ISU starts belt-tightening

AMES, Iowa — Changes are in store for Iowa State University’s colleges, because the school is considering a variety of budget-cutting measures.

Possibilities include eliminating faculty searches, not filling open faculty positions now or in the future, transferring faculty to other departments and cutting undergraduate and graduate majors.

Deans Michael Whiteford of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Wendy Wintersteen of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences met this week with faculty and staff to discuss the future. Both said they are looking for ideas to respond to President Greg Geoffroy’s call for restructuring.

“We’ve reached the point where we need to make some big changes,” Whiteford said. “Our colleges will look quite different than they do right now.”

Geoffroy is projecting an overall $50 million decrease in funding for ISU next year.

In a Dec. 2 memo, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman directed all college deans to thoroughly examine their departments in order to decide which programs are vital to the future of the university and which can be lost.

Wintersteen said the forum was just the first step in a difficult decision-making process that will need to produce some realistic solutions by March 2010, when budget decisions will be made.

“Now is the time to make some tough decisions,” Wintersteen said.

The deans asked faculty and staff for ideas to increase revenue generation, including increasing the general tuition, altering the tuition structure and charging course fees for classes that use expensive lab equipment.

Although there are many factors to consider, Whiteford said the priority should be protecting the current number of student credit hours, meaning class sizes will probably be larger in the coming years.

“We’re here first and foremost because of the students,” Whiteford said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to maintain those student credit hours.”

The deans heard many questions, including why the Iowa Board of Regents was proposing only a 6 percent raise in general tuition for the next academic year, which is not expected to go far toward bridging the budget gap.

Wintersteen said her personal opinion was that a 10 percent increase would be more reasonable, but she said the regents think raising tuition by that amount would put too much strain on Iowa families during an already difficult time.

Whiteford said he believes that much of the restructuring will happen naturally through attrition, but some wondered how the university could reduce the budget enough without cutting tenured faculty.

“If these are unprecedented times, where are the unprecedented measures?” asked Alicia Carriquiry, a professor of statistics. “I could take those measures myself. Relying on attrition doesn’t seem very strategic.”

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