Senate leadership summarized past process in which administration has presented Senate with priorities for comment.
Provost indicated that the budget has become very complex and detailed, implying that he did not have the capability to share the infomation, get feedback, and refine in a reasonable amount of time.
Vi Ettle noted that priorities were vetted with the Senate Committee and Senate in the past; however, this step was skipped this year.
Regarding specifics of this cycle: the Provost noted that his priorities are to finish what has been started since the adoption of the strategic plan.
Currently the Provost's office is going line-by-line through the requests of academic units.
---
The chair asked (Q); the provost answered (A)
Q: What can the committee do to assist in this process this year?
A: Once we come up with the budget, what would be useful is for faculty to support requests from "non-academic" units that are directly related to academic needs, even if that means cuts in places we might care about. But the provost would NOT support the involvement of the committee in the preparation of the academic budget, but offered to SHARE his report to the president with the committee on 1/10/11. The committee could then review the provost's budget on 1/14, meet with the provost on 1/17, and report to the senate on 1/19.
Q: Going forward, how do we restructure the committee in order to be involved in our support of academic priorities.
A: Suggested that faculty on the senate committee seek involvement at the college/unit level and share information with each other in an ongoingway. Did not have a clear idea of a way that a UNIVERSITY budget committee could have meaningful input at the provost's level.
This seems to suggest there is no role for this committee. I am already heavily involved in the budget request at my unit level, I see no purpose of everyone bringing their unit level information to a committee - to do what?
ReplyDeleteCorrect: There will be no substantive role for the committee in the *provost's* deicison-making. Our role, as I heard it, will be to vet the provost's budget with the Senate and point out things we support particuarly strongly.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the committee is given the jobs of
1. making the provost's decisions transparent to the faculty at large and
2. making sure the faculty's voice is heard by the *president*
In the future, there may be some sense in having faculty represetnatives on the school/unit budget committees [where these things exist] come together to discuss what's going on in the different units. This could reveal overlapping interests, getting items moved to more appropriate budgets (library, ctrl), etc.