Cuts in UCSB's Department of Spanish and Portugese

To All Faculty and Staff:

Here is a follow-up to the budget presentation made at the last faculty meeting regarding the need to reduce expenditures.  Based on the projections made at the meeting, I felt the Department would be sufficiently funded through the end of the fiscal year.   As you recall, the Department needed to reduce expenditures by about $12,000 and I suggested eliminating the telephone service for all faculty which was well received.  At that point, I was sure that if we monitored expenditures closely and only spent on items that we really needed we would limit our deficit.  The administrative staff began discussing ways to reduce expenditures even more in an attempt to ensure that we did not overspend revenue.

A few days after we began these discussions, the Department received a memo from Dean Marshall asking our Department to return $37,500 in temporary funds to help with the divisional deficit.  Temporary funds are created when you have carry-over funds (unspent funds from the previous year) from salary savings including work-study savings.  They even identified what types of funds would be acceptable to meet the Department's share of the cut.  The required temporary funds were identified for the purpose to return to the College.  The goal was to keep our Teaching Assistants funds at the current level, which we were able to accomplish.

Now, since our supplies and expense budget has been eliminated, the first and most expensive items to be eliminated are the telephones for faculty.  We will consider combining telephones amongst administrative staff as well. I was asked to research setting up telephone service through the Internet. The French and Italian Department has the same Internet service and each faculty member pays for this service, which is what I would recommend.  The good thing about this service is that faculty can retain their existing phone number.

Here are other areas that we will need to implement in order to reduce expenditures.  They are as follows:

1.  We will no longer be able to, at least for the foreseeable future, purchase toner cartridges after we run out of our current supply.

2.  We will connect all computers to the new copy machine because it is much more cost effective to print off that machine over individual printers.

3.  Copy limits will be strictly enforced.  Effective immediately the copy limit will be reduced to 3,000 copies for faculty for the year.

4.  We will not allow personal accounts on the copy machine.

5.  We will stop our membership with the Faculty Club.

6.  Lay-off our student assistant effective December 15th.

7.  Eliminate educational materials such as the Chronicle of Higher Education.

8.  Eliminate the water service.  We may want to pay for it ourselves if we really want to keep it in the future.

9.  Each quarter certain faculty ask for the Department to purchase books for their classes at the Bookstore.  We will no longer purchase these books and will insist that you coordinate with Monica to order faculty complimentary copies.

10.  We will not be printing (or a limited amount) the Department newsletter and while adding it to the webpage.

11.  We will consider sending printed materials for faculty promotions via e-mail by sending links to the materials so that we do not have to pay the FedEx costs.  We might also charge the faculty for this cost as a way to reduce costs.  This is not unusual because other departments charge faculty.

12.  Reduce funding from specialized program funds for the Events Committee as well as the Mexican Literature Conference.  The amount remaining should cover proposed events already being planned for later this year.

13.  Both X and Y who each have a temporary appointment of 25% each, will be eliminated effective January 1st, maybe sooner.

The net result of this return of temporary funds to the College is that we will be left with very little to cover supplies and expenses.  This will cause the Department to run a deficit by the end of the year, which will just have to happen.  I would welcome any more ideas or ways to reduce costs.