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Efficiencies and Innovations Committee’s work under way |
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Wednesday, 18 November 2009 |
By BRIAN HAWKINS
BB Supervising Editor
A committee appointed by Mississippi State President Mark Keenum to examine all aspects of the university’s operations with continued state funding cuts looming is at work and should submit its final report in January.
In this “President’s Report” newsletter posted on the MSU Web site this past Thursday, Keenum said the 28-member Select Committee on Efficiencies and Innovations has met twice and has groups of its members “... beginning to examine in detail ideas that may help us adapt over the next two years to significant declines in state funding.”
“The committee’s final report, including any recommendations to be presented to the Board of Trustees, should be completed by the end of January,” said Keenum in the newsletter. “Our task as a university is to make the difficult but necessary choices to ensure that we serve our state and its citizens as efficiently as possible while maintaining the quality of our programs of teaching, research and service.”
Keenum announced the creation of the Efficiencies and Innovations Committee shortly before his formal investiture as MSU’s 19th president on Oct. 16.
The committee’s membership includes all the university vice presidents, the leaders of the Robert Holland Faculty Senate, faculty representatives from every college and the library and student leaders, he said.
Budget cuts have become the norm for MSU and other universities, Keenum said, noting a 5 percent cut ordered by Gov. Haley Barbour 10 months ago, a second 5 percent cut at the start of the new fiscal year in June and a likely 3 percent cut coming later this fall.
“Looking further ahead, estimates are that state funding for FY 2011, which begins next July, could be 13 percent below our original FY 2010 budget. State support for FY 2012 could be 23 percent below the FY 2010 starting point,” Keenum said. “These reductions do not account for higher costs associated with inflation. Obviously, cuts of this magnitude will require significant modifications. We must take a close look at all of our academic and non academic programs.”
Keenum referred to a similar process undertaken 18 years ago at the direction of then-President Donald Zacharias. The Priorities and Planning Committee, as it was then known, helped the university “work through a period of reduced state funding while simultaneously focusing university resources where they would do the most good. Parts of his charge to that earlier committee remain relevant today,” Keenum said.
The current Efficiencies and Innovations Committee’s task is similar. The group has been directed to review all academic and non-academic programs, prioritize them in terms of benefit to the university and state and relevance to MSU’s core mission and make recommendations according to the anticipated level of financial resources, Keenum said.
Keenum said the committee has been asked to work under the following guidelines:
• “Take a university-wide perspective. Avoid turf battles.
• “Make purpose-based choices. Assign priorities through strategic choices, not across the board reductions.
• “Prioritize programs on their own merits and relevance to the university mission of teaching, research and service/outreach. Avoid quid pro quo or ‘turnabout is fair play’ approaches.
• “Build on strengths. Recognize areas of established strength.
• “When changes are considered that affect the quality or scope of programs, protect quality first. It is better to have one strong major than two mediocre ones.
• “Consider human impact. Recognize the effect of decisions on all members of the Mississippi State University family.”
“I sincerely appreciate the spirit of cooperation and determination with which each member of this committee and so many others across our campus are approaching this major challenge, and I hope each member of the university community will be ready to share ideas and suggestions with committee members as they go about their work,” Keenum said in the “President’s Report.”
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 24 November 2009 )
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