Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences
.
Table of Contents • Notables • Dean’s address to faculty Vision Credits
|
Address to the Faculty Once again it is my pleasure to report on the state of the college and experiment station. Let me begin by addressing the budget picture for the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1. For the Division of Agriculture, this is one of the better budgets in several years. With the continued promising state revenue projections, we fully expect all appropriated funds from the legislature to flow. Therefore, we plan on a 5 percent salary program for all non-classified staff and faculty. In addition, we believe we can continue to fill our most critical faculty needs and provide some modest adjustments in M&O budgets to help address rising energy costs. We will continue to budget conservatively to ensure that we have the necessary resources to address unanticipated needs. As the associate vice president, I must say it is a lot better to be adding rather than subtracting when developing a budget for the next fiscal year. On the college side, this will be a challenging budget year. Despite budgetary increases from the legislature and from tuition increases, the need to address rising energy costs and other needs has limited their ability to address the needs of our academic programs at the level we believe is necessary. Campus did return our two percent reallocation and fulfilled their commitment to new faculty positions in HES made last year. This will place significant pressure on us to accommodate the needs of our fastest growing programs. The Fayetteville campus will have a 3 percent salary program so we will be challenged to be fair to all of our faculty irrespective of their appointments. This means that we will need to look critically at the number of courses we are trying to teach in a time of static budgets. In order to add some perspective, I thought I would share part of my budget presentation to the chancellor that I have shared with department heads. Despite the somewhat tighter budget picture, I continue to be impressed by your dedication to our students and their success. As a college, we have much to be proud of. I thought I would mention several on-going initiatives. First and foremost, our college diversity plan has expired and there is a need to develop a new five year plan that will be a companion piece to our management plan. I am chairing this task force personally and plan to have a draft in place by the beginning of the fall term. As a college, we need to continue to embrace the chancellor’s priority of increasing our diversity not because it’s a campus initiative but because it’s the right thing to do. As many of you know Preston La Ferney has elected to retire after many years of service to the Division and college. As the director of our International Ag Program, this is an opportune time to examine our current program structure and emphasis. Therefore, I commissioned an ad-hoc committee of unit heads to examine our structure and function and make recommendations for change. Likewise, we have been working with our unit management to examine our current faculty evaluation process and merit salary system in order to make changes that ensure fair evaluations that are better linked to our reward system. Finally, last fall I noted that our management plan was completed and posted on the web. The plan is very ambitious and we are challenged to address the goals identified in the plan. Beginning this summer, we will work with our unit management to address action items identified in the plan. Annually we will examine our progress on our goals and benchmark that progress. With the completion of our scholarship luncheon and honors convocation, I can’t help but note that attendance by our faculty at the awards event continues to be disappointing from my perspective although it was better this year. This is the one time each year where we have the opportunity as a faculty community to recognize our most deserving students, staff and faculty. Likewise, nominations for some of our awards remain lower than they need to be. While I respect that this requires a time commitment on the part of the award nominee and committee, we must find the necessary time to ensure that we nominate our most deserving individuals. I would hope that all of our units give this needed attention next year. Recently, we hosted the annual state FFA contest on campus which is a long standing commitment we have to that organization and the state agricultural science teachers. It's not often you have the opportunity to host more than 1,000 high school students with an interest in our programs along with their teachers. This requires a significant time commitment by many of our faculty and the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education who coordinate the event. I would like to publicly thank the coordinators if they are here today and ask them to stand and be recognized. Jeff Miller, Don Johnson, George Wardlow, Pengyin Chen, Freddie Scott, Nolan Arthur, Michael Popp, Lucas Parsch, Mike Evans, Susan Cannon, Moye Rutledge, Kris Brye, Bryan Kutz, Jon Lindstrom, Gerald Klingaman, Jason Emmert and Gary Davis. Thanks to Ashley Harris for coordinating the lunch for a buck. Please join me in thanking them. |