Monthly newsletter of the TT faculty of the college.

How CLAS Prioritizes the Budget and Resources 

Each year or so, CLAS provides the faculty with an overview of how budget priorities are assigned and with information about the scale and general landscape of the CLAS budget. "Budgets are a way of expressing over time a community's values and aspirations within the limits of resources," says Dean Antczak. "So it's appropriate that the CLAS community know how our resources get distributed.”  

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has an Annual Budget in FY 2019-20 of $80,736,756 of which 94.58% is dedicated to personnel expenses (big ticket benefits such as health for CLAS faculty and staff are included in the personnel allocation). Student wages represented roughly 2.01% of the budget. The Operating Budget is 2.82% of the Annual Budget for consumables, supplies, services, and maintenance (CSSM). The final 0.59% is earmarked for equipment. It's only with this last less than 5.42% that most discretionary decisions are made. "Personnel" in CLAS means the 694 fiscal year equivalent (FYE) regular faculty, APs and PSSs (2019-20) in our college. There were another 11.62 FYE positions funded from designated or restricted funds, which are a separate budget.    

From the personnel allocation comes what is known as the Adjunct Overload Budget. In simple terms, any money available from vacant positions and from sabbatical and other leave is used to fund adjunct and visiting instructors. This is a constantly moving target; this figure is difficult to determine at a given moment because of sudden decisions to retire, faculty members giving short notice of a leave or departure, intended full-year sabbaticals not receiving anticipated grant funding which suddenly become half-year sabbaticals, the salary level of faculty covering summer courses, and other unavoidable fluctuations in who is available to teach at any given time and the exact amount of funding needed to provide that coverage. To complicate matters, a change in federal or state policy, or even a sudden drop or rise in the stock market can change the pattern of anticipated faculty retirements in a given year. "Since we can only squeeze our budget to the maximum for the College each year if we plan on such patterns," says the Dean, "such a change in the outside world can present us with conditions to which we must adapt on the run."

In addition to the Annual Budget is a small, annually variable Working Budget assigned to us by the Provost. Assistant Dean Michelle McCloud notes that "we were allocated $82,862 for 2019-20.” Each year, the 27 units in CLAS have the opportunity to submit working budget requests for consideration.  Eighteen units submitted a total of 84 working budget requests for fiscal year 2019-20. Sixteen of those requests were funded and the amount allocated each year is very variable. The working budget allocations for the current year will fund special projects and one-time costs such as the Vivarium Lab in Kindschi Hall, student support, equipment replacement and program reaccreditation support.

As the university grapples with fewer high school graduates and the resulting decrease in enrollments, budgets this fiscal year were cut across the university. The CLAS budget in total (college office and departments) was reduced by 4.2%. The college was unable to shield the units from cuts as much as we had in prior years. We rolled them out amongst the units in as systematic and thoughtful a manner as we knew how, but units felt the pain—as did the college.

For the decade, the College has been fortunate to have, through the support of private donors (including many faculty members; thank you!), the CLAS Innovation Fund (formerly called the CLAS Fund for Excellence) from which the Dean can assist several projects annually. The Fund supports College programs for faculty and students which are exemplars of our mission. Director for Communications and Advancement Monica Johnstone worked with University Development to establish this fund. "I wanted Fred to be able to say yes to more of the many worthy student and faculty initiatives," Johnstone said. "We also do what we can to suggest germane sponsors to match our funding when that is appropriate so that we can do as much good as possible with the fund." Within these constraints, the Mission Statement of the College and the CLAS Strategic Plan are used as guiding principles for decision making. In general terms, this means maximizing the benefit to students, selecting to fund high- (and wide-) impact projects, and helping the faculty and staff to do their jobs increasingly well and efficiently.    

While many mundane or mechanical matters are dealt with independently by the College Office, those most directly relevant to the teaching mission are conducted in close consultation with the Unit Heads and faculty governance. For instance, to prioritize a limited number of faculty lines that the University can sanction in a given year, such consultation is critical. Units are provided with enrollment and staffing statistics for prior years to help them set their internal priorities based on a firm foundation. Units then submit a prioritized list of new or replacement faculty positions (including affiliate positions) requested for coming year, with justifications. The CLAS Associate Deans and your elected CLAS Faculty Council independently review and prioritize position requests, and both submit these prioritized lists to the Dean. The Dean reviews all of this input and sends the Provost a final prioritized list of all CLAS faculty position requests for the coming year.   

