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Responding to the Financial Environment

SUMMARY OF THE FACULTY REDUCTION PLAN / April 24, 2010

Process

The faculty reduction plan summarized below has been agreed on by the Committee on Academic Priorities (CAP), the President and the Provost. It was a difficult process that we all took on with heavy hearts. None of us wanted to reduce the size of the faculty, but given the need to reduce the overall College budget a reduction of the size of the faculty was necessary.

CAP considered detailed longitudinal data on staffing, enrollments, majors, and trends in enrollment.

The faculty members on CAP (Don Baumer, GOV; Bob Buchele, ECO; Nick Horton, MTH; Bill Oram, ENG; Katwiwa Mule CLT; and Cornelia Pearsall, ENG) interviewed 31 of the 41 departments and programs that have staffing and reported back to the rest of the committee (John Davis, Associate Provost; Danielle Ramdath, Associate Dean of the Faculty; Maureen Mahoney, Dean of the College; and Marilyn Schuster, Provost & Dean of the Faculty).

In all of the deliberations the committee considered the curricular priorities of the Smith Design, the recommendations of the Art & Science Research Group report and the traditional strengths of the curriculum.

Steps in the process from spring 2009 to April 2010

The budget plan that was developed by the major planning committees (that include representatives from the faculty, staff, students and administration) in the spring of 2009 called for a reduction to the budget supporting the Faculty Salary Pool of $3.7 million. This figure included an estimated reduction of about 25 positions in the Core+ faculty (Core+ includes tenured and tenure track positions, senior lecturers, visiting artists and scholars and some long term non-tenure track lecturers), to achieve a student:faculty ratio of 10:1; the $3.7 million goal included some reduction to non-core costs.

At the October 2009 Board of Trustees meeting, the goal for the reduction was itself reduced to $2.6 million instead of $3.7 million which translated to about 17 instead of 25 positions. In the end we were able to make economies that cut that number down to 13.5. Of that 13.5, 4 have already been taken, which leaves 9.5 cuts to make by 2015-16.

Principles

  • Protect Core+ positions as much as possible. Core+ positions (tenure track, senior lecturers, visiting artists, long-term lecturers) assure continuity and stability in departments.
  • Identify FTE not persons
  • In most cases, take the cut at the first vacancy.
  • Maintain policy that a vacancy created by a tenure denial would remain with the department and would not be cut.
  • Take some bold steps that will lead to the reorganization of some areas of the curriculum rather than spread out the cuts evenly.
  • Share resources, both staffing and curricular. Encourage cooperation between departments and between departments and programs whether through joint appointments, shared curriculum, or fixed-term contractual agreements for individual faculty members to commit a course or two to a program outside their home department for a specific period of time.
  • Encourage departments and programs to make use of Five College resources more fully and in new ways.
  • When a future FTE not identified in the reduction plan becomes vacant because of a retirement or resignation, the position is considered a faculty vacancy not a department or program vacancy.
  • Future requests for new positions that will serve more than one department or program will be given more weight than positions that serve one department or program exclusively.

The Plan

Savings in non-core expenses
About half of the reduction in the Faculty Salary Pool has been achieved through savings in non-core positions. All academic departments and programs will share the burden of these cuts, as we will generally be less able to provide replacement courses for leaves and administrative service.

We have reduced the number of teaching fellowships for graduate students and teaching assistantships in language departments. The President and the Provost were able to re-deploy some endowed funds to protect one position that would otherwise have been eliminated.

Reductions in Core+ positions
The 13.5 FTE cuts to be made by 2015-16 are indicated below:

Department or Program

Reductions to be made by 2015-16

Afro-American Studies

0.5

American Studies

0.5

Art

0.5

Biological Sciences

0.5

Economics

0.5

Education & Child Study

0.5

Picker Engineering Program

0.5

English Language & Literature

1.5

French Studies

1.0

Government

1.0

Music

2.5

Psychology

0.5

Religion

1.0

Russian Language & Literature

1.0

Spanish & Portuguese

0.5

Study of Women & Gender

0.5

Theatre

0.5

Total Core + positions

13.5

Departments and programs not on this list bear a special responsibility to share resources with those departments and programs with which they have affinities.

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