Senate Finance Committee

The committee spent most of its time analyzing and strategizing about next year's budget and the savings that have to be made to protect NLU's future.

It's really important for everyone to realize that there is no emergency or imminent threat. We are planning for next fiscal year. As the President has warned, we can sustain a loss this fiscal year, but need to be careful in the next 18-24 months as enrollments rebuild when deficits will not be sustainable. This is the first time NLU has been so proactive about a forthcoming budget issue that some people are having trouble believing that we are being so proactive. Some people believe we are being reactive to an immediate concern because NLU was managing by "putting out fires" for so long. This time, we can see the fire a ways off, and we can be thoughtful and strategic, and take time to help everyone understand our budget realities and ways to solve them.

Faculty has focused almost exclusively on the load issue, probably because this is the biggest way faculty see the budget affecting them. Faculty need to know that everyone at NLU is going to be affected by the budget, not just faculty. Load will make up a maximum of $780,000 of the total savings/new income of $6 million we need to find. Obviously, savings will come from every part of the institution.

To help administration understand faculty's position, I have let everyone know that faculty have already made financial sacrifices this fiscal year because of the new ways load was allocated for summer and fall. There were fewer contracts for 1/6 or 1/12 of pay this summer, and fewer overload contracts in fall because of lower enrollments. Faculty understands the need to allocate load differently, but administration needs to know that faculty had become used to the prior situation, which was used by faculty and administration to compensate for our low pay. I believe that faculty in fact, not only have taken a hit already, but we are the only ones to be affected directly by this year's drop in tuition revenue.

Faculty also have expressed concerns about administration's offer to teach classes for free in order to match the sacrifices faculty are making. Faculty need to know that administration's contributions to the cost savings need to be discussed carefully. Clearly, it's not a good use of the president's time to teach a class if she could be using that time to meet with a donor. And administrators might be so focused on their jobs that they don't have the time or energy to shift gears and teach. All of these considerations need to be discussed.