Minutes - UTK Faculty Senate Budget and Planning Committee meeting of October 7, 2015 Prepared by L. Gross - October 21, 2015 In attendance: Louis Gross (Chair), Chancellor Jimmy Cheek, Vice Chancellor Chris Cimino, Michael Fry, Yvonne Pelletier, Phyllis Thompson. After brief introductions, the meeting followed the agenda (which is included below). The focus of the meeting was a discussion on the agenda items with the Chancellor. 1. (a) Campus Budget Discussion Discussion of budget priorities and mechanisms for Committee input began with a summary by the Chancellor of the campus budget situation. He noted that there was only one major round of cuts from the State ($66M) during his tenure, and that only 7% of these cuts were allocated to the colleges, with the remainder of the cuts being handled centrally. There has been relatively scarce new funding available and what has been available overr the past has been priortitized to salary increases. There has been $32M added to endowments for over 70 new faculty chairs over the past 3 years so that now 16% of the faculty have some kind of chair or professorship now. The campus is required by the System through the Efficiency and Effectiveness review, to develop a plan of allocation and reallocation of 6% of its base budget. This is due in Spring 2015 and for it $35M is required be allocated and/or reallocated to strategic initiatives. The Chancellor noted that no College is over-resourced and very few resources will arise from any reallocation done by Colleges. There has been an investment in the Strategic Instruction Fund of $3-4M per year to help meet instructional demands in sokme fields and to enhance student retention. There is $1B in construction ongoing now with regular concern about cost-over-runs on these projects. (b) Graduate Student Funding Part of the confusion the Committee noted was related to the "ESPN" funding that Athletics stopped paying 3 years ago and that the campus took over. The Committee discussed a spreadsheet from Chris Cimino that explains this. Note that there was $800K for graduate student stipends that this lists as phased out. Chris Cimino told the Committee that "Initially called “fellowships” the funding has been used as top-off but from the very beginning was known to be non-recurring. Starting this year we dropped it to $575,000 and will continue this through FY17." The Chancellor noted he has put another $3.1M into grad support over the past several years and this year there is an additional $1.1M. So there is about $4M of rolling funds for "top-offs" so there are funds to make sure what top-offs a student was given to attract them here continue for the student's for 4 years of top-off support. The money is allocated to the Provost in January for these top-off funds, and the Chancellor made it clear that he expected these funds would be used to attract high quality students. He said it is up to the Provost how to allocate these across colleges but that he expected the allocation would be made in plenty of time for the departments to use these funds in their packages for incoming students. Both VC Cimino and the Chancellor noted that they were concerned that Deans and Heads might use the top-off funding as a way to reallocate other E&G funding and they really didn't intend this. They are aware units reallocate funding regularly, but the top-off funds were not to be used to reduce grad stipends from other E&G funds. There was discussion of support for students who obtain external fellowships and the impact of out-of-state tuition charges. We might lose some of the best students if we don't at least have a way to reduce the tuition charged to them to the in-state rate. The Chancellor and VC said they allocated exactly what was requested this year to handle this ($250K) and thought that dealt with the issue. There is no procedure to give out-of-state "waivers" to those on externally-funded fellowships. Athletics has been asking for these for many years too and so far the Chancellor has refused (this is for undergrads). there was a brief discussion of the Science Alliance, which goes to the System and gets skimmed a bit before it is sent to the campus sometime in September. The funding for this has dropped significantly - it is now about $800K per year but was at one point about $1.2M per year. VC Eighmy deals with how this is allocated to grad students and other priorities. (c) Budget Planning and the role of the B&P Committee The Chancellor noted that he would invite the Committee to a meeting of his Cabinet that is held in the late Spring to discuss budget priorities following discussions within each of the VCs activity areas. He suggested that we invite each VC to meet with the Committee individually to discuss their units priorities prior to the meeting of the Cabinet and he would encourage them to meet with us. He suggested that we may not wish to invite some VCs since there are other mechanisms in place for some to obtain faculty input (particularly Student Life), but it is up to the Committee. 2. Athletics Funding There are two types of reserves for Athletics: The Rainy Day Fund (Unallocated Fund Balance) that currently is about $5.8M; and the Non-Dedicated reserves (used for building fix-up, painting, etc.). The sum of these is now about $6.9M and is larger than was projected in our meeting with Brett Huebner last April because of somewhat higher income and about $1M more in development funds than was previously anticipated. The current target is to reach $25M for the Rainy day Fund. The Chancellor noted that the total cost of firing Coach Dooley and his staff was about $10M and that the new contracts of coaches are much better for UTK because they have mitigation written in if the coach gets another position. About 80% of student athletes are out-of-state and they are charged out-of-state tuition. 3. Salary Analysis An argument was presented by several Committee members as to why repeating the previous anaysis of faculty salaries by gender was still appropriate. The Chancellor noted that he would discuss this with the Provost. The Committee decided to continue to distribute the overall Faculty Salary study done in previous years. It was also suggested by the Chancellor that we invite Susan Matsonago from Institutional Research to meet with us regarding comparisons of different units to peers. 4. Outsourcing The Chancellor discussed President DiPietro's objectives to maintain University control of any outsourcing decisions. The Committee suggested that a possible resolution would be most effective if also agreed to by other UT System campuses. The Chair was charged with contacting the Uinversity Faculty Council about a possible resolution that each campus could adopt. the meeting was adjourned at 5PM. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Agenda for Faculty Senate Budget Committee Meeting of October 7, 2015 with Chancellor Jimmy Cheek 1. Discussion of mechanisms to ensure the Committee and Chair meet their charge as noted in the Faculty Handbook to participate "in the presentation of budgetary needs presented to the chancellor on an annual basis". 2. Discussion of Athletics funding. I attach a spreadsheet that Vice Chancellor Cimino supplied on the $6M of committments. He also said in an email regarding graduate student support: "You are referring to the $800,000 for graduate student support. Initially called “fellowships” the funding has been used as top-off but from the very beginning was known to be non-recurring. It was to be in place for five years and then reviewed. Last year the Provost gave notice to the Deans the funds would be phased out. Starting this year we dropped it to $575,000 and will continue this through FY17. During this time it should be noted the Chancellor has invested another $3.1 million into graduate support and has plans to do more should funding be available." 3. Discussion of gender salary analysis. I attach a ppt slide of the presentation on gender inequity from the Diversity Summit a week ago. We might discuss the possibility of a resolution for the University Faculty Council to consider recommending to the President that the System work with Chancellors, Deans, etc. to allocate additional support for vacant Chairs if such support would enhance the attractiveness of a position to candidates whose presence would enhance the diversity of the pool of Chairs of Excellence. We also could discuss the issue of obtaining data for the analysis of gender salary (in)equity done in the past. 4. Outsourcing - discussion of a possible resolution for the Senate to consider supporting the Chancellor and President's position regarding campus choice for any outsourcing plan.