Arts and Humanities Building Photo credit: Daniel Wright
The Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts released an email to the faculty and staff of the college announcing a spending freeze.
The freeze became effective April 9 and is specifically targeting Professional Development funds.
Professional Development funds are used for professionally related travel, subscriptions, purchases and graduate or student assistants.
The freeze means that all requests from faculty to use PD funds will not be approved for the current fiscal year.
Robert M. Knight, Dean of HFA, cites the current budget deficit the college has as the reason for the freeze.
When the college received funding, in November, for the 2016-17 fiscal year it was 1.3 million dollars less than anticipated.
“November was too late to adjust any expenditure for the fall semester… I am projecting a year-end deficit of over $1.2 million,” said Knight in the email to the faculty of HFA.
This will be the first year the HFA has ended the year with a deficit, with Knight as the college Dean.
“What is evident is that we all must work collectively to increase the major counts in all HFA degree programs as a means to address the situation,” said Knight in the email.
The reason for this as Knight mentions in the email is that the college breaks even on its GE course offerings, but loses money on its upper division courses.
“Together we will be discussing a number of initiatives for the 17-18 year to aggressively market the major programs in the college,” said Knight in the email.
Daniel Wright can be reached at newseditor@theorion.com or @Danny_W_Chico on Twitter.