September 2009 Archives

The College of Health has strength - considerable strength - to build on.  We can envision a solid, strong future.  But what do we need to do now to help us move into the future?

            First and foremost, we have to recognize that no rescue from the current dismal budget situation is imminent.  There will be no influx of new money, or restored money, or reallocated money.  The university has no reserves, and is under intense pressure of cuts to scrounge for every dollar it can find.  Good performance, excellent performance, at present, has negligible effect on our bottom line.  Even though our enrollment is up 6% over last fall, it doesn't help our budget, because we don't get the tuition dollars.  Our external funding does help us some, but it helps the university's central budget more; and because that budget is so strapped, the university is not of a mind, not able, really, to give us more.  So, we must look within for solutions to our situation. 

            We must do genuinely strategic thinking about our future (and not merely mouth the words): what we'll emphasize, what we won't, where we will invest and where we will disinvest.  We need to turn over every rock, look at every aspect of operations from every angle - staffing, faculty release time, course scheduling, travel..., every line in every operations budget.  We may need to compress, to freeze, to contain, to cut - on our own, not because Joe Morgan or Bob Lyman or Martha Saunders says we have to.  We will certainly need to ask more of ourselves.  Especially if we get whacked with significant new cuts this year (which looks increasingly probable), it's quite possible that we will slap a freeze on operational spending, with centralized review of expenditures.  Should this happen, it doesn't mean that every request coming to my office will not net an automatic "no" response, but every "yes" will indeed need one helluva strong rationale in terms of return-on-investment.

            There are tough and painful decisions, but also, I'm confident, smart decisions to be made....

            I'm charging our leadership team, with principal coordination byDr. Nugent, to engage in precisely this form of thinking and planning.  Our chairs and directors will, in turn, be expected to engage, within the governance structures of their respective units, with special emphasis on the tenure-stream faculty, everyone else in this room (as well as those colleagues not in this room).

            Final note: Last year I emphasized "community," and said that community building within the college - among administrators, faculty, staff and students, internally, and with our external constituents - needs to be a constant priority for us all.  That hasn't changed; if anything, our tough circumstances drive that conviction more deeply into my thinking - and, I hope, yours.  We make it or don't make it as a community..., and as a strong community we will make it; we will survive and we will thrive.  We'll not only move from half-empty to half-full; I am convinced that we'll fill the glass all the way up, and then some. 

So far, I've only described the CoH glass "half-empty."  Now, here's the glass half-full:

            · I think the CoH has a great administrative team.  Our associate deans and chairs/directors are truly outstanding senior colleagues - smart, hard-working, and thoroughly team spirited.

            · CoH has talented and productive faculty and staff.  Retention has been impressive, and we've been able to pull in  impressive new faculty despite a "semi-freeze" last year. 

            · CoH enjoys strong demand for our students and our graduates.  We produce 700 graduates a year, all of them vitally needed.  Our degree programs are, on the whole, strong, with projections that they will stay so.  Our enrollment is up 6% this fall, the highest in the university.   

            · CoH boasts of outstanding clinical and community service progams - of which the Children's Center for Communication and Development and the DuBard School of Languague Disorders are the best know.

            · CoH continues to birth new programs and projects - the new Doctorate of Nursing Practice program; a new social work education project geared to public child welfare workers; the Early Oral Intervention program; the newly approved interdisiciplinary Center on Aging. More good stuff is coming - an on-line master's in coaching education; an on-line master's program in medical technology.

            · CoH has the second best record of external funding in the university (behind Science and Technology) - over $10 million last year - funding an impressive array of projects spanning instruction, research, and service.  We have good projects doing good work, often with an immediate positive impact on people's lives.

            · CoH has a new opportunity to make some headway on a stalled building project, with external funding for planning a nursing building.  We have major challenges with inadequate and insufficient physical plant throughout the college, but this is one bright spot - with thanks owed to Dr. Nugent, Vice-President for Research Burge, and President Saunders.

            · CoH has a reinvigorated Dean's Council - 25 enthusiastic supporters, mostly leaders in the health services community of South Mississippi (here the kudos go to Meredith Cothern, our development officer).  We had an excellent meeting last week, and I'm greatly encouraged by their commitment.

            · CoH has a great position vis-à-vis the university's strategic priorities - academic success; image development; community connections; healthy minds, bodies, campuses.  Our missions dovetail the priority concerns of the university quite well.

            · CoH will eventually benefit, I believe, from the university's commitment to a new budget model - "responsibility-centered management," in which better performance translates into better funding.  You'll be hearing more about this in the future; quite possibly, once we learn more about it, we will have a college convocation focusing on the model.

CoH held its fall '09 faculty/staff convocation at Thad Cochran on Friday afternoon.  We were graced with visits from both the president and provost, and, despite all the doom-and-gloom budget talk (mine included), I think we managed an overall "positive" experience.  Following is the first (and nastiest) part of my remarks; the rest will be posted in subsequent entries.

Fall convocations typically concern what lies ahead, with a distinctly positive spin; and I do indeed want to address the future and profess my belief that our future is potentially bright, exceptionally bright, in fact.

But we have to acknowledge first that this is a time of great challenge for the college, as it is for the entire university.  So first, let me show you the glass half-empty...

            · We're grappling with structural (permanent) cuts imposed last year for the current year - 4.5% for this year; over $600,000 in cash from what was already a tight budget.  There are a number of implications of these cuts.  Perhaps the most dramatic is that we now have two departments without any operating budget whatsoever - no commodities, travel, contractual, etc.

            · We're now facing new cuts of possibly 3.5%, the result of Gov. Barbour's recent order, with the expectation that another cut is coming later in the year.  And as I'm sure everyone knows, we're presently facing a hiring freeze.

            · We can also look ahead to planned cuts for the next fiscal year (not yet finalized) - CoH slated to lose three, possibly four, faculty lines, and two staff positions.

            In a nutshell, colleagues, we have an unsustainable budget situation - The harsh reality is that we're rapidly running down college reserves to plug holes in budgets and maintain essential operations.  The college is currently supplementing salaries, supporting faculty and staff positions fully (100%) in some cases, covering commodities and travel and equipment lease costs, altogether, roughly $250,000 in annual costs. 

We can do this - for a time - only because we've been able to build up some reserves from the funds that trickle down to the college from the F&A ("indirects") and salary recovery related to externally funded projects - a college piggy bank, if you will.  But this is largely "one-time" money, meaning we can only spend it once; money coming into the piggy bank cannot match money going out at this rate.  I will not sugarcoat this for you or for myself - this is a BAD SITUATION, and it must change.

Solid and stimulating meetings with the "new" CoH Dean's Council this Friday night and Saturday.  An energized and expanded group, co-chaired by seasoned health care professionals Bill Oliver and Gary Marchand, has a sound grasp of the importance of a sustainable, mutually advantageous college-community partnership, and is committing to long-term support across a range of activities relating to college promotion, planning, and securing new financial resources.

Hard to ask for more - though a visit to the president's stadium suite and a 52-0 victory in the season opener never hurts!