Following department budget cuts in response to a predicted revenue shortfall, the Faculty Senate raised concerns regarding the reliance on summer and winter intersession monies to supplement their low base budgets to the Board of Visitors in a letter on Nov. 30, 2017.
Due to low summer course enrollment, a $21,776 deficit was expected, according to former Longwood Provost Dr. Joan Neff during the Faculty Senate meeting on Sept. 27, 2017. In turn, department chairs were responsible for making the necessary reductions to their respective budgets.
The cuts limited faculty conference travel, funds for student research, department programming, stipends for area and program coordinators and funding for the Arts Council. The Nov. 30 letter stated these reductions hurt the faculty's ability to "fully execute our mission to prepare citizen leaders."
With the start of the spring semester, Longwood Provost Dr. Larissa Fergeson said the September revenue projections failed to consider the receipt of previously uncollected summer tuition fees as well as underestimated the amount of revenue produced by the 2017-18 winter intersession.
Since the fall, the university has collected a little over $150,000 of outstanding summer tuition and $138,118 more than expected from winter intersession courses. With the additional monies, Fergeson said her first goal was to ask the chairs for the amount needed for the rest of the fiscal year to supplement what was allotted in August 2017 "to ensure department needs are met."
"My second goal is moving forward as we think about next year's budget, that we continue to reform these processes that we have and make sure that departments are adequately funded for their operations and also that we support faculty and student success," she said.
According to Board of Visitors Faculty Senate Representative Lissa Power-deFur, the low enrollment of intersession courses was caused by the dip in freshman enrollment in the fall of 2016, generating less tuition revenue.
Power-deFur and Fergeson emphasized the majority of the university's operating budget is funded by tuition revenue, as state and federal monies account for less than 30 percent of the budget.
“The bulk of our operations at the university comes from student tuition money, the funding from the state has dropped precipitously,” said Power-deFur. “It’s in the 20 percent now, when I came here it was in the 40 percent. I came here 14 years ago.”
Due to the cuts and changes in how summer and intersession monies were allocated to each department, tension grew within the faculty in the fall semester.
"In the past, they (departments) had received a portion depending on how much they had generated from summer (or) intersession classes," said Fergeson. Last year, the Office of Academic Affairs attempted to standardize the distribution of funds from the summer and intersession revenue rather than base the size of an allocation off of how much a department contributed to the total.
Power-deFur stated the use of summer and intersession monies to supplement department base budgets began 10 years ago during the Great Recession.
"I recall being encouraged that if you teach a course, especially an intersession, then more money will be coming back to your department, to you," she said. "It was kind of a carrot approach that if you teach in these areas there's going to be more coming back to your program."
In the letter, the Faculty Senate stated that some of the departmental reductions included faculty conference travel, funds for student research, department programming and funding for the Arts Council. Other concerns by the Faculty senate included fears that teaching during intercession would be expected, rather than optional.
“Many faculty find that their summer is the time when they do their research, they do their writing, and how do they find the time to maintain the important scholarship, which is required of a faculty member, if they are now expected to teach during summer sessions?” Power-deFur said.
During the Board of Visitors Meeting on Dec. 1, Dr. Neff stated the departmental budgets had been increased by 3 percent and projections for intercession revenue were higher than earlier projected. Power-deFur also stated during the meeting the process of relying on student enrollment during intercession to fund the Academic Affairs budget was created during the 2007-08 recession to incentivize teaching during intercession and to supplement departmental budgets.
Mr. Michael Evans of the Board of Visitors stated the $200,000 gap that was approximated over the fall semester should be manageable to address, as it represents less than one half of one percent of the university’s total budget.
During the Fall Budget Forum on Oct. 30, Neff stated Dr. Ken Copeland and herself were discussing different ways of funding AA such as taking a percentage money out of summer intercession courses instead of a flat amount.
“We are going to look at some other alternatives,” Neff stated.
According to Power-deFur, Interim Provost Dr. Larissa Ferguson said she was committed to fixing the budget issue during the opening meeting of the College of Education and Human Services.
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Beginning of the fall semester
10 years ago, during the recession, things were lean, administration at that time identified that summer/intersession would be a good way to support department budgets, Good approach if that pot of money grew, but instead it was dependent on summer session/intersession enrollment, it dipped last year.
Smaller class size -
Strategic plan metrics
If your student tuition numbers are lower, you have less money coming in
Read letter form Faculty Senate to Board of visitors on Nov. 30
BOV has supported faculty raises for the past few years, but state institution monies weren't able to do it, faculty appreciate BOV advocacy for various pro-faculty measures
Method of budgeting didn't support inflation and growth of faculty, Dr. Neff and Mr. Copeland both agree that the method for department budgeting needs to change, pres reveley does too, I think everyone recognizes that the loss of summer session and intersession money made clear that an approach was developed ten years ago has some flaws.
reductions made for recession wasn't replaced
Lack of support for junior faculty travel, which is required for faculty to move up on tenure track, lack of support for student research and department programs, art council funding cut, people who organized programs in departments received stipends but those were cut this year, each department had to adjust in response to the cut
Copeland & Neff tried to be transparent and clarify
Board reaction in minutes
they want to make sure that the administration and the board know that we don't as a faculty we don't want the reliance on summer and winter intersession to be a driver for pushing faculty to be teaching during summer session and intersession, but also many faculty like it so the faculty are diverse
I think they believe we just need to redo the budgeting in a different fashion so they don't rely on the sessions - that is not something that you can just do, have to figure out where it will come from, has to be some planning, won't happen during this fiscal year, have to see if somethings in place for next fiscal year
they've done a lot of thinking about it
Questions were asked about reserves at the UPC meeting - amount is set aside for issues - questions about what reserves can be used for, watch for spring budget forum, finance committee of faculty senate with AAUP, fall forum is recorded
Fergeson
You try over the course of the year as revenue comes in, it’s a guidepost to kind of gauge where you are. You budget based on your revenue. We base it on tuition, we base it on state funding, we base it on some federal funding.
Small piece of budget used for travel, decided to allocate travel funds differently than in the past, decided to do so by standardizing how much funding per faculty member would go to the departments. Change depended on the department, in the past they had received a portion depending on how much they had generated from summer/intersession classes – not all because the entire university runs on tuition and state funding
The mixture of tuition funding and state funding, state funding is less than 30% of university funding
Kicked up a lot of concern because departments had used this money to fund professional development faculty travel, to fund student travel that weren’t funded in other ways, either from the dean’s offices or through the office of student research – what’s happened since then is we’ve had additional revenue come in, intersession happened, so we’re at a point where we can now distribute additional monies out to the department
Instead of standardization – the office is now supplementing what was originally allocated to each department in August “to ensure department needs are met”” So students can present at conferences and give papers and do experiential learning
