College Update

From: Sanford Shugart
To: All Faculty and Staff
Date: 01/17/02  2:24PM
Subject: College Wide Update 1-17-02

1. Budget Matters - The Governor has released his budget proposal for next year. The press called it a $1 billion budget for education with few details. The community college portion includes $19 million for the Community College Program Fund (academic funding), $25 million in workforce funds plus a $5 million set-aside for expansion of nursing and teacher education programs, $ 15 million in facilities matching funds, and some potential retirement fund savings. If the legislature funds all of this, it will essentially restore the cuts we took earlier this year. In addition, he is recommending a 2.5% increase in tuition (5% for universities). The best news is his support for an equitable funding formula to be put into statute. this has been our highest political priority for the past two years. It means that when substantial new funding finally flows, Valencia gets to catch up in funds per FTE. Of course, the legislature is the real challenge now. Be sure to make your voice heard in Tallahassee and encourage our legislators to support the Governor's budget for community colleges.

2. Enrollment. It appears that our FTE grew a little more than 13% this term over last year. We scheduled to grow as much as 8%. The tremendous enrollment pressure continues. We will be analyzing the details to see how the growth was managed. What I hope to find is that the principles adopted in the fall are still being honored - no packing of classes, little or no last minute sections, no free passes by needed college prep into college level courses. I salute the good work many did to make this enrollment period remarkably smooth. Students registered earlier and with less stress than in the fall. I continue to be concerned by our rate of growth and am committed to slowing this down so our resources won't be outstripped by our enrollment. We will be analyzing class sizes, late section creations/deletions, late hires, etc. as the month progresses. All of this should help us to plan for much more modest, planned increases in the fall. It's not our size, but our quality that counts.

3. Foundation Matters. One of my highest priorities the past two years has been the restructuring of the foundation. We have made much progress. The entire staff is new. New technology, policies and procedures, investment strategies, and management practices are in place. Much of the Board is new, as well. Geraldine Gallagher, the president of the foundation, has done tremendous work in her 11 months with us. Unfortunately, the foundation's assets have been subject to the same market performance that all of us have experienced. As the markets recover, so will the foundation's assets. Meanwhile, to protect the corpus of the endowment, we are slowing our expenditures in the coming year. to this end, there will be a one year hiatus in awarding of "category C" endowed chairs and most other foundation funded programs other than scholarships. Our principle is to keep all of our scholarship commitments and minimize impact on students.

Funding for chairs and programs should return next year and be based on the earnings (three year average) of the foundation's endowment funds, as policy requires. Meanwhile, we will use this opportunity to review the programs, especially endowed chairs, with faculty to look for ways to improve the connection to the college and our learning initiatives.

4. Governance. Last July we embarked on a new governance structure to increase authentic involvement of faculty and staff in the leadership of the college. A couple of refinements have been suggested that we are implementing immediately. First, the Provosts have suggested that they divide their representative responsibilities among the various councils to make room for others to serve and manage their own workload. This should help them to give more time and attention to campus matters. Therefore, Dr. Kinser and Dr. Zapico will serve on the College Learning Council; Dr. Prather and Dr. Stone will serve on the College Planning Council. All four remain on the Executive Council.

To increase some representation for professional staff, we have asked Paul McNamara to serve on the CLC and Linda Swain on the CPC.

Finally, we are formalizing the role of the new Professional Staff Forum. Although created last September, the scope of their interests, frequency of meeting, etc. still need to be determined. I am asking them to do this and assigning Dr. Zapico to serve as their official liaison to the Executive Council and to me. She will convene them shortly to get this work underway.

TOP