University Budget Committee Structure Review

Attributes of Effective Committees

• State-wide Academic Senate Survey of effective budget committees revealed:– Frequency of Meetings– Continuity in Membership– Regular Attendance– Staff Support for Research

Other Important Attributes

• Honest and full disclosure of information and ideas

• Investment in time and energy to train faculty

• Well-organized process

• Substantial commitment of time

Best Practices

• Appoint and elect diverse and dedicated committee members– Memberships most often contain more faculty

members than other represented groups; memberships also often include representatives from administration, staff, and students.

• Provide strong leadership and clear goals• Establish an environment of trust• Communicate frequently and openly

HSU’s University Budget Committee

• Frequency of Meetings – monthly meetings in the Fall; accelerated schedule for Spring

• Continuity in Membership – – staggered 3 year terms, or – term by virtue of members appointment

• Academic Senate President is Co-chair• Associated Student President is one-year term• Associated Student representative is one-year term

• Regular Attendance – dedicated members attend almost every meeting

• Staff Support for Research

HSU University Budget Process

• Open and transparent budget process with exchange of information and ideas

• Membership has been through the process twice• Process is really designed to address budget

increases and not budget reductions• Committee has spent a lot of time trying to

understand the functions of the major divisions and the impacts that reductions would have on their divisions, but did not feel they knew enough to make a recommendation to the President on matters of divisional reductions.

HSU University Budget Process

• Membership– Some feel that the Committee is too heavily

weighted with faculty members– Some feel that the Committee should have

administrative representatives– Some feel that the staff are overwhelmed by the

process in that they are not used to speaking about policy issues

Areas to Reexamine

• Summary– UBC struggles with budget process timeline

• In order to provide each division with planning time to respond to the Governor’s January budget, the UBC planning timeframe requires almost weekly meetings from March through early May

– UBC has been understaffed and so the Committee did not start the process of looking at Peer institutional data for benchmarking and comparative data

HSU University Budget Process

• Summary– Significant improvement over past budget

processes– Open and transparent process– Faculty, staff, and students are engaged and

making a meaningful contribution

Questions?