Proposed College of Engineering Budget Cut Plan

As many of you know, the Florida Legislature has recently passed a State Budget that includes substantial cuts to the funding of higher education in Florida. These cuts come on top of previous cuts that have already caused the college to reduce spending in many areas. Because of these budget constraints, many of you have already been involved in looking for ways to improve efficiency throughout the College. Your teamwork and ongoing efforts to reduce costs in these difficult times have been greatly appreciated. The budget cut plan outlined in this document was developed following the principles proposed in the two town halls held last month to discuss the budget. The feedback from faculty was in agreement with these principles and thus they were used to guide the proposed allocation of the budget. Through my discussions with other university leaders on campus, I also added one additional item to the list of principles that was not included in the Town Hall. That item is listed last on the list below. This list represents strategic areas that are critical to maintaining the mission of our college and to providing a means in the future of rebuilding our resources in light of what will most likely be permanent cuts to the state support for higher education. Thus the goal of our planning has been to protect the following as much as possible: Tenure track/tenured faculty positions Advising Fundraising C&G (including compliance) Safety Degree programs

The FY12-13 budget we will receive is 5.86% less than this years budget due to the reduction in E&G to the college. Combined with the need to fund our own SPP and promotion raises, this results in a need to cut or repurpose $4.011M. To put this into perspective, this amount is larger than the E&G budgets of each of our 3 smallest departments. Coming on top of the previous cuts taken by the college, this one is particularly painful. The college is a very lean, productive unit. Any further cuts at this point must come from ongoing activities that most people in the college would consider useful and important. The reduction to our budget is proposed to be covered by cuts in three areas. A discussion of each of these areas follows below. Cuts to funds controlled by the college administration I looked first to funds held within the administration budget to find as much in savings as possible without degrading critical services. This yielded $1.853M. This amount comes from a

variety of expenditure categories and will impact the college on a number of fronts. I will attempt to briefly explain the impact of the loss of these funds. First will be a reduction in our ability to support research activities outside the college, such as the High Performance Computing Center and the Water Institute. In addition, a number of internal commitments to various programs and individuals are coming to the end of their agreements and under this plan will not be renewed. This cut will also limit our ability to provide cost sharing. Going forward, we will only be able to provide cost sharing at the college level for major interdisciplinary grant proposals. If, as hoped, we continue to grow our research expenditures, and related IDC, this category may be restored over time. The loss of staff positions will impair our ability to provide HR and IT security service. However, we are preparing shared services plans for IT and HR for the college that should help to cover these important functions. We will need to reduce the funds to support our distance learning program, though incentives for faculty will be maintained at a lower rate. The cohort structure will remain thus keeping the incentive to increase enrollment in EDGE courses. The other targeted TA funds are in support of TA positions in the CISE Dept. which will be covered in the last section. The remaining categories reflect savings gained through successful negotiations with the central administration over the proper allocation of research related expenditures to the Sponsored Projects Administration tax in the RCM budget model. Elimination of savings from reduced fringe rate The second source of funds proposed to be cut involves the fringe rate used throughout the college. This year, the rate was reduced and would have resulted in over $800000 in total savings to the college. Ideally, these funds would have been used by the departments for investment in their programs. However, given the magnitude of our budget cut, this plan proposes to collect up these resources from across the college and use them to cover a portion of the budget reduction. Departmental Restructuring This leaves a remaining $1.358M to be cut from the departments. It has become very clear to me that in order to protect the quality of our programs we simply cannot allocate this cut across the board. Several of our departments have been weakened by the previous cut and by the disruption of our IDC over the past two years, and thus could not continue to offer the quality of education and research that we expect from our college if they were given another cut in E&G. In order to avoid driving many of our units toward mediocrity it is necessary to change the mission of at least one of our units. The choice of which unit to propose to restructure was driven by the principles outlined above.

Under this proposed plan, all of the Computer Engineering Degree programs, BS, MS and PhD, would be moved from the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Dept. to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. along with most of the advising staff. This move would allow us to support these degree programs using the existing faculty support staff in other depts. Roughly half of the faculty would be offered the opportunity to move to ECE, BME or ISE. These faculty would continue to support the graduate and research mission in the Computer Engineering degree track. The choice of which faculty and which departments will be made based on fit with the research program and with the receiving departments. Staff positions in CISE which are currently supporting research and graduate programs would be eliminated. The activities currently covered by TAs would be reassigned to faculty and the TA budget for CISE would be eliminated. The faculty remaining in CISE would then focus their efforts on teaching and advising students in the existing Computer Science BS and MS degree programs, offered through both COE and CLAS. Their assignments would change to reflect this new educational mission with sole focus on delivering quality education for students in these degree programs. Any faculty member who wishes to stay in CISE may do so, but with a revised assignment focused on teaching and advising. Tremendous demand for graduates with these degrees exists, and this new mission would allow us to devote more faculty time to grow both the size and excellence of the Computer Science degree program. There is no question that this is a difficult decision. But this is also a very tough time for both our college and for the university overall. Even though this plan will protect the prioritized areas listed previously, it will still require the elimination of many staff and TA positions. We will of course work with all of those affected by this restructuring in an effort to help them through this transition. With the support of our outstanding faculty and staff, I believe we can endure these difficult times while still maintaining the highest priorities of the College of Engineering. This proposed plan will be open for discussion and input until Wednesday, April 18. If you wish to provide input, please feel free to contact your department chair, the chair or secretary of the faculty council (Dr. Susan Sinnott or Dr. Renwei Mei), one of the Assoc. Deans in the college or myself. On Thursday, April 19, a final plan will be announced.

Proposed College of Engineering Budget Cut Plan FY12-13 Budget Cut: $3.8M (5.86%) Funds needed to cover SPP and Promotion Raises: $210000 Total resources to be cut or repurposed: $4.01M

Reduction in Funds Controlled by the College Administration Reduction in EDGE Payouts to Faculty to $250/student Elimination of TA funds for EDGE courses Elimination of College support for CISE TAs Reduction in support for cost sharing Elimination of Internal Commitments Support for college level adjuncts etc. Elimination of External Commitments Support for HPC, Water Institute etc. Elimination of 3 staff positions in admin Transfer of costs to SPA Tax

$1.853M $300000 $229000 $320000 $200000 $169000

$130500

$184700 $320000

Elimination of savings from fringe rate reduction:

$801852

Restructuring of the CISE Dept. Elimination of 10 staff positions Elimination of 2 non tenure track positions Elimination of support for TAs

$1.358M $584623 $164185 $610000