Volume 67, No. 26
WWW.PANAMERICANONLINE.COM
April 28, 2011
PIECE OF THE PIE
Tough decisions on funding lie ahead.
How much will have to be sliced from the budget at UTPA? Senate proposal
By Kristen Cabrera The Pan American
Imagine feeding a group of students with one large pizza and it being enough to satisfy the group. But the next day you pick up your pizza and 11.5 percent is missing; you just got your pizza from the Texas Senate. You still need to feed your group but now they all need to figure out a way to eat less yet still be satisfied. The next day you go to a different place to pick up your pizza but this time 18.2 percent of your pizza is missing. You just got your pizza from the Texas House of Representatives. Each one of those possibilities is a reality for UTPA. Administrators must figure out a way to feed the University (figuratively) on either 11.5 or 18.2 percent less pizza, i.e. money. Ideally the Texas Senate and House will meet in the middle when it comes to their numbers as they represent and best- and worse-case scenario for the UTPA community. UTPA President Robert Nelsen remains adamant about not increasing cost as other Texas universities are doing to ease the weight of budget cuts.
11.5%
“We’re not going to raise tuition this year,” he said. “We are the 30th of 34 institutions with the lowest tuition, but we need to keep it as low as we possibly can.” In order to do that, each college underwent cuts of their own. Most, like the College of Health and Human Services, took first from less direct student-impact areas, “reducing departmental operating budgets,” said Bruce Reed, dean of the college, and “reducing faculty travel funding to almost nothing.” But eventually “emergency hire” faculty (those on one-year contracts) and three-year-contract hires whose agreements would expire at the end of the year were part of the cutting action. “The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences initially identified two continuing lecturers to be cut,” said Kristin Croyle, dean of the CSBS. “Eight emergency hire lecturers that were hired for 2010-2011 were also not going to be rehired for the following year…We also completely cut all the funds we had for part-time instruction, such as adjunct instructors teaching one or two classes only.” These contract hires are, in most
18.2%
House of Representatives proposal
cases, the ones that take over core classes that every student needs to complete to graduate. This might explain the smaller amount of core classes offered at that stage on ASSIST. If the reductions were continued, it would seriously hamper the mission of the college. “The loss of sections from these cuts would be significant,” Croyle said. “Our faculty were willing to teach extra and teach larger classes to try to open up seats for students, but the cuts were extensive enough that we would not be able to make up the loss with our existing faculty.” Three weeks ago, however, the Office of the Provost released $1.4 million to be allocated to each college for instructional use. A week later that office provided another $1.2 million, bringing the total to $2.6 million in funds to be used to employ contract-hires filling positions needed to meet class demands. “The goal of that funding,” said Havidan Rodriguez, provost and vice president for academic affairs, “was to allow the colleges to identify instructional cost for the following academic year. Again, we wanted to make sure the offerings for this academic
year were quite similar to last academic year despite budgetary cuts.” With the additions of these extra resources more classes were made available and are being offered through the summer, effectively saving the University summer. The provost urges students to continually check the registration website for updated class schedules. But not all the colleges were affected equally. The College of Engineering and Computer Science and CHHS are the smaller colleges of the University and thus effected differently. “This college does not teach service courses in the same way that the rest of the university does,” said David Allen, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “There are virtually no courses in this college at all that are taken by students outside the college…So we are not facing the same kind of situation like other colleges, where we are cutting sections of courses that are offered.” FACULTY AFFECTED In all colleges though, faculty workloads have increased. Some have volunteered to take on another course load, such as some in the College of
Science and Mathematics. “I am very proud of my faculty,” said John Trant, dean of the newly established college. “There are situations where the faculty volunteer to take on another 100-plus students on top of the 300 that they already have.” Reed, dean of the College of Health and Human Services, said that in addition to the workload, some classes’ size will be larger and they plan to offer fewer electives in order to meet budgetary demands. Since the budget is planned based on a biennium (for two years) what will happen the second year is still up in the air, especially since exact numbers for state university budget won’t be known for a couple of months. But while some administrators share a sense of apprehension, Rodriguez seems to be more on the optimistic side. “All we have provided is funding for one year,” the provost explained. “We have to wait till next year. The good thing about this is in several months we will know our budget and how big the budget cuts will be, and it will allow us essentially a year, nine months or so to really plan for the next academic year.”