Your Suggestions
Stop building fancy buildings and invest money saved into the technology infrastructure. Put more courses online, close buildings that are not required. The money saved from electricity, etc. should be significant. Technology is the future, yet we continue to invest in needless brick & mortar. Consolidate programs that have labs and require hands on training into shared spaces and turn off the power everywhere else. The buildings are nice, but if you can't afford faculty, then you will not have anyone to occupy the pretty structures.31
I have a few suggestions, some that I am sure have already come up in your discussions but I would like to state them anyway.22
1. Many campuses charge more for residential parking spaces since they are only able to sell the space once.
2. At a previous university the parking permits were placed on the driver side back window. There was a rule that people had to park their cars with the head facing into the stall. This permits the checker to slowly drive along the cars and easily ticket people without permits. Also it allows for ticketing of individuals that do not park into the stall or those that park facing against the flow of traffic.
3. There are a few universities that have attempted to cut costs by putting in green roofs. Some of the buildings at USM seem, at least to an untrained eye like mine, to be good candidates for the project. I did a little searching and there are a few universities that are offering classes and even some students that have turned the topic into a thesis.
4. I think turning off more lights and especially projects would be of help too. There has been more than one Friday afternoon I have turned off a project that has been on for I don’t know how long. After being told the cost of these bulbs, and how important it is to save bulb life, I can’t imagine why they are left on. The library goes to half lights about 15 minutes to close. I would like to see them do this during the day light hours too, at least on floors 3-5 where there is plenty of light from the windows. Also group study room lights are left on regularly and so are the big screen TVs that are used as monitors. I think restroom lights should all be on timers or at least have signs that let student’s know it is okay to turn off the lights if there is no one else in the facilities.
5. I recently witnessed campus tours done in the rain by vans. It made me wonder way they could not have used the larger transports they have for parking. The vans I saw were not full, in fact most seem to only have a few people taking the tour; however I witnessed this three times in one day, within a ten minute time frame. It seemed to me that they could have combined all the tours into one of those transports and had room to spare.
6. A friend of mine recently started grad school at USM. At her undergraduate university all students were charged a fee for printing and copying. This fee became a declining balance on their student account. Since the library has recently tied printing and copying to a student's account number this would be a good time to start this process. The fee was about $15 but even $10 times the number of students in the student body could help since not every student would use the entire fee. If a student did go over the fee they could add money in the same manner as the current system.
I know that these are not large changes and will not make a big dent in the amount you have to cut, but I feel better at least stating them. Thank you for allowing me this chance to give my opinion. I hope I did not offend anyone and I thank you for doing the job you are doing.
Rather than eliminating any additional employees, why not have each USM faculty/staff/ & adm. take 1 day off per month for which they are not paid? You could divide offices in half so that offices are never closed, but everyone takes an unpaid day off or two. Better to be employeed with benefits than the alternative.05
Perhaps less overhead in the higher level administration will allow more money for the day to day operations to keep the classes and programs running and the programs that keep the school a university.30
Investigate reductions in the number of the administrators, including at the college level.11
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