In this monthly chat, Murray State University President Dr. Randy Dunn reacts to the first meeting of the Board of Regents ad-hoc committee tasked with reviewing his contract, details his plan to roll out findings from Budget Planning and Review Team, explains how the so called “sequester” could impact MSU and how the university is preparing for re-accreditation.
Budget Planning and Review:
Work from BPR teams has been ongoing since the beginning of the fall semester. The 150 to 160 team members have submitted 44 items that include cuts, reallocations and new revenue options for MSU. The timeline below is from an internal memo at the University.
3/1 President and Vice Presidents review all recommendations 3/5 Administrative Council and Deans review the draft list Faculty Senate previews the draft list at their meeting later that afternoon 3/6 Student Government Association previews the draft list at their meeting (Staff Congress may schedule a special meeting the review the draft list) 3/8 Revised draft list of recommendations sent to the MSU Board of Regents 3/11 – 3/13 Campus forum(s) held, time and location to be determined 3/14 – 3/15 Board of Regent meetings to discuss recommendations The final format of the recommendations ultimately sent to the Board (and made available to the public) will likely include a list of recommendations labeled as either “academic” or “non-academic” and also separated into “immediate implementation” or “retained for further consideration/study” categories. In the interest of transparency, recommendations not being forwarded for further consideration will still be shown in one large, amalgamated group at a separate link for anyone who wants to scroll down through those.
Sequester:
Dr. Dunn said Federal Work Study and Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants will be affected for the next academic year. But Pell Grants have been exempted from the “sequester” so far. Below are comments from Dr. Dunn in MSU’s weekly newsletter regarding more on the “sequester”
While we’re not as dependent on these federal dollars for ongoing operational purposes as compared to the big research universities, we are still concerned about some potentially difficult cuts in our federal support… we’ll handle it with as minimal an impact as possible on our grant-supported employees and students, and our federally related projects and services.
Contract Extension:
The MSU Board of Regents ad-hoc committee to review Dr. Dunn’s contractheld its first meeting on February 13th in Louisville. Dunn didn’t attend that meeting but he did flirt with the idea of going. At the meeting the committee laid out the criterion it would use to determine whether or not to recommend to the full board extending his contract. Dunn said some of the information the committee will review was included in his previous comprehensive evaluation the board performed last year.
Accreditation:
Dunn laid out the ongoing work of the many people involved in preparing the campus for a visit from an accreditation team in February of 2014. He also discussed some ongoing work in his recent commentary published in Murray State’s weekly newsletter.
Accreditation affirms that Murray State University has a mission appropriate in our sector as a public state university and has the resources, programs, and services necessary to achieve that mission… The next major hurdle in our reaffirmation work is the finalization of the major written report for reaccreditation (potentially some 50,000 pages of documents!)—the University’s SACS Compliance Certification, which will be completed by late summer, leading to submission of the report this coming September. The report will then be reviewed by an off-site Peer Review Committee during the remainder of the FA13 semester.
Dunn was confident that MSU would be re-accredited.
