Spring Faculty Assembly covers budget and enrollment deficits

The UHCL Faculty Senate hosted the Spring 2017 Faculty Assembly March 29 to discuss the university’s budget limitations and how UHCL can increase its budget going forward.

The two presenters of the budget discussion were Jean Carr, executive director of the budget office, and Glen Houston, interim senior vice president for Academic Affairs and provost.

The assembly began with a recap of the budget shortfall that the university is currently facing. The shortfall consists of two major sources: a lack of state appropriations given to the university, which is decided using a funding formula provided by the state, and a decline in tuition, which consists of statutory and designated tuition.

The total budget shortfall that the university is facing is $13.4 million. The Faculty Senate is hopeful that the shortfall will experience a significant decrease once it receives the final appropriation bill from the state.

The Faculty Senate recognizes that increasing enrollment will make UHCL more likely to receive funding from the state; the state’s appropriation formula is mainly based on the enrollment numbers for each school.

One way to increase enrollment, as brought up by faculty members, is to market more heavily toward international students.

“The community college in the area with the largest number of international students is Houston Community College,” Houston said. “This is a very diverse city with international students all around, and we need to be attracting those students.”

However, one major issue that prevents the university from attracting international students is the lack of available public transportation. Many international students use Metro buses to commute to school, which do not run to UHCL.

Graduate programs at the university are also doing their part to increase enrollment.

“The colleges here are looking to speed up graduation rates by allowing students to finish earlier than before,” Houston said. “One thing that the College of Business has done is that they took their 54 hour MBA and reduced it to 39 hours. Things like that, that you can do with your program to make it more attractive and less expensive, will help us out in the long run.”

Faculty Senate President Lisa Gossett spoke to the faculty after Houston and Carr finished giving their budget presentation.

“In terms of the budget crises that I’ve been through at the university, this one is the most open and transparent that I have seen,” Gossett said. “There’s much more sharing of the information than we’ve had in the past.”

The assembly closed with nominations for the next president of the Faculty Senate, in which each office is up for election annually.

The three nominees included; Michael McMullen, associate professor of sociology and cross-cultural studies; Frank Matthews, associate professor of mathematics; and Timothy Michael, associate professor of finance.