Dear Colleagues:
I participated in a very productive meeting with the Faculty Senate yesterday and several questions were raised that warrant not only a response, but broad distribution across campus. The first question was about how we have addressed the $20+ million funding gap for the current fiscal year. As I did in a recent blog entry, let me emphasize the magnitude of the problem is relatively small when our full budget is considered (i.e. 4% of an approximately $500 million budget) and also that these types of problems are by no means unusual in higher education today given the rapid pace of change, including drops in state funding and increased reliance on tuition and fee dollars. Below is a breakdown of how funds have been (and are) being recovered:
| Funds recovered from unfilled positions across all units (including non-academic units) | $2,500,000 |
| Funds recovered from President’s salary | $340,000 |
| Funds recovered from facility projects (deferred and stopped): | $2,764,000 |
| Funds recovered from administrative (non-academic) units carry forward accounts | $2,013,950 |
| Academic Affairs carry forward recovery (across all colleges) | $7,641,200 |
| Unfilled divisional rquests (unfunded special project requests across all units in original budget: | $5,690,000 |
| Total Recovery: | $20,949,150 |
A couple of things should be emphasized. First, President Martin is working gratis and those funds have been recaptured. We certainly owe him a hearty “thank you”. Second, the recovery from academic affairs is 36% of the total amount. The second question was about athletics. Athletics is contributing approximately $400,000 to the $2.5 million above. It’s important for all on campus to recognize that athletics is a large contributor to main campus given that they pay directly for all of their scholarship support. We have a net gain from athletics in the ballpark of $8 million annually from scholarship funds.
Finally, let me say thank you to all faculty, staff and students for your support in addressing our budget issue. The support has been tremendous and your help is critical for our future success. We will continue discussions through the rest of this semester and spring about how we more appropriately align the university’s configuration to our current and projected budget for coming years. As a reminder, my office is working with both the Faculty and Staff Senates on a monthly Q&A process, one that will hopefully provide for good information flow and transparent communication. The links for submitting questions are below:
Link to Faculty Senate suggestion box: http://www.memphis.edu/facultysenate/suggestionbox.php
Link to Staff Senate suggestion box: http://www.memphis.edu/staffsenate/suggestions.php
Best Regards, David