By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to budgetcomments@iastate.edu and will be reviewed by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
The numbers correspond to the order in which the e-mails were received.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

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I don’t know how much of the budget is used on our power bill here, but one possible avenue of savings would lie there. This is a somewhat half-baked thought, but here goes:
Around the university I see a lot of lights on in unoccupied areas. These days you can get light switches that, by default, only activate the lights when a built-in infrared sensor determines there is someone in the room, and these are pretty cheap these days.
We have a tremendous number of computers on campus. Computers have a lot more smarts built into their power management capabilities. Although the expected reaction of your typical research lab might be, “No, we need our computers at full capacity,” these new, smarter power managers can do everything transparently — and can support levels of granularity down to the processor level [e.g., the processor can sleep during idle periods, which might be many millisecond bursts per second]. Most of our computers aren’t switched off at night around campus, I suspect, but they wouldn’t have to be with automatic power management. This is an article I’ve been applying at home myself recently that has some good ideas — it’s based on Linux, but the concepts are largely independent of the operating system: www.spencerstirling.com/computergeek/powersaving.
Besides the desktop PCs, most of which probably end up effectively being just souped-up e-mail terminals for students, we have these large-scale research computing farms and supercomputers [BlueGene, the VRAC, etc.] that in all likelihood spend the majority of their time powered up to do nothing. That stuff adds up over time.
The downside of either of these ideas is that there would be some materials and labor costs, so some sort of cost-benefit analysis would be needed before moving forward. Some costs could possibly be offset by somehow taking advantage of the new federal green initiatives. I don’t know anything about that; but perhaps Sen. Tom Harkin [D-Iowa] would, or members of the university staff who specialize in green technologies — for example, those folks who built the energy-efficient house for the national contest.
Layoffs and furloughs and such are most likely the quickest ways to recover the most money, as salaries are likely the largest fraction of the budget, but killing off jobs is going to be very unpopular and exacerbate the problem that got us here to begin with: The state ran out of money because of too few taxes, because of too much unemployment. Looking elsewhere to recover money would be the wisest long-term solution.

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There are many small changes that can be made around our campus that would allow it to run in a more financially efficient manner. Some possibilities include:

• Turning the AC temperature up in the summer by a few degrees could save us huge amounts of money. Many classrooms are already uncomfortably cold in the summer, so this would eliminate that problem as well.
• As a member of the marching band, I love all of the perks we receive, however, if it would benefit the university as a whole, I would be willing to sacrifice my complimentary pre-game meals. This custom was just started a few years ago, and it is appreciated, but not completely necessary.
• If the university is cutting back on its janitorial staff, one thing that can go along with that is not emptying certain trash receptacles on a daily basis. Several of these have bags that are nearly empty, and as long as they don’t have obvious odor-causing debris in them, it is wasteful to empty them.
• Many buildings on campus stay lit up during unoccupied hours, or are entirely too brightly lit during occupied hours. This is quite wasteful of energy.
• With regards to CyRide, many of the drivers engage in “jack-rabbit” starts and stops while driving or leave the doors open with the heat cranked up while at a stop with no one around, both of which lead to very poor fuel efficiency. Many of the CyRide buses are often close to empty, so the university could use more small buses from its fleet more often.
• Finally, I have noticed many student jobs across the university that seem unnecessary, particularly because many of these students do close to nothing while on the job. This seems particularly evident at the library, where I have, on multiple occasions, found student employees earning my tuition and fee money to sit around on Facebook waiting for something to happen, i.e., somebody requesting something from them.

As you can see, if many of these possibilities were to be enacted, it would also help toward our university’s pledge to “go green!”

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I think part of the problem is that we give free tuition to too many people. I’m talking about affirmative action. If we are so intent on affirmative action, then only give it to the people who are 100 percent Indian, black, asian or whatever. And they must be born in the country of their nationality, otherwise, if they are born here, they will be completely Americanized, adding no cultural difference to the campus. I am sick of hearing about stories of people who are only percentages of other races and still getting free tuition. Worse yet, they are totally Americanized because they were born here, therefore adding absolutely zero diversity to the campus.
I think making a diverse campus is a huge cost that just does not make sense in times like these, especially if the money lost to affirmative action is wasted on completely normal, everyday Americans who happen to have trace amounts of another nationalities. The money allotted to people of different nationalities should be based on the cultural difference they offer to the university, based on their cultural experience and personality, not on their appearance.
So before you raise my tuition, or surcharge me, or cut the salaries of our hard-working and well-qualified staff and professors, modify the current inefficient and ineffective affirmative action system.

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I have read many of the budget comments in the Daily and find it curious that more people don’t see the advising system as a logical place to cut. Obviously there will always be some need for this service, but a central advisory center serving the entire student body surely would be good enough.
I wonder how many other universities have the system Iowa State has with advisers entrenched in all departments and spread all over the campus. Although many advisers are put to work teaching a course, especially good as pinch-hitters, serving on committees or handling other thankless departmental tasks, most are really only busy advising two months a year — the pre-registration period, when students actually have to trek to their offices for official signatures.
When I was an adviser, the other two women I worked with conducted personal business half the week; after their course work was finished, there really wasn’t much else to do. Other advisers I met worked overtime trying to prove to their departments how necessary they were. In reality, advisees rarely had questions that couldn’t be answered with some personal effort of their own — reading course catalogs, adding up their credit columns. I rarely felt that my services were needed or valued, other than as a buffer between the faculty and the students. If a student is smart enough to get into college, surely they should be able to add up their credit hours and see what they’re missing? Perhaps, if they don’t, they don’t deserve to be here. At any rate, I fled back to teaching as soon as I could, even though it meant much, much more work. I wanted to have meaningful contact with students, not play “buddy” or emotional prop, as some see their advisers, or worse, some bureaucratic placeholder.
At any rate, I’m sure this will go nowhere because the whole advising system has become so thoroughly entrenched since I was a student here — class of ’78, with a M.A. in ’83. And none are paid well enough to pay all that much attention to, but I don’t think their loss would be much of a loss to the mission of Iowa State. Students would have to tot up their own numbers. A few would occasionally screw up, which would help them learn to take responsibility for themselves, a critical skill. A core of these bureaucratic advisers could be kept busy with students who have serious problems, but it seems to me that faculty should get involved when students have serious questions about the content or direction of their courses in a particular discipline. The numbers-toting should be done by students.

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Don’t do stupid things. We didn’t need to renovate State Gym. It doesn’t need a walkway to Beyer. Don’t overheat/cool every building so much.

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I don’t know how much of this is still under debate — reading the Daily and e-mails that come through, though, I have to expect there is still quite a bit of debate — but here are a few more suggestions:

• Parking enforcement: If we’re honest with ourselves, this is one of the most derided functions by faculty and students alike within universities. It does provide a source of student employment, granted, but it’s a very questionable priority in times of severe budget problems. If it is not a net gain for the university to leave it at its current level, it should be greatly scaled back.
• Police: I remember hearing at orientation that Iowa State maintains its own police force, separate from Ames PD. If it also is funded out of our budget, we should scale that back as well. Again, if we’re honest with ourselves, no one really cares how many open container and public intox charges show up in the Daily from week to week. Any major problems can be handled by Ames PD, and, in the end, we don’t have much of a crime problem here, and that’s mostly because it’s Ames, not because of a large police presence.
• Student orgs: From personal experience, I couldn’t determine that the student organizations office does much besides create idle rules to beat student organization officers over the head with. We should have some place to go to when we need the university’s help, but I see too much of its function as a bloated bureaucracy that could stand some trimming down to strictly a core mission to help the students when needed. Reviewing constitutions and processing “Compliance Agreement Forms” does not meet that standard, in my opinion. The majority of clubs, I’d wager, are departmentally affiliated anyway, and the departments could take care of their own. In the rare event some legal concern arises, those could be dealt with on a case by case basis by university administration.

By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to budgetcomments@iastate.edu and will be reviewed by President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
The numbers correspond to the order in which the e-mails were received.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

121
Can we give more incentives to retire to those who are 65 and older? It seems there a lot of these at the university now.

122
I suggest the university require furloughs the week of Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day for all nonessential personnel. I believe that temporary salary reductions will be unfair. Those personnel who make lower salaries already cannot afford to have their take-home pay reduced for an extended period of time. Most people I have talked to would rather endure furloughs than see fellow employees lose their jobs permanently.

123
I am not sure how much the savings were from last year’s early retirement plan, but it seems to me to be a good way to replace higher paid senior faculty with more productive, less expensive junior faculty. I would suggest looking into repeating the offer from last year or perhaps a different version to entice senior faculty to step down.

124
Teaching load parity, not equality, among faculty in all colleges — excluding those who buy out their teaching time.
Install electronic thermostats in offices so temperature reduction is automatic, once it is programmed. High initial cost, but payback is under 3 months, according to city of Ames and Alliant Energy.
Reduce heat and cooling in all buildings overnight. City of Ames recommends overnight temperature at 55 or 58 during heating months [can’t recall cooling temperature]. Allow for more fans so air conditioning can be reduced during cooling months. City of Ames says it costs a fan 10 cents, I think, to run for a comparable $1 of air conditioning.
Allow for more lights to be turned off, automatically — in a hall, perhaps every other light fixture can be turned off — overnight. Most buildings empty out by 7 p.m. and get busy again at 7:30 a.m.

125
I had three great jobs in the private industry with Fortune-300 companies before I joined Iowa State as a P&S staff person; that will be 20 years ago next spring. I have seen deans, presidents, athletics directors and football coaches come and go … I have also weathered three of these particularly ugly budget situations. The first $2 million grant I wrote for my first boss at a research center here on campus, now almost 20 years ago, was funded, and I was laid off a week later — as a peon, my name was nowhere in the grant, and my boss at the time had no interest in writing me into it since I was not a “researcher.” I survived that one by juggling soft money for almost a year … In all cases, I survived on soft money, most of which I generated for the good of my operating unit and that went to my operating unit. I am mostly on soft money now, and finished a grant that is in the works that will cover an additional 1/4 of my salary — currently, 1/2 is USDA money — for the next few years. That said, I’ll come to the point. I am a P&S soldier in the trenches, more or less invisible to administration. I have never been recognized for my contribution to either of the units I have worked for, and I don’t really care about that sort of thing since I quit climbing ladders a long time ago. After almost 20 years, I would like some job security, especially since I continue to pay my way. And I do like to nail-down good projects for Iowa: Over a couple-year period I helped to bring in more than $4 million, of which the university took substantial overhead, co-created a grant package with the Iowa Area Development Group that built a $475,000 industrial park — now with five major businesses — to help save a dying Iowa town, and helped commercialize a novel technology that created an operating business that employs several people. Lately, I’ve been working on a waste-remediation project that could have national environmental impact if we can get facility started … I took my love for my job to former war zones in Afghanistan and Croatia to directly help farmers and improve agricultural networks in those struggling economies … As an Extension person, I feel like I make a real difference.
Now I’m, again, looking at the uncertainties of a layoff? Perhaps not immediately likely in my unit, but the possibility is there for my wife, who has worked in the Parks Library for more than 28 years. In every previous mismanagement by the state, secretaries, P&S staff, groundskeepers, librarians and custodians have taken the hit: Bang! You are fired, no more job. Tenured faculty have never lost a night’s sleep; at the very worst they went without a raise. Well, we are down to the bone on “expendable” bodies. The university is about as lean and mean as we can get — look at Extension and the challenges Jack and Mary have had to address this year. To preserve our missions — and that includes the ones strongly supported by mostly invisible individuals like me — we need action that does not eliminate positions. We need to preserve jobs to preserve the mission. It is time that tenured faculty chipped in too, and paid their fair share. I strongly suggest mandatory furloughs for all 12-month appointments. Sauer-Danfoss, here in town, has implemented x-number of days without benefits taken at the payees’ discretion — unpaid vacation — between Aug. and Jan. 1, 2010. People can plan for it and make it work. The mission does not suffer because the programs still have key people with key contacts and relationships with constituents at their desks or on the road, doing their jobs. Faculty still do research and teach on the days they need to meet with their staff or be in the lab or classroom. Make the decision across the board and you probably will have the money. People may be unhappy, but they will have jobs and the university will continue to function. The other avenue is to consider reductions to the benefits package; especially the wage and benefit packages for “less than active” faculty who should, well, be retired, or younger individuals who have not done anything within their departments for years but continue to live very well from the system. There may be serious age discrimination issues here, so please just consider the following as food for thought sent to me by a friend who works in the law library at the University of Iowa:
About six months ago, I did a quick ‘n dirty salary calculation at the Law School … As I recall, I was using 2008 salary numbers. I selected the six faculty that I know for sure are past 70 years old. Not 60. Not 65. 70. Their combined wages? $959,000 — I don’t think that included the benefits calculation. With bennies, that number would be well over a million dollars. Hey, they want to keep their offices? Let them, or make them share like staff or grad. students. They want to continue teaching/research? Let them, but shift them from full salary to TIAA-CREF. I have not heard a single one of those guys consider retirement. Not a single one. Included in this group is the most gracious person I have ever met in my entire life. Even I would not give [name deleted] a pass on this one! Oh, and heaven forbid a professor teach more than two classes in a semester … As a union-protected person, I would rather see furlough days than job eliminations, if that would even still be a viable option. However, furloughs would have to be mandatory and across the board, exempting public safety and medical personnel. Voluntary furloughs will not work. The volunteers would resent the non-volunteers. A friend of mine tells me this is the greatest financial crisis for the Iowa universities since the great depression.
Drastic cuts were made then that did include faculty [If he has his facts correct].

126
I have no idea how many dollars would be involved, but I think there should be a purchasing freeze on all University and State vehicles for at least 1 year, if not 2. This would include tractors, combines, cars, trucks. Certainly, everyone would like to have new vehicles but with times the way they are I would think we could go without new vehicles for a couple years.

127
Please consider the parents of students that may have their hours per day cut, days per week cut or be laid off from their jobs. Also consider the students that may be laid off or have their hours reduced because of these trying times. It will be hard for those people to come up with the extra money to pay in 2010 and probably a few years beyond. Students want to be able to stay in school to complete their education and receive a degree to be able to have a career, not just a minimum wage job.

128
I suggest that there be a central mandate that colleges seriously consider elimination of the following types of units and activities:

1. Student services and academic services activities that duplicate centrally provided services such as tutoring, study abroad, teaching and learning enhancement, diversity, study skills and general recruitment to Iowa State. This is especially critical for recruitment, as many high schools are implementing policies of one visit per higher ed., institution. If college “X” gets there first, no other college or central recruiter can visit.
2. Eliminate central college units that duplicate units that, at most universities, would be provided centrally. There are colleges that have “luxury” central units that are better funded than university central units and that only benefit students in a single college.
3. Undergraduate majors with fewer than 80 students that are offered at the University of Northern Iowa or the University of Iowa should be seriously considered for elimination.
4. Undergraduate majors with fewer than 40 students should be eliminated or merged with another major.
5. Departments with fewer than 15 faculty members should be merged with another department.
6. Graduate programs with fewer than one Ph.D. student per faculty member should be considered for elimination, as well as masters-only programs with fewer than two masters students per faculty member.

In addition, credit distance education should be moved into the RMM effective FY2011.
Data should be obtained for peer land grant and AAU universities comparing the fraction of tuition plus state appropriation funding devoted to central university units relative to academic colleges.
All faculty associated with the library should be converted to P&S. It is simply ridiculous for them to have faculty status when we have no academic programs in library science.

129
I would like to see temporary lay-offs/furloughs as a major strategy in meeting this round of reductions, but only if they are done in such a way that helps the general assembly and public understand that we cannot maintain our current mission with the budget cuts we have received. The lay-offs/furloughs should result in a delayed start or an early end to the second semester, and the university itself should close during this time. I would like to see permanent layoffs avoided if at all possible, as these will be unevenly distributed, falling on staff and non-tenured/tenure-track faculty.
I believe potential program eliminations should also be in the mix, particularly those that are not part of the core mission of the university, have low enrollment or are underperforming.

130
My understanding is that Iowa State is somehow required to purchase pieces of art for certain buildings. If that is true, can that stop temporarily?
Additionally, how about selling some of the expensive pieces of art we have on campus?
Could highly paid individuals be required to take a certain number of days of unpaid leave?

131
I think you should consider the issue of raising spring tuition. I have been talking to my classmates before class on this budget issue over the last week, and I have been getting a 50/50 response on the issue. The 50 percent who were against the tuition increase reason is that you may get some students to pay out, but those who I talked to said they are going to have to withdrawal because they can barely afford the costs as is. I am in the group against it. I won’t drop out unless it is a drastic increase. I think you need to weigh the outcome that, if students drop, are you still going to come out on top for your budget if you increase tuition? I think you might break even, at best.

132
Have a mandatory shut-down of most of the university during Thanksgiving week and the one-and-a-half weeks of Christmas — Dec. 23 – Jan. 1. Only those specific offices needing to remain open for university functioning should remain open — anything to avoid additional layoffs. We all need to work toward that goal, from top to bottom.

133
I’ve listened to a variety of friends in various age groups over the past week or two who are non-state workers and can’t believe how much, in pay and benefits, is spent on university employees who are past what they consider a normal retirement age — 65–66 years old.
I suggest the Regents implement a mandatory retirement age of 66 at all institutions. I know there are universities that have this in place already — Purdue comes to mind. If employees, at whatever level, want to stay on at their university after age 66, they would need to have their pay and benefits covered by grant/soft money — NOT state dollars, and this should be made clear to the public.
Sounds easy, and I’m sure it’s not, but it does make sense and seem reasonable to me!

134

1. I think the professional development should be cut all the way. We have several advisers who went to NACADA three times in five months. We pay for their memberships and travel. I don’t really see what they get out of it, but, of course, I am not an adviser but work with advisers all day.
2. I believe many OPEN-option advisers could be cut. We have 11, and, yes, they have other duties, but they are only really busy two months out of the year for registration. Most of the time they just hang out in their offices.
3. MSA liasion officer for each college could be cut and just have MSA the central area for students of color to come and receive help.
4. I think a one-time surcharge to the students is fair. I don’t think it’s fair for the all employees of Iowa State have to endure the budget cuts.

135
Thank you for taking the time to come over to the College of Business today and addressing the faculty/staff on the current budget issues.
A few points, then some suggestions about the relationship ISU has with the community colleges.
Iowa State and the other Regents institutions have been put at a disadvantage ,from a business perspective, in that:

1. CC have a tax base
2. CC have enjoyed substantial financial support from the Legislature.
3. CC are allowed to compete directly for the same student pool.
4. Iowa State has been mandated costs associated with easing transfer issues for CC students, notably the TRANSIT system.
5. Iowa State encourages students to remain at the CC often past the optimum transfer term.

While nothing can be done about items 1–3, they create a climate in which the other two items should be considered.
Item 4 is particularly troubling, as the cost of establishing the TRANSIT system was mandated without funding, and current student tuition dollars were diverted to support non-ISU students without any predicted increase in recruiting. Taking a fee-for-service approach, could an admissions fee for transfer students be charged to pay for this service?
Item 5. ISU policy states that 65 credits can be applied to a degree at Iowa State. We cooperatively advise students at the CC though the APP program. As an advisor, I know these two things act to encourage students to stay at the CC past the most opportune time for them to come to Iowa State. The best time to transfer should be based on the degree program and the student, rather than on a fixed period of time. We lose tuition dollars as these student take courses at the CC they could be taking here. Also, again, the use of ISU resources to advise students through the APP program should be recovered through a fee at admission.
I don’t think either of these will generate anything like the savings Iowa State needs, but they can be part of the effort.

136
Permit me to make to suggestions for budget cutting.

1. I have previously mentioned this issue in various forums: The Library 160 university-wide requirement for undergraduates has long outlived its usefulness. Neither of the other Regents institutions has such a requirement. In fact, I can not find any peer institution that does. Virtually every colleague and student I have queried about the benefits of this course during my 37 years on this campus has reacted negatively. My department and others in LAS about which I know have a library utilization session in an orientation class or in a class for majors that requires original research. Library 160 is too general to be of use to students. In addition, the requirement’s meaning has been blurred considerably by the fact the many Iowa community colleges offer a first semester composition course that transfers to Iowa State as both English 150 and Library 160. A new advisee of mine was surprised, yesterday, to learn that by taking such a course at Kirkwood CC, she had earned credit in Library 160. She was never in a library on the Kirkwood campus. She took the course through her high school. The LAS Curriculum Committee, on which I have served for 12 years, is unanimous in its desire to make Library 160 an elective course and will likely propose this to the Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee. Upper-level administrators I’ve asked about this are in favor of discontinuing the requirement. I have no idea how much money would be saved, but I suspect a few positions in the library could be eliminated.
2. While my second suggestion doesn’t concern Iowa State, it involves much more money. The guest editorial in today’s Register regarding the huge expense the University of Iowa intends to request from the state to build an “enhanced” Hancher Auditorium makes a pretty compelling case for rethinking this. My understanding is that FEMA would pay almost 90 percent of the cost of building a completely new Hancher and Music Building, even in a new location. But because UI wishes to add “enhancements” not in the current building, like a studio theatre, the cost skyrockets to more than $100 million dollars not paid by FEMA. This seems absurd in our current dreadful fiscal environment. I have a number of friend/colleagues in the music department at the University of Iowa. While they’re excited about teaching in a shiny new building, they’re still ambivalent about it because of the four or more years they’ll have to continue teaching in an old Menard’s store! This issue ought to be re-examined by the Regents.

