said. "We wanted to be sure that no classes were eliminated that would cause a student to fail to graduate."

Dues and several other department heads and deans said this philosophy has been carried out, but said other students are losing out in the process.

"We give priority to seniors," Dues said of the communication department. "If you're a junior or a minor or (interdisciplinary studies major) or pre-law, you're kind of shut out."

Dues said the department was able to find seats in upper division classes for all its seniors so that they can graduate in May, but that non-seniors may suffer from that move because seniors are filling so many spots.

"If you're a junior, you may have trouble getting any classes," he said. "When you're a junior and get to your senior year, you're further behind. We have a long-term problem over the next three years."

The psychology department - also in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences - is facing the same kind of problems.

"Somebody retired who we normally would have replaced," said department head Lynn Nadel. "But we didn't. So we shifted people. We couldn't afford to replace that person."

Eller College of Business and Public Administration Dean Mark Zupan said his college will put off computer upgrades which may cause Internat and e-mail services to shut down more regularly. He also said the college fund-raising will cut back on projects, which are vital as the college grows.

"The more cuts, the worse the issue gets," Zupan said. "We asked individual units to tighten their belts and worked with them to minimize harm."

Forces colliding

Associate Dean of Students Alexis Hernandez said improvements in advising have been held up and the implementation of any changes will come slowly because of the cuts.

In October, the Advising Task Force, which has spent months studying how to reform student advising, handed back $1 million to the university to prepare for budget cuts.

Associated Students of the University of Arizona President Ray Quintero, the co-chair of the task force - which will release the first of its recommendations about advising reform on Feb. 4 - has not been asked to send back any more money.

"The university has not really said anything would be taken from advising yet," he said. "But last time, President Likins was very supportive of advising and said there would be money for that."

The task force was sprang from tuition hike negotiations last spring, when student lobbyists agreed to a raise in tuition in exchange for advising reform.

Hernandez said the Arizona Blue Chip program, which builds leadership skills for students beginning in their freshman year, will be one on the cutting board. He said that if the program does not get funding, it will not exist in the fall.

Another student service, the Integrated Learning Center, is still waiting for important state-of-the-art technology and additional staff to run it.

Randy Richardson, interim vice president for undergraduate education, said he wants the technology installed as soon as possible, and with it would come 15 new staff positions.

He said $850,000 was cut from the center before its opening, and he will work to get that money back in the next fiscal year.

Likins has said on several occasions that he wants the ILC running at full capacity - which would include opening the Media Center, a place for instructors to catalog their classes so students can access them - but he has not determined when it will open.

Positions on target

For now, deans are avoiding laying faculty off by leaving positions open, but next year, the situation will become more complicated.

Oscar Blazquez, assistant director of landscape architecture, said the school had the money for its 3.3 percent cut, but next year, there will be no vacant positions left.

"If this happens again next year, we'll have to cut someone," he said.

Likins said more cuts will happen next year, but he cannot predict how much the Legislature will ask him to eliminate.

"We're trying to figure out how to prepare for what's going to come down next year," he said. "We know there will be additional cuts - whether they will be smaller or larger than this year is something that we cannot foresee at this point."

Patty Ota, senior associate to the president, said if cuts continue next year, problems will persist.

"In the second year (of the cuts), we're going to make some permanent cuts," she said. "There are bound to be layoffs."

Nik Groesser, executive assistant for human resources, said there are 35 fewer adjunct faculty - instructors who do not have tenure and are hired on a per semester basis - this semester than last.

He did not know, however, how many of those losses resulted form layoffs.

Cyndy Cole and Rachel Williamson contributed to this report.