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  The Strategic Advisory Committee already has received 1,200 cost-cutting suggestions

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: October 1, 2008

Provost Satish K. Tripathi provided the UB Council with an update Monday on how the university is dealing with a potential $21 million cut in state funding.

Tripathi told council members, including newly appointed member June Williams Hoeflich, president and CEO of Sheehan Health Network, that UB’s first order of business after receiving word that state funding to SUNY would be cut an additional 7 percent—on top of the 3.3 percent cut in June—was to institute a moratorium on new hiring and purchases of more than $5,000.

The next step, he said, was to involve the entire campus in the process—“to get as many new ideas as possible”—by forming a university-wide Strategic Advisory Committee to assess the budget situation and advise the administration on how to deal with the expected cuts.

Tripathi reported that he also has met with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and the senate’s Budget Priorities Committee, and attended a daylong retreat on the topic with the university’s senior leadership.

Talks with all these groups have determined three basic principles that are crucial to establishing UB as a premier public research university and must be upheld during budget deliberations, Tripathi said: Maintain UB 2020 as the vision for the university’s academic excellence, provide the best education for undergraduate, professional and professional students, and realize the full potential of the research program.

Tripathi pointed out that every campus group involved in the budget advisory process has endorsed selective budget cuts, rather than across-the-board cuts.

The groups also have started looking at new sources of revenue, as well as the kinds of savings that can be realized, he said, noting that savings have been achieved in the past through efforts like the IT and HR transformations. “We need to do more of that,” he said, adding that reorganizations, consolidations and economies of scale are being discussed, at both the central and unit levels.

In other business at Monday’s meeting, Marsha Henderson, vice president for external affairs, reported that 2007-08 was a record year for philanthropy at UB. The university collected $34.2 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, a 27 percent increase over the previous year. UB also received $57.2 million in commitments during 2007-08, a 92 percent increase over 2006-07 and 132 percent of its $43.4 million goal for the year.

The council also unanimously approved a resolution commending all parties involved in putting together the agreement to begin the consolidation of Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center and create a new, UB-aligned health care system in Western New York.

The resolution expresses appreciation in particular to President John B. Simpson; David Dunn, vice president for health sciences; Michael Cain, dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; and Mary Gresham, dean of the Graduate School of Education, as well as UB faculty physicians Yogesh Bakhai, Lawrence Bone, Merril Dayton, Steven Dubovsky, Evan Evans, Kevin Gibbons, James Reidy, Alan Saltzman and Stanley Schwartz.