137
Everyone should take furloughs, from the president on down.
That’s what they’ve done in Maryland. Their personnel are not being laid off or having their time reduced such as has already happened here at Iowa State. I am one of those people who have already been affected, and my daughter will most likely lose her job at Iowa State as well.
This should not be happening. Merit and P&S employees should not be the only ones to bear the brunt of this financial devastation.

138
RE: Potential budget cuts
I think the committee needs to recognize that there is no feasible way to cut 10 percent without touching salaries. When more than 90 percent of the budget of many departments is salaries, and when faculty cannot be laid off, there is no choice but to cut salaries on a temporary basis by using furloughs. Otherwise, we will end up with zero budgets for TAs and lecturers, which will have major negative impact on student learning and research productivity. If faculty has to spend 20 hours per person per week in the labs, it will lead to virtually no proposals being written, little money for hiring grad. students and little time for research. The result will be that the university will no longer be a Research 1 university and will lose money on a longer term basis. All the hard work of the past 25 years will be wasted. There are many departments today which are looking at zeroing of their TA and lecturer budgets — this is simply not permissible if we are to remain a first-class university.
Therefore:

1. We should have furloughs of two weeks. That saves about 5–6 percent of the annual salary budget. The furloughs can be during the Thanksgiving break and from Dec. 25 to early January. Furloughs for all, except the necessary maintenance and public safety workers. If the merit workers’ union does not want to do it, then they can suffer the consequences of layoffs of their members. A recent survey — admittedly unscientific — done by my secretary showed that every single merit worker she talked with — about 20 people — was in favor of furloughs rather than layoffs. I have found exactly the same sentiment among the merit people I interact with every day. The union is not listening to its constituency. I believe the faculty and P&S staff are strongly in favor of a furlough — the P&S council has already voted in favor of this proposal.
2. To reduce the impact of a sudden decrease in income, we can have each employee sign a voluntary agreement that allows the university to deduct one day of pay every month for the next 10 months if they wish, as opposed to a one or two-time deduction from pay. It is basically a promissory note, whereby the employee promises that should he or she leave before 10 months are up, he or she will pay back a pro-rated part of the furlough money that was not deducted earlier as a one or two-time deduction.
3. There are institutes, centers and labs — for which the university pays high maintenance and part of the salaries of staff and director — that are doing almost nothing. There are hardly any students, minimal impact on education and almost no proposals/contracts that can be tied directly to the center or institute being present. A survey needs to be taken to find out which are productive in terms of student education, student training and research. The ones that are not should be eliminated or merged with other centers. The survey should be done by an outside firm experienced in such things.
4. We must address the extremely high cost of doing business on campus. In particular, FP&M is extremely costly and inefficient with an enormous bureaucracy. It costs a lot more to use university FP&M for any job compared to hiring a private, licensed contractor. For example, it costs more than $1,000 to install an electrical outlet. The very same job was done by Ames Lab, also on campus, for $600. Why is there such a tremendous discrepancy? Why is FP&M so much more expensive? Almost 60 percent more than Ames Lab? Ames lab is almost always significantly cheaper than FP&M for the exact same job. And a licensed electrician, whom I asked to look at the job, was willing to do it for $100. The university should consider privatizing FP&M and contracting out that operation. Iowa has done it very successfully in maintaining the rest stops on the interstates. Some engineering staff will need to be kept for supervision and project designs, but there is no doubt that FP&M is, overall, grossly inefficient. The individual plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, maintenance men, are excellent — they deliver solid value. But the overhead kills us. If not privatization, then steps need to be taken to reduce the overhead in FP&M significantly. An outside firm should be hired to help in streamlining FP&M and reducing their overhead costs. This will save millions of dollars every year. I am not exaggerating here.
5. There are a number of departments that are not using faculty resources appropriately. There are algorithms for measuring faculty productivity. They are not being followed. The result is that a certain number of faculty are coasting, since they have tenure. The university must demand that each department use the faculty resources according to the algorithm — if a faculty has no research and no supported grad. students, he or she will teach many more courses — including lab courses and recitations. The algorithms exist, they are just not being followed. We should demand that 40 hours of pay means 40 hours of work, and it applies to faculty, as well as to other staff.
6. It is a terrible idea to reduce benefits, such as pension plan contributions. Once reduced, they will never come back. That is the reality. A furlough, by definition, is no work, no pay. So it is temporary in its nature.
7. A tuition surcharge of $100 is also a good idea.
8. There must be a HARD freeze — not a soft one — on hiring on state funds. Only soft money — research contracts, endowment money, etc. — can be used to do any hiring. By definition, these would not be permanent jobs. The hiring freeze for faculty must extend to searches for Deans and department chairs. It is nonsense to say that any department or college is in such a bad shape that it needs an outstanding new leader from outside, right now. The only exception to the hard freeze for faculty hiring should be for truly outstanding individuals — members of National Academy of Sciences or Engineering or Medicine or Nobel Laureates. Outside of that, no faculty hiring until the budget situation clarifies.

139
Every month we receive several pages of printed paper containing information and balances for our current grants from the sponsored program accounting office. There are several direct and indirect costs to distributing printed versions of this information.

1. The cost of paper and printing directly incurred by the sponsored program accounting office,
2. The indirect cost to the campus mail system that delivers these reports,
3. The indirect cost to the departments, in terms of the time of the staff to distribute these reports to the faculty mailboxes, and
4. Many of us shred these reports, which further contributes in the form of electricity and wear and tear of departmental shredders.

This information is readily available via AccessPlus, where faculty have access to the financial management system and can check these balances easily. Thus, it seems reasonable to eliminate printing and delivery of these reports. Perhaps an e-mail delivery may also be considered in lieu of printed paper.

140

1. In LAS, each faculty and staff member are given $1,500 every four years toward computer replacement. These funds are very helpful but not always spent wisely. Rather than buying stand-alone computers, why not purchase thin clients at a quarter of the cost and use the savings to create virtual desktops for them? Several departments across campus are doing this in computer labs, and it works very well.
2. Question the resources that are used for “Emeritus” faculty. Unless a person is contributing materially to the mission of the department, why do they get office space, computers, support?
3. Our building was just renovated at a cost of several million dollars and provides office space for faculty who are hardly ever there. In these times of shrinking budgets, why do we allow faculty to have several offices when one or more of these spaces is essentially empty?

141
When considering furloughs, I think it would be good to take into account those faculty/staff that already reduce the amount of their state salary through external funding. It takes extra work to get this external funding and it is good for Iowa State’s bottom line. Therefore, I recommend that, if furloughs are recommended, then faculty/staff should have the option to use their external funding in place of the furloughs, or at least to meet part of the furlough requirement.
Furloughing someone who has a contract to finish a project by “X” date just means that they now have to work nights and weekends to make up for the furloughed time at work.

142
I know single people and those married couples, which both work at Iowa State either pay nothing or very little for their insurance coverage. If everyone had to pay part of that coverage, it would help with the amount Iowa State pays out for this. Why do they not contribute something for their coverage? A percentage should be paid by everyone who is covered with the insurance plans Iowa State has for the employees.

143
The more I have discussed this issue with people in my area, we have concluded that furloughing would be the most acceptable and less disruptive to our work.

144
Budget saving suggestions:

1. Cap vacation payouts at a dollar amount, i.e. $2,000, or eliminate them altogether. This will encourage employees to use vacation for its intended purpose and not save it for a huge payout. In addition, capping the payout will not feel as much like a takeaway as opposed to reducing the accrual, which I’m not suggesting. Some faculty payouts will cost departments between $25,000 and $40,000.
2. Eliminate the sick leave payout, and cap sick leave accrual at 480 hours — ties to FMLA.
3. Mandate, if allowable, electronic W-2’s. This would save Iowa State in mailing and human resources.

145
I realize that no one knows, yet, what’s going to come out of the latest budget reversions. There’s a lot of talk on campus about furloughs. If this is an approach the university decides to take, I would like to ask that we be allowed to spread any required time off over several months. When the voluntary furloughs took place earlier this year, I know my department was doing them in one-week blocks. Since my husband and I both work for the university, as P&S employees, having to lose a solid week of income from one or both of us would be financially devastating. Regardless of how the time is taken, the savings to the university would be the same. I would just like to request that the university do what it can to lessen the impact on those of us who aren’t protected by either the union or tenure.

146
When thinking about the budget difficulty recently, it came to mind for me that, as ISU employees, we are pretty spread out on campus and off. Have we considered temporarily or permanently relocating some ISU staff to energy-efficient buildings on campus to save money on resources? Or, when buildings must be open, because of specific needs, such as lab space, etc., moving others to the necessary facilities and close other non-necessary facilities temporarily? Using busing to transport individuals to these areas and park in outlying areas to ease possible parking difficulties due to the temporary relocation? Beardshear is a beautiful building, but is it energy efficient? Is there somewhere else that administration could reside while we deal with the budget crunch? I, of course, do not know what the cost of relocating these individuals vs. the savings might be. I am just reminded of the old days, during black outs, when a family would all gather around the fireplace in the family room for warmth and sleep next to the fire.

147
Recently I received my basketball tickets for the upcoming season. My suggestion is that they consolidate the men’s and women’s tickets into one envelope for mailing. We also ordered a season ticket for friend. All tickets came in three separate priority envelopes through the mail. I would think they could have crossed referenced our name and address and put all in one envelope, as I checked, and all labels were identical.
Better yet, if you live within 10 miles of the Ames area, have people come and pick up their tickets at the Athletic Ticket Office.
I have also e-mailed the Athletic, Department on all of the holes that are very bad in the parking lot. A patching of some these major holes would sure save on the possibility of a lawsuit if someone falls in one and breaks a leg or ankle.
Another suggestion is having most office work 7:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. year-round, instead of just over the summer months.
Having shut down between the Christmas holiday and New Year’s is a good idea.

148
Dear Budget Advisory Committee:
Here are some ideas to help you close the budget deficit for fiscal year 2010:

1. Stop buying $5,000 trash cans that nobody uses.
2. Don’t rename streets simply for the sake of renaming them — that would’ve saved $80,000.
3. Cancel any plans to purchase expensive wind power; “global warming” or “climate change” doesn’t exist and wind power only costs this economy jobs.
4. Cut administrator positions or anyone who doesn’t teach or research something at the university.
5. Cut football funding because it was, is, and always will be a horrible program that doesn’t win anything.

However, I’m sure that these ideas make too much sense and might make the far-left special interest groups that you worry so much about upset. So, here is the solution that you have used in the past and will always go to in the future: A tuition increase.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

149
Although I believe it is important to promote all the good things going on at Iowa State, I feel that units need to think about the cost and find ways to cut back. I continue to receive hard copies of beautiful reports from several colleges using my home address, which also adds unnecessary postage to the cost. Some of the others in my office are also receiving these at home.
In the past few months, I actually received two different glossy reports from Human Sciences — one was 35 pages long, oversized and full of photos; the other was 16 pages long, very colorful and also full of photos. Research at Iowa State is near and dear to me, and a lot of the stories are about ISU research, but I’m afraid the perception by people across the state who are receiving these reports is that we have an unlimited budget for publishing fancy promotional materials.

150
I am a faculty member here, and so I appreciate the security I have, but I agree with the Faculty Senate president — salaries are relatively low, many of us already work summers for free, while also paying for child care, so please, please, don’t cut our benefits!
Here are some other suggestions for cutting costs:

1. Graduated temporary salary cuts — or furloughs: Cut more from people who make more money and less from those who earn less. This would reduce layoffs, which are terrible for the economy and for morale.
2. Designate a portion of contributions to athletics for academics. Just as proportion of the budget for every building must be allocated for art, so also a proportion of every dollar donated to athletics should be allocated to the educational mission of the university. My preference would be to divide the funds evenly between athletics and academics, but I doubt that would fly. But a 25 percent contribution to academics from every contribution to athletics should be reasonable.
3. Hold classes four days per week instead of five. This would allow faculty to relegate many meetings to Fridays without competition from teaching responsibilities and would reduce the energy and janitorial costs for classrooms.
4. Lay off some assistant coaches. Compare the student/teacher ratio across campus to the athlete/coach ratio. If the athlete/coach ratio is much lower than the student/teacher ratio, lay off coaches to bring the ratio into line.
5. Put motion-detectors on lights in hallways. This has been done in many bathrooms, and it saves considerable money. In many European hotels, the lights in the hallways are on motion detectors. If done on campus, this would save a lot of money over the long term.

By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to budgetcomments@iastate.edu and will be reviewed by President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
The numbers correspond to the order in which the e-mails were received.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

91
I think the furlough is the best idea for making up the budget. By making all employees take one week of furlough, at an average of $20 per hour, half of the $24 million could be made up. Two weeks would make near the total. Doing it this way, everyone is contributing, but no one is losing their job or losing money toward retirement or taking a permanent cut in pay. It seems a reasonable contribution by all employees.
People could opt to take a day a month for seven months to not burden them so much all at once, or could choose to take it all at once. If we took the entire week of Christmas when most people need extra time for shopping, wrapping or traveling, by doing the furlough during that time, the university could also just close down and save on the electricity costs, which, hopefully, can also contribute.
I think people can swallow this, rather than losing their job or taking a permanent cut of pay. By having no pay, the economy will never get better. There will be no tax contribution, nor any spending in the economy, which will only make it deeper in debt.

92
I read in the “Inside Update” Oct. 14 issue that a second early retirement incentive was being considered. During the first offer, many, including myself, did not meet the required age, missing it by a few months.
I understand many other universities offered health benefits to continue but also to continue contributing to the person’s retirement fund. This would be a very appealing offer and would certainly motivate many to take early retirement. The cost of doing this would most definitely be more cost efficient than continuing to pay employees’ wages.
At this point, many are worried about their programs being eliminated and would be happy to take an RIO with added incentives in the package; those not meeting the requirements previously are most likely to meet them the second time.
I seriously hope, when the council members meet Nov. 11, they will consider this additional component in the RIO.

93
As a union-paying, non-supervisory merit person in my 41st year at Iowa State, I have some suggestions for budget reduction to save jobs, to not raise tuition, to help save money and to help save energy. I’m very sorry we have to continue to go through these tough times.
1. Have a mandatory closing during the week of Thanksgiving.
2. Have a mandatory closing during the week of Christmas and extend this to the week of New Year’s, if needed.
1) This would impact everyone and also save energy.
2) When we did this in the past, employees could take vacation or leave without pay or other compensation time.
3) The areas running experiments, security and animal labs would have to have a skeleton crew available, but those people working would also have to take similar leave time at later date.
3. Offer another early retirement package.
1) For me and several of my contacts, we have been too young to qualify for the last two retirement offer packages.
2) Offer to hire us back, without benefits, to help cover the shortage of employees. We have tons of experience and know the ISU system.
4. Don’t raise tuition until the last resort. Parents and students are struggling in this economy. We need to keep the students at Iowa State and in Ames.
Thank you for the opportunity to voice my suggestions and concerns. I am very thankful to have worked at ISU.

94
Reducing the budget ideas:

• Having not as many construction projects going on at once.
• The Spangler Building does not need to be 80 degrees during the winter. Cut it back to 40 degrees.
• Do we need a huge sign outside the Memorial Union that shows nothing of interest to any student? If we are interested in a subject, we already know about it.
• Cut back on mowing. Turn the Central Campus lawn to natural Iowa grass, or plant sweet corn and have a day during the first part of the year for a huge free corn feed.
• Have the waterfall turned off all year long. Mainly only prospective students see it is when it’s on during the summer.
• In the hallways of every building, turn out every other light during the day.

95
We’d have to consider paying the $90/month cost for Medicare Part B, but it still would be a savings. We could offer a conversion to a Medicare supplement upon retirement if the employee wanted it, which would still save money and might help employees transition to retirement and not have to do all of this upon retirement, if they retire beyond age 65.

96
Dear President Geoffroy and budget committee members,
I am an industrial/organizational psychologist and, back in 2001-2002, there were similar — although not as extreme — budget issues facing the university.
During that time, I conducted an online survey of employees working at Iowa State about voluntary furloughs and job attitudes, at a time when furloughs were being discussed as a possible solution. I’ve attached a pdf of the summary results of that study. I shared these with the participants on a Web page, but have saved it to a pdf for easier viewing by you.
I also received many comments, both positive and negative, regarding furloughs, as well as many suggestions for how to handle the budget problems back in 2001-2002, including when the furloughs might occur, e.g., over the holiday break, spring break. I would be happy to share those with you, if you are interested.
One of the main things I remember from the study was the interest in the project and the goodwill the employees relayed to me about someone caring enough to ask their opinions. I thought some of this information might be helpful to you as you are making budget decisions.

97
One thing that might generate more revenue from tuition is that we could start charging undergraduate students more tuition when they take more than 18 credits. I know that, in other states, they have policies that students taking more than 18 credits start paying additional tuition, based on how many credits they are enrolled in. I don’t know how this would impact the Honors Program students, who are automatically allowed to take up to 21 credits each semester, but it might be an option. The students registering for more than 18 credits are taking spaces in classes that could be used by other students, which requires us to offer more classes in each area.
Link to University of Wisconsin tuition and fees info:
http://registrar.wisc.edu/students/fees_tuition/pickit.asp
Link to Minnesota State University-Mankato tuition and fees info:
http://www.mnsu.edu/campushub/tuition_fees/rates/2009_2010/undergrad/oncampus/mnres.html
Another thing that the state of Wisconsin does is that after a student has taken a ton of credits, the student is responsible for the entire cost of their tuition, essentially pays the out-of-state tuition rate:
http://registrar.wisc.edu/students/fees_tuition/surcharge.php

98
I suggest that benefits not be reduced; instead, I think that faculty and staff should take a cut in pay. The percent cut should be based on the salary level and not the individual’s title. For example, less than $50,000 = 5 percent cut; $50,000-$100,000 = 8 percent cut; more than $100,000 = 10 percent cut.

99
I just got back from a meeting in Boulder, Colo., where the topic of budget woes came up often among the faculty representing about 10-15 different universities, usually large research state schools. I wanted to pass along my thoughts, which are shaped somewhat by what others have indicated has worked well at other schools.
First, I support the idea of across-the-board cuts, as opposed to vertical ones. If there was a truly objective way to determine which departments or programs are much weaker than others, then it might be appropriate to make vertical cuts. However, there is no objective way to do it. Does one use SCH? Number of majors? Out-of-state majors? Research dollars provided? Should it be per FTE? Vertical cuts change the shape of the university forever and drastically alter lives — both of faculty and students, and, thus, I support the way we’ve generally handled cuts — passing on the pain to all.
Second, I heard it has worked well elsewhere to let the individual departments, or, more precisely, those chairs, decide how to find the money to give back. Each department knows best where it may have room to cut. A colleague at the University of UT ended up asking if anyone was willing to drop down to six-month support, having no university duties the other six months.
One person had enough research money and had wanted to do what would effectively be a sabbatical and, thus, volunteered, solving the problem in that department — this person normally could not do a sabbatical, since they had just done one within the previous seven years, and that university required sabbaticals to be at least seven years apart.
Third, department chairs should have the ability to use furloughs if that is the only or best way a department can cut money. At other schools, faculty with sufficient research money — or incentive funds — have been able to use those funds to pay themselves through the furlough. I STRONGLY support this idea. The pay freeze last year was very bad for morale. In normal years, raises are based at least somewhat on merit. With the “no raise for anyone” policy, we were all treated the same. Those of us with 10 publications during the year, $1 million in research support, excellent teaching evaluations and very active service, saw no benefits for working hard, as we were treated the same as colleagues with one paper, no funding, poor teaching. In these bad budget times, the ability to use research and incentive money to supply pay during a furlough helps to provide this fairness, in that those faculty who are very productive may receive a reward compared to those who are less productive.
I just wanted to express my opinions and share some of the information I learned last week while chatting with colleagues from other universities.

100
I am a merit employee, and I am happy to see that options such as temporary furloughs/layoffs/LWOP and temporary reductions to benefits are being pursued to hopefully lessen the number of permanent layoffs necessary to reach budget goals. I have never paid dues to AFSCME and I don’t agree with all of the decisions they make. I, for one, would be very willing to take a pay cut, reduce hours or take some days of LWOP, if it means that I, and others in merit positions, can keep our jobs and health insurance. If there would have been a way for me to deny my step increase last month, I would have done it to help my unit. At a time when other classifications are going without raises, it doesn’t seem ethical to expect a pay increase in this current economic environment. I also don’t like the bumping system. I know the person who has less seniority than me and I would find it very difficult to bump someone I know. It would be hard enough to bump a stranger.
I guess I don’t have any new ideas of areas to cut, and I’m sure I don’t speak for all merit staff, however, I think there are lots of other individuals like me who are willing to make sacrifices so that we can keep our jobs and keep the permanent layoffs to a minimum.

