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Faculty Assembly

Faculty Assembly President’s Report

Most of the concern both on campus and at the system level has been about the budget issues. Salary increases are still being modeled in the budget scenarios. However, to have salary raises and the new salary hires (plus other mandated increases in the budget like utility costs), cuts will need to be made to the current budget. However, budget projections are very fluid given the state situation and the fact that the JBC is waiting to set Higher Education’s budget after all other budgets are set.
To get a sense of faculty’s priorities on where budget cuts should be made, a survey was sent to all faculty. Please take time to respond to this survey and to encourage other faculty members to respond. Also, I sent the members of the Faculty Assembly Representative Committee the budget principles (given below) that UBAC (University Budget Advisory Council) used last year. The Chancellor has asked each of the campus governance groups to give input on what this year’s principles should be. These are different from priorities. This input is needed by the end of the month. Please send me your concerns. In order to update and educate faculty about the budget, the April meeting will be a Full Faculty Assembly meeting and will be about budget. The Chancellor, VCAF Brian Burnett and UBAC chair Tom Zwirlein will be presenting. We will also present the results from the faculty survey.
In response to the budget concerns, the system wide EPUS has spent the year working on a Program Discontinuance policy that was recently passed. This policy basically states that if programs are cut then faculty must be given one-year notice about the cut and that an additional year severance pay is given. This policy must be voted on by system-wide Faculty Council. Both the system-wide EPUS and Budget committees are looking at Early Retirement Options. Once these options are passed out of committee then Faculty Council will vote on them.
At a statewide level, faculty from a variety of colleges and universities are working together to develop strategies about how to respond to the funding crisis. This group is called the Colorado Faculty Coalition. They have written a petition (given below) and are asking faculty to sign it. The website for this group is http://faculty.colostate-pueblo.edu/timothy.mcgettigan/petition/petition.asp.
In the May meeting you can expect to vote on the revised Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure policy and we will vote on the Grant Buyout Policy. The Academic Master Plan is being reviewed by the VCAA’s office.
Also at Dean’s Council the Salary Oversight Principles recommended by the Salary Oversight subcommittee of the Personnel and Benefits Committee are being reviewed. Some new recommendations will come from Personnel and Benefits as they update the recommendations. As an update, the request that each college develop criteria for promotion from instructor to senior instructor is still being worked on. When I did a follow-up for this, few of the deans without criteria have written criteria. The Library, Beth-El School of Nursing and Business all have criteria. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes.