Editors’ note: We were unable to cover the October meeting of the Faculty Senate, but the minutes of that meeting are available here.
The UNL AAUP chapter sent out a call for faculty members to show up at the Faculty Senate meeting Nov. 5 to support the establishment of a Faculty Budget Committee and making budget decisions more transparent.
Although the call brought few if any faculty to the meeting, it did initiate a long conversation about budget cuts, the problems the cuts have created for faculty, and the lack of information about the university’s finances.
Pete Eklund, the Senate president, launched the discussion by mentioning the AAUP’s email and noting that he had voted for the creation of a Faculty Budget Committee last spring. The committee has not been established, he said, for several reasons. One is a lack of enthusiasm from faculty members to serve in light of the time commitment it would require. Also, the relationship between the budget committee and the existing Academic Planning Committee needs to be defined, he said. Furthermore, the deans have shown unwillingness to open their books to examination by a faculty committee. Finally, Eklund said he would like to work with ASUN and the student body, given the eagerness of the Board of Regents to listen to student complaints and concerns.
Karen Griffin, faculty governance coordinator, said her review of information about the faculty budget committees at other Big Ten schools suggested they all had substantial buy-in from administrators. The big question, she said, is getting administrators on board. Without their support, a faculty budget committee will struggle to accomplish its task, she said.
Eklund acknowledged the strain the budget cuts have put on faculty. “We’ve had to cut $70 million since 2020 and the workload has not changed” for faculty or staff, he said.
L.J. McElravy, an associate professor in Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication, said recent budget cuts have increased the workload on faculty in his department beyond one full-time equivalency. He said his department had created a certificate program which was expected to generate more revenue. But with budget cuts, faculty were lost and not replaced, McElravy said, leaving remaining faculty working extra to keep the program going.
Sonya Turkman, an assistant professor of interior design, said the budget cuts are being used to justify certain policies, but there is no information available that explains what the financial situation is.
Eklund said the Senate Executive Committee has asked the administration for information on the budget and what the scenario and timeline are for the additional $14 million in cuts that are needed. No answer has been received, he said.
Ed Harris, a professor of biochemistry, said it was strange that so little is known about what is going on in the administration. “Are they asked about being transparent when they are being hired?” he asked.
Stephen Lahey, a professor of classics and religious studies, noted that salaries are public record and wondered whether the same law applied to other financial information.
The Nebraska Public Records Law, Neb. Rev. Stat. §84-712, says the records of state and local governments shall be open to the public, with some exceptions. But in regard to fiscal records, the statue says the right of public access “shall be liberally construed … in order that the citizens of this state shall have the full right to know of and have full access to information on the public finances of the government and the public bodies and entities created to serve them.” The language suggests a broad right of access to information about the university’s finances.
“What I’m hearing,” said Tim Gay, a professor of physics, “is a lot of low morale. If the Regents respond to student morale, why not faculty morale?”
The answer may be how loudly the faculty wants to make its desires know, said John Shrader, Senate president-elect. “How far does this body want to go to demand transparency? How vocal do we want to be?” he asked. The issue will not go away, he said, because the administration is going to be asking for more budget cuts. The faculty has to be willing to ask these questions, even if they are not appreciated by administrators, he said.
The discussion of the Faculty Budget Committee followed a discussion of the news that the Athletic Department would no longer return $10 million to UNL to cover Husker scholarships and operational costs.
At the last meeting of the Board of Regents, which was held at Kearney, half of the time was spent talking about athletics, Eklund told the senators. Much of that discussion was over the issue of selling beer at Memorial Stadium. Doing so, he said, may cut the projected shortfall for the Athletic Department from $15 million to $5 million.
As with the discussion of budget cuts, senators raised questions about the lack of transparency regarding the athletic department’s finances. Eklund asked how much are student athletes being paid. Does the fact they are getting paid turn them into employees? And, he asked, are they still getting their scholarships?
Shrader said, “It’s like they (the Athletic Department) have this little castle over there and the moat around it keeps getting wider and wider.”
Chancellor Rodney Bennett spoke to the senators at the start of the meeting. McElravy asked Bennett about the increasing workload on faculty resulting from the budget cuts. Bennett said he didn’t want to lead UNL in a reckless way by overworking faculty, but he and other campus administrators need guidance from President Jeffrey Gold about what the NU system will look like and how UNL will fit in.
Bennett said Gold has been asking campus administrators about faculty productivity. He wants to know what a 40 percent teaching, 50 percent research, and 10 percent service workload looks like, the chancellor said. He also wants to know how the campus administrators are asking faculty to demonstrate productivity in all those areas. College deans and other administrators are aware of the push for productivity, Bennett said, and that may be causing some of the pressure on faculty.
On a positive note, Bennett said 180 faculty members at UNL have been featured in a list of 2024 most influential researchers. Another nine faculty members have received career development grants from the National Science Foundation. And overall research expenditures have increased by 50 percent over the past 10 years, he said.
In other business, the Faculty Senate:
- Heard a report from the Research Council. Wendy Katz, a professor of art history, said the council has $300,000 to distribute in five categories of grants. She asked for suggestions from faculty on how to distribute the grant money among the various categories and what criteria to use in awarding grants.
- Heard a report from the Commencement and Recognition Committee. Ann Tschetter, associate professor of practice in history, echoed a plea Chancellor Bennett made earlier calling for 10 to 12 faculty to volunteer to serve as marshals at the commencement ceremonies.
- Heard from President Eklund that Lorna Dawes, an associate professor in libraries, will be leaving the university. Her departure opens a seat on the Senate Executive Committee. A special election will be held in December to fill the seat.