101
Could everyone take a 10 percent salary cut?
I have already received my letter that my job is on the list, being presented to those laid off as a job to bump, so I know I will be gone, eventually. I worked at Iowa State since July 1981, but in 2007, I took some time off and lost all my seniority.

102
I’m a non-supervisory merit employee in the Graduate College and was just wondering if the following would be helpful on saving money, instead of temporary layoffs or furloughs. I’ll be the first to say I may be way off, here, as I am no pro at budgets of this magnitude, but it’s worth a try. There are probably a lot of us, myself included, who have quite a bit of banked up sick and/or vacation time. I, myself, don’t have much extra vacation but do have quite a bit sick time. Is there any way I or anyone interested could pay some of that back to the university? Just wondering, because, when you leave employment, I think you get paid out in some form or fashion.

103
How about the voluntary option of staff going to 32 hours a week? Ask for volunteers — there may be parents of young children where that might be more advantageous to them than a 40-hour work week.

104
I would like to see furloughs — for everyone.
Another suggestion:
Leave the Hub and MU Market & Cafe open, but close the other campus cafes — there are five. Have the people working for these cafes transfer to one of the dining centers or Memorial Union so that they don’t lose their jobs. By closing the cafes, there would be savings in electricity, maintenance, upkeep.
There’s nothing wrong with students eating in the dining centers, and, if they want a snack, they can go to the MU, Hub or vending machines — like it used to be.

105
Dear President Geoffroy, Provost Hoffman, and members of the University Budget Advisory Committee,
I have just a couple of thoughts that I am sure you have already heard, but thought I would comment anyway. I know there are other universities that are closed between Christmas and New Year’s. I think this could be a big savings because of the reduction in utilities, and if employees took that time as furlough, that would provide additional savings to the budget. I realize that there are some areas that cannot be shut down, such as our VDL and LVMC.
Another thought is to have one furlough day per month. That would allow employees to plan their finances accordingly, as there would be one fewer day per month that they would be paid for. Maybe even look into two days.
I think most employees would be happy to participate in this type of program to help with the budget and hopefully fewer jobs may be lost.

106
I support a temporary across-the-board salary reduction program, since we are all in this together, and this appears to be easier to administer than temporary furloughs. I do also support a state tax increase, temporary furloughs and a temporary reduction in retirement benefit contributions. It is very important, in these economic times, that everyone remains employed. Unemployment leads to home foreclosures, decreased state tax revenue, all of which further destabilize Iowa’s economic climate and negatively effect the university in the future.

107
I am currently sitting in a classroom, before class starts, and this breakthrough idea came to me. Lower the temperature in every room across campus a few degrees. This very room I am sitting in is at 77 degrees. Just about every person in this class sheds their layers of sweatshirts in order to get comfortable, but it’s still too hot. If every room on campus was kept to 70 degrees, people could just keep some of their layers on from outside and still be fine, and you will save tons of money.
Another thought that I had is that some of the general “common” areas of buildings can have half the lights turned off in them, thus saving money. In the Howe Hall atrium, only 2 banks of lights, out of the total about 6 or 7 are ever on unless there is a big event going on. If this practice was used in other buildings, money will be saved.

108
A few suggestions for how Iowa State can save money:

• Turn off computers in computer labs and classrooms with computers at night and on weekends. I know of multiple labs in Howe and Hoover Halls that leave computers on 24/7.
• Require laboratories, as part of their EH&S safety requirements, to close the sash on fume hoods when not in use. Right now it is a suggestion.
• Caulk around windows and doors in Science 1. I work in this building and have noticed the windows, especially on the west side of the building, leak a lot.
• Consider upgrading fluorescent lighting from T12 fluorescent tube bulbs with magnetic ballasts to T8 bulbs with electronic ballasts.

109
Overall, I advocate for across-the-board temporary or as needed faculty salary reductions by the university. This will save tremendous hours in calculating budget cuts and save staff jobs that need to be retained.
More specifics:

1. Numerous faculty I have spoken with advocate a temporary faculty pay cut versus a loss of more contract faculty and staff. The university, colleges and/or departments should be allowed to have a percent across the unit pay cut. Other universities have mandated salary decreases across the board for faculty. We have the largest salaries; we should take a cut. Best case, the university determines this percentage, does it and this will save 1,000’s of hours of everyone’s time. Make it easy and efficient.
2. Allow any unit to have faculty furloughs.
3. Close the university Christmas to New Years, except essential services.
4. Badly needed is a real means to release non-productive faculty who cannot be re-focused.
5. Additional mechanisms to encourage retirement; to leave the position is more advantageous that to remain in it.
6. Rent out all facilities for additional use. Start with the new basketball facility, to make it part of the community. It is seen, by many, as an elitist, isolationist facility in the face of people losing their jobs. I doubt the facility will engage the players with the ISU campus.
7. FP&M — who is reviewing the charges? Outsource everything Iowa State can. The city has inspectors; that should be the role of FP&M for ISU building projects. We need a list of contractors willing to be responsive, timely and reasonable to do the work. The FP&M tone has changed to one more threatening recently; this is not a service philosophy. Please find someone to review their processes and make a change.
8. What is the role of the “Green Office?” Is it actively writing grants to find funding for green projects and doing an analysis of energy savings? If not, please start.
9. Allow an easy mechanism to convert staff positions to other classifications and duties to save jobs immediately.
10. Allow job sharing. Work with the union to allow for this as well.
11. The students are paying tuition. What percentage of faculty salaries are dedicated to teaching — e.g., the teaching fee. That should be examined. In the future, researchers may need to provide more of their own salaries.
12. Use all options available that will save time and jobs, as per President Geoffroy’s e-mail.

110
I feel the best way to remedy the budget is to have an across-the-board decrease in pay so that all employees keep their jobs. The economy needs people working, and we need to put more people back to work.

111
I wondered what the savings would be if there was an across-the-board 1 percent salary reduction? By doing this, it could be possible to save some people from losing their job or being laid off.
If you wanted to make the employees feel like they were still getting something out of it and not just “giving things up,” would it be possible to do four 9-hour work weeks? The 36 hours would be considered full-time, and the employee would not need to take vacation time or time without pay, as they are already having their salary reduced by 1 percent.
By having offices closed one full day a week, there would be cost savings in energy as well.

112
I am in support of a larger benefit contribution reduction than was outlined in your visit to the College of Human Sciences on Oct. 12. I would support ISU contribution to be temporarily suspended completely or reduced to 5 percent, equal to the employee contribution.
Lay-offs and salary cuts will continue to reduce state tax collections. Keeping people employed will keep them paying taxes.

113
Here are some ideas:

1. Make office hours 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. university-wide, where possible — many have suggested this before. It’s very frustrating when some office staff are available from 7 a.m. – 4 p.m. or 7:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. or 7 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. or 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. or 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., and students and staff are unable to get help. Some offices, such as student scheduling, post hours but then won’t take phone calls after 4:30 p.m. How is this serving the ISU student population?
2. Get rid of the 1-hour and 10-minute lunch. Somehow, this does not compute to an 8-hour work day anyway!
3. Many departments use food to entice students, and then staff end up eating the food. There should be a limit on how much money is spent on food or consider if it is actually needed. If departments or clubs want banquets, all should pay to attend — psychology does it this way for our honors banquet.
4. Staff shouldn’t be able to use university funds to buy athletic tickets for their own use.
5. Cut back on travel. Attending one conference a year is plenty, unless one is presenting. I didn’t attend any last year to do my part.
6. Benefits are important, but we get way more than we need. Vacation and sick leave hours could easily be cut back by a few hours a month.
   Or single employees — merit — could pay for their own insurance, instead of getting it for free. I don’t know of any business that provides FREE health insurance. As a P&S-level person, I pay for my own insurance, and it is a minimal cost for what we receive — AND, I make less with two degrees than most merit employees.
7. If everyone had to take furloughs or a pay cut — 1 percent across the board — we need to know soon, so people can plan ahead. Taking one day’s pay a month — or something like that — can’t be that hard to compute.
8. Stop dumping the costs on the students. Staff need to realize we wouldn’t have jobs without the students, so we need to give a little too.
   If tuition keeps rising higher and higher and aid falling, fewer students will be able to attend, and more jobs would be affected.
9. Reconsider the bizarre additions to the gyms! The walkway between Beyer Hall and State Gym is not necessary. I would think the heating and cooling bill for that alone will be atrocious, especially when all are being told to cut energy costs.
10. Shut down Iowa State TOTALLY between Christmas and New Year’s. When you’ve asked us to do this before — not like in the late 70s/early 80s — some people worked, so heat was still on. This does not save energy and money.

114
In response to Dr. Geoffroy’s letter of Oct. 15, and specifically the employee-related savings strategies, I would much prefer temporary salary reductions to lay-offs or benefit revisions, be they temporary or permanent.
In the nearly 19 years since I started working for Iowa State as a merit employee, my salary has tripled from $14,000 to $42,000. Just as I was grateful each time the state had the fiscal means to increase my salary, I understand and accept that, as a state employee, my salary now needs to be reduced for a while, because of the current economic situation.
Laying people off would only throw people into a job market, where there are no jobs to be had, and eliminating benefits will create a further strain on state services in the long run.
I urge you to use across-the-board temporary salary reductions in order to keep as many people employed as possible.

115
I am alumni, my wife is faculty, and we have an incoming freshman next fall. Whatever you do with the budget it will have an impact on our family. My recommendations are in order of preference:

1. Temporarily reduce or suspend the retirement benefit match for TIAA/CREF or IPERS. This has no immediate affect on take-home pay and would do the least damage to the local Ames economy, state tax collections, and would probably do the least harm to most employees.
2. Add a tuition surcharge ASAP. Everyone needs to share the pain.
3. Reduce wages — better than layoffs, and this also reduces the fear of layoffs.
4. Eliminate programs and lay off people. This is least desirable, and it does not help position the university for the future.

Thank you for considering my suggestions. I am a farmer and a director for a couple of corporations. We have had to make the same choices, but the mission — education — must come first.

116
A few ideas to help save a little money:

1. Remove all personal coffee pots — allow 1 per department — refrigerators, space heaters.
2. Require all personnel to bring their own Kleenex [tissues], eating utensils, personal hygiene items. Don’t provide through Central Stores.
3. Unplug everything at night and on weekends before going home for the day.

Small things, but could add up to a lot if the whole university cooperated.

117
Below are my comments/opinions on the categories being considered.

1. Temporary salary reductions — Asking someone to take a pay cut devalues their service to the university. If we are not worth what we are getting paid, then why make it temporary?
2. Temporary lay-offs/furloughs — These are a good tool to use for blanket down-times in a university; many schools shut down for 1-4 weeks in December/January when there is nothing pressing. Taking a furlough is a much better idea than devaluing the salary by having someone still working and not getting paid.
3. Benefit revisions of a temporary or permanent nature — Never a good idea; many people can live with a reduced paycheck but not a reduction in their retirement or their health insurance.
4. A tuition surcharge for the spring semester of 2010 — Someone said a tuition hike to pay for the state’s mishandling of the budget is not a good idea … most students leave the state anyway and will never benefit from the state’s programs. I completely disagree with this. If we raise tuition, perhaps students will feel more invested in our state and remain and increase our tax base, which is one of the reasons we are in this predicament to begin with.
5. Postponing non-essential deferred maintenance and repairs — Maintenance by nature is to ensure that small, less costly problems don’t turn into major, more costly issues. This category must be closely reviewed to ensure that non-essential, unnecessary and necessary are clearly defined terms, when it comes to maintenance.
6. Refocusing efforts, including potential program eliminations — As a last resort, this may be necessary, but only if it improves the overall effectiveness and progress of the institution.
7. Permanent lay-offs — If staff and faculty are truly unnecessary to fulfilling the mission of the university, then lay-offs are acceptable, but if it is used only as a means to save money, then it is ultimately detrimental.
8. Selling non-essential assets to generate one-time funds — This sounds like going to a pawn shop or a check cashing store. If assets can be sold at a reasonable price, then this should be going on always, but if we are just selling off the back of truck to the first available buyer at any price, then we are acting in panic.

118
I would ask that permanent layoffs for ISU staff and faculty be kept to a minimum. The accumulative knowledge and experience that would be lost would be hard to replace and would severely hamper how we serve students. I would also ask that careful consideration of a tuition increase of 2–4 percent be given serious thought, as I think any budget cuts should also include students as well as ISU staff and faculty. I am of the opinion that an additional tuition increase along with furloughs distributed fairly among all faculty, P&S staff and merit employees would be the best plan of action.

119
As an undergraduate student at Iowa State, I am most concerned about the rise in tuition costs. My family is also under financial strain. I think it unfair for the university to ask my family to make up for the budget when athletic programs are over-budgeted. I ask that more money be taken from athletics programs and applied to education.

120
Having previously worked for many years in the private sector, I feel extremely fortunate to be working at Iowa State with opportunity for growth as well as great benefits. Two points keep coming to the top when I think of the impending budget reduction — saving jobs and not adding to the tuition burden for our students. I’ll begin with the latter point first. It’s easy to look at increasing tuition since it is the easy way out and does not monetarily affect employees. Unfortunately, past government experience of a “one-time” special increase for this or that has resulted in the increase becoming permanent in many cases. Students have been asked to carry the load many times in the past. I’m likely in the minority when I say this, but this time I think faculty and staff should shoulder this reduction. At the same time, layoffs should be reduced as much as possible.
Possible ways to create budget savings and save jobs:

1. Reduce the university’s retirement contribution from 10 percent to either 9 or 8 percent.
2. Have all employees pay something for their health insurance — and, yes, I would be one of those employees who currently pays nothing.
3. Allow employees to take furloughs — a maximum of one day per month.
4. Close down the university during the December holiday break, or at least for part of it.
5. Mandate shorter hours for all offices all year long, instead of just during the summer, to generate utility savings — 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. for fall and spring semesters; 7:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. for summer semesters. The shorter lunch break in the summer has worked well, and employees really enjoy the shorter work day.
6. Reduce travel whenever possible.
7. Reduce office expenses — use non-name brand supplies when possible and print only essential documents.

I realize that some of my suggestions may not be possible because of the union contract, however, I strongly believe that everything needs to be on the table. The less we are willing to give, the more likely we will have a much smaller workforce doing a lot more work! Thank you for asking employees for their input. It truly indicates we are all in this together.

By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to budgetcomments@iastate.edu and will be reviewed by President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
The numbers correspond to the order in which the e-mails were received.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

61
Good afternoon:
I am sure you have thought of these, but here are a few things I thought about:

• Temporarily stop or limit travel. If giving a presentation, the organization hosting could possibly reimburse for faculty or staff members’ expenses.
• Stop reimbursement for meals. Since a person would be eating even if they were not traveling, let them pay for their own meals until budget improves. Or, change the limit amount being reimbursed.
• If an airplane ticket is purchased with ISU funds then frequent flyer points should be given to university to purchase additional tickets rather than kept for personal use.
• Can things be changed phone wise? (i.e., like graduate students not having a phone in every office)
• Temporarily stop on purchases of nonessential items not needed for everyday use. For instances, books, equipment, etc. that can be postponed until budget improves.

One of the things I have heard people outside of the university say many times to me is ‘if the university is hurting so bad why are the constructing new buildings or doing construction on buildings?’ People do not understand there are different budgets for different things. Is there a way these budgets could be merged together and used more effectively?

62
Budget concern ideas….
Faculty might be more willing to step up and teach more courses if Promotion and Tenure allowed a path for promotion (all the way to full prof.) with more emphasis on teaching and less on scholarship (not to say either should be totally eliminated….). Differing duties for each faculty member can be used to get the unit’s work done overall and maintain excellence….some doing more teaching and some more scholarship. Right now the perception at least is that you can not get promoted on teaching alone and people are not willing to step up to teach more courses.
Also, there is a large variation in salaries among faculty. Some staff and faculty that are making $40-75K or so struggle to make ends meet in Ames. A salary cutback for them could be very difficult to handle. There should be a baseline set (say, more than $100K or so) for salary reductions or at least a “progressive tax” to protect younger, lower paid faculty…if salary reductions are considered at all. This would seem to be a breach of contract, however.
Merge some units into administrative units with one chair, associate chair and staff. Some of the work is fairly routine (yes I have been in administration) and could be handled for multiple units at once (such as collecting data for annual reports, class scheduling, book orders, etc.) I think we really need to look at how many Deans/Associate Deans/Assistant Deans, etc. each college has. Administration appears to have grown over my 20 years here while teaching faculty numbers have dropped. Turn more decision making back to the departments so decisions don’t require a dean’s approval.
Finally, really take a look at reports and paperwork. Are the reports really necessary and do they get used or are they just paperwork? I serve on several diversity committees and the reports seem to be just that: reports with no real use or consequences. Ask the administrative assistants which ones could be cut..they will know!
Just some random thoughts from the front lines!

63
If we would have mandatory furloughs, could married employees (both working on campus) split it up so that it wouldn’t be such a hardship all at once?

64
In most cases, I would prefer to have the flexibility to make all of the decisions about budget reversions at the department level. However, the budget cut at the start of this year has left me with almost no flexibility. If you include state supported RA and TA lines as part of the salaries in NREM, our teaching budget is 98.2 percent salaries, our research budget is 99.3 percent salaries, and our extension budget is 98.7 percent salaries. Based on discussions I have had with other department chairs, I think many other departments are faced with similar extremely high percentages of their state budget committed to salaries.
It would be very helpful to have a portion of the reversion dealt with through mandates at the university level even though the actual reversion money still comes from the departments. Two of the Regents’ strategies have appeal because they can initially be temporary, but could become permanent if we are faced with a budget cut for next year. Salary reductions or a benefits revision, or both could be implemented for the remainder of the year for all university employees. I don’t advocate accomplishing the whole 10 percent reversion through these actions, but a portion of the reversion produced that way would be helpful. Reduction of employer contributions to retirement benefits should be adjusted based on the age of the employee with younger employees receiving a lower reduction than those of us who are older. Cuts in those benefits need to make some attempt to take into account the long-term earning power of investments made early in one’s career.
I also think a centrally mandated period of leave without pay would be useful. Delay the start of spring semester by one week. During that period, close the university with everyone except persons essential to safety taking leave without pay during that time. Not only would that help to meet the reversion, it would also send a clear message that Iowa State cannot continue to provide all of the services we have in the past in the face of continued budget cuts or reversions. If that action were taken without a tuition surcharge this year, it would lend credence to the need for a tuition increase for the 2010/2011 academic year. A coordinated effort on the part of all Regents institutions for that period would send an even stronger message.

65
Honor early retirement again currently and not wait until next year.
People who are drawing retirement from the university should not be allowed to continue to come back and draw more pay on top of their retirement.

66
As a grad student and as an employee of Iowa State, the budget can potentially impact me on multiple levels. As a student it is easy to see only the immediate impact of any budget issues and how it is going to impact me. While the Regents have suggested some options, a combination of several of them would combat the budget cuts while maintaining the current level of education. Permanent lay-offs affects me as an employee in that offices are short-staffed and the responsibilities fall to the other employees within the department. It can affect me as a student by possibly eliminating positions that affect my program of study.
One of the suggestions that makes sense would be a one-time tuition surcharge. As as a student I am lucky that there was only a small increase in my tuition last year. Other states have passed the majority of the budget shortfalls to the students through tuition increases. A $500, one-time tuition surcharge would off-set the current budget shortfall by approximately $12.5 million. The university has passed surcharges in the past to help with the increase in utility prices. The additional cuts could then be passed to colleges and the departments.
Thank you for allowing suggestions from faculty, staff and students.

67
To whom it may concern,
This e-mail is in response to a recent e-mail about budget cuts, including a request for input. I am a junior in English education and a member of the University Honors Program. I admit I know relatively little about budgeting and money in general. However, I appreciate that my opinion was asked and would simply like to — hopefully as many before me have — strongly encourage those in decision-making positions to keep in the front of their minds the word “non-essential,” which I saw appear many times in recommendations and considered actions in the e-mail I received. I frequently see items and projects around campus that I consider highly non-essential, for example large televisions in seldom-frequented hallways, renovations to all three of our already very functional athletic centers, and the new sign in front of the Memorial Union. I realize many of these are projects already approved by the Board of Regents, but I am sure there are many of these underway would save valuable amounts of money if discontinued or otherwise delayed or rethought. I also would encourage decision-makers to keep times like this in mind when approving projects in the future. No matter how many funds are already in a certain account, I am sure that if enough thought is given, other projects would be found to be much more “essential” uses of funding than some of the projects I see around campus.
Thank you for your time!

