The University of Arkansas at Little Rock should replace adjunct professors with graduate teaching assistants, demolish two campus buildings and consolidate its five academic colleges into three, a committee has recommended to campus leaders.
The Institutional Effectiveness Committee, consisting of 24 UALR faculty and staff members, will continue suggesting "scenarios" for changing the university's operations amid budget shortfalls and enrollment drops. The committee will stop when enough efficiencies have been found, said Brian Berry, committee co-chairman and assistant professor of chemistry.
Chancellor Christina Drale would approve any changes to operations and budgets, per committee recommendations, Berry said.
The committee is accepting feedback on the suggestions and has published them for employees to review, Berry said. Feedback on the first set of scenarios should go straight to the chancellor before the week of Christmas, he said.
The suggestions were sent directly to Drale and the university's Chairs Council, Deans Council, Planning and Finance Committee and staff senate president.
The faculty senate has not taken a position on the scenarios, which must be reviewed by the senate's Planning and Finance Committee, senate President Amanda Nolen said. The faculty senate isn't scheduled to meet again until Jan. 31.
[DOCUMENT: IEC report to the chancellor » arkansasonline.com/1216report]
In an email to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, staff senate President Melody Weigel said the body's executive committee has reviewed all of the scenarios so far and is happy that they are open for university comment. The committee is discussing with university leadership the "best interest of staff since some of the proposed changes will affect their employment and livelihoods," she said.
"Our foremost priority is ensuring the fair treatment and dignity of staff throughout this process," Weigel wrote.
Drale declined to comment for this article. Through university spokeswoman Judy Williams, Drale cited the ongoing discussions surrounding the proposals.
"Anything she said at this point could be interpreted as prejudicial and cutting off discussion," Williams said.
Drale told University of Arkansas System trustees last month that she planned to explore cutting administrative costs, reducing building-use and maintenance costs, and eliminating low-enrollment academic programs. All of those things have been explored in the current scenarios.
While the university faces a more than $11 million budget shortfall for this fiscal year, the committee is searching for long-term efficiencies, not necessarily anything that would save the university money right away.
Steve McClellan, the university's vice chancellor for finance and administration, said last year that the university intended to cover its projected deficit of about $6 million by using reserve funds. But lower-than-expected enrollment this fall has the university projecting another $5 million shortfall. It's unclear how that will be addressed.
"Cutting costs is not in our name, but effectiveness is in our name," Berry said. At the same time, the university must find efficiencies, which would reduce costs, Berry said.
While the committee plans to continue releasing scenarios, the university's budget-planning draft schedule outlines early next year as a critical time for vetting Institutional Effectiveness Committee recommendations. January through Feb. 14 is allotted for budget hearings based on those recommendations. After that, colleges are to incorporate the changes into their budget plans, which they'll later work on with the university's budget office before the fiscal 2021 budget is submitted for system approval.
The latest scenario, sent out to university employees earlier this month, calls for consolidating the university's five academic colleges into three. That would save $500,000 per eliminated college annually, or $1 million per year for the university, the committee estimates. Those savings would be realized quickly by having fewer deanships and a smaller administrative staff.
Deans' office suites could be repurposed, the committee wrote in its report.
Although university leaders have discussed eliminating academic programs, current scenarios would not do that.
[DOCUMENT: College combination scenario » arkansasonline.com/1216scenario]
"Students and faculty should not be significantly impacted; however, relationships between departments and academic support units would be affected," the committee's report reads. "This scenario will affect all dean's offices, chairs and academic administrative professionals. Academic offices (faculty and chairs) will have more time to devote to teaching, research and mentoring students instead of administrative duties."
The committee provided three suggestions for how to reorganize programs and offered three more suggestions for how to reorganize into four colleges, if preferred.
The suggestions don't include new college names.
One three-college proposal links professional programs, science and math programs, and arts and humanities. In another, professional and human sciences are grouped together; other sciences are grouped together; and the other college includes the remaining arts and humanities degree programs. The third clusters business and communications; sciences and human sciences; and nursing, education, arts and humanities programs.
For the committee, easier things have been tackled first, Berry said, such as halting all new construction. New buildings increase the university's annual depreciation of assets, and none were in the works anyway.
"It was one of those things that was fairly obvious," he said.
Less obvious was how to reduce redundancies across the campus and how to cut academic offerings. Any scenarios addressing those will come later, when more data is collected and more study is done, Berry said.
For academics, the committee will look at programs' growth potential, market need and overall costs. Any cuts to academics would not have an immediate effect because the university is required to "teach out" the remainder of a program to the students who are already in it. The university would stop allowing people into the academic program, but those who are in it would have the opportunity to finish.
The committee recommends transforming some of its 246 graduate research assistantships into graduate teaching assistantships to supplement "depleted adjunct resources." A teaching assistant costs $1,600 per three-credit hour course, whereas an adjunct faculty member is paid $2,000 to $2,400 for the same course.
Demolishing or mothballing the Procurement Services and Education buildings could save the university at least $550,000 annually, the committee concluded. Staff members in those buildings can be moved to empty offices elsewhere on the campus.
Metro on 12/16/2019