Undergraduate schools explain budget process

The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) is currently holding meetings to determine budgets for each academic department.

According to Linda Nathan, KSAS assistant dean of finance, the funding for each department is determined by an algorithm that takes many factors into account including number of faculty, number of majors, number of graduate students and number of courses taught.

“Every department and program has an individualized operating budget, and that is determined based on sort of historical factors,” she said.

Another factor that affects budgeting is the cost for department facilities and administration. Sometimes budget readjustments will be made to accommodate ongoing needs for support.

“So every year we meet with every department and program, we have a budget meeting. We present them with what their allocation is going to be,” Nathan said.

This allows chairs and administrators to make requests on behalf of changes in their programs. Based on these requests, the budget will be altered.

“For instance, when we built the [Undergraduate Teaching Labs] and expanded undergraduate science education in a really profound way, some of the science departments needed adjustments to their budgets to account for things that they had never done before,” Nathan said.

Complications in planning arise when departments enact new programs or when programs funded by specific gifts or endowments need additional funding. Also, extraordinary circumstances, such as travel costs, impact funding for some departments.

“Some programs by their very nature have travel as a component of it,” Nathan said. “If you’re in Near Eastern Studies, there’s an element where you might be going to the Mideast to do a dig. In another department, you know the math department, they’re not traveling anywhere necessarily to accomplish their goals and to further their knowledge. It’s very individualized here.”

Kim Le, an administrative coordinator in the Whiting School of Engineering, also provided some information about their budgeting process. The departments meet with the Dean’s Office and the budget requests for the next year are reviewed.

Both historical trends and future requests are taken into account. Many elements can affect the budget, including specialized equipment and lab spaces. While the number of courses remains about the same from year to year, enrollment changes can also affect the budget.

Because of these changes and different needs of programs, Nathan said that two programs that might seem very similar on the surface can have very different budgets.

Budgets can also be changed during the year if necessary.

“The Dean meets with all the chairs on a regular basis, so some things happen during the year through meeting and email exchanges, and changes are made whenever a need arises and its time sensitive,” Nathan said.

Certain aspects are generally kept constant like the budget pens and pencils. However, Nathan made sure to point out that this is not a rule. The budgeting department really tries to make sure allocations are made properly so that each department has an appropriate budget to meet its needs.

Jean McGarry, a Writing Seminars department co-chair, said that each department works with the Dean and that the department heads meet at the annual budget meeting in January.

“Each department head goes alone,” McGarry said. “The deans do hold meetings of chairs and all the chairs get together, and they talk about large issues in the college. For the budget meeting, it’s each department going separately.”

There is a block budget that covers things like hiring staff, copying and furniture. Each school also pays money to the central administration.

The University, according to McGarry, is scrupulous in tracking departmental fund usage.

“They will check very carefully about the classes. If there were low enrollments, they will ask us about those. Other departments have to defend their graduate programs at times. It’s a sad thing, but undergraduates are not majoring in the humanities as much as used to be the case,” McGarry said.

She also shared that a full time faculty member’s salary is based half on teaching and half on research. The sabbatical leave policy for tenured professors was recently altered from every seven to every three years, six semesters of teaching.

“They want to give us some time when we don’t have a lot of teaching obligations to do our own work,” McGarry said. “It’s a very genial process. The school has enough money to continue.”