68
Greetings,
For the time being, stop making employer contributions to retirement plans, and at the same time take away the requirement that all employees contribute a certain percentage of their wages to these plans. This accomplishes two things: Iowa State University doesn’t spend those contribution dollars and the employee can use their own discretion as to where their money goes. If the individual chooses to stop the personal contributions, it is up to them.
Stop funding conference travel.
Thank you.

69
Dear President Geoffroy;
Furloughs seem to be a reasonable method of coming up with the needed funds. However, they may be difficult to apply to teaching faculty in a fashion that does not overly disrupt students. One possibility around that might be to start next semester one week later than planned or whatever number of days might be needed to raise the necessary funds. This would not only provide an across-the-board response but would send a message to the public that it is difficult to provide the services our young people deserve with the continued budget cuts.
Thanks

70
When on campus in the evenings, I see an awful lot of lights left on in classrooms or other rooms which are not being used. Perhaps there is a way to reduce this, which could save on the electricity bill. Also, computers and monitors in computer labs which I frequent are almost always left on all of the time. If there was a way to set these machines to go to sleep mode or otherwise use less electricity, that might also help the electricity budget line. I know these seem small, but several small things might add up to some real savings over time. These could also be doubly counted as green initiatives.
Thanks for taking these ideas into consideration. Good luck in this hard process!

71
Dear President Geoffrey,
I’m a professor on the library faculty. I’ve signed an agreement to retire at the end of June 2010. It’s confidential, but since you’re the president of the university, I think I can safely tell you that it provides for my health insurance for the five years following my retirement. My personal retirement budget will be really tight, and I knew that when I signed the agreement; a reduction in health insurance benefits (if in the form of increasing the cost for a single person–I’m a widower) would perhaps come close to breaking my budget. I’m sure I’m not alone in worrying about such a change.
I would recommend perhaps reducing the amounts that the health insurance pays for procedures rather than increasing the amount we pay. I would also recommend perhaps an elimination of the university’s contribution to TIAA-CREF benefits for employees — the matching of the employee’s contribution that it provides now. Other institutions, out of state, are not that generous. I would also recommend a severe reduction in the funding allocated for out-of-state travel by faculty, especially to meetings where they are not presenting papers.
In the library, I would recommend the elimination of faculty status for librarians. We spend an inordinate amount of time doing “faculty” things — writing articles, not because we necessarily have something we want to say, but to obtain promotion and tenure and retain our jobs; serving on promotion and tenure committees; serving on post-tenure committees; and producing vita, portfolios and the other materials required of us when it’s our time for promotion and tenure or post-tenure reviews. Besides that, a lot of us serve on national committees solely to further our tenure/post-tenure cases — and again, that requires considerable funding from the university or the library.
I used to be a librarian at the University of Iowa; there I wrote articles for publication on my own time rather than the library’s, and did so because I felt strongly about what I was writing. Librarians at the University of Iowa no longer have faculty status, but they did in the now-distant past. There might not be too many of us who remember it, but librarians were listed among the “Academic Personnel” in the university catalog through 1972/74 (I’m listed there), but dropped from the listing beginning with the 1974/76 catalog. It didn’t diminish our standing in the university community, and it didn’t lessen the importance of my contribution to the work of the library.
Thank you for giving these suggestions your consideration.

72
To whom it may concern:
The suggestion of a modest tuition surcharge is extremely unacceptable. It is very unprofessional to tell students less than three months that they will be paying extra on their tuition. I do not understand how legally this is acceptable as well. Did we not receive information with a cost of tuition. I have budgeted my financial aid according to that information. I did not allow for a surprise surcharge. I do have a suggestion, cut money from athletics. This a university not the ESPN network. I understand that programs help bring in money for the university but I feel that some athletes that are given scholarships should not be here. For example last year a football player at the university on scholarship could barely read. How is this academic failure considered acceptable? Why punish students when money is wasted everywhere on the Iowa State campus? For example why remodel the gyms and oak-elm cafeteria? Seasons is very nice and seems to be accommodating all students. Also did Jack Trice really did that so called upgrade? The stairs at the Memorial Union, may have been distorted but added character they were still sufficient. What is the Veishea budget for this year? Cut that! Most students at Iowa State go to a state school because it is affordable not because the football team is bad, or the stairs are straight, but because they want to get an education! I want to get an affordable education. Throwing extra fees at students is not beneficial to the general acceptance rate. We also pay a health fee. Why pay a health fee when the Thielen Student Center is also very inefficient and I would never go there? Last year they told my friend he was fine, but when taken to the ER, doctors discovered that he had pneumonia. Money is thrown around at this campus and nobody cares because they can always cut teachers and raise tuition. Well this time a “modest” tuition surcharge is too much. Some people have to pay for housing and don’t live in a huge house on campus, some people pay more than $1,000 on books, and now we are supposed to accept a fee on top of a fee?

73
To Whom it May Concern:
In general, I have been satisfied with Iowa State University’s plan to cope with budget cuts this semester, but I would like to voice a few opinions for consideration of this next round of cuts.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that students, professors and employees alike, are all in the same boat right now, but there are several issues I find troubling at times:
For example, and I may be the only one among the student body, I feel Veishea is getting out of control. Not only is the budget for it ridiculous, but the money isn’t necessarily put toward portraying a positive image of Iowa State. Ever since the riots, I feel the environment for Veishea has changed; it is no longer a community oriented event. I truly believe it attracts more people coming to party than coming for the parade and to celebrate what Veishea even stands for. I would be willing to guess 35 percent of the student body doesn’t even know what Veishea stands for, and this isn’t just freshmen. With that being said, I also realize the revenue it brings and I don’t propose canceling it, but I think some serious reformations must take place.
Another issue is the proposed tuition surcharge for the spring semester of 2010. How much are we talking here? I feel like the “one-time fees” and surcharges just keep piling up, and this will already be on top of the fees for the rec renovation fees set to quintuple in one year. Just for your consideration, after the initial budget cuts last year, I lost nearly all of my academic scholarships and I have a 3.87 GPA. Do I have a problem knowing that I am receiving $500/semester when a foreign exchange student or athlete is receiving a full-ride? You bet I do! I am actually making alternate plans for the spring because I don’t know if I can afford to continue my education at Iowa State, and that isn’t figuring in the “tuition surcharge.” I have struggled to put myself through school as it is, and my hope was to make it through this year and reevaluate. I suppose now with fees changing at semester, the plan changes to living one semester at a time. Another thing to consider: Federal student loans are issued on base tuition in the fall semester and do not provide “allowances” for university surcharges. I am sure I am not the only student in this financial situation, I just wish someone would at least acknowledge that fact.
Suggestions:
Other than (4) the tuition surcharge, I agree with the proposed list of strategies, especially the non-essential maintenance and assets in (5) and (8).
I would also suggest a closer consideration and possible student vote on new construction. I was here for the rec renovation debate and although the bill did pass, it’s clear that several students also had reserves. The e-mail from President Geoffroy says “These new facilities will help us to meet the needs of students.” That is very true, but right now I truly believe considerations need to be made on exactly what students need, not just what would be cool, or rank number one in the Big 12. Suppose construction is started for several new projects, I propose a focus on only what is necessary, leaving room for expansion when the economy is better.
And finally, with Veishea planning still underway, I would entertain a 5-10 percent budget cut, or something reasonable.
Thank you for allowing me to voice my opinion,

74
Dear President Geoffroy,
Thank you so much for encouraging and offering the opportunity to provide input about the budget situation.
I’ll pass along an idea I heard elsewhere — What about mandating 2X2 course schedules throughout the university? With classes scheduled on a Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday configuration the university could practically be closed on Fridays, which would save about 6 full weeks of operating costs for the entire year. Several universities do this already, with no classes on Fridays, and meetings (and other activities) strongly discouraged. Iowa State could essentially be closed Fridays through Sunday (with few, if any, services on those days).
Many kind regards,

75

1. Students need to pay a higher percentage of their educational expenses through tuition, no doubt.
2. Programs should not be cut unless there is no real value in them.
3. Faculty and staff benefits should not be touched.
4. The Athletic Department needs to become a part of the university. Staff and salaries need to be axed in the three major sports. No need for multiple coaches. The Athletic Department needs to contribute directly to the general budget of the university and stand in line like everyone else for funds. Million dollar salaries need to be eliminated. Athlete perks need to be reduced. Coaches need to be educators in the off season.
5. Salary reductions might be considered but only for the highest paid faculty and administrators.
6. All job searches should be frozen until the budget turns around. Existing faculty can cover the work.
7. Faculty should “actually” work a full time week for full-time pay. No more 20 hour contact or less for full time. We have high paid faculty who have less than 10 hours of class contact per week. This is appalling!! Regular folk in the real world would laugh at such a cushy schedule. I am half time and have 20 hours of contact. All of my preparation and research is extra.

76
In keeping with President Geoffroy’s invitation, I’ll pass along an idea I heard elsewhere and have shared via the Faculty Senate blogspot.
What about mandating 2X2 course schedules throughout the university? With classes scheduled on a Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday configuration the university could practically be closed on Fridays, which would save about 6 full weeks of operating costs for the entire year. Several universities do this already, with no classes on Fridays, and meetings (and other activities) strongly discouraged. Iowa State could essentially be closed Fridays through Sunday (with few, if any, services on those days).
If this is not adopted at the university level, we might consider if there would be any significant savings at the school level.

77
Half the money in local school budgets is state money, provided through the school foundation plan. If the unspent balance of K-12 and area school budgets reverted to the state on June 30 and was sent back on July 1, there wouldn’t be any deficit. This approach won’t solve the cash flow problem, but it does resolve the constitutional question of deficit spending.
The danger of raising this argument is that someone may want to revert unfilled faculty lines on the same basis, but this isn’t a problem, if funds are returned the next day.

78
Half the students who graduate from teacher education programs in Iowa never take a teaching license in any state. There is a 50 percent over capacity in these programs. Raising admission requirements for education would actually increase enrollment, as research shows, by providing a bigger piece of a smaller pie. If faculty FTE were held constant, this approach would pay. The danger in reducing enrollment and course sections in programs that generate a surplus (the Social Studies generally) is that this produces budget stringency somewhere else. Maybe the cash cows should be cut last and made more selective first.

79
With the 2009 RIO, employees and spouses that become Medicare eligible (turned 65) have to sign up for Medicare Parts A & B and the ISU plan then becomes a Medicare supplement saving the university around 50 percent in premium reduction. Currently continuous employees continue on their plan without having to sign up for Medicare.
Consider implementing this for employees that become Medicare eligible while employed.

80

1. Closing the University from Dec. 28 — Jan. 4.
   This would allow heat to be turned down and lights to be shut off.
   This could be paid time off(vacation) or unpaid furlough.
   Only allowing DPS and Power Plant, and Grounds to work if it snows.
2. Only publish the Daily twice a week.
3. Disconnect every other light in hallways.
4. Come up with a way to eliminate lights being on in classrooms, hallways and offices when not being used.

81
Dear Committee:
In my earlier message I suggested a suspension of intercollegiate athletics. This is intended to apply only to those sports that do not pay for themselves or return revenue to the university.

82
What about reducing business hours across campus? If all buildings were empty and lights, etc. were off, I would think it would save on energy and also on pay. This would be considered furlough time for salaried employees and reduce hourly wages.
Can we reduce lighting and turn off not only the computers but also all the power strips?

83
Dear President Geoffroy and colleagues,
Given that it may become necessary in the current budget climate to consider salary cuts, furloughs or benefit cuts among the faculty, I would like to suggest that any such cuts be applied in an income-progressive manner. My thoughts are inspired to some extent by the policy being applied at Princeton University, which froze salaries this year — but only for faculty and staff making more than $70,000. Some details can be found at: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S25/41/95I57/. Given that faculty salary increases above a miniumum level at Iowa State are decided largely on the basis of strategic priorities determined by adminstiration, and that for the past 10 years the base salary increase level for faculty has not even reached the level of the increases granted to Merit staff under their collective bargaining agreement, it is clear that certain members of the faculty in certain strategic areas have benefitted much more than others through the better better budget times of the late 1990s and mid-2000s. I understand fully that such strategic decisions are necessary. Nonetheless if Iowa State seeks to remain a comprehensive and competitive research university, the faculty must not be allowed to feel as if there are administratively predetermined classes of higher-priority and lower-priority faculty. I fear that we are perilously close to having such a tiered priority structure among the faculty here, and despite the many things I value about this institution, it negatively impacts my desire to remain employed by Iowa State. I would therefore suggest that if and when cuts to faculty salary (permanent or temporary furlough) or benefits be implemented, those to whom the largest investments of institutional resources have been granted in good budget times be asked first to make sacrifices in these much leaner times — and tenured professors making $150,000 on a nine-month base can indeed much better afford them than those making barely one-third of that figure.
Many thanks for your many efforts.

84
I suggest:

• Asking offices/buildings to keep the thermostat set to a specific maximum.
• Turning off electronics (e.g. computers, copiers, printer, postage meter, coffeemaker) during extended times of non-use (overnight and on weekends).
• Possibly consider lessening the production, have a print-on-demand system or check on how many will likely be used when doing posters, publications, etc. I have a pile of around 24 ISU football posters sitting in my office that I was given but probably will put in the dumpster.
• Encourage people to print less when possible.
• I recently participated in a “LEAN”/“6 sigma” training that I think will be very helpful for identifying ways to improve our efficiency and embracing changes. Many other faculty/staff could benefit from it also.
• Offer/suggest that faculty and staff use their personal cell phones for long distance work calls if reasonable and if they can do it without impacting their personal use. Some people have more cell phone minutes each month than they use, or even unlimited calling.
• Furloughs or pay reductions instead of layoffs are a good idea. Perhaps offer employees the chance to volunteer for both options before requiring it.
• Our department handbook states that hourly employees should not volunteer their time to do their job. However, some people may be willing to do so under the current circumstances. What if that was made a temporarily accepted practice? Labor laws may require them to sign a waiver.
• Another option might be offering employees the opportunity to conveniently donate to the university through paycheck deductions. I think I would be more likely to do so if I made a pledge and/or if I didn’t have to write a check to Iowa State after receiving my paycheck.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit comments.

85
Dear Budget Committee members:
I share these thoughts on behalf of several at Vet Med.

1. FURLOUGH: Mandatory furloughs across the board (6,168 non-student employees per the latest count I could find) could result in savings of between $4 and 9 million from salary and FICA. Depending upon the number required (I based my estimates on 5-8, with an average salary of $20/hour), many employees would see less reduction in their pay than a salary reduction of as little as 3.5 percent. Additionally, the employees receive a perk with the furlough, some time to work at home or be with their families. (Call me an optimist-I believe people will step up and continue to get their work done even with less time available.)
2. FLEXIBILITY in FURLOUGH: Allowing employees to schedule their furlough days with their department head would provide optimum service to students and other stakeholders while offering some latitude in regard to the personal budgets of employees. The current time-off card could be utilized very easily to record the required furlough days as they are taken over the remaining 8 months in this fiscal year and should not result in additional costs during implementation. (assumes the payroll system is already set up to accommodate leave without pay)
3. BENEFITS: The health insurance provided by the university is some of the best my family has ever utilized and the premium is the lowest. (I have the HMO) Perhaps a larger cost share with employees would be in order.
4. HOLIDAYS: Close down all but essential units during the Christmas/Spring Break holiday, allowing employees to use furlough or vacation while they are off work. While the vacation pay will not provide an immediate cash savings the significant reduction in the accrued vacation may allow for some cost shifting to help fund other line items. Since the students are traditionally absent during these time periods, impact upon them would be mitigated.
5. STATUS REDUCTIONS: As opposed to laying off employees, reduce 1.0 FTE to 4/5 or 3/5 only for as long as necessary during this time of budget crisis. This will be a large financial hit to many employees, but does allow them to maintain a lion’s portion of their wages and all their benefits — something many families really depend upon. While this would not be practical for faculty (students are, after all, our reason for being here), many of us in P&S positions and probably Merit should be able to make this work. (Again, I admit to being an optimist and believing the “troops will rally”). This option also offers the slight perk of more time with family or even the opportunity for a side job if needed.
6. PURCHASING: Although not an easy thing to instill, requesting all departments use a “not-for-profit” mentality when buying supplies, equipment and other items could result in large savings. For instance, a common 17” monitor instead of a TV, shared printers among professionals, purchasing only when an item is needed as opposed to stock-piling supplies, B&W instead of color printing, etc.

86
Time for a Bold Step
With the massive budget cuts that Iowa State has been through and will continue to go through in the near future, it may be time for thinking outside of the box to continue to serve the people of Iowa without undue burden to the faculty and staff. Laying-off 10-20 percent of the staff could temporarily solve the budget crisis, but would cause tremendous hardship to those laid-off and a great burden to those remaining to fill in for the missing personnel. A mandatory 2-4 week furlough for all staff could temporarily ease the budget crunch, but what about the next fiscal year? What I propose is to question why in the 21st century we are still using the 40-hour 5-day work week model proposed in the 1930s.
Productivity has increased dramatically in the past few decades with the information technology revolution, and certainly is much greater today than it was in the ‘30s. According to an article by Erik Rauch, biophysicist and theoretical ecologist, “An average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week now to produce as much as one working 40 hours per week in 1950.” Would switching to a 32-hour 4-day week mean losing 20 percent of the productivity with Iowa State’s current 40+ hour 5+ day work week? Some companies that have experimented with the 32-hour work week have found that workers are more focused in the shorter work week and that therefore there is no drop in productivity. With three days each week to attend to personal matters, workers are less distracted at work, and more productive (http://positivesharing.com/2006/04/the-cult-of-overwork-again/). Would this also apply to an educational institution? I’ve found that I am much more efficient today in developing educational materials and providing education to clients in today’s information society than I was in the 1980s.
Of course this would mean salaries would be cut by 20 percent, which could be a burden to some, but certainly 80 percent of a full salary is better than the alternative of 0 percent. In a survey of all professional and scientific staff at Iowa State in April, 2009, more staff agreed than disagreed with the option of working a 32-hour 4-day work week at 80 percent salary as a solution to the budget crisis (http://www.pscouncil.iastate.edu/activities/surveys/2009/Survey04-20-09University.pdf). This may not be the best option for all personnel, but if given the choice of permanently going to an 80 percent position, versus a one-time 2-4 week furlough, enough might choose the permanent change that it would ease future budget crises. If the economic climate improves in the future, the 80 percent positions could be converted back to full-time positions, but based on other companies’ experiences, most staff would probably choose to stay 80 percent.

87
I am on the Extension Counsel for Montgomery County and I suggest that this time you should cut from the top. If you cut from the bottom, like last time you won’t have an Extension service left. You at the top make a whole lot more money than these folks at the bottom so we could save money without effecting as many people. And considering how much trust we have lost in you folks we wouldn’t miss you as much! We little people, who do so much of the unpaid work of 4H and Extension are tired of taking it in the short everytime. And as far as our imput goes, it didn’t seem to matter much what we thought last time. So you have lost our trust and I don’t think this message will have much effect as well. But at least I have had my say! Have a nice day.

88
UBAC,
Thank you for all your hard work during this budget crisis. It is not an easy nor enjoyable task.
I would like to say that I would take a pay cut or furlough days to prevent layoffs. Also, a temporary cut in benefits would be acceptable.

