September 24, 2009

University Planning Council

Minutes for September 24, 2009

Present: Becky Doyle, Archer Gravely, Bill Haas, Bill Haggard, Jeff Konz, Jim Kuhlman, Amy Lanou, Keya Maitra, Bill Massey, Ted Meigs, Cortland Mercer, Kevin Moorhead, Linda Nelms, Dan Pierce, John Pierce, Anne Ponder, Christine Riley, Louise Thompson

Absent: Buffy Bagwell, Jane Fernandes, Vic Foster, Patrice Mitchell, Adrienne Oliver

UPC met on September 24 from 3:30 to 5:00 in HU 224.

1. Ms. Nelms convened the meeting and reviewed the purpose and duties of the University Planning Council, for the benefit of our new members, as specified in Senate Document 8704S: http://www.unca.edu/ir/plan/upc/sd8407s.pdf

2. In a budget update, Chancellor Ponder noted two items. One, the second year of the biennium (2010-11) has a higher budget cut than the current year, but we have managed the budget holdbacks so as to not suffer an additional shortfall burden next year, if no new cuts come our way. Two, she reported that President Bowles and all UNC Chancellors had received a letter from State Senator Marc Basnight requesting that we reduce “administrative bloat” in the UNC system. Chancellor Ponder reported that we have a smaller administration than our peers but we appear to have a problem in senior administrative positions that have the words “Chancellor”, “Provost”, or “Dean” in the title. We appear to have grown more of these positions between 2005 and 2008 as reported on the General Administration Personnel Data File (PDF), which is snapshot of employment as of September 30 each year. Chancellor Ponder reported that in 2005 our number of senior positions was artificially low because the Chancellor and VC for Finance & Operations positions were unfilled, Academic Affairs and Student Affairs were still merged, and we had a number of other vacancies. Additionally, during that time, UNC Asheville took advantage of Management Flexibility rules which enabled campuses to create new positions that had these words in the titles without going through the cumbersome Raleigh approval process. The UNC system will cut 66 senior administrative positions and UNC Asheville will need to cut 3, the lowest figure among the UNC schools. In addition to the three cuts, about half of the positions that currently have these words in the titles will be adjusted to a generic equivalent such as “Director” without loss of salary. Mr. John Pierce reported that our administrative costs compared to instruction have not changed over the last five years or in reference to our peers. He also indicated that the state is now requiring us to hold back 5%, approximately $2M, but that we may get some additional funds for enrollment growth next year. Next year’s budget reduction for the University system will be 14%, up from 10.5% this year, but we don’t know what our campus portion of that will be.

3. Ms. Riley distributed a draft copy of the color-coded strategic plan dashboard. The dashboard has three colors to indicate the status of each benchmark: red – below target; green – at or above target; and yellow – no data/measure defined or target not set. Of the 31 dashboard measures, 8 are green, 11 are red, and 12 were yellow. Ms. Nelms suggested that we need to encourage the workgroups to move forward and eliminate all yellow or incompletely defined benchmarks. Ms. Riley will coordinate with the workgroups to get a date for completion for the undefined benchmarks and/or targets. A suggestion was made to create a new amber color to represent the status of a measure that is within 2% of the target. A number of the red benchmarks are falling short by a very small margin.

4. UPC continued its discussion of the list of 22 cost reduction suggestions submitted by the campus. This review will be on-going in future meetings.