As the economic downturn continues, department chairs in various schools are reporting difficulties with hiring faculty and expanding services like course offerings and funding for faculty travel.
The commonwealth’s projected budget cuts affect schools and departments differently, based on how much those sections depend on state funds, said Elizabeth Fortune, associate dean of finance and administration for the Architecture School.
The University assigns its budget cuts based on a proportionate share of its state funds, explained Colette Sheehy, vice president for management and budget.
“What the central budget office does is assign the cuts to the major vice presidential offices,” Sheehy said. She also noted that University Provost Arthur Garson can allocate budget cuts to the different schools however he sees fit.
Garson noted, though, that the budget cuts are allocated equally across the schools.
“We have to discuss together with the dean and the financial people of the school and the Vice Provost for Administration the best way to do reductions where we will do the least harm and the most good,” Garson said.
All departments within the College were asked to cut their 2008-09 academic year budgets by two percent and their 2009-10 budgets by six percent, Economics Department Chair William R. Johnson said.
Although implementing budget cuts in the middle of the academic year is a challenge, Johnson said his department has taken significant steps to deal with the decrease in state funding. Like many other departments, Johnson said the economics department cut back on “Other Than Personal Services” expenditures like the purchase of copy paper and other supplies. Secondly, College departments like economics will be more conservative in hiring new faculty, he said.
“The bulk of our cuts are going to be taken up by essentially not hiring two [faculty members] that we had initially been authorized to hire,” Johnson said. “So it’s not that the permanent faculty will be smaller but that it will be smaller than it would have been [without the cuts].”
English Department Chair Jahan Ramazani and María-Inés Lagos, chair of the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese department, also noted that their departments primarily had to reduce OTPS funds and eliminate positions for potential new hires.
The reduction in faculty hiring has also included the cancellation of replacements for faculty members currently on leave, Ramazani said.
He said changes in the course line-up will have the most impact on students, adding that the English department cut back on introductory writing classes, introductory literary classes and discussion sections because of state budget cuts. In addition, the department reduced the number of “more labor-intensive” introductory writing classes for students who would have difficulty in the regular classes.
“The basic thing is writing classes, obviously, are [some] of the most important, core classes offered by the University to its students,” Ramanzani said. “It’s a shame that we’re having to cut there.”
Lagos, meanwhile, said budget cuts both have and have not affected students within the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese department.
“Of course we have to be more careful,” Lagos said, “so if students request money for additional things — let’s say if they want to bring a lecturer or they want to [present research] — then we don’t have as much to support those activities. But I think in general it has not been as bad because we have had money from gifts and from savings.”
An ongoing problem is meeting student demand for Spanish classes, with about 350 students majoring in Spanish and between 150 and 200 minors. But the department only has about 14 full-time faculty members teaching Spanish. Lagos noted, though, that this was a problem before the economic crisis.
“My sense is that the real [results] haven’t been felt as much [in the departments] because, to be honest, the dean’s office has done a good job [of keeping programs intact],” Chemistry Department Chair David Cafiso said. He noted, however, that in recent years, the size of the chemistry faculty and the amount of support the department receives from both the University and external grants has not grown, even as the size of the student body has increased.
“In summary, I’d say we’re doing all right, with some minor cutbacks,” Cafiso said, noting that the University’s undergraduate chemistry program has mostly remained stable. He said the department has not had to turn people away from classes, but that some courses — particularly upper-level lab courses — are large because they are relatively expensive to run. The department therefore tries to minimize how many are held.
Despite the economic crisis, research money continues to flow into science departments through federal grants from agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health, Cafiso said.
These federal grants likely comprise about 90 percent of the department’s research costs, Cafiso added. While funding from the NIH has remained relatively flat for the past seven or eight years, this challenge existed as well before the current crisis.
William C. Johnson, chair of the department of materials science and engineering, also noted that his department’s research money is about the same as last year. He said this has allowed the department to continue accepting graduate students and hiring postdoctoral researchers, but noted that the budget cuts will still impact student life.
“I’ve had to cut back on the number of external speakers,” Johnson said. “The money is a little tighter, but students are still able to take their classes and conduct their research.”
While research money has stayed constant for science and engineering departments, schools that are more dependent on state funds are more deeply affected by the University’s budget cuts.
For example, state funds form about 61 percent of the Architecture School’s budget, Fortune noted.
“When a cut is applied to state funds, it affects us disproportionately, so we really feel the impact,” Fortune said. “A significant portion of our budget is tied up in faculty and staff salaries, so [the cuts] really put the squeeze” on other areas of the budget.
Craig Barton, chair of the architecture and landscape architecture department, noted that hosting events was the biggest budget item cut, along with his office’s OTPS costs.
This included decreasing the number of student receptions and guest lectures, Barton said. The department also had to reduce funding for faculty travel, which in turn has meant cutting back on faculty fieldwork and research, Barton said.
In addition, Barton expressed distress at the new difficulties in hiring faculty and staff.
“The process of hiring someone, which is always a rigorous one, has simply gotten more rigorous,” Barton said. “You’re going to have to make a case for why you need somebody.”
The faculty of the Architecture School also tried to obtain more grant and gift dollars to compensate for the lack of state funds, Fortune noted, but the department is “just not there yet.”
Meanwhile, departments that assist students in finding opportunities like internships have been forced to become more creative, said Bobbe Nixon, development program coordinator for the department of biomedical engineering.
“We tend to work with a number of small, high-tech companies, and they’re maybe waiting a little longer to make decisions,” Nixon said. “Here we are in the middle of March, and I’ve got two [internships], whereas I’d normally have about six at this time.”
She said her office has tried to train students to be more aggressive in pursuing companies and opportunities and has also encouraged them to submit more résumés to more companies.
Nevertheless, Nixon said, additional support has come from sources like Vice President for Research Tom Skalak’s office, which received a grant from the National Science Foundation allowing the University to provide $1,000 for a number of students seeking internships. This helps small startup companies pay part of the costs of hiring an intern, Nixon said, and it has also allowed the office to reach out to more international partners.
Materials Science Chair Johnson also noted that there has been a desire to work through the challenges of the economic crisis, and said the outlook on Grounds remains generally optimistic.
“In my department, I think most folks understand it’s difficult times,” Johnson said, “and I think the attitude remains positive ... recognizing that working together we’re able to overcome some of these temporary difficulties.”
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