FY13 OPERATING BUDGET & WORKLOAD ASSIGNMENTS MESSAGE FROM DEAN BURGESS

[Jeff Silvertooth]

I am sharing a recent email from Dean Burgess to CALS administrators
regarding FY13 operating budget and workload assignments (see below):

============================


Everyone,


I want to thank you for the efforts that you put in to finish your strategic
planning documents  in such a short time this past spring semester. I
received our budget cut notification last week and the work that you have
done puts us in a much better position than we would have been had you, and
your faculty, not worked so diligently on top of everything else you had to
do. I believe that despite a problematic FY13 (and perhaps FY14) these
strategic plans will be central to us realizing our potential and value to
Arizona in the mid and longer terms.

I will be sending out a "Dear Colleagues" letter that includes information
about CALS budget cut in the next few days,  but the bottom line is that
CALS' FY13 operating budget will be 5% less than that in FY12. We are also
expected to  "assign budget reductions differentially" . Furthermore, we do
not know for sure what CALS' FY14 budget will look like other than it will
be 3% less than the FY12 budget.

Regardless, your phase III documents are your unit's strategic plans. They
are meant to be living documents-- used and referred to regularly by you and
your faculty. I suggest printing, binding and keeping a copy on your desk.
This soon-to-be dog-eared and coffee-stained copies will be needed at annual
review time and, I hope, during your faculty meetings. Do not hesitate to
edit it as you need to as circumstances change; and please send my office an
electronic copy for our records. Of course the EC will have a copy handy at
EC meetings for reference and each Associate Dean also has their own copy.

In the next weeks the Associate Deans and I will be doing exactly the same
thing as you have done for the college and for each Associate Dean's area of
responsibility.  You will have access to these documents also.

As you move forward and we identify how we will do with less, there is a
strong likelihood that you will need to make some workload reassignment
decisions, especially teaching assignments (and you may already have done
this for FY13). I have attached a CALS document that may be of use to you
and I also want to remind you that as a unit head you have the
responsibility of ensuring that your unit's courses are taught, that you
attain your research  and service targets; you also have the prerogative to
reassign duties to balance the diverse and best interests of the unit.
Please keep in mind as you do this that we need to have transparency as well
supporting information for a reassignment. People must be treated equitably
i.e. those with the same profiles need to be treated the same. For example,
are faculty with the same annual review research assessments being asked to
take on the same level of teaching? For consistency comparisons between
individuals should  be restricted to within the unit that is covering the
course load. Please also keep in mind that teaching assignments for
individuals pursuing phased retirements would ideally be defined before the
phased retirement period begins rather than during the phased retirement
period. I realize, however, that this may not always be possible. I hope
reassignments will be a win for the individuals, a win for the unit and most
importantly a win for our students and stakeholders. However, should a
person wish to appeal their assignment, their appeal should be routed to me
along with your rationale for the reassignment.

In closing, I want to remind you all, and please pass this message on to
your faculty (especially those that are not yet tenured or do not yet have
continuing status, as well as those who are not tenure/continuing eligible),
that one of my guiding principles during this budget rescission is to do all
that I can to protect our existing CALS employees' jobs. Non-tenured and
non-continuing faculty, as well as non-TT/CT employees, will not be specific
reduction-in-force targets. In FY13 and FY14 especially, when we have
extremely limited options, I do also want to focus on retaining our high
quality employees by optimizing our work environments and peoples' ability
to be as successful in CALS as anywhere.  

Thank you again
Shane

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