Murrow College Budget News - All Degree Programs Preserved; Multimedia Opportunities to Increase
Dear students, faculty, staff, and friends—
By now you may have heard some information about Washington State University’s budget cut plan, developed in response to the legislature’s 21.53% reduction in our funding for the next biennium. More information is available at : http://budget-committee.wsu.edu/. I would like to take this opportunity to give you some specific information about how the cut will affect the Murrow College.
Cuts across colleges and administrative areas have been as high as 30%, with the university forced to eliminate some programs and 370 jobs. Our College has been comparatively fortunate. We have been asked to prepare for a cut of $160,000. In addition, we have been asked to prepare for a parallel cut to the University’s public television unit, which we are in the process of adopting. This amounts to a reduction of approximately $25,000 to that area. Our planned response to these cuts is to eliminate a funded but not yet filled external relations staff position in the dean’s office and two faculty positions we have kept vacant in anticipation of this situation. We also must eliminate half of a staff position in the public television area.
Unfortunately, these cuts will force a reduction in our capacity to deliver the applied intercultural communication degree program, which currently has 14 majors. Fortunately, however, we did not have to eliminate the program, which also serves students from other degree programs. It is unclear what effect this will have on our graduate program, but currently no reductions in graduate course offerings are planned. Over the coming year, our faculty will need to determine what adjustments may be necessary at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Consistent with the University’s overall priorities, our goals in responding to the necessity for cuts have been to protect students and to protect faculty and staff while sustaining excellence, respecting our unique role in a land-grant research university, and preserving our ability to contribute to the creation of basic and applied discoveries. Our responses have been mission driven and intended to preserve our ability to pursue the overall vision for our new College as approved by the University last year. More specifically, we have responded with the following goals in mind:
· to protect our undergraduate students by ensuring that our majors can obtain access to courses to graduate on time, from highly qualified instructors who deliver instruction with excellence and with the high expectations appropriate for students who will carry forward the Murrow legacy;
· to protect our graduate students by preserving assistantship support and the ability for faculty to deliver graduate instruction and mentoring for collaborative, cutting-edge research;
· to protect students from other programs who depend on courses we offer in the general education (GER) program;
· to protect existing faculty and staff by avoiding layoffs to the extent possible;
· to protect our infrastructure for the effective and efficient support of the work pursued by students, faculty and staff.
It is important to note that these cuts had to be taken from permanent funding lines rather than from funding that comes to us on a temporary basis from a variety of sources. Temporary funding is a less secure resource but remains available to us. We rely on it to hire some of our instructors, to fund operations, to provide for student enrichment , to support professional development, to facilitate outreach and recruitment, and to facilitate special events such as the Murrow Symposium. An increasing reliance on temporary funding means that we must be efficient, flexible, collaborative and entrepreneurial. Consistent with our phased plan for developing our new College, we are pursuing grant funding and ramping up our ability to provide service research and multimedia production.
Strategic collaboration and creativity already are moving us forward in exciting ways. As an example, we are in the process of adopting some resources and staff coming from WSU Extension as a result of planned changes in its video and broadcast unit. Together with the public television resources and staff and our existing resources, faculty and staff, we will be able to pursue a shared vision that will provide new opportunities for students to plan, create and evaluate professional quality, multiplatform messages related to their areas of developing expertise.
Over the next month, the University and our College will be inviting feedback on our budget reduction plans. You can submit your comments on the University’s website : http://budget-committee.wsu.edu/, you can submit comments to our College at murrowcollege@wsu.edu, and of course, you can contact me.
Your involvement and support of our College are critical to our success. As a team we will emerge from the current budget crisis quickly and with even greater strength than we had before. I look forward to ensuring our future together.
Sincerely,
Erica Weintraub Austin, Dean