February is always an interesting month in the life of a dean, as it is the month when the annual budget submission must be prepared and delivered to the VP Finance.\u00a0 For the last four years this document has also included information on how FASS would meet some specified budget reduction target, although fortunately the final cut has never been as much as initially suggested.\u00a0 Sometimes I wonder if that is a deliberate strategy, intended to make us feel happy that the bad news is not as severe as it might have been, but I am probably being too cynical, and I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist.\u00a0 But it does indeed have that effect.\u00a0 Last year I was practically ecstatic that the FASS budget cut was \u201conly\u201d 1%!\u00a0<\/p>\n
This February the deans have been asked to plan for a 2% reduction, which for FASS amounts to approximately $850,000 \u2026 certainly not peanuts.\u00a0 And of course these are \u201cbase budget\u201d dollars, which means that the reduction cannot be met through fiscal savings.\u00a0 Given that some 97% of the FASS base budget is comprised of salaries, there is not a lot of wiggle room.\u00a0 In fact there are only three ways to meet such a target, and some combination of the following has been used in each of the previous years: (1) not replace some of the faculty or professional staff members who leave the university due to resignation or retirement; (2) sacrifice the portion of ELBA funds which are converted from \u2018fiscal\u201d to \u201cbase\u201d (last year this amount was zero, and I don\u2019t yet know if that will change for 2014-15); or (3) reduce the budget for Contract Instructors.\u00a0 To be frank, there is not much else that is legally possible.\u00a0 At Carleton, I don\u2019t think we shall follow the example of the University of Alberta, where some departments cancelled all their telephones, since that wouldn\u2019t save nearly enough money \u2026 although it might draw some national attention!\u00a0 And I have taken the view that no professional staff positions can be eliminated.\u00a0 Indeed, we need more of these, not less.\u00a0<\/p>\n
February is also an important month for two other annual activities.\u00a0 It is the month in which we receive letters from the external referees writing on behalf of faculty members who have requested consideration for promotion, in advance of the meeting of the FASS Promotions Committee in early March.\u00a0 And it is also the month in which we have the majority of campus visits by candidates short-listed for vacant positions, of which there are once again quite a few this year.\u00a0 Indeed, that is perhaps the best proof that the financial downturn has hit Carleton much less severely than other universities.\u00a0 We are continuing to hire, whereas many others are not.<\/p>\n
This point is not lost on the candidates themselves, all of whom meet with me or with one of the associate deans for half an hour.\u00a0 These are not \u201cjob interviews\u201d\u2019 as such, since the Dean\u2019s Office does not interfere in the selection process, nor even convey views informally to the Search Committee.\u00a0 To do so would be most improper.\u00a0 But it does provide job candidates with an opportunity to ask questions about the hiring process, about the academic unit, the Faculty, or the institution, which they may feel uncomfortable asking of the chair\/director or the committee members.\u00a0 If candidates do have questions \u2026 and I always hasten to tell them that they don\u2019t have to do so, that it is not a test \u2026 they are usually about topics such as the future plans for the Faculty, the availability of internal research funding, or Carleton\u2019s process for tenure and promotion; but more recently a number have asked me how it is that we are still able to hire.\u00a0 And the answer is in fact an easy one:\u00a0 unlike most other places, Carleton has no operating deficit and no accumulated debt. \u00a0\u00a0We do have a pension issue, and we do have a wage bill that rises considerably every year \u2026 and these make necessary the annual small reductions to base budgets.\u00a0 But otherwise we are in reasonably sound financial shape, which is certainly reassuring!<\/p>\n
It also means that we are not prevented from undertaking some new initiatives, and one of the last acts of the month of January was a Senate meeting at which our proposed new \u201cminor\u201d in Disability Studies received formal approval.\u00a0 A number of other new programs, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, are also currently in the pipeline, and the FASS\u00a0budget submission will be requesting an allocation of base funding for some of those.<\/p>\n
\u201cFebruary made me shiver\u201d, sang Don McLean back in my youth, although after the December and January temperatures that we have experienced, I expect that any shivering will be metaphorical and not literal.\u00a0 It will be an exceptionally busy month, but I hope one that doesn\u2019t produce too much \u201cbad news on the doorstep\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps the best thing about February is that in most years it only has 28 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February is always an interesting month in the life of a dean, as it is the month when the annual budget submission must be prepared and delivered to the VP Finance. For the last four years this document has also included information on how FASS would meet some specified budget reduction target, although fortunately the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n