To: Appalachian Faculty and Staff

From: Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock

Subject: Update on Budget Reduction Plan Approval

Date: September 6, 2011

Dear Appalachian Faculty and Staff:

As you are aware, the reduction in state appropriations to Appalachian State University is $22.8 million less than our 2010-11 state funding level.  With enrollment growth funding and proceeds from the campus-based tuition increase, our net reduction is $16.7 million.  This represents the loss of 11.7 percent of state funding for this University.

As required by the NC General Assembly, the following principles guided the development of the budget reduction plan submitted to the UNC General Administration on August 19, 2011: 

• Abolish vacant positions first
• Reduce state funding for centers and institutes, speaker series, and other nonacademic activities
• Adjust faculty workload, including ensuring that the average is equal to the national average in our Carnegie classification
• Restructure research activities
• Implement cost-saving span of control measures
• Reduce the number of senior and middle management positions
• Eliminate low-performing, redundant, or low-enrollment programs
• Protect direct classroom services, including faculty members and adjunct professors

The Cabinet members and I took these principles, along with the Appalachian Strategic Plan, into consideration as we determined how to preserve the quality academic experience our students expect and deserve within the parameters of a drastically reduced budget.

We have not received our final budget allocation from the UNC General Administration, but Interim Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Greg Lovins has been in conversations with his colleagues at General Administration and has been told that our reduction plan has been reviewed and conforms to the guidelines provided.

If you have not already, you will recognize several changes on campus.  Each department will experience a reduction in operating funds despite increased student credit hour production this fall.  There will be a decrease in funding for travel and off-campus scholarly assignments will be approved only if they are fully funded from external sources.  In addition, the Belk Library and Information Commons’ hours will be reduced by 25 percent, no longer providing the 24-hour access Mondays through Thursdays that our students requested. State funding for the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center has also been curtailed and those operations reorganized in the Division of Student Development.

We have implemented and will continue to implement efficiencies to better allocate the limited resources we have.  Already, we have restructured several areas of general institutional support, including Information Technology, copier services, and web management, in order to centralize services as a means to avoid costs and realize savings in operations.

In my address at the Fall Faculty and Staff Opening Session, I said that we must continue to examine our procedures and find additional efficiencies in our operations going forward. While Appalachian can be proud of a strong history of being fiscally responsible, the current economic climate simply means that we cannot sustain all operations as we have in the past.

Furthermore, the General Assembly directed the campuses to scrutinize all sources of institutional funds and determine if those could be directed to operating costs.  As a result, all units will experience a decrease in state funding and positions, where appropriate, will be transferred to non-state funds.

Protecting the backbone of our University–our faculty and staff–is paramount.  However, a reduction of this magnitude cannot be made only by reducing operating budgets.  Already, we have relinquished 51 vacant faculty positions; unfortunately, these eliminations will not be sufficient.  This tragic fact is the most difficult and disappointing part of this budget challenge.

Despite our efforts to provide timely and accurate information to the campus community, your best source of information about how reductions will affect your area is at the unit level from your program director, chair, dean, or vice chancellor. It will be late September, at the earliest, before each unit is allocated its budget.  

With Appalachian Pride,

Kenneth E. Peacock
Chancellor