Budgets and Fiscal Planning Committee

Voting members present: Frank Chaplen, Ashton Cummings, Mary Gardner, Natasha Gaspar, Filix Maisch, Shawn Tucker
Voting members absent: Jeff Luck, Joseph Page
Ex-Officio members present: Budget & Resource Planning Office - Sherm Bloomer
Guests present: Yvette Spitz

Chair’s Review of Committee Activities

• Last year the chair reached out to multiple entities across the campus to get an idea of how different units viewed the work of the Budgets & Fiscal Planning Committee. He developed some suggestions and revisions to the committee standing rules and charge to better serve the faculty.
  • Develop Guidelines
  • Be involved in Ad Hoc Budget committees.
    • The chair has been discussing the proposed Ad Hoc committee with Steve Shay, who proposed the committee to the Faculty Senate. Steve Shay has not yet been asked to serve on or chair the committee, though he is interested in doing so.
  • Opt out options for the narrative included.
  • What changes are we explicitly looking to make? Is anything broken in the process that needs fixing?
    • There seems to be ‘no teeth’ in what the committee does. Proposals can be sent back to the originators during the proposal process but there is no way to go back and review programs after any extended period of time to track progress, even for internal reviews.
    • Every program has to go through a 10-year review cycle – can someone from the BFP be involved in that review process?
      • 10 years is a long time to keep documents. Three years may be a better milestone to review programs to see if they’re on track to meet their projected goals.
        • Is this review just a learning experience for the committee? What are we hoping to achieve from these re-reviews?
          • From an institutional standpoint, major program changes should be reviewed to make sure they’re on track, though if the university decides that’s not necessary, it would still be a good idea for the committee to look back to see if there is anything they can learn about what they should have asked during the proposal process.
          • College restructurings may be a good proposal type to go back and review, to the nature of the change.
          • This is information the college would have to pull together; how willing would the units be to pull this information together? How much is the workload?
          • We can still put the recommendation in the report, but leave it up to the next chair to select a program to be reviewed.
            • Inform a program at the time of submission that they will be reviewed in three years so they can have the information.
            • What is the point of asking the units to do this work? What will be done with this information?
              • If it benefits programs in any way, it should be done. Data can be useful for the community.
• The chair will revise the report based on today’s conversation and present the revisions to the committee next week. Discuss potentially changing the charge and bringing it to the EC for the review.

Organization of Spring Conversations

• There will be guests during spring term to discuss resource requirements for the new gen ed curriculum.
• Alix and McKenzie will join next week for a conversation around resource requirements.
• Spring meetings will be recorded for committee members who are not available to attend all meetings.

Report Back from University Budget Advisory Committee

• Sherm presented several key aspects of the process and the draft budget:
  • The preliminary FY24 budget is based on: projections of on-campus and Ecampus enrollment, state funding, and other sources; forecasted inflation; and budget requests submitted a year ago from colleges and major campus units
  • On-campus enrollment is projected to grow modestly through 2025, but be flat thereafter due to limits on dorm and classroom space.  Ecampus enrollment is expected to continue to grow, and thus to account for an increasing share of students and credit hours.
  • Several scenarios have been developed, for different levels of enrollment growth and state funding.  The baseline for planning is high enrollment growth and modest (but not large) cuts in state spending due to a mild recession starting late 2023. 
  • As in every year, staff compensation accounts for about ¾ of spending. 
  • The total estimated increase in Corvallis E&G is ~8% from FY23.  Inflation accounts for about half of that increase, followed by student growth.  Commitments for new programs/initiatives/university staff are next, but amount to <3% of the total budget. 

Other

• No other business

Adjournment

• The meeting adjourned at 9:17 AM.