President Wickham called for a quorum and started the meeting at 3:10 PM. The first order of business was a visit with NSU President Larry Williams and the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Jim Pate. Dr. Pate made the request to speak with the Council in August, 2003.
President Williams started by identifying the severity of the budget cuts. He indicated that Dr. Pate had been speaking with the academic administrators about what those cuts might require of us and that he and VP Pate were here today to open a dialog with the Faculty Council. He indicated that he wanted the assistance of faculty in finding ways to reduce costs. This year will be tough, but next year promises to be tougher still. As an example, he pointed to the 11.4% ($495,000) cut in the teacher education program. That budget already was down 10% from last year. NSU has the largest teacher mentoring program in Oklahoma so the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education added $327,000 back and said funding now was at 100%. OSRHE staff people at the state capitol say there will be more cuts through at least 2005 when, hopefully, the economy will begin to recover. He said he believes we will see a rebound in state revenues in 2005-06, but others, including Dr. Pate, are more pessimistic. All in all, this is a much tougher budget constriction than that of 1982.
He further stated that he and Dr. Pate already had met with Deans and others on campus to identify areas in which colleges could eliminate competing programs and had shared their (Drs. Williams and Pate) opinions of programs that might be impacted. The reality is that we need to have greater efficiency in our operations and one way we can do that is by merging programs that appear to be identical. We also have to take a close look at productivity of programs because they grow and decline at different levels. We need to look at areas that we shouldn’t have put money into, and we need to look carefully at expensive, specialized accreditation processes. We have to ask ourselves if we really need specialty accreditation at this time. We must be efficient in such operations.
Vice President Pate said he has been meeting with Deans for several months and asked them to look at the priorities of their Colleges and to talk about program productivity as they review programs. How is a program (degree, major) measuring up to the OSRHE policy that a degree program must have five or more graduates per year for a three year period.
He also addressed the funding issue. Oil patch problems were better in the summer of 1995. We had a reasonable rate of funding until 1998-99 when a downturn began in the state’s economy and the tax base and revenue available to higher education dropped. North Central was worried about our funding at $0.65/dollar, the same rate as in 1992. The truth is that we have been underfunded for years. We helped ourselves by growing record freshman classes and increasing income from students. However, we have been putting off hard decisions that are made even harder by the fact that we are experiencing a change in direction. Some programs, like Business, are bursting at the seams, and others have declining, some seriously, enrollments. For the first time, Business, not Education, is the largest College in student enrollments. This is difficult for NSU because hiring faculty in Business is a more expensive proposition than is hiring in other areas. We have to think seriously about how we will grow this faculty, provide support for the programs needed, and allocate precious full-time faculty slots.
President Williams commented that Business asked for years for an extension of a program accreditation. Our hard decisions are how to use the limited funding we have. He said that his priority always had been salaries and that we put more money into salaries than into programs. His goal always is to raise salaries and that runs counter to what some presidents at our peer schools are doing. He took flack from regents and other presidents for giving us a 5% raise in the recent past when others targeted 3% or less. He also takes criticism from the Board of Regents of Oklahoma Colleges for continuing support of travel when most of the other schools have curtailed travel.
At the same time that these cuts are happening, other events may make it seem as though we don’t use our funds wisely. There are two or three housing projects going on. The largest of these will be the demolition of the Woodlawn Apartments behind the Library. They will be replaced by housing for about 300 students that is more apartment-oriented and less like a dormitory. Work will progress on the Science Building also. Both of these projects are based on bond funding, and these monies are not available for any other use. Also, Vision 2025 will bring in some $26 million to build new facilities at the Broken Arrow campus. These monies also are dedicated only to bricks and mortar. Finally, the Stadium renovation may or may not happen depending on the outcome of the case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. If it does happen, those monies cannot be spent for any purpose other than renovation of the stadium and associated structures.
President Wickham asked if the core curriculum, the General Education Requirements, would be affected by these cuts. Vice President Pate said he thought everything was on the table but that the Gen Ed requirements would be treated carefully. President Williams indicated that changing this curriculum probably would not happen.
President Wickham followed up by asking how we could continue to grow in Broken Arrow if we have such severe budget constraints. President Williams stated that we would see the first of the new construction completed in the fall of 2006. Hopefully, by the end of 2005, we will be out of the economic downturn and back into a reasonable area of funding. Right now, we look for one time funds to plug the gaps. We easily could spend much more in Broken Arrow than we are.
Dr. Pate responded by saying that NSU/BA has a much larger pool of adjuncts than is available in Tahlequah. Just like TU, OSU and TCC, we will use adjuncts. In Tahlequah, we just about have tapped out the adjunct pool. While the 14.75% tuition hike seems severe to some, especially to those paying the bill, the real-time actual increase to a student getting student aid (70% of NSU students) is invisible because the aid package expands to cover the cost. However, for us, a 14.75% increase in tuition doesn’t come close to closing the budget gap because it takes 3% in tuition increases to offset 1% in revenue decrease (from the state). That is a three-to-one ratio. So, even with the tuition increases, we slid backward. He’s looking forward to a healthy economy in 2007. He was surprised that the $885 million tax issue (Vision 2025) passed with a 60-62% of the vote. A strong Tulsa economy, American Airlines and Boeing included, could be a real boost for NSU. NSU has quality programs, a strong faculty, and the desire to compete. We need to hold onto our good faculty. In recent years, we’ve brought some good folks onto campus for job interviews, but we often cannot compete in terms of salary. Recently, we had a prospective faculty member from Kentucky on campus, but we just were not competitive with a salary in the mid-$40,000 range. We’d love to get him and others.
