Dear Colleagues,
You have likely seen the announcement in today’s WSU Insider regarding WSU’s budget reduction.
I want to give you an update on how this will impact Voiland College and what we are doing to address this situation.
What is happening?
WSU VP of Finance and Administration Stacy Pearson is asking all WSU colleges and other administrative units to plan for a cut to their core funds’ budgets for the next fiscal year by 6 percent.
For Voiland College, this represents a $1.6 million reduction in core funds from our current fiscal year budget.
When is this happening?
WSU departments are required to identify what reductions they will make to meet the 6 percent reduction request by this spring. Once approved by WSU, our 2024 fiscal year budget will take effect on July 1, 2023.
Why is this happening?
In addition to some unforeseen budget impacts this year, WSU’s current undergraduate enrollment is down by more than 9 percent from last year.
Undergraduate enrollment represents a large portion of the university’s revenue stream and a reduction in this revenue significantly impacts WSU’s financial flexibility.
How is Voiland College responding?
I want to assure you that the Voiland College leadership team is working to develop a response to this situation.
Fortunately, we’re in a situation where a disproportionate fraction of Voiland College’s cut can be taken from the college-level budget lines.
Nevertheless, some budget reductions within each college unit will likely be required.
Regarding student enrollment – Voiland College’s position is more stable than the University’s as a whole. We are working with each school and department to coordinate and optimize our recruiting and retention efforts so that we continue to be the college of choice for more than 5,000 students every year.
How does this affect me?
At this moment, a 6 percent budget reduction will have very little impact on our current day-to-day operations. All existing staff searches will continue.
We are currently recruiting for 23 faculty positions (career and tenure track combined) on the Pullman budget and several others at WSU Everett and WSU Tri-Cities. Although the vast majority of these searches will continue, a few of these searches will be suspended. I am working with departmental leadership to prioritize our current searches. We’re still working on overall impacts but at this point, no more than five searches are expected to be suspended.
What do I need to do?
In general, our task with faculty candidates is to help them understand the outstanding career opportunities available to them here, regardless of this budget reduction.
I encourage you to answer any questions you may receive from visiting faculty candidates, but when in doubt, encourage them to discuss the situation with your school director or department chair as they have a bit more information available from which to form a comprehensive answer.
As the budgets for WSU Tri-Cities’ School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and WSU Vancouver’s School of Engineering and Computer Science are administered separately from the rest of Voiland College, I encourage anyone in Tri-Cities or Vancouver to monitor local communications for additional information.
What’s next?
I invite you to join the next Voiland College Town Hall at 2:15 pm in ETRL 101 on Wednesday, January 25 to learn more about this and other topics.
Thanks for all that you do to support our students, our research success, and the college. These efforts continue to provide revenue streams that lessen the impact of this loss of university support.
If you have questions, please reach out to me or your unit leader.
Sincerely,
Mary Rezac
Dean, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
Washington State University
Email: mary.rezac@wsu.edu
Phone: 509-335-5593