89
To whom it may concern,
I have found a really interesting article by the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona that may be a good fit for the College of Engineering.
Some aspects of the article, courses being offered and named from different departments, are already utilized by the college, but the rest of the articles shows how to basically act as a private enterprise.
Best regards,
College of Optical Sciences
Dean’s Office
1630 E. University Blvd.
Tucson, Arizona 85721-0094
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ®

James C. Wyant
520-621-2448
Fax: 520-621-9613
jcwyant@optics.arizona.edu
www.optics.arizona.edu

October 13, 2008
Name of Unit
College of Optical Sciences

Contact

James C. Wyant
Dean, College of Optical Sciences
1630 E. University Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85721-0094
520-621-2448
jcwyant@optics.arizona.edu

Proposal Team
Gary Esham, Associate Dean of Finance and Administration, College of Optical Sciences
Carl Maes, Associate Dean of Academic Programs, College of Optical Sciences
James C. Wyant, Dean, College of Optical Sciences

Proposal developed in consultation with students, faculty, and staff of the College of Optical Sciences and discussions with faculty and administrators in the College of Engineering and the College of Science Units Involved. Part of the proposal involves courses in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Physics in addition to the College of Optical Sciences. The proposal also involves the possible transfer of faculty from the College of Engineering, the College of Science, and the College of Medicine to the College of Optical Sciences. While the College of Optical Sciences has had nine budget cuts in seven years we are financially sound because we have both reduced unnecessary expenses and more importantly we have greatly increased our revenue through many means as described below. Furthermore, Optical Sciences appears to already be structured in a manner which is consistent with the direction the U of A would like to go. We have no departments and we have a cost effective administration which is centralized at the college level. Because we are not hurting like so much of the U of A we feel the most beneficial thing we can do for our transformation plan is to help other portions of the university. We have had group meetings with students, faculty and staff, as well as many one-on-one meetings, and we have three ideas in mind, but as others think about this, more ideas may surface. Teaching undergraduate courses in physics and math. We currently co-teach 16 courses with electrical and computer engineering, materials science and engineering, and physics and these cross-listed courses work very well. In recent discussions with the head of ECE we identified seven courses that ECE and Optical Sciences could combine and cross-list to free up some teaching resources. We have identified 16 undergraduate physics courses that we could easily help teach and we are sure there are several undergraduate math courses that we can also help with. This could start as soon as next semester. Bring in other entrepreneurial faculty and units that are closely aligned with optics The atmosphere at the College of Optical Sciences is extremely entrepreneurial and we would like to add faculty from other units who want to work in this type of atmosphere. There are many possibilities because optics is involved in so many fields and there are many disciplines that would fit in the College of Optical Sciences. Interested faculty should contact us.
Help spread the entrepreneurial spirit
The real solution for solving the university’s bad financial situation is not in cutting costs because this has been done again and again the past few years and there is little fat left, but rather the solution is to increase revenues. In the College of Optical Sciences we have a strong entrepreneurial spirit that has made it possible for us to increase revenues and grow. Our proposal is that a few of us could work with other units on campus to help them increase their entrepreneurial spirit and revenue. We want to warn you that while we think this has a good chance of success, it will take some time and it will not produce large results over night. To help convince others to want to work with us we will now describe a little about how we operate and we will give some of our successes. Our funding model is different from many of the other colleges. We receive little state allocated funds, but we receive a larger rate of overhead return than most colleges. This means our financial condition is more in our own hands and there is a large incentive to increase our outside grants and contracts. Since we get a larger percentage of the overhead return we are able to invest it in the areas that we feel will give the best payoff. I think this is a model that other colleges should use. At least research intensive colleges should be willing to give up state allocated funds for an increased overhead return percentage because this way they should be able to increase revenue over time. The central administration should also be willing to make this tradeoff because as the college’s revenue increases the university’s revenue also increases. We allow our faculty members to get pay increases if they have sufficient funds from outside grants/contracts to pay the increase. The pay increase is given with the agreement that if at any time the faculty member is not able to pay the increase off his own rants/contracts the compensation goes back to the level it would have been without this increase. This provides a big incentive for the faculty member to maintain a healthy level of outside grants and contracts. The faculty member, college and university all benefit from this arrangement.
How well is all this working? The table below shows some performance numbers per tenure/tenure track faculty member for FY08. This last year our grants and contracts increased by 27 percent and they have more than doubled over the last five years. Other items are also shown in the table to show that we know that outside grants and contracts are not the only quantity of importance.
Some performance numbers for FY08
Per tenure/tenure-track faculty member
State Allocation — $111,193
Indirect cost earned — $152,693
New grants/contracts — $745,770
Graduate students — 8.5
Ph.D students — 6
Publications in 2007 — 6.8
We also have a distance learning program where we record many of our courses and then students throughout the world, mostly industrial scientists and engineers, take these courses to get either a Certificate in Optical Sciences or a Masters in Optical Sciences. The faculty involved in these distance learning courses share in the revenue so there is an incentive to teach distance learning courses. Again the faculty member, the college, and the university all benefit from this arrangement. The College of Optical Sciences received ABOR approval for the additional fees charged for the distance learning courses which allows the university to include our distance learning students in the state 22:1 calculation.
We have also sold these courses to universities, companies and individuals in the U.S., China and Europe. Again the faculty member gets a portion of the revenue so there is an incentive to do the additional work associated with the distance learning courses.
We also sell short courses on DVDs and this November we are giving our second group of short courses in Japan. The faculty members involved with the short courses of course get a portion of the revenue so there is an incentive to do the additional work associated with the short courses.
In FY08 the College of Optical Sciences accounted for approximately 1/3 of the utility patent filings for the university and for recent years Optical Sciences is always among the top two colleges (with Medicine), if not the top, for patents filed. While we have not yet made a lot of money on patents, the amount we are making is increasing and we are putting additional effort into patents because of the large potential income we see. The inventors of course share in the revenue so there is a good incentive to do the additional work involved in doing patent disclosures.
We have approximately 50 Industrial Affiliates that support our Academic Program. The income from the Industrial Affiliates Program helps us recruit students, provide student scholarships, pay for student travel to industry conferences, pay for graduate student teaching assistantships, buy optics library material, provide equipment for teaching laboratories, and sponsor senior capstone projects. The meetings with the Industrial Affiliates often leads to research contracts with industry, consulting jobs for faculty, summer jobs for students, and of courses full-time jobs for our graduates. The faculty and staff work hard on this program because there is a good incentive for having a successful program.
During our last five years we have grown our development effort with an emphasis on scholarships for students. We know that to get the best PhD graduate students we have to offer funding to all the PhD students we accept. Most of our MS students also require funding. The University provides good financial aid for most of our undergraduate students, but we know that being able to provide some additional funding to them helps us get the best. Our research grants and contracts support many students, but there is always a need for more student funding. The faculty work very hard in this development effort to get scholarship money because they know this money helps in recruiting the best students available and having the best students is essential to their teaching and research program. By concentrating our development effort on scholarship funds there is a strong incentive for all faculty members to help.
While the TRIF program in optics is run out of the College of Optical Sciences, the College of Engineering, the College of Science, and the College of Medicine are also very much involved with the TRIF optics program. Again, I think that because of our entrepreneurial spirit, the TRIF return on investment (ROI) in FY08 for Optics was 9.4 compared to 5.2 for Bioresearch and 3.8 for Water and Environmental Sustainability. (For sake of completeness, the Biodesign Institute at ASU had an ROI of 3.8.)
Not only has our entrepreneurial spirit enabled us to thrive in a period of decreasing state support, but over the years it has led to several faculty, staff and students starting companies and several companies setting up facilities in Tucson so they can work with us and hire our graduates. It has enabled the College of Optical Sciences to become internationally known as a leader, and probably the leader, in the world in the field of optical sciences and engineering.
We would like to work with other parts of the University of Arizona that may not have as much entrepreneurial spirit as us to increase their entrepreneurial spirit and hopefully increase their revenue so they are not as dependent upon the ever decreasing state support.
Budget
We could probably teach 3-5 undergraduate classes per semester and the cost savings is whatever the physics department is paying instructors to teach these classes.
Most of our proposal is for increasing revenue instead of reducing expenses. It is hard to estimate how much the revenue would be increased, but it could be a sizeable amount.

90
I am aware, as a staff member who covers my spouse under medical, that I have ‘family’ medical coverage, although there are no children for whom I am making claims. Might it save money to finally offer cafeteria type coverage, whereby childless insureds may elect coverage for which premiums are charged on the basis of coverage for only one other person, while those insureds with family coverage for a family of four to six are charged premiums on the basis of coverage for the number of extra dependents?

By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to budgetcomments@iastate.edu and will be reviewed by President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
The numbers correspond to the order in which the e-mails were received.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

31
Dear ISU budget colleagues,
Assuming that Iowa’s economy returns to normal, I believe that more cuts are the wrong way to go. Thus, I suggest Iowa State raises $24 million from a one-time fundraising “Maintaining ISU’s Excellence in Education” request. Perhaps this could be done with the full backing from the ISU Foundation to assure reaching the $24 million by guaranteeing to fill any shortfall. We only need $25 from one million people, and there must be many creative ways to do that!

32
As furloughs are already on the board for cost cutting, what about closing the university between Christmas and New Years, with only essential staff working, i.e. animal caretakers, vet clinic personnel, power plant, etc., working regular hours. Turn down the heat in all buildings not housing animals or research projects that are temperature sensitive, and close those building with all staff taking furloughs, inclusive of faculty, P&S staff and merit staff. This should be a significant cost savings for the university, as most buildings do not need to be open with the students on break. A second closing and furloughs could take place over spring break if the financial need necessitates it. If everyone at Iowa State making under $50,000 gave back $700-$1,000 of their salary and those making more than $100,000 returned $1,000-2,000 of their salaries, would this not cover a major portion of the budget cuts?

33
One suggestion would be to close the university over the winter break and spring break, when the students are away, generating salary savings and utility savings.

34
Two or three days’ furlough per month and a complete university shut down between Christmas and New Years.
I realize this may cause some tough times for some, but it is better than not having a job at all.
Bring back the voluntary furlough program that we had this last summer.
Postpone non-essential purchases, maintenance and repairs.

35
I believe we should go back to shutdown or extreme reduced staffing during the Thanksgiving and Holiday breaks. If employees do not have vacation time for this purpose, they could choose to go leave-without-pay. This would allow for reduced energy costs — lights/heat turned down. This has been utilized in the past and would be another option to lessen the “vacation” bank for those carrying lots of time so that it would be lessened when they finally do retire.
Thank you.

36
I understand the ideology of hiring new people for the vitality of a university, but under these budget difficulties at this time, why on earth would the university allow hiring new or replacement positions when you are laying off and eliminating positions or reducing the working budgets for those faculty already here and doing more with less support?
Also, please consider a moratorium on new buildings and operating those buildings with services, people, facilities, etc. Budget diversions to incorporate new buildings, new centers, etc., are huge long-term investments.
Do we really need all of the “centers” on campus? They drain faculty resources, both time and costs. Research can operate without the glitzy PR of centers.
If we have to take salary reductions or furloughs for existing faculty and staff, I hope — and trust — it will be uniformly applied in a fair and unbiased manner and not target specific groups of people.
It is a tough problem and I wish I had more answers. I hope we can maintain a “universal” education opportunity for our students by preserving the academic programs that provide a well-rounded education in the humanities and sciences for each student enrolled. Having fewer optional or very specific courses in order to preserve core courses in a discipline — for the general education needs of our students — is more appealing to me than allowing departments to give up on service courses to keep the very specific courses for their majors. We need to focus on the best needs for the student, as an individual at Iowa State, and not as a technological product of our discipline. We need a new focus and budget model to avoid departmental cannibalization under declining budgets.

37
Hello,
In these trying budget times, the university is contemplating reducing services. Has the university considered cutting Student Health Services? It seems there is much duplication between this service and that of other regular health providers elsewhere in town, such as MacFarland Clinic. The ISU Student Health Center does not have any specialists, anyway, and those routine services that it does provide can easily be picked up by other clinics in Ames.

38
Dear President Geoffroy;
Hopefully these severe budgetary shortfalls will be a short-term problem. I would hate to see the solution to a short-term problem become a long-term concern for the faculty. I fear that if the present shortfall is made up by benefit revisions, such as decreasing matching funds for retirement, this important benefit will never be returned to the faculty. Once the line is crossed, it becomes easier to do so in the future, and once a benefit is withdrawn, I am afraid that it may not be restored. Faculty have not fared well during the last 10-12 years. Many times, annual raises have not kept up with inflation. Good retirement and health benefits are features that help to keep people in the university system. We need to draw the line somewhere, and I believe the use of benefit revisions is where we need to draw the line.

39
I understand, at this juncture, furloughs cannot be forced, but, as a merit employee, I understand if that needs to happen. Could there be forced furloughs from the top down? Everyone, from President Geoffroy and coaches — our highest-paid employees — to the least paid employee? The number of furlough days could be determined according to how much someone’s salary is, and if the furlough days could be spread throughout the year, it wouldn’t create as much of a financial hardship for people who can least afford it.

40
First, everyone has my sympathy for the difficult position the university – and the state – is in now. I have two main suggestions.
First, I recommend that some management and administrative positions be eliminated.
It is all too common for the “worker bees” to be eliminated preferentially because management is in the position of deciding what to eliminate and does not want to deconstruct its own infrastructure. Secretarial and administrative assistant positions associated with management should also be examined closely — and consolidated, if possible.
I am not at all implying that people in administration and management are lazy or useless. However, I think that, within any ISU unit, decisions could be made to provide less publicity, less oversight, fewer newsletters or to reduce paperwork. These decisions would certainly have some detrimental impact on the organization, but less detriment than eliminating, for example, janitorial positions or teaching positions.
Second, at present, I believe there are too many competing units on campus. I suggest the centers be examined, and, if they are not self-supporting, they be consolidated or eliminated. Many of them have strongly overlapping interests. Each center will say “but we only operate on a shoestring,” but the shoestrings probably add up.
I offer these comments in a constructive spirit.

41
Make a mandatory retirement age.
When a person can be covered by social security and Medicare, that person should retire to save money for the university.
Reduce incentive dollars that faculty receive and use the remainder of the funds to help the departments.

42
Personally, I feel across the board furloughs are the best solution — among faculty, P&S and merit. This allows everyone to share in the solution, while saving jobs. It also allows people to find other means to make up for lost income by working outside jobs.
Reducing benefits is a TERRIBLE precedent that penalizes younger faculty much more than those nearing retirement. It also opens the door for it to happen permanently.
Program elimination is something to examine, though nearly impossible in the time frame. I believe we have too many centers and that combining or eliminating some of them would help a great deal.

43
Dear committee:
Hitherto, there has been no distinction made between “line” and “staff” activities or, as the military express it, the “teeth to tail ratio.” The former consists of teaching and research and the latter of coordination and administration. Almost all of the cuts to date have been of line functions, and many of the proposals listed by the presidents — reduced salaries, reduced benefits, furloughs, and the like — directly damage present and future teaching and research.
Already, Iowa State has grown less competitive with peer institutions in hiring and retaining faculty. These ideas will do irreparable harm to the academic side of our university. Moreover, they will merely persuade the board, the governor and the Legislature that such cuts can be made relatively painlessly and without producing public revulsion at the damage being done, even while they dilute the quality of the research and education endeavors that must be the alpha and omega of any serious institution of higher learning.
Far more effective, yet not mentioned, would be a “suspension” of intercollegiate athletics that would produce instant recognition in Iowa of the costs of these cuts and of the governor’s refusal to make use of the rainy day fund at a time when it is pouring.
As you probably know, Northern Iowa has taken steps in this direction. A second route would be the elimination of all staff positions added during the past five years by administrators at all levels of the university. The number of such additions is indefensible in light of the elimination or freezing of faculty positions. Thirdly, the university has a number of well-meaning but expensive units and programs that do not contribute directly to teaching or research. Among these programs, CELT, which was established on behalf of the Legislature rather than students or scholars, is a leading example. Finally, the university currently hosts a number of programs that exist for political, rather than serious academic or disciplinary reasons. However worthy such institutions and programs, they should be suspended or eliminated before the “teeth” of the university — its disciplines and faculty — are subjected to the sort of punitive steps suggested by President Geoffroy are considered.

44
If cuts in benefits are seriously considered, I would be more accepting of paying some more for health insurance but would be very upset if retirement contributions were cut.

45
Hello,
I can only imagine what we spend on power, so would a windmill farm be feasible to help with our budget crisis? I’m sure there is federal funding available. Of course, our engineering department would be beneficial.
Company vehicles: Have staff use their own personal vehicle and Iowa State only pays for mileage. We would save on maintenance, insurance and fuel, needless to say having to buy one. I don’t see that we are using them on a daily basis, so when you have a large group traveling you could lease one.
P-Card system: I see a lot of waste with this system, time and paper. We need to be more cost-effective and come up with a better document system. In AccessPlus, the order is there and approved, so why copy all of the paperwork? The one who reallocates — not the cardholder — could go online and enter when it was received or if it’s on backorder, etc., and forward this to the departments controller.
I hope some of these suggestions are proactive, “acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty.”
Thank you for your time.

46
Two things that seem the best to start putting a dent in this budget issue — and have probably been brought up by many — are to do the following:
Mandatory furloughs/hours reductions: Some companies voluntarily take four-day work weeks or rotate furloughs so employees can still pay their bills, but keep their jobs. Sounds reasonable to me. Considering the number of employees who are in the state, requiring one or two days off per quarter could make a significant dent.
Benefits: Right now, Iowa State pays double what an employee puts in for retirement pay. How about matching, instead of doubling? It actually surprises me that this has not yet been done. Many people rely on that money, but if we cannot afford it as a state that’s just the breaks. We can hope the stock market keeps going up.
Oh, and third… tell Culver raising taxes is really not such a bad idea. I would pay a little more to keep people working.

47
To whom it may concern:
I ask that you all look to Gov. Culver’s recent action in leading by example and taking a 10 percent salary reduction. As I understand it, temporary salary reductions would be the easiest way to address the current budget crisis. Cutting vital jobs and positions would not be necessary if the appropriate salary reductions were implemented.
I strongly urge you all to not tamper with benefits that all university employees so greatly depend on.
The university community is in this together; we will all have to make sacrifices to deal with this trying situation.

48
Hi to whomever throws these into file 13,
NOTE that, if staff is further reduced, there must be reduced expectations for services to match the increased work load per person.
Most of us “state workers” are running at full or near full capacity already, and more work spread over the remainders means slower service, longer lines and few last-minute requests being fulfilled successfully.
You cannot realistically expect all of the load to somehow just “get handled” with no consequences to services.
Departments will need to be more patient with each other and plan ahead, understanding that bad or late planning on their part can mean failure of their requests, because of minimal the staffing available.
That’s just reality folks. Don’t get stupid with expectations and still expect special treatment when the bigwigs ask for something “now.”
There may be a line.
Fall in.
Get used to it.

49
I would be willing to take a reduction in my salary in order to balance the budget.
A furlough would also be acceptable to me, such as a day of the week or so many per month.
What about unpaid Holiday pay in ’09 or 2010 or 2011 of one week?
Please choose something like that instead of permanent layoffs that would hurt people more permanently until we — Iowa State and Iowa — get back on our feet.
Thank you for including us in the decision-making process!

50
Dear members of the University Budget Advisory Committee:
I am following up on President Geoffroy’s invitation to send ideas on budget-saving measures.
First, some thoughts:

1. Colleges to handle their own cuts. I applaud Dr. Geoffroy for “allowing each budget leader to determine how best to accommodate the reduction amount for his or her unit.” Some deans have been more effective and innovative than others. My own dean has been working diligently with his team to make reductions that will work in the long-term. Without my dean’s support, I would not have been able to streamline the curricula — more on that later. However, there is a good fiscal theory to support the president’s decision in this area. As budget responsibility has been shifted to the dean’s level, decisions should be made there as well, because they know their units better than anyone else and can make judicious cuts while keeping students in mind.
2. Temporary salary reductions and temporary furloughs. I have worked in the president’s office at Ohio University and understand executive decision-making. Temporary salary reductions and mandated furloughs come with legal ramifications on the validity of our contractual agreements. Are we as good as our word? We do hold others to contracts, and this can backfire on us. Temporary salary reductions have the best chance of success, when imposed after a year in which raises were granted. You will confront arguments that faculty and staff are already working under salary reductions last year, this coming year and probably perhaps the next, in the form of no raises, while inflation rises and will continue to do so as the economy improves.
   The biggest administrative risk for temporary salary reductions and temporary furloughs concerns no real protocol to institute them. Who will take the responsibility when something goes wrong? And something always goes wrong or happens unanticipatedly. Temporary furloughs and salary reductions can push some folks into foreclosures or bankruptcies, as there are no short-term remedies for this, such as unemployment insurance.Finally, without the state declaring financial exigency, there is really no firm legal ground to do this, and the state would hurt its bond rating if it did declare such an emergency.
3. Permanent lay-offs. At least there is a legal, human resource protocol for this. Also, permanent layoffs come with unemployment insurance. That said, permanent lay-offs can be made in areas of the institution where we need to make vertical cuts.
   NOTE: Temporary salary reductions and temporary or permanent furloughs mean less taxes into the state treasury. We will be eating our seed corn.
4. Benefit revisions of a temporary or permanent nature. This is a very viable option.
5. A tuition surcharge for the spring semester of 2010. It can send a message to the Legislature. I’m not sure how that message will be received and what impact it might have on the more important permanent AY11 tuition increase. One powerful reason against a surcharge is the argument that we received stimulus money to avoid this scenario — at least that is what the Obama administration promised to students.
6. Postponing non-essential deferred maintenance and repairs. I would not institute a permanent ban but would do maintenance and repairs that fall into an emergency category so as not to invite negligence suits when accidents occur or when the learning environment is undermined by lack of heat in the winter.
7. Selling non-essential assets to generate one-time funds. Absolutely. We saved them for a rainy day. It is raining.
8. Refocusing efforts, including potential program eliminations. It is high time that we did this. We now have the occasion to make lasting changes to safeguard the future of our institution.
9. Eliminate academic units with low-enrolled majors — 20 and under — and relocate them to related majors. These low-enrolled disciplines do not attract high school students, as they are not “destination majors” — programs we tout to recruit high school students to our campus.
10. Revamp our institutional organization. Iowa State is still largely organized as Iowa State College, hence, the absence of schools apart from Greenlee, whereas Iowa’s Liberal Arts College has four schools. The only other major institution with a similar organization is NC State. Our impulse has been to make what should be schools into colleges when they lack the enrollment for that latter designation. If we consolidate related academic units into schools, we can eliminate departments with low major enrollments and make them into degree programs under a wider administrative umbrella. Think about all of those departments with chairs having purchasing cards and access to expendable funds. By reorganizing Iowa State into a department/school/college institution, we would not only eliminate some administrators but also consolidate Iowa State’s most costly expenditure: an ever-expanding curricula.
11. Streamline curricula across the institution. The Greenlee School did this for the past three years and we are ready to do so again. Recommendations: Eliminate emphases, options, specializations, sequences, etc. We don’t recognize them anyway, on the degree, but each has a curriculum of its own. Those are leftovers from our days on the quarter system.
12. Create a Curriculum Council to avoid course duplication. I’m astounded at the level of course duplication at Iowa State. College curriculum committees routinely approve courses that compete with enrollment of ones already on the books — a devastating cycle of waste, especially with RMM rewarding that. To have RMM without a curricular watchdog is a serious administrative and Faculty Senate mistake, because curricular expansion adds to budget and professor workload. Currently, units proposing experimental and new courses do not send them first to all departments to check for duplication, even though they are supposed to do that. We see our courses in communication being duplicated in four colleges — LAS, Design, Life Sciences, Human Sciences — and no one bothers to check with us for sign off. Why is this a budget item? We’re undermining enrollment in pre-existing courses and expanding curriculum so as to need adjuncts and lecturers to teach required courses for the degree. An empowered Curriculum Council can be a transparent, objective watchdog. I hear repeatedly that we have such a system at Iowa State. If we do, I can’t find it. If we do, it is broken.
13. 14. Focus on degree progress, not student credit hour generation. To streamline curricula, departments need to lower the number of credit hours needed for the degree. Do an assessment of how curricular expansion via sequences, emphases, options, etc., has led to students needing more semesters to graduate than eight. LAS did a chart showing the average number of years students in each academic year needed to graduate. It is illuminating. I’d add two more columns to the table, however: Number of majors and courses in the catalog. I haven’t done an empirical analysis, but, at first glance, it looks like units with the fewest majors and the most courses have the longest graduate-time rates. We need such an assessment throughout the institution. Finally, this: Institutions with profit models such as ours tend to overvalue student credit hours rather than degree progress. When they do, their retention rates decline dramatically because students and their parents cannot afford extra semesters.
14. Reduce frivolous technology, including student response systems, virtual-life games and social networks that require bandwidth, upkeep, new graphics cards and ever higher student tech fees. We’re now approaching 15,000 clickers on this campus, and I have yet to meet one student who liked using them. We should do a technological assessment by including questions on our standard student evaluations about whether such devices were worth the cost, just as we do with textbooks.
15. Refocus CELT so that it stops being the brand manager of frivolous technologies, and uses what resources are available for one-on-one teaching mentorships, classroom observations and curricular assessment as in the days of Mary E. Huba. We, at Ohio, saw her as an assessment guru who knew how to make curriculum viable. In fact, bring Mary out of retirement as a consultant to what matters in teaching excellence. One aspect we sorely need more of is peer evaluation of professors who are going up for promotion and tenure.
16. Consolidate units through which purchases can be made. Currently, we can purchase through general stores, IT, book store and purchasing. Consolidate units on each regents’ campus to bargain with vendors, rather than simply complying with them.