Broken Arrow is an excellent opportunity for NSU, but it can be frustrating. The declining economy means that more adults will become students, but we will be stretched to educate them. It is symbolic that OU and OSU, especially OU, recognize that we are a permanent part of the higher education picture in Tulsa. This offers some chances to collaborate on programs. Muskogee was languishing for years, but this year enrollment is up 11% there.
Thom Wier asked how, if faculty were to be engaged in the effort to limit costs and/or increase revenue, we might do so if, at each of our campuses, we have to ask questions about things (current financial data) that are not real obvious and do it in a cost and benefit manner.
Dr. Pate responded by saying that the Administration was doing cost and benefit analyses. The CEO of the Regents surveyed tuition costs of regional schools and found NSU lower than other Oklahoma and Arkansas universities. Certainly, we are less expensive to run than is OSU. We’re funded on a rolling 3-year formula allocation down the road. We have to look at quality in programs. What programs are we talking about? If we find problematic programs, how do we market them more effectively? We may have to visit the issue and cut down the menu of offerings if we can’t grow enrollments. We will make some decisions that will not be agreeable to others. If a program does not meet the OSRHE standards, we will have to talk about it. Chancellor Risser recently said that institutions should focus on certain strengths. In Tulsa, we are strong in many programs, but sometimes it’s easier to objectively discuss someone else. Let’s talk about OSU-Tulsa. This is a school claiming to have maybe 2,400 students, a 26% increase over 2000 when NSU was the leading educator in the consortium. Since we left, it is hard for them to replicate our offerings and our programs. Is their effort bad judgement or is it an effective way to expend taxpayer dollars.
Thom Wier asked how productivity affects the delivery of education to his students. He added that it was easy to look at OSU-Tulsa and see that they were trying to bring high quality graduate programs in areas like engineering even though TU has competitive engineering programs.
President Williams stated that looking at the break-up of the Tulsa consortium is valuable. Langston is struggling, but we are doing the same classes at Broken Arrow as we did on the Greenwood campus. Our enrollments are growing. People want to attend NSU, but to take care of them right now, our faculty are going to have to do more, to ask themselves do I want a job or not. I think those are the sort of questions the new OSU President also will be asking.
Vice President Vassar asked if we have any idea what programs are being targeted for discussion. He further stated that it was his opinion that NSU faculty carried their weight both in the classroom and intellectually. NSU is an intellectual entity. Where do we go when we can’t cut anymore?
President Williams indicated that we can’t run a university like a business, but a university can be run in a business-like way. We have to keep the lights on, and we have to protect academic integrity. We must retain new faculty, and as Dr. Baker says, show faculty that we are a family. We must preserve the integrity of this place.
Dr. Pate responded to the question, What’s on the table? Will all programs at a certain place or in a certain area be shut down? No! I think Dr. Haskins is right in saying that rumoring about reorganization is a sheer art form. At times, I think it almost is scientific. Anything and everything is on the table for discussion. We don’t yet have the feedback from you, the faculty. We ought to be able to increase loads, either hours taught or students per class, because our faculty to student ratio is 1:21. Yet, some of you are in classes with 75 or more students. Some of your colleagues must be able to do more. We have to be leaner and more efficient. Terri Baker asked if class size in freshmen English classes would be affected. Dr. Pate said we haven’t discussed it, but everything is on the table.
President Wickham said that NSU already was so lean that he didn’t see how we could cut much from a situation in which a lean faculty had built a “real” university with all of the intellectual parts that go with the definition.
Dr. Pate responded that we could get leaner and still preserve our university. We could do that if individual faculty would teach across colleges in areas in which they are skilled, and they could do that by accepting more students per class, say letting a 30 enrollment class go to 35 or 40. He indicated that Wier and Vassar are good examples of faculty who teach across colleges. Also, we are trying to use the resources we have to fill gaps. Dr. Bahr will help if exchanges of services are to be made. If all the monies are not there, positions can be filled at lower levels. This is the way he’s been trying to build positions through funding differentials from retirements.
Both President Williams and VP Pate reiterated that they wanted the input of faculty and that faculty strength was something to be shared. They said they did not want a top-down approach, but, rather, favored a grass-roots up flow of suggestions of how to cut costs. At about 4:30 PM, they left.
Due to the lateness of the hour, the Agenda was suspended and only a few items were considered. President Wickham reported that:
1. Chuck Ziehr was absent because his father passed away Tuesday. There was general agreement that we were poorly prepared to respond with empathy to situations like this. Wickham said he would get a card for the Council to sign;
2. Dana Eversole will chair the Circle of Excellence Committee again; and
3. Traveling plaques honoring the 2003 Circle of Excellence winners are in the hands of College Deans for display.
Wickham had a survey from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and Chancellor Risser that needed to be filled out. He indicated that there were many optional ways of doing this but that the easiest would be for the Council to respond with answers to the Likert scale questions. We went through the questions one-by-one.
Adjournment was at 5:00 PM.