Message from President Elson S. Floyd | View in Browser
	September 28, 2011
	Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students: I am writing to inform you of the final actions taken to balance our fiscal year 2012 budget. Our preliminary proposal for closing the $20 million annual budget gap facing our university was posted online and distributed in late July. Since then, Provost and Executive Vice President Warwick M. Bayly and I have participated in two public budget forums and a number of meetings with faculty, staff, and student groups. We have also received and reviewed many emails regarding the budget and the feedback submitted through the university budget office webpage. Your thoughtful comments, observations, and opinions were invaluable in shaping and informing our final decisions. Here is a breakdown of the approved plan: Academic Affairs Consolidation of the College of Sciences and College of Liberal Arts. The Arts and Sciences model is a common one among leading American research universities; about half use this model, including the universities of Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and Colorado, as well as Cornell, Northwestern, Duke and Pennsylvania. I believe there are strong academic, research and pedagogical reasons to proceed with the integration of these colleges. The integration must be done in a thoughtful, deliberate fashion against the backdrop of the fiscal crisis and the academic demands of our students. As a consequence, I have asked Provost Bayly to appoint a faculty committee from the Colleges of Sciences and Liberal Arts with the following charge: To develop a plan to fully integrate the College of Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts into the College of Letters and Sciences. The first phase of this process should be to develop vision and mission statements for the new college. The plan itself should include departmental structures and affiliations, promotion and tenure considerations, and interdisciplinary opportunities and approaches to be pursued in instruction, scholarship, research, and the creative arts within the context of the strategic priorities of the University and each of the existing colleges. It is anticipated that the plan will propose academic and administrative structures that enhance research and creativity, enrich instruction, streamline operations, promote interdisciplinary cooperation, and maximize the centrality of the college within the academy. The plan should be submitted to the Provost not later than June 30, 2012, with an effective implementation in fall 2012. Progress reports are to be submitted December 31, 2011, and March 31, 2012. Discontinuance of state support for some journals and publications, with the intent that they become self-supporting. This proposal has caused a significant amount of comment, much of it coming from outside our university. I believe that most of those comments were based on the inaccurate assumption that we are seeking to cease publication of these journals. Instead, we are looking for ways to make them self-supporting and not reliant on state funds in an era when state funds are increasingly imperiled. It has been agreed that, in this budget proposal, the College of Liberal Arts and Department of English will jointly provide financial support for the continued publication of the journals while they transition to a self-sustaining status from existing resources. The following recommendations will be enacted as proposed: Consolidation of the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences into the School for the Environment. Elimination of the doctoral degree in design, and establishment of the School for Design in Pullman from the Departments of Landscape Architecture, Interior Design, and Architecture and Construction Management. Merging the Department of Statistics into the Department of Mathematics. Conversion of the PEACT (Physical Education Activity) programs to a self-supporting basis (effective fall 2012). Elimination of the agriculture, education, and architecture branch libraries on the Pullman campus. Accelerate the consolidation of the health sciences. Reorganization of University Extension, although it will be exempted from further budget reductions in FY 2012. Finally, the 3 percent contingency fund that is currently being withheld will be released to the academic areas on October 1. Some of the recommendations are being implemented later than previously expected, including the proposed merger of the two colleges, so we have identified additional administrative savings and efficiency measures, non-personnel in nature, to bridge the budget gap. These actions were taken after appropriate consultation with the respective offices and units affected. Budget reductions in the non-academic areas, which make up most of the cuts in the overall proposal, were spelled out in the original budget reduction plan and have been posted on the University Budget Office page. Those changes have largely been put in place and will not require further action to be taken at this time. I appreciate both your patience and your input as we have worked our way through this process. While the economic forecast projects further budget challenges for our university, I believe we will be able to deal with them in the same spirit of collegiality and common purpose that have marked our efforts in this stage of our mutual endeavor. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Elson S. Floyd, Ph.D. President
Office of the President, Washington State University, PO Box 641048, Pullman WA 99164-1048