Thank you for considering these recommendations.

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1. Move to “free” cloud computing aps now — today is not soon enough, do not wait. Eliminate software license costs wherever possible. These aps may not be perfect, but they will get there. The no-cost vs. value ratio is something to consider.
2. Anything we administer online should be combined with the other two state universities. Our state schools should have one E-library that would include all journals and e-materials. I am ignorant here, but I am guessing the three public school libraries do not share anything. Why buy Lexus/Nexus three times and, if you are a student, why not have access to all of the state school libraries online? The trick would be to not form another level of administration and control, but to share an e-library system with unencumbered individual school purchases of non-duplicated materials.
3. Combine all administrative single university costs into one multiple state university system… HR, benefits, hiring systems, payroll and licenses.

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Dear President Geoffrey, Faculty Senate President van der Valk and members of the University Budget Advisory Committee,
I hesitate somewhat to write this e-mail, as I am concerned – as I know other junior faculty are – about what effect expressing negative views may have on my standing at the university, given that I am not yet tenured. However, I feel strongly that I cannot continue to be silent about this situation. I also take seriously the president’s request for input and hope that you will take these comments as seriously as I’ve considered them.
The Board of Regents’ decision to lift the moratorium on constructions projects while simultaneously continuing to suggest faculty salary reductions, furloughs and benefit cuts as among their most creative “solutions,” is just one more example of how I feel this university neglects and under-values its faculty. The fact that the Board of Regents, nonetheless, continues to claim that “everyone at our institutions [will] remain resolutely committed to (1) continued access for Iowa students to an outstanding higher education, and (2) protecting the exceptional quality of our educational, research and service activities” is patently outrageous. How can they claim they are committed to excellence in research and teaching and yet the “very first thing” they take off the table is a moratorium on construction projects?
At a time when we already have increased class sizes, reduced funding for faculty research and support staff, do we really need new buildings? I understand that there may already be contracts in place, but this is an emergency situation. Contracts can be re-negotiated. If I’m simply naive in thinking this is possible, then the Board of Regents needs to revise their statement about maintaining excellence in research and teaching and a dedication to student learning, and state that they simply do not have the funds – or the guts? – to support that.
I think we need to get our priorities straight. Clearly, the priority – as currently funded – is not to maintain excellence in research and teaching, as is also indicated by the bulleted points the president listed in his e-mail today, nearly all of which are targeted at further disadvantaging faculty — salary reductions, furloughs, and so on — at a university where I feel good faculty are already under-compensated. Will these salary reductions also be targeted toward administrators? Is the Board of Regents reconsidering the performance bonuses to the three state university presidents? — http://www.whotv.com/news/who-story-bonus-presidents-092809,0,1208480.story — Why are administrators getting bonuses while faculty, who are already doing “more with less,” are being threatened with salary reductions? My department already has one of the heavier teaching loads in the college and yet our faculty’s salaries are amongst the lowest. Our colleagues at other research universities across the country have lower teaching loads, higher salaries and junior sabbaticals. So Iowa State is already at the bottom of the pile in terms of faculty compensation and now they want to reduce it yet more? I certainly understand that this is a university of “Science and Technology” and it is to be expected that the university will more adequately compensate faculty who work in those areas, but we cannot continue to claim that we are a “comprehensive” research university and that we are committed to citizens becoming “global citizens” if we only support faculty in engineering and business.
Further, as Arnold van der Valk has recently discussed on his blog, we have faculty members who are pursuing little to no research, are doing little to no teaching and do little to no service — http://ag3v.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/deadwood. Why aren’t these faculty members fired? Certainly those salaries could be pooled into stemming the hemorrhaging of funds in other areas, where faculty are actually doing their jobs. Again, I suspect that — like the building and construction situation — people will argue that these under-performing faculty are under contract, have tenure or are “too difficult to fire.” Once again I say: This is an emergency situation and I think the university needs to fight for its priorities, or, if it cannot, then it needs to stop claiming that “research and teaching” are our top priorities. It is hypocritical and it simply angers the good faculty who have chosen to stick around and continue to pick up the slack for others.
I am angry that this university continues to reward under-performing faculty and staff  while continuing to dis-incentivize junior faculty. An example of this is only giving sabbatical research leaves to faculty once they receive tenure — a practice that Provost Hoffmann insisted at a Faculty Senate meeting last year is “technically” not going on since it’s not written down anywhere, but a practice that one administrator told at least six faculty in a meeting in my department two years ago is extremely common. He stated that it is basically an unwritten rule that this university does not give sabbatical leaves to junior faculty. It seems fairly simple to me: If you want to keep quality faculty here who will teach quality classes and thus keep the students happy and keep students coming to Iowa State, then you need to 1. give them the support they need to do their research in the form of time, money and a reasonable number of students to teach, and 2. reward their good work, not their “loyalty.” Rewarding those faculty who are “loyal” to Iowa State only encourages mediocrity. Further, it leads to situations like this where we are now stuck with faculty who don’t do their jobs and are sucking money from the system so that the rest of us have to suffer.
In short, I believe the current suggestions for handling the budget reduction grossly undermine everything the Regents argue should be our top-most priorities, namely the continued pursuit of “excellence” in research and teaching. Faculty bear the burden of maintaining and fostering that excellence. We have already shouldered extra burdens in teaching, including higher enrollment minimums, meaning more grading and a shift toward lecture-style content delivery, which inevitably translates into lower quality instruction and reductions in our research funding. For example, I will now pay out of my own pocket for the majority of my expenses for conference travel and travel to research archives, not to mention the fact that I buy my own chalk and other teaching supplies.
This is not a good way to attract and keep quality faculty who genuinely care about research and teaching.

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Can someone explain why the Regents would lift a moratorium on construction projects that are “already approved” but not underway? This makes no sense to me when there are so many “already approved” functions, courses, research, etc., that are underway but are facing moratoriums, cuts or elimination.
Could the Regents be closer to the building industry than they are to the academic enterprise?

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I would like to recommend that background checks be paid for by the applicant rather than the hiring unit.
Since July 1, when background checks became mandatory, the hiring unit has been responsible for the cost. It seems that with little to no effort the process can be amended so that the vendor, HireRight, bills the applicant rather than the unit. I realize we are not currently hiring external candidates, but, nonetheless, this seems like a “best practice” for the future.
I have attended two SHRM conferences in the last 18 months and took the opportunity to seek out colleagues from higher education institutions to discuss this topic. In every case the reaction was one of surprise that 1. Iowa State was just now requiring background checks and 2. that we would consider funding them.
Beyond the cost savings to the university, this change could have other positive effects on the hiring process.

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While it might be difficult to do, I think the university should just shut down during our three break periods coming up. Everyone should be on leave without pay except for vital security people and a minimal crew who takes care of animals. Shut down all computers except those directed to keep running for people to work from home if they want to. Shut off all lights, reduce air flow in buildings and reduce heating in all buildings except where research requires it stay at a certain temperature. This would have to save a lot of money. By shutting down during breaks we minimize any impact on teaching. If people know of it early enough it should reduce impact of research, they just plan around break periods. I would rather see this than a reduction in pay or benefits.

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The easiest way to balance the budget is to require every faculty member to teach at least one undergraduate course. This would reduce the number to Teaching Assistants (in future years) by the equivalent of about 325 FFTE. It would also improve the quality of undergraduate education. Given the choice of teaching undergraduates or freezing salaries, most faculty would choose the former.

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Another way to reduce costs is to have presidents of Big 12 schools meet and set salary schedules for coaches and athletic directors. The U. S. Supreme Court has ruled that public universities aren’t subject to the Sherman Act, so they may meet to set salaries among themselves without fear of prosecution for restraining trade. The competition for coaches, and therefore the pressure to increase salaries, comes from the institutions themselves. By setting a salary schedule, the institutions prevent themselves from being whipsawed. The coaches and directors, being confidential employees, are ineligible to bargaining collectively. There should be readiness for action by the university presidents, as they are all experiencing budget stringency. Begin the process by discussing the issue when the presidents next meet.

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A small amount could be saved by transferring the Regents’ special purpose schools in Vinton and Council Bluffs to the Area Education Agencies where these schools are located. Their presence in the Regents system is an historical accident based on the sequence of events that created the Regents and the fact that there were no regional educational units for K-12 education at that time. These institutions have no connection to the Regents’ core mission.

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Just an idea:
What about considering a temporary across the board salary reduction, with certain “steps.” That is for university employees with an annual base salary, not salary and benefits, of less than $50,000.00 to invoke a 5 percent salary reduction for the next 12 months. For those with an annual salary of equal to or greater than $50,000 but less than $150,000.00 invoke a 10 percent salary reduction for the next 12 months. For those with an annual salary equal to or greater than $150,000.00 invoke a 15 percent salary reduction. This would be imposed for the balance of the fiscal year, i.e., through June 30, 2010. I would think that the majority of folks on campus would be in the middle 10 percent group, and the 15 percent reduction for the higher paid group would offset the dollars not retrieved with the 5 percent reduction. I am sure additional calculation would be needed to better figure this out, but I think I might be close.
This savings, along with shutting down all electrical equipment when not actively in use, shutting out lights when the area is not occupied, restricting out-of-state travel, grouping folks in vehicles to move to university tasks/events and any additional cuts that could be suggested by others, might take care of FY2010. The complete situation would then need to be re-done as plans are being made for FY11.
I would anticipate there would be many who are not in favor of this type of adjustment. But, when faced with losing a steady income, or being laid off, vs. retaining a reduced income, I believe the retaining a reduced income would win out. Of course there will be those that choose to leave their position but when doing so it is them so choosing, hence not an unemployment issue for Iowa State.
Almost forgot, this must be applicable to all university employees, academic, P&S, merit, administrative, athletic, field, etc., no exceptions.
Please advise of any questions or clarification you may need on any of this.
Thanks for considering this thought.

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Personally I would rather see temporary furloughs for all employees rather than layoffs – either temporary or permanent. Layoffs are still a drain on state funds as those people then turn to unemployment. And rather than having to take a whole week of furlough at a time, maybe we could take one day a week for the rest of the year. Those days could be rotated within the department, so that the area would still be staffed five days a week.
I also like the idea to close the university between the holidays at the end of December.

By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to fy10budgetcomments@iastate.edu by students of Iowa State, and will be reviewed by President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

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You can post-pone the Beyer Hall renovation — that project seems to be poorly timed.

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Thank you for being open all of the ISU community. As an out-of-state student set to graduate in spring 2010, I feel I have given all I can to Iowa State. I have been given little to no scholarships throughout my years here, and, trust me, I have applied for everything. I don’t think I can spend any more money on tuition, as I am already going to be close to $75,000 in debt upon graduation. On top of that, I have been diagnosed with a chronic incurable disease and, as I become a non-dependent on my parents’ health insurance, I will struggle to find insurance that I can afford.

As part of a solution, I would encourage cuts in the ISU Dining services.

Being an employee of ISU Dining, I see first-hand the waste it produces.

Look into it and see what we can cut — limit the amount of food students can take with one meal plan, lessen the variety of food offered, etc.

I know Jamie Pollard and most of the athletic department have taken temporary salary reductions. I feel that President Geoffroy and the executive staff can take the temporary salary reductions also, if they haven’t already.

Thank you for listening.

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I am a non-traditional student who has attended classes part-time for eight years. One area of inefficiency that I see is how wasteful departments are when using money appropriated to buy such things as new computers, when the old computers work just fine. For example, these departments are told if they do not use the money designated for buying new computers, than they must return the money so the department heads will buy new computers — even if they don’t need them — just so they don’t have to return the money. I believe thousands of dollars could be saved if this policy was changed. In addition, this mentality carries over to the professors. I have been told by professors who I personally know that heads of their departments have told them to buy a new laptop because if the don’t they have to give the money back. In my view, this policy is flawed and needs serious review. Even my friends who are professors don’t think that is right. I hope that you will consider my recommendation.

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I believe that some aspects of this financial challenge may be viewed as an opportunity. There are some cost-saving measures the university could enact that would synchronize with its goals of sustainability. For example: While I don’t know what the university’s electricity bills are, enacting stricter efficiency rules on simple things like hallway lighting, computers and their monitors, and so forth could translate into saved dollars. Other utility bills could likewise be reduced by being mindful. Classroom paper and printing costs could be decreased by increased use of WebCT, which features downloadable PDFs of course print-outs.\

Departments could also seek used options whenever possible for purchases and be more mindful of what is available at university surplus. Setting up recycling bins for deposit items, such as cans and bottles, could be an additional potential source of revenue. Although they’re small steps, these could add up to some savings while furthering Iowa State’s image of sustainability.

To add a quick 2¢ on tuition and salary issues, although I recognize my bias in saying so, I would avoid laying too hard on us graduate students and the student body, in general. Most of us are rather poor, as it is, although I shall grant some are simply bad at managing their finances or have very spoiled ideas about their needs. As a general suggestion, I think we all need to think about doing more with less, which is a great lesson to learn from sustainability. Let’s rise to the challenge instead of getting all doom and gloom!

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Whatever you do, don’t take anything else from 4-H/Extension… rural 4-H can’t afford to lose any more than they already have.

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What percentage of the budget are utility costs? How consistent is building infrastructure? What sort of savings might you see from lowering building thermostats to 68 degrees in rooms that see regular use, and 55 degrees in rooms that are not regularly used (excepting labs that must be kept at a certain temperature to preserve phsyical data samples or equipment)? How about cutting back on upgrading computers? Or increasing parking permit fees?

I think it is a terrible idea to consider a tuition surcharge. Many students and their families are struggling as much if not more than institutions in this economic climate. The same goes for lowering salaries on lower-paid staff.

Is it possible to temporarily renegotiate contracts with vendors like whomever provides dining services (I’m guessing Sysco, I don’t know)? How about a 25 cent/ride CyRide charge? That would increase income but end up being far less burden on students than a several hundred-dollar tuition surcharge. If it could partially offset the fuel cost for buses, that would have to help.

Sorry if these have been suggested already.

Good luck at figuring out what to do.

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In light of the frustrating situation that lies ahead, I would like to suggest that you, the Board of Regents, stay true to your word and that there will be small cuts across the departments. However, it concerns me, as a French studies and education major, that I could have classes dropped simply because my department is so small. I cannot express how utterly worrisome it is to receive e-mails from professors, warning us that we may not have senior-level classes offered because of the minimum number of students not registering. The university has already dropped my senior seminar; it should not be dropping other courses. I urge you against this not only because it is unbelievably frustrating to map out alternative credits for faculty, but because it makes students like myself feel like they have been cheated in their education, and that we are not receiving legitimate degrees. I do not want to graduate and have to come to terms with the fact that Iowa State has not prepared me for teaching French in public schools. At this point, I am very tempted to start doubting the quality of education I have received, and, at times, regret my decision to transfer from Luther College simply to be here. If you want to make cuts, consider cutting the salaries of engineering professors, some of whom make close to $200,000, as opposed to English professors, who make $100,000 less.

Additionally, you may have to come to the hard reality that you will have to cut the amount of research going on at the university. I understand that is one of our staples, as an institution, but it honestly does not look any better to essentially strip smaller departments of their resources or class opportunities. I hope you will keep this in mind for the future.

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I have been at Iowa State for five years now, and throughout that five years, I believe that I have received an excellent, quality education. I am proud of the heritage and future of Iowa State but feel there are many ways to reduce monthly costs without raising student costs or firing faculty.

First of all, I believe the university could save a lot of money on energy costs. I am currently enrolled in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and I have noticed many shortfalls in the energy use here. When classes first began this fall, the basement of the college was kept very cool. Often, students were wearing coats, jackets, etc., while having class in this part of the building. Now that we are into October, parts of the building are extremely hot. These temperature issues are not just seen in the College of Vet. Med. As an undergraduate student, I spent many days in Gilman Hall, sweating while trying to focus on organic chemistry. This is a huge waste of energy, and I believe that these wasted funds could be better spent elsewhere. Another concern is the amount of lighting that is left on in the buildings when no one is using them. I am often on campus after hours and walk into large rooms where all of the lights are on and no one is there. Why would we begin cutting faculty budgets when we could make simply changes in order to save lots of financial resources?

Secondly, I have noticed throughout my years here that the grounds and maintenance crews will be “working on a project” when all I see them doing is standing around sipping on cups of coffee. These people are paid employees, and if they do not have enough stuff to do to keep them busy, why do we keep paying them?

Couldn’t we better redirect these funds?

I would ask you to consider the suggestions I have made above. I love Iowa State and want to continue to see her as a leader in research, teaching and environmentally sustainable agriculture.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

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My friends and I would be in favor of a tuition increase so as to lessen the budget reductions felt by Iowa State. We are willing to pay what is necessary to be able to take the classes we need and want and not have those classes dropped or increased in size too much. In addition, we realize that we are paying for our education, and we want a quality one. If that means investing more money, then that is what we’re willing to do. Public education is still relatively inexpensive, and we believe students should cut back on their own extra expenses and help carry a greater burden in this budget crisis.

Please seriously consider raising tuition. We don’t want to see instructors laid off, classes and programs eliminated, etc.

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I’m sure you have had plenty of good ideas or suggestions. The only idea that may help with the budget crisis — we may need to look at changing the structure of services at the university. By this, I’m suggesting we take our service-type jobs, such as lawn care, janitorial and even food service positions, and change those to contract-type positions. Without knowing all of the numbers, we may make a large dent in the budget just by eliminating the benefits that are offered to those employees. We may also have the ability to continue to keep the cost down with short-term contracts with contracting partners. Some decisions are hard to make, especially when it comes to letting full-time service employees go, but some sacrifices must be made to continue to operate without effecting education.

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I have a few printing-related savings ideas:

Require professors who insist that your homework be typed to accept submissions online, rather than asking students to print them out. Not only would it save money on paper and ink, there are annotation tools — in Office ’07 and Acrobat, both of which most professors have current access to — that would make homework feedback more useful to students.

Also, have senior design posters rotate on the monitors already installed in buildings and be NOTICEABLY available online, rather than printing them.

