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Chancellor Holub Message to Budget Task Force

November 25, 2008

To: John McCarthy and the Budget Task Force
From: Bob Holub

Dear John,

Thank you again for agreeing to serve as chair of the budget task force. My intention in forming this task force was to engage our faculty, staff, and students in developing innovative strategies for dealing with reduced budgets while retaining focus on our collective goal of becoming one of our nation's best public research universities. To that end, I do not want to preclude any areas of discussion or dictate courses of action. I do want this talented group to have open discussions and the opportunity to be creative in the face of a difficult task.

I was asked on several occasions, however, to give more specific information with regard to my own priorities, and I thought I should write to you with some of the things I have been thinking about so that you can pass them along to the members of the task force.

First, it is my fervently held belief that the strength of our institution is directly linked to the strength of our faculty. As you have probably heard me say before, the quality of UMass Amherst is inexorably tied to the quality of our faculty, since the faculty drives our teaching, research, and service agenda. My highest priority, therefore, is to protect the current tenure and tenure-track faculty on campus. The faculty here is a distinguished group of scholars and teachers, and we have made a significant investment in them that we cannot now squander.

At the same time we must find ways to deliver the curriculum to students more effectively and economically. We may need to alter requirements and expectations, both in departments and on the campus, in order to give students the type of education they need. In order to accomplish this goal we will have to be more strategic and more nimble than we usually are. Departments must be ready to enter the next academic year with a teaching staff that is perhaps smaller than they had anticipated it would be. The faculty senate must be prepared to hold emergency meetings to discuss and perhaps modify general education requirements so that they are manageable for departments. We must enact changes expeditiously, or we may be forced to make changes that will be even more objectionable and less educationally sound.

I would also ask the task force to look at areas in which we can achieve administrative savings, especially since we are currently searching for several administrative positions. Are there colleges that can be merged successfully to achieve savings? What should we be doing to make certain we are successfully administered, yet poised for the future, within the constraints of budget reductions?

It occurred to me that we do not do very much on the campus with regard to putting salary on grants to secure savings. Some campuses, especially in colleges of engineering and the natural sciences, require their faculty to put part of their salaries on grants in order to free up state monies for other types of expenses. At Tennessee, for example, the dean "taxed" departments, so that on the average departments were expected to contribute toward relief of the general budget. If I am not mistaken, we have very few individuals here at UMass who write off regular salary on grants and contracts. Since many faculty conduct significant research, we must look to this source of revenue in these difficult times.

As you know, among the areas I would like to protect relative to others are research and development. Both areas generate revenue for the campus. But just as important for me is that the greatness of a campus is usually correlated closely with its research productivity, and that successful fundraising provides the enhanced support for teaching and research that raises a campus from good to great. We have enormous potential in both of these areas, and we must realize this potential for the benefit of the entire campus.

As you know, I also believe that we must support graduate education better and more strategically. Increases in support for graduate education, however, will very likely have to wait for a few more budget cycles, but it would help if you could reflect on how we might jump-start this process even in these times of economic distress.

Similarly undergraduate education has to be a central part of our mission; in some sense it is the bread-and-butter of our existence. While budget reductions will no doubt have some detrimental impact, are there things we can do to mitigate the damage? I have suggested that first-year seminars, for example, can improve the undergraduate experience in demonstrable ways, and that the costs of such programs are reasonably modest. If we are going to be compelled to introduce more large classes, first-year seminars can be a valuable means of counterbalancing the negative impact of this reality. Are there other things we should be trying? How can we better make use of our great research and scholarly accomplishments to make undergraduate education more worthwhile?

On the more positive side, I also encourage you to discuss ways to focus our future faculty hiring on more strategic outcomes. I don't believe we'll have the resources in the short-term to fill many faculty vacancies, and we will be required to make difficult choices regarding which areas or disciplines have the opportunity to distinguish our institution nationally and internationally. I have already called on faculty directly to develop proposals involving interdisciplinary directions. This process will allow us to target our future faculty hiring on those areas where we can make a difference and maintain and improve our academic excellence. It will also enable us to use other resources on the campus - facilities, fundraising, and communications - in a coordinated and integrated effort. I don't define these areas solely based on research prowess, but also on great scholarship, and it would be foolish to restrict all FTE allocation to these initiatives when support of excellent departments can be of strategic advantage to the campus.

Taken together I still believe that we have the opportunity, even in a down cycle, to create a better university for the future. As the commonwealth's flagship research university, we have some advantages that will aid us even as the economy continues to struggle. Demand for our product is one of these advantages. We must be strategic in our efforts now so that when the economic situation improves, we are prepared to seize our opportunity.

We will require strategic focus in the areas I have discussed both here and in my various presentations to the faculty and other groups, as well as innovative thinking on the part of our campus and its enormously resourceful faculty. Progress will require difficult, but necessary, priority setting. The subcommittee structure the task force has established should provide significant opportunity to delve into these issues, to examine other institutions across the country engaged in best practices, and to come up with ideas to implement here at UMass Amherst that will assist me and our administration in dealing with this difficult budget circumstance.

Again, thank you for your commitment to UMass Amherst. I look forward to working with all of you as we strive to reach our collective goal.