The university's moratorium on hiring and purchasing will continue indefinitely, according to an e-mail sent to all UB employees from Satish Tripathi, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.
Tripathi introduced a strategic financial plan to address the economic situation faced by the state and its impact on UB. The plan comes after a lack of guidance from the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees on the budget, Tripathi said.
"I believe we cannot sit idly by and wait for SUNY's declaration regarding the budget," Tripathi said.
The Board, which met in September, did not provide any information on budget reductions that would be allocated to SUNY schools, according to Scott Nostaja, vice president of Human Resources and chief of staff in the Office of the President.
"They left us without any real clarity about how budget cuts will effect UB," Nostaja said.
Nostaja said that the school will wait for the Board to shed light on SUNY's economic situation, but has in the meantime produced a four-point financial plan to guide the coming semesters.
Though it was not stated as one of the four points, the continued hiring and purchasing freeze, which was previously extended to Oct. 15, was mentioned in Tripathi's e-mail as necessary.
Tripathi repeated similar sentiments about the moratorium that he stated during its initiation and extension.
"The hiring 'time-out' is an important way for our university to preserve current degrees of financial freedom," he said.
The e-mail, along with reiterating a commitment to upholding the UB 2020 initiative, stated that the university must continue "retaining and recruiting" high-quality faculty.
Nostaja said that while the school has not made any new hires aside from special circumstances, it is still pursuing recruitments for faculty and will wait until it has a better idea of the budget before making hiring decisions for next year.
"It would be shortsighted for us to stop those simply because of the uncertainty of the budget," Nostaja said.
Tripathi developed the financial plan after meeting with university leaders and the University-Wide Strategic Financial Advisory Group and compiling the 1,200 responses regarding the budget from faculty and students.
One goal of the plan is to create new revenue for UB. Some suggestions from the Advisory Group are to increase fundraising, use the campus for more activities during periods between semesters and explore opportunities to increase student service fees.
The group supports a rational tuition policy, recently endorsed by the SUNY Student Assembly, which would bring in revenue by increasing tuition gradually rather than with large hikes.
Nostaja said that the school isn't in charge of changes in tuition.
"UB doesn't set tuition," he said. "That is at the SUNY level in consultation with the legislature."
Another point in the financial plan is to determine which areas of the campus will receive budget cuts and how to manage expenses appropriately.
Proposals from the Advisory Group include consolidating campus service providers and evaluating the impact of limiting aspects like the hours of operation for some buildings. The group also supports an energy conservation plan that will in turn reduce costs.
The final point in the plan involves careful use of the central fund revenues, a sum of funds the university has set aside for times of financial need.
Tripathi said that the measures he enacts in response to the budget stipulations from SUNY would follow the university's core principals of providing a strong education from a top-research university while, among other things, eliminating wasteful resources.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