All of the participants in this winnowing process base their prioritizing on enrollment and staffing trends; areas of highest student demand; curricular, accreditation, and certification requirements; impact on liberal education; retirements and resignations; availability of adjuncts; and efficient use of the existing staff. For obvious reasons, a clearly articulated and compelling rationale for each requested position is vital to its success. 

While a dean cannot by individual fiat approve new personnel or erect buildings or reconfigure classrooms shared by all of the academic units in the university, the Dean, Associate Deans, Assistant Deans, and Director of Communications have seats at the tables where such priorities are set and provide information that makes its way to legislators, Trustees, donors, and the President's cabinet of GVSU. In short, they become the voice of CLAS in the larger planning and resourcing processes of the university as a whole.  

Of course, funding from the college and the university is only part of what it takes to fuel our values and aspirations. External grants, private donations, and gifts-in-kind play a larger role each year. To illustrate, in FY 2004, indirects (costs not directly attributable to the grant project itself, such as administration and some overhead costs) accounted for only $12,804. With the new indirect cost policy distribution change that went into effect last fiscal year, PI’s and departments now receive 12.5% and 7.5% of the indirects collected on their projects. The college supports this change in policy which rewards faculty actively engaged in externally-funded research and scholarship, as well as the departments that cultivate faculty scholarship. In fiscal year 2017 the college received over $149,000 in indirect cost recovery dollars, compared to last fiscal year when the college received slightly more than $59,286. With fewer indirect cost recovery resources, the college will be very careful about ensuring that projects supported with scarce resources are in line with strategic priorities. 

Seven years ago, CLAS established a fund for a CLAS scholarship, through fundraising such as the CLAS on the Green golf outing.  The fund surpassed endowment level quickly, and is now making awards to our students.  Elbow grease never shows up on the CSSM spreadsheet, the dedicated hard work of students and faculty isn't easy to quantify in the bottom line, our increasing credibility with the general public that can be detected in newspaper articles and anecdotally from our neighbors is impossible to assign a dollar value, but all of this goes into the equation ̶ the sum of which brings us more and better students, a greater impact on our community, and a trajectory towards the future we have planned. 

FROM THE DEAN'S DESK

Frederick J. Antczak, Dean

In the summertime, there’s always a great deal of learning-by-doing to show as students and faculty dive into their research, many take their lifelong learning on the road, and wonderful programs like our Summer Film Project (see student getting hands-on experience in the photo above) allow practical application of theory.  Your enthusiasm is a happily renewable resource.

It’s a good thing that’s true. The world sorely needs us.  I don’t have to recount the environmental, social, and political challenges that this summer brought into painful focus.  You are well aware and doing something about these challenges.  I’d like to congratulate Elena Lioubimtseva (GPY) and her team on a very successful conference to empower K-12 teachers with educational chops for teaching about climate.  Kudos to Caitlin Horrocks for her new book making Oprah’s list—our fiction writers and poets educate our hearts in times when compassion is needed.  I hear that some faculty members have finished their book manuscripts (and I look forward to the launch parties). 

Check out the magnitude of the course contributions your CLAS colleagues are making to the Making Waves initiative.  The “Big Splash” official launch is coming very soon.

I'm very appreciative of the FORUM article by Peg West about my Start Up speech.  But as you suspected, it is very unlikely to be my 'final message'--you will hear from me at Sabbatical Showcase and in these columns at very least.

In the last few months, many of you worked on grants or curriculum revisions or world record attempts—all of these move the needle, keep us fresh and relevant, and are part of what sustains our work.

In fact, we are so interconnected that it can be very, very hard to name all of the heroes—and I love putting you in the spotlight.  After the preceding issue of CLAS Acts, it was brought to my attention that Michael Henshaw (BIO) did some of the foundational work that chemists built on for the parachute course we described in our feature last month.  I’ll bet in turn he’d name those who inspired that work.  A great college is like connective tissue.  Individual parts are very important but so are the interconnections that allow it to work at scale.

So as we go into this new academic year, I ask you to continue to think big, make bold improvements, and let the college help connect you to the people and resources to make that work.  From my heart, I’m grateful for your including me on your excellent adventures.