Faculty worried about effects of state budget cuts

Your professors are scared.

After a year featuring a university system-wide hiring freeze and forced unpaid leave, this summer's looming budget reductions have left faculty worrying about not only the possibility of increased workloads and less pay, but major changes to the structure of the university as a whole.

Official numbers on a second round of state-wide cuts are expected to be announced by Labor Day, but the early estimations suggest Gov. Martin O'Malley could be forced to chop as much as $420 million more from the state budget, on top of $281 million in cuts that were levied in July.

While no formal actions are being made by university President Dan Mote and his administration until the second wave of cuts are finalized, Mote and Provost Naramin Farvardin said cuts in student services and increases in class size are imminent. As a result, many faculty members worry the budget reductions may take a toll on the progress made by the university in the past 20 years.

"The budget cuts are going to be crushing [for] everybody across campus," said history professor Ira Berlin. "They threaten everything we've created in the last two decades. They put us at risk.

"[The main priority should be] protecting people," Berlin added. "You get good people, you become a great university. ... With these new cuts and the fact that we've cut everything else to the bone, the only thing left to cut is people. And that's an extremely dangerous thing for the university."

The administration has stated any cuts, including the $14.5 million chopped in July, will be dealt with in concordance with the strategic plan approved in spring 2008. The plan was drawn up as a way to improve the national prestige of the university and provides a basic outline of the university's future.

For example, the plan gives the provost the ability to re-allocate funds between colleges each year. In June, Farvardin did this for the first time, using the plan as a guideline for money redistribution. And while critics of the plan — many of whom were very vocal about their concerns as the plan was being ratified — have spoken out against the plan's use in such harsh economic times, Mote said the plan was created to shape how the university will spend the money it has, not the money it wants.

"This is the time when a plan like that is extremely important," Mote said. "You have to make strategic decisions. At this point, we're not talking about [cutting] programs that are superfluous. We're not talking about programs that are not important. When you start talking about reductions at this level, we're talking about actually reducing good things. That's what we have left: good things.

"That's why you do a strategic plan," Mote continued. "It's for charting the future. So it would be foolish, I believe, to not use a strategic plan when you have to make judgments on supporting programs."

Still, critics of the plan remain worried for the university's undergraduate general education programs. History department chair Richard Price said the plan could turn the university into a "mid-Atlantic Georgia Tech," in a March 2008 public presentation of the plan.

English professor Maynard Mack, also an outspoken critic of the strategic plan, worries budget reductions could only hasten the process.

"None of [my fellow English professors] liked the strategic plan," Mack said. "I don't feel there's a great understanding about what the humanities and social sciences do. ... It didn't reflect a whole lot of awareness on the importance of critical thinking."

Mack has seen the size of his upper-level Shakespeare class double from 35 seats to 70 for the fall semester. He worries the cuts will test the "good will of the faculty" to work longer hours for less pay.

But the plan has gained at least one supporter in the 15 months since it became official.

Price wrote in an e-mail that he now sees its value with "evidence of the past few months that resource allocation will be directed to protecting strengths as well as developing new areas of study."

University Senate chair Elise Miller-Hooks supported the strategic plan in 2008, and continues to "believe the document on the whole will lead our university in a positive direction." But the civil engineering professor warned against additional furloughs, or forced unpaid leave, which the university instituted last school year.

"I've had several conversations with faculty and staff members regarding the possibility of a second round of furloughs," Miller-Hooks wrote in an e-mail. "I hope that our state will not consider imposing furloughs again. The faculty and staff are already doing extra work by not replacing those who have left during the hiring freeze."

The general consensus among administrators and faculty, however, was concern. The budget cuts will almost assuredly mean valued programs, services and classes will have to hit the chopping block.

Mote was wary of expecting a quick economic recovery. Mack described the situation as a "new nightmare." Miller-Hooks bated her optimism for a solution.

"I hope that we will find novel, positive (e.g. revenue generating) ways to address our budget concerns," she wrote. "I suspect, though, that we will need to take a hard look at who we are, what we are good at, what our taxpayers want/need from us, and where we should continue to invest."

ajoseph at umdbk dot com