Start using the already-installed monitors for university-related advertisements, fliers and notices, rather than printing and posting them on walls.

Require professors to make class handouts and syllabi available on WebCT, rather than printing off a copy for each student.

Ask that professors print tests two-sided, when possible. Answer keys can be offered online. Bubble sheets can be reused for multiple tests. Diagrams, photos and maps can be put on the projector, rather than printed on every test. Reference sheets can be reused year to year.

Stop mailing us notices, bulletins and scholarship rejections and e-mail them, rather than printing them. You’ll save on envelopes and postage, too!

Use the “Forms” function of Adobe Acrobat in your online forms so that they can be filled out on the computer, instead of printing. Added bonus: Secretaries campus-wide will love the increase in legibility.

Stop printing “Go Green” banners and fliers — their existence is hypocritical and wasting money. Feel free to include the phrase on things that will already be printed, and especially on electronic communications.

Default printers to two-sided fast-draft. Those who care about quality know to change things, but those who just want a quick print really don’t notice or care about the quality of the print.

Also, as printers break, let them naturally become more sparse to encourage people to think about whether they really need to print or not. And don’t spend money on new printers. When they become sparse enough, high quality, high efficiency printers can be purchased, furthering the savings in the future.

Ban office printers — they waste energy, ink and paper. They frequently get jammed and cause driver issues, wasting IT resources, and they’re generally of low quality, compared to a shared printer. Also, as ink companies have started putting timers on their cartridges, one person using a cartridge can be a highly significant waste.

Expand the system that the College of Design implements, where, after sending your document to the printer, you must go physically approve of its printing when you are at the printer. This way, there would be less paper waste from multiple printing, forgotten printing, and accidental printing.

Lastly, break down printing credits by week, rather than by semester, to discourage students from printing posters, books or large amounts of cram notes.

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Possible cuts:

1. In the newly constructed buildings — chemistry and Ag. engineering — try turning off the lights at night and all weekend.
2. Lights, in general — make staff attempt to keep lights off.
3. Try to minimize number of ISU vehicles there are, and minimize them driving around aimlessly all the time — ISU parking!
4. If it boils down to a surcharge to students, I feel you should give everyone BUT engineering students a surcharge, and then give the engineering students one if needed. I feel this way because we, as engineering students, already pay a large surcharge that other colleges’ students don’t pay, and I don’t see why, either… very pointless.
5. Also, in the engineering college, you could easily reduce the amount of printer pages that every student receives, from 2,000 to 1,500 or 1,000. I think you could make this change very easily.
6. Maybe the ISU basketball team didn’t need the leather chairs, Playstations, Wii’s, etc., this year… why not put a hold on using that facility, rather than building learning facilities, like ag. eng., chem.!

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I do not know how much Iowa State spends on heating and air conditioning, but I’m sure it’s quite a bit. This past summer, I was rarely on campus without a sweatshirt, as many of the buildings are over-air conditioned. I actually resorted to wearing a stocking cap in my office, in the summer! For more than a year, now, my office-mates and I have been struggling with the facilities staff to try and fix such problems, but they have not been fully resolved. I know other buildings have such issues as well. Also, now that the boiler is on and the building is being heated, we still have the air conditioner running! It is hot here in the morning, and then the heat trips the air conditioner and it’s a little chilly in the evening. These systems just need to be shut off, but no one seems to be able to do that simple cost-saving task!

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If you started turning out lights in all of the buildings and computers, it would save a lot of money. There have been reports of high schools and businesses doing so, and they ended up saving a lot of money!

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I’m very pleased with the outreach effort to students on budge issues, so I’ll keep this short.

I think it would be wise to review what services all students pay for and cut items that are not being utilized.

For example, I know there are many library journal subscriptions with very low utilization, as well as PPP service offered through IT services.

I’m against a surcharge because I plan my budget out for the school year each year, and a surcharge would force me to take out an additional student loan for the surcharge. My assumption is that multiple students would be in the same position as I am in, and a surcharge would increase student debt here at Iowa State, which is already a recognized problem.

I strongly urge the committee to reconsider this before making a decision about a surcharge. Thank you for your time, and good luck with this tough decision.

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I’m a little ticked at the tuition surcharge in the spring. Paying for school is hard enough as it is. I’m working two jobs and going to school full-time. Every year the tuition increases, and it hurts me and my family when we are already suffering in this economy. When I walk around campus, I can’t believe all of the wasteful spending there is. Within the last two years, almost every building has gotten these new flatscreen TVs to hang in the hallways. How much did that cost? Was that a necessity or a luxury? Nobody pays attention to the TVs; they are distracting to students who are trying to study in these areas, they don’t work half of the time, and they serve as an announcement board most of the time — simple paper flyers would suffice for announcements. Not only were these TVs expensive, I’m sure, but running them is pricey, I assume, too. Why don’t you sell all of those TVs on craigslist for a little fundraising. That’s what we — students — end up doing when we can’t make our budgets. Or what about the solar-powered compacting trashcan outside Curtiss Hall??? Why in the world did my money pay for that? Or the new sign outside the Memorial Union?

Also wasteful. The university’s poor spending habits and budgeting has definitely attributed to the high student debt at Iowa State. I’m a senior this year, but, looking back at how the university has handled its budget and spending and seeing the constant increase in tuition dollars, I don’t know that I would choose to enroll at Iowa State again. If you don’t have money, then you shouldn’t be spending. The university is not setting an example to the students about careful financial spending.

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We have an unusually large student body this year. $25 million sounds like a lot, until it’s divided by the number of my fellow students.

Students in clubs are students who are giving some of their free time to pursue hobbies they enjoy, and I’m positive they would not mind the fact that doing things they enjoy can benefit the university.

I think by merely challenging the leaders of all of the existing clubs on campus to come up with a fundraising idea on their own and making the stipulation that it has to have something to do with the club itself, you would be pleasantly surprised with the results you get.

You are already talking to volunteers, who are likely to understand that the reward is helping the university, our professors, other people in clubs and ourselves. The only thing it would cost the university would be a few minutes, an e-mail, and a congratulations to the people who did the best.

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To encourage people to do their best and to encourage friendly competition, it would probably be best to wait until after any decisions have been made, as to which clubs are staying. Otherwise, you are likely to get fundraisers for the sake of fundraisers, out of a sense of scared obligation — in spite of any assurances that the who-stays-and-who-goes decisions have nothing to do with fundraisers — rather than brilliant people at their best trying their hardest to do right by the university, and your return will probably be much higher for your patience.

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I have a friend who works at the University Book Store in IT. He told me yesterday that people from departments come in, sometimes, toward the end of semesters and ask him how they can spend the rest of their budget money as fast as possible in order to retain the same budget for the next year. My friend said that often when this happens — they will buy 10-20 computers, usually averaging around $2,000 per computer. So it seems to me that we could close the budget gap through more accountability to spend only what is necessary, not what they have.

On a different note, I was in a conversation the other day with various staff, and one person said that if the administration wants to reduce salaries, then the administrative leaders need to show that they are going to be hurt by these reductions as well.

My wife had an interesting idea as well, although it would not be nearly as popular: She said that if the state cut the budget by 10 percent, then all employees should take a 10 percent salary cut.

As a student, the idea of a tuition surcharge does not incite warm, fuzzy feelings, but it would seem fair that students bear a share of the burden as well, in order to maintain high education standards.

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As a non-traditional student working, raising a family and liquidating a dairy farm to meet financial challenges, I have a few suggestions. I have worked in the health care industry and human resources before returning to school; I am a senior in kinesiology and health — the financial cost shifting placed on the students is wrong. Speaking with young college-bound seniors, I have found many to be heading out of state to college because even paying out-of-state tuition is a cheaper alternative to Iowa State. When these talented young people head out of state, they do not typically come back. I understand everyone shares this financial burden. The idea of an emergency one-time fee on the students next semester is something most of us did not budget for when long-range planning.

ISU grads continue to be the most indebted upon graduation of all the Regent universities. The economic downturn is facing many of us graduating with the realization that we may not secure jobs after graduation.

I am proposing a few minor suggestions that come nowhere near the $24.5 million-mark but will get you closer. The state health benefits are amazing, when compared to the common worker. Working in human resources for a self-funded health plan, we were required to raise family premiums — the amount the employee contributes to their health plan — and raise the office co-pay from $15 per visit to $25. Working as a nurse in the health care industry, this is a common amount. Requiring them to pay more of their share for prescription medications is another piece of this. The employees will not be too burdened by this, as it is virtually impossible to pay the thousands of dollars it costs for private insurance. The next step is to decrease the amount contributed to the retirement plans for these employees. This is a temporary situation, and I think the above measures will make people appreciate that they have a job with benefits. I am not sure of how contracts read, etc., but it could generate a large amount of money by doing this. The idea of the hiring freeze is good and is only temporary.

All of the combination above could help generate some income.

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Thank you for your time and understanding. We are all in this together. Make the adjustments across-the-board, so everyone has a shared percentage.

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Alumni Building, new rec. center, new basketball practice facility, Hixon-Lied student center, Gilman renovation, and the hotel in the Memorial Union…

Close them down or suspend these things until the budget is back to normal.

We don’t need an alumni building, new rec. center, Hixon-Lied student center, Gilman renovation or a hotel in the Memorial Union — employees, costs or utility bills.
The basketball players didn’t have any problems practicing in State Gym, shut down the new one and save some utilities costs.

If an athletic program cannot make money, cut it — keeping Title 9 in mind, so you’d have to cut a women’s and men’s sport. This is a school.

And ask the state government why they are giving away $50 million annually to some random business of their choosing when there is a budget crises in all of the state schools

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Please Do Not raise tuition. It is hard enough on a student in my shoes to pay the ridiculous price on their own and still think that we will be able to afford the cost of living. Students pay a lot of money to come to this school, and it is not acceptable to have tuition raised and make it even harder for the average student to get a great education.

—
Here are my suggestions to reduce costs and raise capital:

1. Continue the moratorium on all new building projects — complete those already in progress, but each new project brings new costs. Each new building completed brings long-term expenses. Think about the long-term.
— If you cannot maintain buildings you already have, do not build new buildings.
— If this has not been done already, stop construction on the addition to State Gym. Invest the money from that project into maintaining the residence halls to attract and retain future students. OR use the money to invest in the upkeep of places where students and the public congregate — like the Memorial Union.

2. Ask for a loan.
— Since Iowa State and US Bank are partners, ask for a loan from US Bank.
— Use the money from the rise of the number of tuition-paying students this year to pay off the loan quickly.

3. Request funds from the ISU Foundation — their fundraising efforts have been phenomenal. Use some of that money to make up for some the shortfall.
— Don’t build any more new buildings for the ISU Foundation.

4. Cut expenditures on the athletics dept. — yes, this is near-blasphemy — reward the atheltics department with new buildings and facilities if their teams earn them.
— Ask any professional sport team that has a state-of-the-art stadium and a losing team — fans come to watch their team have a decent chance of winning. An empty state-of-the-art stadium is a huge expense for a team that does not win even part of the time.

5. Carefully examine the bureaucracy that runs the university — what has been duplicated?
— Who is part of the “customer service” aspect of the bureaucracy but is giving poor customer service?
— Who or what is really essential for bringing in and managing the the students?

That is all my suggestions for now. May things work out.

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In regards to the budget concerns, I often wonder whether the TVs in academic buildings that run 24/7 are worth the university’s funds. These televisions often show screen shots of various academic opportunities, although they are nothing students are unable to see on flyers around campus. About 1/4 of the time, however, the TVs contain a blue screen with an error message displayed for all to see. Moreover, the TV’s are running when buildings are locked and, thus, are useless. I encourage the university to stop paying to run these televisions.

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I understand things are tough right now at the university with budget cuts, but that does not constitute a tuition increase or a one-time surcharge. Everyone else and their families are suffering as well. It is a budget cut, not a tuition increase. The university needs to do everything in its power not to increase tuition. The student drop-out rates will most likely increase, because students are not going to be able to afford their eduction, particularly those of us who are paying for our education without financial assistance from our families. Financial aid will probably not increase, and that is something that needs to be considered when tuition increases are considered. Please just remember: This is a budget cut, not a tuition increase, and students should not be responsible for making up the money.

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I am a student here at Iowa State and have been proud to call myself a Cyclone for the last four-and-a-half years, now. It is my pride and respect for this institution, and its value to today’s youth and tomorrow’s leaders, that have led me to take action and provide suggestions for how the Cyclone community can weather the storm of financial cuts we are currently experiencing. The university has been on a mission to become “Green” to reduce our carbon footprint and energy consumption for some time now. Ideas have been suggested, research has been done, and actions have been taken, but it is my belief that more can be done. On any given night you can enter any number of campus buildings and find nearly every light on. I understand the importance of keeping exits and hallways lit, but to my knowledge there are no classes taking place in the middle of the night, so why is it necessary to keep classrooms and lecture halls completely lit overnight? As early as elementary school we are all taught the three “R’s,” those being Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. I can’t begin to imagine how much money the university could save by simply shutting lights off at night, and, as a result, “Reduce” its electrical costs. Clearly this won’t make up for a $24.5 million cut in appropriations, but I can’t think of an easier way for the university to save money while simultaneously reducing its carbon footprint.

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I am currently sitting in a classroom before class starts and this breakthrough idea came to me. Lower the temperature in every room across campus a few degrees. This very room I am sitting in is at 77 degrees. Just about every person in this class sheds their layers of sweatshirts in order to get comfortable, but it’s still too hot. If every room on campus were kept to 70 degrees, people could just keep some of their layers on from outside and still be fine, and you will save tons of money.

—
Thank you for sending the e-mail about the budget. I was lucky enough to go to an undergraduate university where there was plenty of public support, helping to limit the students’ extraordinary costs — tuition=$33,000 per year. Because of such funding activities, I truly believe that Iowa State’s students and their families would donate and/or pay extra to keep Iowa State running as it has been doing so.

I think Iowa State needs to provide a donation option on their access U-Bill page. An e-mail indicating the purpose of such donations would explain how such donations would help the school and limit future fees that the students will experience. This e-mail would also need a link to provide an efficient way to speed the donating process. As for the donation process, I would make it in $10 or more increments and allow for ongoing charges to debit and credit cards. I know most of my graduate program would commit to $10-20/month to ensure our school will stay super uber awesome!

I also liked the tuition surcharge idea, which you and President Geoffroy proposed. I think the tuition surcharge should be progressive in nature and reflect a certain percentage of the student’s typical college costs. I also think this should not include housing. Because there is a direct benefit for Iowa State’s students to live on campus through positive externalities, it seems unfair to apply harsh financial repercussions on students providing a direct non-monetary benefit to the school.

These are just thoughts, but thank you for allowing a voice.

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I’m sure this has been proposed, but I suggest cutting funding to student groups. I heard the sailing club is requesting $20,000 this year; if everyone’s tuition has to go up for that, then I say they can’t afford it.

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I first want to thank you for even considering students comments and suggestions. I am an active member of the ISU community; I received my B.S. here in 2008 and am now studying for my masters degree. I know many people here and have been in many conversations with staff and faculty here about this situation.

Below are my comments and suggestions:

President Geoffroy needs to show this university that he is a leader and understands this situation and how dire this situation can turn out to be if he does not pull the university through this. I think the most important thing is that President Geoffroy show that he is also going to tighten his belt. I believe during this time not only should President Geoffroy decline any bonus that the Regents may offer, but, also, President Geoffroy should accept a significant salary reduction.

1. Temporary mandatory furloughs or temporary salary reduction: Many staff members would rather have a reduction of pay than to face the horror of losing a job. You have to consider the unemployment rate and how long it is taking people to find new jobs. If every staff and faculty member (INCLUDING PRESIDENT GEOFFROY) agreed to a 1-year 5 percent salary reduction, it would make a huge dent in this budget crisis.
2. I believe that laying off staff members is a BAD idea — you will lose talent that could be hired by another university and then, once the budget is re-established, you have to go through the hiring process and the training process again, which will cost you more money again. So, in turn, you are spending more money by laying off a staff member.
3. The great benefits available here at Iowa State is one of the great incentives to come and work here. If you revise the benefits available you will lose a great number of talented people.
4. A tuition surcharge: Students are already under a lot of finical stress; the private loans companies are NOT giving out loans like they once did. The federal loans do not cover ISU tuition. Parents of students have either lost money in the stock market or lost a job. You need to consider how this will truly affect the students. You finally had an increase in the number of students attending this university; raising the tuition will only encourage students to attend a different university.
5. Postponing non-essential deferred maintenance and repairs: I believe this should be done to help the budget crisis.
6. Refocusing efforts, including potential program eliminations: If you do such a thing, you have to take many items into account, and take your time deciding what to do. You have to take into account how this will not only affect the students, but how the elimination of a program will affect the university profitability.
7. Permanent lay-offs: I believe that laying off staff members is a BAD idea — you will lose talent that could be hired by another university, and then once the budget is re-established you have to go through the hiring process and the training process again, which will cost you more money again. So, in turn, you are spending more money by laying off a staff member.
8. Selling non-essential assets to generate one-time funds: HOW WILL THIS HELP THE UNIVERSITY? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I NEED MORE INFORMATION BEFORE I MAKE A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION.
9. Go Green program — GOING NOWHERE!

* Tell staff and faculty that when they leave their office or classroom to turn down the temperature. There is no need to heat a room or classroom when no one is in there.

*Many of the buildings here on campus have many windows that are nice during the spring, summer and fall, BUT during the winter these windows do nothing but increase the heating cost. We need to cover the windows with plastic film, which is done in most houses, to decrease our carbon footprint.

Graduate Students

Many departments have or are considering ending some or all the graduate teaching assistant funds. These funds are what graduate students live on, at approx $1,300 a month. If you want this university to continue to be one of the leading research institutions, you must ensure that graduate students focus solely on research and not on finding a job to support themselves while conducting research. If funding for graduate students was cut, students would be forced to find a paying job to support themselves. By doing that, the research accomplishments done by graduate students and professors will decrease. With fewer research hours being conducted here at Iowa State, fewer grant funds will be given to this university, which will make this budget situation worse.

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This university strives to be greener, but many students I have encountered from other universities comment on our lack of recycling receptacles in campus buildings. I feel that this is an area that could at least pay for itself, if not make the university a little money if more recycling bins were available on campus for students to dispose of pop bottles.

I would also suggest that we start reminding people about turning off the lights when you leave. I know many people who leave their office lights on all the time or computers and computer monitors. Just another thought on a way to reduce costs.

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I think that, in a time of economic crisis, the continuation of pouring millions of dollars into re-doing and updating buildings is a WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY! Instead of looking for ways to cut programs and increase tuition, WHICH IN-STATE AND OUT-OF-STATE ALREADY PAY A GREAT AMOUNT OF MONEY TOWARD, STOP the construction. Instead of shoveling out university money, put a hault on it and save that money to cover areas that are suffering. I know and understand that certain families have very graciously donated money to the university — guess what… if they are gracious enough to build a building, then they will be gracious enough to keep student programs and education afloat so that students don’t suffer. STUDENTS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN BUILDINGS. WITHOUT STUDENTS, THIS WOULDN’T BE THE GREAT UNIVERSITY IT IS NOW AND WOULD NOT BE NEEDING ANY BUILDINGS OR PAYING ANYONE’S SALARIES.

Go ahead and raise tuition on a group of people who don’t even have money to pay the current tuition price — we’ll just take out bigger loans that we won’t pay back for years because we can’t find jobs and have to work for a much lower salary because they have faced cuts as well. Does that really sound reasonable?

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I have several recommmendations for the budget committee.

First, consider cutting back on janitorial services. This was done during the 90’s.

Then, consider cutting back on benefits to university employees. Things like reducing health benefits with employees paying larger deductibles could help. Also, consider cutting retirement benefits. I understand large, matching contributions are made to retirement plans every year. They are more generous than in the public sector and could be suspended or cut.

Also, put off or cancel big projects that would add to student fees. This would include the new recreation center additions and improvements. This is clearly a perk and doesn’t need to be undertaken. Given the change in the economic climate, the studnets would probably vote differently on the proposal if it were put to a vote now. Give the choice betwen even higher tuition and recreation center improvements; I think students would vote down the proposal.

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Temporary lay off, temporary salary reductions, temporary benefits revisions, etc. The Board of Regents has increased the tuition 10 percent several years — NOT TEMPORARY — and another one to come next year. A surcharge upon the tuition next semester is just a way to increase tuition with a different name. The students are going to make up the difference while the university continues to build new construction. I would think that with all of the brain power on the Board, you would come up with something different, rather than having the students carry such a load. I realize that it is a privilege to be able to go to college.

Students are why there is a college — without them, there is not a need for a college.

With people getting laid off, saleries being slashed, jobs up in the air, and medical costs out of reach for many people, this plan just isn’t reasonable. Four years of school is getting out of reach for many people.

The students have to find jobs that they can make a living on and pay back student loans. Let’s get back to the drawing table and get a plan that works without putting the burden on the students.

