Our next months

Wed Jan 29 10:08:16 MST 2025

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back and happy 2025!
I’m a little late this year. I know. I am sorry for being so, but I have been holding off writing this letter until I had some more clarity on, well, pretty much everything.
And yet it seems that every day things are getting less clear. So, because I want to give you as much information as I can on key things that I think you could be concerned about, I'm going to write this letter before February.
If you feel there is something you need to know about, or access, or you feel you're not being told about, please email me or use Grapevine<https://compass.arizona.edu/grapevine> if you prefer anonymity. Of course, you can speak with me in person. Thank you for participating in our communication options (Dial-the-Dean<https://compass.arizona.edu/dial-the-dean-webinar-series>, Town Halls, “Ed Talks”, using Compass<https://compass.arizona.edu/>, and shared governance via Faculty and Staff Councils). You should get information distributed by your academic and/or county unit heads as well as Executive Council mission directors. Thank you for bringing your questions and concerns to the table. I do truly appreciate and value your candor.
If you can think of ways to make our existing information systems better in any way, please tell me. If you can think of new ways to communicate better with you, please let me know.
On December 19, after an enormous amount of work by our business professionals, the following FY26 financing requests were submitted by our three CFOs: Amanda Stevens, Janis Rutherford, and Carolyne Greeno. Thank you all!
Arizona Experiment Station: $11.28m spending authority (c.f. FY25, $10.6m) includes:

  *   $3.6m of self-generated revenue. NOTE: this amount is very much at the whim of the markets and now is also at some risk because of the federal grant funding situation allowing the academic program delivery to be done in the first place.
  *   $245k for capital improvement.
  *   Salary adjustment factor of 2% for all current and approved faculty and staff.

College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences: $70.6m spending authority (c.f. $63.3m, FY25) includes:

  *   $2.6m (inclusive of start-up funds) to hire 4 additional tenure-track and 8 additional career track faculty and 7 additional staff. These positions were finalized following our normal process of unit head submission, then prioritization by the CFOs, associate deans for teaching and research and the Extension director, followed by shared governance review. These positions are crucial to ensuring 771 current students at not at risk of either delayed or no graduation without negatively impacting our current research capacity as well as generating >$9.7m in net tuition revenue to UA and adding to UA’s overall research expenditures. If these people are not hired, unit heads must assign 55 courses to our existing tenured/tenure track faculty decreasing their research FTE.
  *   Salary adjustment factor of 2% for all eligible employees.

Cooperative Extension System: $22m spending authority (c.f. FY25, $32.5m) includes:

  *   $3.9m of one-time state New Economy Initiative/Arizona Healthy Tomorrow funding.
  *   Remaining $2.1m of state On-Farm Irrigation funding.
  *   A decrease from FY25 to FY26 due to the smaller final year On-Farm Irrigation grant amount.
  *
Salary adjustment factor of 2% for all eligible employees.
  *

  *
Jeffrey Ratje and I will meet about these submissions with Provost Marx and CFO Arnold on March 17. We will report back to you as soon as we know the outcomes of this meeting.

If like me, you sometimes feel that you are unsure of where the UA is going, and how you fit into the bigger picture, then one thing I find useful is to look at the annual performance goals ABOR assigns the UA president. On December 20, the Arizona Daily Star reported President Garimella’s 2025 performance goals<https://tucson.com/news/local/education/college/university-arizona-president-suresh-garimella-performance-goals-potential-bonuses-board-regents-total-compensation/article_fbf09ad8-be36-11ef-896c-4b2fb593ebaa.html>, which I will summarize here:
1. Set a strategic vision including student success and experience, strategic research growth, community engagement, and communications and marketing efforts.
2. Building a “high-quality, collaborative, mission-driven and effective leadership team.”
3. Work with ASU President Michael Crow to find areas in which to collaborate on research.
4. Meet athletics benchmarks, including setting “an ambitious five-year strategy” to build fan and alumni engagement, develop relationships with donors, achieve student-athlete academic and athletic excellence, and lead within the Big 12.
5. Create a comprehensive list of new revenue streams for the UA.
6. Achieve budgeting goals, including controlling budget challenges, setting up transparent budgeting processes, continually addressing days’ worth of cash on hand, overseeing reduction of the deficit and financial administration of athletics and reduce UA’s $63 million budget deficit to zero by July 1.
7. All three AZ public university presidents and the regents’ director are, together as a team, to maximize federal support for higher education in Arizona; focus on collegiate athletics; and develop a plan for the three universities to collaborate and streamline tri-university offerings in Yuma.
I hope you can see yourself and your colleagues – as I do – contributing to UA’s success in many of these areas.
Specific to goal 7, on, December 16, I accompanied President Garimella on a visit to Yuma. He has said multiple times since, in multiple forums, how impressed he was by everyone he met with and with the experience. Even today at an academic unit APR, Provost Marx mentioned how impressed President Garimella was with Yuma. Thank you and well done to everyone involved.
Very recently, the L.A. County wildfires have negatively impacted and, in many cases, devastated some of our students, our colleagues and their families, who haven’t just lost a house, but their home: irreplaceable possessions, cherished pets, and even loved ones. Coming back from their losses will take a long time. Even, with everything else going on, please keep these people in mind daily.
And in just the last few days, US Presidential Executive Orders have most people I have spoken with concerned in some way or another. Some are very scared. Again, please keep these issues in mind daily—you never know who may be very upset or worse.
Regarding federal grant and contract funding, we have received timely email communications from UA Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Tomás Díaz de la Rubia and our Associate Vice President and Associate Dean, Jon Chorover. If you are worried about your promotion and tenure/continuing status trajectory, please remember that your packet should be assessed by your internal and external reviewers in the context of the times—it will be by me. If you are scared for your job because it is federally funded, as I know some people are—as of writing this letter late on Tuesday night, currently there is no evidence that your job is at risk.
Regardless of why, if you are concerned, scared, or feeling anxious, please remember that there are lifelines and resources available to you:

  *   Faculty and Staff: https://cales.arizona.edu/dei/resources/employees-resources
  *   Students: https://cales.arizona.edu/dei/resources/students-resources

Thank you for your hard work and perseverance over the past year. Together we have excelled at the vanguard of delivering UA’s three Land Grant University missions.
We once again face uncertainty and ambiguity. But I know that once again we can meet whatever financial and other challenges we will face and keep excelling—so long we continue to do so together.
My three priorities, in order, remain unchanged: 1. Your job; 2. Our students’ ability to earn timely quality educations; and 3. Your Extension and/or research FTE.

Best wishes

Shane C. Burgess
Vice President for the Division of Agriculture, Life and Veterinary Sciences, and Cooperative Extension
Charles-Sander Dean of the College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Forbes Building, Room 306
PO Box 210036 | Tucson, AZ 85721
Office: 520-621-7621
shaneburgess at arizona.edu<mailto:shaneburgess at arizona.edu>
alvsce.arizona.edu<https://alvsce.arizona.edu/> | cales.arizona.edu<https://cals.arizona.edu/>
linkedin<https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-burgess-8871985b/> | twitter<https://twitter.com/UAAgLifeVetExt>

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the University strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

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