Campus Resources and Planning Committee

April 15, 2009

Present: Kathy Julik-Heine, Dave Swenson, Jennifer Rothchild, LeAnn Dean,

Heather Peters, Shannon Juhnke, Pete Wyckoff, Zak Forde, Ray Schultz,

Bryan Herrmann, Maddy Maxeiner, Karen Cusey

Guests: Judy Kuechle, Sandy Olson-Loy

Minutes of March 25, April 1 and April 8 were approved as presented.

Reaction to budget plan

Pete asked the committee for their reactions to the budget plan as it has been presented over the past couple of weeks. He will forward the feedback from the committee to Chancellor Johnson.

Kathy said she was uneasy with the combination of the international student office and the multi-ethnic resource center. She’s concerned about how it will be implemented, if money will be saved and in what way combining the offices would really help either group. Ray added his concern that some of the realignments seemed unclear and he wondered how the offices would operate. He would like to know when the details of this are going to happen and how they will be presented to the campus. Sandy reported that there would be some money saved and that resources would be allocated in different ways. She also said that Hilda Ladner thinks this is a model that could work because students are linked more here than in other places on campus. Hilda would welcome the chance to talk to this committee. Shannon suggested consulting with the group of students that would be impacted by the plan.

Jennifer is concerned that the cuts made from faculty are mostly adjunct faculty. She doesn’t understand how cutting these positions will save money and is confused about the rationale. Pete echoed the same concern and said he had not received a complete answer.

Regarding student numbers, Pete said we are tracking reasonably well in the first year and wondered what we need to have to meet the 1610 goal.

Heather wondered if several task force committees should be formed to either stay on top of what’s happening, i.e., the Admissions/Enrollment management plan or perhaps we should take a more proactive stance and figure out how other colleges are modeling for increased revenue; i.e., grants, housing, facilities, youth camp, duplicating, online course, music, etc. Sandy added that the strategic plan addresses some of those things but we haven’t brought the governance and administrative structure together.

Heather also suggested tapping into the cost pool and determine what other resources we could utilize from that cost pool. She wondered if other areas of the campus could be outsourced.

LeAnn is concerned about how travel and printing savings will manifest while we are also cutting our budgets 5%. She asked if the bandwidth could be the common good that the cost pool is paying for. Ray added that he has been here 10 years and his discipline’s SE&E budget has never gone up and at this point, he’s not optimistic it will ever increase.

Dave said he believes people are ready for the specifics of the budget and restructuring plan.