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I understand overcoming a $24.5 million deficit will take the help of everyone, but before a tuition surcharge for the spring, please look elsewhere. I have more than $5,000 in loans after just my first semester at Iowa State, and am already looking at $30,000 or more. I will probably have had to borrow by the time of my graduation. I would also like you to consider the funding for program elimination. I am an animal ecology major with a focus in the interpretation of natural resources. Cutting funding to a small program like that could be detrimental — many of my classes are only offered in one section and only in fall or spring semesters or, in the worst case, every other fall or spring semester. Many articles have now been published asking for the students to “reach deeper in their pockets.” Well, my pockets are empty, and, at this point, it seems as though I am no longer being asked to reach a little deeper, but I am being asked to give the shirt off my back and the food off my plate. So I will ask some of the administration to look themselves in the mirror, knowing the salaries they make should also be considered. I have seen the proposal for temporary salary reduction, and I can’t help but to laugh. At this point, some of these reductions should not be temporary. I also find it humorous that I find nothing about a temporary increase in tuition, because once you’ve decided that we will pay more, it never gets reduced again. I will end this message by reminding you that you are all in positions of power, and that is great, but it is we, the students, who are in the majority and have the ability to make radical change. The mild complaints about the budget have turned into a topic of real discussion, and there are students ready to make a difference, so please consider wisely.

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1. Cut back on DPS employees and hours worked. We really only need them in the morning, as people with parking permits arrive at school.
2. Give the coaches a pay cut… who needs to make over $1 million a year? Nobody! It’s absolutely ridiculous.
3. Stop giving athletes “benefits,” like mopeds…

Keep in mind that the truly important part of education is creating productive members of society, not having a great football team.

Perhaps students will not have as many options for their “adventure” at Iowa State for one fiscal year.

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I know, as a student, getting across campus is important, and I know in the winter Iowa State does an extremely and timely job of clearing the snow in these walks, but it would save money if you designated certain walks on campus to be plowed and certain walks to be un-plowed or “closed” during the winter.

Also, the plowing of the walks does not need to be perfect — one strip down the center, etc., would be plenty, especially when you consider many students walk on the snow anyway to avoid the ice that is building up in the walks.

Or, in order to not affect education, you could just cut the football scholarships and raise the GPA of the school at the same time.

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I think an evaluation of your current teachers/employees might help you eliminate the weak ones. I have been through many classes where the majority of the class struggled to find ways to pass the classes. The areas these issues have occured in were ones like English, management and philosophy. I can provide names of instructors, if needed. I feel that the evals that we do at the end of each semester don’t get looked at or weighed in the proper manner.

I do have a question about this training facility put up for basketball teams: Why was this needed? Why not add to some of the facilities on campus? Or why not put the money into the academic buildings?

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I would suggest stopping construction on any gymnasiums and/or recreation centers. These constitute several million dollars of our budget. They are mostly extracurricular and have few educational benefits. There are plenty of workout centers in Ames as alternatives for us students.

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I know you’re getting many ideas, so I’ll keep this short. The tuition for out-of-state students is already very high, nearly 3 times the rate of in-state tuition. I think that raising tuition for out-of-state students any higher than it already is would be a great mistake and would send many students elsewhere for their education. It would isolate Iowa State even more from the rest of the country, and I think that diversity at a university is very important.

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In response to “the most recent budget news” you offered the following strategies:

1. Temporary salary reductions.
2. Temporary lay-offs/furloughs.
3. Benefit revisions of a temporary or permanent nature.
4. A tuition surcharge for the spring semester of 2010.
5. Postponing non-essential deferred maintenance and repairs.
6. Refocusing efforts, including potential program eliminations.
7. Permanent lay-offs.
8. Selling non-essential assets to generate one-time funds.

I understand and agree, but would prioritize slightly differently (keep in mind that I am not fully informed on the details), as such:

8. Selling non-essential assets to generate one-time funds.
1. Temporary salary reductions.
2. Temporary lay-offs/furloughs.
3. Benefit revisions of a temporary or permanent nature.
6. Refocusing efforts, including potential program eliminations.
4. A tuition surcharge for the spring semester of 2010.
5. Postponing non-essential deferred maintenance and repairs.
7. Permanent lay-offs.

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I’m not sure how legal or not this is, but perhaps one way we could raise funds would be through a lottery — powerball or any other one. I noticed that funds were raised for the Iowa Veterans in that way not too long ago.

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I live in Oak dormitory and have noticed that our bathroom looks only slightly cleaner after the custodial staff comes to clean it every morning. Perhaps it should only be cleaned every other day, which would save about half of the cost of cleaning supplies and paying custodial staff.

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I am an international student from Peru in the Ph.D. program. I have a suggestion, if I may. This current situation that the country is experiencing recalled some of the hardest time we had in Peru in the early ’90s.

Today, I read one article in the Iowa State Daily where Provost Hoffman mentioned that the university will be closed from the 28th to the 31st of December. In Peru, my university closes every year for approximately three weeks, right after final exams, in mid-December, until the first Monday following New Year’s day. It’s kind of a massive vacation time, since it’s both summer time and the holidays. No one is around — only security and a few maintenance people. This practice has been established annually and saves money to the university — even now, when the times are good in Peru.

I hope you would considerate a longer period, since many people could take either a break or bring some work at home for one or two weeks when the holidays last. At the end, maybe this could help reduce the ISU budget in some regard.

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I don’t know any specifics, including the institution’s name, but I heard about the following fundraiser at another college. For one day, if all the students in a class donated one dollar, the professor was “imprisoned” and class was canceled for the day. We wouldn’t have to take our poor faculty away, but the same idea would work here. If each ISU student did this in two classes — a realistic assumption, considering the obvious immediate benefit to the students — more than $50,000 could be raised for the university. If faculty got into the spirit, requesting matching funds by the professor could possibly double that number. It’s small peanuts, granted, but easily enough to keep a maintenance position or give a few top faculty members the raises they demand to keep them from going elsewhere. Plus, student organizations could be encouraged to hold their own events on Central Campus. It would be a celebration, of sorts, possibly in conjunction with VEISHEA.

By Zach Thompson

Editor’s note: The following comments were sent to budgetcomments@iastate.edu and will be reviewed by University President Gregory Geoffroy, Provost Elizabeth Hoffman and the University Budget Advisory Committee, as they make “the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead,” according to an e-mail sent by the president to students Oct. 15.
The numbers correspond to the order in which the e-mails were received.
Contributors’ names and e-mail addresses have been withheld, as consent to publish could not reasonably be obtained.

1
I would suggest that every person take a 5 to 10 percent cut in salary to help save the jobs of all concerned.

2
I feel if we, as a university — all faculty and staff — would give mandatory X number of days without pay, that would make a big impact on the budget. If we lay off, the state of Iowa revenues would continue to go down. They would have to go on unemployment, and the story continues. This way we keep many employees still working, keeping a strong university and the state of Iowa growing.
I, personally, would like to see as many employees in the state of Iowa keep their jobs.

3
As a merit employee, I would be more than happy to pay for a portion of my Blue Access insurance and still pay the co-pay. If the union or university did not totally pay for this for the many merit employees that are enrolled in it, this could be a huge savings for the state. I would much rather pay for my insurance than lose my job. I doubt my unemployment would cover the Cobra insurance I will be forced to have taken, as I am the benefit provider for my family.

4
I strongly prefer furloughs over salary reductions! Reducing benefits provided by Iowa State is also a preferred budgeting approach. Although difficult, a review of special programs — not curriculum, but programs — is important as well. There are some special programs that could be eliminated, or at least temporarily suspended, when money is tight.

5
How about getting rid of overtime? I just heard about a situation in FP&M [facilities planning and management] where the people do not do the work during the week so they can get overtime to do it over the weekend. There is also overtime in some of the other areas, where they could hire non-fulltime workers or rotate the fulltime employees to help fill the workforce without using overtime. Parking, especially, at football and basketball events is an area of concern.

6
I continue to believe that permanent cost savings and efficiencies could be achieved by centralizing and consolidating at least some of the resources across campus allocated to communications and publications, and that such an approach would actually enhance our common efforts to advance Iowa State’s image and messages.

7

• Retirement Incentive Plan
• – Consider increasing the incentive for faculty — TIAA-CREF contributions.
• – Act now to implement plan to allow employees to plan ahead
• Voluntary Leave Without Pay
• – Let employees know the benefit reductions, if LWOP will be more than 30 days long
• – Encourage LWOP during holiday and spring breaks
• – Give P&S a choice, furlough X days or be laid off… not mandatory, but choice
• Voluntary donations through ISU Foundation
• – All university employees could contribute to the cause and use payroll deduction to spread out the take-home pay reduction. Those who itemize deductions can then reclaim some of the donated amount.
• – Provide employees with an algorithm to calculate one-day pay to ensure staff are on the same page when requesting furlough donation equivalents.
• – Friends of Iowa State could be encouraged to contribute to the cause.
• Benefit cut
• – Reduce two-for-one TIAA-CREF contributions’ match to one-for-one
• – Reduce TIAA-CREF contributions from 5 to 3 percent, as employee choice
• Pay cut
• – Reduces take-home pay and benefit costs
• – If Iowa State feels it has “right sized,” makes sense to pursue
• – University should restore when funding returns to show care for its people
• – Consider pay-cut percentage variation by salary amount
• Develop plan to eliminate Iowa State’s dependence on state appropriations
• Plan for a five-year budget reduction and recovery time, rather than two years.
• Eliminate programs and majors now with a three-year phase-out plan.
• Sunset centers with reduced impact or viability.
• Consider likelihood of reductions as permanent reductions. Act deliberately and carefully. Do not jeopardize funding in areas not funded by state appropriations.
• Reinstate mandatory retirement age. Grandfather current employees if needed to avoid age discrimination.
• Eliminate car pool and reimburse mileage at personal rate, rather than federal limit.
• Reduce out-of-state travel.
• Stop new recreation center construction project for the time being to retain students. Shows compassion for parents paying the bill; allows for tuition increase to occur for additional revenue.
• Close university during Thanksgiving, Christmas-New Years, and Spring breaks.
• Reduce custodial staff and allow student employees to provide those services — provides jobs for students and reduces costs to university for the service.
• Eliminate summer school and reduce positions to nine or 10 months, where possible. Consider Saturday morning classes during the year, with existing employees to cover in lieu of summer school. Consider J-term again instead of summer school.
• Determine requirement/regulations and costs associated with meeting those where responding “We’re sorry, but due to budget constraints we are not able to comply at this time.” is appropriate.
• Look for out-of-state student populations that could be recruited at in-state tuition rates. Some talk about community colleges along state borders. Maybe other distinguished community colleges that do an admirable job in preparation for university curriculum.
• Allow any student graduating from an Iowa high school to be considered a resident with regards to admission and tuition, if we are not already doing so.
• Require specified fund amounts at RRC level be used for green initiatives.
• Outsource Student Health Center and offer as optional service, not required.
• Outsource Veenker Golf Course.
• Reduce size of Reiman Gardens as Iowa State’s south gateway.

8
Suggestions for budget cuts — all are temporary:

1. End college graduation ceremonies effective this fall — just have a fall and spring ISU commencement, incorporating all undergrads and grads. I realize the counter argument is the “PR” these separate ceremonies create, but I believe students and families really understand we are in very serious economic times and, perhaps, would applaud such a change vs. a tuition increase or layoffs.
2. Are there other costly “ceremony” type events we can trim or stop for now?
3. Close Iowa State over winter and spring breaks.
4. Reduce TIAA/CREF benefits.
5. Provide units with guidelines for outsourcing jobs we have had to have done in the past by FP&M — their charges are unbelievable — they even charge us, now, for estimates on jobs. Maybe the FP&M changes could even be permanent.
6. Establish a volunteer program to help units deal with layoffs or other jobs that need to be done for which there are no funds now. We have a strong alum base — I bet they’d be happy to help.

9
Since I know very little about the budget exercise, I was just wondering if I were to “gift” the university days of vacation, would that have any influence on the budget?

10
My approach would be distribute this reduction between two to four areas to lessen the burden in any one. For example, a 4 percent reduction in salary through temporary furloughs, a 3 percent tuition surcharge, and 3 percent through one more round of early retirements would be a nicely balanced approach; the faculty and staff would “hurt” a bit, the students would “hurt” a bit, and some who feel like they made a mistake by not taking early retirement will have another chance to reconsider.
A base-line permanent salary reduction will be met with great anger, and any attempt to adjust our benefits in any way will be met with even greater anger. Both of these measures are unnecessary options.

11
The university should shut down between Christmas and New Year’s. It has been proven that it saves millions of dollars.

12
I agree that furloughs for everyone are a good means of budget savings, but proper timing could add to budget savings beyond salary costs. By furloughing over the holidays, particularly between Christmas and New Years Day, heating and lighting in buildings could be minimized…

13
I am sure the issue of utility savings has been discussed as a savings item. I would suggest that the university consider a complete shut down of all non-essential buildings during the holiday/semester break period. Buildings housing live animals used for research or teaching would have to be held open and utilities maintained for obvious reasons. Those staff members who care for the animals would also have to report. However, most of the other functions, facilities, departments and offices that are not needed over break may be able to be completely closed, saving utilities and employee salary dollars through a mandatory layoff during that period.
I was greatly disappointed last spring with the response to the voluntary furlough/temporary leave without pay response by ISU employees. Members of my staff who volunteered for the furlough/layoff were also disappointed in the response. Our unit of 25 merit and supervisory confidential staff and five P&S employees had 10 employees — all of whom took the full five-day furlough/leave without pay. We were all surprised and disappointed when the final number of 210 was published as having taken one to five days of furlough. I would suggest that furlough or leave without pay be mandatory this go-around. The one to five days is very workable, even for faculty, and, if it is flexible — unless used over the holiday/semester break — other than those employees in essential positions, I believe it could have a very big impact.

14
I have a comment regarding the state requirement that 1 percent of all building funds be directed toward art projects/works within or around a new building. Although I thoroughly enjoy seeing these beautiful works, I have trouble feeling comfortable with losing valuable technical staff, specifically regarding the Veterinary Medical Center at the College of Veterinary Medicine, while we continue to spend — I was quoted about $200,000 — on artwork. I am aware that this is a state law, but can we postpone implementing it until we are in better fiscal times? I believe this is a significant amount of money that may not be available to the college, per se, but anything to improve the state’s fiscal situation would help. At this rate, we will be a beautiful hollow shell, lacking the infrastructure that was the instrumental force in establishing the need for the new building in the first place.

15
During the upcoming holidays, close the university down as much as possible while most students are gone for the holidays … Obviously some service personnel would have to stay working, like DPS, some of FPM, mail service, ISU Dining and such.
Any little savings can amount to a bigger savings.

16

1. A 4 percent or greater decrease for those making $150,000 or more a year
2. Decrease in salary for coaches
3. Hiring freeze
4. Decrease work hours, shut down two times a month, such as every other Friday/Monday — no services

17
Why not have a mandatory shut down during winter break and spring break? I would much rather take time off without pay for a few weeks out of the year than lose my job.

18

1. Emeritus, who are of the age to receive Medicare — stop receiving university-paid health care.
2. Anyone making more than $75k take a 10 percent pay cut; anyone making more than $100k take a 20 percent pay cut; anyone making more than $150k take a 30 percent pay cut, in the form of permanent cuts.
3. Shut down units that do not directly serve the interests of Iowa State and those units that would be better handled by the private sector.
4. Lay off faculty — even tenured — who are not performing well, based on student review, or are not providing valuable research work.
5. Do not exclude faculty from consideration on any cost-cutting measures; faculty teach, but P&S/merit run the show.

19
I just read the following on the Inside Iowa State e-mail:
More RIOs
The second motion, which passed unanimously, was a recommendation to implement another retirement incentive option in 2010. This motion also failed to contain specifics ­— such as suggested age or length of service requirements — and a retirement deadline was eliminated.
“I think it takes the detail out of it, but, more, it says that we really need and really want this,” said Camille Schroeder, council president. “This is a different day, and a different year and a different budget. I think we have to act based on what we know.”
Years ago, there was a retirement incentive plan implemented at Iowa State with health insurance paid until age 65, but the eligible retirement age was 57. If the age limit were lowered, there may be more people taking the retirement option and opening up budgets for salaries.

20
With already not providing a cost-of-living increase for the current year, the prospect of temporary pay reduction for employees, who will have to work a little harder in the future because of higher workloads generated by the inevitable reduction in work force that is coming, is not a great retention policy for the current employees, especially faculty. While the governor’s cut is dramatic, he is at least addressing the future of budget constraints now, and I encourage the university to do likewise. Make the permanent cuts that are needed, and be positioned to grow with new flexibility as soon as the budget situation eases — not just go back to where we were before the cuts.
I serve on a board of trustees for a liberal arts college in Olathe, Kansas. We have had these same issues for three years, now, as revenue has declined and our foundation has retreated in value, reducing its support to the institution. The most effective solutions that have been implemented have been the permanent ones. Temporary cash flow adjustments never allow for you to become effective in making future decisions. You are still tied to old standards because you have only temporarily reduced your financial commitments to those programs.
I encourage you to think long-term and not anticipate that state funds will increase to past levels when this crisis is over. Maybe the Board of Regents will never see this funding level again. When the revenue increases to the state, the state may have other issues to address like larger Medicare costs passed down by the federal government or K-12 commitments or restoring funding to public safety. Plan as though you will never see these funds again, and make the hard choices. If you do make permanent reductions and the funding does come back, then the returning revenue will allow you to re-establish components that were missed, and to start new emphasis that are emerging areas that we would not have had funds for before.

21
I think I heard the athletic salaries/budget has been moved from general fund — is that correct? How much of the athletic budget is general fund budget?
Thank you.

22
Look at how much is spent on leisure books, music CDs, feature films and TV shows (i.e. about $210 for episodes of “Cheers”). Are these items necessary, right now, for a research library?

23
I suggest we seriously consider the consolidation of all IT resources on campus. There is quite a bit of waste generated by the duplication, triplication, etc., of services, equipment and employee positions. This seems to already be an eventual goal of the university, but maybe it’s time to speed things up?

24
I don’t see any mention of athletics facing budget scrutiny. If this is truly an educational institution, perhaps the athletics budget should be cut instead of the continued push to hurt P&S employees, etc.

25
The largest percentage of the university budget goes toward faculty salaries. A university-wide mandatory furlough for faculty makes the most sense. If Iowa State doesn’t want to make this a university policy, then the authority to make this policy should be delegated to deans and department chairpersons. Additionally, no state funding of faculty and staff travel would be a wise move.

26
My suggestion for budget savings within the university would be to order a mandatory shut-down, possibly over winter break, Christmas break, and/or spring break. Of course, some areas would have to report, such as those areas that are housing animals, etc. The majority of ISU students are not present at these times, and thus would alleviate the worry about not being able to serve our students appropriately.
It is also my belief, after talking with a few of my colleagues, that the majority of people would be more than willing to take a few days off without pay, rather than lose their jobs entirely. A few days without pay can be handled much more easily within family units than someone losing a job all together, whether it be having to take an entire week all at once, or staggering days off, such as one to two days per month for a year.

27
Instead of laying employees off, which then provides a shortfall in the services that the university provides, what if we were to reclassify those positions as part-time/temporary — not to exceed 20 hours — and then that would not only cut out a large portion of the $24.5 million, but it also eliminates the fact that Iowa State would not have to offer those employees health benefits. This temporary change could be set for 18 months — covers the remaining fiscal year and all of next — and, at that point, the issue could be revisited to either extend the temporary positions or to change them back to full-time P&S, faculty or merit. The average insurance for a single person at Iowa State costs the university in the area of $6,500 a year. If you take that, along with cutting people’s work week in half, the amount adds up.
From an employee’s point of view, it would be easier to swallow going from 40 hours per week to 20, rather than going from 40 to zero and not having any place to work at all. Allowing people to keep their jobs, but at a reduced work week, forces them to still pay taxes, which will help the state, rather than have them collect unemployment, which hurts the university and the state.

28
How much could Iowa State save if it changed the TIAA-CREF match from 10 percent to 9 percent or 8 percent?

29
I am willing to take a furlough and give back on my benefits or whatever it takes to keep Iowa State a fine, stable and beautiful place, but I am just wondering where it all ends. We all keep giving, giving and giving, and it just gets worse, every day. People do not have any more to give. I am really feeling very hopeless right now. I don’t want people to lose jobs, because that just defeats the purpose of building up the tax rolIs. What will it take to make up $50 million. I could use a little good news.

30
Could we close campus — except for essential personnel — the last two weeks of this calendar year? Most departments are either closed or only staffed with a skeleton crew, and the skeleton crew would rather be home with their families, even if the time were unpaid. Even under normal circumstances, I think most people would like to have that time off and would take it without pay.
Also… why in the world would we be watering Veenker Golf Course when it’s raining outside, which was happening Thursday morning at around 7 a.m.? I know that’s a “nickel and dime” type of savings, but small things like that spread around the university could possibly add up.