2009 Fall Convocation Speech - Budget Recovery
Speech Segments
‘Budget Recovery’ Video Transcript
OK, I’m winding down here, and I know you’re all ready for that to happen. The economy, budget and recovery… I think it’s important I talk a little bit about that. I’ve mentioned a little bit, but in a different context.
Let me again congratulate David Ward, Tom Maki and others for the work they did last year when we experienced a rather serious budget reduction. I think they did outstanding work to minimize the damage to this institution with that loss.
They also were able to position us in pretty good shape right now with some carry-forward funds, so we are not destitute. We don’t have discretionary money, but the great thing about their work is that we finished last year OK. And we think that there is a pretty good chance that we will have, that the state will have, another budget reduction.
And I believe that because of their work, we are OK to accomplish that without serious continued damage, so their work in the winter and the spring, I think, has just has served us extremely well.
Well you know, more cuts will be hard, but we can handle it, and we will recover. Things cycle. But the funding will not come back the way it left us. It will not come back so we that can turn around and disseminate the money right back out to where we pulled it in from to accomplish the budget cuts. It won’t come back like that. This is my opinion based on the experiences and the conversations I’ve had.
It will come back in special initiatives, primarily. It’s not the only thing. A lot of this money will come back for special initiatives, and not to replace, again, something like an across-the-board cut that we received. And, it won’t happen quickly. It left fast. It won’t come back that way. It will be slow in returning, and when it comes back, it will be sort of a different color. It will be for specific kinds of things. The new funding, I believe, much of the new funding as it returns will be earmarked or allocated for some specific areas — degree count, cost containment for students and families, access, job development, economic development and a number of other targeted initiatives.
So, we need to position this University to benefit from the way the money is going to come back. I said this in my interview, so this if this is shocking you, you should have hired me because this is exactly what I said in my interview. The universities that position themselves best for this recovery will fare much better in gaining funds from the state than the ones who are not looking and thinking ahead like that. This will require us to carefully assess our performance and our capabilities in several areas, and I’ve just listed them twice so I’m not going to say them again.
You know, the good thing is, we’re a university. We can be creative, so lets be. We know how to collaborate, so lets do that. And let’s problem-solve. That’s what we expect our students to do. We purport to be really good at teaching our students to problem solve, so lets work together on solving this kind of problem, this specific problem where we need to position this University to anticipate the manor in which funding will return to higher education, and it will. But we can do this.
Now, I was going to talk about the Common Theme, but I’m going to skip that because you all know about the Common Theme. We do have a great one coming up. “Red Sky in the Morning: America and the Crisis of Global Environment” is the book. The theme is “Realizing Our Sustainable Future.” Participate in that. What a great activity. What a great program for our University.