May 15, 2008

In our efforts to communicate the latest budget developments here and in Tallahassee in a timely manner, the university is disseminating weekly budget updates from President Modesto A. Maidique. These communiques are sent to our students, faculty and staff, alumni, donors, FIU Board of Trustees, Foundation Board of Directors, President's Council, select media, elected officials and other interested parties. We believe that timely information on a topic of such critical importance will benefit the entire university community and help to continue the university's forward momentum.
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In This Issue:

Dear members of the FIU community:

Last week I had the privilege of participating in the first FIU commencement ceremony ever celebrated in China. We awarded FIU degrees to 29 hospitality and tourism management majors, most of whom will hold key positions as millions of visitors pour into China this summer to attend the Olympic games. Some 600 of our students will be staffing Olympic events.

During this trip I had the opportunity to speak with several influential Chinese educational, political and business leaders, all of whom are working diligently to make sure China gains a competitive advantage in education and business. In Tianjin alone, where our hospitality program is located, I’m told there are 67 universities.

This experience served to reaffirm my conviction that we must continue to make the case for enhanced higher education funding. The status quo means that we – as a country and as a state -- will continue to fall further behind relative to emerging powers such as China and India. In this context, the cuts that we are experiencing are disheartening indeed.

We are in those critical days between the end of the Legislative session and the day the governor signs the budget into law. Even then, the situation can and probably will change mid-year and potentially become worse. We must therefore continue to make our projections and move forward cautiously and strategically as to do the least possible permanent strategic damage to the university.

Budget decisions will come sooner

With plans from deans, directors, vice presidents and the provost expected by Monday, the decision was made this week to accelerate our internal timeline in making budget decisions. We have done this in an effort to balance caution with everyone’s need to plan for next year. This decision complies with a mandate from our Board of Trustees to communicate our decisions as soon as they are made. (The May 19 Board of Trustees budget workshop will focus on the total budget, including E&G funds.)

Our next Town Hall meeting, which was previously scheduled for June 17, has been moved up to May 22 at 9 a.m. in the Graham Center Ballrooms. Please mark your calendar and plan to attend. Your participation is crucial at this point in the process. I ask supervisors who have employees who don’t have easy access to email to please ensure that all members of the FIU community have an opportunity to see this message and attend the Town Hall meeting.

A full BOT meeting will take place June 12, when final budget decisions will be made regarding cuts.

Because all of our attention in the next two weeks will be on budget, we are postponing the Employee Recognition Awards ceremony. A new date will be announced in the next few days. Our desire is to align this ceremony with Faculty Convocation to celebrate a full week of recognitions. September will allow more faculty and staff to participate and will encourage a more thoughtful selection process.

In Tallahassee

As you know, the university is preparing for a $12 million cut in recurring general revenue funds in addition to the $10.4 million cut we sustained in this fiscal year. Additionally, our College of Medicine received $3 million less than requested in funding, and changes to limits relating to on-line learning fees are expected to result in FIU having to absorb approximately $4 million of expenses.

On a positive note, all signs indicate that Gov. Charlie Crist is inclined to sign the 6 percent tuition increase, which will bring us some needed revenue. We are also hopeful that FIU will receive $10 million for a Center of Excellence for Hurricane Damage Mitigation and Product Development. This project was reviewed by a panel of experts and ranked No. 1 among 41 projects from around the state. I would like to congratulate everyone who worked on that proposal, particularly the International Hurricane Research Center team.

Moving to reduce our costs

While we wait for word regarding our funding for fiscal year 2008-09, we have started to move forward on non-academic cost-cutting measures.

In the next few days, the Division of Human Resources will make available guidelines for the modified summer schedule, which we will adopt beginning Friday, June 6, and ending Friday, July 25. It is important that we remain disciplined and adhere to the guidelines of this four-day work week, which will require us to work four 10-hour days. We project that our electricity costs will be reduced by at least $250,000 as a result of many of our buildings being unoccupied for three consecutive days each week.

Safety and security on campus are a high priority. Officers will continue to patrol the campus on their regularly scheduled shifts. Likewise, Public Safety is one of the very few departments that will not be affected by budget reductions. We believe that in order to build a great university, we must first maintain the safety of our university community. In fact, it is our intention to continue investing in our public safety infrastructure.

We are making changes in our vehicle pool area. FIU owns more than 200 cars, vans and trucks, some of which are not utilized on a full-time basis. We have determined that we can sell some of those vehicles and pool the rest so that departments have access to vehicles when the need arises but do not incur the expense of maintaining them year-round. A side benefit to the sale of these under-utilized vehicles is that more parking spaces will now become available to the university community.

Timeline

Links of interest

Office of Governmental Relations
http://government.fiu.edu

Special budget crisis website
http://president.fiu.edu/budget1.html