5-20-09: Stanford: Undergraduate Education, Engineering School announce cutbacks

The Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the School of Engineering recently announced budget cutbacks for fiscal year 2010.

In a presentation to the Faculty Senate last week, John Bravman, vice provost for undergraduate education, said the unit has eliminated 25 administrative and professional positions through layoffs and attrition in recent months, moves that reduced its non-lecturer staff by 18 percent.

Sixteen people were laid off; nine positions were lost through attrition. During a simultaneous reorganization, six new positions also were created and filled.

"This is a very significant reduction and a very painful reduction for many colleagues—as is true across the university—who have served us so well," he said.

The office also employs about 70 lecturers, most of whom teach in the Introduction to the Humanities program and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

Following the reductions and reorganization, the office now employs 160 people.

Bravman said the unit receives 60 percent of its revenue from the endowment, and a large fraction of that sum from relatively new endowment funds that are now worth less than the original donation, due to the national and global economic crisis.

"We had to confront the fact that fiscal year 2009—this year—we had an unexpected $8 million deficit on roughly a $52 million base, due exclusively to endowments being under water," he said, adding that the Development Office is contacting donors asking for help.

In order to get the "maximum efficiency from our staff and our precious dollars," the office underwent a restructuring that reduced the number of administrative groups under its umbrella to four units, down from nine, Bravman said.

The newly named "Stanford Introductory Studies," for instance, includes Introduction to the Humanities, the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, and Freshman and Sophomore Programs. The other groups are Undergraduate Advising and Research (which has subsumed the Freshman Dean's Office), the Bing Overseas Studies Program and the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Bravman said the office also has trimmed next year's budget for undergraduate research to $4.5 million, a reduction of $1.1 million.

Earlier this year, Bravman announced that the office would eliminate three programs that paid student and faculty advisers: the Head Peer Academic Coordinator Program, which paid upperclassmen to advise freshmen; the Peer Mentor Program, which paid room and board for students who arrived on campus early for New Student Orientation; and a program that paid honoraria to faculty for serving as advisers to freshmen and sophomores.

Bravman said the office still needs to cut $1.2 million to $1.4 million from its budget. Those cuts need to be made as soon as possible, he said, but will mainly be made in fiscal year 2011.
 
School of Engineering
In response to the financial crisis at Stanford, the School of Engineering recently announced plans to reduce its operating budget by $9.6 million. After protecting essential expenditures, such as faculty salaries, the reduction reflects a 21 percent cut in the school's operating budget.

The School of Engineering recently eliminated 15 staff positions in the dean's office through layoffs and attrition. Eight people lost their jobs; seven jobs went unfilled.

"There have been no easy decisions in this process, and those involving staff layoffs were particularly difficult," said Engineering School Dean Jim Plummer. "These are real people—our friends and colleagues. I am grateful that the university is providing both severance and outplacement support to the employees whose jobs are being eliminated."

The school also has frozen 15 open faculty billets, shifted unrestricted endowment income to the operating budget and away from specific programs, and eliminated salary increases for faculty and staff during fiscal 2010.

Plummer has directed each of the Engineering School's nine departments to reduce operating expenditures by an average of 14 percent. The departments will announce decisions about cutbacks as soon as possible. According to Plummer, it is unlikely that they can achieve their targets without eliminating staff positions.
He said the Stanford Center for Professional Development, the school's online and distance education program, is currently analyzing enrollment and revenue trends and in the coming weeks will make decisions that will include additional staff reductions.

Plummer said the school remains a "great school of engineering" and said he is optimistic about the long-term future.

"Our strategic objective in approaching the budget reductions has been to protect the core mission of the school and to ensure that our decisions today minimize any adverse effect on our long-term health and strategic position," he said.

Although some construction within the school has been suspended, he said that many important projects, including the school's new headquarters, the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center, are moving forward.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/may20/cutbacks-052009.html